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Topic: Curious how the SCP is coming along!
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665b510d954d0ZylonBane

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Because with discussion of favorite decks, inevitably comes discussion of least-favorite decks. Anyway, we could have this discussion split off if desired.
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I don't know...It's a bit backwards that this is probably the hardest point in the game, mainly due to high respawn rates/many spawn points or whatever, but obviously it's part of what engineering is for us now. That's a bad excuse though. Personally I want areas later in the game as just as nightmarish in spawn rate/points, I only ever feel the pressure of spawning in engineering. Heck on the Rickenbacker there are no respawn points at all except one or two I think (you guys would know), though that may be intentional because of it's linear nature, or I may just be missing the spawning 'cause of said nature.

Personally I like the corridor of death, and wish there were more corridors/areas like it later in the game, but it certainly is questionable. Depends on your perspective. One could argue it's a simulation and steady difficulty curves are not something that a true simulation would have, but that crosses the thin line of simulation|gameplay quite significantly. I vote to keep it as is, and instead add more corridors of death :) I know you want it to be accessible to newcomers but you already have made many considerations for newbies, and there is easy mode. Can you not have some stuff filtered on all but easy mode? If (difficulty [0]), tone down x; else vanilla.
Or certain items that are only in world on easy, so can place additional hypos and ammo in the maps for noobs. 

whatever will make the out of the thin air spawning less obvious is good (in the ideal world, the player should never be witnessing the spawn).

Good point.
« Last Edit: 07. February 2014, 00:00:04 by Join usss! »

665b510d95b38ZylonBane

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The other ridiculous thing about the respawning in that area is that it's a dead end of the ship. There's literally nowhere they could be coming from except the door you came through to get there.
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Regardless you'll never get that past the purists. And since there is no easy fix that would also be satisfactory I'd leave this section for a bonus addon.

I've never understood why it's one or the other.  It seems like a lot of fan made patches on the web have two options at install "Vanilla (bug fixes only)" and "Standard (recommended)".  Is it just the difficulty of play testing multiple installer options?
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It's just a lot of work to build, not just playtesting. (Ever looked at the editor?) v47 & ZB mentioned the possibility of an addon with changes that go beyond pure fixes in the past. But currently they're working on the basic version.

665b510d9632cvoodoo47

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the problem is that sometimes it's hard to tell whether something is a bug, or not - a nice example would be the eng2 body of the Many sequence. if you look hard enough, it feels a bit off (the spiders are stuck, and act crazy when they see you). when you fire up the editor, it looks unfinished (extra waypoints that are not being used, signals that are not being executed). and now, what is the proper course of action - leave it the way it has always been because "that is the original setup that everyone has been accustomed to during all those years" or take your best guess about what the original intention was, and fix it up?

the same can be said about the corridor of death - it looks like IR have overblown the spawning at this particular place. and the question is, again - fix it up so it will feel smoother, or leave it alone just because "it has always been a corridor of death where enemies spawn like hell for no particular reason".

or, to use a more recent example, almost no toilet stalls have doors, that means anyone taking a dump would be clearly visible to anyone just passing by. this is just stupid (and unhygienic). but, is it a bug? an anomaly? something the original mappers forgot? should it be fixed?


my usual answer to such questions is yes - if it's creaking, oil it, if it's rough, smooth it out, if it's stupid, make it smarter.
« Last Edit: 07. February 2014, 10:11:06 by voodoo47 »
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the problem is that sometimes it's hard to tell whether something is a bug, or not - a nice example would be the eng2 body of the Many sequence. if you look hard enough, it feels a bit off (the spiders are stuck, and act crazy when they see you). when you fire up the editor, it looks unfinished (extra waypoints that are not being used, signals that are not being executed). and now, what is the proper course of action - leave it the way it has always been because "that is the original setup that everyone has been accustomed to during all those years" or take your best guess about what the original intention was, and fix it up?

The mist and spiders moving properly are solid improvements.
The mist is good for hiding a lack of detail and adding atmosphere. Good job.

the same can be said about the corridor of death - it looks like IR have overblown the spawning at this particular place. and the question is, again - fix it up so it will feel smoother, or leave it alone just because "it has always been a corridor of death where enemies spawn like hell for no particular reason".

Add more!  :awesome:

or, to use a more recent example, almost no toilet stalls have doors, that means anyone taking a dump would be clearly visible to anyone just passing by. this is just stupid (and unhygienic). but, is it a bug? an anomaly? something the original mappers forgot? should it be fixed?

Hmm. Well, a lack of cameras on board tell that they still value their privacy, and a billion dollar FTL ship should at least have properly fitted toilets. Hard to tell the original designers intentions there, quite the conundrum. I say give em doors.
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It's a given that Marvin's going to hate SCP anyway, so... ehh.
Why? I don't hate ADaoB, or any other mod on this site for that matter, I'm just curious about the purpose of SCP. The initial goal was to do away with ADaoBs gameplay changes and only iterate on the bugfixes, yet you and voodoo continue to contemplate on level design issues and gameplay changes. I welcome any effort to keep SS2 alive and kicking, I'm just confused about you being confused about what SCP, your own mod, should turn out to be.
If you want to create a bugfix-only mod, then you shoudln't even worry about the respawn rates, unless you encountered an ecology with 99 hybrids that spawn simultaneously.

665b510d971f5voodoo47

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The mist and spiders moving properly are solid improvements.
exactly. they are improvements. something the purists hate. but still, this is going to be included in the first release, as it's either improve, or leave it broken. the toilets are getting fixed up as well.


the final goal of SCP is to ensure that the "dafuq did I just see" phrase is never heard during a SS2 playthrough. originally, the first release was supposed to only fix the most obvious bugs, but Shocked has pulled us in, and we got swayed by shinies and started to polish and retouch many things.. that's why we are so delayed.. anyway, I'm going to finish up the toilets and then go bug ZB for a status on Rick and Many.

665b510d97309ZylonBane

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Voodoo, you should take a look at the change log for rick1. I've been busy.

665b510d973fdvoodoo47

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gotta admit it's been a while since I peeked there.

//holy machine-mother.

665b510d979c9ZylonBane

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For those who are curious about our internal process, here's the current issue tracking post for the Rickenbacker maps:

Code: [Select]

============================================================
UNN Rickenbacker
============================================================

Rickenbacker general
- Korenchkin log 11.JUL.14, "Re: Rapture", should be using the psi reaver portrait instead of the human Korenchkin portrait. //fixed
- Most conduits on the Rickenbacker are unbreakable. This is inconsistent with the rest of the game. //fixed in gamesys

rick1.mis
- Doors 316, 409, 841, 926, 1257, 1335 go out of room brush when open. //fixed
- Audio dead spot near room brush 57. //fixed
- Button 1764 backward. //fixed
- Button 1637 backward. //fixed
- Respawn marker 118 spawns player facing into QBR. //fixed
- Area around the top of ladder 114 needs to be made less crazy. //fixed
- Near object 1195, animated striped texture on edge of raised platform. //fixed
- Decals in the shaft with half broken ladders (116) are floating in midair //fixed
- Removed physics from debris 506. //why?
- Having cyborg assassins constantly spawning in the umbilical room is annoying and nonsensical. Recommend deleting all the monster generators in there (2296 and 1489, I think), or seriously toning down the respawn rate.
- This map's 0,0,0 is directly above the "up" gravshaft, making it easy for the player to bang their head on whatever explosive projectiles are hanging out there. //fixed; moved a few dozen projectiles from there to out of world
- The blown-out "six subdecks" is currently little more than a giant rectangular air box. It looks more like the ship was built that way than the massive devastation asserted by the logs. We should be able to do better than this.
- Anything tossed into the "down" umbilical gravshaft is lost forever. //fixed, objects now elevatored to command1.mis
- Spawn marker 2142 has somehow acquired Render Type: Normal, which causes a floating wedge in-game. //fixed
- Door 409 moves out of room brush when opened. //fixed
- Room brush 193 (6647) floating in middle of another larger room brush with seemingly no reason to exist. //deleted
- Many flesh breaking windows sequence only plays if player takes ladder. Can be easily missed by climbing nearby terrain instead. //fixed, added a second trigger spanning the entire climbable side; also adjusted the window breaking delays from 0, 1, 27 to 1, 6, 20 (there was some weird incomplete stuff here)
- Visible should-be-invisible entity just past torpedo launch room. //fixed
- Some janky texture alignment on the floor ramps approaching the "low head room" area. //fixed
- Huge crate 790 jumps when lift turned on. //fixed, wasn't aligned with elevator path 1542
- Huge crate 790 makes mechanical noise when raising, even though it's being lifted by a grav beam. //fixed, changed schema
- Space shield 1840 causes some objects behind it to not render depending on view angle. //fixed, added Alpha 1.00
- Chrome pipes 79, 1037 don't match corroded pipe ends. //fixed
- New mantle allows climbing over pipes 661, 716, 972, breaking the intended path through the level. //fixed, made non-mantleable
- Door 1136 disappears when open. //fixed, was set to translate 675 units instead of 6.75 units!
- Steam jet 314 not in room brush. //fixed
- Room brush 19 not touching floor. //fixed
- Security computer 2110 placed on top of wedge light. //fixed, moved over a bit to a more sensible location
- Crematorium is obviously a clone of the crematorium on VB Med/Sci deck. //fixed-ish; replaced VB lights and signage with Rickenbacker lights and signage
- Nanite pile 2097 laying on floor next to empty body bag; probably supposed to be inside it. //fixed, added Contains link
- QBR 526 texturing messed up. //fixed
- Screwy sound propagation in Nacelle B. //fixed
- Junction boxes 647, 648 backwards. //fixed
- Junction boxes 618, 619, 620, 631, 627, 623, 840, 878, 828, 1133, 1289, 1290, 1291 upside-down. //fixed
- Junction boxes catch player since their physics boxes don't line up with that of their conduits. //fixed, changed to sphere physics model so player can push past them
- Can get stuck walking under grate 739. //fixed, made passageway a little less tight
- Grates 738, 739 block red light that's probably intended to illuminate their respective passageways. //fixed
- Red light between grates 738, 739 has no apparent source.
- Turret 1632 very difficult to walk past without destroying it. //fixed
- Gravity control 754 lacking physics model. //fixed
- Door 1201 niche top exposed to player view. //fixed
- Nacelle B uses same texture on walls and floor. //fixed, gave it a proper floor texture
- Several fuel cells near beginning of level have VB tech screens on them. //fixed
- Nacelle B sign 1613 over area leading to inaccessible Nacelle A area. //fixed; deleted and replaced with Nacelle A sign 2229
- Nacelle A signs 595 (33), 597 (32), 710 (2242), 711 (2231), 712 (2228), 713 (2230), 714 (2227) in place of Nacelle B signs (was wrong model in gamesys). //fixed; deleted and replaced
- Spawn marker 1681 somehow became visible. //fixed
- Pipes 1340, 1341 don't reach ceiling. //fixed, extended ceiling
- Weird pointless pit near object 2117. //fixed, changed the floor to a grating so it could be some kind of drainage pit
- Dripping water 1267 particles disappear before reaching water. //fixed
- Grates 1213, 1216 wrong size to have covered the gap that they're laying near. //fixed, resized grates
- Room containing object 2181 way too freaking dark. //fixed, changed grates 183, 184, 186 to allow passing light
- No visible light sources for brush lights in room containing object 2181. //fixed, replaced with object lights
- Particle systems 1214, 1206 not centered in niche, too large for niche. //fixed
- Added door properties to crate 790. Again, this is the only way how to prevent strange stuff like Rumblers running through and big bots shooting through the crate.
- Added some particles to grav loader 300 to more clearly indicate its function in lifting the crate
- Medkit 907 propped up in niche but falls down flat in-game. //fixed, missing location/rotation
- Very easy to fall to death off ladder 532 when dismounting from top. //fixed, made floor opening smaller
- Note 7_6:"Reverse the Gravitronic Generators in order to safely access Pod 2." only gets added if player picks up log 1801. //fixed, made tripwire 327 also add note
- Note 7_3:"Proceed to Pod 2." added before player has activated gravity control. //fixed, replaced weird QB filter setup on tripwire 327 with simpler once-only tripwire; moved addition of note 7_3 from email trap 326 to new QB Set 2245.
- Gussied up wall that gravity control 754 is attached to (object model has some pipes coming out the left side that weren't connecting with anything)
- Gravity control 754 only device in the game that's activated by frobbing a button. Everywhere else in the game you frob the devices directly. //fixed
- Some sort of sound should play when activating gravity control 754. //fixed'ish, currently playing schema "act_nacelle" via XP trap 1353.
- Added a small HP clip behind pipe 746, because there's no other loot in Nacelle B, and if anyone manages to get up there and look behind that pipe, they deserve to find something.
- Moved med bed key 2121 back a bit so you actually have to enter the area it's in to get it.
- Added dynamic light and corona to sparks 331.
- Halved size of exterior lights 550, 551 to make ship view out windows seem larger.
- Upgraded steam to bitmap particles.
- Salvo 212 would look better with four exhaust plumes instead of just one in the center.
- Launching salvo causes a couple dozen "expharm not in room" error messages. //fixed, added big room brush over them
- Something broken in salvo 212 launch sequence. Seems to be set up to fly out a distance and then appear to explode, but instead it just vanishes after a few seconds.

rick2.mis
- Light 513 backward. //fixed
- Upside-down turrets rotate the wrong direction to track their target. //probably not fixable without creating a custom upside-down model // done, rick2_b5 uses the new model, and the issue is fixed
- For the bot that spawns from nowhere when entering the chapel, perhaps add a nearby monster closet to explain its appearance.
- Slightly decreasing gravity on this map makes the annoying jumping puzzles much easier to manage, and is easily explained by in-universe by the screwed up gravity generator. But, this might be too much of a change for people to accept in a baseline patch.
- Made sure all objects are properly floored to the ceiling, also repositioned the ladders in the sickbay as their orig position made no sense.
- Upgraded steam to bitmap particles.

rick3.mis
- Worm goo 616 backward, partially sunken. //fixed
- Worm goo 617 backward, partially sunken. //fixed
- Worm goo 618 backward, partially sunken. //fixed
- Worm goo 619 backward, partially sunken. //fixed
- Worm goo 631 backward. //fixed
- Worm goo 632 backward. //fixed
- Worm goo 635 partially sunken. //fixed
- Worm goo 638 backward. //fixed
- Worm goo 639 backward. //fixed
- Worm pile 1509 broken. //fixed
- Worm pile 1513 broken. //fixed
- Worm pile 1516 broken. //fixed
- Security glass 513 has VB logo on it. //fixed; scaled up so VB logo inside wall
- Hand rail 1083 in Diego's quarters very easy to get stuck on in that confined space. //fixed; removed collision
- Picking up worm launcher 510 in Diego's quarters gives 20 CMs. That's great if you actually want it, but makes it entirely too easy to miss out on 20 CMs if you've already decided you don't care about exotic weapons. //fixed; awarded CMs on unlocking Diego's quarters instead
- Added one unreachable wrench in one of the cryotubes (to explain the one that has been added at the beginning of many.mis)
- Wrong color brush light near screen of escape pod pilot screen (green instead of amber) //fixed
- Recommend adding a force field effect at the end of the escape pod launch bay to explain why the Many mass hasn't grown into it. //added
- Some messed up brushwork/texturing on the escape pod cryo pods. //fixed
- Escape pod door goes out of room brush when open. //fixed
- Can't walk behind large scanner table. //fixed; slightly enlarged room behind table
- Crate 993 placed too low, falls through grate into lower area. //fixed
- Sound 89 outside of room brush. //fixed
- Nanite pile 669 laying on pillow in Diego's quarters next to empty crate makes no sense. Nanites probably intended to be inside of crate. //fixed, linked nanites into container
- It's physically impossible to have gotten that crate next to Diego's bed. Would make more sense to have a wall locker there. //fixed
- Eggs 134 and 175 have no sound, tripwire set too small. //fixed
- Restore overhead windows in escape pod. //fixed
- The connection between the Rickenbacker and the escape pod is built like you're just stepping into another room of the ship. No walkway or umbilical or anything. For the enhanced patch, recommend... something.
- Diego's quarters suck. For an "enhanced" patch, I'd recommend replacing the Worm Launcher display rack with a chair and desk, and move the Worm Launcher to laying on his bed.
- Needs steam upgrade
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"- New mantle allows climbing over pipes 661, 716, 972, breaking the intended path through the level. //fixed, made non-mantleable"

New mantle? That sounds interesting, do tell.

What about jumping function, can anything be done to the script to make it more believable; less floaty?

665b510d97c03voodoo47

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new mantle is a NewDark fix, see cam_ext.cfg - basically, it makes mantling smoother, but this makes some places that weren't meant to be reachable reachable.

665b510d97f4cZylonBane

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What about jumping function, can anything be done to the script to make it more believable; less floaty?
Stop making me hate you.
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Just leave it as it is, there is no bug to fix there.
There is- if you look at the details many of the ecologies simply cannot function properly, as designed.

To be more verbose: the ecology in question is set to spawn... 3 monsters minimum, ie there are meant to be 3 monsters wandering that corridor at any point- to a maximum of 5(!). Perhaps fortunately whoever designed it stuffed up, and the ecology has only a single spawn point, so only one can actually be spawned at a time. Did they intend there to be 3, 5, or 1? Was the designer aware that his design meant that there would, effectively, not be random respawn but automatic respawn? What was their intention?

(I'd suggest the intention was not to have 5 (!) AI wandering around that particular corridor at least, and that the designer misunderstood how the ecologies worked, personally. Most likely by thinking that if they had 5 AI starting the area they had to set the Ecology max to 5)

665b510d9845cZylonBane

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That reminds me-- I wonder if the occasional AI spawning into existence in front of the player is due to the code intended to make sure that doesn't happen sucking, or because of an ecology with only one spawn point?
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For those who are curious about our internal process, here's the current issue tracking post for the Rickenbacker maps:

Thanks, this was extremely fascinating to read.
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That reminds me-- I wonder if the occasional AI spawning into existence in front of the player is due to the code intended to make sure that doesn't happen sucking, or because of an ecology with only one spawn point?

There is a PlayerDist flag on the monster gens which, I believe, controls whether it checks, uh, player distance, so that not being set or only checking distance to the gen itself and not any daughter spawn points may be a possibility. Otherwise I guess they may have set the detection to be via raycast, so if you're in an 'interesting' physics position it won't detect you.
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whatever will make the out of the thin air spawning less obvious is good (in the ideal world, the player should never be witnessing the spawn).

This!

I am not so convinced that limiting respawning should have anything to do with the difficulty level although if that is the only way to play it with limited respawning, then I'd surely go for it.

So my hope is that SCP will do something about it.
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Grumble wheeze moan...fucking world. Burn it all!

Hey, Mr. Psychosis, if you're going to make a personal comment about an action if mine you believe to be wrong or find aggravating, at least explain what it is so I can consider fixing it. An official patch.
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Obviously ZB likes hover jumping. Generally player movement in Dark games is peculiar. Some think it's more realistic than in other games, some think it's bowling balls strapped to their feet. But that's how it is and it's not likely to change. Certainly not through SCP.
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