Underground Extra Cirricular Development

ID:80337
 
Aug 25 2009, 6:49 am (Edited on Aug 25 2009, 6:54 am)
Keywords: motivation
So far, things are looking pretty good for my BYOND progress even after school has started. One of the nice things about BYOND is it doesn't require a bleeding-edge graphics card, and so my laptop is quite up to the task of BYOND development.

Further, while 14-credits of classes is indeed a fairly heavy load, stranding myself at school for 40 hours a week assures I've a surplus of time to spend on other pursuits. This morning is about as bad as it gets - I'm barely here for an hour before being sucked into 3 hours of classes - I'm actually anticipating 5 solid hours of down time on Thursday night before I get to home.

So it looks like my little developing microcosm will enjoy riding around with me about the campus during the day. A small digitized pocket of giant bugs and struggling space colonists fending off pirates amidst the hustle and bustle of the Millennial Generation's gambits for future employment. The things I do to pass the time.

Three tips I can offer to aspiring developers:
  • I've found that it's good to have a text file (or notepad, or whatever) that operates pretty much as a free write of game thoughts. This provides a nice backdrop for whatever you're working on, and is a handy reminder where I left off when I pick it up again the next day.
  • I've found that it's a good idea to have a second text file (or notepad, or whatever) that operates as a "bug quashing" pad to keep track of thoughts that might occur to one as they're in mid-coding. That way, I don't forget good ideas or things I want to do before the next compile. Particularly hard problems can (and probably should) sit on the sidelines for a few builds as I incubate on the proper means to solve them.
  • It's good for motivation to promise yourself a little time off at the end of the day from developing. Whether or not you actually feel like seeing through this promise is inconsequential -- just having that release of not forcing yourself to work on something does wonders for the motivation.
Along the lines of the later point, I am considering giving Champions Online a spin during my time off. It's a sell motivated by nostalgia more than anything else.

I've been in the beta for quite awhile, and I found myself to be largely disillusioned with my earlier pre-beta fanboy aspects. I was expecting a better City of Heroes: deeper, with more meaningful choices and consequences. What was delivered was a flashier, shallower game. There was more flexibility in character creation, but the choices offered felt much less significant. The statistic system was weak - there's little point to taking Strength, Dexterity, Ego, or Presence. Most of the powers in the game are attacks, there's disappointingly few trump cards to be found.

So, why consider shelling out $50 for the game, and another $60 for a discounted 6-month subscription (or, if I had another $140 on top of that - which is doubtful - a lifetime subscription)? Because I'm wagering that, sooner or later, the issue I'm taking with the game will be ironed out. It won't remain a shallow game for long, but rather what I'm witnessing is a young game, still wet behind the ears.

Well, this entry has fairly filled the time before class begins today, but I think I've said all that needed to be said at the moment.
Aug 25 2009, 9:49 am
I commuted to college too. It's a pain. =(
Aug 25 2009, 10:42 am
i've been toying around in the CO beta, and the game's core combat mechanics are indeed pretty wonky; they managed to make combat more interesting, lively, and action-oriented than your typical "use spell rotation, drink for 30 seconds, use spell rotation again" grinding in other games. however, balance is way off-kilter, and some moves completely dominate others and make them pointless to use (pyre/shotgun/condemn come to mind as "why use anything else" abilities), which kills a lot of potential fun.

in addition, it's quite silly for them to try to market it as a PvPer-friendly game, considering character building is way too freeform and diverse to ever reach any semblance of comfortable balance that would provide engaging, competitive PvP

still it's a fun game in the sense that questing and PvE in general is low-stress, and you can't really fail at it. you can just create a neat superhero and have fun, as long as you never hope to take it seriously. i personally find it hard to imagine something cooler than a wild western gunslinger doing hardcore flipping ninja acrobatics all over the place
Aug 25 2009, 11:50 am (Edited on Aug 25 2009, 12:01 pm)
Though it looks like I missed out on the 6-month discounted package (tough luck for me), I suppose I will at least shell out for the box with inclusive first month of service. I probably spent at least as much time in beta to justify it.

I'm in complete agreement with Zaole's assessment: it's not the best balanced game, but it does break up the usual MMORPG formula (which I was sick of before World of Warcraft came out). Besides, I am a long time City of Heroes fan, I'm curious how CO will shape up post-release.

My advice for success in Champions Online: get a defensive passive (e.g. regeneration, lightning reflexes, invulnerability, or personal force field) as soon as possible. This will keep your character vertical. Now, you just need to rank up a good single target attack and a good AOE attack. At that point, you've got all the bases covered for most situations you'll encounter.

It's the main issue Champions Online has: it was developed to be playable with a 7 button controller, you don't need that many powers to succeed. 5, tops, and you're good.

I'm probably going to start off with Energy. It's a pretty good set with offense, defense, and crowd control. The advantaged proc on the energy builder is probably the best in the game.
Sep 1 2009, 2:29 pm (Edited on Sep 1 2009, 2:43 pm)
so i was perusing the CO forums...

remembering to block won't really help, because henchmen don't use any attacks that require blocking :P

oh, and i played during the head start and you didn't. na na na na naa naa
Sep 1 2009, 3:00 pm
Personally, my character blocks all the time, including Henchmen... but that's because I've got Force Sheath and that blocks attacks briefly afterwards when I'm not blocking.

Even against Henchmen when you're not using Force Sheath, what you can actually do is time when the bulk of attacks are going to come in, and block them. That can greatly mitigate damage.

Also, through strange and unexplained phenominon, my Direct2Drive purchase was allowed to play the game during head start, but my brother's wasn't. It was probably because I as in the Sakura 150, or part of the closed beta, or something.

I'm just about to go home and try out the new patch. Judging by the major complaints on the forum, it's really nerfed the hell out of heroes. However, I get the feeling I'm good enough to adapt to play in it anyway... but then, my character is incredibly robust, he has like 5 defensive powers.
Sep 1 2009, 3:11 pm
my main character apparently is following in your footsteps unknowingly. going all force so far and aiming to delve into some power armor/gadgeteering stuff. even with end/ego SS, force cascade seems pretty weak when you have to eat up a field surge just to do more-than-normal damage with it, but i haven't yet snagged that auto attack advantage which grants an energy form, so we'll see how that pans out.

i recently tried out a melee character, and was really bothered by having to mash my generic "hit this move to expend energy for extra damage" ability because it was a combo move that only did significant damage at the end of the combo, and the controls are pretty unresponsive; hitting it 3 times in well-timed succession wouldn't use it 3 times, i generally have to hit it 5 or more times to be safe. it gets really old really fast when you have to use it to eliminate henchmen (with the alternative being auto attacking them for 40 seconds). especially when its advantage that turns it into an AoE is flat out broken and never works. :(
Sep 1 2009, 6:16 pm
I finally got a chance to play Champions Online today, and now I'm thinking only certain builds are being really heavily hit by that nerf, my pretty much solely Force/Gadgetry build is still going pretty strong. He doesn't have quite as much of a leeway as before, but he works out pretty well.

It might be because Personal Force Field isn't a defense once can really lean on to begin with. It's a very limited battery, so you get used to killings tuff quick or not at all. Whereas, with Regeneration or Invulnerability, one is probably fairly used to the idea of being able to drag out fights pretty long. A nerf would hurt them pretty badly.
Sep 1 2009, 7:22 pm
my force character currently only has PFF and field surge as his defensive capabilities, and he was able to rely on that, but now PFF is drastically weakened and field surge is quite frequently glitching out so that it activates the cooldown without having any effect. the end result is he's very gimped and has to either, like you said, kill it really fast or not at all. a single villain can remove his PFF in seconds and then very quickly eat through his entire puny health bar

he's too low level to get any new defenses, and respec costs weren't actually lowered; they either stayed the same or went up for some people. it would cost me about 40x the total cash i've earned to respec far enough to fix my defense powers, if i was even willing to abandon his theme :(

i know they're going to fix things, but releasing a nutty patch like this on release day of all days is pretty bonkers
Sep 2 2009, 6:01 am (Edited on Sep 2 2009, 6:07 am)
It might be the reason why my experiences in the game have been going well post-patch is that I'm over that "bump" of not yet having earned enough defensive capabilities to compensate for the general weakness of passive defenses.

Looks like the "retcon" system is still receiving heavy tweaks, and it's a good thing they are. I've been wanting swap out my Force Eruption because I don't use it very often. I took it at about level 8-14. Yesterday, retconing that was impossible at my level (27). Today, it's now possible, but the cost is highly restrictive. They'll probably be done tweaking the retcon system when they finally give up this silly notion that when you take a power is at all reflective on your need to be rid of it.

Speaking of which, under the new balance it might be worth one's time to take one of the active defenses -- referring to those "click" defenses that last about 15 seconds and grant a nice boost to your defense. Field Surge was supposed to be this (in addition to being an "energy form") but it's broken. There's other ones, such as Unbreakable (Power Armor) and Perfect Dodge (Martial Arts). As far as I can tell, these ones were not nerfed, and should be perfect for the situations when one's passive defense is just not enough to keep a hero alive. There's also a number of click heals such as Bionic Shielding and Bountiful Chi Resurgence.