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Thread: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

  
  1. #51

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    You have said: "My estimate is that creatures using their spells in a completely different way changes a lot, but improves too little."
    What was done: Creatures now use Grenade in a completely different way.

    Making such a big design change in general is very questionable; but you have passed such a change while expecting it to improve too little, which feels contradictory to me.
    I see the change proposed above as having a lot more impact, than just the grenade being used. And I don't -expect- the grenade change to be not worth it, but I'm concerned it might. And if a large part of the people who try it do not like it, it can be worked on further before a release.

    I don't see this as a big design change. A big design change would be for example when the player can buy and choose which traps to place, or players can always dig to fortified walls, or finishing the collapse spell to place dirt blocks. A few creatures using a spell, causing them to do a bit more spash-damage, where since the original game all damage and health values have already been massively overhauled completely through rebalancing efforts, the fixing of stat bugs and changes in growth per level, is not a 'big' design change. If you feel it is a bad change after you've played some levels with it, I'd love to hear it and what it is you like and dislike about it specifically.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    But KeeperFX was never intended to be a 'special version' of the game, and I don't think that should change going forward. I'm well aware of the temptation to make big design changes or to add cool things to get people excited, but I'm of the opinion that the developer(s) of KeeperFX should hold a responsibility to maintain the original game play - at least until design changes are the only changes left to make. Besides that, why make these subjective design-based changes before the game is even properly stable? If you make design changes before fixing the issues, you are essentially forcing those design changes on anyone who wants an eventual bug/crash-free experience. On the other hand, fixing everything first and then making design changes gives players a choice - they can play the stable version, or they can play any future gameplay-enhanced versions.

    I also worry the impact is too big, and for seemingly not much benefit. This is a change that is entirely subjective, and being "very cool" does not warrant completely changing the balance and behaviour of creatures in my books. I don't mind the idea behind this change (new behaviour is always exciting), but I think there is a higher directive that needs to be considered / prioritised first.
    KeeperFX did changed many things. Stuff that you can see as subjective just as easily. And mefisto also had todo's in the code for trying to get the non-realised spells into the game. I'm not planning to change the direction KeeperFX had with Mefisto, but it will always prove to be a personal estimation on what is an improvement over current gameplay, and what is changing the gameplay. The only thing I can offer, is that I give the community a chance to provide feedback, however I will not take a 'all change is bad'-approach.

    However, I think the release I did of KeeperFX Unofficial, IS a stable release. There's nothing wrong with playing that version. The only thing is the pathfinding bug, which unfortunately is in KeeperFX and to a lesser extend the original game as well. But, if that's ever fixed I'm perfectly happy to share a version of KeeperFX Unofficial that matches were KeeperFX ended + pathfinding bug fixed next to the most updated version I'm working on with Sparta now. However, I see no clear breaking point, where the amount of subjective-design-based-decisions are past a limit. I for example reverted a change Mefisto did on making creatures flee based on fear, but kept his decision to add custom campaigns, you can now scroll to zoom, and computers assign creatures to correct rooms,... where does it end, where does it begin?
    I've worked in software development long enough to know there's no meaningful difference between a bug fix, new feature, or change. People call behavior THEY don't like or expect bugs, and what it is from a technical perspective does not matter. Consider these options:
    - There's a bug in the code that causes creatures not to use the grenade
    - There's a bug in the code, that caused the developers to decide not to allow creatures to use the grenade
    - The developers never got around to finishing all features around the grenade spell so they did not enable it yet
    - The developers designed the grenade to never be used by creatures in the first place
    There are many situations where you don't know which of these is true, but for you as a player it does not matter, the effect is the same. And I change the experience of the player in exactly the same way by getting the grenade in the game. Offering up a 'bug free experience' before making improvements is not a real thing. I think KeeperFX 0.44, 0.45 and 0.46 can also be played perfectly well without crashes and hangs, just with fewer changes.

    This also isn't a matter of priorities. It's the user Schizz who made this for himself and offered up the code for the community. I did not get a choice to say 'no, please fix the pathfinding bug instead'.
    The priority is improving the experience of people wanting to play dungeon keeper. When almost every player has one or more changes compared to the original game they dislike to such an extend they rather not play it, I've failed, and that's also why feedback is important, and why I err on the side of caution. But making improvements to the interface, and adding new script commands, possibly new spells or creatures (which will not show up by default) is a main goal.

    Quote Originally Posted by Edwin View Post
    What is exactly does is giving the mapmaker some other possibility's rather then killing creatures. It would mean that getting more creatures than the max creatures have consequences, in either fighting creatures, creatures leaving etc.
    As for the computer to stop scavenging perhaps it woud be possible to configure the scavenger like the prison with an icon on the menu to turn it ON or OFF.
    Or by the use of a script command like: MAX_CREATURE_SCAVENGE it would give the player a max amount of creatures to be scavenged, at which point the scavenger room can't atttract any creatures anymore
    Sorry Edwin, I notice your English is not the best so I simply have some difficulty in understanding what you mean. Feel free to PM me in Dutch if I still misunderstand you,... but you're requesting a feature for a mapmaker to limit units for a player that takes into consideration all the non-portal stuff to get creatures as well?
    And yeah, that would be nice. I already have a few on the wish-list.
    Last edited by YourMaster; March 24th, 2018 at 12:04.

  2. #52
    Fly Trotim's Avatar
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    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Would be nice to have a "used by creatures?" toggle for Grenade in the .cfgs. I personally would definitely keep it enabled but, hey, options are good

  3. #53
    Fly Gold Knight's Avatar
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    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    To talk about your specific examples - the grenade is indeed a major change, and I really hope to get feedback on it, because it changes everything.
    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I don't see this as a big design change.
    Which one is it?

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    A big design change would be for example when the player can buy and choose which traps to place, or players can always dig to fortified walls, or finishing the collapse spell to place dirt blocks.
    Hmm... I do hope these are not all on the todo list. Of course, the scale is nearly infinite, and there will always be a bigger design change that can be made. For example, being able to pick up creatures only if they are on your own territory (which was retrospectively considered for the original game) is an even greater design change. But in relation to how the original game currently plays vs KeeperFX, the Grenade behaviour is a considerable change.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    KeeperFX did changed many things. Stuff that you can see as subjective just as easily. And mefisto also had todo's in the code for trying to get the non-realised spells into the game. I'm not planning to change the direction KeeperFX had with Mefisto, but it will always prove to be a personal estimation on what is an improvement over current gameplay, and what is changing the gameplay.
    I'm aware KeeperFX has already changed many things, and there are many instances in which I don't fully agree. I also don't think it is always a personal estimation, as is the case with many issues such as the pathfinding bug or 255 creature limit.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    The only thing I can offer, is that I give the community a chance to provide feedback, however I will not take a 'all change is bad'-approach.
    Of course, and I appreciate that. I'm not saying all change is bad, but that change of such low priority can be considered so, particularly when it has a considerable impact on game play and the list of pros doesn't do much to outweigh the cons.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    However, I think the release I did of KeeperFX Unofficial, IS a stable release. There's nothing wrong with playing that version.
    Well you and I both have very different ideas of what constitutes a stable release. I would not call getting an average one crash per session exactly stable. Several maps are downright unplayable due to bugs or crashes.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I've worked in software development long enough to know there's no meaningful difference between a bug fix, new feature, or change. People call behavior THEY don't like or expect bugs, and what it is from a technical perspective does not matter.
    As have I, and whether you consider it meaningful or not is irrelevant - there is still a discernable difference that should be considered. I think changes should always be considered from an external perspective first, before considering the intentions of the original developers. Let's look at how enemy Keeper fortifications cannot be dug through as an example: If it was a logic error rather than design decision that prevented their excavation, I would still argue against "fixing" the logic error because it would change the experience too drastically from the original. Even if the original behaviour was unintentional, it is still the experience players expect and enjoy.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Offering up a 'bug free experience' before making improvements is not a real thing.
    I disagree. It's easy to group the two categories together (i.e. a bug fix is technically an improvement), but there is a difference. In this instance, there are two primary categories of bugs that I consider - one is memory-based and the other is logic-based. The memory bugs are always objectively bad, while the logic bugs can be subjectively bad (as Noanechu has helped demonstrate). Logic issues can be subjectively bad because their solutions may result in altered gameplay which not everyone will agree with. Logic issues involve things like mining through neutral walls, creature stats going from 255 to 0, Speed only lasting a few seconds at level 10, Tunnellers breaking players' fortified walls, 'floating spirit' activating traps, AI placing dozens of traps on a single tile (or on room tiles), etc. A lot of logic issues are more subjective than others - but many of them are almost completely objective, such as Word of Power doing no damage.

    Memory issues, on the other hand, are a different ball game. These issues revolve around completely bizarre behaviour (that is usually hard to trace / repeat) caused by memory address errors or infinite loops, such as sold bridges turning to earth tiles, doors acquiring solid rock properties, Dungeon Hearts becoming invincible, scripting flags being assigned the wrong values on map start, incorrect sprites or sprites disappearing altogether, as well as complete crashes caused by things like sacrificing Horny into a Temple, having 255+ creatures on the map, etc.

    I believe fixing all the memory issues can only benefit the game, fixing logic issues are likely to benefit the game and adding new features or restoring unfinished / cut features may benefit the game. It should be fairly obvious which areas to prioritise first, right? I think more players have had the thought, "I wish DK didn't crash all the time" over "I wish creatures used Grenade."

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    This also isn't a matter of priorities. It's the user Schizz who made this for himself and offered up the code for the community. I did not get a choice to say 'no, please fix the pathfinding bug instead'.
    The priority is improving the experience of people wanting to play dungeon keeper. When almost every player has one or more changes compared to the original game they dislike to such an extend they rather not play it, I've failed, and that's also why feedback is important, and why I err on the side of caution. But making improvements to the interface, and adding new script commands, possibly new spells or creatures (which will not show up by default) is a main goal.
    It should be a matter of priorities, and by no means as broad as "improving the experience of people wanting to play dungeon keeper". Sure, those things can be main goals, but my main point is that they should not be prioritised or come before the essential base fixes that spawned this project in the first place.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trotim View Post
    Would be nice to have a "used by creatures?" toggle for Grenade in the .cfgs. I personally would definitely keep it enabled but, hey, options are good
    I was actually going to suggest this. Adding +10 columns for each creature in Creatures.txt for whether a spell is used doesn't sound too bad, or perhaps a single column for each spell. But then there are still the damage / splash reductions to consider.

  4. #54

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    Which one is it?

    Hmm... I do hope these are not all on the todo list. Of course, the scale is nearly infinite, and there will always be a bigger design change that can be made. For example, being able to pick up creatures only if they are on your own territory (which was retrospectively considered for the original game) is an even greater design change. But in relation to how the original game currently plays vs KeeperFX, the Grenade behaviour is a considerable change.
    It's a big enough difference that I expected discussions like this, but it's not a real mayor change like the examples I mentioned. And no, none of those are on my wishlist, all because while I think they might have been good things if originally implemented, the change is too big to be worth it now and it makes the experience totally different.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    I'm aware KeeperFX has already changed many things, and there are many instances in which I don't fully agree. I also don't think it is always a personal estimation, as is the case with many issues such as the pathfinding bug or 255 creature limit.
    Hangs and crashes are just about the only thing all people agree on. Playing with much larger armies would already be discussed by many people as undesirable.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    Of course, and I appreciate that. I'm not saying all change is bad, but that change of such low priority can be considered so, particularly when it has a considerable impact on game play and the list of pros doesn't do much to outweigh the cons.
    I agree completely. I'm eager to hear from people playing with this Alpha to see if this change is such a situation or not.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    Well you and I both have very different ideas of what constitutes a stable release. I would not call getting an average one crash per session exactly stable. Several maps are downright unplayable due to bugs or crashes.
    We have the same definition, and I would love to get more info from you on your issues. I've played this game a lot, and I've had no non-pathfinding crashes and bugs in months, perhaps years.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    As have I, and whether you consider it meaningful or not is irrelevant - there is still a discernable difference that should be considered. I think changes should always be considered from an external perspective first, before considering the intentions of the original developers. Let's look at how enemy Keeper fortifications cannot be dug through as an example: If it was a logic error rather than design decision that prevented their excavation, I would still argue against "fixing" the logic error because it would change the experience too drastically from the original. Even if the original behaviour was unintentional, it is still the experience players expect and enjoy.[/quote


    I disagree. It's easy to group the two categories together (i.e. a bug fix is technically an improvement), but there is a difference. In this instance, there are two primary categories of bugs that I consider - one is memory-based and the other is logic-based. The memory bugs are always objectively bad, while the logic bugs can be subjectively bad (as Noanechu has helped demonstrate). Logic issues can be subjectively bad because their solutions may result in altered gameplay which not everyone will agree with. Logic issues involve things like mining through neutral walls, creature stats going from 255 to 0, Speed only lasting a few seconds at level 10, Tunnellers breaking players' fortified walls, 'floating spirit' activating traps, AI placing dozens of traps on a single tile (or on room tiles), etc. A lot of logic issues are more subjective than others - but many of them are almost completely objective, such as Word of Power doing no damage.

    Memory issues, on the other hand, are a different ball game. These issues revolve around completely bizarre behaviour (that is usually hard to trace / repeat) caused by memory address errors or infinite loops, such as sold bridges turning to earth tiles, doors acquiring solid rock properties, Dungeon Hearts becoming invincible, scripting flags being assigned the wrong values on map start, incorrect sprites or sprites disappearing altogether, as well as complete crashes caused by things like sacrificing Horny into a Temple, having 255+ creatures on the map, etc.

    I believe fixing all the memory issues can only benefit the game, fixing logic issues are likely to benefit the game and adding new features or restoring unfinished / cut features may benefit the game. It should be fairly obvious which areas to prioritise first, right? I think more players have had the thought, "I wish DK didn't crash all the time" over "I wish creatures used Grenade."
    Well, that's the whole point, there is no difference from a user perspective AT ALL. If it was a logic issue as you call it that caused creatures not to use grenade, we'd be having the exact same discussion. WoP not doing damage was such a case, and when that got fixed the damage was so extreme that all units died in a single shot.
    Not every new feature/change/restored feature may have a positive impact, but if a specific one has a big positive impact, or a very low cost, then yes, that of course takes priority over a fix that is non-contended but takes a lot of effort and has hardly noticeable impact.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    It should be a matter of priorities, and by no means as broad as "improving the experience of people wanting to play dungeon keeper". Sure, those things can be main goals, but my main point is that they should not be prioritised or come before the essential base fixes that spawned this project in the first place.
    If I would pay for developers, I would give them priorities like you mentioned. But when people volunteer, the issues addressed first are issues they feel they can pick up, or the issues they like the most. I think - except for pathfinding - all essential issues are fixed. Pathfinding and the limits would be my highest priorities, but they are also very difficult to do, we're looking into pathfinding, and the limitations we might never be able to handle.
    If you have crashes, please report them and we will look into it. Otherwise I don't know about any high priority issue. I'm open to suggestions.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trotim View Post
    Would be nice to have a "used by creatures?" toggle for Grenade in the .cfgs. I personally would definitely keep it enabled but, hey, options are good
    Quote Originally Posted by Gold Knight View Post
    I was actually going to suggest this. Adding +10 columns for each creature in Creatures.txt for whether a spell is used doesn't sound too bad, or perhaps a single column for each spell. But then there are still the damage / splash reductions to consider.
    I have already considered this yes, and would see this as a positive addition. Everything that can be configured through configs is a plus in my book.
    Last edited by YourMaster; March 24th, 2018 at 22:55.

  5. #55

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Here we go again!

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    True, whenever something changes, there will be people unhappy about the change. And it does not matter what I or anybody else feels about what has been a mistake or not, but when somebody volunteers to improve something, it's his judgement on what an improvement is. When I release a new version, the original game and KeeperFX are still available, just like older versions of whatever I released. It's not feasible to release every possible combination possible, and making everything configurable also isn't manageable.
    But why wouldn´t that doable? Ok, I understand we can enable a classic bug mode and campaigns relying on them are now "fixed" that they work.
    IMHO it would be a nice option to have a launcher that enables or disables some of these things and creates a fitting exe or whatever files are needed.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    As for changes that impact mapmakers, that you personally do not want to make maps is not the point, you do like playing maps made by mapmakers. And if you don't, other people do. You personally feel like there are plenty of maps to play, but I believe the general consensus is, is that most of the maps are shit. Happily, some people still enjoy playing custom maps and custom campaigns, but many do not, and this is because there are so many limitations on what you can do on a map that it makes it very difficult for people to make good maps. My strife is to add possibilities for mapmakers to do new and interesting stuff on new maps they make, without affecting old maps.
    Fixing the dig-through-neutral-walls-bug does indeed affect old maps, albeit in my judgement in a trivial manner. Your second video shows that indeed people knew about this bug, but at the same time it shows it does not matter, and indeed the player loses time by using his method since digging through a neutral wall takes more time than digging through dirt.
    Now, if neutral walls can always be penetrated, which by the way is not behavior communicated to the player in any way, to players who have seen this youtube video neutral walls might as well be dirt and maps would play out the same. However, with this bug fixed, neutral walls can function like impenetrable objects, that allow the player to continue only after he managed to claim the area around it, say after he completed an objective giving him a bridge. It reintroduced neutral walls as a feature.
    How do you presume such a "general consensus"? I haven´t seen so much voices raised about this things. At the moment it is just a few people in this forum(including you and me) debating about FX and what is desirable to change and what not.
    Sure, there are a lot of crap maps, but not all.
    I doubt that all map packs coming with FX are crap. Of course some are better than others, and it may differ from personal preferences.
    Ancient and Post Ancient Keeper may be without any doubt interesting and carefully made, but on the other hand the hard difficulty might not appeal to all.
    OTOH we have just "normal" campaigns that are too easy and not that spectacular, like the Good Campaign. IMHO for map making one needs talent - and let´s face it, not everyone has that. Some might make a campaign which has a handful good levels but the others are not because they lost interest, or others might make too difficult maps.
    From my experience that is a general issue with fan-made maps, regardless of the game. We have in every game that offers the ability for fans to make maps shitload of crap maps, some average ones and a handful of good ones. Or some that are that difficult that I doubt even the creators have played them.

    Well, the neutral wall thing might be not the big deal, if I want to run faster through Morkardar I might stick then to 0.4.5 or 0.4.6 without that change. Still, this leads to the question if a new version is really an improvement to all players. I presume most people that may learn about KeeperFX want to play the original campaign and DD, to a lesser degree the other things. Things like this and new maps are more a discussion of Dungeon Keeper geeks(not meant perogative).
    But it is the general discussion(and it seems I´m not the only one concerned about that) which changes are desirable and which not, and why. We also might talk about if it was originally intended that the flame breath is so overpowered, so that abusing a dragon in possession mode makes a lot of scenarios very easy.
    Of course changes that add stuff that was supposed to be in the original game but never made it into that like the mentor reporting the finding of a special box, the grunting sound of creatures put to a job they dislike are ok like the WOP spell issue.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    The second area where I would not think twice about impacting old maps, would indeed be to improve the AI. Where possible I am happy to make stuff configurable on a per map basis to keep old maps functional, but in general I think most people would be much happier if the computer players would not be so dumb. You said you played DK in dosbox, you did not specify if it was the original version or after the update, but no, in the original version the later maps with Keepers did not provide any challenge at all. Level 14, Sleepiburgh was the worst, without any real heroes and both keepers would never build a single room or claim a portal. Level 15 also had the keepers not do anything at all, and on the final level you did not notice blue was even there. Now, DK gold already made a bit of a difference there, and KeeperFX went even further with actually having an opponent to play against. This breaks some maps - in an easily fixable way - and makes others more fun to play. Seems worth it to me.
    It was already 8-9 years ago, so I don´t exactly remember the version, but I presume it was the gold one, therefore it should be fixed.
    I still have my original CD from 1997 which I didn´t use for that, but I can´t remember so much issues.
    Regardless of this, I think everyone is ok for making the AI keepers in the original game acting like a real enemy, nut just some dummy.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Most people play in higher resolutions because they prefer the crisper, sharper image that provides. You said you don't, I believe you. A downside of the higher resolution, which people still played with, was that the minimap dots became minuscule, since the latest change they look like in higher resolutions like before the change they looked in lower resolutions. So, an improvement for the majority of people. For the minority of people, like you, who play in 320x200 or 640x480 the dots on the minimap became too large, too bad. If sparta indeed fixes it to properly scale with resolution, all the better. If instead he focuses on removing downsides of playing in higher resolutions like the not so nice menu, also very good.
    Crisper image? TBH "crisp" is not the word that comes in my mind when I think about DK. I don´t see how the bigger resolution improves anything. Heck, we talk about ancient pseudo-3D graphics where you can count pixels. Higher resolutions just give a better overview. Of course graphics is not everything and I´m ok with the game in this regard as it is, but with the lack of any higher resolution textures I don´t see the point of playing in resolutions the game was never meant to be. Eventhe configurator in the launcher states that VGA is the best resolution.
    I don´t play 320x200, but even the old and highly compressed videos from the speedrun don´t look that much worse than VGA ones. Sure, we have the low resolution icons and all this, but that´s it. And which resolutions are used might be a question for a poll.
    Of course I wouldn´t mind to see a real widescreen support for 16:9 resolutions.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And as a final note, I find it amusing that you state you don't like maps that try to imitate Ancient Keeper, but that's exactly the campaign that revolves around fucking with the exploits and known bugs in the game. The very reason why there's a classic bug mode, and indeed it spawned some imitations because it gave people some example to at least make some sort of challenge. My proposal is to go the opposite direction, in not have the game be around the bugs and having to make complex maps around them, but instead make the core improvements that make basic maps more fun to play. Where you can have a map with a rival keeper on equal footing and he actually challenges the player. Or a map where the player builds a dungeon, gets invaded by heroes and he does not immediately win because he became all powerfull by converting the invading heroes to his side.
    I think my words were a bit misunderstandable.
    I wasn´t so much refering to the bugs and exploits, but more to the difficulty. Because AK can also be pretty difficult if one is not used to the bugs, and even then, using them can be a pain in the ass in some cases. And there are also scenarios where it is just...difficult, regardless of the exploits. Like defeating a bunch of samurais or reapers with weaker creatures. Like said above, to make a good map one needs talent. With pseudo-AKs I was refering to some that seem to be too difficult at all, on a level that is just not fun anymore. There is the big difference between an enjoyable challenging difficulty and one that is just frustrating.
    The issue with "normal" maps is that most longtime DK geeks know how to abuse some mechanics of the game. E.G. if the map is revealed there is no such thing as the "fog of war" other strategy games have, therefore the player can spam spells onto the enemies ground, finding his way to the heart with a possessed creature and so on. Sure, there might be ways to avoid that, but then we again talk about balance.

    Regarding of the stability, there are still scenarios where the game freezes or crashes. Like the freeze I had in Mirthshire(and unfortunately not the log file, but next time the game freaks out I will save that immediately). It might run 80-90 % of the time stable, but as there are so many possible scenarios and a lot of campaigns and maps(some of them not played by someone here) there is still the possibility of issues occuring we don´t know yet).
    Last edited by Noanechu; March 25th, 2018 at 21:30.

  6. #56

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    But why wouldn´t that doable? Ok, I understand we can enable a classic bug mode and campaigns relying on them are now "fixed" that they work.
    IMHO it would be a nice option to have a launcher that enables or disables some of these things and creates a fitting exe or whatever files are needed.
    Well, lets put it this way, Mefisto worked on his own, and he quite often made multiple changes in a single commit, but sometimes some changes took multiple commits, so lets say there's 1 change per commit, that would mean there have been around 2000 changes made to the game. Having 2000 different to download is far too many for people to handle. Now, if you release a version for each possible combination of features/changes, you'd have E5735 versions, so literally more versions than there are atoms in the universe.

    That indeed leaves the option to make every single change and new feature configurable by the user. That is possible, but takes a lot of additional effort. Look for instance at the recent changes in the Alpha, where a bugfix in Meteor caused my to have to tweak the spell values as well. Now, if I wanted to make this feature optional, we would also have had to build something to link the new spell values to the fix, and the old spell values to the bug. Now, imagine in the distant future there's another change that effects the spell, now we have 2 changes people can enable/disable, so 4 possible variations of the spell, and just for 2 we have balances stats available, we would have to come up with two more spell values as well, and test them. You'd be setting yourself up for more and more work.

    And even when say we can somehow come to an understanding, and come up with just 10 features that people may or may not want to turn off, that still gives a whole range of possible combinations that would make maps play out completely different. If person A makes a map, he would not know if neutral walls would be safe or not for example, and he does not know if dragons have overpowered flamebreath or not so he could hardly make a valid map. Even people who speedrun would have to just give a long list of settings, because otherwise they can never compare their times.

    Simply put, the most efficient way to work on something, is to work on every feature just once, and maintain just one version. That would than be the version everybody can either play, or not play. And yes, it sucks when there are multiple versions available, and there are things you like and dislike about each version and you would just love just one version which just had the best of both worlds. All I can promise is that I'll try to make each release better than the last, and I'm not planning to make any changes that would alter the feel of the game. And I also still want to continue maintaining the 'classic bug' mode for changes that would break many old maps AND have lots of stuff in the config files.

    But the game is open source, so if you or anybody else feels they can make more stuff configurable, they are free to invest the time.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    How do you presume such a "general consensus"? I haven´t seen so much voices raised about this things. At the moment it is just a few people in this forum(including you and me) debating about FX and what is desirable to change and what not.
    Sure, there are a lot of crap maps, but not all.
    I doubt that all map packs coming with FX are crap. Of course some are better than others, and it may differ from personal preferences.
    Ancient and Post Ancient Keeper may be without any doubt interesting and carefully made, but on the other hand the hard difficulty might not appeal to all.
    OTOH we have just "normal" campaigns that are too easy and not that spectacular, like the Good Campaign. IMHO for map making one needs talent - and let´s face it, not everyone has that. Some might make a campaign which has a handful good levels but the others are not because they lost interest, or others might make too difficult maps.
    From my experience that is a general issue with fan-made maps, regardless of the game. We have in every game that offers the ability for fans to make maps shitload of crap maps, some average ones and a handful of good ones. Or some that are that difficult that I doubt even the creators have played them.
    I've read quite a few topics on this, on the maps in the map database and the included campaigns, and not many people seem very happy with them. Not recent topics mind you, but people have talked about this when the forum was still active. Making good content takes skill indeed, but for some games it easier than on others. There are several mechanics that cause it to be quite difficult to make fun DK maps, and it's no wonder that the paid expansion contained so few maps, no real option for custom maps, and many of those DD maps try to avoid many of the core mechanics like prisons.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Well, the neutral wall thing might be not the big deal, if I want to run faster through Morkardar I might stick then to 0.4.5 or 0.4.6 without that change. Still, this leads to the question if a new version is really an improvement to all players. I presume most people that may learn about KeeperFX want to play the original campaign and DD, to a lesser degree the other things. Things like this and new maps are more a discussion of Dungeon Keeper geeks(not meant perogative).
    But it is the general discussion(and it seems I´m not the only one concerned about that) which changes are desirable and which not, and why. We also might talk about if it was originally intended that the flame breath is so overpowered, so that abusing a dragon in possession mode makes a lot of scenarios very easy.
    Of course changes that add stuff that was supposed to be in the original game but never made it into that like the mentor reporting the finding of a special box, the grunting sound of creatures put to a job they dislike are ok like the WOP spell issue.
    I still think on those two maps you can get there just as fast, and if not perhaps it would take you a second or 2 more, you'd live. And yes, it's the fans of the game that might enjoy new maps and improvements. I guess most people who now pick up the game, are those that liked it 20 years ago, and want a nostalgia trip. They can play the GOG version of the game just fine and have the original experience.
    It's the people who want more, that are interested in KeeperFX, but what exactly they want differs from person to person. There are people who want to have something that resembles the original experience, but don't mind some obvious fixes/improvements and there are people liked Dungeon Keeper and would be very happy to play a game 'like' it that just has the same positives and more as DK. However, nobody will ever be able to agree on what is important to the 'original experience', and what are the things that make DK fun.
    The Dragon flame breath is a fine example, I think it's way overpowered and would nerf it in a heartbeat. But, I guess that many people who actually use the flame breath actually prefer to keep it like it was, so I'll leave it like it is. (I believe it's already changed compared to the original game.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    It was already 8-9 years ago, so I don´t exactly remember the version, but I presume it was the gold one, therefore it should be fixed.
    I still have my original CD from 1997 which I didn´t use for that, but I can´t remember so much issues.
    Regardless of this, I think everyone is ok for making the AI keepers in the original game acting like a real enemy, nut just some dummy.
    I am absolutely sure there are people who are against improvements to the AI in general, and when we'd discuss what would change to make the AI better, there would be even more people that would disagree to those specific changes. And there I'll take the same stance, I won't accept the all change is bad approach because I'm in this for the improvements, but I'm open to feedback from people who like or dislike specific things about it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Crisper image? TBH "crisp" is not the word that comes in my mind when I think about DK. I don´t see how the bigger resolution improves anything. Heck, we talk about ancient pseudo-3D graphics where you can count pixels. Higher resolutions just give a better overview. Of course graphics is not everything and I´m ok with the game in this regard as it is, but with the lack of any higher resolution textures I don´t see the point of playing in resolutions the game was never meant to be. Eventhe configurator in the launcher states that VGA is the best resolution.
    I don´t play 320x200, but even the old and highly compressed videos from the speedrun don´t look that much worse than VGA ones. Sure, we have the low resolution icons and all this, but that´s it. And which resolutions are used might be a question for a poll.
    Of course I wouldn´t mind to see a real widescreen support for 16:9 resolutions.
    The launcher simply hasn't been updated yet. If you read the full texts you'd notice that the things true anymore. When KeeperFX was new, the higher resolution tended to crash the game, so it's easy to recommend a low resolution there. The stuff with the menu and video scaling has also changed since then.
    But I'm not telling you to run in a high resolution, run in whichever resolution you prefer. I for one don't care either way and can hardly tell the difference between the resolutions. However, take a look over at the GOG forum or articles written about KeeperFX, for many the higher resolution is THE reason to play KeeperFX over the original game. I can't be sure, but I really think there's a sizable majority that plays in the higher resolution.
    And yes, there's a visual difference even with the low res sprites.

    On top of that, mefisto was always against being able to make more stuff visible as he did not want to give people an advantage over people with lower resolutions. I have no such reservations, and would be perfectly happy with making it possible to zoom out further with higher resolutions.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    I think my words were a bit misunderstandable.
    I wasn´t so much refering to the bugs and exploits, but more to the difficulty. Because AK can also be pretty difficult if one is not used to the bugs, and even then, using them can be a pain in the ass in some cases. And there are also scenarios where it is just...difficult, regardless of the exploits. Like defeating a bunch of samurais or reapers with weaker creatures. Like said above, to make a good map one needs talent. With pseudo-AKs I was refering to some that seem to be too difficult at all, on a level that is just not fun anymore. There is the big difference between an enjoyable challenging difficulty and one that is just frustrating.
    The issue with "normal" maps is that most longtime DK geeks know how to abuse some mechanics of the game. E.G. if the map is revealed there is no such thing as the "fog of war" other strategy games have, therefore the player can spam spells onto the enemies ground, finding his way to the heart with a possessed creature and so on. Sure, there might be ways to avoid that, but then we again talk about balance.
    I'm not a big fan of overly difficult maps either, although some people are. But there are so, so many tricks in this game that make a game that would make a map with otherwise reasonable challenge really easy if you know about them. Then if the map considers all these tricks, it would make the map incredibly difficult to people who don't use them. I recently played a map shared here where you almost had to possess an archer to use the incredible overpowered guided missile spell to take out units from guardposts, otherwise you had an insane challenge. I did not really like that, because normally I would consider that almost cheating and no fun to keep sniping creatures in possession. But if he would have made it easier to disregard that, people who want to use possession to the best of their ability would have a really, really simple map. All these exploitable mechanics in make it so difficult to make a fun map with a reasonable difficulty. And this is just one of countless examples.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Regarding of the stability, there are still scenarios where the game freezes or crashes. Like the freeze I had in Mirthshire(and unfortunately not the log file, but next time the game freaks out I will save that immediately). It might run 80-90 % of the time stable, but as there are so many possible scenarios and a lot of campaigns and maps(some of them not played by someone here) there is still the possibility of issues occuring we don´t know yet).
    Rest assured, I'm not saying: "forget the crashes and hangs, I'll leave them because I'd rather make a feature where bile demons will drink tea in the workshop". Fixing the pathfinding bug - which causes the most issues in the game right now - is completely at the top of my list. It's just out of my control. And I have no other crashes or hangs that are waiting to be fixed, when people say 'my game sometimes crashes' that's not something to go on.
    The opposite is actually true, I currently only play the game when it's to test new stuff, so when a developer makes some low-priority feature that causes me to playtest the game, which gives me a chance to experience a crash, which could lead to information to fix it.

  7. #57

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Well, lets put it this way, Mefisto worked on his own, and he quite often made multiple changes in a single commit, but sometimes some changes took multiple commits, so lets say there's 1 change per commit, that would mean there have been around 2000 changes made to the game. Having 2000 different to download is far too many for people to handle. Now, if you release a version for each possible combination of features/changes, you'd have E5735 versions, so literally more versions than there are atoms in the universe.
    Well, in that case a launcher for customisation should be a priority. I don´t want to change every fix ever made, but common sense should be the rule when offering users that. That would be for me to enable and disable graphic changes, altered spells etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    That indeed leaves the option to make every single change and new feature configurable by the user. That is possible, but takes a lot of additional effort. Look for instance at the recent changes in the Alpha, where a bugfix in Meteor caused my to have to tweak the spell values as well. Now, if I wanted to make this feature optional, we would also have had to build something to link the new spell values to the fix, and the old spell values to the bug. Now, imagine in the distant future there's another change that effects the spell, now we have 2 changes people can enable/disable, so 4 possible variations of the spell, and just for 2 we have balances stats available, we would have to come up with two more spell values as well, and test them. You'd be setting yourself up for more and more work.
    Yes, this would mean work, but then again, common sense. Let´s say we don´t touch the spell things in this discussion, but graphical difference like the dot thing which is a matter of taste IMHO.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    And even when say we can somehow come to an understanding, and come up with just 10 features that people may or may not want to turn off, that still gives a whole range of possible combinations that would make maps play out completely different. If person A makes a map, he would not know if neutral walls would be safe or not for example, and he does not know if dragons have overpowered flamebreath or not so he could hardly make a valid map. Even people who speedrun would have to just give a long list of settings, because otherwise they can never compare their times.
    Well, most speedrunners in DK(there are not so many) use the original version, just because of that. I have seen some using FX and even the u-builds, but these runs are listed as extra. Most games with different "modes" due to changes by fan improvements have different categories on speedrun sites.
    How someone plays for himself is just a matter of personal taste. Given the rather simple nature how to change stats in DK I could even easily make my creatures nearly invincible, then it wouldn´t matter how some map was designed by the creator.
    OTOH disabling things like the neutral walls thing would give map makers not the ability to make a map that relies on abusing game mechanics, at least this one.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Simply put, the most efficient way to work on something, is to work on every feature just once, and maintain just one version. That would than be the version everybody can either play, or not play. And yes, it sucks when there are multiple versions available, and there are things you like and dislike about each version and you would just love just one version which just had the best of both worlds. All I can promise is that I'll try to make each release better than the last, and I'm not planning to make any changes that would alter the feel of the game. And I also still want to continue maintaining the 'classic bug' mode for changes that would break many old maps AND have lots of stuff in the config files.

    But the game is open source, so if you or anybody else feels they can make more stuff configurable, they are free to invest the time.
    I don´t know anything about coding, but for starters it might be interesting to show what was exactly changed in the builds, so someone can try to play around here(of course knowing the risk to break the game entirely, but then it would be his own fault).

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I've read quite a few topics on this, on the maps in the map database and the included campaigns, and not many people seem very happy with them. Not recent topics mind you, but people have talked about this when the forum was still active. Making good content takes skill indeed, but for some games it easier than on others. There are several mechanics that cause it to be quite difficult to make fun DK maps, and it's no wonder that the paid expansion contained so few maps, no real option for custom maps, and many of those DD maps try to avoid many of the core mechanics like prisons.
    Different impressions then. I haven´t read that much about how satisfied/unsatisfied users are with these fan-made maps and campaigns. E.G. when I was asking if someone played Evil Keeper I got no sensible answer at all, and haven´t found anything about that in older threads. Therefore my impression is that some of the campaigns were not played by anyone here(or at least he doesn´t state it).
    I only read some complaints about some rather difficult maps like Twin Keeper(if it was that), so I guess most people stick to the original campaign, DD and maybe AK, but otherwise they aren´t that interested in new stuff.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I guess most people who now pick up the game, are those that liked it 20 years ago, and want a nostalgia trip. They can play the GOG version of the game just fine and have the original experience.
    It's the people who want more, that are interested in KeeperFX, but what exactly they want differs from person to person. There are people who want to have something that resembles the original experience, but don't mind some obvious fixes/improvements and there are people liked Dungeon Keeper and would be very happy to play a game 'like' it that just has the same positives and more as DK. However, nobody will ever be able to agree on what is important to the 'original experience', and what are the things that make DK fun.
    Well, of course it is a matter of personal taste like said, so there are different views what makes DK DK and what is not acceptable. For me the appeal of FX are also small things, like "what would the game be with originally not used speech like the report of the special box" or "what if WOP would actually do damage and not just pushing creatures back", therefore a mix old and new experience.


    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    The Dragon flame breath is a fine example, I think it's way overpowered and would nerf it in a heartbeat. But, I guess that many people who actually use the flame breath actually prefer to keep it like it was, so I'll leave it like it is. (I believe it's already changed compared to the original game.)
    IMHO the flame breath shouldn´t be touched. Because dragons are otherwise pretty useless, just overexpensive meat shields. Put some dragons in a fight with knights and the fight migh take forever because both sides heal themselfes easily(and eventually the dragons kill themselfes with rebound meteor). If someone don´t want a map to be easily with with a possessed dragon my guess would be to not include them in the creatures pool or the map.
    Or to maintain balance it would be an idea to give the dragons the hand-to-hand attack, then try to find out which value would be the best because with basic strength 90 they would do rather decent damage and destroy enemy groups faster.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I am absolutely sure there are people who are against improvements to the AI in general, and when we'd discuss what would change to make the AI better, there would be even more people that would disagree to those specific changes. And there I'll take the same stance, I won't accept the all change is bad approach because I'm in this for the improvements, but I'm open to feedback from people who like or dislike specific things about it.
    It would depend on the nature of the AI changes and why because someone complaints. Surely there might be players who don´t want too smart enemies, but then leaving these too dumbed down would lead to the question why one would play the game at all.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    The launcher simply hasn't been updated yet. If you read the full texts you'd notice that the things true anymore. When KeeperFX was new, the higher resolution tended to crash the game, so it's easy to recommend a low resolution there. The stuff with the menu and video scaling has also changed since then.
    But I'm not telling you to run in a high resolution, run in whichever resolution you prefer. I for one don't care either way and can hardly tell the difference between the resolutions. However, take a look over at the GOG forum or articles written about KeeperFX, for many the higher resolution is THE reason to play KeeperFX over the original game. I can't be sure, but I really think there's a sizable majority that plays in the higher resolution.
    And yes, there's a visual difference even with the low res sprites.
    Hm...I just quickly grabbed some screenshots with 1024x768 and 1280x1024, and they just look like magnified 640x480. What is also my impression from the game. I also compared with videos from Youtube that were taken in higher resolutions and don´t see any difference. Therefore I might say that people who want "higher resolution" have no clue about the game. Todays gamers are somehow spoiled by graphics, that might be a reason. But really, if someone cares much about graphics I don´t see why he should play games from an era when HDDs had less space than todays cellphones RAM is.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    On top of that, mefisto was always against being able to make more stuff visible as he did not want to give people an advantage over people with lower resolutions. I have no such reservations, and would be perfectly happy with making it possible to zoom out further with higher resolutions.
    Yeah, I wouldn´t mind having really higher resolutions, however then we need also high-res sprites, and to my knowledge none were ever published.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I'm not a big fan of overly difficult maps either, although some people are. But there are so, so many tricks in this game that make a game that would make a map with otherwise reasonable challenge really easy if you know about them. Then if the map considers all these tricks, it would make the map incredibly difficult to people who don't use them. I recently played a map shared here where you almost had to possess an archer to use the incredible overpowered guided missile spell to take out units from guardposts, otherwise you had an insane challenge. I did not really like that, because normally I would consider that almost cheating and no fun to keep sniping creatures in possession. But if he would have made it easier to disregard that, people who want to use possession to the best of their ability would have a really, really simple map. All these exploitable mechanics in make it so difficult to make a fun map with a reasonable difficulty. And this is just one of countless examples.
    Well, you sum up my reservations of new maps here in a few sentences. That´s the main reason why I´m not so much interested in these - I don´t want to spend time playing something that is just nort worth playing because of things like that.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Rest assured, I'm not saying: "forget the crashes and hangs, I'll leave them because I'd rather make a feature where bile demons will drink tea in the workshop". Fixing the pathfinding bug - which causes the most issues in the game right now - is completely at the top of my list. It's just out of my control. And I have no other crashes or hangs that are waiting to be fixed, when people say 'my game sometimes crashes' that's not something to go on.
    Bile demons drinking tea? Call me interested, haha. And then let´s talk about a nude mod for the mistress and the heroines...ok, wait, the low-res sprites, so unfortunately no waifu material(just some joke that came up a while ago regarding games ).
    Well, I try to supply FX logs when again some strange things occur(on 0.4.5 I never had any crashes or slowdowns, only a crash after the torture screen on L7, on 0.4.6u like said Mirthshire crashing - but then the logfile does not exist anymore, so we have to wait for next time).
    Anything that could help to get rid of the pathfinding bug is good.
    BTW at the moment I´m still waiting for an alpha build without the dot thing - as it was offered me. I don´t want to rush anyone here - just asking .

  8. #58

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Well, in that case a launcher for customisation should be a priority. I don´t want to change every fix ever made, but common sense should be the rule when offering users that. That would be for me to enable and disable graphic changes, altered spells etc.

    Yes, this would mean work, but then again, common sense. Let´s say we don´t touch the spell things in this discussion, but graphical difference like the dot thing which is a matter of taste IMHO.
    For you that would be common sense, for other something else. The minimap dots would never go to the launcher for instance, they don't scale properly in low resolutions, you play in a low resolution so you dislike this shortcoming, it would be a complete waste of time to work on the launcher for this, because that time spent on the launcher could also be invested in simply making sure that on low resolutions the minimap dots show in their proper size. I'm not sure if this will ever change, but in the meantime you can play in high resolution for the proper dot sizes.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Well, most speedrunners in DK(there are not so many) use the original version, just because of that. I have seen some using FX and even the u-builds, but these runs are listed as extra. Most games with different "modes" due to changes by fan improvements have different categories on speedrun sites.
    How someone plays for himself is just a matter of personal taste. Given the rather simple nature how to change stats in DK I could even easily make my creatures nearly invincible, then it wouldn´t matter how some map was designed by the creator.
    OTOH disabling things like the neutral walls thing would give map makers not the ability to make a map that relies on abusing game mechanics, at least this one.
    Yes, so I don't take speedrunners into consideration at all.
    And yes, you can change your game yourself however you please, and if you play a map with a modded game you shoudn't expect it to be balanced. But when you do want to play a map properly, you know to use the base stats. However, if you have gameplay altering settings, all settings are valid settings, so the map plays out differently in different version, and it could be very unbalanced for the settings you've selected. For this reason, gameplay altering settings will never go in the launcher in any version I will release, ever.
    And most importantly, yes, the whole point of fixing that neutral-wall bug is so that mapmakers won't make a map that depends on exploiting a bug. That's the worse thing you can do, because yes it makes your map unplayable if the bug is ever fixed, but it also requires players to be aware that a bug exists in the first place or the map would be unwinnable. And that neutral wall bug has hardly any map-making benefits. The only one I can think of would be to give a player access to possession only later in the game and as such the ability to breach a wall. But there are other ways to breach walls from the script.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    I don´t know anything about coding, but for starters it might be interesting to show what was exactly changed in the builds, so someone can try to play around here(of course knowing the risk to break the game entirely, but then it would be his own fault).
    That's actually listed in the first post of this topic, the full change list can be found here.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Different impressions then. I haven´t read that much about how satisfied/unsatisfied users are with these fan-made maps and campaigns. E.G. when I was asking if someone played Evil Keeper I got no sensible answer at all, and haven´t found anything about that in older threads. Therefore my impression is that some of the campaigns were not played by anyone here(or at least he doesn´t state it).
    I only read some complaints about some rather difficult maps like Twin Keeper(if it was that), so I guess most people stick to the original campaign, DD and maybe AK, but otherwise they aren´t that interested in new stuff.
    There has actually been a survey a while back on who played which campaigns and why. And I've opened topics on the custom maps, and many people don't play all the campaigns because if they dislike the first and second one they try, they won't try the third. You yourself state you don't even want to try new maps because you expect them to be bad. I've tried a lot of custom maps as well, and truth be told, most of them ARE bad.
    But what kind of map do you like? What is it you enjoy in DK?

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    IMHO the flame breath shouldn´t be touched. Because dragons are otherwise pretty useless, just overexpensive meat shields. Put some dragons in a fight with knights and the fight migh take forever because both sides heal themselfes easily(and eventually the dragons kill themselfes with rebound meteor). If someone don´t want a map to be easily with with a possessed dragon my guess would be to not include them in the creatures pool or the map.
    Or to maintain balance it would be an idea to give the dragons the hand-to-hand attack, then try to find out which value would be the best because with basic strength 90 they would do rather decent damage and destroy enemy groups faster.
    I already said I will leave dragons as they are. They have been buffed back to how they were in the original game however, and they are certainly not useless. They are very expensive, but on many maps that doesn't matter, and they survive forever. Put a few on your front line, and creatures like warlocks or mistresses can lay down the hurt from a scaly shield to do massive damage.
    Giving dragons a melee attack would completely destroy the roll they have now.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    It would depend on the nature of the AI changes and why because someone complaints. Surely there might be players who don´t want too smart enemies, but then leaving these too dumbed down would lead to the question why one would play the game at all.
    Yes, so that matches my position with KeeperFX Unofficial going forward. Purist who want the original experience should stick to the original game, and I will accept improvements to the game as long as they don't destroy the original feeling of playing dungeon keeper.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Hm...I just quickly grabbed some screenshots with 1024x768 and 1280x1024, and they just look like magnified 640x480. What is also my impression from the game. I also compared with videos from Youtube that were taken in higher resolutions and don´t see any difference. Therefore I might say that people who want "higher resolution" have no clue about the game. Todays gamers are somehow spoiled by graphics, that might be a reason. But really, if someone cares much about graphics I don´t see why he should play games from an era when HDDs had less space than todays cellphones RAM is.
    I can see the difference, but if you don't care about graphics you wont care that the minimap looks uglier now in low resolution do you?

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Yeah, I wouldn´t mind having really higher resolutions, however then we need also high-res sprites, and to my knowledge none were ever published.
    There are some high resolution sprites already included but not accessible. And I've ran an algorithm to create higher quality sprites from the ones we've got. And it would be possible to make the game zoom out further without losing image quality.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Well, you sum up my reservations of new maps here in a few sentences. That´s the main reason why I´m not so much interested in these - I don´t want to spend time playing something that is just nort worth playing because of things like that.
    This was actually a good map, one of the better ones out there, it's just quite difficult and it requires full use of all possibilities in the game. But this is also why I want to work on changes to make making good maps easier, so there are more good maps, so there's plenty of good maps for people with different kinds of preferences.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Well, I try to supply FX logs when again some strange things occur(on 0.4.5 I never had any crashes or slowdowns, only a crash after the torture screen on L7, on 0.4.6u like said Mirthshire crashing - but then the logfile does not exist anymore, so we have to wait for next time).
    Anything that could help to get rid of the pathfinding bug is good.
    BTW at the moment I´m still waiting for an alpha build without the dot thing - as it was offered me. I don´t want to rush anyone here - just asking .
    We don't need any more logs or info on the pathfinding bug, that one is easy enough to reproduce. If you've got a hang/crash and it's NOT the pathfinding bug then I want to know about it.
    And read back, and I don't think you've been offered an alpha build with the minimap dots changes. Perhaps you'll get it someday, but don't hold your breath. Check the list I posted above what's already there, but usually when a few commits have been made, I post the alpha here.

  9. #59

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    For you that would be common sense, for other something else. The minimap dots would never go to the launcher for instance, they don't scale properly in low resolutions, you play in a low resolution so you dislike this shortcoming, it would be a complete waste of time to work on the launcher for this, because that time spent on the launcher could also be invested in simply making sure that on low resolutions the minimap dots show in their proper size. I'm not sure if this will ever change, but in the meantime you can play in high resolution for the proper dot sizes.
    Then we might have the consensus that the dots shouldn´t be changed in 640x480 and below, just as a suggestion.
    The strange thing is that the high-res modes also don´t work properly for me. Here are screenshots from one of the alpha builds from my game. I can press Alt-R and the letters of the information that a screenshot was taken are in different sizes, otherwise nothing changes. I took screenshots at 640x480, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 - all look the same. Here to see, completely unaltered.




    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    Yes, so I don't take speedrunners into consideration at all.
    And yes, you can change your game yourself however you please, and if you play a map with a modded game you shoudn't expect it to be balanced. But when you do want to play a map properly, you know to use the base stats. However, if you have gameplay altering settings, all settings are valid settings, so the map plays out differently in different version, and it could be very unbalanced for the settings you've selected. For this reason, gameplay altering settings will never go in the launcher in any version I will release, ever.
    And most importantly, yes, the whole point of fixing that neutral-wall bug is so that mapmakers won't make a map that depends on exploiting a bug. That's the worse thing you can do, because yes it makes your map unplayable if the bug is ever fixed, but it also requires players to be aware that a bug exists in the first place or the map would be unwinnable. And that neutral wall bug has hardly any map-making benefits. The only one I can think of would be to give a player access to possession only later in the game and as such the ability to breach a wall. But there are other ways to breach walls from the script.
    I presume then map makers that will rely on exploits would write into their description that the player should use a version where this is not fixed. Or they enable the classic bug mode for their map. I can understand that you don´t want maps that don´t work in every version, but I say you will not stop people from making strange or bad maps with this.


    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    But what kind of map do you like? What is it you enjoy in DK?
    Aside the original levels which are mostly well made I like levels that are somehow challenging but not to a degree that only "hardcore gamers" can beat them. If they add too much haste it´s not my thing.
    What I enjoy in DK is the general atmosphere and setting, also because I like to tactic(which strategy is about). Also I rather play DK than most of the new games because in the last years there weren´t much good new ones.
    I played the Arctic Campaign some time ago. While it has it´s flaws the idea is interesting. Still, too easy IMHO because in all maps it is only needed to destroy the white heart to win.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I already said I will leave dragons as they are. They have been buffed back to how they were in the original game however, and they are certainly not useless. They are very expensive, but on many maps that doesn't matter, and they survive forever. Put a few on your front line, and creatures like warlocks or mistresses can lay down the hurt from a scaly shield to do massive damage.
    Giving dragons a melee attack would completely destroy the roll they have now.
    The dragon thing is ok, nobody said a change is necessary. But yes, basically you say the same thing like I, they are just expensive meat shields outside possession.


    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    I can see the difference, but if you don't care about graphics you wont care that the minimap looks uglier now in low resolution do you?
    Again a little misunderstanding. I said I don´t care about graphics in a way that just graphics don´t make a good game. But ugly graphics are another thing. I said above that it doesn´t look appealing to me - that´s my main complaint.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    There are some high resolution sprites already included but not accessible. And I've ran an algorithm to create higher quality sprites from the ones we've got. And it would be possible to make the game zoom out further without losing image quality.
    Alright, then let´s see if there could be really a graphics improvement.

    Quote Originally Posted by YourMaster View Post
    We don't need any more logs or info on the pathfinding bug, that one is easy enough to reproduce. If you've got a hang/crash and it's NOT the pathfinding bug then I want to know about it.
    And read back, and I don't think you've been offered an alpha build with the minimap dots changes. Perhaps you'll get it someday, but don't hold your breath. Check the list I posted above what's already there, but usually when a few commits have been made, I post the alpha here.
    Ok, then we are clear about that. Still, supplying logs should be encouraged, if they just happen to be a know bug like this the situation is clear, if it´s something unknown or maybe map-specific, let´s see.

  10. #60

    Default Re: KeeperFX Unofficial - continued development - alpha builds

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Then we might have the consensus that the dots shouldn´t be changed in 640x480 and below, just as a suggestion.
    The strange thing is that the high-res modes also don´t work properly for me. Here are screenshots from one of the alpha builds from my game. I can press Alt-R and the letters of the information that a screenshot was taken are in different sizes, otherwise nothing changes. I took screenshots at 640x480, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 - all look the same.
    That's what I've been saying for several pages now. Sparta tried to get the dots to properly resize with the lower resolution, did not manage yet and decided not to spend too much more time on it. But the goal was having 640x480 as before, like you suggested.
    I see a difference on the screenshots you post, it's just negligible. Look at the steel door in the menu on two of the screenshots, there it's easy to see.

    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    I presume then map makers that will rely on exploits would write into their description that the player should use a version where this is not fixed. Or they enable the classic bug mode for their map. I can understand that you don´t want maps that don´t work in every version, but I say you will not stop people from making strange or bad maps with this.
    If a bug is fixed as soon as it is found, nobody will make maps that rely on the bug. And everybody benefits from the bug-fix.


    Quote Originally Posted by Noanechu View Post
    Aside the original levels which are mostly well made I like levels that are somehow challenging but not to a degree that only "hardcore gamers" can beat them. If they add too much haste it´s not my thing.
    What I enjoy in DK is the general atmosphere and setting, also because I like to tactic(which strategy is about). Also I rather play DK than most of the new games because in the last years there weren´t much good new ones.
    I played the Arctic Campaign some time ago. While it has it´s flaws the idea is interesting. Still, too easy IMHO because in all maps it is only needed to destroy the white heart to win.
    Well, try Yceglayze Mountain or Wetlands, and tell me what you think. Depending on your feedback I can give you another suggestion.

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