Re: SoundRTS and the CrazyMod (update 8.3)
Hi
So, not sure if this is exactly the correct thread for this but I felt that starting a new one would be unnecisary.
Anyway I was messing around yesterday and made a map for sound rts that hopefully will work out well, though 1 part of it is already kinda annoying me even though it's not the editors fault it's just a flaw in my design that can't really be fixed unless I change some stuff but that's not what I'm asking about.
Firstly, the way that making paths and bridges is presented in the map making documentation never works for me in practice, for instance, the example is west_east_paths a1 c1 d1 e1 f1, and the tip says that you just need the west most square of the path, which I'm still not, exactly sure I fully understand in the context, but my problem is that that simply doesn't work for me, I get squares with paths, but with walls in between them, so I use something like west_east_paths a1 b1 c1 d1 e1 f1, because I know that the last one will go to g1 and that the first one you have to specify, but it starts there, it doesn't try to go the other direction as well.
This isn't exactly a huge problem because I can still do it, but it takes more time for me, and I'm curious as to exactly where I'm getting it wrong.
Second, and this is more problematic, when I used the player command instead of starting_resources, starting_squares, and starting_units, so that I could give each player a scout tower on either side of them, as well as one in the middle, since the square you start in is 3 by 3 and I wanted you to be able to see all of your land, but I needed to specify the locations of the side buildings for each one, since they all started in different places, then it only works for 1 player, I thought repeating it 4 times for 4 players would work, but it only worked for 1 player, so if you weren't that one when you spawned? you'd aut omatically lose because nothing spawned for you, so it looks like you lost it all to the enomy, and if you were, the other AI's would have the same problem so then you'd automatically win.
Eventually I just gave up and gave everybody 1 tower in the middle of their square, but this means they can't see the paths that enomys will come down, and they can't see all of their land.
I wonder if there's a way to do something like...
player_1 75 30 b2 1 townhall 3 farm 1 scouttower a2 1 scouttower c2 1 scouttower
player_2 75 30 n2 1 townhall 3 farm 1 scouttower m2 1 scouttower o2 1 scouttower
If there is though, I haven't seen it.
Now on a more unrelated note, this version of sound RTS has some balancing issues that seem to be impacting the game pretty heavily, which I made a list of, at least the ones I know.
1. Some or all units that can attack ajacent squares but can't defend them sel ves in the same square can now do so, most notably grenade launchers, this also occurs when using control enter on this type of unit and forcing it to go to the square, then attack, instead of staying in the next square, so where normally it would be ripped apart, it now can attack with all the range it needs with not much resistance.
2. Centaurs and to a lesser amount forest archers do a rediculous amount of damage even to buildings, weather this is because you can get so many of them and pretty fast, I don't know, but something should be scaled up or down, maybe a higher price or reduced damage or speed? or something.
Also, aradites do too much damage them selves in my opinion, and should also cost more, and because they also have the energy ball ability and meetiors which multiple units can cast at once, I don't think they should be nearly as powerful just by them selves, because they can cast such powerful spells to help them anyway.
simply put it
's no longer fun to play against elves unless your using another overpowered race and then your still probably screwed, so that race needs some simple tweaking I think.
3. I don't know if this is just troditionals or what, but it seems like the computer is able to gain new units way faster than makes sense given how much gold and wood they gather, for instance, troditionals often are able to somehow have 15 or more cattipolts 15 minutes into the game even with 100 and 200 capacity goldmines and woods around them, and not that many, either.
Also I suggest that the temple be moved to having the castle as a requirement, because priests are very powerful, and keeps already get 2 new buildings while castles get 1, and yes, this means that that race will be more vonerable to invisible units for a longer period of time than a few other races, and I'm not quite sure how to fix that, but they still have powerful units early on at least, so they could always go
smash the more invis groups before they have a chance to make those types of units anyway.
4. dark are supposed to be good in numbers, I get that, but the Thestrel is too cheap to make sense,and yes I know it's damage sucks, but I think it should be a bit more expensive, right now it's kind of rediculously cheap considering the building they come from requires the best town hall for that race...
And speaking of that, on the other end of the spectrum, some of the buildings they get take a hooooole lot of gold ad wood, I don't know if this is to make them more balanced, and if it is, that makes sense, but otherwise, compared to their farms, and the units they can recruit, it's a bit weird.
5. I think that for elementals, the elemental circle should take longer to make, and possibly require more materials, I say this because you already start out with one, but since the peasants for that race can fly, the AI loves to just scatter them a
ll over, making several elemental circles that are just annoying and take for ever to get rid of even if you've basically beaten them already.
Also fire elementals are just really overpowered, I thought the point was that the elementals are all good in different ways, but these guys don't seem to have any drawbacks and can do rediculous amounts of damage in a super short amount of time from a long way off to flying and ground units, and they don't have bad hp either.
6. As a limitation to all flying units, you can't currently make them go specifically to 1 building, ignore others, then turn back and go away, like you can with ground units.
For instance, there's a farm at c3 I need destroyed, but there's also a barrics that I don't want to destroy because I want to give the other player a chance, I want to hurt them, not destroy them, so I have a winged serpant, and I control it, then tab to the farm, choose go to,
and hit control enter, then I quickly move to b3, control it again, choose go to, and hit control shift enter.
With a ground unit, say a broozer, if I did that, the broozer would walk into the square at c3, go directly to the farm there, destroy it, then walk away back to b3 and completely ignore the barrics, or any little peasants hacking at him.
With a flying unit,the commands just sit there cued and nothing happens.
7. it's nice that the AI's controlling races with defense towers do build them, though they don't build traps much unfortunately, but they still don't send out small patrols, or check around the square they are in for enomies, if the AI can see the squares around it, say because of a scout tower, and I walk a witch or something right up to the square that they are in, but don't go in, should they not go kill me if they can, and especially if I attack, which they don't always do.
Also, if I were
say, to cast green storm with that witch on the square, and there were 30 archers, why would they not move away? first I shouldn't be able to get away with that with out getting attacked in a few seconds or less, but even if I walked away fast enough so they could not find me, they often just sit there dieing instead of moving away from the thing that's killing them.
This happens in a different way when an AI keeps bumping up against opposition, say I have a cannon tower at a3, and the AI has a barrics at a1, if the AI sends out 1 or more soldiers that get killed by my cannon, it almost always will just keep sending 1 at a time to get continually murdered, they don't try to go around, they don't try to overwelm my tower with small groups, they don't do anything but sometimes build another barrics and send teams of 2 to the same fate, which I think is more by accedant than design.
They get really caught up on making money but not using
it, if you are on a map with allot of gold and wood, they often just keep mining with out buying new units, so killing them is easy, even if you set the game to fast 4 for like an hour, they are still doing basically nothing but mining, and honestly if you have to do that just for a chance at fun with an AI then that's not so great.
8. Units say attack! for every unit they see, every time.
This gets really annoying especially when you are attacking a bunch of peasants, because they are stupid, they retreat because they get scared, then come back again, as if the monster has gone away, lol, but every time they come back, even if you just have 1 unit there, it says attack attack at at at at, atatat, attack atackatackatackatackatackatack atack! roflmao it just gets super annoying, especially when an ally AI does it because you can't move them away and wait either for smaller groups of peasants, or more units to kill them faster with like you could for your se
lf.
This also happens with things like bombers, if it's attacking buildings it says it each time it goes to a new one, that's all fine and dandy, but say the ai sends in 15 paladins, for every new unit the bomber sees, it screams attack! rofl, so it gets super annoying.
Lets just say me and my friend have actually quit multiplayer games against the AI that we were winning because of the insaneley loud and seemingly never ending crazyness, especially if it's 2 or more at once from different directions, since even moving away doesn't always help, and I've actually used tear gas just to get my AI allys to shut up and die so that the enomy doesn't keep screeching attack! attack! aaaaaaaaataaaaaaaaaaaack! lol!
Smash's head against wall repeatedly while bellowing, ataaaaack...
I want to just make it clear that I love this game and this mod and that I played this game way before this mod or any others even came out, but t hat yes, I do believe that there are some balance issues that are hopefully easy to fix that are currently messing up something awesome, though not because of any intention on the part of any of the talented and imaginative people working for free and with their own time on the game and the mod it's self, and I do also understand that AI's aren't easy to make good, and that Pygame is old and somewhat limited compared to the new stuff out there, but that rewriting the hole thing in a newer language would be incredibly time consuming, especially considering that this is a free game, but I also understand that it's hard to get people to do a multiplayer game with you, and that having a good AI would make the game just that much better for when you can't find a match, so personally I am okay with holding off on any new types of damage, special abilities, etc, until the AI especially but also some of these balance problems are looked at, but others ma y not be so keen on that, either way I will keep playing and loving this game anyway.
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