No Where To Run Beta

[gwyned]

After several weeks, I am releasing the BETA of a new Eden colony mission entitled "No Where to Run." It's a Land Rush mission (with a special twist) and does not feature an enemy AI.  Instead, the disasters (coupled with the small map) provide the main opposition to your efforts.  The objectives are quite straight-forward: accumulate 40,000 common ore and 20,000 rare ore.  Given the other parameters of the mission, you should be able to accomplish this within an hour or so of play, give or take.

Couple of pointers:

1. You'll immediately notice you start out without any colonists.  This is intentional.  As soon as you move your Evacuation Transport next to a Command Center, your colonists will be deployed.  Since you have no colonists, you will consume no food until you actually do this.

2. The Easy level is almost a tutorial - the disasters are weaker, at great intervals, you have plenty of starting resources, and easy access to ores.  Hard, on the other hand, is quite difficult; in fact, on first glance it may even appear impossible.  Let me assure you though - I have tested each difficulty setting, and have beaten Hard several times.

Known issues:

1. The Evacuation Transport appears empty.  However, once it is adjacent to a Command Center, it will deploy your entire starting population.  It will also only do this once.

2. If your Evacuation Transport is destroyed prior to deploying your colonists, you're hosed; but as of yet I have not made this an automatic failure; you'll just have to restart manually.

3. Sometimes, after loading a saved game, the objectives will not appear correctly; I suspect this is due to some left-over coding from my original source and/or the usual save buffer issue.  This does not affect your ability to win the mission - you simply won't have the visual cues.

I appreciate any comments and feedback you would care to provide.

[Hidiot]

It's a save game issue of 1.3.5.

Just that sometimes it may crash your game when you try to view your objectives :/

This is assuming qwyned did the saving right.

[Sirbomber]

So, basically, it's a single-player Survivor without the Blight?

[gwyned]

So, basically, it's a single-player Survivor without the Blight?

Something like that.

The real challenge of the mission is the beginning - can you establish and sustain a colony given limited resources and frequent disasters? The ore objectives (along with the 200 population objective I forgot to mention) are a nice benchmark of having achieved stability.

[Sirbomber]

So, basically, it's a single-player Survivor without the Blight?

Something like that.

Sounds good.  I'll give it a try when I get finished with Eden #5 for OP:SC*.  Of course, I will never get finished with it because my mapper (cough CK9 cough) is too lazy to do the celltypes on the map he made for me.


*That stands for Outpost: Second Chance, not Starcraft.

[Hooman]

How about some source?

It's a save game issue of 1.3.5.

Say what? How come I'm only hearing about this now?
 

[Hidiot]

Seems to happen with custom maps, not the standard ones. New custom maps for some reason.

Sirbomber should be able to give you better info.

[Sirbomber]

Hooman, he's referring to that "saved games crash if you look at the mission objectives list" thing I was telling you about.

That's a CodeBlocks issue, not an OP2 issue Hidiot.

[Hidiot]

Oh... my bad then.

[Hooman]

You do realize CodeBlocks also uses the MSVC compiler right?
 

[Sirbomber]

Yes, but then explain why CB results in UR DETH but non-CB does not.

[Hooman]

I'm going to guess it's a difference in project settings. The project files will be unique between CodeBlocks and MSVC, and those project files control how the compiler is called.

[Sirbomber]

Why couldn't you have told me that, I dunno, last year when I first asked you about that problem?!

Now tell me how to fix it (in a PM, so as not to be spammy) or be destroyed.

[gwyned]

Not that this discussion isn't important and all, but I'd love to return to the topic of the beta for No Where to Run.  Has anyone actually played the mission yet? I'd love to hear if someone has managed to beat it on the Hard setting...

[Sirbomber]

Still haven't gotten the chance to play it, but I do want to give it a try.

[Sirbomber]

Alright, I played it.  Gotta say, not all that impressed.

1) It's a boring "get X amount of resources" mission.  Those practically play themselves.
2) NOTHING happened.  For a map where "your primary enemy is the disasters" there are very few of them.
3) You artificially inflate the difficulty by giving us way too many people to start with, ensuring that morale is at zero for ages and everyone dies of boredom.
4) If your population is 130, why the heck do you start with no research?  You'd think you'd at least have something, especially on easy.
5) You should check to see if the CC has actually been built before you allow the player to unload the colonists.
6) I think it would be neat if, instead of starting with an ET filled with 130 people, you have the player start with a very small group of colonists (15 workers, 5 scientists maybe?).  When the CC is finished, the ET with the rest of the population spawns and you can unload them into their new home.
7) You should add some failure conditions in case somebody thinks it would be funny to kill off the entire colony by self-destructing the ET, or dumping the CC kit from the ConVec, or whatever.

[Hooman]

In other words, Sirbomber tried to get some satisfaction from hearing his colony was doomed, but was disappointed by his efforts.

Perhaps some valid criticisms, although I wouldn't worry too much about point #1 for your first mission. Point #2 is also a bit debatable for a first mission. Although, if it's something you're releasing for other people to play, it's important to eventually deal with those two and make something fun to play. (Which to some people, is just a simple sandbox game, so maybe you're not too far off from that). Point #4 is also more to do with the level designer's wishes, but yes, it's usually nice to tweak starting techs based on difficulty level. It gives the mission a more complete feel.

The other points listed all sound like things worth working on before trying to take on something else.
 

[Sirbomber]

In other words, Sirbomber tried to get some satisfaction from hearing his colony was doomed, but was disappointed by his efforts.

You know me too well, Hooman...

Anyways, my problem with the "getting resources" is that if you just made it a plain old population style map, that would be fine; but throwing in "oh, and while you're at it, get 40k common ore and 20k rare ore" just wastes my time.  Colony management is fun.  Sitting around watching your cargo trucks get ore is not.

But what's wrong with liking the sound?  I like it so much I have it in four different languages!  Well, 3 if you don't count English...

[gwyned]

Alright, I played it.  Gotta say, not all that impressed.

1) It's a boring "get X amount of resources" mission.  Those practically play themselves.
2) NOTHING happened.  For a map where "your primary enemy is the disasters" there are very few of them.
3) You artificially inflate the difficulty by giving us way too many people to start with, ensuring that morale is at zero for ages and everyone dies of boredom.
4) If your population is 130, why the heck do you start with no research?  You'd think you'd at least have something, especially on easy.
5) You should check to see if the CC has actually been built before you allow the player to unload the colonists.
6) I think it would be neat if, instead of starting with an ET filled with 130 people, you have the player start with a very small group of colonists (15 workers, 5 scientists maybe?).  When the CC is finished, the ET with the rest of the population spawns and you can unload them into their new home.
7) You should add some failure conditions in case somebody thinks it would be funny to kill off the entire colony by self-destructing the ET, or dumping the CC kit from the ConVec, or whatever.

Thanks for playing.  I have a few responses:

1. Rdging #1 & #2 - If the level seems boring, actually try it on Hard.  I admit that the random disasters could be a lot more frequent, particularly on Easy.  In fact, if you read my original post, I did make the disclaimer that on Easy the level is practically a tutorial/sandbox.  I will continue to tweak this.

I will also consider tweaking the mission objectives.  The fact that you are required to collect Rare Ore does force the player to expand and expose the base to more disasters.  I actually found it somewhat interesting to have to mine so much Common Ore, as usually you don't need nearly that much.  Still, I could understand how that might not be everyone's cup of tea.

2. Rgding #3 - Especially on Easy, there are definitely more ppl than is probably reasonable.  I will tone that down in the next version.

3. Rgding #4 - I will look at adding some Completed Research for the next version.  While this may be common in custom games, the original Colony games did not start with any research (at least that's what I remember - I could be wrong).

4. Rgding #5 - Enlighten me as to what code will check to see if the CC has been successfully built vs. merely in progress.

5. Rgding #6 - Interesting ideas.  I personally like the fact that you have unlimited time to mess with your initial buildings and the like before having to deal with any population or morale.  We'll see.

6. Rgding #7 - Again, I did note in my original post that no fail-safes had yet been programmed in if you do something stupid.  My plan all along was to add this in at a later point.

Thanks for your feedback.  Again, I encourage you to try again on Hard.

[instigator]

rofl!! This is the 3rd time I've had to restart on hard.

I finally figured out how to start and a vortext spawns right on top of my cc and everything lmao

update: I finally got a thriving colony going. As a precaution I put redundant tubing everywhere, it paid off later. Backup convecs in garage works well. 3x cc scattered around just in case. Had a major earthquake hit me and devastated everything lol, but i just activated backup buildings and rebuilt.  (thumbsup) . Only thing i would say though is make the player plymoth, since they are the ones that wanted to "adapt" to new terra (reinforced residences is more fitting for this scenario imo).  

[Hooman]

Maybe try checking if the CC is busy? I'm not entirely sure what the best method is actually.
 

[Sirbomber]

4. Rgding #5 - Enlighten me as to what code will check to see if the CC has been successfully built vs. merely in progress.

Show me the code you're currently using and I can show you exactly how it's done.

In the meantime, you'll need IUnit/OP2extra.lib: http://wiki.outpostuniverse.net/Op2extra

Anyways, when you're checking for the CC, you also want to add a couple of checks to make sure it isn't being built, deconned, or destroyed:

Code: [Select]

IUnit playerCC;
(enumerator code)
switch(playerCC.GetBusy())
                {
                    case ctMoDevelop:
                    case ctMoUnDevelop:
                    case ctMoDismantle:
                        break;
                    default:   //If it's not being built, or destroyed, take it
                    // code goes here
                 }

[instigator]

How about just dont bring the evac to the CC before you are ready? -.-

 

[Sirbomber]

A good programmer should assume the user is a total moron and take preventative measures.

[Hooman]

Lol!  

Very true. Very well put Sirbomber. Have you provided technical support on a professional basis?


But yeah, never trust user input. Normally that's a security measure, but it applies for other reasons as well.