Samapico

Well, if the client handles the animation, it's more fluid (no lag), and handling a timer for each player on the server would be annoying (and unnecessary)

I lol'd Yeah, maybe only for the sector map, or whatever large HUD item there might be. No use to do it for everything, really. ok, so you could basically define like 100 screenobjects, 1 for each pixel, all using the same image, with different times, with the same objectID, and you'd get a nice fluid animation... interesting.

The annoying-opaque-HUD-element problem can be partially solved if you use 2 superposed layers, one under ships and tiles, opaque, and another over ships/tiles/weapons, with 50% of the pixels black. This means you see things through it, while it doesn't look fugly normally. And +1 vote for money/exp counter, maybe even a small fading/popping '+ 32$' animation above or under the counter when you get a kill (or flag game win). Nothing too flashy, just to make things more... alive. +1 vote for ?commands to toggle the HUD panels... you could even have a few color schemes for the bars and stuff, and you could choose one. As long as download size doesn't get too high though. Since it is kind of hard and it makes bigger downloads if you do a pixel-by-pixel bar animation, a bar with "blocks" might be more suitable... like the 2nd, 4th and 6th bars in this image: http://www.essentialobjects.com/screenshots/progressbar_aspnet.gif

Cool

Emmm... I thought this was about a loan system between players, which is much different. It just makes sure the other person pays you back, and he could not ?give money to anyone else (including other aliases) until his debt his paid off.

Polix just installed a new tracker module, where we can submit and track bugs. http://www.ssforum.net/index.php?app=tracker I didn't check the permissions yet, dunno if you can see it or submit stuff to it... 'tis nice anyway.

Discretion only works for the Discretion test zone (which I forgot the name, something like Discretion Wars) Trying to enter other zones with it wouldn't work.

yeah... makes things easier... fits with the .lvl format, allows backward-compatible elvl stuff hidden in header, makes editing easier (you only need to grab one file from server),

yarly

I believe the settings structure will be quite different than subgame though.

Ever heard of google? seriously... type that exact sentence in there, and click anywhere, you'll get answers.

Also... how about if all the weapons/specials were handled the same way... For example, the repel would simply be a weapon, with some triggerdelay:0 property so it explodes right on launch, and a gravity effect To reproduce what continuum can do, that would require a lot of properties to begin with, but over time, it would allow for VERY diverse weapons and items. For example, a repel that you can throw at someone, a massive anti-gravity bomb that shoots off shrapnel that act like small repels... Or some weapon of mass destruction that launches burst "seeds" everywhere, and they go off. If you introduce forces, each weapon projectile and ship could have a weight, so repels would have different effects on them. For VIE-style settings, set weights to 0, and repels give objects the maximum repel speed instantaneously.

Only 6 macros? I never have enough with 20

Suidakra - And the Giants Dance...

WTF I MISSED A HUGE GAME OMG Notice it does it for all the "forced" zones

I thought zip files were made with zlib?

There has to be someone out there who can fix his servers for this

It's also common knowledge that youtube video descriptions are read just about as much as EULA agreements (was that a pleonasm?).

So basically, you get paid by having to buy the stuff they want you to buy.

might as well allow zip files instead of using lvz's just to pack files

You guys should toggle off the grid for these screenshots, would be prettier

3. goal, flag and special objects are not lvz's, just bitmaps Also, what he posted reflect the current Continuum way of doing it, I'm pretty sure you could define animations for the doors from an image as well, and use only 1 tile for each door set. 2. just appearing on the other side would be easy enough, but showing what's on both sides if you're standing near the border could be quite a challenge on topic of speedmodifying tiles, I listed 2 types earlier: resistance and speed limit... I'll add a third type: thrust limit (think slippery ice) and yes, this could also be handled with regions... could be much easier, actually. If you want a whole area to be slowed down, you don't want to define duplicate tiles with the same graphics and different speed values...

Hmmm... if you remember me talking about having customizable 'energy bars' for various purposes (shields, splitting afterburner from energy, things like that). Well these could be your ship's subsystems, and EMP bombs could be made to target some of these specifically. i.e. it could disable your engines pretty easily: You make it so a small amount of engine power is required for normal thrust and rotation, you Some example of what the settings could look like, with recharging shields, a hull integrity, and engines... and a bunch of other stuff, actually. Having fun here. Might spawn some ideas about implementation. Some discussions are scattered in there concerning some stuff... like shrapnel being discussed in the bullet description. Don't ask me why. Subsystems: #Shields { style: bar, green } #Hull { style: percentage, yellow CausesDeathBelowZero: true } #Engines { style: bar, blue } #Heat { style: numeric, red CausesDeathOverMax: true //Would be nice to have other possible effects, such as damaging other subsystems when going over/below some thresholds; jamming weapons //Perhaps a whole different section could define simple effects/scripts that can then be triggered in different ways (firing weapons, emptying your engines subsystems) } #Schwartz { //Only used on sysop ship, allows it to use super weapons, roar! style: invisible //override this on sysop ship to make it show up } #add whatever you want, stop complaining { } Weapons: #Bullet { levels: 4 #Can be upgraded through greens or prizes or whatever damage: 100 damageupgrade: 50 target: "Shields", "Hull" //Damages shields first, then the hull itself when shields are down cost: "Shields"=75, "Heat"=-10 //So this would make the Heat go up projectileradius: 1 proximityradius: 0 blastradius: 0 //Direct impact only projectilespeedinitial: 500 projectilespeedmaximum: 1000 projectilehomingthrust: 10 //"thrust" value given to the projectile to seek its target (or simply to accelerate from 500 to 1000 in this case) projectilehomingrotation: 0 //"rotation" value given to the projectile to seek its target //You can get a bunch of different styles of homing weapons with these 4 parameters //insert stuff about source (X, Y) offset, orientation, number of projectiles, pattern... EDIT: or don't, that should probably go in the ship settings. //or they could go in either one... if the pattern is proper to the weapon itself, put it here, and use it on different ships //if you want ships to use the same weapon with different patterns (double-barrel, multifire), override these parameters in each ship's settings. //insert stuff about shrapnel, ... why not have a flak bomb that launches smaller bombs on impact, which themselves launch small shrapnel? i.e. define a #Ubershrap weapon, and refer to it here as secondary explosion //perhaps if Ubershrap has 5 different levels, you'd use something like: shrapweapon: "Ubershrap"=3 //if you want to use the level 3 Ubershrap for this //You could create an infinite loop of blasts... if Ubershrap has bullet as shrapweapon... OMG. PEW PEW PEW. //insert BS about icons, graphics, sounds and other stuff here } #EMP bomb { levels: 12 #Why not damage: 10 damageupgrade: 20 target: "Engines" freeze: "Engines" freezetime: 500 //voids the 'recharge' value of the target subsystem //there's probably a better way for this... one could want to deal different damage to Shields and Engines, for example. freezetimeupgrade: 150 cost: "Shields"=400, "Heat"=-100 //Direct impact only, but the missile itself has a thickness. The only difference with this and prox radius would be how it can go through holes. //Projectile radius of 0 would go through walls, like a thor hammer projectileradius: 3 proximityradius: 0 blastradius: 50 } #Heat Bomb { //blahblahblah target: Heat damage: -500 //Makes target's heat go up freeze: Heat freezetime: 200 //ok... freezing heat sounds weird, but basically voids the cooling for 2 seconds } #Beam { gothrough: true //Hell yeah //should have some way to have a... continuous beam of some sort. A maximum length, some reduction of its damage over distance, etc. These could be useful for other things too... Shotgun-like weapons, strong at close-range, useless far away. //Which kinds of bring another topic... should each individual projectile fired by a weapon (i.e. multifire, double-barrel) be treated independently so a double-barrel weapon does 2x damage? If you want to make a shotgun kind of thing, would be nice if it fired a bunch of individual projectiles. I'm guessing this could be specified as a weapon parameter. } Ships: #<All> { //Default values that are the same for every ship; can be overridden for a specific ship too Subsystem "Heat" { rechargeinitial:-300 rechargeupgrade:0 rechargemaximum:-300 range: -100, 1000 //One could want to express this value in a particular unit (i.e. degree Celsius) just by adding a symbol on the HUD next to the value } //stuff } #1 { name:"Your moma's butt" Subsystem "Heat" { CausesDeathOverMaximum: false //Oh what's this? Your moma's butt can't get too hot range: -280, -220 //Some uber cooling going on in this ship } weaponsinitial: "Heat bomb"=1, "Bullet"=1 weaponsmaximum: "Heat bomb"=5, "Bullet"=4, "EMP bomb"=12, "Ubershrap"=1 //Yeah, why not fire shrap directly? ... Ok it would look stupid, but STILL. thrustinitial: thrustupgrade: thrustmaximum: thrustcost: "Engines"=50 afterburnerinitial: afterburnerupgrade: afterburnermaximum: afterburnercost: "Engines"=500 rotationinitial [...] rotationcost: "Engines"=50 } #2 { name:"Javelin" } While writing all this I kept in mind the "Could you still have an arena exactly like in Continuum?" thing, and yes, it would still work. A subgame.cfg -> discretion settings conversion could be done pretty easily also. Enjoy my ridiculous suggestions

Indeed lol