plague bombs too weak!
chuckMFd
effect the planet population enough. I've used 1 to 10 shots on a
planet and the population always continues to grow! Even when the
planet has no shields. The plague bomb should make the population
counter constantly go down until anti-plague is used. The population
should die faster the more a planet is hit with them.
Dan Samuel
My main deal with plague is that it should:
* not be immediately obvious that something is plagued
* be highly contagious so you accidentally carry it to lots of planets before you even realize it
And only THEN does it become an obvious source of death.
---
But currently:
* I don't think I *ever* show you that something is plague-ridden
* I agree it is way too subtle an effect, population-growth wise
---
I have this as=yet-unfinished module for 'distress' where planets should actively draw your attention to their plight
(blink on the map, send you radio messages, show up in the Guide, etc). Distress comes from things like
* being plagued
* being under attack
* out of resources
(those were in my original WarPath for PC)
But I would like to extend it to include something like a mini-quest generator. Where a planet can ask you to perform
some action on their behalf, in return for which you earn some love.
---
And when I am DREAMING, I fantasize that this could take the form of a video message, delivered via YouTube, and that
individual players could make their own videos (then seen by other players) so we end up with people doing their own
"Help me, Obiwan Kenobi, you're my only hope" sort of videos, dressed up as aliens, with alien backgrounds, etc. I
think that would be funny/cool.
But of course, it would really just end up being pornographic probably, so it will never happen. Still......
====
Anyway, thanks for the report, I appreciate it!
OK, let's read your other emails and blend it into a single reply............
>Ok I've kicked Barney's ass enough... Is there any real players out
>there? Do I need wi-fi for multiplayer?? If so I'm headin to the
>store!
You have properly determined that Barney is another bot (bots within bots). So far it's pretty rare to run into another
fellow human player. I monitor the server and keep seeing people just barely miss each other. It's always a challenge
to reach the initial critical mass required so that people are there when you need them. There are about a thousand
active WarPath players at the moment (and a couple thousand inactive ones). That SHOULD be enough. If it were a PC
game, I think it WOULD be enough. But my analytics show that most people don't even push the multiplayer button. Not
even once. I find that odd. Of those who DO push it, about 10% seem to be put off by the warning dialog about "please
be nice to other players and be sure you know how much your ISP is going to charge you for bandwidth".
From that, you have 'how long will people wait before giving up' and that seems to basically be about 10 seconds. So,
two motivated multiplayers have to press MULTIPLAYER within 10 seconds of each other for it to work out. And for that
to have a probability of success you have to have a LARGE number of active players, which I don't have... yet.
This rendevous problem is an old one.
There are several solutions. One of them is 'visibility' (right now you are just waiting blindly for someone else to
show up and have no idea how long you might reasonably have to wait.) If I could show you more information, like "there
are 3 games in progress right now" you would at least know there WERE other players around.
Then if I let you 'request a game' but rather than leave you at that rendevous screen, I let you play solo until someone
else showed up, at which point I would auto-pause the solo game and start the multiplayer. That's actually pretty nice
since a solo game can keep you occupied for quite awhile, increasing the probability of overlap.
Next level is for you to request a multiplayer game and then leave the app completely, only to get some sort of phone
notification when people were available. That's like the 'best' way, but still only works if the wait time is short.
You need to successfully get a game started within 5-10 minutes or it breaks the social contract with the cell phone.
Still a 5/10 minute overlap would lead to much higher success rates than a 10 second overlap.
Then there is the possibility of server-side 'events' that the game tells you about. As in, you start WarPath on
Tuesday, 10am. It picks up a message of the day from the server, saying "This Saturday at 10pm California time, there
will be a WarPath tournament" and maybe have an alarm clock thingy that reminds you during the week and ultimately
starts beeping just before the tournament starts. Anyway, in theory that would sweep up some number of people and have
them actively arrive at a mutually convenient time.
Anyway, lots of possibilities. Right now I think my 'plan' is just to improve the game until it is just magically
desireable enough to achieve the necessary critical mass of multiplayers.
But getting back to that original point: Almost no one pushes the multiplayer button. I don't think it's because they
don't know what Multiplayer means (though it *could* be that). I think they just don't think they want to do that. For
me, that's like the first button I would push :-)
But to answer your wifi question, nope. It's probably BETTER on wifi (less lag, I mean), but if you can battle Barney
(and I have watched you do it!) then you have all you need.
-------------------
>Warpath is definately one of the better games for android. Still has
>me hooked. Was just wondering though if it were possible to make
>larger maps with more planets? If not oh well still a fun game!
Thanks! I'm addicted to "Tower Raiders Gold" myself. I think I would like to evolve in a direction where the planets
themselves were 'richer' in personality (rather than just more of them, though that is another knob that could be turned).
====================
Anyway, thanks again! And I'll try to fix plague soon.
- Dan
Charles Nunn
Wow awsome response thankyou and keep up the good work!
Since I have 0 game programing skills I'd like to throw you an idea for a game. Did you ever play a game called Bolo for mac? It was a multiplayer tank/fortress game.
Well if you're still reading this you command a tank from the top view and you also have a gatherer/builder.
So you send your gatherer out to harvest trees which adds to your resource stock. The trees grow back over time. You then use your resources to build blocks and pill boxes. The gatherer/builder is fast when performing a task. In the original game he looked like he was rendered using only a few pixels in the shape of a man and tasks only took about a second. When a task is initiated the pixel man would jump out of the tank, run straight to the location of the task, and run back to the tank.
Blocks could be destroyed but it took a lot of shots. Pillboxes fired the same projectiles as the players tank but had less range and fired faster.
So that's the basics. It' been a long time, mid 90s I think, so here are a couple more ideas for this (not for sure on everything) :
~different terain impacts mobility. Patches of trees, rocks,and water slow you down
~deep water destroys your tank
~use resources for making ammo,adding more tanks to lives remaining
~pillboxes can shoot over blocks
~pillboxes are destroyed easier than blocks
~pillboxes require a lot of resources
~maybe differnt types of blocks which require diferent amounts of resources
~tanks cannot shoot over blocks
~trees are in forest patches not all individual
~armor can be added to the tank using resources after battling
~blocks show damage from being shot
~blocks and pill boxes can be repaired
~maybe different resources add more or less to the stock
~unlimited stock of resources
~losing a tank takes away all your resources
~use the gatherer to make a secret stockpile spot that only you can see but if someone elses gatherer happens upon that spot you get jacked
~placeable/desroyable respawn spots which everyone can see but not overly noticeable and require resources
Well I'm sure you could expand on this if it interests you at all. It was a pretty simple game yet addictive. The fortresses could get prety crazy and basically were used for cutting other people off from resources. Seems like it would work good for a phone game and would be the best tank game so far on the android market!
Dan Samuel
Sounds fun :-)
Dan Samuel
growth via plague... I call that a bug :)
On 4/16/2011 12:43 PM, chuckMFd wrote:
Dan Samuel
level exceeds 33%.
You also get the WarPath Classic 'visualization' of plague (little green dots around the planet)
Thanks again, Charles!
On 4/16/2011 12:43 PM, chuckMFd wrote:
Charles Nunn
No problem, glad I can help!