Paradroidz reloaded...

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#1

…well, not really. I just didn’t want to revive the old Paradroidz thread and therefore i created a new one.
Albeit it was going slowly in the last weeks, Paradroidz is still alive. I’ve added a kind of “fog of war” or “line of sight” or better “circle of perception” or whatever. I hope it helps to avoid the confusion of some players (especially those, who never played the classic game) when droids are disappearing even if the camera itself would still be able to see them.

As usual, Paradroidz can be found at http://www.jpct.net/paradroidz

#2

Couldn’t see any fog of war despite OpenGL rendering (on Windows XP, JDK 1.4.2). Is there a fallback to software rendering, and if so, under which circumstances?

Also, it’s maybe my clumsiness with the mouse, but it seemed as though hitting the menu items is somewhat difficult. Do you use an exact detection where the user has to actually click on the bars of the characters?

#3

There is a fallback, but it will happen in the setup frame, not in the game itself. If you are able to choose OpenGL in the setup, you are using it. The “fog” is a grey plane covering the floor at places that are out of sight. It’s most noticable when opening doors for example.

It’s semi exact…i’ll improve it later.

#4

I really like how this game goes! However I when picking whether to capture a droid or blow it up, I’m not sure how to choose. I assume that when I right-click to go into capture mode the bars over their heads represent their stats, but I have no idea how they compare to mine. Is there a way to tell? I saw on one the red bar had a white vertical line on it. Was the white line showing that that’s where my stat is so I have more… “red” than it does? Also, what do the colors mean and what are those tiny letters or symbols on the bars? I can’t make out what they are.

#5

It’s coming on nicely… what it really needs though is some really nice animated models for the bots now doesn’t it? Can’t really get away with the spheres in this day and age :wink:

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

Yes, they are showing you the stats of the enemy (roughly) and no, there is no way to compare them to your own. The white line marks the max health of the droid. If the red bar is smaller, the droid is already damaged. The symbols are a heart (for life energy), a gun (for firepower) and a moving droid (for speed)…but i agree that they are quite difficult to read. However, i would like to improve it without enlarging it, but i’m not sure how…

#7

Agreed, but until i’m able to find somebody who will do the models for me, the spheres have to do the job. I can always point to the classic game on the C64 and say “look, they are spheres there too. I’m just trying to be authentic”… ;D

#8

man I had a 624 and got smashed by a door :stuck_out_tongue: Why are doors closing so strong?

#9

Which game have you played? :wink: There is no 624… however, there is a 614, 615 and a 629. About the doors: ??? They don’t do any damage and even if they would, they shouldn’t close while you are standing in them. I double checked this…there is no code that makes a door (even if it would accidently close) do damage to the player. I rather think that you’ve be killed by some enemy from behind…

Edit: Or maybe you lost your droid because you have been in control of it for too long. The higher a droid’s number, the shorter the time you can control it. A minute before the end, you start to light green and make a sound.

#10

Ahh, well it was 6 something :wink: 29 perhaps. The green thing was it then! I just thought that glow was pretty… I didn’t really pay any attention to it because the first time I noticed it was when I had cleared a level and I was emitting light. I thought it was just because my droid was green. What a shame! I’ll have to keep that in mind then :slight_smile:

#11

How do you play the take control of a droid game? Can’t figure out what I am supposed to do.

#12

press left or right to pick which side you want to play before time runs to 0. Then the game starts. You move your cursor down to the line you want to take, click space (I think it’s space…) then your thingy shoots out. Try to pick the side with more lines that fork out to take 2 of your opponents pieces. Play a few times and see what it takes to turn his color to your color and you’ll start to get the hang of it. The player with the dominant color at the end survives. If you survive, you take the new droid.

#13

You’ll find that waiting until the last possible moment and then firing off everything quickly is the best strategy, as the computer brain has absolutely no AI at all and just randomly fires. So wait for it to waste all its shots before doing yours :slight_smile:

Cas :slight_smile:

#14

[quote=“princec,post:13,topic:23864”]
That’s not really true…it moves randomly up and down, but it decides to fire based on a scoring system. However, this scoring system currently doesn’t take the player’s actions into account. It just a static evaluation. To work the against the “wait until the last possible moment” stategy, the AI slows down moving and firing as long as it already has more points than the player.

#15

I remember playing this as a kid … I didn’t really get it then, but I can understand it now. It looks good, and plays like the original … it’s still really hard. Only got one life, ouch. And messing up transfer mode means instant death. I wonder how much practice it takes before you can actually beat it … :o Anyway, good job.

#16

(Edit: ACK! Sorry for the necromancy; I didn’t realise the first-page threads were that old until I took a closer look. :-[ )

Brilliant. I suppose you’ve had the advantage of having an existing (excellent) design to work from, but this is still pretty damn brilliant.

FWIW, I never owned a C64 - my first computer was a PC-XT - so this is my first crack at a Paradroid-like game, and I think I like it.

Please get the consoles working!

I’ve also got a couple of suggestions…

(1) Whenever you send a pulse, the pulser’s position resets. Could you adjust it, or at least offer a control option, such that:

  • sending a pulse doesn’t reset the pulser’s position, and
  • pressing the “influence mode” (?) key does?

So the player could pulse a bunch of control lines and then reset the position of the pulser to hit another line that’s near the start position (for example).

(2) I noticed that some droids don’t use lasers (like the 300-series) and some have special weapons (I don’t even know what series those are; my 400-series got chewed up pretty quick by them!). Could you adjust it so that when those droids are taken over by the player, they retain their unique abilities? (Do they already?)

(3) This may sound like sacrilege, but maybe there should be a minor puzzle-solving element to the game. Like, there might be laser barriers in an area that only certain droids would be immune to, or extreme temperatures which would damage certain models of droid, or pits that could be hovered over by a hovering-capable droid. This would make the droids very, very different in their abilities and encourage more hopping!

(4) Have an “easy”/“wimp” mode where the player can rack up multiple “lives” by taking over droids. So if the player took over two 300-series and then failed to take over a 400-series, the second 300-series would be destroyed but they would revert to the first 300-series. (Needs balancing… I can see players taking over a bunch of 100-series and then using them to kamikaze some high-level droids. Perhaps in this mode, the high-level droid would shoot the player once before attempting to self-destruct… if it managed to one-shot kill the player, it wouldn’t self-destruct.)

Edit: (5) An optional command-line input interface for the hacking minigame would be awesome! Just label the connection lines 0-F and pop up a text I/O window next to the pulse display (or above/beneath it).

ENTER “SELECT A” FOR SIDE A OR “SELECT B” FOR SIDE B.

SELECT A
INPUT PULSE COMMAND
PULSE 0,1,3,7,D
SENDING PULSES TO LINES 0,1,3,7,D.
PULSE 5,B,F
ERROR: INSUFFICIENT PULSES
PULS###CONNECTION INTERRUPTED###
DEADLOCK

Thanks, and good luck with the project!

#17

Someone already suggested that in the past but we came to the conclussion that it’s not just a convenience option but it would affect gameplay for the transfer game. I haven’t seen it that way before, but i think it’s correct. It has been that way in the classic game and i think i’ll leave it at that.

The droids’ attributes are health, fire power (if armed), weapon type (laser, disruptor), speed, “bumping power” and disruptor immunity. When you capture an enemy droid, you will have the same attributes (unless you are losing control/your life), so yes, they already do that. Armed droids are 476, 614, 615, 629, 711+742 (both armed with disruptors), 751, 821, 834, 883, 999

Nice ideas. I’ll add them to my “possible additions”-list.

Hmmm…no, i don’t think that i like this idea. And i don’t really think that the game has to be easier (not even as an option). It already is quite easy IMHO (got a bit more difficult in the last update due to the improved path finding, but anyway…you can still finish it in around 25 minutes if you are well trained).

No idea about this one…not sure if it’s good or bad for the game. Anyone else?

Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate it.