Friday Facts #228 - High resolution turrets

[Mekronid]

Variety for the sake of variety is called bloat. Reckless bloat only causes balance issues and creates a pointless learning curve for new players.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat

"The term is not applied consistently."

Anyway, I don't need to make a case for a feature for which I am not advocating. Features can be good or they can be bad but variety cannot be bad just because it is variety.

In 2005 I played World of Warcraft and was a guild member of a world-ranked guild. We never used the "flavor" gear or talents and instead spent hours running complex CPU-intensive simulations of every stat point and boss fight. Many newbies did use these flavor items because it was how they preferred to play. At the end of the day some of us used these so-called "useless" things on our alts because it would make the game more enjoyable or easier to play in specific ways we couldn't achieve on our main accounts.

But since you want to take a shot at me directly, I will say this: I am simply pointing out that your line of reasoning is stupid and lacks foresight.

[JoneKone]

Lazer should have a max tracking speed, dependent on the amount of "radar coverage".

Also, you should move to Vulcan instead of new opengl (i know don't give me grief)

[bobucles]

Make a case for your thing

I don't need to make a case for a feature
I played World of Warcraft and was a guild member of a world-ranked guild.
your line of reasoning is stupid and lacks foresight.

Oh. Uh. I guess I'm wrong then. My mistake. I guess I should make more effort to understand things from your perspective.

[Koub]

[Koub] Please people, remember the subject is the FFF, not the opinion you have one on the other. This would also help not getting into personal attacks.

[Mekronid]

Oh. Uh. I guess I'm wrong then. My mistake. I guess I should make more effort to understand things from your perspective.

Yeah, good job quoting out of context. Next time don't attack people unless you know what you're talking about. Or better yet, don't attack anyone at all.

[Tricorius]

Oh. Uh. I guess I'm wrong then. My mistake. I guess I should make more effort to understand things from your perspective.

Yeah, good job quoting out of context. Next time don't attack people unless you know what you're talking about. Or better yet, don't attack anyone at all.

But since you want to take a shot at me directly, I will say this: I am simply pointing out that your line of reasoning is stupid and lacks foresight.

Uhm, I *could* be wrong, but this was the only “attack” I saw in the exchange.

If you want additional perspective, I have extensive PvP (back when it “meant something”) and PvE experience with WoW, from Alpha forward (I’m one of those people who remember picking up a new weapon type and missing for the first few hundred swings while you skilled up the new weapon, we were also one of the first guilds to pioneer using shadow priests as “mana batteries” for raids).

I wouldn’t exactly hold up WOW as a bastion of balance or example of good bloat. In fact they steadily trimmed out bloat over time (while simultaneously adding additional, more acceptable—to most—bloat).

Reckless bloat only causes balance issues and creates a pointless learning curve for new players.

Point in fact: the aforementioned skilling up weapons matches both items mentioned as a disadvantage of pointless bloat. I could probably go on for several pages noting similar, trimmmed “features” out of WoW alone.

[bobucles]

Oh, is this a WoW thread now? I'm afraid I can't hope to reach the levels of the hardcore veterans here. Sadly I shared an account with a friend and could not commit to a raid guild as they operated past my curfew time. Instead I spent more of my time doing solo play and on the forums, meddling in class balance issues and seeing my suggestions turn into patch notes. It was a different kind of fun watching a priest change his tune from "I hate getting focus fired in Alterac" and "priest plate plz" to "I heal bomb in Alterac and you can't stop me". Also Paladins got a lot of damage increases and healers got much more useful spell equipment. If you can't win change the rules, right?

Anyway it's pretty hard to take an argument seriously when someone demands game bloat, doesn't actually defend new items, and then quotes WoW as a qualification to be right as though apples are somehow equivalent to green circuits. What can I do but laugh? I'm not mad, but I do insist that game balance issues aren't something that should be resolved by recklessly adding new things, especially when those things are frightfully similar to things that already exist.

[Jap2.0]

Oh, is this a WoW thread now? I'm afraid I can't hope to reach the levels of the hardcore veterans here. Sadly I shared an account with a friend and could not commit to a raid guild as they operated past my curfew time. Instead I spent more of my time doing solo play and on the forums, meddling in class balance issues and seeing my suggestions turn into patch notes. It was a different kind of fun watching a priest change his tune from "I hate getting focus fired in Alterac" and "priest plate plz" to "I heal bomb in Alterac and you can't stop me". Also Paladins got a lot of damage increases and healers got much more useful spell equipment. If you can't win change the rules, right?

Anyway it's pretty hard to take an argument seriously when someone demands game bloat, doesn't actually defend new items, and then quotes WoW as a qualification to be right as though apples are somehow equivalent to green circuits. What can I do but laugh? I'm not mad, but I do insist that game balance issues aren't something that should be resolved by recklessly adding new things, especially when those things are frightfully similar to things that already exist.

Ha! I've never even played WoW! Beat that for relevant, qualifyling experience!

Anyway, because we're supposed to be discussing the FFF, nice turrets. And beams - although I agree that the laser turret looks a bit more lightweight than it actually is.

[Tricorius]

Oh, is this a WoW thread now?

Sadly, the only game in which I have amassed more hours that Factorio is WoW. I assumed Diablo 3 was close, but if I built a Pie Chart of Hilarity or whatever I called it, Diablo would be a much smaller portion.

I just figured I’d need to toss out my credentials so that I could be taken seriously.

[fu-fu]

On the subject of OpenGL:

I personally realized it ran on OpenGL 1.2 a week or so ago, trying to find out it's minimum OpenGL version... which was incredibly low, but incredibly nice, especially seeing as how pretty the game is anyways.
I however, like someone else, use a nice old laptop. In particular mine only supports OpenGL 2.1, with some old intel graphics card. I do have a gaming pc, but I just don't use it till late-game bases.

In anycase, an alternative of just 'jumping' to OpenGL 4.1, is doing similar things as 0ad/Xonotic (and probably many others): Load-in OpenGL extensions if available and then use them. In both 0ad and Xonotic on the highest settings they both use sharers (and possibly other things) to enhance the graphics... quite significantly. They're also opensource, so if you guys go about that route, you can have some sort of reference for how this is being done.

In practicality, I realize that if you have to switch away from allegro, that this may not be the 'desired' route, as it would add complexity, and limit the power of the shaders/etc.. ie, you wouldn't be able to simply pass everything needed to the shaders, and just have them handle the rendering. - For raw CPU performance, this _could_ improve that. (But if cpu usage on rendering is almost nothing, then meh.)

However, it does seem that in allegro (5) there is some ability to get the underlying OpenGL functions.. (http://liballeg.org/a5docs/5.2.0/opengl ... oc_address)
But you then would have to deal with whatever data-types allegro uses internally.. or maybe everything is nice, and are just simple wrappers over OpenGL, I have no idea. There can always be those wonderful complications buried somewhere too.

And as a last-resort, limiting your OpenGl version to 3.3 would be nice, as that's where the software render's for OpenGL stop being fully functional. (Only linux, anyways, Idk if any other OS even has software renders... /shrug maybe osx? ... and only if you're not using nvidia.. you don even get the software renders on nvidida unless /everything/ is in software.. )

In any case, my point is simply that it's possible to have it factorio work on various-levels on differing OpenGL versions, so that the lower-end systems, just get the low-end graphics. Where more powerful computers get more graphical enhancements (usually just as sharers/post-processing). Furthermore doing it that way, MacOSX support could still be retained.. and in general, it doesn't make anything worse due to gfx-incompatibility, while still letting more features of OpenGL to be available. (Unless, just requesting more OpenGL extensions is a higher-level of opengl... but that shouldn't be higher than 2.1, which, I'd very much argue is a safe increment... ~15 years ago? yeah, probably okay... given this is an argument for ~8 years ago... so idk.)

[Solarion]

The lasers reminded me of this old game called Harvest: Massive Encounter.

The main point of this game was that you fought aliens by placing laser towers, and combining the power of these towers by having all lasers in range of one particular tower focus on that one, thereby amplifying the range and power of that single laser.

I think this could be something fun to add to lasers.

[Supercheese]

The lasers reminded me of this old game called Harvest: Massive Encounter.

The main point of this game was that you fought aliens by placing laser towers, and combining the power of these towers by having all lasers in range of one particular tower focus on that one, thereby amplifying the range and power of that single laser.

I think this could be something fun to add to lasers.

That, in turn, reminds me of Prism Towers from Red Alert 2!

[bobingabout]

This OGL debate reminds me of the 32bit support debate.

How many people use lower versions of OGL, and how much of a pain in the arse is it to maintain them?

if it's only a few people and a lot of effort, get rid of it.

if it's a fair number of people, but not much of an effort, then keep it.


I can see support dropping for 1.2 and 2.1, but you shouldn't restrict it to just 4.1 simply because "It's the latest version".
How much of a benefit would it be to drop support for earlier versions of OGL?

[Oktokolo]

There is a problem with OpenGL versions on Linux.
I still only get 3.0 on my IvyBridge i7 (wich i use for playing Factorio because my gaming rig hasn't enough CPU power) as reported by glxinfo. And Intel is known for its exeptionally good Linux support.

So increasing the required OpenGL version too much might equal dropping the Linux support.

[fu-fu]

Well, increasing OpenGL, in my mind, only gets you more access to data-types, like SSBO's/etc, maybe more sharers...?

But doing more research into the sharers of OpenGL2.1, you still have vertex and fragment sharers... which, for simply graphics, should be a significant improvement if wanted..?

(I'm still doing research into the 'upgrading OpenGL on the fly', as I'm working on some OpenGL programs myself, and would like it to work fine on my laptop. I have yet to test anything in regards to this, maybe I'll do that this weekend... but looking at this https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/index_gl.php , you see _EVERY_ extension, (well, looking for a few things in core 4.1, it looks like everything and more) including things for uniforms or compute shaders..)

I guess I'm confused on what the improvements would be?

In anycase, a strong argument (in my mind) for not going super-high OpenGL, is you'll break your mac port... which, I'd not be happy if a game I owned and played, broke running on my OS forever.

And yeah, I agree with bobingabout. If I'm the only one, then it really doesn't matter. (Given, I uh.. macs... so I don't think that is the case, (at least for 4.1))

[ownlyme]

i hope the beams will be bright at night, unlike that mod