Friday Facts #252 - Sound design & Map editor

[Engimage]

Really nice to see handy in-game editing tool. Keep up the good work!
Sure it is still pretty far from Creative Mode (mostly due to extra entities) but yet already lets you do much if you want to.

Oh man I just can't wait till 0.17 release! Its like a perfect box for a perfect candy

[Deadly-Bagel]

I tried to use the map editor a few months ago, found a ton of just little annoyances (try creating a "pool" of nothingness and see what it does to the map) and gave up. It was unintuitive, clunky, and the process of loading in to playtest was a pain for fine-tuning. Glad to see it's getting some attention before release ^_^ often these tools are overlooked.

Though you realise you're going to have to add a "Scenario" category to the Mod Portal after this =D

Regarding the new Spawners, they're really not very visible to me. It's a green blob on a green background, when zoomed out it's going to be a pain to spot. Maybe it's like that for normal vision too? Natural camouflage? It's fine, we can just find nests with the map right? Oh yes, tiny red dots on a multi-hue green background, nobody is going to have problems with that >_>

[Omarflyjoemacky]

This is just soooooo amazeballs.

"Extending the decorative editor to have more fine-grain control of placing/removing without needing to know the exact decorative you're looking at." Does this also mean there will be a brush for painting random decoratives?

I have around 20 maps I've made over 3 years, and love, love, love these changes. Thank you so much!

And the sound of the artillery?!! Holy sh*t!

[chris13524]

I think it would be awesome if the floor tiling around the spawners would automatically grow up to a certain distance from a spawner to create "Enemy Territory". All (most) entities would have a special display mode which would make them covered in vines and things. Trees would turn black, there would be a different haze on the screen when you're walking over them. Water would turn green or something. Maybe you walk slower or have some sort of poison affect applied? Like something right out of Stranger Things! It would be flammable, so hitting it with the flamethrower would kill it. Also destroying the spawners they depend on would make them die. Would add more to combat as you'd want to burn a path to the spawners before attacking them? It could also be turned on/off depending on the evolution or even get worse as evolution goes up?


Also, is that a "Tick Backwards" button I'm seeing on the map editor?

[Suka]

I really like the new sound and visual tweaks you are implementing. One thing that in my opinion would highly raise the inmersive level of the artillery canon is some kind of visual recoil, like a little bounce of the wagon on the tracks.

I really apreciate the hard work you put on the game, every Frday makes me even more exited about playing

[Rseding91]

Isn't that a contradiction? Admins control the permission system.

Only admins can change the permissions if they have the permission to change permissions. You can remove everyone's permission to edit permissions and still have them be admins - controlling stuff through the server console.

Have to admit that not having a per-map fixed setting to disable it would probably cause flamewars (especially from the achievement community), if you can never be sure that all of the map is "legit". And maybe a bit too hard to resist in a weak moment, when you know it's so easy to reach. On the other side... if it's always active maybe we can get rid of the whole discussion about cheated-or-not, and of "i don't want to use commands because they disable achievements so i'm gonna edit the savegame instead"-people. Yea. Like that's gonna happen.

Using the editor disables achievements just like using console commands.

[DeathMers]

Sound is awesome on headphones, I wanna hear multiple shots (arty párty/artillery barrage)!!!

Animation would be great if that ammo belt would move tho.

[POPISowyNumer]

Are you planning on increasing the variety of biters?
Because currently biters offer nothing but mild nuisance, unless you go out of your way with modding to make them somewhat dangerous

[mexmer]

Isn't that a contradiction? Admins control the permission system.

Only admins can change the permissions if they have the permission to change permissions. You can remove everyone's permission to edit permissions and still have them be admins - controlling stuff through the server console.

YO DAWG, we added more permission to your permission so you can change permission when changing permission

[Raphaello]

Brilliant updates, I am looking very much to both improved sounds and the editor.

Sounds really get immersion to the next level. I cannot play without Mushroom Cloud mod anymore as it makes nuke explosions as they should be.

[mophydeen]

Are you planning on increasing the variety of biters?
Because currently biters offer nothing but mild nuisance, unless you go out of your way with modding to make them somewhat dangerous

You can change a few(+-10) settings at map creation.

[batorfly]

Nice. BUT - OPTIMIZE FLUIDS. NOW

[eradicator]

@Rsed:
Permissible Permissception. I guess we'll see how it turns out :).

Nice. BUT - OPTIMIZE FLUIDS. NOW

Is "make all the connected things behave like a single tank"-type optimization still on the table btw, or was that discarted?

[Morivy]

If the team has a new sound designer, does it means that Daniel James Taylor will no longer work on the soundtrack and sounds?

[PaszaVonPomiot]

The sound layer is increadibly important for me and I welcome every improvement to this aspect of a game. I miss some ambient sounds like water, trees, birds and overall quality of biters' sounds and maybe trains and weapons/turrets. Overally the sound as it is is quite okay and it's not something that irritated me in any way. In terms of graphics the spawners seems bit unnatural and not blending into terrain quite well.
Anyway good job once again!

[Ohz]

Sound: I think it's missing a super low frequency sound, like around 80Hz. Earth should shake ! I play with great headphones, and good sound system, don't forget the basses ! Get inspired by the Dreadnought sound from Red Alert 3 if I'm not mistaken, but not sure because I played only once, years and years ago. Can't find the sound effect online.

[Azzinoth]

I tried to use the map editor a few months ago, found a ton of just little annoyances (try creating a "pool" of nothingness and see what it does to the map) and gave up. It was unintuitive, clunky, and the process of loading in to playtest was a pain for fine-tuning. Glad to see it's getting some attention before release ^_^ often these tools are overlooked.

Thats exactly my experience with the map editor too. I wanted to spawn some opponents to test various defenses, but i couldn't use my blueprints in the map editor, the placement were clunky and i had to switch all the time between the game and the editor. I ended up using the "creative mode" mod. I think if the editor becomes integrated into the game, it will be much more useable.

Are you planning on increasing the variety of biters?
Because currently biters offer nothing but mild nuisance, unless you go out of your way with modding to make them somewhat dangerous

In my opinion the biters have the following balancing problems:
-They are too many. This is because they are too weak, which is compensated by quantity.
-They respawn way too quickly.
This results in the following playstyle: You pretty much ignore the biters and just concentrate on destroying all the nests first, while running away from the biters. After destroying the nests you kill the remaining biters. Killing biters first is kinda pointless, because of the high respawn rate.

What would be more fun in my opinion:
-Less biters but stronger
-A higher respawn time (seperate for every biter), that means if you kill 1 biter, he respawns after time T, if you kill 5 biters at nearly the same time, 5 biters respawn after time T.
This would allow for the following playstyle: Kill all biters first and if you can manage that you can start destroying as many unprotected nests as you can, until the biters start respawning.

That would be more fun in my opinion.

[BlueTemplar]

Woo! So many improvements !

Though please, this time, make it so the dead spawners look more distinct from the alive ones !

[Drizznarte]

As mainly a late game player i often find myself reloading creative mode mod . Creating a small setup and testing it using items like creative belt loaders and fluid sources.Saving a blueprint, unload the creative mod and then resuming my main game. If the Map editor is to be truely powerfull i would like it to include these creative belt loaders and fluid sources , so the map editor could be used for testing setups.I think this would be a good feature to have in the main game.Even introducing the player to the idear of testing setups as part of the main tutorial.This would also remove the need to reload twice due to using mods.
Keep up the good Work...
3919 Hours and counting.. lol

[Jan11]

The sound of the artillery cannon is not good.
It needs more bass. Its such a huge cannon but made a sound like a pistol. If this artillery fires the player must get goosebumps.