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Refreshing levels - tomangelo - 03-10-2015

Main thread to discuss about levels and possible changes.

Current division of levels in Colobot: Gold Edition:
Spoiler :
  1. Missions
    1. Leaving Earth
      1. Equipment
      2. Building
      3. Departure
    2. On the Moon
      1. Titanium Ore
      2. Flying Drill #1
      3. Flying Drill #2
      4. Black Box
    3. On Tropica
      1. The Trap
      2. Amnesia
      3. On the Offensive
      4. Shooting Drill #1
      5. Black Box
    4. On Crystalium
      1. Viruses
      2. Subterranean strategy
      3. System Failure
      4. The Lost Valey
    5. On Saari
      1. Uranium
      2. Invasion
      3. Disarmed
    6. On Volcano
      1. Transport
      2. Analisys
      3. Mountain Warfare
      4. Technological Treasure
      5. Safe Home
      6. Time for a sharp exit
    7. On Centaury
      1. Cloning
      2. Target practice
      3. Cleansing
      4. New polices
      5. Self-defense
    8. On Orpheon
      1. Logistics
      2. Storm shelter
    9. On Terranova
      1. Killer Mushrooms
      2. Poison Hail
      3. Gold Digger
      4. Alien Queen
  2. Free game
    1. Leaving Earth
    2. On the Moon
    3. On Tropica
    4. On Crystalium
    5. On Saari
    6. On Volcano
    7. On Centaury
    8. On Orpheon
    9. On Terranova
  3. Exercises
    1. Spiders and supply
      1. Spiders 1
      2. Power Cell 1
      3. Titanium 1
      4. Titanium 2
      5. Power Cell 2
      6. Spiders 2
      7. Spiders 3
    2. Ants and wasps
      1. Barrage fire
      2. Flying tower 1
      3. Flying tower 2
      4. Fighter Jet 1
      5. Fighter Jet 2
      6. Wasp Hunter 1
      7. Wasp Hunter 2
    3. Fundamentals
      1. Follow a path
      2. Follow with variables
      3. Massacre
      4. Exchange posts 1
      5. Exchange posts 2
      6. Labirynth 1
      7. Labirynth 2
      8. The gold digger
      9. Remote control #1
    4. Motors
      1. Dragster
      2. Radar
      3. Crazy bot
      4. Patient hunter
      5. Shadow
    5. Mover
      1. Mover 1
      2. Mover 2
      3. Mover 3
      4. Flying mover
    6. Functions
      1. A function
      2. Spiral
      3. Remote control #2
    7. Classes
      1. Remote control #3
      2. Remote control #4
      3. Remote control #5
  4. Challenges
    1. Fundamentals
      1. Follow a path
      2. Massacre
      3. Exchange posts 3
      4. Labirynth 3
    2. Motors
      1. Crazy bot 2
      2. Shadow 2
      3. Help
      4. Radar and traps 1
      5. Radar and traps 2
    3. Mover
      1. Mover 1
      2. Mover 2
    4. Functions
      1. Function
      2. Spiral 2
  5. User levels
    1. <userlevels>


Ok, now we should think about these levels, their good and bad parts, what we should save and what we should change.
Problems that I've found in levels:
Spoiler :

A.1.* Tutorial missions, they teach us the basics.
„The Nevada desert is already bustling with activity.” - I'm not sure. All this „activity” means a few robots just driving around, and a couple of engineers in the only building in the desert. IMHO it should be more bots (that actually do something useful), more buildings and more engineers in them and around them. It doesn't look like a last hope of humanity to find a new home.

A.1.I We are in the middle of the desert, with a factory and PracticeBot. Why they're here? It's supposed to be a vehicle which Me arrived or something? Maybe we could use some vehicles from BuzzingCars, when we'll have a licence. Next, our goal: find your survival kit. Find. Why they didn't give Me the kit? We don't even have any clue where it may be. And where he is? In the bush, near ControlCenter. Like some garbage. This doesn't make any sense. It's like „Welcome to our company. First day in new job? First task: find the keys to your office, they are signed with your name, they should be somewhere in the headquarters.”.

A.1.II Nothing's wrong with this one IMHO.

A.1.III We must transport a blackbox to our SpaceShip. Tutorial about researching, making bots, starting SpaceShip. Where is our BlackBox? On a platform, on a hill, that Me, engineer and wheeled bots cannot drive.Why they put a BB (BlackBox) in such unavailable place? It would make more sense if there will be house/houses with engineers that just finished works on the BB.

A.2.I Nothing's wrong
A.2.II ^ Not even a part of the story.
A.2.III ^
A.2.IV A bit strange that suddenly energy cells are almost empty, while in previous mission they were full.


A.3.I Where did our robots go? Where are our energy cells and titanium? Why we can't build anything?Needs some explanation in SatCom. We throw away everything from our spaceship? We returned to Earth, and they didn't give us anything? And mission is complete, when we die. Some players might just think „Oh no, I've died on this stupid mission, we have no chances in this mission” and turn off the game.
A.3.II We have no idea where we should go, no clues. This is hard, but not because you must think, this is just unfriendly.
A.3.III Everything looks good.
A.3.IV Not a part of the story.
A.3.V Hmm, not bad. Quite easy mission, unlike 3.II


A.4.I Only one that I want to suggest is to tell the player that defense tower is resistant to Alienworms.
A.4.II Not so bad, but why we must destroy all the livings?
A.4.III A bit strange that both robots have full energy cells. Maybe crazy bot should get partially discharged nuclear cell? And they should start closer to our spaceship. Another question: how he stole our BB if we were flying? Or why we landed here?
A.4.IV Not so bad.


A.5.I We can't build whatever we want to. Quite strange.
A.5.II Why we landed in the place, that will be under siege? Just to kill ants?
A.5.III Why we (again) can't build anything? And why these Ants doesn't defend themselves? And why we can't just take the BB and fly away?

A.6.I Why TNT was leaved between the lakes of boiling lava? Why we need to bring them to our spaceship?
A.6.II Looking good.
A.6.III ^
A.6.IV Not bad, but why that robot can fly without any limits unlike Me?
A.6.V How these Ants did multiplied? Did they teleported there?
A.6.VI ^


A.7.I Not so bad

A.7.II Not a part of the story

A.7.III Not so bad, but searching of highest point on the map is quite boring.

A.7.IV. Not so bad

A.7.V ^

A.8.I ^
A.8.II ^, but we should explain why we can build only lighning conductor. Our spacesuit is resistant to lighnings, so it's not fault of the storms.


A.9.* no bigger problems found.


B.* We could add some settings, like 'generate invasions', 'amount of subsoil resources', 'generate whole map' (i know it was - at least partially - implemented, but still it's hidden feature), and so on.


C.* && D* - if we have a licence to Ceebots, we could maybe add some exercises and challenges from then, maybe add some new ones, with different difficult.

//Text with this color means "This mission need some bigger change, now it have big lacks in logic and may be discouraging"
//Text with this color means "This mission is good, doesn't need to change that"

In main story we have 36 levels, and 21 doesn't need changes (at least doesn't need big changes), so we have 15 levels that we should change.
Of course it's only my opinion, you can think differently.

What's your opinions about missions? What we could change? What we should save? What are your ideas?

RE: Refreshing levels - RaptorParkowsky - 03-11-2015

I think that flying/shooting drills is the part of the story, because of SatCom content.

Some of the points I'll try explain/expand, but not the all because of keyboard-time and language limits:

Quote:A.3.II We have no idea where we should go, no clues. This is hard, but not because you must think, this is just unfriendly.
There is some clues. Ruins and wrecks of the first expedition. We must just find and follow them. Even in SatCom there's a word about that.


Quote:A.5.III Why we (again) can't build anything? And why these Ants doesn't defend themselves? And why we can't just take the BB and fly away?
I think that's because of safety for the radar station after we fly away from this planet. In the whole game there's about keeping communication with the Earth by building radars and protect systems for them. I think we should add in this mission possibility to build defense towers or even the whole autonomous base, that will be keeping protect for months after our's departure.


Quote:A.6.V How these Ants did multiplied? Did they teleported there?
I always thought about AlienWasp's ability to grab and transport them. If we will split these 3 last missions on Volcano into one mission, there's a way to explain that. Or maybe we just put there some AlienEggs?


Quote:A.6.IV Not bad, but why that robot can fly without any limits unlike Me?
That's because that robot is more modern and half-organic. We can explain this in SatCom.


Quote:C.* && D* - if we have a licence to Ceebots, we could maybe add some exercises and challenges from then, maybe add some new ones, with different difficult.
Now we have a licence and sources for CeeBot-A and CeeBot-Teen. But we can't just mix all this programming course stuff without bigger changes in order of the exercises and material to learn for newbies or professionals. There should be one, big refactoring on it, and this should be even before refactoring on the missions and free-games, because this will be great opportunity to expand and keeping CBOT documentation up-to-date.

Well, there's a lot of material to do. But rewriting the main plot of the game I would left for Beta stage. We're still in Alfa stage. The game requires a high priority refactoring in the CBOT, documentation, Scene, languages, UI etc. and low priority into graphic/sound engine and main content of the game (models, textures, music, sounds, levels).

Of course, we can still discuss about plot in this topic. We can still making and polishing content for the future purposes in the project, but we must remember about these all basics and low-level things in the game's code.

RE: Refreshing levels - tomangelo - 03-11-2015

(03-11-2015, 01:42 PM)Raptor Wrote:
Quote:A.5.III Why we (again) can't build anything? And why these Ants doesn't defend themselves? And why we can't just take the BB and fly away?
I think that's because of safety for the radar station after we fly away from this planet. In the whole game there's about keeping communication with the Earth by building radars and protect systems for them. I think we should add in this mission possibility to build defense towers or even the whole autonomous base, that will be keeping protect for months after our's departure.

We just grab BlackBox, destroy 4 ants and go to next planet. There is no need to build radar. In fact, we can, but we can finish mission without need to build radar too.


(03-11-2015, 01:42 PM)Raptor Wrote: Well, there's a lot of material to do. But rewriting the main plot of the game I would left for Beta stage. We're still in Alfa stage. The game requires a high priority refactoring in the CBOT, documentation, Scene, languages, UI etc. and low priority into graphic/sound engine and main content of the game (models, textures, music, sounds, levels).

Of course, we can still discuss about plot in this topic. We can still making and polishing content for the future purposes in the project, but we must remember about these all basics and low-level things in the game's code.


Yes, but we can discuss now, there is a lot of time to do this. I doesn't want to say "We must change this now, and commit these changes in next release", I know it's better to leave this to Beta, but starting discussing now give us more time to think about them.

edit: one more thing: as a sandbox we're quite often limiting players by telling them what they can build, and what they can't. But on the other hand allowing them to build everything might be confusing.

RE: Refreshing levels - Nohus - 10-21-2015

In A.6.IV, you go to the robot, return with the robot, and then you return Me on the next mission, there is a 50% chance that a player will just return Me first. I did that on my first playthrough: went to the robot, found it, returned the astronaut to the spaceship, then switched to the robot and returned the robot to the spaceship. Suddenly on the next mission I am back where I found the robot and am supposed to return again. This is frustrating and I think that it should be fixed.

RE: Refreshing levels - krzys_h - 10-21-2015

(10-21-2015, 08:32 PM)Nohus Wrote: In A.6.IV, you go to the robot, return with the robot, and then you return Me on the next mission, there is a 50% chance that a player will just return Me first. I did that on my first playthrough: went to the robot, found it, returned the astronaut to the spaceship, then switched to the robot and returned the robot to the spaceship. Suddenly on the next mission I am back where I found the robot and am supposed to return again. This is frustrating and I think that it should be fixed.

Good catch - I never noticed that before

RE: Refreshing levels - kevinvr - 12-18-2015

I do like what you all have done here.
I am going through the missions as well and will make some suggestions for the help and solution files.

In mission 1.2 the help file states :
2) Build a research Center. Note that only you can accomplish the task of building; no bot can be substituted.
This is now incorrect. In version 0.1.6 the new "build" command does that so maybe a program outline/template/example should be given to the user to try out in the wheeled grabber.

I will continue doing this and make notes and check out what you have all done and see if I can then help in any way.

regards,

RE: Refreshing levels - krzys_h - 12-18-2015

We still haven't fully decided if we'll keep the build() command for grabbers or make a new bot type for that

RE: Refreshing levels - Emxx52 - 12-19-2015

Em, I believe we did... Like, two years ago or sth? It's kind of an obvious thing to do, we should implement Builders as soon as possible. It may sound surprising for the newcomers that we've yet to implement those new bots but instead tried to implement a new gamemode (Code Battles), which works not that well for the time being (and makes almost no sense at all without the Builders). It's probably not the best place to whine about it though, sorry :>