Author: {wf}shadowspawn <shadowspawn_at_shadowspawn_dot_net>     Reply to Message
Date: 7/13/2003 2:25:49 AM
Subject: things that make you go

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!

q2wf had this team balancing code all over it (well really not all over, just at an important part of it) as the winning team progressed, weapons became less effective, certain things 'lasted' less like proxies, goodyears, and what i've been working on currently LASER DEFENSES. not much, but slightly and it was a ratio between the scores/caps.

friggin chasing a bug for over 3 hours so i said fuggit, deliberate dr watson type crash so I could debug and trace. there it was, so hidden and not commented well. what I thought was a bug cause I was so atuned to what was going on actually wasn't; I just happened to have tons of debug prints on stuff and was wondering why variances I couldn't explain were happening.

oops, geeky stuff.

damnit I forgot all about that. it is pretty slick so i'd like to refresh some people on what it is; its a delta curve, will flatten out before 20%. statistically and mathematically its a work of art; the winning team's weapons and specials are slowly handicapped. This has been around for a while.

now THAT is interesting if you think about it for pub play and dwell about its effects on popularity. It has been in there for a while like I said, i did some hunting on sources (it can be turned off, most admins probably never even knew about it). It really could explain why WF was considered a more challenging game; the game literally adapted for the team's skills so if there were allot of prostars on one side, they would have to work harder.

i mean EVERYTHING was affected. just THINK about that. I'll take a moment while you do.

Thinking about it yet?

seriously, try to imagine that during a game. any changes to weapon damages will be so slight noone would notice at all. ever. instead of 8 splashes for rockets at a maximum splash distance for a gunner it takes 10. so instead of 200 bullets to kill someone during a pray and spray event it takes 240. so the pb takes a little bit less from people. so the sentry does a little less damage.

its so slight and its based on score.

What other game has ever done this? none that I can think of at all, except coin-op arcade games single player; the worse you do the easier the game is. its there for a reason, to keep you hooked. except with this, the better you do, the harder it is to be better. it's not giving power to the loosing team, its subtlely taking away power from the winning team.

just something to think about, thats all.

  


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