Nerf Cake

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KIRA
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I have a dream,lol, that one day Hedgewars will be played by so much people that there will be competitive play events in competitive commensurate gamemodes like The Specialist, The Random Specialists, Capture the Flag, Shoppa... But in order to achieve this, weapons and utilities should be balanced and skill based. Weapons like Melon, Hell grenade, Cake and Ballgun are not adequate for this genre of gamestyle, they are stupid and funny and can be used only in casual games. The cake weapon for example has an intresting and unique working mechanic but deal too much damage. One simple way i was thinking to make it balanced is too reduce the damage output, reduce the radius of the explosion and reduce the time it can walk before exploding. This way the cake will be used not for dealing damage but for more strategical purposes like pushing a hog off an edge. Thank you for listening
nemo
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If you want to test this out, just make a script that modifies Boom of weapons. It'd be just a few lines of code in the onGearAdd callback. Could pass in the weps as script params, or just hardcode 'em. Call it BalanceTest.lua or something. I'm fine with it as is though. The danger of the cake makes you consider the terrain more. Something as simple as blowtorching through the base of a pillar suddenly becomes important strategically. It's interesting to play a game against the AI, like 2 or 3 human hogs against like 16 allied AI. They have 2 cakes. It's still winnable if you make sure your hogs are on isolated land. Other things work too, like girders to outright turtle or simply lift yourself off the ground. Once upon a time napalm strike was very effective, but despeckling reduced that quite a lot, curvy terrain still works well to restrict range though.
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KIRA
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Hey nemo thank you for replying. I cant code sorry. I think that that much damage output just is not necessary, then, now that i think about it the effectivness of the cake change really a lot on the type of map, ( for example in maze maps is very challenging making use of it meanwhile in simple randomly generated maps is almost guaranteed a kill in the first turn by pushing a hog in the water) but since the most played maps are those, the random generated ones i think that a rework of this weapon like i suggested would balance the weapon and make it available also in competitive matches and this would not make the cake underpowered in other type of maps. The cake weapon like it is now has been always considered a superweapon by the community and this suggest that it needs a rework imo.
nemo
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Could also shorten the cake walk timer I guess. Anyway, as for the coding... function onGearAdd(gear) if GetGearType(gear) == gtCake then SetGearValues(gear, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, nil, 20) end end Battalion does this already BTW. https://hg.hedgewars.org/hedgewars/file/ebc33ffb1cbd/share/hedgewars/Data/Scripts/Multiplayer/Battalion.lua#l1037
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Wuzzy
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A long time ago, I created a script called “Game Hacks”. You can use this to mess around with various game settings. https://hedgewars.org/node/6279 If you install this script and select it in the “[wiki]Styles[/wiki]” dropdown list, you can set the [wiki]script parameter[/wiki] to set the damage of various weapons. Enter “cakedamage=50” to set the cake damage and explosion radius to 50. You can also set the walk time with “caketimer=50%” to set it to 50%. Read more about this script in the thread.
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KIRA
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Yes Wuzzy i already have installed gamehacks but didnt use it cause i didnt know what to write in the script parameter. Thank you but i was thinking that gamehacks works only for playing in normal mode, am i wrong? Can the script parameters functions be implemented in the game itslef for let them works also in other scripts?
Wuzzy
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[quote]Thank you but i was thinking that gamehacks works only for playing in normal mode, am i wrong? [/quote] Yes, you are wrong. You must select Game hacks in the styles list, otherwise it will do nothing. [quote]Can the script parameters functions be implemented in the game itslef for let them works also in other scripts?[/quote] Yeah, the functions could theoretically be implemented in the game itself. I just never got myself to do it. Note that some of the features in Game Hacks are more esoteric or “hacky” and I wouldn't want to have them in the main game, for example, epidemic. But some features are more useful like ready or saucerfuel. Another challenge in adding this stuff into the main game is to make it so that the player is not overwhelmed with options.
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nemo
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Does gamehacks support the "script2" parameter like unc0rr's gravity script? If so, it could load for example Highlander. I've had fun in past playing variable gravity highlander (so long as anything with mines was disabled, since mines and graves still do not interact well with variable gravity)
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KIRA
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Yes Wuzzy i know that i have to select gamehaks in the style list but i was trying to say what nemo said: supporting a script2 for loading the specialist for example. I think it would be fine and a very cool addition to add the script paremeters functions in the actual game and that wont be overwhelming if there will be a page with the complete list of the script parameters. Idk what "Epidemic" does but if it affects all the teams then the game wont be unbalanced and since its activation is optional this will never be a problem to the player. Btw i tried the new cake nerfed by modifying the script parameter, thanks but i think the timer script parameter change hasnt worked.
Wuzzy
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No, script2 is not supported.
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hedgemodderlugia
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nemo
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You can always implement your own where it *is* supported Smile
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vint
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Fair point. I think Highlander is overrated! It's like you play a board game, but everyone's spawned in random structures and survival of hedgehog depends much on random armory it has (chances of getting transportation are odd). Could be worse if weaponry was shared in clan, however with such balance you also regret that it isn't. This is just the red flag for me, because in the end of the day I get disappointed by Highlander's popularity. One can say this game style is in high demand just because there are few alternatives out-of-the-box, which don't meet some players' expectations. The question remains: what could go wrong?
[float=right] [url=https://techhub.social/@vintprox][img]https://img.shields.io/badge/Mastodon-6364FF?logo=mastodon&logoColor=white&style=for-the-badge[/img][/url] [url=https://matrix.to/#/#vintprox:envs.net][img]https://img.shields.io/badge/Element-0DB989?logo=element&logoColor=white&style=for-the-badge[/img][/url] [/float] [size=14][font=serif]Hello, I am author of [url=https://www.hedgewars.org/node/9156][b]Typewriter[/b] Hedgewars Lua library[/url]. [color=#00FF55][i]Will be happy to contribute in some HW campaign or mission![/i][/color][/font][/size] Wink Smiley
easy
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I too have thought the cake is too powerful. Another thought that I’ve had recently( and maybe it has come up before so forgive me, I’ve been on a few years break)... The mechanic to walk is the uniqueness so that clearly shouldn’t change but to make it simpler to understand without fiddling with parameters, is it a better way to start the cake at the current power and radius but as it walks farther, the power and radius slowly get reduced to whatever lowest limit makes sense (half power?) I think that satisfies a few scenarios. For max damage without hitting yourself, you have to drop off an edge or have good radius judgement for earliest possible detonation. Scenario two, for hard to reach targets, the ability to hit them is the benefit but it may not need full power and to me has a better balance. Cake bonus thought, as it walks it sheds icing. Make it slippery or sticky. Add another layer of chaos.
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