BehindTheHedge: Spawning tweaks & Forts
In the BehindTheHedge series we provide brief glimpses into what's going on at the development side of the game.
In this episode I will talk mostly about the changes made to how hedgehogs spawn and how fort mode got upgraded.
Ready, set, go!
The outcome and fun of a match depends on the entire course of a game, starting with the initial positions of your hedgehogs!
The game already tries it bests to find good places for all your hedgehogs, but it could completely fail to do that when the entire map was mostly empty or filled up with land!
Not anymore though!
nemo made the game able to deal with maps that have too little land or space for hedgehogs.
If there is too little land, hedgehogs and a platform below them can be spawned in mid-air.
If there is too little free space, holes will be created to place those hedgehogs in.
Another change affecting hedgehog spawning:
The Divided Teams scheme option will work with several teams now (instead of just 2).
Some love for Forts
The Fort Mode game modifier in the game scheme options has been there for a long time now, but it took a few steps to set it up and many players didn't even realize that it existed.
That's why we decide to move Forts Mode to where it can be selected quickly and without having to create new schemes:
Forts will be a map type!
Also we got rid of the annoying restriction of a maximum of 2 clans/forts per battle!
This means it's possible to have fort battles with up to 8 forts and teams!
(For fairness-related reasons you probably want to set the World-Edge to "wrap" in fort games with several forts)
And because - why not™ - we decided to make the distance between forts adjustable.
In the animated gif on the right you can see how the "feature size" slider will affect the preview's "gap size" between the forts.
Note: The generic preview forts are a about as wide as an average fort, however the gaps could be bigger or smaller based on the actual forts widths.
Multiple forts also work in Construction Mode, which also has received several fixes and tweaks. Thank you Wuzzy!
Do you have opinions or suggestions regarding above topics?
We'd love to hear them, please leave a comment!
Disclaimer: features mentioned above are still in development and therefore subject to change
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Wuzzy
Nothing of this is news to me, but I really appreciate those BehindTheHedge posts.
The remainder of this post will be unstructured (mostly self-serving) ramblings about new Hedgewars features, both official and unofficial.
I include it for those who are VERY curious what's going on, sorry if it is a bit messy but I am pretty K.O. right now.
For the curious, I give you some more views behind the hedge:
Sheepluva also added a “cinematic mode”, simple black bars for cut scenes, this makes it easier when you are seeing a cut scene rather than playing.
Currently, only 2 missions make use of this feature but hopefully there will be more later.
Regarding the Construction Mode “tweaks and fixes”: This refers mostly to bugfixes and slightly improved usability. One notable bugfix is that crate costs of this mode were all the same in 0.9.22, a rather embarrasing bug if you ask me!
Construction Mode will also have support for script parameter in next release (energy-related).
Some of you users probably noticed it, I have lately been doing quite some work on Hedgewars in the past weeks. I'm not an “official” developer, so sheepluva slowly includes / cherry-picks stuff from the code I have written.
Stuff already included:
- Several missions reworked:
- Rope-knocking challenge (awards you a score)
- Portal Mind Challenge
- Many more
- New mission: Flying Saucer Training, teaches you how to use the flying saucer (posted in Content Creations)
- Several smaller frontend improvements
Apart from that, I have tons of commits lying in my repository which are NOT part of Hedgewars (but may be in future):
- Reworked missions/tranings screen, sorts mission into scenarios, trainings and challenges.
- More reworked styles/missions: Capture The Flag, Gravity, Racer, TechRacer, Mutant
- Huge updates for HedgeEditor: Dud Mine Placement Mode, Sprite Placement Mode repaired and supports choosing individual sprite frames, better user interface and texts, many more features, tons of bugfixes
- Huge updates for WxW, Space Invasion, Tumbler (See my posts in Content Creations)
- Cool new sound effects for many weapons and utilities (3 of them are already official)
- Show check mark for completed campaign missions and campaigns
- Most of the missions I have posted somewhere in Content Creations
- More stuff, I am too lazy to type it all down xD
My current unfinished / WIP projects:
- Replace weapon tooltips and names of “special” weapons in certain scripts with proper texts. Example: The “air attack” in Construction Mode which is actually the structure placement tool will get a proper tooltip. Proof of concept:
- Rubber ducks: My latest super-secret project (okay, not anymore xD) is a new weapon:
The rubber duck swims on water and follows the wind and explodes on impact, could be nice as a strategic weapon. (longer descriptiong here: http://hedgewars.org/node/629?page=10#comment-29957)
This it what happends if the rubber duck floats towards the Sea edge:
This is very WIP and not finished, no promises!
Orange_Ball
Is v0.9.23 ready? I'm so excited when the new version come out.
nemo
I kinda want to add some kinda machinegun first. People keep asking for it.
Also, sheepluva switched us over to SDL2, so we could really use a bit more testing. ideally of weird architectures to test endianness, and verifying things like vid recording or screenshots still work (btw vid recording had some severe bugs that koda fixed for this release)
Orange_Ball
I see, and I predict that new version will come out on Middle June, Late June, or maybe Early July if everything are okay. ^u^
Besides, It's been around seven months since the v0.9.22 release.
Anyways, I bet the new version will have some new soundbanks, like the gentlemen or something.
nemo
The problem with new soundbanks is we lost our "pro" sound guy, Armagon, to Tiyuri's Starbound.
Armagon wrote a guide to new voices on the forum. It seems to boil down to "use a decent mic, avoid external sounds by recording under a blanket, try to be funny sounding, speak slowly so when sped up for high pitched the voice sounds ok"
And then go wild w/ Audacity or whatever.
At present we're trying to maintain his level of recording for standard voices. We're a bit more forgiving for localisations 'cause they are hard to find (we have a handful of localisations of Default). Most other stuff goes on DLC for optional install.
Summer release, not impossible I guess. Depends on vacation/free time. We really should get more testing. unc0rr has made nightly windows builds, could try to get more people using those, testing screenshots, video recording, audio - stuff that might break in SDL2. My bet is late summer/early fall tho.
frd *was* trying to resurrect the HTML5 port. That would have been darn cool. He disappeared a couple of days ago though.
sheepluva
If you ever get a chance to bet on something with money... don't :P
Orange_Ball
You're kidding. I didn't mean that i was betting with money.
And Are you sure!? Armagon... DISAPPEARED? Oh NO!
Star and Moon
Yep, both Tiyuri and Armagon no longer have anything to do with Hedgewars: http://blog.chucklefish.org/team/
Without Armagon, Hedgewars now has to rely on the community for new voices.
Orange_Ball
May i create a thread that the voice actor wanted for new voicepacks?
UltiMaxKom
C'mon ! please make me straight
Is v0.9.23 will released ? Yes or No ?
I Doubt about "This Time" HW Progress is Walking, even RUNNING !
,,, please make me A BIG WRONG Guys !!!
OR ! IS v0.9.23 is released ? Please Answer this poorman
(Just clarifications about my brains,,, we LOST MANY Member here !)