Release Hase 1.6 - more gravity, more particles, more fun!


Ziz

Advanced Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2006
Messages
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Greetings pandora folk!

After years (in fact 5 months...) of hard work (in fact I was lazy like shit most of the time) I proudly introduce the most recent (until new bugs require a new release) and most fun (yeah, really!) version of Hase!

Version 1.5 was great and got a lot of small and bigger fixes improving the game a lot, however some things needed to be fixed on a very low level, which I did now.

  • New movement. In the past it was hard to predict where you will land after jumping (especially in a low gravity area). I fixed this and as side effect I got a
  • More shooting based gameplay. Gravity is fun but useless if you just walk to your enemy, shoot in his face and run away. So it is harder now to reach your enemy directly. Furthermore I implemented a game mode, where you deal more damage if your bullets stays longer in the air!
  • Better AI. The AI was dumb. In fact it is still dumb, but less dumb. It will change the weapon and fight against hares sitting on it's head. Speaking of
  • New weapons! I added shotgun (shooting 5 bullets), a potato (shooting a powerful bullet), a teleporter (who gets the origin of the sprite?), tunnel building tools and the possibility to surrender (ending your turn)
These were the biggest and most important changes. But I did also
  • Improved the odds of spawning items, especially if you start with a high number of players, but some of them already died
  • Items bounce
  • If you (or items) get hits from explosion you get a small drill in that direction
  • I increased the minimal shooting power and decreased the maximal shooting power
  • The level generation algo creates also holes now. Furthermore you can save and load levels.
  • I added some new sound effects
  • Instead of the need to enter a players name to remove it, you can now select it in a list. With this you can also kick players you don't like (if you are the game master). Furthermore I removed the max player setting. If your game is too crowded: kick Binky some random player.
  • I improved the network code. You will not notice it, but I decreased the amount of send and received messages.
  • You can set up a lot new game settings (even after the creation!)The starting health from 50 to 200
  • The AP per turn from 1 to 5
  • You can activate the already mentioned "long shoot more damage" mode
  • You can enable Ragnarök instant or after up to 30 turns. If Ragnarök happens every turn an increasing amount of skulls is dropped, which explode at contact. Also all items become skulls.
  • You can activate infinite borders instead of getting killed by them
[*]Bullets die after 30 seconds. Important for the infinite border mode
[*]I improved the cluster bomb and Wingardium Leviosa. They got weaker.
[*]A spell should now hit always the right™ player
[*]I added a way more helpful help
Last but not least a video showing some of the new features. I played bad, but the AI even worse. :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JI8eDd--aY

Enjoy! The PND will be in the repository (as always).

Greetings

Ziz

PS: About the increased amount of particles... I lied! :>
 
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I've not played this for ages (or anything else for that matter), but well done on keeping it updated
 
Which player is the AI in the video? I really cannot tell... :p

(those friendly fire kills are hilarious and amazing at the same time)
 
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Ha, amazing video! :D Was pretty excited for this update, but watching this just topped it off.

Well done, sir, I tip my hat, which I don't have with me, but you know, hats....
 
I've just played a test game on Pandora; build seems to run still and is stable enough for that length of time at least.

If you watch the test game, all I can say is that the AI is a lot more challenging now!  The end was a bit slow and odd, with most of the terrain destroyed by ragnarok and two AI bots mostly floating about.  I thought a few close calls with ragnarok skulls would be enough, but it seems a direct hit is needed there; perhaps it could be speeded up if anything coming within blast radius of a skull gets blasted.
 
"Stop beating yourself!" :D

Well, nice Video, shows good how the game works. The AI aiming seems really usable. Remembers me onto the Worms AI from the first game. Actualy, the AI there basicly always hit you, even from the weirdest spots. Sounds unfair but it was a good training to imitate the AI behaviour, especialy Grenades and Bazooka. Good times back then in school.  ;)

The movement AI could need some "changing direction" algorithm when it hit's a dead end like the one rabbit in the hole to the left, he could have still escape to the right.

One question about the Level generation. Is it possible to round corners of rectangle or polygon objects? That way everything would look a little bit more "organic". I know the abstract style is on purpose but when blending different surfacres to one big mass it could makt everything look better when certain sharp angles are rounded, maybe. ^^

And speaking of the tracer lines all around. Would it make sense to fade them out after a while? At least old ones from  some rounds ago. If this is a game design decission to leave them all, then not of course. But for orientation it should be enough to have the latest tracers visible and older ones can fade away, maybe even more as older they are? Just a idea.
 
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Hmm, the i386 build just crashed on me.  I was watching a game with Holysmoke playing against some AIs, and speeding through the footage to try to get catch up with live.  The display was suggesting Holysmoke wasn't responding, and was counting up to 90, but I don't think it got to 80 before it crashed.
 
Here's a snippet of log.
 

PULL THREAD: Get second 156 of player HolySmoke
Pulling Second 155 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
Pulling Second 156 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
PULL THREAD: Get second 157 of player HolySmoke
* Recalculating level:
  Drawing Ellipse: 0
  Update Gravity: 1
  Drawing Ellipse: 1
  Drawing Arrows: 10
  Blitting: 6
PULL THREAD: Get second 158 of player HolySmoke
Pulling Second 157 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
Pulling Second 158 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
Pulling Second 159 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 1000
PULL THREAD: Get second 159 of player HolySmoke
PULL THREAD: Get second 160 of player HolySmoke
Pulling Second 159 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
Pulling Second 160 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
PULL THREAD: Get second 161 of player HolySmoke
Pulling Second 161 of player HolySmoke...
Done with status: 0
Ending Pull Thread for player HolySmoke
PULL THREAD: Get second 162 of player HolySmoke
Setting time of HolySmoke from 161657 to 162000
*** Error in `./hase': corrupted double-linked list: 0x08d0c868 ***
 
I've got a much longer snippet including stacktrace if you want it.
 
"Stop beating yourself!" :D

Well, nice Video, shows good how the game works. The AI aiming seems really usable. Remembers me onto the Worms AI from the first game. Actualy, the AI there basicly always hit you, even from the weirdest spots. Sounds unfair but it was a good training to imitate the AI behaviour, especialy Grenades and Bazooka. Good times back then in school.  ;)
The AI isn't so good. In fact the aiming capabilities didn't change at all since the last version. If you play a bit you will get strategies to avoid getting hit. ^^
The movement AI could need some "changing direction" algorithm when it hit's a dead end like the one rabbit in the hole to the left, he could have still escape to the right.
This is not so easy... It changes the direction at random and imho this is fine. This game is about having fun with friends not about smashing the AI. And even if: The AI is already hard to beat for a beginner and at least for me it makes fun to play against it. Just have a look at the replay of Holysmoke against 4 AIs. It's called "Rabbit Stu likes Rabbit Music". Holysmoke plays very well, but in the very end... The AI SMASHED him. :>
One question about the Level generation. Is it possible to round corners of rectangle or polygon objects? That way everything would look a little bit more "organic". I know the abstract style is on purpose but when blending different surfacres to one big mass it could makt everything look better when certain sharp angles are rounded, maybe. ^^
Of course I could do this. But I don't see a reason for it. It makes fun the way it is. ;)
And speaking of the tracer lines all around. Would it make sense to fade them out after a while? At least old ones from  some rounds ago. If this is a game design decission to leave them all, then not of course. But for orientation it should be enough to have the latest tracers visible and older ones can fade away, maybe even more as older they are? Just a idea.
In fact they fade out. But the amount of traces is per player is 16, so you may not notice. I could decrease this count. Are their other players, which don't like the mass of traces? Did it disturbed you ingame, Fusion?
 
With repeating borders I guess the traces can now be much longer, and hence potentially distracting.  I don't have a problem with them.

It's interesting how starting with different AP levels make different weapons usable.  If you start with 2 AP, even after a kaio-ken you only get 3AP next turn, so can't build up to 4 unless you kaio-ken one turn then pick up a tomato next turn.
 
Furthmore finding a tomato with only 2 starting AP increases your strength by 50% instead of 33% from 3 to 4.

Starting with 5 AP on the other hand makes only sense with distant damage enable imo. Otherwise Avada Kedavra would do all the work. ^^

Something else: I did release a new very minor release, where I renamed the Help to "How to play" and made it select at first start. I hope some player uses this help to get the game mechanics before trying to smash buttons...
 
The traces are a good idea and can be very helpful and they actualy don't disturb. I just thought it could add some more overview when the difference between each trace is more clear, depending on when it was created. So the newest trace is the most visible, the older ones are fading slightly darker. It doesn't need transparency (expensive, I know) or so, it would be already enough if they blend with the background more and more. Maybe it could even optional after how many rounds the traces fade completely? ^^

AI is not that bad, true. In fact it's really usable for a "dumb" AI as you say. :) I don't play online against real players so I need AI opponents, not only in Hase.
 
The traces are a good idea and can be very helpful and they actualy don't disturb. I just thought it could add some more overview when the difference between each trace is more clear, depending on when it was created. So the newest trace is the most visible, the older ones are fading slightly darker. It doesn't need transparency (expensive, I know) or so, it would be already enough if they blend with the background more and more. Maybe it could even optional after how many rounds the traces fade completely? ^^
Blending with the background IS transparency... However I like the idea and will just blend with black, which is approximately the background color.
AI is not that bad, true. In fact it's really usable for a "dumb" AI as you say. :) I don't play online against real players so I need AI opponents, not only in Hase.
Why? Most hase players aren't better than the AI and you could make use of the insult button! ^^
 
Blending with the background IS transparency... However I like the idea and will just blend with black, which is approximately the background color.
That's actualy what I've meant. ^^" So if they are green they just getting a darker green and then black and then gone. This could also show a nice "history" of the fight so far and even  with alot of traces around gameblay would still be clearer than if every trace has the same color/brightness. :)

Why? Most hase players aren't better than the AI and you could make use of the insult button! ^^
I just can't stand contesting gameplay against real players, too exciting. I can get very emotional and this is not very healthy for my heart right now.   :ph34r:  
 
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As long as you connect to the IRC server, you'll find that us hase players aren't that competitive, and don't take anything in the game too seriously.  But it's entirely up to you; even though it would be good to get some fresh blood in the irc channel from time to time.
 
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