The experience system & skills and abilities thread

[Kaldar]

Force destruction would be awesome . Something like force rocket launcher. I would like to see teamheal and teamenergize too, becouse it improves teamwork. Protect and rage are useless in this shape so throw it away.

[JRHockney*]

They not useless at all but they may need to be boosted a bit. rage is probably ok for now. protect could maybe use some boosting. so far in game play, it has only been somewhat helpful.

[Tapela]

I've never seen a Jedi fly. I've seen a bad wired jump that looked like floating in 1980's Empire Strikes Back but that was obviously due to the bulky suit. Expanded Universe is stupid and so is anything written by Haden Blackman. While I am nostalgic about Jediknight's force powers like force destruction. I don't think its all that different from lightning and I would think unnecessary to have giant fireballs shooting from dark jedi. But on to what I think could work.

 

First off rage is a force power that I believe is doable and could be worked to be used like a double edged sword giving alot of power but of course coming at a cost. Maybe higher mishap? Jedi can also have a power that is more defensive like rage is offensive which would take protects slot. Instead of protect actually absorbing damage make it absorb dp damage so it could be used to counter rage or become more of a defensive Jedi. I'm not sure if you'd still call it protect. Maybe theres some other more lore name like how the Jedi see strikes before they happen some fancy name for what basically would be Force Protect. Drain and Heal could also be used to turn dp into force points, make drain less of a power to be used on someone (or not) and more of a power to use on yourself except offensively. You drain your own points and transfer them, this could be used in battle but make it transfer less efficiently compared to heal(or meditate,battlemeditate) which would be out of battle and leave you open but be much more efficient. This of course in addition to healing your hp if you guys want.

 

 

I guess those are just my ideas. I've been still playing 1.1 pretty regularly and its a blast, I like being a pure gunner because hybrids always bugged me when I'm not going crazy with lightsabers on fearis (best map ever, must find more like it).

[razorace]

My preference has always been to focus on powers seen in the movies.

 

Since I read an interesting article about the paradox of having TOO many gameplay options, I've been thinking it might be best to leave those powers out. Instead we should focus on adding new interactivity to our existing powers.

 

Besides, I was never able to come up with a good ideas for Rage/Protect anyway. Everything I thought of could pretty much be replaced by passive stat improvement skills.

 

A new power that I can think if would be "Telekinesis". This power would allow the player to fling nearby objects (dropped guns, items, seekers, other players?) at the targeted enemy. There was a very similar power to this in JK. In addition, it might be cool if this power could be used to slam defenseless players into the target enemy. Could look cool.

 

Since the normal spawn points aren't used for guns and items anymore, we could use that locational data to drop random boxes, crates, and crap into the map to give TK users something to throw.

 

As for having some sort of "prediction" ability, it might be possible to add some sort of "warning" power to Jedi by doing some environment scanning. Things that I think could be doable would be:

- Indicate the block direction needed for an incoming saber attack.

- Show the direction of incoming weapons fire.

[JRHockney*]

actually, protect and rage already work very similar to how you're discribing in the new code. rage speeds up yore swinging, has a 10 fp startup cost and 2 fp per swing (we just need to get rid of that red lightning effect ). protect cuts dp damage in half, but drains fp like speed at the same rate while hhoping down the button ( and we need to get rid of that ugly green glow ).

 

As far as force power additions in general, unless something is so cool we can't pass it up, I would still perfer to stick to our old philosophy of staying as true to the movies as possible. its been the basis for our thinking and combat for years and we shouldn't stray too far from it.

 

that being said, one of the ideas that I've considered is using our new grip dynamics to throw droids and or boxes at people. I've considered makiing it a forcepower or just something naturally apart of the game. it would either work by spawning droids or box model replacement for droids and havethem fly to your hand ina gripped pose for you to fling at people, or maybe just always have them spawn at random places in the level anytime a player goes ingame (and respawns after a bit if killed)and use grips already existing dynamics to hit people with them or throw them. I know this would be fun because I have been having a blast at my server spawning gonks and throwing them at players I mean seriousky, this would be a highly marketable feature.

[Kaldar]

I don't know if and how would that work. It would spawn those boxes for example in walls, players or beyond map. And there is no need for force telekinesis becouse grip + psuh do the same.

[razorace]

I'm suggesting that it might work better as a more automated force power. IE, using it directly on your enemy vs manually picking something up with Force Grip and then throwing it.

[Maxstate]

no

[madcatmach2]

]

A new power that I can think if would be "Telekinesis". This power would allow the player to fling nearby objects (dropped guns, items, seekers, other players?) at the targeted enemy. There was a very similar power to this in JK. In addition, it might be cool if this power could be used to slam defenseless players into the target enemy. Could look cool.

 

Since the normal spawn points aren't used for guns and items anymore, we could use that locational data to drop random boxes, crates, and crap into the map to give TK users something to throw.

i actually really like that idea. kinda like how force push was back in the days of JK1.

[JRHockney*]

no

 

no? what do you mean, no? no to who or what?

[Maxstate]

no? what do you mean, no? no to who or what?

No to automated powers. Darth didn't code the new grip stuff for days on end just to have it unused. I suggested much the same thing about being able to grab items and such right after we had first finished testing grip, I'm not against it. I am against making it an automated power.

[razorace]

It won't be an automated power. You'd still have to aim it at your target enemy. It would probably work very similar to Force Push from JK1.

[JRHockney*]

)I do like this idea about flinging items at people, and I think there are ways of balancing it and not lessening grips usage. make them fly slower so they can be dodged , make them do less damage than flinging a person or droid with grip, make it only fing one item ata time unless used with seeing (then everying in view highlighted would get flung), etc. Marketing gold, I'm telling ya.

 

And Max, if your going to say no to razor, pleae give a little more discussion on why if you would. Maybe you didn't intend ant disrespect but to respond like that basically looks like your responding to the father of our mod like a forum noob Besides, if we clean it up and make it balanced, Im sure you'll be excited about this feature too this is like every jkaer's dream me thinks.

[Maxstate]

Remember how Darth Maul flung stuff? There was a slight delay in there. Maybe we could do the same and add some kind of visual cue. I wonder how hard it would be to make people rotate while they fly....

 

If we can split up "gripped" and "getting thrown" I could do some animation stuff that'd make it look slightly better. There's loads of death and knockdown anims that I can see working for grip.

 

Anyway, time to pack my things.

[JRHockney*]

sounds like a plan

[Maxstate]

Good news!

 

I'm taking one of my two days off on Friday so we can finish off all of the remaining bugs and add whatever still needs adding. Hopefully most of you will agree with a (final) playtest on Friday night, 20:00 GMT+1?

 

I have to work again on Saturday and my parents are going to want to barbecue the entire Sunday away, so this is my only real free day

 

Also, I wanted to talk about some of the changes we've made in the past couple of days. Recently, more and more players have started showing interest in OJP and a lot of them experience the same as I do, which shows in their opinion of the mod: Good, but it needs polishing.

 

The main recurring troubles that are mentioned are the jetpack, flamer, seeker droid, the forcefield and the gun DP damages. Considering that I've seen some of the same comments on the forums, I decided to put... DARTH to work on some of these matters. For example, players complained about jetpack being too "light". Players did not have a sense of momentum and the jetpack was too much like the base jetpack. I agreed.

 

Our jetpack:

-Fast velocity and speed-up

-Very high momentum

-Twitchy

-Steering is mediocre

 

The movies' jetpack:

-Slow velocity and speed-up

-Ability to gain a good top speed

-Weighty, you can 'feel' the weight of your player in your controls

-Steering is relatively easy.

 

Darth has tweaked the jetpack physics further from the point where we started, and in my opinion he has struck gold. The jetpack physics are now much more like the movies. In my opinion it was still a little too fast, but that might stem from teh animations it uses: they're good animations, only they need to be slowed down a bit to suit the new physics. I'll take care of this.

What do you guys think of the current jetpack physics? Do you agree with making it slower, but more realistic?

 

I kind of mucked up my explanation of what I wanted Darth to do with the flamer, but I'm sure he'll fix it anyway. We want the flamer to slow down the player getting flamed, from g_speed 210 to g_speed 100 or something comparable. Then, I told Darth to see how many checks the flamer does for its damage and to divide it over the knockback. So let's say that it has 60 checks a second, maybe make it push the other player back by a force equal to a force push with g_knockback 16 at each check. Basically, flamer should slow down and push back a jedi. This should make it more useful to a gunner and should bring it back to the playing field.

 

The seeker droid got complaints about being too useful. Instead of a gunner support tool and an anti-mindtrick defense mechanism, it's seen as a semi-automAs of our last changes, we've lowered its accuracy a bit so it doesn't hit the target at EVERY shot. If we can, we should make it susceptible to something like Force lightning. Currently it's not and it can take 2 to 3 gun shots before it goes down.

 

The forcefield 'lags' players, is too cheap and too useful. We haven't done anything about it yet, but from a team game perspective I can see the forcefield getting smaller in size and being more easily destructible with certain weapons in the future.

 

Me and Darth have taken it upon ourselves to balance out some of the more powerful gun damages. Bowcaster did 50 to 60 DP damage in a single shot for example. This is a bug, don't fret! It's supposed to do 50 DP damage on a fully charged shot which drains 15 ammo from its pool. Last I heard we've fixed it, and a number of other gun imbalances have been taken care of. There's still some stuff left here and there that we will finish off tomorrow, though.

 

Right now we should focus on getting the damages just right; enough room for a jedi to practice his deflection or run in for a kill, but tight enough for the gunner to be able to feel the rush of mowing down a saber-wielding snob. One idea would be to lower the amount of damage that a gun does on a base level to standing opponents. I think in a fair fight of gun fire vs defending saberist, the saberist should be able to survive until his FP wears out. His DP shouldn't suffer as much as it does from the fast arm and hand motions of a jedi deflecting, so all in all I think we should lower the damages for walking and standing Jedi.

 

Don't go crazy yet, in return, we should consider the option to make certain (or all?) guns drain some amounts of FP. With our current jetpacks, force jumps, speeds, ledgegrabs and whatnots, the possibility for a player to do a tactical retreat has never been greater. Damage to anyone's Force points would cripple them in a way that'd be beneficial to the attacker; the defender (or retreating party) would not be able to use their Force powers to help them retreat, nor would they be able to use their jetpack since they lack the ability to jump in fatigued mode. It would also make banzai-styled jedi swing-a-thons history. Think about it and give me your opinions.

 

And please, if there are gamebreaking bugs that you know of that need fixing before release, NOW is the time to tell us!

 

Edit:

I should proofread moar MOAR MOOAR

[DarthDie]

Wai do we care what the movie jetpack is like? rzrace

[Maxstate]

Wai do we care what the movie jetpack is like? rzrace

Well... uh... ih... because...

 

stop asking questions rzrace

[Kaldar]

I'm afraid that I will be late but

Good, but it needs polishing.

Poles will arrive to Polish OJP!

 

Nice ideas with jetpack as it was uber unrealistic. You can also make a 2-3 seconds time when player needs to launch his jetpack.

 

Don't go crazy yet, in return, we should consider the option to make certain (or all?) guns drain some amounts of FP.

 

Good idea but you can't make it too fast as it will give gunners a big advantage.

 

And the last thing is (I don't know if it still exists): why can't you manual deflect with all styles. The strangest thing was that in the latest version I've played you couldn't manual deflect with...soresu!

 

Anyway, you are doing great job, long may it continue!

 

EDIT: Oh, and you can make an effect for flamethrower when it touches player, the textures go burned.

[DarthDie]

Some style you can't manual deflect with, as usual I can't remember which one so wait for max to respond in a couple minz.

[Maxstate]

I'm afraid that I will be late but

 

Poles will arrive to Polish OJP!

 

Nice ideas with jetpack as it was uber unrealistic. You can also make a 2-3 seconds time when player needs to launch his jetpack.

 

 

 

Good idea but you can't make it too fast as it will give gunners a big advantage.

 

And the last thing is (I don't know if it still exists): why can't you manual deflect with all styles. The strangest thing was that in the latest version I've played you couldn't manual deflect with...soresu!

 

Anyway, you are doing great job, long may it continue!

 

EDIT: Oh, and you can make an effect for flamethrower when it touches player, the textures go burned.

 

hahahaha polishing

 

You can't manually deflect with soresu because soresu wasn't meant to be an aggressive style. It wasn't mean for reflecting shots back at opponents. It was meant for DEFLECTING shots away from the user, and it has bonuses to make up for its inability to manually deflect

[Kaldar]

This idea is abortive.

[JRHockney*]

that list sounds aout right. hers a few more things that need attention: slap needs to hit better, quick parry no longer blocks kicks at high mishap or low dp and needs fixed, grip needs to be more balanced, and there should probably be some sort of jumpijg penalty for hybrids more than there is now since jump 1 is so high. sorry for talking about more work to do than there is already but these are important too.

[Kaldar]

Well...10 minuts left and no files? ;f

[Maxstate]

^^^^^ lol kablardardor ^^^^^

 

Any last minute ideas?