Game Development

user11177

2:33 AM

I have a question about game dev but am unsure how to post it like a proper question. Maybe you can help?

It's about how much should a character be improved per level in a pvp-oriented MMO?

Assuming there is PERMANENT DEATH

i.e. how many level 100 players is one level 200 worth in a pvp fight?

Icy Defiance

offhand, I can't think of a game with permanent death that allowed people of significantly different strengths to fight each other in the first place.

RuneScape limits fights to be within certain level ranges; EVE has a shallow and very wide skill tree so pvp is pretty even after only a couple months of play...

not that those are exactly permanent death, but they're the closest to it I can think of right now.

John McDonald

3:07 AM

Yeah... I doubt there's a hard and fast rule, :/

It's basically whatever you come up with. There are good guides on how to deal with leveling up however

user11177

Me too. Just looking for a general guide lines and tips :)

John McDonald

15

Q: Balancing Player vs. Monsters: Level-Up Curves

I've written a fair number of games that have RPG-like "levelling up," where the player gains experience for killing monsters/enemies, and eventually, reaches a new level, where their stats increase. How do you find a balance between player growth, monster strength, and difficulty? The extreme e...

10

Q: How to implement an experience system?

I'm currently writing a small game that is based on earning experiences when killing enemies. As usual, each level requires more experience gain than the level before, and on higher levels killing enemies awards more experience. But I have problem balancing this system. Are there any prebuild al...

algorithm experience

24

Q: How to create adjustable formula for RPG level up requirements?

I'm trying to create a formula that can be modified simply by changing two values: number_of_levels, and last_level_experience. This is to enable people modding the game to change the levelling requirements. I've got it so that I can specify the number of XP needed for the last level up, but I w...

c++ rpg experience formula

Lots and lots, just search the site. All of these are from "leveling up": gamedev.stackexchange.com/search?q=leveling+up

Dave

Evening

@user11177 generally keep it fast at low level cos that makes it addictive to some people.

John McDonald

Mornin' (UGT)

Dave

whats new all

John McDonald

3:11 AM

JSON awesomeness

:D

Dave

still working on it :P ?

infact i wanted to ask you a Q about your suggestion from the other night

John McDonald

Heh, you bet, but I'm getting close to the end, I hope

Yeah, shoot

Dave

well lets say user clicks upgrade which takes 1 hour... then user logs in 2 hours later

pre upgrade the building generated X amount post upgrade it was x+2

how would you calculate it on interaction to include both levels

John McDonald

Right, I'll first explain how it could work with 1 event, then try to expand that to N events:

Dave

okay

John McDonald

3:16 AM

So: to create our timeline:
T0 - User starts upgrade, it will complete at T1. Upgrade is marked for completion at T1. User logs out
T1 - Nothing happens because nobody is here
T2 - User logs in, sees that upgrade finished at T1 and does some calcs:

You'd need to calc 'X' from T0 to T1 at the rate without the upgrade, then from T1 to T2 with the upgrade

Dave

won't i need to store logout time =/ or at least "last update" time

John McDonald

When the player's empire is updated, you should store that time and use it as T0

Dave

okay

John McDonald

Then since the upgrade has a time (T1) that is greater than T0, but less than the current time (T2), you'll need to update in steps like this

This will be quite common, and more than likely multiple steps. If you have 2 upgrades:
T0: Queue U1 and U2, taking 1 and 2 hours respectively. Logout
T1: U1 is done, but nobody is here to see it
T2: U2 is done, but nobody is here to see it
T3: User logs in

Dave

hmm trying to work out how ill make the db for it

John McDonald

3:21 AM

Same deal, Calc everything from T0 to T1, apply U1, then calculate from T1 to T2, apply U2, etc

Well... There's only a few important bits of time-related info: When the empire was last updated, when stuff will be done, and the current time

The "when stuff will be done" is going to have to be one time per item

Dave

so something like:

uid | build_id | upgrate_start | completes_on | length_minutes

actually i don't need completes_on really =/

i can calc that

John McDonald

I'd use completion time, since it's more important in calculations. Only the user cares when it started

But yeah, I'd keep only one of the two dates

Dave

won't i need to know when it started to know if there was time beforeit finished to give the post ugprade resources

John McDonald

Umm... I'm not sure if I follow

Dave

well if upgrade took 1 hour for that one hour itll be giving resources of normal for that one hour

then upgraded finished it is then doing an extra lets say +1 from then on per cycle

John McDonald

3:29 AM

Well, doesn't it only change at the completion time?

Dave

yeh

itll start giving +1 more after upgrade finished

but for an hour of the users logged out time the building's upgrade was not finished so it was giving the default amount

so example:
user - upgrades (it takes 1 hour)
user - logs out
for 1 hour he gets 1 per 5 minutes
upgrade now finished
for 2 hours he gets 2 per 5 minutes

John McDonald

So upgrades start to work before they are done?

Dave

eh?

John McDonald

(you said U1 takes 3 hours, yet production went up after hour 1)

Dave

oops

fixed :P

John McDonald

3:33 AM

Right. The starting date isn't important because nothing changes at the starting date, I'm assuming you've been collecting 1 unit / 5 minutes until now

Dave

yup

but when user logs in 3 hours later how does it know it was level 1 for 1 hour then level 2 for 2 hours

John McDonald

The end date is the important bit of info: when did this upgrade start working

In your example, T0 (when the user starts the upgrade) is in the DB as the last empire update time. T1 (when the upgrade is done) is in the DB when the user clicks "upgrade". T3 (when the user logs back in) is the current time. You have all the time info you need to calculate:
T1 - T0 = 1 hour * (1 / 5 mins)
T2 - T1 = 2 hours * (2 / 5 mins)

Yeah?

Dave

so t0 is start time ?

t1 is upgrade complete time ?

t2 is now

John McDonald

Correct

Dave

ok got it

wont i also need last interaction in there too

John McDonald

3:44 AM

T (short for Time), and the numbers indicating a reference #. So like: T[0]

Depends, I might have only 1 number for the entire empire

So, "Last empire update" or "Last Interaction", yeah, same thing

I'm using "empire" to mean "player"

Dave

wait so t0 as start time is infact last interaction

John McDonald

The last time your production or upgrades or player has been updated

Dave

T1 - T0 = 1 hour * (1 / 5 mins) //time passed since last interaction
T2 - T1 = 2 hours * (2 / 5 mins) //time passed since upgrade

ok so i only need to store completion time i understand now

oh and last interaction time

John McDonald

:) cool

Dave

thanks for explaining :D

John McDonald

3:48 AM

Yeah, no problem

sm4

@Byte56 Thanks for pointing out the duplicate, this is (IMHO) the best example of a duplicate, that is hard to find. The title of the second question is more appealing.

@Byte56 And I have also flagged it as duplicate to close it asap :)

Byte56

Sure thing. When you spend as much time on the site as I do, you remember when these questions were asked before. :)

I'm sure you'll get your rep back on your new answer in no time

5

Q: Show path of a body of where it should go after linear impulse is applied

I am making a game with Andengine and Box2D. I have a dynamic body and I apply linear impulse on the body to move it around when the user have touched the screen. Now I want to show the path where the body will go when the user have touched. If you have played Angry Birds or Basket Ball Shoot or...

physics box2d andengine

John McDonald

Yeah, I could have sworn it was a dupe, but I couldn't find one

sm4

Oh, I don't mind the rep :) The only difference it makes, people will expect more from me.

Byte56

It was in the related list.

sm4

3:52 AM

@Byte56 The system is smarted than it seems :)

I usually go through old Andengine questions, but I must have missed this one. Or it is exactly in the middle between active and inactive, where I haven't been yet :D

Byte56

The related list is also shown the the user as they're creating their question, so more than one person missed it.

sm4

Ah, and free badge. Cool

Disciplined. Worth more than 30 rep for sure!

Byte56

Only 10 rep now

sm4

So fast? :)

Byte56

Someone must have linked it in chat.

sm4

3:56 AM

@Byte56 ;)

BTW I already released two alpha versions of my games to play store. Right now they are being alpha tested. I will release the first one soon I believe, because there are no bugs so far... First download and I get to be a real game developer!

Byte56

Congrats! That's a big step.

Dave

Does it cost ?

(for them to alpha test)

sm4

yeah, feels good. The other game has "levels", so I just released the game with about 25% of levels to alpha test.

Programming took like 4 weeks, but making content is pain...

No, it doesn't cost anything.

Dave

nice

sm4

I released alpha version and now I am using my friends to test it.

Dave

4:00 AM

how fussy are they about upping to play store

sm4

1

A: Betatesting an android game. Best practices?

Google Play allows you to upload an alpha or beta version of your app and lets you choose a group of testers. The group can be a Google Group or Google+ Community. I highly recommend using social media to spread the word and involving (or hiring) interested people in beta testing. You can also hi...

I am doing exactly this.

Byte56

Pretty authoritative answer then :)

sm4

@Byte56 yeah :) Using friends is the best, but fiverr people can be very useful too. Friends tend to be too nice when judging the game.

Which is encouraging, but you know :D

Dave

so is apple store worth doing too

Byte56

Yeah, dump it on reddit if you want honesty

John McDonald

4:36 AM

sigh. "Proper" setter methods that are designed to help you can kinda hurt in a component data-oriented system

public float Armour
{
	get
	{
		return armour;
	}
	set
	{
		int initialHitPoints = (int)armour;
		armour = MathHelper.Clamp(value, 0, TotalArmour);
		OnArmourChange(initialHitPoints);
	}
}


public int TotalArmour { get; set; }

And I populate this with json:

"HitPoints" : {
	"Armour" : 50,
	"TotalArmour" : 50,
}

Armour gets set first, bounds check causes that to flatline, causing my entity to die in the first frame, causing me to see a flicker of a sprite and go "wtf?"

sigh

lol, and on top of that, my game detected that there was no power in the world and declared that the game was over, but since my first frame didn't run to completion, my "OnGameEnd" events didn't run, and in result, it wouldn't let me bring up the in-game menu with Esc because it thought it was already up

ehhh... Fail cascade

sm4

@Dave I don't know about apple store. I am developing for Android only. I know there's plenty of multiplatform engines, but I wanted to start small. One engine, one platform.

@Byte56 and another badge, revival :D

John McDonald

4:57 AM

heh, nice

Seth Battin

5:51 AM

@JohnMcDonald I think your setter should be private, and you should put that logic into some other function with a public interface. Then you can make your objects with a constructor that can use the private accessor.

0xFFF1

6:33 AM

i dont want to waste a question being downvoted, but i need to ask it anyways. I need a language that can always respond to user input real-time as if in a video game, but in a text based terminal window/text screen. C++ doesn't quite do this without including their windows.h library. whenever the programs you write in C++ ask for input, they pause the program and I don't like that. (there are ways around this, i just wish a language could do this more naturally.)

Seth Battin

@0xFFF1 yo, try this guy. Non-blocking input is the term to search. stackoverflow.com/questions/6171132/…

0xFFF1

7:03 AM

so also can i set the "history" to just 1 screen?

so that the user can't scroll to see the previous game stuff

C++

0xFFF1

7:15 AM

okay so i have to reduce the size of the console buffer