Serra

Basic Principles of Gamedesign – a weekly compilation

serraavenger — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:17:35 +0000

1. EXPERIENCE
“A lot of [Soviet Army soldiers] ask me how one can become a constructor, and how new weaponry is designed. These are very difficult questions. Each designer seems to have his own paths, his own successes and failures. But one thing is clear: before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field. I myself have had many experiences confirming this to be so.” – Kalashnikov
The same is true for every other aspect of life, including game design. In order to be a good game designer, one aught to have a deep gameplay experience.

New Help!

serraavenger — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:42:52 +0000

Bill is going to assist me a lot in Battleships Antarctica. He’ll do (almost) everything but the code, and I’ll revision it and work closely with him to get Antarctica done better than before!

Antarctica Delayed For One Year

serraavenger — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:28:54 +0000

Got too much school stuff to finish Antarctica in the next year.
Note though that in a year I’ll have Free time (almost) 24/7 so development should be really fast.
Still need a couple of helpers though…
Feel free to join us (we have cookies!)

Enjoy your time till then, Serra

SeaControl

serraavenger — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:25:26 +0000

SeaControl is an Ultra Speed (*900) Version of the unreleased StarControl browsergame for WC3.

It’s the year 2056. Following Global warming, the polar caps melted – and did let the seal-level rise to unexpected values. Now whole california is covered with water, with only a couple of islands where once were hills or mountains. Cities have developed into huge underwater stations that can only be reached by small platforms floating on the surface, connected with a deep elevator. With these cities isolated from law and order, it was easy to declare independance from the American continent and establish new city states.
But the North American continent reacted fast. They are rebuilding their forces in order to get all city states back under their control…
It is clear that they will have to ally with the strongest state if they want to accomplish that task.

You prevail one of these platforms…
And you want to be that state.

In order to become this, you will have to upgrade your ships, control fleet production and use the unique combat system to your advantage so you can conquer other city states!

Features:

Unique combat system that allows for great tactics
5 Shiptypes:
- Destroyer: Fast and agile, this aircraft is used to spot other fleets and destroy Battlecruisers
- Frigate: Slow but sturdy, this airship is used to protect Battlecruisers from incoming Destroyers
- Battlecruiser: The strongest airship of all. Perfect to destroy Frigates, but weak against armadas of Destroyers.
- Cargoship: When your are neutral or even allied with another player, you can start to trade with him. Cargoships cannot fight, so will have to keep them defended.
- Conquership: These ships are the only ones that are able to take over other platforms.

Happy Birthday, Say_no_to_war!

serraavenger — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:22:26 +0000

Happy birthday to you, old fellow : )

Live long and prosper!

Need Helpers!

serraavenger — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:09:03 +0000

As seen on my ad wall, I need a couple of people helping me!

Positions to be fulfilled are:

SPELL GENERATOR: Give Spell Ideas for the ships. Spells cost mana, are static (no learning/levelling) and have a really low cooldown

SKILL GENERATOR: Give Skill Ideas for the ships. Skills are leveable hero skills. These cost no mana – the only cost they have are their cooldown.

SKILL/SPELL DEVELOPER: Code Spells or Skills for Antarctica. There are some restrictions on what systems to use, but you will be granted administrator control and will get full credit.

Thanks in advance for anyone helping,

Serra Avenger

Battle.net down?

serraavenger — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:00:10 +0000

It seems the internal structure of battle.net has just changed.

The classical www.battle.net sides were down two minutes ago, and now they relink to their new pendants: http://classic.battle.net/CONTROLLER.

Can anyone report why this has happened? The change to bnet 2.0 is already quite old, so I am wondering why this domain name change has been made…

Auto Casting

serraavenger — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:40:10 +0000

I just finished a fine system that will allow users to use simple click-mechanisms instead of actually having to click on their skills.

What does that mean? You will be able to double-click on an enemy hero to cast one of your spells on it (like the old school captains cannon), or to double click on the terrain to cast a spell on it (like flare or teleport). This will be turned off by default, but you can turn it on at any time using either a ship skill or a chat command (this is currently decided on).

The system and a demo map are available on thehelper.net. Scheduled implementation: 0.39

New Skill: Counter Flare

serraavenger — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:46:29 +0000

The counter flare is a passive skill that has a chance to cast flare on ships that attack you and that you can currently not see. This is extremely useful against CI ships and ships that attack while hiding behind cliffs.

The chance is currently 35-55% ( 31 + ( level * 4 ) %), while the cooldown between two potential flares sinks from 8 seconds to 5 seconds ( 80 / ( level + 10 ) seconds )

An example:

Alice attacks Bob, who has a counterflare of level 4. The cooldown between two potential flares is thus 80/14 = 5 seconds. On the first attack, Bob’s flare misses (it has a chance of 53% to miss) – he has thus to wait 5 seconds until the next flare attempt can be made. All attacks he gets during these five seconds will not trigger his ship to flare Alice!

After the five seconds, Bob has again a 47% chance to flare the next attack that he recieves.

Any comments are highly appreciated!

Current Changes: Cooldown -> (8 – 0.25*6^1.6 seconds ); Hence a high level skill will be much stronger than a low level one, increasing the power of high experienced (thus low cost) ships.

For The Records

serraavenger — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:59:12 +0000

I’m wondering wether I should add a scoreboard to the map which will be displayed at map end and what it should show.

Currently I have the following:

Kills/Deaths
Income Ratio = OwnIncome / (EmpireGold-Taxes)
Income= TotalIncome – Taxes
Experience
Skills / Active Items used
Upgrade Status

If you have a suggestion for something to display or want to take one of them out, please post here : )