Anger's Alternative

Cake of Darkness wrote:Sorry,really dont have much time to read the whole thread right now,just 1st page(.Excuse me if i said things which are discussed earlier.I think i can give you some concepts and I want to take part in testing.

What do you think about dogfights in planet atmosphere and its orbit?

this was discussed, but I can't into specifics yet, but I can say it is a possibilty!

I've applied to the group about a week ago without response.

I've had some Lua scripting experience from playing zachtronicsindustries' manufactoid(it still uses Lua 4, pretty much everything i try to code has some error because i'm too used to 5) and more recently from Roblox. However, i haven't really used some advanced stuff thoroughly(like file manipulation, coroutines and metatables).

ill add you shortly, sorry... it's moved beyond lua; easier to read everything in the section rather than explain it here...

hey anger
i'd be glad to do some conceptual drawings of strange-freaky-psychic-spaceships and landscapes if it meets your taste... drummerman said it might fit some race you've been planning?

also i can help with music; i do electronic stuff from ambient to very hard tracks. (i did some for swiss TV too). i'd be glad too to produce new tracks for the game, or rearrange, edit, remix whatever the participating community likes of my past stuff. i'm not a professional producer but i think i could also help with some sound fx; i have about 20 years of experience with electronic music

let me know, i'd be proud to be a part!

all help is appreciated lol - ill add you to the group...

we're having a meetup in 10hrs 15 mins from now, roughly, that will give the best intro to what's going on with it.

thanks anger!
i can't join the meetup. i will pm you...
btw. here's a video clip to a song i did with a friend from the US. the name of the song is "Label Thy Anger"....kind of a match
Label Thy Anger

I'd like to get on board with this. I have experience with game design/balance, modelling, concept-drawing, composing, and scoring film.

Where do I start?

Hi MK,
I'll let Anger know and he can add you to the group.

Having finally read through this entire thread, I'd like to make some suggestions based on my previous experience with projects like this:

First, use github. Slight learning curve, but the convenience is incredible. I'd be hard pressed to code with other people over the internet without it. https://github.com/

When you do live chat sessions, use a text-based chat client and save the transcripts. I can't count how many times I've looked up a conversation for information I've missed or forgotten. In my mind, it's a must.

There are a lot of great ideas running through here introducing a great deal of complexity. I think they'd make for a great second game. For anyone here working on their first major project, simplicity rules the day. Make the first game something that's not completely overwhelming. So much of MBs charm comes from its simplicity. You can jump right it, play a few fast-paced rounds, and get on with your day.

Realistic physics is fantastic but makes dogfighting a huge pain in the ass. MBs system is, I think, pretty close to optimal for that sort of game. Sure, speed limiting in space makes no sense - so what?

Start concept drawing now. Build up as much material of as many types as possible. Not only is the graphic end a huge undertaking (bigger than anyone ever seems to anticipate), you'll be glad to have a wide assortment of possibilities when the time comes to start piecing it together. Beyond that, having some tangible product - even just artwork - does wonders for group motivation and keeping the project alive. It can even inform the game mechanics in positive ways.

Also, I'm a sucker for player-piloted capitol ships. I vote for as many of those as we can reasonably pack into the game.

Lastly, if this is going to be a for-profit F2P, it's wise to set up a business model from the get-go. As much as everybody would love to sacrifice vast swaths of time for profit they'll never see, I suspect many of us wouldn't mind splitting the fruits of our labor.

noted, thanks!

ill add you to the group shortly, there is much much more notes to read through as everything above here is somewhat dated. easier for you to read than me explaining anything here...

my knoledge with any coding is zero like zero in understand how to do something easy about that...what i can do is give some little support in expenses where they are ...let me know if you like.

Let me second Mark Danger's comment re github, although bitkeeper.com is just as good - possibly better. Both provide a cloud server for storing the project's source code & complete revision history using Git. Its perfect for people working remotely to both track their own local changes and sync them together in the master repository. I've grown accustomed to it in my "day job" programming, would be lost without it.

How did I miss this thread??? I've been dreaming of such a game since the days of WIngCommander! Lol.
Can help you with designs and testng - I was leading a team of code QAs a couple of years before. Also good wiht database query languages (probably won't help much other than wiht player stats )
Might come with some design sketches soon, liked your modular idea.
IMO, we really need some place for this idea to grow, rather than the forum.
Too bad I missed the call.

Ever-est wrote:How did I miss this thread??? I've been dreaming of such a game since the days of WIngCommander! Lol.
Can help you with designs and testng - I was leading a team of code QAs a couple of years before. Also good wiht database query languages (probably won't help much other than wiht player stats )
Might come with some design sketches soon, liked your modular idea.
IMO, we really need some place for this idea to grow, rather than the forum.
Too bad I missed the call.

Hi Ever-est,
I wouldn't say it's too late. I'll check with Anger to see if he'll add you to the Moonfix group.

Hi Ever-est,
Anger said to let you in, so you've now got access to the Moonfix section at the bottom of the main page.

Maybe some of you haven't noticed what showed up on moonbreakers.wordpress so I thought that I'll quote it here.

Moon Breakers community,

First, we are sorry there hasn’t been more communication about the state of Moon Breakers. The current state is that development has effectively been halted on the game. Imba, the developer and owner of the game, ran out of money and the Moon Breakers team was disbanded.

Uber, as the publisher, is going to continue to maintain the servers for now. In addition it may be possible under some future scenarios for us to acquire the rights and continue to develop it.

Uber Entertainment

So we finally know what was going on with MB.

Kisuke wrote:Maybe some of you haven't noticed what showed up on moonbreakers.wordpress so I thought that I'll quote it here.

Moon Breakers community,

First, we are sorry there hasn’t been more communication about the state of Moon Breakers. The current state is that development has effectively been halted on the game. Imba, the developer and owner of the game, ran out of money and the Moon Breakers team was disbanded.

Uber, as the publisher, is going to continue to maintain the servers for now. In addition it may be possible under some future scenarios for us to acquire the rights and continue to develop it.

Uber Entertainment

So we finally know what was going on with MB.

Hi Kisuke,
I found out about it on Uber's forum and Userecho a few days ago and made an announcement post here. Seems like my post didn't get much attention tho.

On a related note, I am in loose contact with the Uber forum admin, so if there are any changes, we'll have a few avenues to find out about it.

ive had a lot of time to think on this one...

moonfix, as it was known, will remain shelved indefinitely unless anyone wants to continue it with the ideas it had. by all means feel free to use that pool of ideas with permission from those who suggested them.

the main reason things got muddy is the project became entangled between three irreconcilable approaches to a space shooter genre - more realism vs a moonbreakers clone vs mmo-scale grandeur. i had my part to play in that too... sooooo... im cutting it back to basics and starting over. what can be salvaged from moonfix i dont know, easier to archive it and use it as source material for this second attempt. those who were on the project are welcome to stay on of course.

the project is still 'shelved' however, i will announce when it is ready to proceed there as i am working out how it will operate.

the parameters of the project look like this:

first goal is to re-build the moonbreakers feel and experience. cloning the gameplay essentially, but not necessarily specifics like weapons or ships or designs (partly because it takes a long time, partly because of new design ideas).

second goal is to integrate the frameworks for the ideas i wished to add to moonbreakers such as greater focus on customizing ships and gameplay. in particular i was interested in deluxe weapon & module customizations and (at least) simple ship body customizations (swapping wing shapes, trading attributes like speed vs shields, etc). to some extent i wanted to integrate an on-board AI mechanism that would micromanage modules for things like auto-triggered defenses, smart weapons, autopilot & free-aiming, etc...

beyond that i dont know, it depends what the game is capable of by that point...

That was a positive post, I can see why the project foundered. I think if you work on it & pursue your own objectives without any confusion it would have a much greater chance of success. I might even be able to help out in some way if you want

I'm still on board for helping manage the thing if you need it. The new approach sounds more focused than the previous project.

Hmm, I would like to beta test it. I think things that would help is customization of weapons and dock, as well as decor customization. Squads and commands to only talk to your team would be helpful too.

the sort of customization i am after would look something like this...

the ship should be customizable to an extent that parallels Spore Creature Creator. with obvious limitations of course, but you get the idea... build your own ship, with your own design to it, with some minimal restrictions for it to still look like a space-worthy vessel.

weapons should be extensively customizable in a modular fashion - starting by separating 'weapons' into 'ammo' and 'launchers' (at the moment, still unlimited ammo). launchers will be compatible with certain ammo types, some launchers may be multi-purpose or have better stats, or are highly specialized for specific ammo, etc... following that you have launcher mods and ammo mods; launcher mods alter launcher stats and ammo mods alter the round/projectile/warhead. the specific launcher used will have a max number of mods, often fewer the more specialized it is or the better the base stats... ammo mods depend heavily on the type of ammo; rockets / missiles can have guidance mods (FOF rockets, predictive tracking for missiles, etc), more traditional rounds would have damage mods (explosive rounds, armor piercing, incendiary rounds, etc) and things like plasma bolts and lasers wouldn't have ammo mods at all (entirely launcher / weapon mods there)...

basically, weapon = launcher + ammo; launcher has mods, ammo has mods.

i would also be looking at sensor and weapon systems (mech warrior weapon groups as they are, basically) like currently in MWO - sensors: radar / HUD info shared between players, each player can see only so far, ECM affects this in several ways, etc... puts more focus on team play and coordination, something that never took off past 3 man adhoc wings with moonbreakers...

thats a very crude summary of it but you get the idea...

I like the idea of weaponry mods.
Star Conflict uses mods to entirely change the type of damage that you do.
The normal damage types are thermal for lasers, kinetic for railguns, and EM for plasma cannons.
With the mods, plasma can do kinetic damage, the lasers can do EM, and the railguns can do thermal.
I like that approach, and think that we should try adopting something similar.

i do like the idea of thermal / kin / em dmg types (eve had explosive type as well which sort of does and mostly doesn't make sense to have). however i would like to take it a step further and give different properties to each damage type, eg, thermal may interfere slightly with heatsinks, kinetic dmg might relate to how much force is carried across in the impact, em might interfere with sensors (maybe)...

ive also had time to rethink the defensive side of things, and it's looking like this:

3 layers - shield, armor, hull.

hull is the lifeblood, you lose that you go boom. doesn't regenerate on is own.

armor is a special type of hull that can withstand impacts and damage of various types up to a point before it will degrade, basically if damage (per dmg type) is less than the threshold no damage is taken. once armor is depleted hull takes all the damage. armor can also be bypassed / penetrated, ill come back to that...

shield regenerates on its own at a fixed rate after a short time of taking no damage at all. shield takes the damage first, before armor. once shield is depleted, armor is exposed. however the shield can be penetrated as well...

shield and armor (S,A) will each have 3 penetration parameters (P1,P2,P3) per damage type (T,K,E). this gives a total of 18 penetration parameters. depending on how much damage (D) you do, the damage will be absorbed and applied a bit differently. when damage falls between 0 - P1, it is ignored. exception is shields - their regeneration timer is reset regardless. damage between P1 - P2 ends up being D - P1. when the damage to the layer exceeds the remaining HP, the remainder (calculated in an appropriate way, tbd) falls through to the next layer (ie, when you overkill the shields, the excess damage is passed through to armor and the process repeats). when damage reaches P2 - P3, the current layer starts to reduce the proportion of damage it takes, reflecting an upper limit to the stress it can take before being bypassed. dmg to current layer would be something like (D-P1) * (P3-D) / (P3-P2) and the damage passed through along the lines of ((D-P2)^2) / (P3-P2). when damage exceeds P3, the defensive layer ignores it and passes it almost wholesale (D - P2) to the next defense.

edit - the maximum damage in the P2-P3 bracket is for base damage D = (P1 + P3) / 2; the final damage for the layer = (P13 Peak)^2 / (P3 - P2) = (P1 + P3)^2 / 4(P3 - P2);

D = P13 Peak is the ideal damage value to aim for if you know the penetration parameters ahead of time

to be clear, the damage we are talking about is the immediate damage from a single bullet / weapon impact and such.

suppose shield has 1000 HP and the following parameters:
Thermal - P1 = 50, P2 = 200, P3 = 1500 P13 Peak D = 775; peak dmg = 462.02
Kinetic - P1 = 50, P2 = 150, P3 = 800 P13 Peak D = 425; peak dmg = 227.88
EM - P1 = 5, P2 = 500, P3 = 5000 P13 Peak D = 2502.5; peak dmg = 1253.76
(implying shield has equal resistance for thermal & kinetic, but kinetic will penetrate shields earlier; em damage is readily absorbed but will eventually leak through a little given enough of it in one go)

to demonstrate penetration, kinetic damage only:
40 Kin = no dmg, stops shield from regenerating though.
80 Kin = 30 dmg to shield (50 is resisted)
200 Kin = (200-50) * (800-200) / (800-150) dmg to shield and ((200-150)^2) / (800-150) Kin dmg reaches armor.
ie, 200 Kin = 138.46 dmg to shield and 3.85 Kin dmg yet to impact armor.
500 Kin = 207.69 dmg to shield and 188.46 Kin dmg yet to impact armor.
1000 Kin = 0 dmg to shield, still stops shield from regenerating, and 850 Kin dmg is yet to impact armor.

some may disagree with my reasoning, but as the damage from weapons gets stupidly large (beams, missiles) it gets uninteresting. i figure a better reward for achieving such silly numbers should be the ability to damage more than one defensive layer at a time, even if the total damage is less than using a less overpowered weapon (which would only affect one defense). because as you can see, after a point the damage gets so ludicrous that you may as well put down the calculator and concede defeat... this way at least it gets interesting in the mid-range of damage, and when combining different damage types...

In MB there is obviously only one "shield" and when its gone you're dead - what you're describing is much closer to the Star Conflict model, a bit beyond it actually with the addition of Armour.

In MB weapon types just require different skills & strategies to use based on their effective range, reload times and aiming methods. Basically if you hit an opponent in MB, regardless of the weapon type, you pretty much expect them to die in a fairly short time with the exception of bullets versus the tougher ships due to their lack of percentage damage.

If you're wanting to add shield/armor/hull along with weapon types that react differently against each in a rock/paper/scissors fashion, I'd suggest that ships would have to be a lot stronger & therefore require more thought to breaking them down. After all if they just go boom quickly as they do in MB what'd be the point of all that extra complexity?

There's nothing wrong with tougher ships, in fact I think it'd be a good thing provided the ships are still highly responsive to controls and have drift/strafe abilities, as it'd just make for longer contests with the better pilots coming out on top & less reward for insta-kill blindsiding opponents.