The DCUG Back on Track!

[BentonGrey]

Well, in my version (which, admittedly, is always being fiddled with) he's got 'super blitz.'  I'll check him in game later.

[Blitzgott]

Flash's spinning vortex doesn't work due to missing fx.

Edit: It's super blitz in my version, too. Both in-game and on FFEdit.

[Blitzgott]

Since I had absolutely nothing to do, I decided to look for as many bugs as possible in order to get this over with. Here's what I found:

Missing weight: Dr. Fate and Kalibak


Missing mesh: League Assassin, Riddler Puzzle Thug, Grey Ghost and Officer Montoya


Not working: Arisa, Arkkis, Hal, Guy, Jon, Kyle and Tomarre's lantern emerald punch; Batgirl's fist full of batarangs; Brainiac's battle mode; Clayface's streeching arm; Cluemaster's flare pellet; Deadshot's wrist-gun grapple; Desaad's death beam; Dr. Alchemy's river of glue; Gorilla Grodd's grodd subvert, grodd subjulgate and grodd groundthrow; Hal's lantern emerald golem; Kyle's stewart emerald monster; Lashina's battle lash tangle; Metamorpho's meta freezing nitrogen cloud; Mirror Master's mirror banishment and mirror teleport; Prof. Zoom's zoom hand vortex; Psycho Pirate's pirate friends are foes, pirate fear and pirate anger; Sinestro's anti-matter nuke; The Shark's shark mind drain and shark mind bolt; The Trickster's trick ultimate con; Tigress' tigress capture arrow; Vulcan's vulcan great flaming axe; Starfire warrior's assault, and The Question's entire tier b.


Repeated powers: Black Lightning's electric field and Jon's stewart emerald bolts.


Miscellaneous: Robin's electric batarang inflicts heat damage; R'As Al Gul's dueling dominance has a single contact animation; Kid Flash's speed punchas has a single contact animation, and you named Geomancer "Gentleman Ghost".


It's possible that I overlooked something because, near the end, I got kinda tired and started to make haste in order to finish it quickly, but I doubt it's much stuff.


Edit: Other than Starfire's, all the melee attacks I mentioned on the "not working" list actually do work, but they are missing fx.

[kkhohoho]

Edit: Other than Starfire's, all the melee attacks I mentioned on the "not working" list actually do work, but they are missing fx.

That probally means that they have the "No_Effect" FX...

[Blitzgott]

That probally means that they have the "No_Effect" FX...

No. Lantern emerald punch, for one, uses the fx_emerald_punch, but there's no animation. I won't check all the others, but I'm sure none of them has the "no_effect" fx.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

There's a HUGE difference between having no fx, and having no animation.  Which is it.  (Anything lacking an animation won't have FX anyway.)

[Blitzgott]

There's a HUGE difference between having no fx, and having no animation.  Which is it.  (Anything lacking an animation won't have FX anyway.)

I mean there is no FX ANIMATION. The attack animation ("X" hero punching) plays normally, but, even though the fx of the power is set as (on the example above) fx_emerald_punch, the hero's hand does not glow or whatever when he executes the attack. It's LIKE he has the no_effect fx, but in reality the fx for that power is set as fx_emerald_punch.

[BentonGrey]

That's alright, Blitz has been a huge help, I can figure out what's wrong with them, as I'll have to take a look at all of them anyway.  With 99% of these, it's going to be a case of an FX from their FF1 herofile not existing in FF2, and I'll just have to find an alternative.  I may request a few FX once this is done, however.  Thanks Blitz, I'll try and run down most of those errors tonight.  I'm not sure about the missing meshes though...that might complicate things slightly, but shouldn't be too much trouble.

Let's say we'll give Alpha testing until the end of this week (giving me a bit more slack time in the character-strings department) and I'll try and upload the new files for the Beta this weekend.  That is contingent on a few skins and meshes that are necessary being finished by then (Syn's ridiculously awesome new Batmobile for one, and my own hexing work on TR's Robin hex for another), but if they aren't we'll just push back the release a few days.  Those won't include voices yet, as I'll need to work in conjuction with CQ, and he's pretty busy at the moment.  They will include all of the characters and changes promised in the beta, as well as, of course, the ridiculous amount of bug fixes already in place and pending ^_^.

On the subject of invulnerability....I have to say, that Blitzgotts now retracted arguments for damage resistance did not fall on deaf ears.  It would make balancing much easier if a blow from Hawkman's mace could inflict SOME damage on Supes without having to be overpowered ridiculously.  The problem I see with this is character specific (aside from the balancing work that it would entail for me :blink:), what about characters that are vulnerable?  They would lose their invulnerability, but keep the damage resistance....anyroad, I would really like to hear some thoughts on this in between now and the final version, so no hurry.  However, I know the thoughts of Shazam and Blitz, so I'd really like to hear from the regular community members and the other testers more than anything else.

NOTES ON THE FUTURE OF DCUG:

Well, I have hinted about what my grand (and impractical) plans for this structure might be, when I mentioned using it as an EZSCRIPT platform.  The last week or so, while I'm bored at work, I've been sketching out storylines (or EZScript adventures, if you will) for various characters and teams.  I have a lot of material in skeleton form at the moment, and considering what I'm about to begin asking for, I suppose I should let you know what I intend to do with it.  As I said, my dream is to remake the entire DCU out of my own imagination, to write the over-arching stories of Batman's career, the adventures of Superman, the crime-fighting career of JLA, and the ending to the war between New Genesis and Apokolips (which I wouldn't dream of touching if the King had been able to finish it :( ). 

So, heavily dependent on time (moreso than inspiration as I've already got months and months of material lined up) I want to release monthly 'comic issues' in EZScript format.  An adventure, part of an on-going series, all tied together in a developing master plan.  Now, ideally I'd like to release issues of each of the heroes, and maybe even a JLA once a month.  That's ridiculously unlikely, however.  What I might be able to manage is three or four issues a month, two staple and two rotating titles.  So, we'd have Batman and the Brave and the Bold every month along with two of: Hawkman, Superman, The Atom, JLA, Blue and Gold, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, etc.  Will I be able to keep up the monthly schedule?  Will I actually ever finish my grand plan for the DCU?  Will Batman and Robin escape the dasterdly clutches of the devilish device that holds them down?  Probably not, but I hope to entertain the community for a while, and encourage others to put out some of their own adventures.

Why talk about this now, many, many, MANY moons before the final version will be ready?  Mostly because this is a pretty large undertaking, and although I'm willing to do all of the requsite writing and work myself, it would be a pretty big help to me to have a few oddball skins and maps picked up as people have time.  For example, sooner or later, I'm going to need an Atlantian Citizen skin or two, along with some rather evil surprises that will pop up for the first time in my Aquaman storyline.  I'll need simple maps, as I said, like a Thanagarian market and wilderness.  So, I'm going to be making a seperate 'map request' thread to handle these things.  There won't be any rush on any of them, but if any of the community members feel like picking one up, I'd certainly appreciate it.  I imagine that I can fashion something for my stories on my own, but a little help would help me meet my monthly goals.

Well, enough about impossible dreams, I'll get to work on fixing these issues, and thanks again Blitz!

[Blitzgott]

No problem, BG. That's what I signed for.


On the invulnerability, I don't know... For balance purposes, I'd suggest physical resistance alone, with maybe a very little bit of invulnerability for the real tough guys. That's the best for game balance, IMHO. However, I'm aware that you are concerned with the comic accuracy, too, so the best thing would be try finding a balance between accuracy and gameplay. Maybe just tuning down the invulnerability a bit... Myself, I don't like giving more than 15 points, and only for the real (real) tough guys. Because, and I don't mean to disrespect Shazam's work, invulnerability is kind of a broken attribute to me. Even 15 points, which Shazam says to be little, is actually a lot. If you pit two super strong heroes against each other, invulnerability won't make that big a difference, since they will be constantly inflicting over 30 or 40 points of damage. However, when you add ranged combat on it, the problems start to be highlighted. Hell, in case some of you haven't noticed, 15 points is the base damage of all (other than melee) attack types! So now you want Supes walking around shrugging off every single atomic blast Captain Atom throw at him? Because that's what's gonna happen. I agree that tuning down invulnerability makes the character seem far from their comic counterparts, but what's better: comic accuracy or keeping melee combat from being pretty much the only alternative, damage-wise, of fighting?

On vulnerability, you could set another penalty other than loss of invulnerability. Losing strength, speed or being left powerless are good options, too, I think.


Oh, and on a related note, I'm looking forward to the next release. I never had the chance to see the vehicle/driver attributes in action, and there could not be a better way of being introduced to them other than by seeing the Batmovel zooming around a rumble room map.

[kkhohoho]

I say; keep invurn., but tune it down.   I was fighting Superman with Kiliwog the other day (that would make no sense in the comics, but I did it for my own enjoyment. :P) and the only reason I won was by throwing a truck at ol' Supes.  If I hadn't whittled away his health beforehand, the truck would not be as signifigant as it was.  In fact, Kiliwog had a strength of 9, and his punches didn't do much, and his GL attacks didn't do much either. So I suggest tuning it down, so more characters like Kiliwog-a GL with superhuman strength-actually get a fair fight against more poeple, and so that even characters like Batman could at least do a very small amount of damage.

[Shazam]

Blitz is quite right, invulnerable is a broken attribute, but then so is Physical resistance. By the way, I didn't create invulnerable Dr Mike did, I just made more levels of it. I believe that ips was the person that thought up the invulnerable attribute and he talked Dr Mike into making it. ips, was the one responsible for the grades of invulnerable we now have in FFX after I showed him and others how to make them. Physical resistance was created by me intially because I was unhappy with the invulnerable attrib and I was going to make different percentages of it. Stumpy was the man who fine tuned the attribute after I did much testing.

The trouble with FF is that melee does alot more damage than ranged attacks since the strength of the character is part of the maths involved, so characters like Superman will always have hugely powerful melee attacks. The only way to balance it right IMO is to power down melee attacks much like Alex used to with his hero files. In comics Darkseids Omega beams are more powerful than his melee attacks. You will never be able to well simulate this with FF unless you power down melee attacks, I have done this with my own hero files because I want ranged attacks such as Darkseids Omega beams or Supermans heat vision to be powerful. High invulnerability works with two powerful melee characters because the punches they both inflict on each other cause huge health loss. Invulnerable gives back health points making it seem like the character is invulnerable to a certain amount of damage.

It is very difficult to simulate Marvel and DC characters in FF, the game is just not designed for it. At the end of the day Bent, this is your mod. Not mine, not Blitz's. You're fighting a losing battle in trying to come up with a balance that everyone agrees with, it just isn't going to happen. Best thing to do is get it the way you want it and are happy with. People will still download this regardless of wether they agree with your setup or not. The main thing for testers is to identify bugs, not argue on how a character is setup. Remember the name of the mod is 'The DC Universe according to Grey' not Blitzgott or Shazam ;)

[Blitzgott]

Remember the name of the mod is 'The DC Universe according to Grey' not Blitzgott or Shazam ;)

I know that. And it's not like I'm forcing him to do the way I think is best. I'm only giving suggestions because Benton himself asked for them, and it's up to him whether or not he will take them into consideration.


On the melee/ranged attacks issue, it's just like I said on my last post and you reafirmed on your own: melee attacks inflict more damage than ranged attacks, and the difference is not small. It's a small problem, but, hey, it's how you handle it. Myself, I try balancing my characters' powers in a way that they will all be useful at all times, so they usually inflict a very similar amount of damage. See my Superman hero file, for example. His three principal attacks inflict 23 (zero-cost melee attack), 20 (zero-cost projectile) and 20 (low-cost beam). Yes, my Superman inflicts 23 points of damage with his melee attack, even though he has strength 10. I made it like this because, like I already mentioned, I want to make all attacks useful. So, when Superman slugs it out with, say, Doomsday, he will be using his melee attack. If Doomsday happens to start gaining the upperhand, Supes can fly away from him and start zaping him with his heat vision. Now, let's say Supes is fighting someone that is superior to him in aerial combat. Supes will then fly at him and use his flying melee attack (the projectile) to drop the guy to the ground so that he can start pounding on him with his melee attack. The good thing about keeping the damage of your hero's attacks similar is that it "forces" you to mix your attacks well instead of simply spamming one, since you'll be inflicting about the same amount of damage no matter the distance you are from your opponent. So you'll not find yourself trying desperately to bring your opponent to the ground if you are playing with Supes, because it won't make much of a difference. This keeps the fights from looking shallow (characters with ranged attacks almost never using them because their melee attacks are so much stronger) and there's also the balance issue: since will try to make your melee attacks inflict a similar amount of damage as your ranged attacks, there won't be a huge gap of damage output between Batman and Superman, which means neither of them will be completely descartable.

I don't mean, of course, to say that the damage of melee attacks shall always be around 20; only those of heroes who are proeficient at both melee and ranged combat. So it's okay for Thing to have a melee attack that inflicts, say, 30 or more points of damage, since he cannot do anything else other than pound his enemies at close range.

[quiet]

Im with Shazam on this one. I personally like invulnerabilty quite a bit, so Im going to tweak these characters to the way I want when we are all done.  I think it is really easy to get bogged down in the way characters should be portrayed because everybody has their own theory and are generally passionate about it.  Lets focus on making these guys playable and then we can get in the weeds as to how they should be later on when we are just looking to polish the mod up before release.

[BentonGrey]

Fair enough guys, consider the issue tabled for the moment.

[BentonGrey]

Hey guys, just a quick update to let you know that all of the issues brought up so far have been corrected, BUT with the fact that I played delinquent last night and watched TMNT, coupled with the lack of a few needed vehicle meshes and such, it'll probably next weekend at the earliest before the beta is released.  I'm gonna' try and spend a good part of today working on the voices, since most of my work building characters in is over. 

[bearded]

if the characters are done, you could release the beta, and then later make a voices patch, and vehicle patch.

[BentonGrey]

Hmm, I guess I didn't say that very well ^_^, what I meant was that I'm missing some vehicle meshes, but also some character skins, etc.  Depending on how much I get done tonight, and also depending on what everybody wants, I suppose I can upload an alpha mark 2 tonight or tomorrow.  That would just be the fixes, some extra characters, meshes, skins, and a work in progress vehicle/driver set-up or two.  Would everyone be interested in that?

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I'm assuming this will be compatible with your voice packs as well?  That would just pack in an extra level of awesome.

[Juanjete]

ok.  :thumbup:

[BentonGrey]

Yep Cat, as a matter of fact, most of the characters are already set up to work with them, it's just a matter of me doing the rest of them, and filling in the gaps with voices from other mods (if I can get permission) and with the generics, thanks to CQ and Sledgehammer.  That'll be the last phase of my finishing this up, especially considering how many JLU episodes I still have to go through.

[kkhohoho]

Hmm, I guess I didn't say that very well ^_^, what I meant was that I'm missing some vehicle meshes, but also some character skins, etc.  Depending on how much I get done tonight, and also depending on what everybody wants, I suppose I can upload an alpha mark 2 tonight or tomorrow.  That would just be the fixes, some extra characters, meshes, skins, and a work in progress vehicle/driver set-up or two.  Would everyone be interested in that?

I'm interested. :D

[Blitzgott]

Hmm, I guess I didn't say that very well ^_^, what I meant was that I'm missing some vehicle meshes, but also some character skins, etc.  Depending on how much I get done tonight, and also depending on what everybody wants, I suppose I can upload an alpha mark 2 tonight or tomorrow.  That would just be the fixes, some extra characters, meshes, skins, and a work in progress vehicle/driver set-up or two.  Would everyone be interested in that?

I'm interested. :D

Ditto.

[BentonGrey]

Okay, looks like I need to get to work tonight ;)!

[BentonGrey]

Hey guys, sorry about this, but I didn't finish adding in the last members of the Doom Patrol.  My wife and I ended up renting a movie, and the night just sorta' ran out on me.   :huh:  Anyroad, what I have left shouldn't take too terribly long, so I'll probably finish it tomorrow.  I'll try and have it uploaded by around 10-ish tomorrow.

[quiet]

BG

Im in the S's right now, just finished up shining knight.  I must say Ive never heard of silent majority before.

[BentonGrey]

Hey man, glad to know you're still keeping at it.  Yeah, Silent Majority is just in on a whim from myself.  I know nothing about him, and I have none of the rest of the characters from his team in the mod, but I just think he's cool.  I mean, Silent Majority as a name for a guy who can clone, and who rarely speaks.....pure genuis!  Haha, well, as far as his back story, all I could find was this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Majority_(comics)

However, I would just say what little that has about him, but leave out all of his history, merely mentioning that he works for the government as part of Project Cadmus.

[BentonGrey]

Okay guys, I'm sorry I've been such a bum, but work has been really tough lately, and all I feel like doing at the end of the day is coming home and laying down.  I really don't feel much like doing Freedom Force stuff.  However, I have managed to wrap up most of the things I was working on for the Alpha V2.  This has all of the fixes that were necessary, and the Golden Age JSAers...make that, MY version of them, as you won't see any Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Batman, or Wonder Woman in this group.  The whole idea behind this project is to create my own, cleaner version of continuity, and the modern backstory of the Hawks is WAY too convoluted, so that's why I'm going with the Silver Age version.  Anyroad, Elasti-Girl and Mento of the Doom Patrol are also finished, but Robotman and Negative Man...well, I just haven't found the time or energy to add them yet.  I'll probably work on this a little bit during the week, but I don't think I'll get much done until the weekend.  I hope y'all understand, but I did want to get the bug-fixed version out, at least.  I'll post the sendspace link here when it's finished uploading, but it'll only be useful if you've already downloaded all of the earlier files.

The new mesh pack: http://www.sendspace.com/file/b2maan

The new mod folder: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pod4bn

Sorry guys, Sendspace was acting werid for a while, but we're set now.

[Blitzgott]

Will the packaged version be released anytime soon?

I'm asking because it's a pain to have to reset the directory of all templates (again), since they are set to C:\ and my Freedom Force stuff is on E:\...

[BentonGrey]

Well, the inital plan was to wait until the final release to save myself the pain of re-setting all of the mesh directories, but seeing all of the voicepack work that still needs to be done for that...well....I'll think about it.  I'm plugging away at the beta this weekend, but I don't know if I really feel like tackling something so inherently painful.  You could just take the DC meshes and drop them in your custom folder temporarily.  I imagine that you'd like to avoid that, but it would be a quick fix.  It's a lot easier for me to edit and tweak everything with all my meshes in the custom folder.  I can have FFEdit open, tweak a power, then jump into CTool to check on an alternate animation without having to move files around.  If you have a hoss of a hardrive, you could even just copy all of the DC meshes and paste them into your custom folder.  Anyroad I will continue trying to provide a beta soon, although Quiet is helping me out with some different characters and strings, so it'll also be contingent on his schedule as well as my own lack of free time.

NOTE TO TESTERS:  Hey guys, please take a hard look at Dr. Light, I know nothing about him and I have a sneaking suspicion that I haven't done him justice.

[Blitzgott]

The only issue I noticed with Dr. Light is that you forgot to give him summon (megaman). Other than that, it's cool. =X