°° AMAZONAS (beta jungle) °° Bugs and suggestions

News, discussions and gossip around WOK SPECIES.

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Hannibal
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Post by Hannibal » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:49 am

Suggestions;

That box added early on, showing totals and averages, is great, gives you a sense of perspective and at least SOME sense of what's happening in the WHOLE game, rather than your isolated patch. Great.

Could it maybe add (if only for the Beta):
1) Number of herbivore species
2) Number of carnivore species
3) Total number of specimens eaten (prob hard to code?)
4) Number of specimens eaten last turn (ditto)

It would add a frisson to know that there are more and more predators out there, and add excitement that you know carnage is going on somewhere (hopefully not being the victim yourself, but at least you can subtract your own from the total and feel comforted that you're not the only one serving as someone's meal......).
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Post by Egbert » Tue Mar 23, 2004 12:32 pm

An aesthetic suggestion:

How about a picture of what we look like? It could be an amusing one, and it would change as our attributes change.
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Post by Xarfei » Tue Mar 23, 2004 1:18 pm

During the first cycle I noticed that everyone consumes # of specimens / 2 pieces of food. At the end of the cycle my # of speciemens increased to 143. It no says every step that I consume 71 food, but in fact my saturation level drops by 72 every time.

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Post by Aussie Gaz » Tue Mar 23, 2004 1:43 pm

My user name has successfully been changed to Aussie-Gaz but......

When I log in it does not show me as being in the game nor will the system allow me to log in again as it says I am already playing.

I really would like to find out how my blue scorpions are going.

AG

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Post by korexus » Tue Mar 23, 2004 1:59 pm

Xarfei wrote:During the first cycle I noticed that everyone consumes # of specimens / 2 pieces of food. At the end of the cycle my # of speciemens increased to 143. It no says every step that I consume 71 food, but in fact my saturation level drops by 72 every time.
This looks like a rounding error. If you're consuming 71.5 food then the summary could round what it says down to 71 but then round the amount of food left down from (previous amount - 71.5) which is (previous amount - 72)


That's my guess anyway.


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Post by Egbert » Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:05 pm

It seems like the game is taking too long. Perhaps it's just the excitement of playing a new game, but the skill levels, movement, etc. are just excruciatingly long. :sleeping:

Is there any way we can speed up the game, even just for the purposes of beta testing? How about a turn every 10 minutes, instead of every 15? At this rate, I will grow a beard before I grow another appendage.

Doesn't anybody like my suggestion of seeing a little picture of your character, as it develops? :( It was a serious suggestion.
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Post by korexus » Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:11 pm

It's a nice idea, Eg. I think Smashy's in charge of pictures so talk to him.

The problem would be that with all the combinations of arms/legs/body size and so on there would have to be a lot of pictures to cover them all...


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Post by gm_al » Tue Mar 23, 2004 2:56 pm

About rounding: usually all values in WOK SP are rounded down. Live with it.

@Aussie: problem fixed hopefully.

@Eg: we might increase turn speed to 10 minutes once were satisfied with the engine. Right now 15 minutes gives us more time to consider things.

About pics: we are thinking do some pics for the mobile version, but we are not too sure yet how this will affect the online version. Right now Id prefer top have a few set of pics for the jungle.

Important changes have been made:

* spying to a different square brings increased instinct return
* cycles will now happen every 48 Turns !! This means more action all the way... we had to adapt several values, and because you now see birth&death twice a day the fertilty has been halved. This also means hiscore gets updated every 48 Turns now.

Many typos etc. fixed too. More feedback coming.

Seems the engine initiated a new cycle.... so the next one will happen 48 Turns later, on Turn#216. Sorry everyone.

Were still struggling a bit to get things through, Ill keep you posted.

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Post by Dameon » Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:20 pm

I agree that things seem to be excruciatingly slow when it comes to gaining new skills and mutations. The new cycles should help, but what help even more is if the cost of everything that requires skill points was cut in half, or so. Between moving, hunting, fertility rates, instinct, and banking turns, it's hard to get enough skill points to really buy anything except over a very long and dragged out period of time.

I also think that since you halved fertility, you should halve the fertility loss from 4% to 2% each cycle. Otherwise, species are losing a lot more fertility than they were, and I feel that the fertility rates/loss was about right at the point it used to be at.
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Post by ThinKing » Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:21 pm

korexus wrote:
Xarfei wrote:During the first cycle I noticed that everyone consumes # of specimens / 2 pieces of food. At the end of the cycle my # of speciemens increased to 143. It no says every step that I consume 71 food, but in fact my saturation level drops by 72 every time.
This looks like a rounding error. If you're consuming 71.5 food then the summary could round what it says down to 71 but then round the amount of food left down from (previous amount - 71.5) which is (previous amount - 72)


That's my guess anyway.

No it isnt! Its MY guess! I suggested this exact thing to you both yesterday!! :roll:




As for Al's "live with it", well sorry Al but that just wont do. Rounding things is OK, but rounding to two DIFFERENT values is plain stupid! At least make them the same!



Here's a hint to all you players out there - go for the brain upgrade. I have Brain 2 and I am now harvesting twice as much corn. Wait, I mean "hunting twice as many plants".


I wonder how Eg is so far ahead already? Whatever he has been working on sure counts for a lot in the score....

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Post by Dameon » Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:25 pm

Sorry I did notice that the fertility loss has been halved upon looking again- my bad. And TK you are right, my corn hunting skills went up like mad with my brain upgrade, but the issue here is which upgrade you get is pretty random. The cost for mutations does go up with each level, so by managing your skill points you can prevent becoming unbalanced, but it's still a bit of a crapshoot. But then, so is mutation, so it's all good. :-)
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Post by Saladin » Tue Mar 23, 2004 4:50 pm

If breeding happens twice as often now the number of turns to by fertility should also be doubled otherwise the increase in fertility will be double that of what it was. (erg 10% fertility increase will mean 21% increase in species) per day.
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Post by gm_al » Tue Mar 23, 2004 5:41 pm

@TK: yep, BRAIN is nice... but then you should really try to plan a bit how you want to behave in the jungle and act accordingly. Mutation costs are stable now, and people can increase their chances into some direction.

Dont forget we are playing game that is supposed to run for 4+ weeks. Thats the default, we can always make it faster if we want - means also more stress, may I remind you. Try to think about how long a WOK4/5 game takes....

Now on decreasing costs for mutations.... this would lead to species that are quickly fully developed - and then what ? What we are trying is to add more new attractive skills instead. We are also working to give each species some individual start characteristics, so surealy a lot of stuff will still be changing.

@Sal: you are probably right that we need some increase for the fertility costs... I can see that now. Chris already stated that but I didnt realise it back then..... getting old. :roll:

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Post by Hamster » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:01 pm

Things from my Event log that still need to be fixed:

1)
Event log says: Hunting for *********. PAtt from 0 to 17, PDef from 0 to 10. Hunt limit: *********., but in the table where my species details are Attack points: 0 - 17 Defense points: 0 - 17. Why the difference of defence (10 and 17)?

2)
Event log from same turn:
Your instinct drops by 1% to reach 92%
Your species regain 4% instinct. You now have 93% instinct.

Yes, it was buying 4% of instinct in 5 turns, but it gave only 1% increase. I don't know if this happens only on steps, or on any other turn too.

GL, Hamster

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Post by Donut » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:13 pm

Welcome to WOK Hamster.

1. Most likely because you were on the attack, your PDEF will probably be lower in case of a counter attack. Remember, this is still a new game and with the exception of the Developement team, none of us really know anything for sure.

2. What was your Instinct before the turn. I suspect that it added the 4% to your previous instinct and then subtracted 1 from the 93%.

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Post by Hamster » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:18 pm

1. I was hunting plants in same sector I am.

2. I did a deeper check of the logs and you're right, 1st it added 4% and then lowered 1%. I need to make myself familiar from reading the logs from bottom to top :D

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Post by korexus » Tue Mar 23, 2004 10:28 pm

Welcome Hamster. New players start coming in even with the beta test, this is very good! :D

As Donut already covered one question, I'll do the other. The PATT of 0-17 is your attack points, the PDEF of 0-10 is the defense points of the plant you are hunting. Anyone who's played a WoK game before will be familiar with this setup, but maybe it's not so obvious to newcomers...

Anyway, I hope that helps you and good luck!


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Post by Strider » Wed Mar 24, 2004 5:43 am

Dev Team--

I know you have lots on your hands, but I thought I would add my two cents.

In my opinion, I'm intrigues by the game so far, but I think it really needs some more action in it. Maybe you're testing the basics of the game so far, (it's hard to know the full rammifications of everything when the rules are unknown), but it takes a lot of time just to upkeep your species's sat lvl, instinct and fertility alone without buying skill points.

Sure, strategy plays a role in this, but I think the game would be a lot more interesting if growth is easier when you're small and the costs of "upkeep" get higher when your species gets more developed. Kind of a logarithmic increase to everything instead of the seemingly linear increase in place now.

If upkeep costs are lower when you're less developed and increase later on, I think you can suck in a lot of people. It will be fun to start, because you see rapid improvement, but very challenging when you get to midgame (where the good stuff is). As it is now, just to check out mutations, I have to sacrifice a lot of upkeep because skill points take a lot of time to gather.

Just my thoughts at this time. I'll keep playing and let you know how I feel as I go.
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Post by Saladin » Wed Mar 24, 2004 9:22 am

I agree with Strider here. When your species is still small, it should be easier to keep it's instict up than when it's a bigger species.
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Post by gm_al » Wed Mar 24, 2004 9:29 am

Welcome Hamster - nice logo :P

(let me add that Hamster is one of the Siemens dev guys that will do the mobile version of Species. I suspect "Yngvarr" is the other one ?) Make sure to join us in the chat (links on main page)

* PATT and PDEF - it actually means "Power of the Attacker/Defender" and I agree its not very user-friendly for newcomers. Maybe replacing by a simple "Attacker rolls 0-17, Defender rolls 1-11" would help.

* easy buildup, harder time later on: good comment and thanks for your kind words Strider (feels good after all the fire we had to take from the ever-critic community :smash: ) I partially agree to this.... but see it this way: you start with one day of food and no ennemies to put you in danger. With lowered skill costs (and more skills) you get into the game rather quick. Later on the challenges will come - plants get scarce and hunters begin to roam the land. Your species will grow and hunger will get more predominant (as its supposed to be), even more with bigger species. Its not fully linear when you play it, but I hear your words and my intentions are in every way to make it more fun for everyone involved, beginner and advanced.

@Saladin: bigger species already face quite some drawbacks.... you shall see hopefully :twisted:

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