Arcade Game?

Renegade 13 · #1 September 30th, 2003, 12:36 AM

The game must run differently on different systems. On my machine the speed is just fine. Cutting it back by 4X would make the game unplayable. Although I do agree that the turn rate should be reduced, maybe by 30-50%?? (Especially for the destroyer

) But this is just me and it sounds like quite a few of you are having some trouble with this, so good luck!

Phoenix-D · #2 September 30th, 2003, 12:49 AM

4x was probably overkill, but I did it that big so I could be absolutely sure it was working, without needing to do extensive testing.

DeadZone · #3 September 30th, 2003, 05:09 AM

IMHO Game speed is ok for me
All it is is the turning rates that annoy me, but these are easily moddable anyway

Instar · #4 September 30th, 2003, 06:15 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Renegade 13:
The game must run differently on different systems. On my machine the speed is just fine. Cutting it back by 4X would make the game unplayable. Although I do agree that the turn rate should be reduced, maybe by 30-50%?? (Especially for the destroyer ) But this is just me and it sounds like quite a few of you are having some trouble with this, so good luck!

Well, it does run differently, with different frames/sec, but the game is supposed to scale with that I think.

PvK · #5 September 30th, 2003, 06:53 PM

Yes, the speed of gameplay is (should be) the same on different-speed processors. The frame rate suffers on slower ones. If on a really slow system game events actually take longer, then that's a bug and/or a system that isn't strong enough to run the game properly.

I don't think the game will ever run faster than designed on a faster computer, though. It should just have a higher frame rate. Again, if that's not the case, then it's a bug.

However, I would agree that the default game as designed runs quite fast, resulting in almost arcade-like gameplay. Many players don't seem to mind, but I think that it's designed to be more of a "Diablo in space" action/strategy game, than a large ship simulator. Apparently it's designed to make manual piloting, keeping the enemy in view, and making instant decisions, part of the gameplay.

You can mod the game so that ships are slower pretty easily, as Phoenix-D did. However it will take more work to adjust the balance appropriately, in terms of times allowed to complete missions, and the difficulty of fighting enemy ships when you no longer have the major obstacle of trying to figure out what is going on and decide what to do in a fraction of a second.

PvK

Instar · #6 September 30th, 2003, 09:48 PM

I remember games that actually did not scale up or down based on how fast the system could run. You need an emulator (I use Kickstart) to run Doom nowadays.

PvK · #7 September 30th, 2003, 10:09 PM

Yes, there are games like that, particularly ones made in the 80's or early 90's, when computer speeds weren't changing all that terribly much, and games were often written to just run the gameplay as fast as possible.

Sometimes there are subtle side-effects on intermediate-era games too, like Aces Of The Deep. If you run it on a 66 MHz computer, as were good when the game came out, all is well. If you run it (or the Win95 re-hash voice command Version) on a Win95 era computer with say, 200 MHz or more, it mostly runs correctly, but suddenly the anti-aircraft guns go from being historically inaccurate, to ultra-deadly, apparently because the collision-detection is being done much more frequently.

PvK