GearHead2 v0.450

[Joseph Hewitt]

I've just uploaded v0.450 to SourceForge. There are a lot of changes this time around; I really need to make releases more often. Anyhow, on with the good stuff!

There are three big changes this time around. The first is that the enemy mecha generator has been completely rewritten. Enemies should now more closely match the PC's skill level, but since it's a new system we can expect some balance issues.

Second, the tactical arena mode has been greatly improved. There are now faction NPCs who provide mission orders and debriefings. Arena units are initially restricted to purchasing mecha from their own faction, but through missions may gain the ability to buy mecha from other factions as well. In addition, there are now skill trainers which are also gained through missions.

Third, I've added Theles Spinner. It's not complete yet- the arena didn't make it in, and there are some shops for the third level that I need to add, but it's pretty nice for what it is. There will probably be some major bugs in the tower quest.

Here's the complete list of changes. It's even bigger than last time.

- Weapons may have integral weapons as subcoms (ghweapon.pp)
A weapon may be installed inside of another weapon as long as the lower level weapon is marked with the Integral tag. This way, composite weapons can't be created or taken apart with Mecha Engineering (although the ability to create them might make a good talent). Gunswords, here we come!

- Memos always include the name of the city (arenascript.pp)
This one is really handy.

- Rumors attached to current scene will not be returned (interact.pp)
Hopefully this will quash the party-rumor-at-party issue.

- Added ReflexSystem mecha trait (ghmecha.pp)
A mecha with ReflexSystems gets a +1 bonus to combat rolls if the pilot has the matching personal combat skill at the same level.

- If characters or mecha lost in ArenaMode, team renown reduced (gh2arena.pp)
- Props have an armor rating (gearutil.pp)
- Added arena mode skill schooling (gh2arena.pp)
- Increased cost of HYPER weapons (ghweapon.pp)
- Remove software menu should now give correct info (backpack.pp)
- Lancemates should no longer talk to animals and props (aibrain.pp)
- Added UNREGULATED special tag for scenes (services.pp)
- Changed the way missile prices calculated (ghweapon.pp)
- Removed blast/hyper ammo premium, added mass penalty (ghweapon.pp)
- Improved the shuttle destination menu (services.pp)
- Added \FACTION_DESIG message formatting command (arenascript.pp)
- Recalibrated the threat/renown curve (ability.pp)
- Dungeon difficulcy level now stored in scene Type attribute (navigate.pp)
- Fixed crash when restoring from world map (arenaplay.pp)
- Rebalanced chatting mechanics (interact.pp)
- Reduced ArenaHQ item sale price (gh2arena.pp)
- Added EXPERIMENTAL weapon tag (ghweapon.pp)
- Fixed Renown/Morale bugs (ability.pp)
- Locked doors generally less hard to open (randmaps.pp)
- Added charge attack (effects.pp)
- Crashing should now work (action.pp)
- Swarm missiles should no longer misfire (effects.pp)
- Swarm AtOp now calculated correctly (effects.pp)
- Reworked dynamic encounters; may now assign enemy faction (arenascript.pp)
- Removed LoadD, TStockD commands (arenascript.pp)
- Reward command based on Renown, not Threat (arenascript.pp)
- WMecha command now takes Renown, Strength as parameters (wmonster.pp)
- Enemy mecha generated based on Renown and Strength (wmonster.pp)
- Fixed possible overflow problem with XP awards (ability.pp)
- Script debugging messages always active (arenascript.pp)
- NPC skill training uses SetSkillsAtLevel (gearparser.pp)
- Removed GAbsoluteLevel command (arenascript.pp)
- All context tags should be five characters long
- Scene context includes faction of current scene (randmaps.pp)
- Core story macro names use "NPC" instead of "Char" (corestorystub.txt)
- Storage module ammo explosions don't cause overkill (action.pp)
- SelectSpotInFeature won't place gears on obstacles (randmaps.pp)
- Flying mecha don't make wide turns on oversized maps (movement.pp)
- Arena units may earn additional mecha sources (gh2arena.pp)
- Conversation bonus happens sooner in Arena mode (gh2arena.pp)
- Arena mission element search "Key" returns core enemy faction (playwright.pp)
- Added GAlterContext, AddDebriefing ASL commands (arenascript.pp)
- Element search "." selects root scene when called from quest (playwright.pp)
- RandomMecha prize reported in ArenaHQ debriefing (arenascript.pp)
- Start of turn message in ASCII tactics mode focuses on chacter (arenacfe.pp)
- Character generator access error fixed (chargen.pp)
- Changed the way arena missions are initialized (playwright.pp)
- HasSkill function now correctly deals with arena units (ability.pp)
- ArenaHQ mecha start with faction colors (gh2arena.pp)
- Arena units may only buy mecha belonging to allowed factions (gh2arena.pp)
- ArenaHQ personalities report information following mission (gh2arena.pp)
- Added Mission Report numeric attributes (locale.pp)
- Added faction personalities for arena mode (gh2arena.pp)
- Arena units will be checked for complete set of factions at loading (gh2arena.pp)
- Arachnoids can jump like zoanoids (movement.pp)
- Added default sprite for hoverfighters (glmap.pp)
- Memos, News, and Email get alphabetically sorted (arenascript.pp)
- Memes automatically get frozen (playwright.pp)
- Memes must be declared as Prefab elements, use NID (arenascript.pp)
- Starting a performance from backpack exits the menu (backpack.pp)
- Changed how character generator examines context (chargen.pp)
- NPCs may spontaneously surrender if health is extremely low (arenacfe.pp)

Try it out and let me know what you think. I'm particularly happy with arena mode; it needs more reward missions, but between the rewards and the faction personalities it's really feeling like a real game.

[Burzmali]

Looks good at first blush.  I'll be adding any bugs I find to the bug tracker on the Sourceforge page.  For example: Bug Tracker

Do you check the bug tracker regularly, or should I leave a note here when I add some?

[Joseph Hewitt]

I'll start checking the bug tracker regularly. It seems to be a useful thing, so I might as well learn to use it.

Regarding the "Weapons not limited" bug, any weapon can be equipped but a weapon which is too large causes an attack penalty. The message has been reworded to hopefully make things clear.

The new message is: You will need two hands to use this weapon without a penalty.

This message isn't perfect. Actually, you don't need two hands, you need one free hand in addition  to whatever you're holding the weapon with.

[Albijoe]

You could say "this weapon needs a free hand to be wielded properly."  (or to aim properly, or to handle properly, or anything similar)  (if mounting points work, replace "hand" with "mount" and all the gearheads here will understand, I expect.)


Personal questions on this:
  Is it one free hand total for all weapons like this (which lends itself to abuse), or one free hand per weapon of this type?

  Do mounting points count as "hands" in this case, allowing a torso mount & an arm mount to work together, for example?

[Joseph Hewitt]

It's one free hand total for all the weapons like this, which isn't as abusive as you'd think. Characters can usually only carry one other weapon anyway (although with armor mounted and harness mounted weapons they can have more), and mecha which are big enough to mount a lot of guns are also big enough to fire most of them single-handed.

Mounting points don't count as hands for the purpose of steadying a heavy weapon.

[macksting]

But you can hold a two-handed rifle on one arm if it's clipped to a mounting point and hold the forward handle with your hand?
'Cause that's a frickin' awesome visual for a mech.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Yes, you can do that. You just can't string a weapon between two mounting points. The Overkill Savin's heavy railguns are carried this way.

[The Lone Badger]

The new version hangs for me when I try to start a new campaign. The 'just a minute' screen comes up and does not go away.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Crud... it didn't do that for me when I tried before, but I just tried now and the program froze. I tried it again and got through. My guess is that the quest generator is capable of getting stuck in some kind of endless loop.

The program freeze doesn't seem to be very common; I just restarted about ten times and it didn't happen again. Try starting a few more times and tell me how it is for you. It would be easier to activate windowed mode for this so you can just click the window shut if it hangs for more than a few minutes.

I'll add something to the quest generator so that quest generation will automatically fail after some large number of tries, say 100 quest components. If the problem lies there this should fix things.

[dPB]

This happens for me as well. Could it be because I tried to start in Theles? or because I didn't choose a faction when I made my character? It always seems to happen when I try to make my character but it has let me through a few times when I randomly generated a char. The random chars that did make it through were not in Theles (at least I think so) and were all part of a faction.

[Keiseth]

I can report the loading screen freeze here, too. Tried it again with the exact same character and I got through. Otherwise everything is great so far!

[Burzmali]

Per the weapon discussion, I have submitted a feature request to add a balance modifier that increases or reduces the mass of a weapon for the purposes of determining the Firing_Weight of a weapon.

[The Lone Badger]

It happens a lot (about half a dozen times in a row at first), but not as it turns out every time.

[Albijoe]

On two-handed weapons:

(Pre-)first, I have not played the game in a while, so I'm going off of logic and not so much game mechanics.

  Upon reflection, even if someone did carry every 2H weapon known to man, at any scale, they would weigh themselves down to the point of death.  That balances any serious issues that could come up.

  On "looks" issue, I still think it would make more sense to have each weapon need "two mounts/hands", to stop units from looking like a one-man band of weapons, each sticking out of somewhere & waiting to be fired...

[Joseph Hewitt]

There seems to be some magic afoot... it appears that the game usually (though not always) hangs when creating a new character when starting the RPG campaign, but it usually (though not always) works when loading a character from disk.

Weird. There shouldn't be any difference between the two cases. Maybe there's not- I am dealing with a pretty small number of tries, after all. The freeze appears to be happening in the world generation procedure, which takes a character gear (either freshly generated or loaded from disk) as a parameter. There shouldn't be any difference between the two character sources as far as StartCampaign is concerned.

The program isn't leaking memory during this freeze, which indicates to me that it's not simply a case of the quest generator getting stuck in an endless sequence of quest components.

I'm going to try disabling some things in the campaign file and see if they make any difference. It may be that something in Theles Spinner is causing the problem.

On a more positive note, what do you think of the changes made to Arena Mode?

ETA- Breakthrough, of a sort. Disabling the Theles Spinner ladder quest cures the lockup. I'm now pretty sure that the loop is somewhere in the quest generator, but where? It's not adding an endless string of new components and it's not bailing out when it runs out of options.

ETA2- To fix the game for now, open ATLAS_L5Pat.txt and remove line 5201, which reads "Quest2 <*:GuaranteedQuest 35>". I'll find the cause of the freeze and upload v0.451 soon.

ETA3- I've identified and fixed the problem, and also identified a separate weakness that should probably be addressed in the future. If one content label is a substring of another content label, the game will be confused. In this case, a "*THESP_Industrial" component was being loaded when a "*THESP_IndustrialSpire" component was being sought. This ambiguity is useful in some places for defining content subtypes, such as the quest rewards, but it is something that I'll need to be careful about in the future.

I'll try to post GH2v0.451 when I get home tonight. Thanks to everyone for reporting the problem.