Piles of suggestions and ideas to make Blockland a little easier or more fun to play. Basically your run-of-the-mill suggestion thread, but bigger! Please tell me if any of these are available or default already.
BOTSCurrent bots are pretty great but inflexible in certain respects. Bot combat AI cannot be changed, bots can't operate any kind of bot turret, and bots don't prioritize event commands when hostile in minigames. Bots also fire weapons at fixed rates, cannot be modified in terms of health (thank datablocks for that one), and certain weapons and items do not work with them (granted, this can be seen as a fault of the items themselves). Here's some stuff I thought might help:
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Changeable AI: Bots always behave in a certain way when hostile to anything; they flank and shoot. What I'm suggesting is that there be more options available for aggressive bot behavior. Instead of the constant flank-shoot-flank-shoot of current bots, bots could have eventable-selectable options for how they behave. For example, a spawned aggressive bot could be made to run straight at enemy players while firing as fast as it could, or it could be made to stand still and take potshots at targets. Bots could also hopefully be made to behave in certain manners according to range or health, e.g. how far away a player is for the bot to start shooting (this is different from detection), or how to behave (fight/flight) when on low or high health, or just what to do upon spotting any kind of hostile.
Possible AI choices could include:
-running (towards target(s))
-flanking
-retreating
-jumping (w/ frequency)
-crouching (at what frequency and for how long)
-staying put
-firing (and at what frequency)
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Event/command priority: For the most part this already exists. People tend to complain that bots don't behave properly when in minigames, but that's because they are
set to a hostile team, and bots prioritize either running away (to save themselves) or attacking when a hostile is detected. Setting a bot to 'friendly' or 'neutral' in a minigame will make the bot obey its events normally-up until anything the bot identifies as hostile arrives, at which point the bot either tries to attack it or it runs away if it doesn't have a weapon. This would be an event (presumably a checkbox) that determines whether or not the bot prioritizes event orders or its own AI under certain circumstances.
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Extended general events:
-Swapping seats in vehicles.
-Establishing individual players/clients/vehicles/other bots as targets to attack, follow, or run away from, regardless of the bot's team. Kind of doable by default w/ multiple events.
-When to use jets/jet-button-based abilities, and for how long. (you can kinda-sorta do this with playGesture but it is not as flexible as it could be)
-An 'onbotreachbrick' extension that would allow bots to behave as if they'd been ordered to the brick by an event. Useful for if a bot evented to sit wanders off, and then returns and stands up for the rest of its life until respawned. This event would allow you to order the bot to sit down again, without ever having touched the brick.
-How to react when a player, bot, or vehicle is detected. Basically just an input for when a player, vehicle, or bot is detected, this would allow players to manipulate what bots actually do when they spot anything. (e.g. bot spots vehicle, plays emote X/goes to vehicle. Could be extended for use on "attack individuals" and whatnot or for forcing bots to stay still when attacking.)
-Bot travel behavior. Also kinda ties in with the AI suggestion: right now, bots now usually try to circle around obstacles when they can't get to something they want to reach. Now you can tell the bot how to try and go about this, via jumping, strafing, walking straight, etc.
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Bot-on-bot action!: Bots now cannot operate bot-based turret vehicles or vehicles with click-based gun functionality, so if there were a way to get bots to behave properly when confronted with these, it might be pretty useful.
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General functionality:
-Bot inventories and events for management of said inventory
-Togglable bot zombification
-Better click-to-charge detection (e.g. always charging the Spear fully)
-Toggleable bot emotes when hostile in combat/minigames (unless this is already default, hostile bots will emote even if disabled.)
-An option for server hosts to let player bots stay regardless of whether the owner is present or not.
-Changeable hard limits for non-admin player bots, to go with the suggestion above, and thus preventing spam.
-Events for bots in vehicles (handbrake, key functions, etc.). May already be doable via playGesture.
-Zombie bot variants w/ brick fakekilling capability (V8 bots kill bricks outright).
-Detection/utility/event input for bots opening doors and similar content (e.g. onBotOpenDoor/onBotActivate), since bots can currently open default doors by themselves. Somewhat already present in onOpenDoor.
-A general event for bots to board vehicles and non-turret bot vehicles? I'm not entirely sure on this one as you can just order a bot to jump prior to it reaching a vehicle spawn.
-Outputs for attacking/running away from individual players/bots regardless of team affiliation.
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Another thing with the bots: Remove some of the checks in the script that search for a spawn brick or a minigame owner.
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Bots are also dead-accurate with their aiming. You should be able to adjust how good their aim is.
-Events to order bots/bot holes to perform certain actions from non-bot hole bricks?
-Event input to detect what gesture a bot has used last?
-Event to cancel any recent bot orders, similarly to cancelEvents?
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VEHICLESJust some suggestions for the community on vehicles. Honestly these aren't very clever or at all necessary.
-Raycast weaponry vehicles: Back a couple versions when the ScatteredSpace dogfight was all the rage, one unique vehicle came from their server: a combat capable mini biplane! It had mounted weapons in the form of two raycast guns that allowed it to effectively engage other targets in the air. Another vehicle like this could be fun for everyone.
-Generic treaded carrier: While its great to have tanks, treads aren't only used on 'em. A generic crawler sort of vehicle (imagine a traditional snow rescue vehicle) could be fun, but god knows what use would come of it besides it existing. On the other hand, it doesn't introduce much new to BL, besides some civilian treads.
-Generic bot boats: We have a rowboat, sure, inflatables of all kinds,, sure, but a true speedboat? Nope. A bot speedboat vehicle would probably be simple to make, just a little faster than the rowboat, with some seats and a motor. That's it. Again this isn't much of a 'new' suggestion and it's basically just a resized and reorganized rowboat.
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EVENTSSome event suggestions for all the coders.
-Variable conditional events- again? I have no idea what happened to these, as far as I know Destiny/Zazk0Wack0 was working on another version of 'em, but they seem to have disappeared. Is anything going on? One thing that I would ask for regarding these is a fixed manual and easier use, 'cus VCE was pretty complex.
-Node hiding/unhiding events? I'm not sure whether or not this already exists..
EDIT: See post by Gen. Hothauser
-I know Orion up there wouldn't mind it, is it possible to have a camera brick that pans? Me thinks this would look nice for cutscenes.
-I know this is floating around somewhere in a private folder or whatver, I would love a favorites bar for an event brick. However I know that this is very exploitable to those troublemakers, so maybe a restriction to its availiability. I already am certain an environment favorites bar exists.
-OnVehicleTouch got lost somewhere me thinks, although PlayerEnterZone is an alright alternative. Also I wouldn't mind having a "setvehicle" thingie (excuse my broadness here), I love to make bots transform into vehicles but that's restricted to playertypes.
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WEAPONS/ITEMSSome weapon and tool ideas.
-A port of Ephialte's flamethower?
-A proper port of Kaje's AutoLauncher? I managed to get one and fix it up a bit. If you want it shoot me a PM.
-A boomerang? In an attempt to bring something new to the table, this'd basically be a weapon with a projectile that has a pre-set trajectory, moving in only a certain range and then returning to the player (or at least its starting point?). It could probably be picked up and dropped like the sports items.
-More non-generic-generic weapons. C'mon! A machine gun? A rifle? Really? When's the last time any of these brought a mechanic that WASN'T reloading to the table? Look at stuff like the Flak Cannon with its two modes, the Shotgun with its bullet spread, the Old School Rifle with scoping? Don't bring weapons, bring mechanics! For example, take the
Buster Gun. Its main thing isn't that it's a shotgun, but that it uses actual damage falloff- the further away the target is, the less damage is dealt.
It's introducing a new and previously unseen mechanic. Think about
Kaje's Minigun or
Double-Barrel Shotgun. When they came out, they were- and still are- unique weapons. Kaje's minigun needs spinup, the double-barrel is a two-stage gun. When's the last time you've seen something with new mechanics? If it's not mechanics, then think about role and purpose- Take Tier+Tactical for instance. However much people don't like it, when you strip away the skins (which Bushido himself said are all basically the same gun), you get a LOT of different weapons in the different tiers,
each with a different individual role and purpose on the field. This doesn't just apply to weapons! Think about tools and items! The Hookshot, the Gravity gun(s), the Portal Gun- New stuff! Try it, maybe.
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THE GAMEGeneral suggestions for the game itself besides bots.
-Support for lights on non-rendered bricks?
-Extended environmental control. See
this thread, and
this thread by Mr. Nobody.
-A general default events and bots guide. Since people seem to have trouble with both of them sometimes, some guides could be good for everyone.
-More default builds with examples of terrain made with [GSF]Ghost's bricks. Hopefully with more than one type of ramp involved!
-Default implementation of GSF's 4x terrain bricks?
-More default builds with the Sports items
-Delete keybinds set for add-ons automatically if the add-on is removed from the game. Probably shouldn't when said keybind is shared with a default function, though.
-Even more minigame events (e.g. triggers for when rounds start, end, etc.).
-Support for leaving camera events when used without events to return the player's camera to normal.
-Avatar options for having feet and skirt parts at the same time
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tutorial should be updated
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Vehicle physics!
Improved brick physics - stop them from going through things!
Vehicle physics can be improved upon and made a bit better within the engine limitations if people would take the time to adjust the vehicle's datablock properly. Changing even a few of those settings can affect the performance of the vehicle drastically.
Very true. Another thing related to vehicle properties:
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=201933
- Support for more visible lights. It's been shown that it's possible but it hasn't been implemented.
Bots in vehicles have awkward aim, it seems. When the BotGoToBrick event is used, they never quite go straight at the brick, and the OnBotArrive event is triggered for bots in vehicles from a grater distance away than when a bot is walking. Somehow fix this.
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TL;DR doop doop brockrand suxe hers som sugestons!11!11
A lot of these suggestions may be pretty bad or else generic in the extreme. However, I kinda feel like some just might be useful. Tell me what you think, and leave suggestions of your own, 'cus some of these are suggestions that I'd like added to the game itself. Thanks for reading.
Also, I realize I probably should have said that most of this obviously won't go into the game. If someone picks 'em up, great! If not, then it's still something to discuss.
Poll