Bigass general suggestion thread- Ideas to actually improve on the game

[Pliny]

- Quake-style lightning gun
- Freeze ray (immobilizes target in a solid block of ice. the ice could perhaps reduce incoming damage by a certain factor while leaving the victim open to hits)
- Paint guns with Portal 2 / Tag style effects
- Hinge and swivel bricks (interactive bricks that basically act like doors, rotating / moving bricks placed atop it when activated. would need some sort of limits for performance)
- a weapon with damage-inflicting after-effects, like fire or poison

Cool ideas! I've actually seen some of the stuff you're talking about kinda-sorta done.
-Bushido was hosting a server yesterday with what he called a "static rifle", and when you fired it it would shoot out a short-ranged continuous blast of energy (or else I'm mangling it up and you'd best ask Bushido).
-A freeze ray would definitely be possible, as it was done in some guy's spell pack where you could freeze players solid!
-Paint guns could possibly be done utilizing a script similar to that of the Portal Gun add-on: wherever you shoot, a 6x6 square of emitters would be placed, and an effect is applied to the area. However, it'd be tough to do multiple, as the emitter would have to cover multiple bricks to really work and it could lag up servers. On the other hand, look at Space Guy's Laser Pointer for an example of something like this being done effectively. In fact, the 4-second fade of the Laser Pointer could be applied to such an item, and so prevent it from being too spammy.
-Hinge and swivel/turntable bricks would be really tough to do, as bricks now are kinda like fixed world objects or something and cannot really be made to 'move'. However, perhaps this could be done as an item that works a little like Truce's Buildable Vehicle by not actually using bricks but invisible bots/models with hidden nodes that you can reveal and color. Problems could arise, though, from  the fact that the model will always take up a certain amount of space (all the nodes are still there, just hidden). However, this too might be averted by simply using lots of different shapes and sizes of nodes for different item collision boxes. Even then though, hinges would be difficult.
-This has actually been done many times before, like in the Molotov, but having a more straightforward weapon like this'd be nice. Bushido has also done this and a flamethrower with afterburn was on his server yesterday.

Vehicle physics!
Improved brick physics - stop them from going through things!

With Vehicle physics it's kind of an engine limitation and it can't be gotten rid of. Brick physics I don't know about.

[Ad Bot]

[Tophius]

oh i didn't mean the hinge and swivel bricks would allow for total freedom of movement / rotation, i'm well aware that kind of stuff is, for all intents and purposes, impossible, haha. what I meant is that they'd work sort of like buildable doors, where activating them would make all the bricks undergo 90 degree rotation, so they'd still be aligned to the brick grid. kind of like duplicating a structure and rotating it.

i had actually made some decent progress on the paint guns, at least as far as the visuals go. the initial idea was to use a long-term explosion effect as the paint splatter, but obviously that started to lag players even with a relatively short lifetime. the compromise we came up with was to make the projectile spawn a short-term "splatter" brick, that worked sort of like a zone brick. we never did get to the point of implementing it, though.

really cool that some of these ideas have actually been tried out / worked on. at least we know that means they're feasible in some sense. though i should've figured that after-burn type stuff has already been done, kind of the most obvious one :P

[Pliny]

Ah, sorry about all that. Thanks though!

[Bushido]

the static beam is basically a flamethrower without afterburn, but with ludicrously fast projectiles and higher damage

it's basically for close-range forgetin up of single dudes, rather then crowd control



freeze rays would probably completely destroy the breakneck pace that blockland is so good for and i really dont like the idea of being able to increase someone's ability to defend against your attacks at all, so let's

let's not do that



FIRE effects on the other hand are super rad and more guns should have them

[BluetoothBoy]

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.

[Port]

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

[BluetoothBoy]

Very true. Another thing related to vehicle properties:

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=201933

Good stuff, Port. I might make that client-side shifter if I have time to get around to it. ;)

[Zeblote]

With Vehicle physics it's kind of an engine limitation and it can't be gotten rid of. Brick physics I don't know about.

Oh this is an add-on only thread?

[Pliny]

Oh this is an add-on only thread?

Nah. With what BluetoothBoy and Port were discussing, it actually DOES seem feasible now. I'll add your suggestion in. Sorry 'bout that if I came off as rude.

[Pliny]

Bump?

EDIT: Adding some stuff to OP, been messing around with bot events, must update.

[Orion]

we desperately need a bot event but it's hard to explain

i'd like to be able to fight a bot and randomly during the fight (with events) the bot will move to a predetermined area, switch weapons, gain health, change appearance, etc., without having to respawn + change events or use timers.

i think it would be close to an onrelay with a bot output. is this possible?

[Pliny]

we desperately need a bot event but it's hard to explain

i'd like to be able to fight a bot and randomly during the fight (with events) the bot will move to a predetermined area, switch weapons, gain health, change appearance, etc., without having to respawn + change events or use timers.

i think it would be close to an onrelay with a bot output. is this possible?

So basically what you want is for bricks to be able to send commands via relay to bot holes?

[Pliny]

Bump. Should I stop bumping?

[BluetoothBoy]

Ok, so I was thinking; we have some pretty good modders in the BL community. But hardly anyone releases a fun, feature rich addon that's not a tool. For example, the duplicator has a ton of options, but... It's just a building tool. It doesn't add dynamics or extra customization to gameplay. However, things like my vehicular impact damage support add something new and interesting to the game (not bragging or anything, just the only addon I could think of off the top of my head). While it's not really feature rich, it adds something to the game that, as far as I know, never existed before. This is what we need to add to BL to keep it always new and exciting. Quality over quantity, basically. Great if you can do both; more power to yah. Got an idea for an exciting addon? Then make it! Think of an awesome new feature later on that could be added? Then don't hesitate to make it a feature! Addons are likely half of the driving force behind Blockland's continued gameplay.

Disclaimer: Not saying stop making single feature addons. We still need bricks, sounds, skyboxes, normal vehicles, etc. We should just all leave our minds a bit more open to what can be accomplished in Blockland. It is a sandbox game, after all. :)

[heedicalking]

Vehicle collision is improved when you use a custom collision DTS. I've remade all the default large cubes to use one and they work a whole lot better. now on my TDM people don't fall through the ground as often.