New game modes coming soon!

Hi all!

A major update to UfoPilot 2 : The Phadt Menace has just been released, including a reworked menu, new Arcade game mode (with global highscores of course!), as well as fixes to the existing game modes.

Please see my previous post for details, as most of those things are in effect. Official information will be posted in the next newsletter.

Thanks for your support!

Ok. I love it!
I'll just blurt out whatever comes to my mind:

When I first started to play I thought Arcade Mode would have some sort of score-table at the end of each level, where bonuses and penalties were given or deducted for a ton of things, like: shots fired, pilots killed, time spent, lives lost etc. This was not the case. And as I kept playing, I realized I had no idea how you'd approached the balance/score-issues here.

I really like the game and the challenge, even from playing it for the first time, but here are some issues:

- The game is based on the Classic Mode and will (eventually, when a lot of players have spent a lot of time playing it) have some sort of end, or ugly thresholds where you either get like 50.001, 50.002 [i]or[/i] 186.056 or 186.0057 points, depending on if you live through [i]that[/i] particular level. As it's presented now it's obvious I'm not playing a genuinely designed hiscore game. [i]But[/i], on the other hand, playing the original levels and competing against others is a lot of fun!

- It isn't endless (I don't know for sure yet), but that doesn't have to be a problem. (It has to rool without ending?)

- Another problem is that you (though I'm not sure) can get 1 billion points at Level 1 or 2 by simply shooting a poor Gun enough times. Yes, you'd have to have a couple of days or weeks to spare, but it's possible as long as they keep giving you 100 points each time. (You can charge your upgrades the same way in every level, you just have to find a nice (and boring) spot..)

- Some prisons/pillboxes are really impossible to collect due to the Arcade Mode-respawning. (I know there is no such thing as "luck" for a truly skilled player in a non-random game, but keeping track of 6-7 respawning Guns, Tanks and Sams you have to shoot together with 5 scattered pilots you mustn't shooot, in a crowded space, just seems impossible.)

- Bug/problem?: When I got to the next "world" (from Caledonia to..erm.. don't remember the name) all my upgrades disappeared. With no upgrades, I lost ALL lives in one level :cry:

I know these issues can be complicated to deal with, as they are based on fundamental design. But I believe a score-table approach, where you get points deducted from shots fired, time spent and so on - and points gained from pilots rescued etc. would give another result (although you'd have to playtest everything a lot to get a grip on how may points to give/deduct).

Moreover, I'm thinking about score versus upgrades in this mode. Perhaps [i]score[/i] (in Arcade Mode) is reward enough? Like, you always start with a certain upgrades setup (perhaps different for each level, but always the same in each level?) and if you rescue pilots or shoot enemies you score, if you don't you don't get any points? This would eliminate the "Ok, I lost a life on level N'th, I better give up as I have NO chance against these UFO's and Sams anyhow."

Also, after an enemy is destroyed once, it won't yield any more points nor upgrades, though it may respawn. And I would go through the levels one more time to find "impossible" places. Perhaps enemies at certain places can have a longer respawn time? (So they're at least [i]nearly[/i] impossible?)

As in every other popular game, eventually you'll have hiscores impossible to beat - but at least they couldn't be beaten by a player that kept shooting Guns at level 2, and I believe the scores would be based on memory, speed, training and general dedication. Like - there are only 30 levels and you have to really master them all, in all aspects, to have chance.

All in all, I'm looking forward to more comments and a future update! Keep rooling!

[quote="samplerInfo"]
- The game is based on the Classic Mode and will (eventually, when a lot of players have spent a lot of time playing it) have some sort of end, or ugly thresholds where you either get like 50.001, 50.002 [i]or[/i] 186.056 or 186.0057 points, depending on if you live through [i]that[/i] particular level. As it's presented now it's obvious I'm not playing a genuinely designed hiscore game. [i]But[/i], on the other hand, playing the original levels and competing against others is a lot of fun!
[/quote]

I admit I'm really hung over right now , but I don't really understand what you're getting at here. Do you mean that since there is only so much to shoot and rescue on each level, there will be a kind of "quantization" effect to the scores that people get?

[quote="samplerInfo"]
- It isn't endless (I don't know for sure yet), but that doesn't have to be a problem. (It has to rool without ending?)
[/quote]

Correct, it runs thru the same levels that the Classic mode does. There is an ending that is worth seeing (it took a long time to code and compose )

[quote="samplerInfo"]
- Another problem is that you (though I'm not sure) can get 1 billion points at Level 1 or 2 by simply shooting a poor Gun enough times. Yes, you'd have to have a couple of days or weeks to spare, but it's possible as long as they keep giving you 100 points each time. (You can charge your upgrades the same way in every level, you just have to find a nice (and boring) spot..)
[/quote]

I was initially worried about that too, but I'm not sure that it's a "real" problem, because powerups don't respawn. This means that eventually you will have taken all the Armor powerups, and rescued all the pilots you can without triggering the level change. Enemies will continue to shoot you, and you will eventually get hit enough to force you to leave or lose a life.

For the crazy people who still want to push it, well, I think that they will really deserve the scores that they will get

[quote="samplerInfo"]
- Some prisons/pillboxes are really impossible to collect due to the Arcade Mode-respawning. (I know there is no such thing as "luck" for a truly skilled player in a non-random game, but keeping track of 6-7 respawning Guns, Tanks and Sams you have to shoot together with 5 scattered pilots you mustn't shooot, in a crowded space, just seems impossible.)
[/quote]

I haven't noticed that myself, but I haven't played really extensively either. I'm sure it's down to skill in general (a lot of people find the control scheme in UP2 to be impossible).

Of course, Arcade mode is a "blatant" re-use of the existing levels, and I'm sure that some of them aren't entirely appropriate.

However, I'm sure that the respawn times need to be tweaked. Come to think of it, this is sort of like Nightmare mode in Doom...

[quote="samplerInfo"]
- Bug/problem?: When I got to the next "world" (from Caledonia to..erm.. don't remember the name) all my upgrades disappeared. With no upgrades, I lost ALL lives in one level :cry:
[/quote]

I will look into this.

[quote="samplerInfo"]
I know these issues can be complicated to deal with, as they are based on fundamental design. But I believe a score-table approach, where you get points deducted from shots fired, time spent and so on - and points gained from pilots rescued etc. would give another result (although you'd have to playtest everything a lot to get a grip on how may points to give/deduct).
[/quote]

I understand what you're getting at here, but I'm not very keen on actually deducting points from the player, that's not very nice

One of my favorite arcade games, Rygar, has a time limit on each level, and when that runs out Death comes for you. It is possible to avoid death, but it is hard, and it kind of pushes you to leave the level. I was considering something similar here, but couldn't really figure out all the details of how this might work.

Also, due to the fact that you HAVE to leave the levels (as explained above) before you die, I think there is a natural push (to leave) already.

[quote="samplerInfo"]
Moreover, I'm thinking about score versus upgrades in this mode. Perhaps [i]score[/i] (in Arcade Mode) is reward enough? Like, you always start with a certain upgrades setup (perhaps different for each level, but always the same in each level?) and if you rescue pilots or shoot enemies you score, if you don't you don't get any points? This would eliminate the "Ok, I lost a life on level N'th, I better give up as I have NO chance against these UFO's and Sams anyhow."
[/quote]

My main idea behind the upgrade setup in Arcade was to emulate what happens in Rygar, in that the longer you play and survive, eventually you will have all the powerups (there are 5 in Rygar). When you die in Rygar, you lose them all, and yes, it is brutally punishing.

I agree that perhaps losing all powerups in UP2 is TOO punishing now, because indeed the difference between being "all red" and "all blue" is very big. Maybe this is just down to the upgrade score interval? Should it be lower, so you get upgraded quicker?

[quote="samplerInfo"]
Also, after an enemy is destroyed once, it won't yield any more points nor upgrades, though it may respawn. And I would go through the levels one more time to find "impossible" places. Perhaps enemies at certain places can have a longer respawn time? (So they're at least [i]nearly[/i] impossible?)
[/quote]

I don't really like the idea of having the enemies not yield any more points. My intention with respawn is essentially that the action stays constant; one of my biggest beefs with the flow of things in Classic mode is that there is a kind of "boring cleanup" phase at the end of each level, when you just rescue pilots and most of the enemies are dead.

[quote="samplerInfo"]
As in every other popular game, eventually you'll have hiscores impossible to beat - but at least they couldn't be beaten by a player that kept shooting Guns at level 2, and I believe the scores would be based on memory, speed, training and general dedication. Like - there are only 30 levels and you have to really master them all, in all aspects, to have chance.
[/quote]

We'll have to see what the highscores are like in a month

Thanks so much for your feeback! As usual you have a lot to say about game design issues

Some thoughts:

1. In the score-table-at-end-of-level example, you don't necessarily have to [i]deduct[/i] points from the player - rather [i]give[/i] the player more or less points after each level depending on how good he/she did in the different areas.

2. I don't agree that "pushing it" should be equal to how many hours or days you spend camping on level 2. Pushing it, for me, is when you play the game over and over again a million times with a number of player skills involved. I'm a speedrunning freak and I know how insanely much time some people will spend refining their skills to beat a certain game to get the world record. UP2 disqualifies itself for any serious competition as long as the "camping" alternative exists.

3. Introducing Time, although I don't like Time in general, could solve the problem of "camping" as well as add a new dimension to Arcade. Time could perhaps be handled like this:

You have a certain amount of time on each level, but so much of it you can fly [i]really[/i] slow, shoot everything several times etc. In essence, you don't need to worry about it (unless you camp, of course).

At the end of each level, you get a few bonus points for how much time there's left - slightly more than the points you'd gained from camping (not much). For experienced players competing for hiscore, Time will be a factor because of this bonus, but you don't need to worry about it if you've just started playing.

I'm definitely not sure about this, but at least it's another approach than the "enemies only give points the first time you shoot them".

I like freelancer's idea of just losing some of the upgrades, that might solve the issue (i.e. you lose half of them).

Another way might be to have the upgrades stick around as pickups at the site of your last death, so you can go back and get them. This might however be too hard, depending on where you died and the enemy concentration there, etc.

Yet another idea is to have score be awarded per hit on an enemy instead of per kill like it is now. This might allow you to get your upgrades back faster.

Lastly, maybe one-shot-one-kill might work in Arcade mode (for all enemies), but maybe that will make it too easy instead.

I will experiment! If you have any other ideas I would love to hear them; as samplerinfo pointed out, this isn't really designed to be an arcade game from the start, so this will probably take some creative tweaking to get right.

I finally got around to trying some of the proposed Arcade Mode fixes.

I have implemented score per hit on enemies, 10 points on stationary and 50 points on mobile. This seems, at least for me, to offset the punishment of being killed somewhat. As long as you're careful for a bit, it is quite possible to come back from a death.

On the later levels of Xenus things did indeed get quite hard, even when I was fully upgraded. The levels with lots of sam sites are very intense, which is great because intensity is what I was shooting for in Arcade Mode, but there is still the issue of it maybe being a bit too hard overall.

Shields are now very important, since they update can now kill enemies on contact (implemented in last update, did I mention this?).

However, maybe the whole idea of gaining upgrades from score is a bit counterproductive to the whole idea of keeping the action level high. Perhaps we should just have the player maxed out at all times, just like Time Attack Mode?

Please test the new update and tell me what you think!

Yes indeed, maybe it's just time to observe the following:

"features are emergent from rules"

which means that if I'm not getting the features/gameplay that I want, then my rules suck and need to be changed