Introversion

As it is, you can choose to have normal or 'simple' research box contents, how about some extra options? like

'Virus scanned' - speaks for itself, never have to worry about being kicked in the teeth after fighting your way to get a box with an infection in it
'Legacy tech' - Only power-ups that stared in the origional darwinia (squads, airstrikes, engineers and all that jazz)
'Reformat' - Only the must ludicrous, awwr inspiring power-ups apear, Let there be futurewinians and nukes flying everywhere! let devestation rule ^^

Not a bad idea.

The second one already exists, after a fashion: 'Basic crates only'.

Shwart!!

Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your news letter.

To explain the (EDIT: non-)sarcasm, Icepick is the main coder of the powerup crates, and he's already considered and discarded your ideas. He did months ago.
He's also very annoyed at this point by people requesting it, so I'd recommend you not bring it up again.

Shwart!!

It wasn't sarcasm.

How about a check-box which server hosts can tick off which crate drops they'll allow, and which ones they won't?

Or does IV want to maintain the rampant hair-tearing chaos that is already present in Multiwinia's crates?

It's been previously rejected.
Sorry.

Shwart!!

Kuth wrote:How about a check-box which server hosts can tick off which crate drops they'll allow, and which ones they won't?

Ooh! an even better! customisable carnage ,


Hey Shwart? just wondering why has it been rejected? it could do nothing but good to the fun of the game as far as I can see, since everyone gets the same power-ups = 3

The reason there isn't an option to direclty specify which crates are and aren't present on the level is because if that was the case, everyone would simply remove all of the bad crates from the line up. You might think this is a good thing, but it really isn't; crate drops can easily alter the flow of a game in a radical way, and there needs to be some risk to the person collecting them in order to balance this. Giving players the option to take out all of the bad crates would remove that small niggling throught that should always be in the back of their mind when they divert Multiwinians to go collect a crate.

That said, I do like your suggestion of having a number of different crate sets. That way, players can select a group of crates they want to appear in their game which will still have that slight risk. This also allows for some interesting game types; imagine a game where the only power-ups you get from crates are Meteor Showers and Infection Outbreaks. So yeah. I am more than happy to entertain the idea of a variety of crate sets for the player to choose from (and indeed, if you have any good ideas for more sets, please post them!) but directly choosing which power-ups are and aren't included just isn't going to happen.

Infection (basically all the virus related powerups, and Evilinians):

• Triffids
• Infection Outbreak
• Eggs
• Ants nests

Only problem I see is that ants nests will be near impossible to get rid of, and the balance between good and bad powerups has been shifted towards bad.

Pyrotechnics anonymous:
Napalm airstrike
Flame turrets
Meteor
Nuclear Strike
Magical trees (something to burn, after all)

Temporal anomalies:
Speed up
Slow down
Hot feet
Mega rage (?)

The day Darwinia stood still:
Futurewinians
Soul Ark
Armor
Viral outbreak
Nuclear attack
Meteor(?)

Barbarism:
Infection (they seem to fight each other...?)
Randomizer
Mega Rage
Personal shield

Smokey's desktop:
Dark Forest
Magical Forest
(both as above, random, also)
Flame turret
Napalm strike


Some of the lists seem short, but keep in mind that those powerups would appear more frequently.

The game crasher:
Crate mania

Hehehe. Some how, I doubt that last one will see the light of day.

ah ok, thanks for clarifying ice pick = )
heres a few more themed packs

Firewall:
Flame turrets
Rocket turrets
Dark forest
Randomiser ( to counter turrets without depriving the battlefield of them)
Randomiser (so to speak, twice as much randomiser as normal)
Infection, outbreak or whatever it was called (with the black 'winians
Infection (so to speak, twice as much infection as normal)

Patch:
Futurewinians
Rage
Hot feet
Mega rage
Birth explosion (or whatever that power-up to increase spawn rate for a bit was)
instant darwinians (like before, I dont' remember the name, but it gives you a whole lot of instant darwinains as soon as you open the box)
Ants nest (well, it wouldn't be a patch without adding a few bugs now would it? ;3 )
air strike (to counter ants nest)
Infection
infection