Introversion

This thread might get sticky'd and embraced and added to as a good idea, or it might get deleted as a really bad one, or just ignored.

Anyhugh, since like hopefully lots of you I've been playing Darwinia+ since Wednesday, I've noticed what's in and what's out compared to the PC version(s). In some cases, it's a nice new feature that someone might not be aware of. In some cases, it's missing for implicit design reasons. In some cases, it's got me scratching my head as to why, or if it's even really gone and am I just glitching. There are definitely some strategies that no longer apply.

So here's a list for you to peruse, add to, confirm or deny, update... or delete because it's detrimental to sales of the new version. You decide.

*Each item denoted with a + or - compared to the original.
*This excludes mods to maps for one reason or another. I'm not going to mention where the odd Soul Eater or Triffid has been added or moved, or control towers switched; where's the fun in that?

+: Leaderboards.
+: Funky rippling explosion effects.
+: Water reflections.
+: Third-person following camera while controlling Squads. NB: This can be toggled with the 'Y' button to a more traditional point-and-click control, but you need to zoom in and go to Camera to fire properly and use grenades or air strikes.
+: Explicit 'Move' or 'Lay turret' waypoints for Armours in Darwinia, similar to the control system in Multiwinia and toggled with the 'Y' button. The turret can also be placed on much steeper terrain than was previously allowed.
+: The area of influence of an Officer or control tower seems wider, to reduce the amount of micro required to get things done.
+: DGs are kept at a visible size irrespective of the zoom-out.
+: Friendly unit souls and control beams now glow Blue instead of Yellow in Darwinia, so they stand out better from the scenery. This also matches the blue colour of friendly data crates, so it kind of makes sense anyway.
+: Eggs now die if they land in water in Darwinia, but Virus and Ants can still swim.
+: You can now change the map with other players already connected in Multiwinia.
+: The host has the option to return all players back to the lobby for another game in Multiwinia.
+: Host migration is supported in Multiwinia in the lobby, but not in the game itself.
+: Population and score graphs at the end of a game in Multiwinia.
*: Rocket Riot renamed to Rocket Race in Multiwinia.

-: Assault mode in Multiwinia.
-: Futurewinians as a default option in Multiwinia. 'Crazy crates' can be enabled in custom/non-leaderboard matches; comparing to this list, it seems that the only 'crazy crate' is the Futurewinians.
-: The pixellation effect in Darwinia.
-: Rockets for Squads in Darwinia. However, Grenades and Airstrikes have a controller button each so can be used without operating a menu.
-: The 'Absorb' command for Officers in Darwinia. This means that Officer 4.0 does no more than Officer 3.0, and is a waste of research points.
-: Officers cannot move and issue a move command at the same time, at least not without some pot luck with the controls.
-: Configurable difficulty in Darwinia.

Greeba wrote:This thread might get sticky'd and embraced and added to as a good idea, or it might get deleted as a really bad one, or just ignored.

Anyhugh, since like hopefully lots of you I've been playing Darwinia+ since Wednesday, I've noticed what's in and what's out compared to the PC version(s). In some cases, it's a nice new feature that someone might not be aware of. In some cases, it's missing for implicit design reasons. In some cases, it's got me scratching my head as to why, or if it's even really gone and am I just glitching. There are definitely some strategies that no longer apply.

So here's a list for you to peruse, add to, confirm or deny, update... or delete because it's detrimental to sales of the new version. You decide.

*Each item denoted with a + or - compared to the original.
*This excludes mods to maps for one reason or another. I'm not going to mention where the odd Soul Eater or Triffid has been added or moved, or control towers switched; where's the fun in that?

+: Funky rippling explosion effects.
+: Water reflections.
+: Third-person following camera while controlling Squads. NB: This can be toggled with the 'Y' button to a more traditional point-and-click control, but you need to zoom in and go to Camera to fire properly and use grenades or air strikes.
+: Explicit 'Move' or 'Lay turret' waypoints for Armours in Darwinia, similar to the control system in Multiwinia and toggled with the 'Y' button. The turret can also be placed on much steeper terrain than was previously allowed.
+: Soul eaters in Darwinia now carry the souls they've eaten in their heads as they do on Multiwinia. Irrespective of this, they only leave one behind when they die.
+: The area of influence of an Officer or control tower seems wider, to reduce the amount of micro required to get things done.
+: DGs are kept at a visible size irrespective of the zoom-out.
+: Friendly unit souls and control beams now glow Blue instead of Yellow in Darwinia, so they stand out better from the scenery. This also matches the blue colour of friendly data crates, so it kind of makes sense anyway.
+: Eggs now die if they land in water in Darwinia, but Virus and Ants can still swim.

-: Assault mode in Multiwinia.
-: Futurewinians in Multiwinia.
-: The pixellation effect in Darwinia.
-: Rockets for Squads in Darwinia. However, Grenades and Airstrikes have a controller button each so can be used without operating a menu.
-: The 'Absorb' command for Officers in Darwinia (This appears to mean that Officer 4.0 does no more than Officer 2.0, and is a waste of research points).
-: Configurable difficulty in Darwinia.

Blue - Available in the newest update of Darwinia (but not in Multiwinia)
Red - WHAAA?!?!?!

Futurewinians are in D+. Seen them once. There's a specific option to turn them and only them off, even.

+ performance improvements. Seems like the game logic and rendering run in different threads; sometimes, with a lot of action, you see the DGs stutter around, but the camera is still moving smoothly.

Non-obvious changes in Multiwinia:
+ you can now change the map with other players already connected.
+ after a game, the host has the option to return all players back to the lobby for another game.
+ at least in the lobby, host migration is supported. Not in the game itself, sadly.
+ population and score timelines after the game.
* Rocket Riot renamed to Rocket Race, probably to avoid name collisions with the Rocket Riot XBLA game.

I mourn the loss of Assault. While it's true that many players simply did not get how to run a successful attack on the non-impossible maps, with competent partners, it was fun. And it would be even more fun if you could yell "YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!!!" into your microphone. [size=0]I know, I know, you can do that on the PC, too. But the other players don't hear you.[/size]

bert_the_turtle wrote:Futurewinians are in D+. Seen them once. There's a specific option to turn them and only them off, even.

I'm intrigued; tell me more. Is this because I've been playing Leaderboard games the whole time and not trying the options on maps?

bert_the_turtle wrote:+ performance improvements. Seems like the game logic and rendering run in different threads; sometimes, with a lot of action, you see the DGs stutter around, but the camera is still moving smoothly.

Amen to that. I noticed some skipping on Temple when I had thousands of DGs on the go, but nothing like the horrific lag that used to affect the same scenes on the PC version.

bert_the_turtle wrote:I mourn the loss of Assault. While it's true that many players simply did not get how to run a successful attack on the non-impossible maps, with competent partners, it was fun. And it would be even more fun if you could yell "YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!!!" into your microphone. [size=0]I know, I know, you can do that on the PC, too. But the other players don't hear you.

See, again you're speaking my language. I can't believe we'll never see Dog Green Sector or The Third Kind on the Xbox.

Greeba wrote:I'm intrigued; tell me more. Is this because I've been playing Leaderboard games the whole time and not trying the options on maps?

Yep. The name is "Allow Crazy Crates", and it defaults to 'off'; activating it turns the game into a custom one. I thought it was on by default, by bad.

Modded list to add your points Bert.

+: DGs are kept at a visible size irrespective of the zoom-out.

Isn't this a preferences setting in Darwinia/Multiwinia and is indeed the case for the default setting?

The rendering of the little guys in PC MW definitely also switches the way it does in D+ MW if you zoom out. Dunno about Darwinia, dunno whether it is a setting you can disable.

I got a good insight from Chris & Mark at tonight's do on the ins and outs. Basically Assault wouldn't be viable without further optimisation to raise the population, and they didn't think it was worth it since the game mode was essentially broken/unbalanced anyway. Shame to miss out on the fun to be had, but an incentive to dust off the PC version.

Also, Absorb was skipped as that was felt to be an afterthought that didn't really work either. The waste of research points this represents was not caught.

Greeba wrote:Also, Absorb was skipped as that was felt to be an afterthought that didn't really work either.

That is probably a good assessment of absorb. It is not really useful in the Darwinia campaign, and very few modders (if any other than myself, even) attempted to work it into a mod. Even my attempt was rather tedious. I can't say that I wouldn't miss the absorb command if I had an XBox, but it was hardly crucial.

xander

I wonder why they didn't add some of the mods to D+. Too much testing required, maybe?

It would just be another thing to work on for Darwinia and then get MS to OK, and I think IV want to be done with all that for now (They've been working on Darwinia for nearly 3 games in a row now...). Even given that most of the obvious reasons and requirements that would be placed on the mods are obsticals which could be overcome (eg adaptation and reworking), really the question is, would doing so have made the game a more attractive product? D+ is just refined Darwinia+Multiwinia, with a bunch of the things that weren't really that amazing milled out of it, and nothing new added - I don't think adding more features that they couldn't stand next to without batting an eyelid to their quality (and to be fair, the larger darwinia mods are quite comparable to, but usually more 'shallow' than, the original campaign - ie this would be a commitment for them) was really on the cards.

edit - as an aside, yes, absorb is an afterthought, it doesn't have an officer state mapped to it, eg if you leave and return to a map, all the souls around the officer will vanish and it won't be in absorb any more.

- In the epilogue, you can no longer skip ahead of the cutscene and get troops over to the middle island before red does substantial damage, as it's seperated into two levels.

- You can no longer have officers moving and issueing goto orders anymore. I really miss that.

Also, I'm annoyed at the lack of rockets. They were my main method of taking out SDs. But I suppose my method relied on zooming in and looking up anyway, something not possible with the new control scheme.

+ New credits!

+ Darwinia's Armours explode on any death other than making a Battle Cannon.
+ SafeAreas seem to be able to change more than once.
+ Objectives can be 'un-completed'.

As for one of the listed points, Soul Destroyers always carried the deleted souls in their heads. This is not a change.
Additionally, your list says that Officer 4.0 is no better than 2.0. This isn't true, as 3.0 gives the Follow command. Consider revising.

And on the topic of mods: Personally, I feel that Insurrection, if nothing else, deserved to be added. I certainly understand IV not adding any mods, but Insurrection is probably good enough to stand alongside the main game. Perhaps some free/cheap DLC down the line? I doubt it will happen, but... one can dream, right?

Shwart!!

RabidZombie wrote:- You can no longer have officers moving and issueing goto orders anymore. I really miss that.

I did at first, but it's fine once you research Follow.

Shwart!! wrote:+ SafeAreas seem to be able to change more than once.

Help me out here, as a non map editing person; what's this mean/do?

Shwart!! wrote:+ Objectives can be 'un-completed'.

Pesky on the Yard in particular.

Shwart!! wrote:As for one of the listed points, Soul Destroyers always carried the deleted souls in their heads. This is not a change.
Additionally, your list says that Officer 4.0 is no better than 2.0. This isn't true, as 3.0 gives the Follow command. Consider revising.

My bad. So what did Officer 2.0 do then?