In reply to my own post this time, here's a slight update.
First off, after having become acquainted with the level editor and haivng learned how to set up a computer hack like this one, I now know just how easily this could be fixed. Every computer hack, when you're setting it up, has outputs on various events that can do whatever you need them to do.
Since Alien Swarm was released just so the modding community could have fun with it, there's a version of Landing Bay that's loadable in Hammer. Loading it up and looking at the hack's trigger, it's supposed to trigger the spawn to break down the door when the hack starts. So, what I guess happened is: since the hack started up complete, none of the OnComputerHackStarted outputs fired, and none of the other outputs cause enemies to spawn. No enemies spawned, nobody to break down the door.
However, there are other events where the spawn that breaks down the door could be enabled. OnComputerHackCompleted jumps out as being suitable at first, but it's probably a bit late to spawn them, since the door does take a while to knock down and we want the players to have some sense of urgency. OnComputerDataDownloaded is much too late, if they spawned then, the players would have to stand around and wait for the door to be knocked down. It should be set to OnComputerActivated, and maybe increase the delay from 5 seconds to 7 to account for the computer starting up to give it about the same amount of time in the end.
Yet another solution involves changing the door itself. As it exists in the level, it's nonfunctional and not welded. If we change both of those, so that the door can open if triggered and make it welded, players can still get through if this ever happens again. To prevent the obvious speedrun exploit, the door's Total Seal Time could be jacked up from the default 10 seconds, and the door set to be fully welded. This will make it take a while to unweld the door. The exact amount of time required would need some research. Figure out how long it takes the chainsaw to break down a default health door and go from there. The door out of the room on the other side would need to be locked until the OnComputerDataDownloaded output of the computer hack fires. I'm unsure as to whether or not it's locked in the first place (it's been a while since I chainsawed the door down to check).
There's something that bugs me about this though. Looking at the outputs on the computer hack trigger, there's a broken one set for OnComputerDataDownloaded with a target of AfterHackSpawnTrigger. This trigger doesn't appear to exist in the level. Was this broken output originally meant to be in the level to prevent this "mystery case" from messing up the game?
The other update is to correct the data needed to calculate the probability of this happening. I forgot to mention that for the hack to complete, all of the columns need to be moving the same direction. So the new situation is that the hack starts up with all four ones aligned AND moving the same direction. Basically it adds an extra bit's worth of complexity to each column.
I've noticed it start up with two of them aligned every now and then, and three fairly rarely.
One thing's for sure: The odds of anyone at Valve reading this: zero.
Showing posts with label Alien Swarm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alien Swarm. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Guide to Soloing Landing Bay
I've certainly done this enough, and I've even shown a friend how to do it, but the limits of in-game text chat prevented me from saying absolutely everything I wanted to say. I could have put on my headset and just talked to him, but whatever.
Anyway, this is an extensively screenshot-supported guide to soloing the first level of Alien Swarm's Jacob's Rest campaign, Landing Bay. The items it uses are available standard at level 1. The recommended difficulty level is Hard, for the +20% experience bonus. Insane changes the spawn wildly, and is not recommended. Done correctly, you'll get over 1400 experience from a single run.
Anyway, this is an extensively screenshot-supported guide to soloing the first level of Alien Swarm's Jacob's Rest campaign, Landing Bay. The items it uses are available standard at level 1. The recommended difficulty level is Hard, for the +20% experience bonus. Insane changes the spawn wildly, and is not recommended. Done correctly, you'll get over 1400 experience from a single run.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
What were the chances of this happening anyway?
I just encountered a really weird bug while soloing Landing Bay.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Level Editors Suck
In the past, level editors were simple. Open it, make a new map, design the map, script anything that needs scripting if the level editor had support for it, then save and play. That was it.
Warcraft 2's level editor was like this. It was really simple to use, you just drew the terrain with your mouse, added trees, water, dirt that couldn't be built on, gold mines, and start locations for each player. That was it.
Starcraft's was basically that, but with triggers that let you script things. Sure, they took a little bit to learn, but the design process was simple enough and triggers weren't absolutely required, so the editor still had the same accessibility.
Descent and Descent 2 both used the same editor, which was fairly complex, but the average user could still make a map with only a minor bit of effort. This is important because these are the first 3D games I've mentioned thus far.
Also 3D, but going back to the RTS, Warcraft 3's editor looked absolutely amazing at first. You can mess with all sorts of terrain things and design a landscape with hills, valleys, rivers, etc. Placing start locations and other level essentials is still simple. They upgraded the trigger system massively from the one used in Starcraft, and it shows since any trigger set can be converted into some random scripting language. What language is this, what is its syntax like, what are the predefined objects, methods, and properties, etc.? So I go into the help file. Or, so I think. Selecting Help just opens a web page in my browser that basically says that the world editor is not supported by Blizzard. Okay, that's fine, but how about some fucking documentation? Why leave documenting your editor to the third party hacking community? Why not lay everything bare and say "look, here's how to use everything". Starcraft's help file did that. It was by no means a complete trigger tutorial, but it at the very least got you started.
Why isn't it that FPSes and other modern games have the same simplicity in their editors that older games did?
Open up Unreal Editor and churn out a simple deathmatch level in five minutes without having to first research the bare essentials of how to use the editor. I dare you. I made one CTF map in it, that took approximately four hours (after reading documentation, and with further documentation lookups during creation) just to get the bare basics in the level so it was playable. You know, the layout, the flags, ammo pickups, spawn locations, etc. It looked like shit, but that's to be expected of a first level. When I fired it up, I discovered that the bots wouldn't move. You have to litter your level with what it calls PathNodes so that the bots can find their way around the level. This is eased somewhat by the fact that all pickups, flags, etc. contain a PathNode, but if the distance between them is too far, the bots won't know what to do. Really?
Alien Swarm, an otherwise great game, was advertised as having an "easy-to-use tile-based level editor". Upon installing the game and its SDK, I was confused. Starting up the editor started up Hammer, which looks a lot like Unreal Editor. Where was this "easy-to-use tile-based level editor" the game was supposed to come with? I found out via a thread on Steam's forums that contained some of the more useful console commands that in order to get to it, you need to type a console command in-game. That, and you have to enable cheats. The "easy-to-use tile-based level editor" is a cheat.
So, whatever, I open up the console and type in "sv_cheats 1; asw_tilegen" and get the editor up. It's got tiles for rooms with various configurations of doors and so forth, so I happily went about constructing a small network of hallways. I saved it, then told it to generate the level and play it. Upon entering the level, I see nothing but white except for my yellow player name. My marine can fire guns and do all the emotes, but I don't get the feeling that I can move anywhere. It's just white. A little more inspection of the editor shows that you can make your own custom room types and save them, and they automatically get added to the tile list so you can place them. So I make a room based on one of the preset rooms, but it lost the background graphic and was just the small graphic indicating a door to the north. Hmm.
Also, I noted that if I right click, a weird green symbol appears in the level precisely one tile below the tile I right click on, that I can't move anywhere after that. Apparently this is the start location. Why didn't the level editor bitch at me when I went to build the level without a start location? Why doesn't it appear in the tile you click on, and why can't it be moved after that? And furthermore, why is nothing else placeable in this editor?
Apparently, Hammer is still required to actually finish the job. In that case, why does the in-game editor have the option to save and play, and doubly, why doesn't the editor bitch at me about the level being incomplete when I go to build it?
I loaded up Hammer and tried to use it, just by feeling around in the dark hoping to find something, anything that could be used to light the way, metaphorically speaking. Somehow I managed to create a cube and texture it, but I think it wasn't a room because weird things happened when I tried to move the camera inside it. So basically, your guess is as good as mine on how to use this thing. Which kind of sucks, because I was looking forward to making some levels. Why is it that you pretty much need knowledge of 3D modelling to make levels? Haven't they heard of providing prefabricated level elements to get people like me started? Can't they make a level editor that's intuitive to use and that gets the job done without requiring other tools? Sure, the quality of a quickly made level is going to be low, but at the very least LET ME MAKE A SHITTY LEVEL EASILY SO I CAN LEARN HOW TO MAKE BETTER ONES OVER TIME.
Fuck. You'd think that with the huge community that's popped up around modifying and creating custom content for games, that there would be an intuitive editor to get people started that haven't done any of this before. As far as documentation goes, at least Valve has an official wiki with a Getting Started tutorial. I can work with that.
Warcraft 2's level editor was like this. It was really simple to use, you just drew the terrain with your mouse, added trees, water, dirt that couldn't be built on, gold mines, and start locations for each player. That was it.
Starcraft's was basically that, but with triggers that let you script things. Sure, they took a little bit to learn, but the design process was simple enough and triggers weren't absolutely required, so the editor still had the same accessibility.
Descent and Descent 2 both used the same editor, which was fairly complex, but the average user could still make a map with only a minor bit of effort. This is important because these are the first 3D games I've mentioned thus far.
Also 3D, but going back to the RTS, Warcraft 3's editor looked absolutely amazing at first. You can mess with all sorts of terrain things and design a landscape with hills, valleys, rivers, etc. Placing start locations and other level essentials is still simple. They upgraded the trigger system massively from the one used in Starcraft, and it shows since any trigger set can be converted into some random scripting language. What language is this, what is its syntax like, what are the predefined objects, methods, and properties, etc.? So I go into the help file. Or, so I think. Selecting Help just opens a web page in my browser that basically says that the world editor is not supported by Blizzard. Okay, that's fine, but how about some fucking documentation? Why leave documenting your editor to the third party hacking community? Why not lay everything bare and say "look, here's how to use everything". Starcraft's help file did that. It was by no means a complete trigger tutorial, but it at the very least got you started.
Why isn't it that FPSes and other modern games have the same simplicity in their editors that older games did?
Open up Unreal Editor and churn out a simple deathmatch level in five minutes without having to first research the bare essentials of how to use the editor. I dare you. I made one CTF map in it, that took approximately four hours (after reading documentation, and with further documentation lookups during creation) just to get the bare basics in the level so it was playable. You know, the layout, the flags, ammo pickups, spawn locations, etc. It looked like shit, but that's to be expected of a first level. When I fired it up, I discovered that the bots wouldn't move. You have to litter your level with what it calls PathNodes so that the bots can find their way around the level. This is eased somewhat by the fact that all pickups, flags, etc. contain a PathNode, but if the distance between them is too far, the bots won't know what to do. Really?
Alien Swarm, an otherwise great game, was advertised as having an "easy-to-use tile-based level editor". Upon installing the game and its SDK, I was confused. Starting up the editor started up Hammer, which looks a lot like Unreal Editor. Where was this "easy-to-use tile-based level editor" the game was supposed to come with? I found out via a thread on Steam's forums that contained some of the more useful console commands that in order to get to it, you need to type a console command in-game. That, and you have to enable cheats. The "easy-to-use tile-based level editor" is a cheat.
So, whatever, I open up the console and type in "sv_cheats 1; asw_tilegen" and get the editor up. It's got tiles for rooms with various configurations of doors and so forth, so I happily went about constructing a small network of hallways. I saved it, then told it to generate the level and play it. Upon entering the level, I see nothing but white except for my yellow player name. My marine can fire guns and do all the emotes, but I don't get the feeling that I can move anywhere. It's just white. A little more inspection of the editor shows that you can make your own custom room types and save them, and they automatically get added to the tile list so you can place them. So I make a room based on one of the preset rooms, but it lost the background graphic and was just the small graphic indicating a door to the north. Hmm.
Also, I noted that if I right click, a weird green symbol appears in the level precisely one tile below the tile I right click on, that I can't move anywhere after that. Apparently this is the start location. Why didn't the level editor bitch at me when I went to build the level without a start location? Why doesn't it appear in the tile you click on, and why can't it be moved after that? And furthermore, why is nothing else placeable in this editor?
Apparently, Hammer is still required to actually finish the job. In that case, why does the in-game editor have the option to save and play, and doubly, why doesn't the editor bitch at me about the level being incomplete when I go to build it?
I loaded up Hammer and tried to use it, just by feeling around in the dark hoping to find something, anything that could be used to light the way, metaphorically speaking. Somehow I managed to create a cube and texture it, but I think it wasn't a room because weird things happened when I tried to move the camera inside it. So basically, your guess is as good as mine on how to use this thing. Which kind of sucks, because I was looking forward to making some levels. Why is it that you pretty much need knowledge of 3D modelling to make levels? Haven't they heard of providing prefabricated level elements to get people like me started? Can't they make a level editor that's intuitive to use and that gets the job done without requiring other tools? Sure, the quality of a quickly made level is going to be low, but at the very least LET ME MAKE A SHITTY LEVEL EASILY SO I CAN LEARN HOW TO MAKE BETTER ONES OVER TIME.
Fuck. You'd think that with the huge community that's popped up around modifying and creating custom content for games, that there would be an intuitive editor to get people started that haven't done any of this before. As far as documentation goes, at least Valve has an official wiki with a Getting Started tutorial. I can work with that.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Alien Swarm
Similar to how I got Portal, Alien Swarm is free today on Steam (The SDK and dedicated server are also free!). Get it while you can.
I'd heard about this a few days ago, and wondering what exactly it was, I read an article, found that it was originally a UT2k4 mod, so I downloaded and installed that to see what it was like. After having gotten the Steam version, I can say this: the two are vastly different control-wise. Specifically, the Steam version is a couple metric megafucktons better. You don't have to switch marines for every little menial task anymore. There isn't any stupid right click menu anymore. You can order your tech guy to seal or unseal a door without changing marines. More complex things (that the specific marine has to do, like hacking panels or healing) still require switching, but that's excusable.
The AI is a lot better too. In the UT2k4 mod, the AI marines liked nothing better than just standing about half a screen away from you not doing anything while you were busy trying to kill things. Now they actually fire at things. They also run into a nearby heal beacon if they need healing, which is nice.
The Steam version has a much greater emphasis on multiplayer, to the extent that the single player is only a practice mode. To contrast, there were single player campaigns in the UT2k4 mod.
My main issue with the game is that changing weapons with the scroll wheel is WAY TOO SENSITIVE. Most of the time, I end up re-selecting what I originally had selected. Which is a huge problem when I'm controlling the healer and trying to drop a heal beacon and then go back to shooting things. I ended up wasting two beacons. It was this way in the UT2k4 mod as well, which is strange given that I have no problems switching weapons in regular UT2k4 gameplay with the scroll wheel.
Also, for one reason or another (I believe I had issued a follow order at the time...) I lost a marine (only one) in the practice level because he didn't fucking follow the rest of the group. I was trying to get him to weld a door shut (with Faith selected, using Shift+4), but the door kept opening instead. I decided to just run, since this was right at the end of the practice mission, and he didn't follow and died.
One thing I can say: don't overlook flares. Their purpose, despite their name and obvious visual effect, is to give your weapons autoaim. If you're getting rushed, toss a flare into the enemies and fire away.
Overall, Alien Swarm looks like it'll be a really fun co-operative multiplayer experience.
I'd heard about this a few days ago, and wondering what exactly it was, I read an article, found that it was originally a UT2k4 mod, so I downloaded and installed that to see what it was like. After having gotten the Steam version, I can say this: the two are vastly different control-wise. Specifically, the Steam version is a couple metric megafucktons better. You don't have to switch marines for every little menial task anymore. There isn't any stupid right click menu anymore. You can order your tech guy to seal or unseal a door without changing marines. More complex things (that the specific marine has to do, like hacking panels or healing) still require switching, but that's excusable.
The AI is a lot better too. In the UT2k4 mod, the AI marines liked nothing better than just standing about half a screen away from you not doing anything while you were busy trying to kill things. Now they actually fire at things. They also run into a nearby heal beacon if they need healing, which is nice.
The Steam version has a much greater emphasis on multiplayer, to the extent that the single player is only a practice mode. To contrast, there were single player campaigns in the UT2k4 mod.
My main issue with the game is that changing weapons with the scroll wheel is WAY TOO SENSITIVE. Most of the time, I end up re-selecting what I originally had selected. Which is a huge problem when I'm controlling the healer and trying to drop a heal beacon and then go back to shooting things. I ended up wasting two beacons. It was this way in the UT2k4 mod as well, which is strange given that I have no problems switching weapons in regular UT2k4 gameplay with the scroll wheel.
Also, for one reason or another (I believe I had issued a follow order at the time...) I lost a marine (only one) in the practice level because he didn't fucking follow the rest of the group. I was trying to get him to weld a door shut (with Faith selected, using Shift+4), but the door kept opening instead. I decided to just run, since this was right at the end of the practice mission, and he didn't follow and died.
One thing I can say: don't overlook flares. Their purpose, despite their name and obvious visual effect, is to give your weapons autoaim. If you're getting rushed, toss a flare into the enemies and fire away.
Overall, Alien Swarm looks like it'll be a really fun co-operative multiplayer experience.
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