Development Cycle Archive

The toggle feature on mounting/dismounting vehicles is fantastic. I've loved that feature ever since I first encountered it on TC2. The old way of having to click on the bike over and over until the message changed, or worse, clicking on it to get an error message like "You cannot mount while riding a mount", was quite aggravating after awhile.


The new badge display in the character menu is pretty nice. Now seeing which ones I needed, it felt like there was more to do since I had a checklist for badges that I still needed to acquire.

While there are a great many good things in this publish, there is a very bad one, and it may have bugs: Weapon switching delay. There is a post about this in the Core System forums called "Take it out now". This is a bit of what I wrote there:

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mrbleepbleep wrote:

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DaunteDelfuego wrote:

/agree

This hurts anyone who uses sophisticatedcombat strategies to take advantage of various weapon abilities. It nerfed the smart people.

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Agreed 100%. The change hurts those who use tactics, while the button-mashers are sitting pretty. This is such an ill-considered fix that it's damaged my faith in the dev team to get the combat balance right.

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Agreed. Not to mention the low levels that have to switch in a melee weapon from ranged when they close. This PROMOTES kiting. REPEAT: THIS PROMOTES KITING! I have tryed a sequence that predicts when to start the change without success. I think there is a bug someplace that makes this delay go unnaturally long. I have a newbie marksman (rifles)/Brawler (2-handed)/Scout. Normally I would start the combat with a rifle and switch to sword if they come for me. I cannot do that now. What happens is that I hold the rifle, forever, no matter what until the combat is over. This is not right. I have repeatedly tried to predict the switch, I have gone out to 15 seconds and it did not happen.

So now I do no switching and kite. Was that what you devs wanted? Please, enlighten us.

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I stand by that comment. Armor switching delay makes sense. Delaying the switching of a weapon does not.

Message Edited by Fred_Skinner on 07-05-2004 07:33 PM

> Fixed problem with the GUI not updating XP totals when XP is gained or lost

Still busted - I'm standing in the Decay Mite cave, knee-deep in corpses, and XP monitor hasn't moved.

We all know they added armor/weapon switching delay to prevent exploit. It's a good idea, but again, bad programming. The delay apprently is based on server clock. for example, you cannot perform armor/weapon switching until next check point comes. Depends on the move's dealy, the check point is 0, 3, 6 ... or 2, 4, 6 ... or so seconds of server clock(or client). so, if you are lucky, you hit switch bottom at 2.99 second of server clock(eg: 12:00:02.99) you can swtich your weapon/armor in 0.01 second. If you hit the button at 12:00:00.01, then you will be dealyed for 2.99 seconds before you can perform item switching.

The delay system sounds allrite, but for some reason, they applied this to combat system as well. It is applied to brust run, /attack, all combat profession's moves, and all the jedi's forcemoves(cure, forcerun, forcearmor.. etc).

This is not a big deal but it's really annoying when you have to wait for x seconds to perform your first action, and x more seconds for the move dealy until you can perform next action. eg: if you want to perform forcerun(6seconds delay) and forcearmor(6second delay), There's chance you'll have to spend 6(predelay)+6(forcerun delay)+6(forcearmor dealy)=18 seconds until you can do anything else. (note: 6 second is estimated time), same thing applies to other moves as well. The more dealy time of the move, the longer you have to wait til it is performed.

The combat dealy should not base on clock time, it should be checked at the point previous action ends, so you can perform next action right after that, or perform any first actions instantly.

Badges
* Character badges are now located on the "personal" tab of the character sheet in the middle box instead of the examine window
* The Character Sheet now displays a list of badges earned by the player and also badges not yet won

I don't really care. It's kind of annoying seeing all the professions not yet Mastered for a Non-Hologrinder.

GCW
* Fixed several fire rate problems with manual turrets.

I don't use turrets.

GUI / Keyboard
* Fixed problem with the GUI not updating XP totals when XP is gained or lost
* Items that are reduced to 0 hitpoints, show up as red in your inventory (unless it is equipped in which case it still shows up as an equipped item)

Had the XP loss only occur once, but it was frustrating, so that is a good fix. The red highlighting is ok, but currently it highlights items with no condition like Ubese Armor shirts and Mabari belts. That is really annoying and I hope that gets fixed.

NPC’s
* AI improvements: on steep hillsides and cliffs, creature aggressiveness and accuracy has been improved

Haven't really noticed a difference, except the other night. Rancors warped 100m away once their HAM was low. That kinda sucks.

Profession Entertainer & Dancer
* Modifying /watch and /listen so that you can perform these actions while sitting on the ground

That's good.

Profession: Image Designer
* Master ID timer changes (a master outside the Image Design salon gets 1/2 time, a master inside the Image Design salon has no time required)
* Fully decorated and added music all the Image Designer salons

Sounds good.

Vehicles / Mounts
* Enter/Exit vehicle changed to toggle
* Vehicle hit points should now be saved properly when making repairs
* Fixed vehicle orientation when traveling over water
* Smoothed ground effect more when driving off of a cliff
* Players can now use the radial menu, in addition to the previously working slash commands to enter and exit a vehicle while in combat.

The toggle is excellent. Might be the best thing that came from this publish.


I'd like to add a few more:

Healing
* Healing commands in the combat queue

This really sucks now. It takes a significantly longer time to heal now then when there was no queue lineup.

Armor
* Armor delay

The armor delay is really long. I can see adding a delay, but as it is now, if you are in combat, you may as well not equip armor. By the time you get the whole suite on you are already dead. The armor delay needs to go for non-combat armor equipping. Keeping the delay when not in combat is ridiculous.