Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Nearly finished supply limits

The long talked about supply limits stuff is all done and nearly ready for the 1.27 patch. That patch has some other stuff like a challenge fix, increasing the taunt to 256 characters, some balance changes and introducing a hidden, not very supported ability to manually edit the maximum zoom out distance.

Anyway, as is usual, when I do my final sanity checks before uploading a patch, I noticed a bug. And then fixed it, and tested again…and again… five times in total. And it’s still not done. The final ‘gotcha’ was the code that displays what supply limits are in place for the current mission. I have to have support for restricting new modules from expansion packs, BUT, the game can’t do it’s normal freaking out if a module can’t be found. So that needs fixing and then testing again… hopefully tomorrow morning.

This is basically phase I of the usefulness of supply limits. I’ve added them to a single mission (gravity well). This means that they will also beĀ  in place for new challenges issued on that map. Hopefully feedback on them will be positive

Phase II will be a new route for issuing a challenge, that will wrap into a basic scenario editor. The data in a scenario is effectively included in a challenge, so I don’t even need to change the challenge format. All I really need to do is code a UI that lets the player pick a map size, the spatial anomalies etc. I already have the supply limits editor done, which is a full screen pop-up dialog. My eventual aim is that people start issuing some cunningly designed challenges with supply limits that prevent the most obvious tank/spam fleets, and encourage some clever and aesthetically pleasing fleets instead.


One thought on

  1. hi Cliff,
    what i’m wondering about is, why didn’t you just limit hull numbers instead of modules (or why not both).
    i can see the problem if there is no limitation but the drawback is that i’m restricted to use what others are telling me, so it takes away some freedom which i really liked so far to have..
    aynway i’m looking forward to this patch, as it will doubtless give me new challenges to ponder about.
    by the way, can i have an unpatched and a patched version (with and without supply limits), if i remember correctly the game updates itself when i start it…

    greetings and good luck for your late year insulation project ;-)

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