Moral support thread for our overlord...ehm dev!

[TheKidPunisher]

yes counting is changing the game like the filters in alpha 7.8

Not changing so much for me, just see that i take time for that and now everyone can do it very easily...

But maybe it will permit to more player to reach higher league and have more opponents, that's not bad

Other filters in alpha 8 and 9 were useful too, but nothing like counting.

the "All" in target selection is, for me, the most useful add for the moment (it is not really a filter but i classified it with the "tools for AI")

[pier4r]

Well if you had already super webby things, surely counting is not changing much. Anyway making cluster of nodes compacts helps a lot the maintenance and lazy players (like me) to find better counters.

For example the strength of all assault mode should be greatly reduced because now one can distinguish assaults in an easier way.

I think with counting the node blocks of lazy players (still with good tactics) will greatly improve.

[pier4r]

Finally I like self filters. They simplify the work a lot.

Instead of self shield 0.25 another node, shield 25-50, another node, etc... I can be more compact.

Thanks! Counting and self filters will improve maintenance, slowly, by a lot.

[Ritter Runkel]

I like the new explosions. Even in Fast Foreward they look awseome and in slomo they're beauteous.

[pier4r]

beahurtiful = so beautiful that hurts

PS: I don't care about the graphic in the slightes. What is important for me is debugger, AI editor the rest could be counters.

[Ritter Runkel]

That's different for me. I like cool graphics and effects. It's like music. I can code without hearing music, but it's only half of the fun I could have

[LuBeNo]

That's different for me. I like cool graphics and effects. It's like music. I can code without hearing music, but it's only half of the fun I could have

I need silence when coding. I can't concentrate.

I like the near-to-the-community-programming style.

[Ritter Runkel]

I like the ingame announcements and (don't know if already wrote that) these big explosions when bots die and the smoke before they do so

[pier4r]

I like the new matchmaking and the fact that is kept updated on a (flexible) wiki!

[pier4r]

Even if I liked to have more stats in the diagrams of the stats page, I like the new diagrams that are "standardized".

[Kanishka]

I like the swiftness with which Dr D tackles bugs.

[pier4r]

Ha! The standardization in the stats page (i.e: history by a fixed amount of time and not forever, but it is good to spot trends) got larger. Cool.

[TheGnoo]

I like coming back a few weeks later and discover a whole new game.

[Revenge]

I appreciate all the effort he puts into the game. We now have counting, faster matchmaking, and tournaments. And I'm looking forward to this game's evolution.

[pier4r]

I like the auto redeploy, especially if one does not play much.

maybe it should be shortened a bit (like 5 repeats per map) to avoid abuse, otherwise it is nice.

[WASP103]

I love the frequency the dev answers to mails. I was blown away by how quick I got a response and had to adjust my mail-checking

I also love the Metal soundtrack that, even sped up or slowed down, induces a feeling of "My Bots are ROCKING this place"

I love the pure simplicity of the UI.
Since he obviously is coming from the mobile vector, he's implemented concepts like responsive design, a great minimalistic, de-clutered, repeating UI (<3) and for a port from a mobile platform, it does not at all feel like it is out of place. Especially done right in that regard were the hotkeys, which totally help feeling at home on a computer (compared to a *mobile device)

Keep up the smile and the good work <3

[Jeffrey Harpen]

Yes, the UI has been improved recently and it's very good. Actually I have never liked graphical programming much, because it can be a bit annoying (especially when the code is large), but Gladiabots' editor is the best I've ever used and I really like it. And now you can cut/copy/paste nodes and move them around together, which is great improvement.

[pier4r]

And yes I forgot to update this thread. No time at all...

[pier4r]

So yesterday I played again after the last matches in October / Nov 2017.

First I have to admit that I was long time against unranked matches, as they don't provide competition. But they are great for casual play without pressure! Especially if one has to fix a ton of stuff.

Second, my Ai was barely compliant with 9.x and now I have to update it to 12. THERE ARE A TON OF CHANGES all quite interesting!

I love the new debug window, it is pretty easy to find which branch is executed.
The node colors are not so clear, but I'll figure out eventually.
I love the new filters! I already feel that the tactics can be super ultra refined compared to before.

THE NEW MULTIPLE SELECT, COPY, CUT, PASTE, CLIPBOARD IS THE KILLER FEATURE. Finally it is inside the game and it, together with the matchmaking bound of +/- 400 points (plus aother thing that I'll mention shortly) I guess can help a ton to manage complexity.

I love the random maps, although they are not that random in unranked, they are great.

I love the fact that one can play with ghosts. There is a ton of activity for a casual gamer (for an hardcore gamer, it is likely that one sees always the same guys).
Surely ghost will mess up the score system. But if the gain/lose points and expire after a while, I bet there will be not so many problems.
Moreover the ghosts gets quickly outdated (for hardcore gamers that keep improving their AI) so they are good as "gatekeeping" new players that have to improve over a certain point, plus they are good to avoid losing track of past optimizations that where winning some time before.

Said that, I feel that I need to do some 10'000 fixes to bring my AI compliant to the 12.x (for example the "exists enemy at range" messed up a bit) and I will tackle them slowly with unranked games. After that, I will refactor some modules thanks to the copy and paste, still in unranked games. Then I will finally bite the new filters and the instant tagging (instant tagging makes obsolate my previous usage of tags), this one playing ranked. The cleanup will be unranked only.

So I can play my 2-3 games per day and be happy. One fix at time (plus all the bugs introduced by a fix). Really nice.

I will write in this topic shortly too: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=823

[pier4r]

AIs: way faster to load in the editor.

Undo: ultra helpful. (how many undo actions can one do?)

Rewind: amazingly fast compared to alpha 9.x

Really nice improvements.