SDS Episode 50

[roncli]

Matt Toschlog will be on the show to talk Overload. We're planning on our usual time of 5:30 PM ET / 2:30 PM PT (4:30 PM CCT ) this Sunday!

[Sirius]

oooooo grats

Not sure whether I'll be able to watch live, but if I can't it'll be worth watching later for sure.

[The@$$Man!]

If it has anything to do with Overload count me in. Ask about their ideas of how they will implement multiplayer (c/s dc/s p2crap so on) and if there will be an internal ladder (ie. all blizzard games.) Are they still working with the scaling (ships/maps/weapons)? How is tricording coming along? I have like a million questions but I'll just watch the show (the recording.)

[Jediluke]

might not be a terrible idea to submit your questions here...and perhaps roncli will ask a few

I'd imagine roncli knows what "WE the competitive 1 v 1 scene" want

[roncli]

[Cyrus]

Will you please, please, PLEASE, make trichording as good as it is in descent 1 - because that is the only concept of the game that has had me itching since the age of 10 years old. Question for Overload awesome people. ty

[Leto_II]

I liked the single-player demo of Overload (played about a year ago), but I found the ship to have a bit too much inertia, which I don't think would work nicely in the kind of fast-paced multiplayer we're all used to. However, things very well could have changed since then. Is this something they have commented on recently?

[birdseye]

[roncli]

I was under the impression that Trichording mode was identical to D1 (The usual sqrt(2) = ~1.41x speed bichording, and sqrt(3) = ~1.73x speed trichording), All-Way was a faster ship but no boost from Trichording (~1.23x speed in every direction), and Hybrid was somewhere in between. Is that not correct? Might you be seeing a different mechanic at play, such as Leto's complaint about Inertia?

[Drakona]

Last time I tested it, that seemed to be true over long distances, but over short ones, trichording is less effective than you're expecting. I had to run a test over ~20 cubes to get close enough numbers to be convinced the game was showing the full effect, so I think complaint is still valid over distances we actually use in fights. I don't think it's a speed cap I'm hitting, though; more likely a failure to give bonus acceleration or something.

This is easy to verify for yourself. Over a distance of about 10 cubes (the length of the initial training room), I am able to cross it at a single chord in 3.75 music beats, but at a triple chord in 2.3 music beats. This yields about a 1.63 speed multiplier, not the expected 1.73.

Over a distance of 5 cubes (the width of the same room), I get a single chord speed of 2 music beats and a triple chord of 1.25. 1.6 again.

Over the 20 cube distance available just before the exit door, at single chording, I get 8 beats, while at a triple chord, I get 4.75. That yields 1.68. Closer, but still short.

Those measurements are all within the error bars of the method I'm using, but consistently just a bit short, and they seem shorter the shorter a distance I measure over. For me personally, it's not the nails-on-blackboard annoyance that trichording being broken had been, and without better analysis tools, I can't 100% prove something's wrong . . . but I think birdseye is on to something, and I cannot say the experience is the joyful one we have in the other games. Playing overload and D1 back to back, there are definitely things I miss going back to D1 . . . but the ship movement always seems like such a relief in the older game. I've said in the past that this is something that newer games shouldn't try to improve on unless they are Really Dang Sure they know what they're doing. I haven't seen one yet that seemed like an improvement.

Anyway. They used to have it so forward speed was faster than slides, which I thought might account for the above results, but testing with the latest build shows that isn't the case. I'm not sure what's accounting for it, but I suspect something is going wrong with the acceleration.