ZED Online - a fork of the Zod Engine

[SteelGhost]

A bit a of a preview on how the action works in ZCraft. Here's a video showing some fights between robots and comparing their stats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swv6zONy6dE

....1:09 World's luckiest Sniper... and epic fail how 3 Lasers couldn't kill 1 Pyro.

Some notable limitations of this engine:

• Damage and radius of explosions can't be changed, so all attacks deal projectile damage

• Invincibility frames (entity can be damaged only every 0.5 second) make rapid fire attacks less effective

• Unit health varies from 1 to 100. Since all units use projectile-type attacks, damage/armour modifiers can't be used. Robots have only 3/4 of their original health, so they take less time to kill with small arms. In turn, they can't take as many hits from explosives, but it somehwat compensates for their smaller area of effect

• Projectiles are unaffected by gravity, since it messes too much with their trajectory. This makes Toughs and Pyros a lot more effective (since their shots can't fly over the enemy)

I also made a custom sound pack for this, aiming to replace the old sounds with higher quality ones.

[DaMarkov]

A bit a of a preview on how the action works in ZCraft. Here's a video showing some fights between robots and comparing their stats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swv6zONy6dE

Looks like a cool project! How about a separate thread for ZCraft?

Zed Online v0.1.6 will be released this Saturday (around evening time for central EU) via the updater, on SourceForge about 1 hour later.
Full changelog as always here: https://sourceforge.net/p/zedonline/wiki/changelog/

As promised mostly bug fixes.
- I fixed a bunch of bugs on a few maps. Most noticeably level 3, 7, 22.
- Completely new video player. IMPORTANT: audio & video files are split now, so you need to run the 0.1.6 updater to get the audio files for specific languages.
- Fixed the "laggy animation bug" + missing animation bug + performance improvements
- Better integration with online highscore (btw. congratz on Ali on being no. 1 right now!)
- Finished the medium tank sprites for all planets
- in LAN and Online matches. Completely new game lobby. You can now double leftclick to switch teams.
There are also slots for spectators, so you can watch for 4 AI battle against each other.
- Multiple rallypoints per factory can now be set. (Thanks to APC for telling me, I completely missed that)

If I don't find or get a message about major bugs I would like to work on new features an start developing on the v0.2 branch.
For that I would plan about 4 weeks for some experiments.

If there are still too many bugs I might release another version (v0.1.7) just for bugfixes in two weeks.
However, this is the first version that seemed quite stable during testing, so I would be surprised about major issues.

Enjoy the weekend and happy playing!

[SteelGhost]

Suggestion. What if we added an option to use the sound effects from the PlayStation version, since they are better quality than the PC ones?

On PS1, robot voices are more clear with no static noise, and most of the unit firing sounds were remixed to sound more powerful.

I have extracted most of the sounds, and could compile them.

[DaMarkov]

Suggestion. What if we added an option to use the sound effects from the PlayStation version, since they are better quality than the PC ones?

On PS1, robot voices are more clear with no static noise, and most of the unit firing sounds were remixed to sound more powerful.

I have extracted most of the sounds, and could compile them.

Nice!! Mind uploading them somewhere?

[SteelGhost]

I did some further experimenting with the mechanics of DOS Z, trying to figure out the probability of "driver shooting".

I previously assumed that it's just a number that determines the unit's chance of hitting the driver. but it seems that the game also randomizes how many hits the driver can take. Sometimes when a tank fought a Jeep, the driver would die from the Jeep's first shot (the driver was previously undamaged). Yet, other times it would take many more hits from the Jeep to kill the driver.

I also noticed that Mo. Missile drivers can also get shot, despite being mostly enclosed vehicles. Only Cranes and APCs are immune to sniping.

This game's mechanics sure are a lot deeper than I thought. I wish we could contact the original developers or someone to give us answers.

[DaMarkov]

Would be nice to do some experiments to figure out the probabilities.
Also, I would be great if we had data how much damage buildings take.
In Z DOS I have the following data so far:

Code: Select all

Bridges
Unit | Shot till half health | Shots from half health to destroyed
Light 6 6
Medium 4 3
Heavy 2 2
Mo. Rocket 1 1

Robot/Vehicle building takes 40 light rounds to destroy
Radar station takes 30 light rounds to destroy

[SteelGhost]

Something weird with the Robot Factory's graphics.



When it gets more damaged, some of the windows on the front just disappear.

[DaMarkov]

Something weird with the Robot Factory's graphics.



When it gets more damaged, some of the windows on the front just disappear.

Interesting. You have certainly good eyes! I tried to reproduce that in the current build, but failed to do so.
Maybe I have accidentally already fixed it. I will look over that issues in the next days again.

[BallWin]

I noticed problems with the maneuvering of light tanks on the bridges. When damaged on the bridge, the tank tries to move to the right or to the left. On the bridge, this is impossible and the algorithm enters an infinite loop right-left-right-left. The animation switches at high speed. As a result, the tank "shivers" in place. If you select it and specify the direction of movement back - nothing happens. And if forward - he will go.

[SteelGhost]

Would be nice to do some experiments to figure out the probabilities.
Also, I would be great if we had data how much damage buildings take.
In Z DOS I have the following data so far:

Code: Select all

Bridges
Unit | Shot till half health | Shots from half health to destroyed
Light 6 6
Medium 4 3
Heavy 2 2
Mo. Rocket 1 1

Robot/Vehicle building takes 40 light rounds to destroy
Radar station takes 30 light rounds to destroy

Seems right. Tested this with Toughs too - 15 rockets to destroy a bridge. This suprised me, I thought Toughs do the same damage as Lights.

[city slicker]

hell yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
love it. i knew someone out there will do it. bravo! keep up. LET IT RIP.
im too busy screaming of joy i havent read the 15 pages yet so ignore if its already answered but i cant change the speed, its in 100% and doesnt move. apart from that thanx a lot!!!!!!!!!

[city slicker]

play some more and heres my things to improve
robots dont automatically get in a vehicle/gun or take grenades when passing by
right click can work as last action route like z95
thanx again your work is much appreciated!

[DaMarkov]

hell yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
love it. i knew someone out there will do it. bravo! keep up. LET IT RIP.
im too busy screaming of joy i havent read the 15 pages yet so ignore if its already answered but i cant change the speed, its in 100% and doesnt move. apart from that thanx a lot!!!!!!!!!

Thanks a lot for playing!!

robots dont automatically get in a vehicle/gun or take grenades when passing by

I will have a look and see how complicated it is to fix that. The next version is almost feature complete, so the fix might not make it into the next version if it's too complicated to fix.

right click can work as last action route like z95

Not sure what you mean. Did a right mouse click cancel the last waypoint or something?
Never noticed that I have to try that in Z95.

[city slicker]

when you right click in z95 it shows yuo the last order you gave and auto select the unit that this order is given. f.e. if i sent pyros to grab a flag and i want to change that i right click and now pyros are again selected and their route is showing on the field so i can make them do something else without having to find them and left click them. its very usefull, too.
here's my video of last map of z95 (greedy alert: i sure would like to see these maps someday in your game as well!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niby9WQ-pqQ&t=253s

i select a medium tank at 2:59 give it an order and then i right click and give it a new order (great band btw...) to attack the gun

i also noticed that map buttons dont work but i like the map in the state is in now, so thanx for the response for the greatest game ever made!!!!!!

[DaMarkov]

when you right click in z95 it shows yuo the last order you gave and auto select the unit that this order is given. f.e. if i sent pyros to grab a flag and i want to change that i right click and now pyros are again selected and their route is showing on the field so i can make them do something else without having to find them and left click them. its very usefull, too.
here's my video of last map of z95

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Niby9WQ-pqQ&t=253s

i select a medium tank at 2:59 give it an order and then i right click and give it a new order (great band btw...) to attack the gun

Interesting ... might need to implement another hotkey for that. When using zod or starcraft control there is of course no point for that feature since the unit would be still selected after giving a command. In classic controls the right mouse button is already used to scroll the screen. So maybe the middle mouse button could be used for that.
By the way, fantastic video!! I game is really fast. I plan to re-enable quicker game speeds at a later stage. I have been working on replays, so I first want to have one fixed game speed in order to make it easier for me. Later on it might be useful to have different speeds like normal, fast, fastest or so.

(greedy alert: i sure would like to see these maps someday in your game as well!)

The Z95 maps are already included. After playing the first 20 levels there is a button called "expansion" of something like that in the single player mode and you can play up to level 35.
If you don't want to play the first 20 maps you can also go in the folder "maps\singleplayer_expansion" right click->open starts the map (highscore will not be saved!), right click->edit opens the map in the map editor (highscore will not be saved if the map is changed)

i also noticed that map buttons dont work but i like the map in the state is in now, so thanx for the response for the greatest game ever made!!!!!!

Eventually, if will implement the T button (terrain view), but it's at the very bottom of my todo list.