Oh damn, nice run! I haven’t had a lot of time to play the new version but I like it, generally!
There’s a bit of weirdness though trying to navigate the main menu on my iphone 14 (standard), I find it hard to scroll because if I touch a link it follows it before I actually lift my finger or scroll… Also, “The First Orbital Racing Game” was over the tabs making it difficult to switch tabs to look for Apollo
I was more thinking of designing a map such that the best possible run has to spend like minutes using full afterburner in a refuel zone fighting gravity or something… I just hope that this theoretical map isn’t weighted like 10x a normal one.
I hope you don’t mind if I make an exploitative map or two if I see the opportunity? (with the full expectation they might get deleted)
It sounds like a good change overall. I hadn’t considered delta-V spent, it’s not a bad measure honestly! Though, I do hope you can’t game it a bit to make your map way too weighted just because the ship is constantly in a refuel zone with max afterburner or something haha, just a thought.
And yeah, the only thing the map would possibly know is roughly how long it takes to complete and the amount of thrust you used (but it can’t know the time/delta-V of the optimal path of course). I don’t even think having a number there is too important, even just a little warning saying it’s likely/definitely too short/long/simple to be competitive (whatever that means however you do the calculation) would be enough for me and should hopefully not be too hard to implement (at some point).
As far as the sorting goes, thinking more it shouldn’t matter much to me how it’s sorted as long as it makes sense. Most of the problems I’m seeing in my head might be a lot worse if we had a lot more first-time type maps from more people, but that’s farther down the road anyway.
I also can’t believe I never really tried out this Trefoil path before, it seems so obvious now haha
Thanks for asking my opinion! Just upfront, I really don’t mind changes because I’d just like more people to play against! I may be the first “boss” of the leaderboards, but I know in my heart I will not be the last… So if something needs to be done to make the game better and more attractive, I’m for it! This is the best time for the rest of the game’s lifetime to make big changes.
I think it sounds like a system with a lot more longevity. I kinda liken it to games like Trackmania: The “official” maps are always there, and people do play them quite a bit (especially new players), but what people stick around for and what is played day-to-day by the regulars are mostly the community maps. I expect the same would happen here eventually, assuming the game really kicks off, and so I think it’s a good direction to head in! That’s not to say I don’t have concerns though…
Difficulty tags:
If you get rid of difficulty tags, I think new players should definitely have the “easier” maps like Reach and such somehow pushed at them early so they can learn the game, or some of the easier “Mediums” so they can see that there is complexity to be had. They’re still the ones I’m most concerned about sticking around, and I’m still worried about the new player experience but can’t really speak for it anymore haha
Also though, as a personal concern, I’m afraid of the whole pool of maps becoming an unsorted mess somehow. The difficulty tags are still helpful in that way, and hopefully there’s something else that might replace it? Self-reported difficulty would eventually be rough too, heuristics are wrong, and community votes might be nice but can be manipulated… I just kinda have the urge to group the maps in some way so that I can decide to go grind the “Blue” or “Red” maps or something if that makes sense, because that’s essentially been my whole personal gameplay loop so far
If I think of more I might tack it on, but my comment’s getting long too!
Kinda unnecessary there pal
Related, I’ve been going through all the maps and starting to grind the time and delta-V records too, I dare someone to come for me in the championship!
Maybe it’s because I have a habit of restarting in the first couple seconds if I mess up?
I’ll keep an eye on the checkpoints to see the changes!
Aside from that though, I’ve been messing around on Water Rapids and just got an interesting error while I was flying: “Kicked (flood)”
Also, I have more information about the spaceship disappearing bug, I’ve noticed because I fly Box that it happens after I watch a replay of someone flying in a different ship. If I watch a replay of someone flying in Box, it reappears on the next play. EDIT: Eh, not exactly. Maybe it has to be a replay from someone else flying the same ship? shrug
I noticed I wasn’t #1 in the championship by the F1 championship points, I had to fix it! :)
One of the things I actually do like about Daytona though, is that the ship starts with just a little less velocity than you’d like at the start. With the current mapmake, the ship always starts pointing the direction it has velocity in (obviously may change at one point, but I’m trying to hold back from bombarding you all with feature requests that are probably on your list when it’s still early). My rule of thumb I think is that I like maps where the ship is already facing the direction that I want to start thrusting in at the very start, at least for competitive maps
I’m still messing with mapmake sometimes, or at least trying to think about ideas! But I’ll be honest, in these types of games I almost never was the person to make the maps… It’s definitely fun to be on the ground floor actively trying to figure out what’s good and not though! Here’s hoping more people make more maps, now that there’s more competition!
They still had to maneuver at key moments, although not many.
But that is a good point, it’s not quite as though they could set up a stable orbit and let it fly, though I guess that run might be possible. In my runs I’m kind of ideally thinking of planets/bodies as “steering points,” because they really are where you want to change your direction, accelerate, decelerate… But if you’re passing by a planet very closely, a tiny change in direction going in can result in a large change in direction leaving. Maybe that’s why so many small adjustments had to be made over the run, because of the tight stable path by the left/right planets? Who knows… Extra pax though, score!
Take that!
This was a fun one to try to optimize, and my run is definitely not perfect by any stretch of the imagination
“Old Godzilla was hopping around Tokyo city like a big playground…”
I have it stuck in my head now hahah
Don’t forget the value of actually knowing your codebase if you wrote it… or the value lost if you just have an LLM do the whole thing.
Wee, thanks! Alright let’s go leaderboard domination time!
Aaaaah that’s what happened. Makes sense, thanks!
Congrats on hitting MVP stage, happy to support the game in a small way! And don’t worry, I’ll keep dropping feedback, bug reports and arguing score as long as I’m playing, thanks for having an open ear for it. Speaking of…
Ran into something… I don’t know what happened, but I swear I’ve beaten Trefoil before on v0.1.9 at least, but I’m off the leaderboard now. It also happened with my run on my own community map Daytona mid-v0.1.9 (I think, but can’t be sure…). Unless it was something manual it might be something to look into?
Also, it still seems to be impossible for me to finish “Trio” and “Planet and Moon”
And happy to be! I look forward to seeing what’s in the future 🔥
That looks pretty smooth! Flying well on Apollo escapes me haha, I’ll give it a try
Yeah… I don’t envy web development for that reason haha… A smidge smaller on the UI scaling made it a little easier to move around on mobile. I hadn’t messed with it much on mobile, it was only because I was trying to follow the share link and see how badly you crushed me by!
And no prob again!