Soem things to note from playtesting.. Energy beam does less damage, yet results in almost the same amount of reel, which is very important since you can tackle the strongest enemy of a room easily. Pulse is very strong, but it's quite difficult to get a good aim on moving targets, especially enemy wizards - the early Ochre is a good example of this. At certain combinations of angles and distances, hitting a target is either impossible or pixel-perfect with the Pulse - the aiming is a bit weird.

Overall, this was an interesting test and the maps turned out pretty nice, in my opinion. You need to figure out a good way to take on each room separately, and general shooter skills are pretty useful here. Trial and error gets you far, if you have the patience! :D

When you say the pulse is strong and the beam is weak - have you changed the data files for those?

If so, when I play the maps on my non-modified version they will play differently.

I haven't changed the data - it's a fact that pulse does much more damage if you manage to land all of the hits, as opposed to the beam.

ah right cool ok.

Pretty cool! I've uploaded them, thanks :)

There's a bunch more interesting things about how pulse works, based on writing stuff for both it and the beam.

however, there will still be balance issues between what you've been testing on and MRCr, since pulse doesn't tend to hit targets in MRCr, while it does quite well in MROpen.

Aiming seems to be exactly the same in my version of Open and MRCr.

I can make the pulse bullets detect collisions more frequently. I think currently they only detect every one in ten frames. This is to try to save proccesor time but also means the slower the bullets move over the target the more likely it is to hit. So rewards accuracy. But I don't mind increasing the detection rate (and maybe reducing the number of bullets).

I would also like to change the beam. Not sure why it is so inaccurate. I had intended the beam to be a sniping weapon when I first put it in but it feels more like a laser machine gun at the moment. Any objections?

There was more about finding targets better I think.

The beam was made to do that because it would instakill all of the things.

Ok Maybe I'll reduce the beams power rather then. The beam damage doesn't hit stacked units though.

Do you remember what you did with the targeting? I was thinking about a zonal system, what did you do?

I imagine that copying a script or two about bullets over would do it. maybe a bullets ai?

I think beam does hit multiple units. I'm pretty sure it explodes

Ok I'll check that. Thanks!

I can confirm that beam hits multiple units. Pinpoint accuracy with slightly decreased damage while using the GMG would be good, I think. I think that pinpoint accuracy without the GMG is good as-is in terms of damge, since the beam doesn't shoot out very often.

Also, the problem with pulse is not so much in hit detection time, I think (unless MR doesn't run at 60fps), but the speed the bullets fly at seems to indicate that there is some kind of a targeting system in place. Sometimes bullets explode on targets (mostly on stationary ones) no matter which distance your cursor is at, while usually (especially against wizard AIs) you seem to have to adjust your distance to the cursor very carefully so that the pulses die out and explode right on top of the enemy or it won't connect.

I checked objBullet but the latest mrOpen still works the same way from what I can see.

An AI character will have a specific unit that is their "target". Bullets fired will only detect collisions with the target. For Merlin, the game doesn't know who you're aiming at so it has to detect collisions with all enemies. To save processor time though, each bullet just chooses one enemy per frame to detect a collision with. This is why the pulse seems a bit ropey. With only a few enemies on screen the collision detection is pretty good, but once the screen is full you'll have to be more accurate.

The energy mines work the same way but because they're static and because they are mines, we rarely notice it.

I want to improve the collision detection of the pulse, I'll give some thought to it.

Ok I've removed the randomness from the beam so it's perfectly accurate. I experimented with bringing down the power, but it just didn't feel right.

Some enemies are pretty much insta-kill but I still can't get past screen 5 on this map, and the beam is supposed to be one of the most powerful weapons in the game so I'm happy with it.

See what you think.

I cleared the map in one go with the new beam.

It's definitely much stronger, but not necessarily in a bad way. I suppose that balance doesn't matter too much in a game like this; having a very powerful sniping spell would be pretty cool for the late game (kind of like in MR2). It also feels a lot better without the GMG now!

Anyway, testing out the new beam with this map is more or less pointless, since this map was not designed as a test to the beam, but rather as a test to your dodging skills. In order to see whether a spell is too strong/weak, testing it out in normal maps would be more appropriate.

But I like the increased damage output, since I've recently felt that some enemies in general have too much HP and deal too little damage. Especially melee units, which don't really pose much of a threat currently (you can just walk horizontally while a group of orc warriors are after you - it's hilarious). And at the meanwhile, some ranged/magic units like skeleton archers and black mages can be really tough to deal with due to their power and range.

I agree with everything you've said :)

I try to say relevant and correct things :P

Even at that, I hope that commenting and giving my opinions on stuff would spark some ideas and discussion etc. :D

haha - ok I promise to disagree with the thing you say :)