XS Prototype: Quantumbender

[Xyx]

Quantumbender

The quantumbender distorts space and time around it.

Prototype preface
XS prototypes are built to see if certain concepts work as well in practice as they look on paper, to see if our ideas can be realized and whether they are fun. This thread is meant to gather feedback and suggestions. Please post your thoughts and crazy ideas!

Current features

• Press Fire to accelerate time around the quantumbender. Help your team run and shoot faster.
• Press Altfire to decelerate time around the quantumbender. Helps you avoid projectiles and roadkill people in slow-motion.
• Press Jump to initiate recall. Your position is marked. In 10 seconds, the quantumbender "travels back" through space and time to the marked position, restoring your health to what it was at that time. A giant explosion follows in your wake.

Known issues

• The timebending fields sometimes become temporarily invisible while the camera is angled a certain way.

Plans

• This version's recall feature seems a bit lacking. We might decide to give the quantumbender a significant speed boost after initiating recall.
• Alternatively, recall could require you to hold Jump for several seconds, after which you would warp back to wherever you were some 30 seconds ago.

Version 1's attract/repulse features will probably be salvaged for another vehicle, perhaps with more of a "singularity" theme to it.

Prototype disclaimer
XS prototypes are not meant to represent finished products. Custom graphics, balance tweaking, bot support, net support and extensive bugfixing are not part of the package.

Download

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[Phoenix86]

very profesional post

[TheAgent]

Pictures please

[Xyx]

It looks like a Nightshade, so there isn't much to see yet.

[Setheran]

This one's great fun to use - a true support vehicle, with loads of potential. I like the idea of the warping feature too. It might be a little overpowered in the way it lets one person build a node in seconds, but I guess it's balanced a little by the fact that it'd let nearby enemies destroy it just as fast. I could see it being abused a bit by snipers, too.

Does anything happen if two of them come close enough that their slow/speed fields overlap?

[Xyx]

Does anything happen if two of them come close enough that their slow/speed fields overlap?

Very good question! I don't know, but I bet it'd be glitchy and hard to fix. It'd probably be best if the fields cancel each other out stay disabled for a few seconds. We'd have to try and find out what'd really happen, though.

[Vicious3745]

Very good question! I don't know, but I bet it'd be glitchy and hard to fix. It'd probably be best if the fields cancel each other out stay disabled for a few seconds. We'd have to try and find out what'd really happen, though.

I kinda like the idea of the two vehicles acting as magnets, and pushing each other way, perhaps as a safety feature or just from some nonsensical super complicated science explanation.

Edit>Holy Cow, i really like this vehicle.
First impressions:
I think the range is a bit huge, but i'll play with it more and see if i like it. It seems very good for tanks, and i love how projectiles even slow when their in it. It's pretty awesome.

Double Edit:
-The Slow/Fast field Seems to not effect certain vehicles at random times. Never effects Hovor boards.

- If somebody or something exits the slow/fast field whilst i'm still holding the button down, they remain in that state. Bots will exit the field with double speed tanks, raptors, scorpions, or just dart back home with the flag like the flash. It's pretty crazy.

-If you're creating any of the fields whilst exiting the vehicle, you'll push, suck, slow or speed yourself up. Seemingly indefinitely.


Super fun tips!
A scorpion was darting towards me, firing it's mortar. I slowed time down, repelled it, and angled myself properly, and sped time up, effectively shooting the scorpion with it's own mortars.
The Quantum Bender makes Hellbenders SUPER-EFFECTIVE! xD
Slowing down time whilst repulsing makes just about any projectile incapable of reaching the QuantumBender, including Tank Shells.

[Vicious3745]

When using the Push combined with the Slow, the game will suddenly lag when it meets a barrage of LinkGun pulses. Although, the game will also lag if there's too many projectiles on screen..

Another bug: Once a vehicle's projectile flies into itself, it doesn't clip or deal damage. Would it be possible to say, make a projectile completely neutral and collide with everything once in the field, so i can throw tank shells back at the tank it came from?

Non Projectile weapons should also be effected by the field, don't you think? I mean sure it makes thinks go super slow, so perhaps very low poly bullets should spawn from machine guns and assault rifles, to dart by the player. At least that way Bullets aren't an instant hit. However i think things like the Shock Rifle should remain an instant hit, considering it's Light.

Perhaps for the sheer sake of Lag, perhaps the Quantum Bender has a limited amount of power that it's able to instantly regenerate. So that would give you an excuse to limit the amount of things the bender is able to effect.

So say, that given an objects mass, would make that object more difficult to push/pull and slow/speed up. This way, if theres a tank in the radius, the Bender is using alot of it's energy to effect it, and ends up incapable of spending it's energy on too many other items in the field.
-With that said, if nothings in the fields, perhaps it just has a limited amount of projectiles it's able to effect depending on their velocity or something. Ya know what i mean?

One other thing i'd really like to see:
A cicada was shooting at me once, and i noticed that using the Push+Slow, the bombs would come to a grinding halt. It was pretty awesome, though when i released the fields, they'd suddenly regain their speed and fly at me. It'd be pretty sweet if you could just release the fields and watch them fall to the ground.

[Xyx]

The version 1 has many issues that will be fixed in version 2, which will use Epic's slow volume instead of "manually" affecting all around it. The slow volume is massively more CPU-efficient, will slow down vehicle movement and resets anything that moves out of the field to its proper time rate.

Once a vehicle's projectile flies into itself, it doesn't clip or deal damage.

Version 2 will no longer have the repulsion feature, but if I put the repulsion feature on another vehicle I'll have to have a look at that.

Non Projectile weapons should also be effected by the field

They should be completely blocked by the field. Again, version 2 will use slow volumes, which are supposed to block any hitscan going into it (though not hitscan fired inside it).

things like the Shock Rifle should remain an instant hit, considering it's Light.

In UT99, the shock rifle beam did not have instant hit visuals. It did hit instantly, but it looked like a very fast projectile.

A cicada was shooting at me once, and i noticed that using the Push+Slow, the bombs would come to a grinding halt. It was pretty awesome, though when i released the fields, they'd suddenly regain their speed and fly at me. It'd be pretty sweet if you could just release the fields and watch them fall to the ground.

Too tricky.

[Vicious3745]

Aww, so no tossing tank shells back at the tank? Cause, that's a pretty wicked feature, if not my favorite thing to do with it.

[Xyx]

New version (named version 3... we're skipping 2) uploaded. See first post for details.

Main changes:

• Attract/repulse replaced with mark/recall.
• Bending time is now done using slow/speed volumes.

[Vicious3745]

I like how well the new volumes take advantage of everything around them, though i do miss the repulse feature, i can't wait to see it in another vehicle, perhaps one that flies?

Anywho, the Quantum Bender has become particularly overpowered. I can understand how warping backwards to a previous spot could cause some kinda fatal catastrophic for some reason, but a redeemer explosion in place of it is way too powerful. I figured out a pretty trollish tactic. I set up a recall point right outside the enemy's base, and went in, parked next to their powercore, and warped back about 5 times. I took out the power core in less than a minute!

I think a more understandable replacement for the redeemer explosion would be, perhaps an extra large Shock core blast. That way things could suddenly be sucked in and tossed about whilst the Bender created some kinda warp hole. Even cooler, would be to suddenly teleport gibs or projectiles of anything within inches of the bender back to the recall point for some kinda crazy awesome travel effect.

First Glance Bugs and Impressions:
The first thing i noticed is that whenever i view the ground, or perhaps somewhere below the horizon line, the slow field effect dissapears. At one point even all the energy based projectiles inside of it wouldn't show up either, but i could hear the manta firing them and feel my ship getting shot by them. I'm running two Nvidia 9600Gt's with the latest 1.180 drivers if that's any help.

The second thing i'd like to say is that the Slow Field effect is strange. I understand it's use in death match and such, it makes great cover and gives players a chance to dodge out of the way of projectiles. While using this Vehicle in WAR, i've found myself coming across 3 dissapointments very quickly:

1- Defending a power node from a scorpion ended up with me watching the mortars fly slowly over my craft to slowly hit the node over and over again, i wasn't proving to be much of a deterrent.

2- (This goes back to what i said about SlowFields providing cover and being useful for dodging around projectiles) Putting a mobile slowfield out there on the field is very useful to block laser and bullets, however, this makes speeding up a tank from the inside very useless for the gunner, seeing as his bullets hit the inside wall of the field. One other thing, is that absolutely Anything shooting at me from the outside of the slowfield still had it's normal firing rate, so instead of being a small guy dodging around dozens of projectiles, i ended up being a guy in a large vehicle surrounded by buddies in large vehicles getting pummelled with a solid and gapless string of rockets, shockcores, plasma bursts, just about anything in the game could be turned into a Rope of Death as long as someones on the outside.

3. This is very trivial, but i find the square shape and the slow field effect distracting and strange. I'm sure it'd make it difficult firing weapons such as tank shells and hellbender cores rather inaccurate. Perhaps that'd be a means of balance, but i don't think balance should come off as annoying.

Will a latter version go back to the sphere, and will it be replaced by a similar effect? I was thinking of some kinda post process happy energy field, so speed up would glow kinda red or green, and slow fields would suddenly go all cold and blue, and perhaps any vehicles effected within it's radius would just glow with the thing's effects. It'd probably stand out on the field and look more threatening and obvious to an opponent as well as give them a better idea as what's going on if someone were to hide the Quantum bender behind a rock while a vehicle around the corner was shooting at him.

I recorded a video to illustrate more clearly some bugs that i found:
(( Youtube ))http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olanw...e=channel_page
(( WeGame for Better Quality)) http://www.wegame.com/watch/QuantumBenderV3_BetaTest/
(( btw, Wegame.com seems to work best on google chrome, or their could just be something wrong with my firefox. ))
:32 - Missing Effects
1:20 - Effects of the Quantum Bender remain after i've exited the vehicle.
2:20 Recall Abuse. This is rather fun to watch if your into an absolute owning of opposing teams.


EDIT: As an idea; I've caught myself more often than not assigning a bot to cover me when i use this vehicle. That way if anything happens, they'll link gun me up. They often spend their time running around behind the thing and being rather useless or getting killed until something important needs doing. Since this vehicle is supposed to promote support and team play, perhaps a second seat with a link gun turret, no more powerful than a regular link gun with a very limited range would promote the player to sticking to their friendly vehicles, in case one ever takes damage. For the alt fire, perhaps the link gun turret could repair the quantum bender itself? I think such a feature would also promote staying with your friends rather than running off to Recal spam the opposing team.

[Doc Shock]

Anywho, the Quantum Bender has become particularly overpowered. I can understand how warping backwards to a previous spot could cause some kinda fatal catastrophic for some reason, but a redeemer explosion in place of it is way too powerful. I figured out a pretty trollish tactic. I set up a recall point right outside the enemy's base, and went in, parked next to their powercore, and warped back about 5 times. I took out the power core in less than a minute!

I'm sure the Redeemer blast is only a placeholder. Whatever effect it will be replaced with, it needs be more efficient against vehicles and players than against nodes and cores of course, but it still needs to be an area effect that covers quite some space or you won't hit anything. Once again black holes come to mind. Stationary objects like cores and nodes won't get pulled to its center, where the damage-over-time effect is extremely strong, so they only get damaged a little, but anything mobile will get sucked in and slowly torn apart.
And I think there needs to be a slight delay before the warping happens. Not too much or you won't get any hits at fast vehicles, just a little something that requires a bit of anticipation from the driver and gives the enemy an "Oh, shi..."-moment before the havoc starts. Maybe the warp could be configured that it needs to be charged? After a second it is fully charged and warps upon release of the button. When charging up the vehicle it'll start to glow and make strange noises, so everyone around will be aware of the imminent danger. Maybe it could take more damage during the charge phase, to prevent drivers from driving around fully charged all the time. Hey, it's health will be reset anyway, no reason not to increase the danger for the vehicle when it charges at something, the enemies need a fair chance to destroy it with united forces before it can make the warp.

Since this vehicle is supposed to promote support and team play, perhaps a second seat with a link gun turret, no more powerful than a regular link gun with a very limited range would promote the player to sticking to their friendly vehicles, in case one ever takes damage. For the alt fire, perhaps the link gun turret could repair the quantum bender itself? I think such a feature would also promote staying with your friends rather than running off to Recal spam the opposing team.

I'm not too fond of this idea. That would make the vehicle truly overpowered. It can sorta heal itself already, by warping back in time. Combine that with a self-healing link gun and it gets nearly indestructible. And your teammates as well, speed-up combined with link gun healing will keep any friendly vehicle alive, totally pwning the other team.
And I have another, more selfish reason for why I wouldn't like this feature: I still hope for a UT3-Remake of the Cruiser and that's already a key feature of it. For more info on it, see my latest post in the general XS thread.

[Vicious3745]

I suppose your right about the link gun, though i really like the idea for charging up the teleport. I think that during the charge up, however, it should perhaps be unable to use it's other functions, but perhaps the charge could only take say, 2 to five seconds?
BTW, i uploaded that same video to Youtube if one's curious.

[Xyx]

The purpose of the prototype is not to be balanced. Everything can be balanced... that's just a matter of extra time. The purpose of the prototype is experimentation; to investigate whether something is possible and whether it is as cool in the game as it looked on paper.

Once experimentation is over, when we have a good idea of what we want and how to do it, then we'll put in the time to polish things up with balance and pretty visuals.

The quantumbender has obviously not reached this stage yet. It's still highly experimental. Chances are I'll replace another feature before I'm done. Once it starts to show true promise and the concept solidifies, then I'll balance it.