Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

What do you want to see in Armagetron soon? Any new feature ideas? Let's ponder these ground breaking ideas...
MikeyW
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Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by MikeyW »

Hi

I play on the yellow submarine server a lot and a major annoyance is when people "hide" by grinding the walls.

Is it possible to make it so that when you cross one wall, you just re-appear out of the opposite wall, like snake on mobile phones? So the geometry becomes like a donut, wherever straight line you follow you will just end up where you started.
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Jonathan
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Jonathan »

To the non-Americans out there, that's a torus.

People have talked about this and other weird geometry before (teleporter walls was a prominent idea), but I don't think too much happened with it.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Phytotron »

Old-school arcade (and Atari) game mechanic—leave one side of the screen, come out the other. Asteroids, Pac-Man, Combat, etc. Something I've supported (suggested?) for years, if and when it were to be feasible.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Z-Man »

It's a little more difficult to implement than in the old 2d days. Back then, you'd just mod the cycle position with some integer. Now, you'd have to take care to properly handle the cycle trails and collisions near the border, you need to properly handle the transitions via rendering portals (if you don't want it to look bad) and everything is floats.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by K-Yo »

maybe it can be done with zones v2 (to have zones instead of walls around the arena) and scripting (to teleport players)?
I let specialist correct me there.
but that would be scripting and not a game feature...
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Concord »

half of the concept could be accomplished by having death zones rim the perimeter and turning on respawn. Could make for nice continuous combat in small area.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Luke-Jr »

ph's original plans called these Edges-- basically like Zones, but they're lines and you cross them rather than entering/exiting shapes.

To address the "wall hugger" problem, I have a server demoing a ZonesV2 map I made. It's basically classic, except the grid walls are constantly rotating ;)
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Phytotron »

A little followup. While I've long thought it would be cool to have the "wrap-around" movement from one side of the arena to the other, my reason for it is just as an homage to the old-school arcade game mechanic itself. (And of course, only with a flat and square arena :). This game, while presented in 3D, plays 2D, and I would prefer to keep in that way, if I had my way.)

I don't think it would do anything to solve or deter any rim-hugging, for the same reason "death walls" wouldn't make much difference. Players would still have the ability to get up next to the rim and lay down a cycle wall which would effectively become the new outer rim, and others will still be able to try to cut it even closer (this happens in "no rubber" servers as well). With cycle walls on opposing sides, even if someone gets behind the one on one side, they come out on the other side and crash into the other.

Fact is, when it comes to rim-hugging, you have several ways to deal with it:

1) Play in a server with moderation that discourages excessive abuse of it. (Outright prohibition, as some servers attempt with this "no rimming" rule, is useless for the same reasons above.)
2) Get better at beating their grinds.
3) Play in lower (i.e, normal) rubber servers. Rim grinding still occurs, but how deep one can get and how many times a grind can be beat is reduced, and the 180'ing back and forth and "camping" on one wall is nearly or in some cases completely eliminated.
4) Learn to play and excel in the middle of the arena amongst the "trash" (football metaphor, not derogatory term).
5) Play in a server that doesn't encourage or reward rim-hugging—and negate the accomplished skills of #4—by having infinite walls or expanding death zones that force people to run to the rim.

And probably others....
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Luke-Jr »

Phytotron wrote:With cycle walls on opposing sides, even if someone gets behind the one on one side, they come out on the other side and crash into the other.
You're assuming it's an opaque Edge. If I implemented a wrap-around arena, I would make the Edges transparent, thus creating an infinite rendering loop :)
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Concord »

It makes for a really nice mechanic where the map ceases to effect player-to-player competitions. This would be the top of my wishlist, as if that counts for anything at all.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Phytotron »

Luke-Jr wrote:
Phytotron wrote:With cycle walls on opposing sides, even if someone gets behind the one on one side, they come out on the other side and crash into the other.
You're assuming it's an opaque Edge. If I implemented a wrap-around arena, I would make the Edges transparent, thus creating an infinite rendering loop :)
Not sure I follow you. I'm talking about an instance where there are cycle walls laid up "against" the rim wall on opposing sides of the arena. Get behind the cycle wall on one side of the arena, turn to cross over to the other side, come out and you're running into another cycle wall.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Z-Man »

What Luke means is to make the wraparound seamless. Take Asteroids. Usually, the viewpoint is fixed; asteroids leaving to the left re-enter at the right, so does your spaceship; if you don't pay attention, running into an asteroid on the other side after the warp/wrap surprises you. But there's no reason not to let the screen scroll so your spaceship is always in the center, that you always see what's effectively your surroundings; you don't see yourself warping ever, only the asteroids. That can be translated to 3d dispay with the use of portals.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Phytotron »

Gotcha. Like Defender or Bosconian. :) Still, you'd eventually come around, yes?
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by Concord »

yes I think so, and one would find oneself in a dangerous position if one just went straight and came back right around in line with one's tail.
From experiences with uneven axes, being directly on a wall is...interesting.
Doing this creates an fascinatingly shaped grid, something like a torus cut in half such that the hole in the center is now a half-circle.


edit: A Light cycle-offspring has used this concept, namely Knot in 3D, essentially 3D TRON. The looped playing area creates a situation where the grid is becoming ever more crowded. Your cycle has a health reservoir so that you can hit things and make mistakes (think finite rubber), speed is also constant.
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Re: Suggestion: Donut geometry, ie. no walls

Post by INW »

This reminds me of an old 'bug' to say the least. If you set cycle_accel to .000000001 or somewhere near that neighborhood; one would double bind enough times and eventually go through his tail and end up on the opposite side! Fun fun.
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