Different types of cycles

[Lucifer]

Luckily, Phytotron, you got the source code for the game from wherever you downloaded the binary and are free to do with it what you will, so long as you make your derivative work GPL. You know, rather than piss and moan about how we're trying to steal your childhood or whatever nonsense you're always on about.

Really, I don't understand your objections at all. Nobody here has volunteered to do any of this or suggested the "core game" you love so much be rendered useless or removed entirely.

But there's obviously a lot of people who are interested in exploring the ideas that were suggested by the light cycle concept rather than being chained to a wall and told to play Phytotron's game or go make a completely new game from scratch.

Yeah, you trolled me. No need to celebrate. But really I responded to ask you this: when, in your world, does freedom of speech includes freedom from speech? Or did your mommy never teach you restraint or discretion?

[Phytotron]

There's no trolling here, never has been. I don't play those games, and you know it, however hard you regularly try to peg that on me in order to knock down that or other straw men in vain attempts to make yourself seem better-than.

To the rest of your typically sophistic chatter: "Are you still beating your wife and children?"

EDIT: for those to whom the above quote reference wasn't obvious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

[Lucifer]

Good job missing the point, Phytotron.

Also, you're not a convincing liar. Good troll, bad liar.

Do I need to simplify my post for you? Is your intellect struggling to understand what I said?

[AHM]

I got a neat idea.Why not put a price on the heavy cycles? for example 10 kills.

[gawdzilla]

I want a crosshair in the middle of my screen whenever I'm shooting deadzones from my lightcycle.

Also, I want turtles in the game. I like turtles.

I hate every single one of you.

Especially Phytotron, I hate you, you old idiot.

[Tank Program]

I think we've already got the best feature ever. The zones that spin. They have to spin because they're round!

[Concord]

Here's my attempt

Lightcycles accelerate when next another lightwall, so I'm assuming there is some interaction there, all lightwalls that we know of are of the same width, mass, energy. These are the walls left by a tail. When that cycle travels parallel to the wall, perpendicular to the field, and close enough (cycle_wall_near), it accelerates. At any given point the acceleration field is propelling the cycle. Perhaps it's like magnets. The cycle accelerates forward as opposed to moving away from the wall because it and its own wall have an equivalent fields. If the cycle left a "heavier" wall, maybe because it was traveling slower, -think half speed, doubly thick- the wall would have a stronger field and repel slower cycles. The cycles could drive perpendicular to the wall fine, but as soon as they turn perpendicular to the field (parallel to the wall) they would start taking damage. Or maybe they would accelerate at a greater rate. Or maybe they would be pushed away from the wall. Maybe all three.

Every cycle would be the same, with the option of changing the ratio of your energy that goes to the cycle and the tail. The more you put in the cycle the higher velocity you'd have, but your wall would have less energy, therefore give less acceleration (or the other options). Put more in the tail and your velocity decreases, but your tail gives higher acceleration. The ratio could be changed right in live play.

[Luke-Jr]

In the context of the game, cycles are whatever those controlling the direction (programmers or persons funding development; no, afaik, there is nobody in the latter category right now) want them to be. No need to make our legal situation worse by strict adherence to a trademarked movie. :p

I admit I didn't actually read the whole thread (who wants to read stuff about Luci being trolled or whatever that was?), but it made me think of a "stats" system used by MUDs. Basically, you would get a total N points to distribute among various skills. In our case, that could be things like general speed, wall strength, wall length, cycle strength (to break weaker walls), brake, boost, rubber, etc...

So if we used a 15-point scale, I could make my cycle like so:
Speed: 7
Wall strength: 1
Wall length: 0 (relative to server settings, of course)
Cycle strength: 0 (I don't need to try breaking walls )
Brake: 1
Boost: 3
Rubber: 3

(maybe additional fields/points for shooting and such when applicable)

By the way, faster cycles already *use up* rubber quicker than slower cycles, so at least in regard to the first comment, there is one value being changed for cycles.

[Concord]

Luke, would those settings would all be console commands that could be changed ingame by the player, instant chat with /cmd cycle_stat_rubber 4, and/or by driving through zone, with the appropriate zones v2 code?

[AdyLucifer]

So if we used a 15-point scale, I could make my cycle like so:
Speed: 7
Wall strength: 1
Wall length: 0 (relative to server settings, of course)
Cycle strength: 0 (I don't need to try breaking walls )
Brake: 1
Boost: 3
Rubber: 3

(maybe additional fields/points for shooting and such when applicable)
.

Now that would be some nice progress, and adding a 'Player level' indicator would be nice too.

[Phytotron]

Hell, why even keep up the pretense of lightcycles at all?

[Z-Man]

A huge, huge problem with all those suggestions is that the way the different cylces are treated needs to be balanced, and the point of the best balance depends on all other server settings, including things like the average map size. So the server admins would need to do the balancing. That would be most difficult in the stat based system, of course. A set number of cycle models would be easier, but still a challenge.