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Kubik

Developer
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  1. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Mynoduesp in Deselection of active selection   
    I'd love to see the feature to deselect certain units and/or units of the same type from ones active selection via the UI below.
    In case you did not know, this is already possible via the units themselfs:
    Use <SHIFT + leftclick> to deselect a specific unit and use <SHIFT + CTRL/STRG + leftclick> to deselect all units of a kind.

    Furthermore: If possible let the UI dynamicly expand or at least increas the default to a 3 by 4 grid to increase the units shown from 9 to 12.
  2. Bkingn liked a post in a topic by Kubik in AOE damage overflow bugfix (high impact)   
    I would suggest first fixing it first so it does not miss so many enemies 😛 There is optional boss one step sooner (lvl=2 instead of lvl=3), but no unit defined for it, so every time game decides to have it there, it only logs warning that boss is missing 😞
  3. Damo liked a post in a topic by Kubik in AOE damage overflow bugfix (high impact)   
    Why me? I just provided real time data for how the damage works. Implemented formulas @wibryz write and did some small testing. He is the one who did trough all these numbers to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. (And I would say it was less than 4 days for the actual analysis and fix 🙂 )
    How much HP does "usual" targets of Shadow Phoenix have?
  4. Dallarian liked a post in a topic by Kubik in New Gamemode: Monument Rush (rPvE)   
    Sounds technically possible, but I do not think there is single person in the team that have all the required knowledge to do all that 😞 (not even talking about time)
    You can open the editor and try for yourself
  5. Metagross31 liked a post in a topic by Kubik in AOE damage overflow bugfix (high impact)   
    Why me? I just provided real time data for how the damage works. Implemented formulas @wibryz write and did some small testing. He is the one who did trough all these numbers to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. (And I would say it was less than 4 days for the actual analysis and fix 🙂 )
    How much HP does "usual" targets of Shadow Phoenix have?
  6. Mynoduesp liked a post in a topic by Kubik in AOE damage overflow bugfix (high impact)   
    Why me? I just provided real time data for how the damage works. Implemented formulas @wibryz write and did some small testing. He is the one who did trough all these numbers to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it. (And I would say it was less than 4 days for the actual analysis and fix 🙂 )
    How much HP does "usual" targets of Shadow Phoenix have?
  7. Kubik liked a post in a topic by wibryz in AOE damage overflow bugfix (high impact)   
    There is a longstanding bug in the calculation of AOE (area of effect) damage, affecting spells, unit abilities and unit attacks which have a max damage per target and max overall damage. Examples of affected spells are Eruption or Fire Sphere, abilities like Rifle Cultists' Dark Grenade or AOE attacks of units like Construct, Frost Mage or Deepcoil Worm.
    TL;DR at the bottom!
     
    How the bug works:
    If an AOE damage effect kills a unit, only 50% of the overkill damage is transferred back to the pool of available damage which is to be distributed to other targets.
    Let's take Fire Sphere (u3) as an example. The spell has a maximum single target damage of 6000 and a maximum total damage of 8000. As it stands, the spell will only ever do its full damage if its primary target (closest to the area of effect center) has at least 6000, and its second target has at least 2000 health.
    If you use Fire Sphere on a group of weaker enemies, it's effectiveness will vastly diminish. Let's take for example a group of 8 Sunderers (u3), which have exactly 1000 HP each, for a total of 8000 HP. Fire Sphere will kill 3 of them, and damage a fourth Sunderer for 375 damage, leaving him with 625 HP. Total damage dealt: 3375. It would get even worse for lower health targets.

    Why does it happen? Because of faulty calculation in the damage formula, which returns only 50% of overkill damage to the pool of remaining damage.
    So what's the maths behind it?
    Before: max single target damage = 6000, damage in pool = 8000
    Target 1: health = 1000, damage dealt = 6000, overkill damage = 5000, damage returned to pool = 2500, remaining damage in pool = 4500
    Target 2: health = 1000, damage dealt = 4500, overkill damage = 3500, damage returned to pool = 1750, remaining damage in pool = 1750
    Target 3: health = 1000, damage dealt = 1750, overkill damage = 750, damage returned to pool = 375, remaining damage in pool = 375
    Target 4: health = 1000, damage dealt = 375, health remaining = 625
     
    Is it a bug, or is it a feature?
    That's a non-trivial question. But so far, there is every indication that this is in fact a bug.
    1. There is no indication whatsoever in the spell descriptions, especially the big AOE spells like Fire Sphere, that they massively lose effectiveness against groups of enemies, or that they deal only half damage to further targets.
    2. Against a heterogenous group of enemies, the total damage dealt varies greatly, depending on which target was closest to the spell center, thus in which orders the targets are affected.
    3. Logic dictates, that there is no reason for an explosion to lose effectiveness (as in: deal less overall damage) the more viable targets are affected.
    4. Increasing "maximum single target damage" reduces the overall damage dealt by the spells, if they are used against groups of enemies, to a point where Lava Field sometimes deals more overall damage than Fire Sphere. How does that make sense?
     
    What's the proposed bugfix/change?
    To enable full overkill damage overflow. As in, if the single target damage is 6000, and the target has only 1000 health, let 5000 damage return to the remaining damage pool.
     
    Using the example above again, that's 8 dead Sunderers for a total of 8000 damage and a happy, fulfilled Fire Sphere.

     
    Can it be implemented easily?
    We've been hard at work and testing with Kubik (who's effort and insight are massively appreciated!), and the relevant code already exists, ready to be implemented. It also is easily adjustable, should it turn out that another value, like a 75%, or 80% damage carryover on overkillis the sweet spot.
     
    What will change if the bugfix is implemented?
    Every AOE spell, ability and attack, which has a listed damage per target and maximum damage will be affected by this change. However, the degree to which it will have an impact, varies greatly from one case to another. For most cards, especially with low damage numbers, the increase will be negligible (not JUST because these are low numbers, but primarily because those spells/attacks have a low chance to kill a target with any given shot).
    Generally, the bugfix is a direct buff to many cards and abilities. However, damage is only actually increased if 1. at least one of the targets is killed, 2. there are more viable targets in range than (total_damage / max_singletarget_damage) rounded up. Also, to be clear, damage is NEVER going to be increased for the primary target
    Spells which are affected the most, are spells which have high enough numbers, that they are expected to reliably kill some, or most of their targets. The greater the single target maximum damage of the AOE damage source, and the greater single target maximum damage in relation to total maximum damage, the more any given spell/attack/ability is affected. Also, spells/attacks/abilities which have a larger AOE and the above characteristics, tend to be affected more (because more targets fit into the AOE).
     
    My predictions concerning the impact on specific cards:
    High impact: Fire Sphere, Rifle Cultists* (ability: Dark Grenade), Boom Brothers* (ability: Boom), Necro Fury* (ability: Bone Shards), Altar of Chaos (against really large groups), Worldbreaker Gun (attack and ability: Heavy Snowball, though the latter only against really large groups), Shatter Ice, Comet Catcher (against really large groups).
    * - Unholy Hero increases the impact
    Moderate impact: Construct (attack), Giant Wyrm (attack), Ironclad (attack), Wasteland Terror (attack), Abomination (ability: Blessed/Tainted Fury), Skycatcher (attack), Gemeye (attack), Volcano (attack), Artillery (attack), Hatecaster (attack), Deepgorge (attack), Thornbark (rooted attack), Treefiend (rooted attack), Lost Horror (attack), Soulshatter (>3 targets), Backlash (depending on void power, may be low impact), Corpse Explosion (>3 targets), Morklay Trap, Shadow Phoenix (>4 targets), Lost dancer (ability: Necro explosion, only with lots of targets in range), Nasty Surprise (>3 targets), Necroblaster (attack, and shadow affinity ability: Tainted Voodoo).
    Low impact: Magma Hurler (attack), Sun Reaver (ability: Metal Spikes), Deepcoil Worm (attack), Twilight Bombard (attack), Lost Disruptor (attack, moderate impact against grouped very low health fliers), Shadow Mage, Eruption (>3 targets).
     
    My predictions concerning the impact on PVP balance:
    (I am not an active PVP player currently. I did play a decent amount in times of Battleforge, but I am in no way up to date, so take these predictions with a grain of salt).
    Shadow will slightly gain in power, as the explosions have actually high enough damage numbers to reliably kill at least some of their targets, but except for Shadow Mage, it only ever becomes relevant when there are >3 targets in range of the spell/ability. The slight buff to Eruption shouldn't have an impact. Otherwise I expect nothing much to change. The vast majority of significantly affected cards are T4.
     
    My predictions concerning the impact on PVE:
    Enemies: Long range AOE attackers, like Bandit walkers and high tier defensive towers (e.g. artillery) will be more proficient at murdering grouped units.
    Players: Stronger tools of destruction at player disposal. It should only really affect T4, and shadow at lower tiers (Shadow Phoenix in particular should be noticeably more effective against large groups, Necroblaster will get stronger, Corpse explosion and Soulshatter will also be noticeably more effective).
     
    Final thoughts:
    I was for a long time under the impression, that large AOE damage sources are somehow underperforming, without really understanding why. Fire Sphere! Enormous explosion! Which... kills 3-4 units out of a cluster of 15 units. Now that I found out why those spells underperform, I've taken the effort to try and fix it. That's the result. I consider it a bugfix, even though it is also a moderately impactful balance change. That's how Skylords Reborn, and earlier Battleforge, handled AOE damage. A bug that had largely become a feature. I propose we change it in a logical way. Maximum 8000 damage in the area? If the targets in range have as much overall health, the damage will be dealt in full.
     
    Special thanks:
    Kubik, for his unending patience and making the unreadable mess of code actually parsable for the human mind.
     
    TL;DR:
    High tier AOE spells and abilities promise big numbers. Against lots of small targets, numbers are much smaller, because overkill damage is halved (multiple times). The proposed change fixes stuff, so that big spells deal the promised damage. Fire Sphere -> big boom -> big damage -> lots of dead bandits. Vote big damage. Vote dead bandits!
  8. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Mynoduesp in Guide to how melee works in battleforge skylord   
    For easier comparison [old value] -> [new value]
  9. Mynoduesp liked a post in a topic by Kubik in SOLVED: Issues with implementing new voicelines   
    https://github.com/jonwil/snrtool
  10. Kubik liked a post in a topic by LEBOVIN in Upgrade Count Error   
    Since new cards were added in the patch it is sadly wrong again^^
  11. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Majora in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    You also have to keep in mind that reforging is finite. Like Windhunter said, 750.000 cards have already been reforged. While that number will rise, I doubt it will be double in the same amount of time. Reason being that most of the active players have now reforged most of their inventory, and simply dont have enough cards left to keep up the reforging pace. Once everyone has burned through their backlog, you can expect the market to settle down a bit. Its the effect of releasing a drastic system like this one year after a release. Im really curious how the market will look 1 year from now. 
  12. Metagross31 liked a post in a topic by Kubik in Future Card & Content suggestion   
    have you checked?
    specifically:
    [Open] Balance Developer
    [Open] Game Designer
  13. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Mynoduesp in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    try "promo:1" 🙂
    For values (health, attack, upgrade, charge, copies) you need to use "=", but for attributes (a.e. promo, flying) you need ":". Think of it as true/false for 1/0 rather than the number.
  14. Kubik liked a post in a topic by chickennoodler in Low priority: Reduce decomposer ability range maybe   
    Maybe an ability range of 50m siege range on a building used mostly to speedrun feed or kill void recycle ones own units at close range is excessive.
     
    This is such a minor issue, but the large range is mostly abused for denying allies ground presence. Unless speedrunners need the range that high, reducing the range will mostly only hurt decomposer trolls without hurting functionality.
  15. Damo liked a post in a topic by Kubik in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    If you think balancing cards is easier solution, why not apply for "[Open] Balance Developer" position, to try out for yourself?
  16. Bkingn liked a post in a topic by Kubik in The map generator is one big BUG   
    How are we supposed to fix it, if we do not have source code for it?
  17. Kapo liked a post in a topic by Kubik in [Abandoned] Wav to snr converter   
    As announced in our 11th community update, we decided to open source wav_to_snr (repository link). This is a very simple application that allows you to convert audio files to a format that is compatible with BattleForge called SNR.
    SNR is compressed a lot, and it is lossy compression (over 70% of data is lost). Sample count is the same as WAV, but for most samples only 4 bits instead of 16 bits is used for the value, that means 16 possibilities instead of 65536 possibilities. It is not that bad as it might look at first look. There is some function (difference from previous 2 samples) applied so the dynamic range does not need to be that big, and only precision is lost.
    Currently it works this way: for each block of 32 consequent samples it tries all "configurations" and calculates all samples in the block, then pick the one that have on average smallest difference from the original sound. The problem with this is that if the original audio is decreasing at the end of block, but the compressed one is increasing it, it can still be the one with smallest difference, and if next block start lower than the source, the difference between the last sample of the block and first sample of the next block will be even greater because of that.
    In theory "configuration" should be picked so that whole audio wave is as similar shape as possible, instead of absolute difference for each sample averaged over independent blocks. But comparing shapes of waves is much more complicated thing, requires much more computation time, and what is most important it is much more complicated to write.
    So if anyone will improve the algorithm it would be great 🙂 right now it is kind of unusable for voice 😞 but for some simple effects it sounds kind of maybe acceptable.
    If you want to just play existing file check out:
  18. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Majora in [Abandoned] Wav to snr converter   
    I know this one got overshadowed a bit by the new-patch-hype, but we would greatly appreciate the help from the community for making the implementation of voicelines possible. We already have two cards fully recorded and ready to go, with others in various stages of recordings, but they are currently on hold because of the mentioned issues. 
    Please help us out 🙂 
  19. Demiron liked a post in a topic by Kubik in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    🤔 what "hostility"?
    I personally do not like the reforging, so I do not need to hear how people like it.
    Position of "Balance Developer" does not require any technical knowledge, and usually applicants get to try it before their application is being processed.
    It just need crazy amount of time per card. And there are 1000s of cards.
    I did not ask about position of designer that have more to do with re-balancing the cards. I would say these positions also not require highly technical knowledge (depending on how you categorize math).
    I hope it will not sound aggressive to you (again), but how you can judge a concert if you are not musician? All concerts I heard in television was just some people doing noise, no useful information, no fun, so I have no clue why would anyone want to watch that.
    And to be honest I feel the same about any soccer game, you get score, so you know who win, what else would you want to judge one it?
  20. Soy liked a post in a topic by Kubik in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    🤣 this weirdness is intended, but do not ask me why I was given some explanation I did not understand.
  21. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Soy in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    Intended to make people with OCD go crazy?  It makes no sense....LOL
  22. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Soy in Community update #16 - December 18th   
    I see where Demiron comes from with his observations regarding the forging system.
    I played BF when it first launched and had 10's of thousands of BFPs because of buying cheap retail packs.  Cases of them actually.  I had every card I wanted and many of them.  So many that I had a huge shop selling C and UC for gold so new players could make complete decks.  I would have LOOOOOOOOOOOVED the forge system then.  But what would have happened?  I'd probably have stopped selling my C and UC for gold and put them in the forge.  This would make it harder for a new player to have a dependable path to solid decks.  Instead they would be entirely at the mercy of rng and grind.
     
    Now I'm back to the game maybe six weeks.  I've been buying commons on the AH to fill out my decks and saving toward more expensive cards that I enjoy playing with.  The prices for those things have now doubled or tripled or are simply not available.  The hill new players have to climb just got much steeper.  If I'd been playing for a year or more I would be ecstatic.  A new system that lets me use all my unwanted cards with potential to get something better or different.

    Honestly with how many cards are in the game the time it would take for a new player to have 4< of a card to begin forging is insane.  
     
    Another observation of mine is that the color output does not make sense.  If I put in shadow x3 and fire x1 it would make sense for the output to show 75% shadow and 25% fire chance of the forged card.  Currently it is 25%, 25%, 25%, and 25%.  If I put shadow x4 then it shows 100% shadow output.
     
    Appreciate all the effort that went into this as I think it is brilliant.  Hope we can find a way to balance the newer player's experience though.  It just got much harder to get cards for them.
  23. Kubik liked a post in a topic by Kapo in I cant login   
    Server is currently down for preparation of tomorrows update
  24. Mynoduesp liked a post in a topic by Kubik in Simplify searching cards for upgrades and auctions   
    Improve experience when viewing / auctioning owned cards.
    1. Done... You can filter you inventory 🙂
    2. This would need server support 😞 so I can not do anything about it
    3. Done... You can filter you inventory 🙂
    Item Search
    1. This would need server support 😞 so I can not do anything about it
    DISCLAIMER: I am not sure if these changes will make it to the next path, but I really hope so.
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