Fires! PTE! Balance! Oh My!

If you walk into our office through the secret entrance, the first person you’d see is Tim. He’s making new decals. In development lingo, he’s doing “dec work.” Basically, he helps make the terrain look scarred whenever something blows up — or, now, catches on fire.

If you take a left through the corridor of computers as you approach Tim’s desk, you’ll see Ben making new effects. And Forrest testing various performance tweaks. Look a little deeper and you’ll find something … new and vast. Something exciting that Planetary Annihilation fans are going to dig.

As usual, we’ve got a lot of new stuff coming into Planetary Annihilation. The one we’d like to talk about today? Fire. We showed off fire for the first time courtesy a not-so-sly Facebook tease. In just a couple of days, you’ll be able to get your, er, hands on it, too.

Fire doesn’t just look cool. It adds a new strategic dimension to the game. And, ironically, it isn’t because of the fire itself — it’s because of trees. In the fire update, trees will be physical objects. Units won’t be able to stomp through them. Instead, they’ll have to path around them. You can also reclaim trees for bursts of metal, if you’re low on resources.

In the early game, you can imagine the advantage that selecting a spawn by a bunch of trees will give you. But, will you sacrifice your leafy protection for metal? Or will you purposefully start fires to make it easier for your machine of war to reach your foes?

Meanwhile …


We’ve also been shaping a brand new experience for folks who want to see, first-hand, how Planetary Annihilation is being made. It’s called Public Test Environment, and it’s available right now across PC, Mac, and Linux.

When we’re testing out new ideas to make Planetary Annihilation even more epic, we use private versions of the game to give them a spin. Sometimes, we make dramatic changes. Most of the time, we make small changes. Then, we play the game together in the office and see if these new ideas make the game more fun. If the answer is a resounding “yes,” we often push out these changes in a new update to the game.

Until now, this was a part of the Planetary Annihilation journey you didn’t get to see. The Public Test Environment is a public-facing version of the game where we’re trying out a lot of cool or interesting ideas, much like we did in our private in-office tests. When you download PTE, you’ll get to see features or balance changes that have the potential to change the way the wider game is played — and you’ll be in on it from the start.

We think PTE is a really exciting way to keep you in tune with Planetary Annihilation. If you want to give it a shot, visit this message board thread, read what Marc has to say, and the client it’s delivered through a download.

As creators, we use experiments to test the limits of our games. As designers, we use experiments to test out how balance and gameplay feel. PTE will be primarily used for testing experiments, from engine changes to even balance overhauls.

We have a fun balance philosophy at Uber Entertainment. Before we start finely tuning attack power, range, and concepts like that, we truly stretch the limits of units by doubling, tripling, or maybe even halving their abilities. We test for feel first, and then start really getting in there.

When you jump into PTE, you’ll see and get to play with these experiments, and truly experience how we’re shaping the Planetary Annihilation experience.

And Now For A Question


Will secondary colors return?

We’ve been asked this one several times since the Gamma phase began. The short answer is: yes, yes they will.

The long answer? We pulled them in the initial Gamma update because some combinations just didn’t read well. People couldn’t tell what army was what color. Since then, we’ve re-worked how secondary colors appear on units by minimizing their impact on unit models. Those times when you were like, is that red or blue team? Not going to happen anymore once we get this in.

And speaking of units — Andrew’s been thinking about redoing the Grenadier unit. Here’s an image of an early idea:



Don’t forget to check out Planetary Annihilation on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Have a question? Ask them on the forums or send us an e-mail: mailbag@uberent.com. Otherwise, plug in, stay tuned, annihilate!

Looks wicked.

Down with the bi-peds!

Having worked with 3 Legged designs(and even more unorthodox 7 legged designs) I get the feeling there will still be further iteration yet, 3 legs just don't work out all that great in the end.

Mike

Some pretty exciting stuff coming our way!

I can't wait!

I AM SO PUMPED UP!
-- Emmit

Looks and sounds great! It'll be nice to have secondary colors back in vanilla PA and I'm excited to see the completed version of that new model!

Can I point out that pathfinding in the current build is absolutely atrocious? And you're adding trees as obstacles?

I love the fire idea...and am excited to be able to zoom out, see lasers, rockets, explosions and now fire spreading across the warzone. Talk about a truly epic experience! I also like the protection/mining aspect. Though I think the larger units should be able to knock trees over, but at a great expense to speed and mobility, including the commander. Regardless, it's a very cool addition I'm looking forward to playing!

I haven't tried PTE, but after finals next week, I'm hoping to dedicate some real time to this game...in my free time.

The 3-legged change is kind of cool...but I think it needs a split so there's still 4 contact patches at the ground...keep it's ***-end stable. Don't wanna shoot a grenade and fall over....lol.

Great work guys!

Pathfinding is a house of cards that breaks every time something changes that has anything to do with paths.
If there's a chance it would break when trees are added, it would be more convenient to fix it after trees are added, rather than to fix it once before trees are added and again after trees are added.

Of course, woe be to anyone who tries to run a tournament in the middle of this process...

Well, technically, a tripod bot would be the most stable out of any bot. A tripod is the most stable standing structure.

I could care less about fire. Fix the pathfinding of bots its so annoying. Also the lagg issues are huge. I think the fire will just make it 10 times worse just like when we had disco inferno power plants. I dunno about going around trees with units its just going to be a huge mess.

Just an idea: When secondary colors return, could the secondary color please also be used for the outlining of the strategic icons? (Also for the little symbols inside the strategic icons that help to distinguish one icon from another.)

I think that could help to solve two problems...
a. It should make it easier to distinguish between teams when the viewing the game at an icon level.

b. It should also make it possible to chose an strategic icon outline color other than just white, that will contrast better with the environment. This can currently be a problem with some strategic icon colors that can be difficult to follow visually. It is regularly mentioned during the early streaming of games that players should avoid choosing some colors to make the game easier to follow for viewers. Using the secondary colors to allow the choice of a higher contrasting outline color for the strategic icons should help to resolve this, and hopefully make more of the color pallet usable.

No mention of my mod that has let people view (and choose) their secondary colour in the lobby pretty much since that feature was removed officially. I am disappoint.

Also +1 don't give a [redacted] about fire and trees gameplay (its currently just annoying), but the visual effect are cool.

Yes exactly.

But seeing as the current issues with pathfinding in the live build have been there for several months, it would be really nice not to deal with that in the live build until it was ready to be pushed to live.

I'm going to be sceptical here and ask a question.

Why do we put effort into making trees objects and burnable while 1/5th of the planets do not have trees?

Because the systems required for that type of thing have applications far beyond just burning trees.

Mike

I sort of mentioned it!

I use that mod all the time and am really thankful for how well it works!

If that's the case, can we just go for one leg bunny hops? Might be easier to code.

Fair point you make there. I have a different perspectives on the matter:

- Going by your statement would mean that the grenadier unit technically wouldn't be able to fire unless it's standing still correct? Otherwise, it might fall over from physics related to having such a large RPG cannon, varied terrain, and firing angles.

- If it were to dig in and use 3 posts, fine I could see stability..but not while on the move...at least not over any terrain or from any angle...it'd be more specific due to obvious tipping points...which with two legs in the front wouldn't work well with an RPG pushing backwards against the one rear leg.

- The bot is not a structure and last I checked. And I would assume that the eight legged varieties were the most able and stable of anything with legs, not just because of lower center of gravity either. I could be wrong...that's just my perspective on the matter.

- I thought the grenadier units still fired while moving? Maybe that's something I missed though, it wouldn't be the first time. I'd much rather traverse uneven terrain with either two wheels or four wheels over any three wheeled vehicle, any day, any time, anywhere...and I have lots of experience on all of them.

Cheers!

There is a difference between wheeled vehicles and legged units, but 3 wheeled vehicles are still quite a lot more stable then 2 wheeled vehicles (weather or not they are comfortable is another matter). Although adding more legs to a bot wouldn't make it less stable, it doesn't really improve the stability at all past 3. A tripod bot could easily fire a heavy RPG kind of weapon without loosing balance, since it is just as stable as a four-legged one. The difference is not the stability but the mobility between 3 legged bots and >3 legged bots, a tripod bot is actually very slow, IRL, whereas a quad bot currently holds the record for fastest legged robot ever made. Although it could easily change with how you design either bot.