[TuxKart-devel] Re: Tuxkart-devel digest, Vol 1 #39 - 13 msgs

[Ricardo C. <ri...@ae...>]

Hi Steve,

 Please, do a favor to all of us: stop writting so much! :)

Em Segunda, 28 de Junho de 2004 22:08, o=20
tux...@li... escreveu:
> Content-Type=3Dmessage/rfc822
> Content-Description=3Dembedded message
> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 07:47:10 -0500
> From: Steve Baker <sjb...@ai...>
> To: =A0t...@li...
> Subject: Re: [TuxKart-devel] Re: Tuxkart-devel digest, Vol 1 #36 - 8 msgs
> Reply-To: tux...@li...
>
> Ricardo Cruz wrote:
> > =A0I don't agree with this.
> > =A0Why not making it like any other Karts game? Each characters has its
> > level of difficulty.
>
> They don't *all* work that way. =A0MarioKart'64 has an 'engine size'
> selection (50cc, 100cc, 150cc IIRC) - what this changes is the game
> difficulty - in a number of subtle ways...however, all of the characters
> are present in all of those 'difficulty' levels.
>
> As I recall, the Crash Bandicoot kart game has difficulty too (I'll have =
to
> dust off our aging Playstation to find out).
>
 I haven't say that there shouldn't be any generic difficulty value. I agre=
e=20
with that, that adds replay value.

 I just said that characters should also have their own difficulty. This wa=
y,=20
each kart that you pass through will get harder. And to get into the 1st=20
place, you would have to be really good.

> Anyway - this is our game - and we get to choose how to do it.
>
> The problem with each character having a hard-wired difficulty level is
> that we'd have to make a LOT more characters. =A0If you want 'easy' 'medi=
um'
> and 'hard', you'd need (at a minimum) four characters at each level
> otherwise the beginner doesn't have four easy characters to race with - a=
nd
> the experienced guy doesn't have four difficult characters to choose from.
>
> That would force us to build at least 12 characters - but even having done
> that, we still gave the player very little choice about who to race at
> any given level of challenge.
>
 I think 12 characters is too much. But 8 is a must, at least for a challen=
ge=20
mode.

> If we put 'difficulty' factors into the game in other ways that don't
> require us to change the Kart graphics each time - then there can be
> more characters available at each stage (although we might want to make
> some of them 'unlockable' so you have to work in order to play them).
>
> We can change the abilities of the karts at different levels by changing
> some constants in the code - speed, accelleration, cornering ability, etc.
> We can also (in principle) change the skill level in the AI to do that.
>
> This isn't unreasonable - after all, our human player's abilities
> improve with practice - why shouldn't our game characters get better as
> time goes on?
>
 Well, that's a good idea. :D

Ricardo

> I strongly suspect that it's going to be hard to make even 12
> character/kart models that look good...so as a purely practical matter, I
> think difficulty has to lie outside of character selection.

=2D-=20
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really
good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They really
do it.  It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens every day.  I cannot
recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
		-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address