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Let's Make It Harder!


Fluffy Cupcake
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Fluffy Cupcake

Alright, so I got an idea going on here. In the first LEGO Racers, we've all seen via the competition how much better we can be than Veronica Voltage, even without the usage of warps!

 

What I'm thinking of doing using the GHB Recorder with the help of the best racers we have out here in the community, is make a harder Time Trials mod!

 

Now, we can't make the times practically impossible to beat, like for example my time on IGP in the competition which I couldn't even beat myself at the time! They have to be harder than the originals, but at the same time they have to be reasonable and have that balance of not being impossible to beat.

 

First off, should we do warp abuse, since that is what players are likely to do? I'm thinking not at all or sparingly, as there is no skill in warps. Secondly, do you guys think this mod is a good idea? I leave those two questions up for discussion below. If this goes thru well, I'll get this mod up and going in a place the rest of the forum can see it. Also, if any of you guys have an issue, idea, or general comment regarding this mod idea (go ahead an say it is downright stupid for all I care), don't be shy about it, feel free to toss it up! I and perhaps others want to know what you think on the matter.

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Yes, I'm definitely in support of this. In fact I'd suggest we have two tiers: hard and insane. Hard is as you suggested, difficult but not impossible to beat, while insane would be the best RRU can possibly give. If anyone's played WipEout HD and tried to get the Beat Zico trophy (dang, that one took me a while to get), that's the kind of difficulty I'm thinking of. I'm pretty sure that the developers all raced on that particular track trying to get the best time over and over again, and Zico got the 'unbeatable' one, so that became a trophy that you achieved by beating his time.

 

Warp abuse... Huh. I would have said yes to using them, seeing as there's nothing to stop the player using warps themselves (it's not an RRU competition after all). But I can see the reasons for no. Or perhaps if you were to run with my hard/insane idea, the hard mode could not use warps while the insane mode did.

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Fluffy Cupcake

Both a hard and insane mod? That could work too!

 

I'm not a fan of the warping, although I was having second thoughts about making the warps a yes. For the case of this mod, I think it may be exceptional, as I've seen the extremes people have taken on other games to be the best in the world! There could also be a third section to this mod for those that don't like to use warps with only hard difficulty and not insane, but that wouldn't be of high priority to be made. 

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So you're saying we could have three mods then? As in:

  • Hard - no warps
  • Hard - warps
  • Insane (which includes warps)

I'd be up for that, although I think we should approach it one at a time and complete one before moving onto the next. Considering there are... 28(?) tracks to record on, that's a lot of recording.

 

 

Next question, who's going to set the laps? Judging by the LR tournament, I'm not great. But we could have everyone submit theirs and just choose the best, I suppose.

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Fluffy Cupcake

As I already mentioned priority, yes, let's not do them all at once.

 

Set the laps...? I'm not sure what you are meaning. Anyone can do whatever track they want, with best time gets picked. I guess you could call it a non-competitive competition.

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Sorry, I meant record the tracks, not laps. We could also use the best times for Insane and the not-so-good times for Hard. And sorry for not seeing your mention of priority already, I was/am tired and all... ;)

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  • 9 months later...
  • 10 months later...

The trouble with this idea is the fact that the AI are from memory hard coded into the game engine. a much better idea, would be to get all the models extracted and then recreate the game in something like Unity Engine, that would then allow you to also do things like: Add the missing short cuts from Nightmare-athon and Pirate Skull Pass. It would also allow you to add new part colors, torso textures ect without overwriting the existing ones. Not to mention allow you to add new circuits entirely

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Fluffy Cupcake

Hardcoded? Eh, no. Not really. We can change their looks AND their routes, which is what this topic is after, we can also change how fast they travel along the route too if I'm recalling correctly, so we can practically do whatever we want with them. The only thing I think(???) we can't change is their racing behaviour. i.e. Redbeard always spamming weapons, or Rocket waiting for a full power up before zooming off.

 

Also, we can add new bricks without overriding, although I think there is a limit to how much we can add iirc.

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5 hours ago, Xiron said:

Hardcoded? Eh, no. Not really. We can change their looks AND their routes, which is what this topic is after, we can also change how fast they travel along the route too if I'm recalling correctly, so we can practically do whatever we want with them. The only thing I think(???) we can't change is their racing behaviour. i.e. Redbeard always spamming weapons, or Rocket waiting for a full power up before zooming off.

 

Also, we can add new bricks without overriding, although I think there is a limit to how much we can add iirc.

 

I think you can change the AI behaviour.

 

I know that we can find these values - they're coefficients, so every time unit Racer X has a 0.8 chance of using Powerup Y. Where they are is something I don't know, but it is possible to edit them even if you're forced to have CE running in the background.

 

We can't change stuff like Rocket waiting for a full power up, but we can change the fact that he won't run into large quantities of green/white bricks.

 

I remember changing the powerups on the KK Raceway (what was its name?) to find King Kahuka using absolutely no shields and instead frying me with cannonballs.

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Fluffy Cupcake

Well it's the best we can do when we don't have an army of people wanting to spend a lot of time re-making the game from the ground up, so these are restrictions we have to live with.

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  • 1 month later...
On 8/1/2016 at 3:53 AM, aidenpons said:

We can't change stuff like Rocket waiting for a full power up, but we can change the fact that he won't run into large quantities of green/white bricks.

Actually, this can be changed in Drivers.ddb. 

 

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  • 1 year later...
legoracerlover
On 8/1/2016 at 3:53 AM, aidenpons said:

 

I think you can change the AI behaviour.

 

I know that we can find these values - they're coefficients, so every time unit Racer X has a 0.8 chance of using Powerup Y. Where they are is something I don't know, but it is possible to edit them even if you're forced to have CE running in the background.

 

We can't change stuff like Rocket waiting for a full power up, but we can change the fact that he won't run into large quantities of green/white bricks.

 

I remember changing the powerups on the KK Raceway (what was its name?) to find King Kahuka using absolutely no shields and instead frying me with cannonballs.

Wait so your saying that the behavior of AI or in this case KK changed by you changing the bricks position? So the game re adjusts to another behavior or does the game treat the cannon like the shield? 

 

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On 1/9/2018 at 4:33 PM, legoracerlover said:

Wait so your saying that the behavior of AI or in this case KK changed by you changing the bricks position? So the game re adjusts to another behavior or does the game treat the cannon like the shield? 

 

 

What I did was essentially replace all the blue powerups on King Kahuka;s route - because anyone who's played LR for some time knows which blues KK takes large.OldTonguePNG_transparent.png.299864b6559440630e29f111b85cffe2.png - with red ones. Voila, he now never uses shielding (because he never picks it up) and instead shoots me to bits with cannonballs (because there are lots of those on his route).

 

I didn't change the route. I just changed what was on it.

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I can do runs for different circuits if you want help with difficulty settings.

 

We also don't need Kahuka to go as ballistic as Redbeard is, since we already have a cannonball maniac. The problem, of course, being that Kahuka will use basic shields as much as Redbeard uses Basic Red Bricks.

 

I can stream in a little bit to help determine difficulties (though my skill will most likely have just 'Insane' difficulty)

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10 hours ago, Greycatmon said:

The problem, of course, being that Kahuka will use basic shields as much as Redbeard uses Basic Red Bricks.

 

Wrong. Both champion AI will use whatever they find on their route.

 

Lurking around somewhere on this forum are the AI parameters for delay times of using powerups, in addition to their speed. A crummy AI like, oh, Pharaoh's Mummy has a speed of ~0.7 IIRC, as well as delays of ~2-4s (it's a range, I know that much) for every powerup - resulting in him spotting a target to shoot with his cannonball, waiting for the timer to run out, by which time his target has gone round a corner and can no longer be hit - in which case the timer goes back to 0.

 

Champion AI have speeds of about 1.1 or 1.05, so they will slightly out-run you, but more importantly they have 0-0.5s delay for powerups - resulting in Redbeard getting a cannon and shooting you immediately, or Kahuka getting a blue brick and instantly putting on his shielding.

 

Swap the powerups around - a trivial thing to do with the programs we have available - and suddenly Basil is pelting you with cannonballs while Kahuka is dropping waaaay too many oil slicks.

 

 

There's a third thing to note and that is that the higher level AI have rules of "Only use Red/Blue/Yellow powerups if you have at least one white brick." This is why Johnny Thunder is much easier than Captain Redbeard (it's not just cumulative skill!). Redbeard will shoot you instantly and use shielding instantly. Thunder will also use shielding instantly, but he won't shoot you with reds until he's got at least one white - which is rare on those maps. Barron von Barron has a similar rule with shielding, which is why he's also easier. Gypsy Moth has another rule with yellow bricks but those are basically not noticeable.

 

Rocket Racer is coded to only use green powerups when three white bricks are collected - resulting in him warp-spamming as opposed to doing what every other AI tends to do, which is just use its green bricks a second or three after they're collected.

 

 

I cannot remember where I saw this information. But it fits the facts.

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