Extra difficulty for story mode after defeating Nolok

[Wuzzy]

I have an idea for an optional continuation of the story mode.

I have seen that SuperTuxKart has introduced a 4th difficulty: SuperTux. I like it, it is really much more difficult.

I would like it if the story mode would somehow incorporate the 4th difficulty. But I think since this is only reserved for the pros, here’s my idea:

After Nolok was defeated in Fort Magma, the story ends normally. But the story mode now unlocks the SuperTux difficulty for all challenges on the map. This is intended for an optional extra challenge for the pros. Basically it is just the AI which is more difficult, but the victory conditions may also be harsher, but this depends on the challenge.
Winning a challenge in SuperTux difficulty gives a diamond cup and more score than a gold cup, obviously. The intent is to push players to their limits.
I picked diamond, because I guess it would be easier to distinguish from the other cups. Platinum would be hard to distinguish from silver, for example.


My second idea is to add a last, ultimate challenge on the map which gets unlocked when a score of the equivalent of (number of all other challenges)*10 (gold) has been achieved. With 24 challenges, this translates to a score of 24×10 = 240. So if one has gold or better in all other challenges, the ultimate challenge gets unlocked for sure.

This last challenge is the “All Tracks” grand prix with 15 AI karts (at least in SuperTux difficulty). Why 15? Because there are 16 different karts in the main game, and this challenge would represent all karts.
I intend this challenge to be extreme, because it is the ultimate challenge.

As I said, all these diamond cups are entirely optional and are only there for the STK pros and completionists.


What do you think of this idea (!)?

[Tuxfan]

I think your idea has some potential. I am not convinced of the "ultimate challenge". The "all track grand prix" is really long (an hour or more playing time probably), but not actually hard to win. Unfortunately I have no idea what could be a better challenge.

[Wuzzy]

Have you tried to win the All Tracks grand prix on SuperTux diffuculty? ;-)
Yes, it is absurdly long, your estimate of 1 hour is pretty accurate. That’s the reason why I call it “ultimate”. Is it possible to pause a grand prix in the story mode and continue it later? If yes, I think it should totally be made more prominent, because from the interface you can’t really tell.

Maybe the grand prix challenge can be made harder (at least in SuperTux difficulty) by adding a score requirement as well. So you not only have to win the grand prix, you also have to have to collect a minimum total score in the grand grix.
Maybe this could be added for the other grand grix challenges as well (at least in SuperTux difficulty).

[Anon]

If saving grand-prix challenges is a feature that's coming to the game, then I see no reason why this wouldn't work. I think it's a good idea that has the potential to greatly expand the endgame content in Supertuxkart.

[Arthur]

Yes, saving a grand prix challenge is possible in the game as of the current development version.
When it comes down to number of karts, in previous versions more karts meant significantly worse performance on some systems, so even "pro" players without proper gaming hardware would not be able to play it comfortably. However, the new graphics engine might be less impacted by karts, although we would probably need to do more testing to be sure.

When it comes to having SuperTux mode for challenges, that is mainly a question of having enough people to balance all the challenges, and as you can see from your other recent thread there are lots of opinions when it comes to that. But if a few people would make SuperTux challenges, they might be included if no extra issues pop up (the UI would have to be slightly adapted for example).

TL;DR version: it could be done, if people are interested in making it happen.

[Anon]

Instead of taking the time to balance all of the changes by hand, would it be possible to just take the fastest high score (once that comes out) from each track and then add a fixed percentage/number of seconds? It should make for pretty even difficulty, and help in making the challenges truly "SuperTux" difficulty.

[Wuzzy]

Maybe I can start by creating a simple new cup icon:

cup_diamond.png (15.21 KiB) Viewed 6608 times

It may be not the best image, but at least it is clearly distinguishable from the other images even in small size.


@Anon: That too might require balancing work. And I guess we don’t have record times specific to the story challenges yet. Balancing or not, some work needs to be done, obviously.

[Anon]

Maybe not yet, but I'd expect the story challenge races to be the first ones to get maxed when the first version of the game with online highscores gets released.

[hiker]

Maybe not yet, but I'd expect the story challenge races to be the first ones to get maxed when the first version of the game with online highscores gets released.

Just for the record: online highscores are a unlikely to happen any time soon. Main reason is that it is too easy to cheat (e.g. modify a text file to make your kart faster). So we would need to filter all results, potentially looking at replays etc. Which is just way beyond what we can handle

We might add some game statistics collection, and it would be feasible to add finishing time - but again the problem is how to distinguish people hacking their installation (though perhaps that's less of an issue, since there is no glory to be gained this way ), but amount of time to actually look and analyse the data. But I admit I like the idea of using some average time to help us balance the challenges.

I am thinking of adding support for a 'limited online' highscores: you would only see your friends. This way, if you have friends that cheat, unfriend them

Re Diamond challenges: yes, we would need someone to come up with some good values for all challenges. But the additional issue is that ... it gets kind of boring Maybe we should unlock the higher difficultly earlier (e.g. after winning your first GP on hard), and then make them available? Increasing the number of karts to race against is difficult, people with lower end hardware might be struggling to have that many karts on the screen.

Cheers,
Joerg

[Wuzzy]

I do not think that it gets boring. SuperTux difficulty is hard enough to keep one’s attention. Well, at least my attention. XD
And as I said, this is intended to be entirely optional.

Maybe we should unlock the higher difficultly earlier (e.g. after winning your first GP on hard), and then make them available?

Nah, I think that unlock criterion is just plain random. I don’t know. The problem with that would be that Fort Magma can probably unlocked early by winning diamond a couple of times. The score balancing would get messed up and thus the balancing would require even more adjustments.
I still think the 4th difficulty should be made available after the defeat of Nolok. It is not an impossible thing to unlock and win in Fort Magma. If you got only bronze in all challenges but Fort Magma, you got 23*8 = 184 points, which is enough to unlock it.

Increasing the number of karts to race against is difficult, people with lower end hardware might be struggling to have that many karts on the screen.

It has yet to be proven if this is still an issue. I created this thread to collect data. Hopefully someone with low-end hardware replies in this thread.

[Alayan]

I may help to balance challenges in SuperTux if needed. (aka ; I'll try to provide values as soon as you confirm it will be somehow useful)

That said, the risk of challenge being boring exists, and it is a true question to know how to unlock that new difficulty for challenges. In my case, e.g., since I already got all gold challenges in 0.8.0 and 0.8.1., and since I'm used to SuperTux ; having to play the challenges two times wouldn't please me especially.
Just do everything all over again without other benefit that getting diamond is maybe a little bit limited.

Getting a little bit offtopic, but are the number of challenges and their core content somehow "locked" ? Otherwise we may try to think again about the whole process, with how things are unlocked, which features could be unlocked (atm it is just some tracks and the related grand prix, but why not e.g. the reverse mode ?) etc

[Auria]

I may help to balance challenges in SuperTux if needed. (aka ; I'll try to provide values as soon as you confirm it will be somehow useful)

That said, the risk of challenge being boring exists, and it is a true question to know how to unlock that new difficulty for challenges. In my case, e.g., since I already got all gold challenges in 0.8.0 and 0.8.1., and since I'm used to SuperTux ; having to play the challenges two times wouldn't please me especially.
Just do everything all over again without other benefit that getting diamond is maybe a little bit limited.

Getting a little bit offtopic, but are the number of challenges and their core content somehow "locked" ? Otherwise we may try to think again about the whole process, with how things are unlocked, which features could be unlocked (atm it is just some tracks and the related grand prix, but why not e.g. the reverse mode ?) etc

It would be possible to lock other things, though that would require some development work. At this time, only tracks and karts may be locked in XML files

[Arthur]

Just bringing this up again: it's too late now for inclusion in 0.8.2, but if we get a pull request with extra challenges for SuperTux difficulty after the release we'll be happy to review it then.