Some weapon suggestions

[claymore]

• Cake seems very overpowered. The stun seems a bit excessive me, I think it should be removed. As of 0.7 it's possible to fire it backwards, I don't think that should be allowed with a weapon so accurate.
  
• Bowling ball, otoh, takes some skill to hit with, especially at a distance. I have a suggestion to make it more valuable: don't destroy it on collision with a kart, allow it to keep rolling. Maybe destroy it if it hits as many as 4 or 5 karts.
  
• A dummy box weapon that has the appearance of regular boxes but doesn't rotate (or is visually distinguishable in some other subtle way) would be a nice addition. It would have the same random negative effect as a banana peel.

[ctdabomb]

• Cake seems very overpowered. The stun seems a bit excessive me, I think it should be removed. As of 0.7 it's possible to fire it backwards, I don't think that should be allowed with a weapon so accurate.

I think it is fine

Maybe destroy it if it hits as many as 4 or 5 karts.

interesting idea

A dummy box weapon that has the appearance of regular boxes but doesn't rotate (or is visually distinguishable in some other subtle way) would be a nice addition. It would have the same random negative effect as a banana peel.

also an interesting idea

[claymore]

Cake seems very overpowered. The stun seems a bit excessive me, I think it should be removed. As of 0.7 it's possible to fire it backwards, I don't think that should be allowed with a weapon so accurate.

I think it is fine

Thanks for your reply, I'm curious to know what other people think. Another thing I dislike about the stun effect (besides that spinning around helpless on the spot defies the laws of physics, and feels unsatisfying for this reason) is that it doesn't seem to be possible to rescue yourself. In past versions, you were rewarded for preemptively hitting the rescue button when it appeared you would lose more time than if you were to last out the effects of being hit (in the hope that you would land on the track).

I've just remember another idea I had for a weapon. How about a defensive bubble which blocks all attacks on your karts for a few seconds? When it blocks a shot successfully, it could ripple or something. Again, the player would be rewarded for successfully predicting an attack.

[Auria]

Indeed, a protective bubble is something we have thought about, we just haven't got to actually doing it

[ctdabomb]

Indeed, a protective bubble is something we have thought about, we just haven't got to actually doing it

i think that a shield of stars like in supertux would be cooler than a bubble.

[ardvark71]

How about a defensive bubble which blocks all attacks on your karts for a few seconds? When it blocks a shot successfully, it could ripple or something. Again, the player would be rewarded for successfully predicting an attack.

Hi all...

A "force field" would be a great addition.

As far as the cupcakes, in all honesty, I like it the way it is.

Regards...

[MCMic]

One thing that I liked in Mario Kart and is missing in STK, is the possibility to use almost each weapon in a offensive or defensive way.

We should be able to stop bowling ball with bubble gum, fire cake in other cakes, explode rubber ball with a cake fired backward at the right time, and so on.
I think that some of this is already possible (I remember shouting a bowling ball in an other one for instance, but you'd have to be really quick)

[ctdabomb]

One thing that I liked in Mario Kart and is missing in STK, is the possibility to use almost each weapon in a offensive or defensive way.

We should be able to stop bowling ball with bubble gum, fire cake in other cakes, explode rubber ball with a cake fired backward at the right time, and so on.
I think that some of this is already possible (I remember shouting a bowling ball in an other one for instance, but you'd have to be really quick)

the swatter can be used in a defensive way, it can swat bombs, and it can stop bowling balls from hitting you if they are coming from the right direction.

[claymore]

I had some more ideas, so I'll just post them before I try and implement some of them (will need sounds and graphics though). I have a working build now at least.

• I changed my opinion on cake a little. The amount of stun perhaps isn't so bad, but the spinning stars visual effect shouldn't start until the kart hits the ground.
  
• Zipper weapon should function more like track zippers (rather than providing only a small speed boost, immediately bring you up to a certain speed) to make it more valuable and differentiate it from nitro.
  
• Experiment with allowing bomb to be passed back directly to the kart that gave it. Otherwise, it's very difficult to pass it around.
  
• Parachute works strangely. It lowers the cap on your max speed (as it should), but it also prevents you from accelerating? This makes it more punishing to karts who have just come off the track, which I hardly think is desirable.
  
  Also, how is the length of time that parachute lasts determined? It doesn't last a uniform amount of time for all affected karts, indeed it seems to last longer on slow-moving karts.
  
• Certainly don't give 3 parachutes in one box with this behaviour.

New weapons:

• Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.
  
• Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.
  
• Bubble: blocks weapons. Perhaps use bubble graphic from overworld, or have a shield of stars as ctdabomb suggested. Lasts ~3 seconds? Doesn't block rubber ball for kart in first place. Ripples on successfully deflecting an attack.
  
• Mirror: temporarily flips the track orientation horizontally for everyone. Switch left and right key mappings so pressing left still moves left.
  
• Smokescreen: a trail of smoke billows from your kart, impeding visibility.
  
• Ghost: become invisible (and so not targeted by cake), pass through other karts and obstacles. Skid marks, engine sounds are still present.
  
• Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.
  
• Torch: plunges track into (partial) darkness, with only your own kart equipped with a torch to light the way.
  
• Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).
  
• Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.
  
• Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

[ctdabomb]

nice ideas! if you need help modelling any of these, I would love to help. I love new weapons!

[wardmuylaert]

Also, how is the length of time that parachute lasts determined? It doesn't last a uniform amount of time for all affected karts, indeed it seems to last longer on slow-moving karts.

Bases itself on stk_config.xml

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

  <!-- friction is the friction increase when a parachute is attached.
        time is the time an attached parachute is active
        time-other is the time a parachute attached from other kart works
        done-fraction is the fraction of speed when lost will detach parachute -->
   <parachute friction="2.0" time="4.0" time-other="8.0" done-fraction="0.7"/>

Friction is what slows you down. For the time parameter I believe the 4 is for parachutes from bananas, 8 is from parachutes given by other karts. Time parameter gets ignored once the speed of the kart drops below 0.7 * start_speed_when_parachute_attached. At least, that's how I understand it. So indeed, slow karts at the moment of activation will have a harder time dropping below 70% of their starting speed. It's why I always brake if I get a parachute when already going pretty slowly.

[Arthur]

I had some more ideas, so I'll just post them before I try and implement some of them (will need sounds and graphics though). I have a working build now at least.

• I changed my opinion on cake a little. The amount of stun perhaps isn't so bad, but the spinning stars visual effect shouldn't start until the kart hits the ground.
  
• Zipper weapon should function more like track zippers (rather than providing only a small speed boost, immediately bring you up to a certain speed) to make it more valuable and differentiate it from nitro.
  
• Experiment with allowing bomb to be passed back directly to the kart that gave it. Otherwise, it's very difficult to pass it around.
  
• Parachute works strangely. It lowers the cap on your max speed (as it should), but it also prevents you from accelerating? This makes it more punishing to karts who have just come off the track, which I hardly think is desirable.
  
  Also, how is the length of time that parachute lasts determined? It doesn't last a uniform amount of time for all affected karts, indeed it seems to last longer on slow-moving karts.
  
• Certainly don't give 3 parachutes in one box with this behaviour.

I believe the zipper weapon functions pretty much like the track zippers. Maybe they are a bit softer, but honestly many seem to get into trouble when using zippers when it comes to steering, so if the speed change is too abrupt it may hurt gameplay.

Personally I think that bombs should not be too easy to pass around. The time limit is quite high, so with decent driving you should be able to pass it on, or if you're leading you'll just have to try getting swatters. Additionally, the amount of time shrinks significantly when passing a bomb, so if passing bombs were too easy two karts driving side by side would eventually make the game seem like Russian roulette.

Ward is right when it comes to parachutes, and it can be very annoying at low speeds. Usually I brake to get it released quicker and then use any spare nitro to quickly come back to speed again. But actually the annoyance is kinda fun because it does force you to think creatively and use the brakes to your advantage. That's basically the only thing the brakes are good for, and taking that away would remove some dynamic feel to the game, IMHO. Can't really quite define why I feel this way, since it's often a curse instead of a blessing, but it does add to the game in an arbitrary way. But yes, the ability for both you and the AI to get 3 parachutes in a row may make this worse than it otherwise would be. So that is a change I would support.

[Arthur]

New weapons:

[*] Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.

This could be interesting to try out. Main thing I have against it is that the learning curve would increase by quite a bit, and people would have to concentrate more and look further ahead to check for rotational boxes.

[*] Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.

I am not sure moving at high speeds is a good idea, unless there were some sort of auto-guidance. Also, this doesn't seem too different from zippers.

[*] Bubble: blocks weapons. Perhaps use bubble graphic from overworld, or have a shield of stars as ctdabomb suggested. Lasts ~3 seconds? Doesn't block rubber ball for kart in first place. Ripples on successfully deflecting an attack.

Some kind of shield is definitely wanted, at the very least for 3 Strikes Battle. Battles tend to be over pretty quick, so slowing it a bit down and making it more strategic by having a shield would be good.

[*] Mirror: temporarily flips the track orientation horizontally for everyone. Switch left and right key mappings so pressing left still moves left.

This sounds mainly annoying, especially for new users. People playing STK a lot would probably have few problems with this after getting used to it, but personally I think altering things dynamically is generally a hindrance for people wanting to learn a game without investing too much time in it.

[*] Smokescreen: a trail of smoke billows from your kart, impeding visibility.

Sounds like backward plungers. I doubt we need another sight-blocking weapon.

[*] Ghost: become invisible (and so not targeted by cake), pass through other karts and obstacles. Skid marks, engine sounds are still present.

This sounds like it could be interesting. Possibly a physics nightmare, but nevertheless it might turn out to be a very cool weapon.

[*] Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.

Or maybe use a shockwave instead, like in the game Blur. A bit simpler to understand exactly what it does, me thinks.

[*] Torch: plunges track into (partial) darkness, with only your own kart equipped with a torch to light the way.

Maybe that would be cool, but again it sounds like it would be mostly problematic for new players.

[*] Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).

3 Strikes Battle would be cool with this. Otherwise, I am not so sure if the info would be particularly useful in a normal race.

[*] Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.

Would not work well with the minimal GUI, and frankly that would just be a bit too much to try keeping in mind. It would very easily become a distraction if people tried to read while driving, leading to bad driving and thus could do as much harm as good. Also, having too many special weapons will sharpen the learning curve.

[*] Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

Sounds cool, but frankly I think this would be better done with oil spills. Then we could replace the bubble gum with oil, and get a similar gameplay result to this snowball idea, with a little less graphical work to be done.

As you can see, I am quite wary of making the game more complicated, especially adding weapons that might make newcomers easily lose out or have trouble grasping the concepts. Additionally, I think we just can't have so many weapons or else the game would seem very chaotic. We'd need to remove some at least if we were to add more than a couple of those, and I think the ones we have already are pretty good. Maybe not the most imaginative ones, but they are easy to grasp and doesn't require too much skill to use.

[claymore]

[*] Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.

This could be interesting to try out. Main thing I have against it is that the learning curve would increase by quite a bit, and people would have to concentrate more and look further ahead to check for rotational boxes.

I think this is a weapon that just needs to be tried to see how it works out. I'm not really sure how it would play.

[*] Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.

I am not sure moving at high speeds is a good idea, unless there were some sort of auto-guidance. Also, this doesn't seem too different from zippers.

The difficulty in guiding fast-moving karts is what I think counterbalances this weapon. It differs from zippers in that it provides a continuous boost, rather than a single instantaneous one.

[*] Smokescreen: a trail of smoke billows from your kart, impeding visibility.

Sounds like backward plungers. I doubt we need another sight-blocking weapon.

I think smoke is a pretty easy effect to add, and as a weapon it wouldn't significantly increase the learning curve. But yeah, lower priority.

[*] Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.

Or maybe use a shockwave instead, like in the game Blur. A bit simpler to understand exactly what it does, me thinks.

Yeah, you're right... shockwave is much better.

[*] Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).

3 Strikes Battle would be cool with this. Otherwise, I am not so sure if the info would be particularly useful in a normal race.

Me neither, I think it's another weapon that we would just need to try out to see exactly how useful it is. In any case, I'm not sure there's any harm in occasionally getting a less useful weapon from boxes.

[*] Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.

Would not work well with the minimal GUI, and frankly that would just be a bit too much to try keeping in mind. It would very easily become a distraction if people tried to read while driving, leading to bad driving and thus could do as much harm as good. Also, having too many special weapons will sharpen the learning curve.

I think this points more to a problem with displaying these messages during the race and expecting people to actually have time to read them. An aural indication that a kart has been hit (and by what weapon) would be far more useful in this regard. But in the worst case, you could just hit the fire key at a random moment in time and get a pretty much random weapon.

[*] Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

Sounds cool, but frankly I think this would be better done with oil spills. Then we could replace the bubble gum with oil, and get a similar gameplay result to this snowball idea, with a little less graphical work to be done.

Not sure how I feel about this. I'm slightly attached to gum, but then there's a bit more strategy involved in placing oil spills so as to make slipping as dangerous as possible, like at corners or places where karts can go off the track. But I don't think the graphical work involved in Snowball would be too hefty.

As you can see, I am quite wary of making the game more complicated, especially adding weapons that might make newcomers easily lose out or have trouble grasping the concepts. Additionally, I think we just can't have so many weapons or else the game would seem very chaotic. We'd need to remove some at least if we were to add more than a couple of those, and I think the ones we have already are pretty good. Maybe not the most imaginative ones, but they are easy to grasp and doesn't require too much skill to use.

Yes, I did notice. :P I do understand your reservations, and I would hate for any of the existing weapons to have to be removed. So I think the solution is to make enabling/disabling weapons (and possibly setting weapon frequencies) possible within the GUI, and having the weapons you're not so sure about disabled by default. That way, we get the best of all worlds.

[hiker]

[*] Dummy box: appears as non-rotating, or slowly rotating box; effect is same as banana peel.

This could be interesting to try out. Main thing I have against it is that the learning curve would increase by quite a bit, and people would have to concentrate more and look further ahead to check for rotational boxes.

I think this is a weapon that just needs to be tried to see how it works out. I'm not really sure how it would play.

I am not sure either. If it's easy enough to distinguish the two types of boxes (as is the case in MK), then it's more or less like a bubble-gum (something to avoid), if it's too hard to see, it's more difficult for beginners.

[*] Rocket booster: attaches to the kart and forces moving at a very high speed. Probably given to low-placed karts only.

I am not sure moving at high speeds is a good idea, unless there were some sort of auto-guidance. Also, this doesn't seem too different from zippers.

The difficulty in guiding fast-moving karts is what I think counterbalances this weapon. It differs from zippers in that it provides a continuous boost, rather than a single instantaneous one.

Fast moving is way too difficult to control (large turn radius, and kart might be often slightly flying if the track is not smooth). A guided one might be an option for the last player to catch up easily (see rocket in MK Wii).

[*] Magnet: momentarily repel nearby karts.

Or maybe use a shockwave instead, like in the game Blur. A bit simpler to understand exactly what it does, me thinks.

Yeah, you're right... shockwave is much better.

Yes, magnets are more a symbol for pulling, not pushing. STK had a magnet in the very early versions, but it never worked well, so we removed it. Some kind of shockwave sounds indeed interesting.

[*] Revealer: for some period of time, indicate weapons karts are holding as an image hovering above the kart (and on display at top left of screen).

3 Strikes Battle would be cool with this. Otherwise, I am not so sure if the info would be particularly useful in a normal race.

Me neither, I think it's another weapon that we would just need to try out to see exactly how useful it is. In any case, I'm not sure there's any harm in occasionally getting a less useful weapon from boxes.

I don't see much sense in that tbh.

[*] Copycat: when used it turns into the last weapon to hit a kart. For example, if the last message to appear was "x ate too much of y's cake", you will get cake.

Would not work well with the minimal GUI, and frankly that would just be a bit too much to try keeping in mind. It would very easily become a distraction if people tried to read while driving, leading to bad driving and thus could do as much harm as good. Also, having too many special weapons will sharpen the learning curve.

I think this points more to a problem with displaying these messages during the race and expecting people to actually have time to read them. An aural indication that a kart has been hit (and by what weapon) would be far more useful in this regard. But in the worst case, you could just hit the fire key at a random moment in time and get a pretty much random weapon.

Again, I don't see this to be too useful. Perhaps something like this as a shield (or glove?): while this shield is active, you will catch the next item that hits you.

[*] Snowball: freezes karts. Frozen karts have any animation paused, are surrounded by a giant ice cube, have rescue disabled, and continue sliding in the direction they were travelling.

Sounds cool, but frankly I think this would be better done with oil spills. Then we could replace the bubble gum with oil, and get a similar gameplay result to this snowball idea, with a little less graphical work to be done.

Not sure how I feel about this. I'm slightly attached to gum, but then there's a bit more strategy involved in placing oil spills so as to make slipping as dangerous as possible, like at corners or places where karts can go off the track. But I don't think the graphical work involved in Snowball would be too hefty.

I like this idea. The advantage of snowball would be that it could work longer, while an oil spill might have a temporary effect only (not sure now that I write that ... the wheels could have more oil glued to it to explain why it acts over a longer period of time). Anyway, the fact that it gives you more options to think about (where to place it) is nice. A snowball could also have a snowball effect: if you hit another kart while being a snowball, that kart would be affected as well.

Having said that, I can't see that I will have any time for that in the foreseeable future - so, patches welcome

Cheers,
Joerg

[Binky]

Hello world

Some thoughts:

• Perhaps explosions are overused? Maybe cake could splat, block a player's vision, and stop their cart for a moment, as would happen if someone threw a giant cake at you!
• Likewise, bowling balls should knock your kart over and push it, rather than blowing up. They should probably explode after a timeout.
• instead of time-bombs going off when you drive into a bannana skin, the timer should speed up
• gift boxes should add weapons to a stack - you keep your old/unused weapons but must use the new ones first

My object/weapon list would be:

bannanas give you:

• anchors
• bubble-gummed wheels
• parachutes
• time-bombs
• a plungered face
• less time to pass-on your time-bomb

fake gift boxes look like normal ones from a distance, but spin in the opposite direction. have black ribbons, and when a kart is within half a kart's width from them, they should turn into bannanas

real gift boxes give you:

• throwable, slightly self-aiming, splating cake
• bowling ball, knocks over other karts, explodes after 5 seconds
• plunger, thrown backwards to impede vision, forwards to overtake.
• swatter, either flattens other karts, or bats weapons back at the nearest kart*
• oil, cars driving over it loose steering
• magic powers to turn bannanas into boxes etc

*i.e. when the weapon hits you from behind, the swatter automatically uses the same weapon backwards t the nearest kart behind you, and vice-versa

[betharatux1]

it's about plunger... are possible make position plunger on face of model who sit in kart take with it ? (on kart.xml will show position plunger with x,y,z directions)
and when automatic-opponent kart attacked other kart with plunger, we can see where kart has gotcha with plunger on race viewed. (not when we see the icon, other option + this is included as suggest ). but make it possible in Irrlicht, could be able ?
how with Hiker, know something idea make this possible ?

[betharatux1]

1.how with make possible intruder like eating-plant on papu-papu track in CTR ( crash team racing ), but in STK i think maybe possible (but i am not sure) an something animated hammer on each side road, and if kart driving on the target position will be "FLAT!" like kart are smashed with swatter when we use this weapon.
2. and intruder next is "thrower spring" ( like on past topic, ) on random side of road, make each kart driving into target will be throwing. but looks like its should be as weapon as well than as intruder.

[hiker]

Hi,
...

H

• Perhaps explosions are overused? Maybe cake could splat, block a player's vision, and stop their cart for a moment, as would happen if someone threw a giant cake at you!
• Likewise, bowling balls should knock your kart over and push it, rather than blowing up. They should probably explode after a timeout.
• instead of time-bombs going off when you drive into a bannana skin, the timer should speed up
• gift boxes should add weapons to a stack - you keep your old/unused weapons but must use the new ones first

Explosions: maybe Pushing karts is difficult (esp. if they might get pushed in the air), since then karts might end up on parts of the track where they are not supposed to be. Speeding up the timer is worth considering, not sure if this is obvious for everyone (e.g. people not playing with sound) - it might be difficult to understand what/why this is happening.

Using a stack might tend to over-complicate the game (next then people want to pick which weapon to use ). This way the driver has to make a decision: risk getting another weapon, or stay with the one the kart currently has.

Otherwise we (i.e. the few main developers) won't have time to work on any weapons in the near future (I'd guess at least), as far as we have time we focus on 0.8 and physics improvements and story mode. So: patches welcome

Cheers,
Joerg