Goonhub
12-04-2014, 07:58 PM
After all the recent improvement of the game's code, I'm starting to wonder if the basic antag classes of SS13 should follow suit. I'm mostly talking about Changelings, Vampires and Wizards, and maybe obscure things like Wrestling Belt users and Macho Men.
From what I've seen of the new Wraith and Blob, their gameplay is amazing and considerably more streamlined: abilities are all listed on your HUD instead of the disorganized menu tabs, the HUD itself is easily customizable and improvable in general for future revisions of the game, and much testing was done to make sure their coded-from-the-ground-up gimmicks actually worked - in fact the Wraith really was coded from the ground up, and the Blob was ripped out of the game and remade entirely. This is in stark contrast to the base antags: half of their abilities run off of comparatively-archaic coding and are horribly clunky (especially the ones that autotarget, when being able to choose a target would make a world of difference), some abilities don't even work right (I'm looking at you, Headspider), and some buffs and nerfs come across as the coders not knowing what to do (half of the players unanimously agree that Changelings never dying to direct damage anymore is absurd).
To put the argument simply: the old antags and their coding are becoming outdated, and I believe that rebuilding them from scratch in similar procedures to the Wraith and Blob would do them and the game a world of good. Working HUDs, redone ability coding and general ease-of-use knickknacks. I realize that it's a huge chore to remake them entirely, but with all the recent backend improvements and such, I thought it was worth suggesting.
From what I've seen of the new Wraith and Blob, their gameplay is amazing and considerably more streamlined: abilities are all listed on your HUD instead of the disorganized menu tabs, the HUD itself is easily customizable and improvable in general for future revisions of the game, and much testing was done to make sure their coded-from-the-ground-up gimmicks actually worked - in fact the Wraith really was coded from the ground up, and the Blob was ripped out of the game and remade entirely. This is in stark contrast to the base antags: half of their abilities run off of comparatively-archaic coding and are horribly clunky (especially the ones that autotarget, when being able to choose a target would make a world of difference), some abilities don't even work right (I'm looking at you, Headspider), and some buffs and nerfs come across as the coders not knowing what to do (half of the players unanimously agree that Changelings never dying to direct damage anymore is absurd).
To put the argument simply: the old antags and their coding are becoming outdated, and I believe that rebuilding them from scratch in similar procedures to the Wraith and Blob would do them and the game a world of good. Working HUDs, redone ability coding and general ease-of-use knickknacks. I realize that it's a huge chore to remake them entirely, but with all the recent backend improvements and such, I thought it was worth suggesting.