Quite proud of this run, had to practice it a lot to nail it without wasting too much fuel on adjustments!
I hit the top score on Trefoil with a different route!
https://slingshotspeeders.com/r/n28dq4w6
https://slingshotspeeders.com/r/n28dq4w6
Quite proud of this run, had to practice it a lot to nail it without wasting too much fuel on adjustments!
10 Comments
Derg@programming.dev · 2 pts · 2d
Related, I've been going through all the maps and starting to grind the time and delta-V records too, I dare someone to come for me in the championship!
jaykrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Awesome work I just saw that and it makes so much sense, even after I've done so many runs on the Trefoil I never thought to take that path as more efficient, really cool to see. Alien emoji at the end for style! And massive run on the Apollo map, great job, awesome to see you found a way to get around the moon with minimal fuel usage.
I wanted to ask. I just had a massive idea and want to ensure it's brought up before continuing. The community map making system, I am planning to unify the system, so that there are no "official" or "community" maps, so there are just "maps", all of which impact the standings, meaning the runs on your Daytona and Orbital Transfer maps would impact the standings.
What this means is that there will be a system that makes it so the more other players play on it, the more valuable it becomes for rank, increasing the competition. This would impact current standings, but moving forward would put the maps more in the hands of everyone playing.
It really doesn't make sense moving forward for me to be creating all the maps, then porting them to be "official" maps. The ranking system will become dynamic, and as new maps are created by players (and played on by different signed-in users), the field shifts and stays competitive. This way by creating maps you take part in the creation of the weight in the standings.
These are core fundamentals of the shift:
By playing a map created by another player you basically give it value to improve your rank. You have the incentive to publish a map you created that you're really good at, so that other players want to compete because it's a fun map.
If someone creates a map that takes 1 second to win on (they waste 400 pax), and it has very little value compared to one that takes 10 seconds to win on. So all it takes is one player to invalidate the map by winning rapidly (time is the fundamental value). The time the fastest run takes has a huge impact on the weight of it on the standings.
Simply:
A rapid 1 second map has low weight because low time, and a boring 10 minute map has no value because no one wants to spend time to win on it. Neither really impact standings too much, and this helps ensure that most difficult maps you enjoy playing (like Apollo) have the most weight in the standings. (because they take time and other players don't get close to your score)
I'll be removing all the difficulty tags as well, given that it's manual and subjective. The real difficulty is decided by players looking at the "VIEW" mode, the time it takes, and the score earned. Like for instance, the Apollo map is clearly much more difficult than the Leap map, you don't need a label to tell you that.
Thoughts? If no opposition, then I'm going to be shifting this starting tomorrow for the v0.2.3. 👽
Derg@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1d
I also can't believe I never really tried out this Trefoil path before, it seems so obvious now haha
Thanks for asking my opinion! Just upfront, I really don't mind changes because I'd just like more people to play against! I may be the first "boss" of the leaderboards, but I know in my heart I will not be the last... So if something needs to be done to make the game better and more attractive, I'm for it! This is the best time for the rest of the game's lifetime to make big changes.
I think it sounds like a system with a lot more longevity. I kinda liken it to games like Trackmania: The "official" maps are always there, and people do play them quite a bit (especially new players), but what people stick around for and what is played day-to-day by the regulars are mostly the community maps. I expect the same would happen here eventually, assuming the game really kicks off, and so I think it's a good direction to head in! That's not to say I don't have concerns though...
Difficulty tags:
If you get rid of difficulty tags, I think new players should definitely have the "easier" maps like Reach and such somehow pushed at them early so they can learn the game, or some of the easier "Mediums" so they can see that there is complexity to be had. They're still the ones I'm most concerned about sticking around, and I'm still worried about the new player experience but can't really speak for it anymore haha
Also though, as a personal concern, I'm afraid of the whole pool of maps becoming an unsorted mess somehow. The difficulty tags are still helpful in that way, and hopefully there's something else that might replace it? Self-reported difficulty would eventually be rough too, heuristics are wrong, and community votes might be nice but can be manipulated... I just kinda have the urge to group the maps in some way so that I can decide to go grind the "Blue" or "Red" maps or something if that makes sense, because that's essentially been my whole personal gameplay loop so far
If I think of more I might tack it on, but my comment's getting long too!
jaykrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Those are legit concerns and I appreciate you mentioning them, I'll definitely keep them in mind moving forward. Making the competitive weights viewable and understandable per map makes a lot of sense, I'll figure out how to best represent that so it's clearly which maps are worth more to spend extra time on. And yes, you're right there should still be like an "Easy" tab for beginners aside from everything else.
In the map making system, given the fact that you already have to successfully complete the map to publish it, I could give a "predicted weight" calculation based on time and the maneuvers you do (delta-v), given that the server has all that data. This would mean the more time you spend, and the more delta-v you use (maneuvering), the higher the weight prediction. But it would just be a prediction, given that you can't know how many players would try it, the fact that more runs would then increase the weight further.
The sorting idea I have for the maps is something like "Hot", "New", "Top" basically the maps that are newest with the most runs/weight in a short amount of time get on "Hot", and "Top" are for the maps that have the most runs/weight with the biggest impact on ranking. And "New" is for anyone looking to try out new challenges. So the maps get sorted by total runs and the weight of the map in terms of score and time.
Derg@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1d
It sounds like a good change overall. I hadn't considered delta-V spent, it's not a bad measure honestly! Though, I do hope you can't game it a bit to make your map way too weighted just because the ship is constantly in a refuel zone with max afterburner or something haha, just a thought.
And yeah, the only thing the map would possibly know is roughly how long it takes to complete and the amount of thrust you used (but it can't know the time/delta-V of the optimal path of course). I don't even think having a number there is too important, even just a little warning saying it's likely/definitely too short/long/simple to be competitive (whatever that means however you do the calculation) would be enough for me and should hopefully not be too hard to implement (at some point).
As far as the sorting goes, thinking more it shouldn't matter much to me how it's sorted as long as it makes sense. Most of the problems I'm seeing in my head might be a lot worse if we had a lot more first-time type maps from more people, but that's farther down the road anyway.
jaykrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
That's a good point and a good concern, I had the same thought. The beauty of the already existing score is that if you exploit the weight of the map by burning your afterburner intentionally to give the map more weight, then your score will be terrible compared to someone who tries to race the map more efficiently to get highest on the leaderboard. The runs with the highest scores on the leaderboard provide the context for the map, not the runs where players did weird things like delay a win by 5 minutes, or burn afterburner in fuel zone. So basically the desire to be the top in the standings nullifies exploitative attempts to increase map weight. All it takes is one honest good racer to make the exploitative runs useless, because the highest scoring run on the map provides the most context.
Derg@programming.dev · 2 pts · 1d
I was more thinking of designing a map such that the best possible run has to spend like minutes using full afterburner in a refuel zone fighting gravity or something... I just hope that this theoretical map isn't weighted like 10x a normal one.
I hope you don't mind if I make an exploitative map or two if I see the opportunity? (with the full expectation they might get deleted)
jaykrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 21h
I encourage it honestly, seriously it'd be awesome and helpful to see if you can break it. I'll happily play on them! The v0.2.3 will be coming a bit later today, I'll post about it.
jaykrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 20h
The v0.2.3 is live, I look forward to seeing if it breaks! There's definitely still some jank in the map making that makes it more annoying than it should be, but I think there's still an INSANE amount of potential for new map design ideas.
jaykrown@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I'll also factor in delta-v, such that, if a map takes longer, and on average players use more delta-v, then that's clearly a map that requires more maneuvering in order to complete it, such that it should have more weight. Where with the raw score, you get a higher score when you use less delta-v, but with the weight a map has in the ranking system, it should give the map more weight if racing it takes more maneuvering (more delta-v).