The Energon Pub

by **turbomagnus** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:05 am

First off, this is NOT, repeat November-Oscar-Tango, NOT any form of third faction idea, it's still an idea for Autobot vs. Decepticon.

That out of the way...
I had a thought a few moments ago; we can select alts and colors for our TFs, auto or manual CR, even whether or not we want help text displayed, correct?

Maybe we could have selectable insignia, just for a bit of in-game variety? Autobots could select

, :BOT2: , :MAX: , :DINO:

,

,

or

as their faction insignia instead of just having

by default, and the Decepticons would be the same way with :CON2: ,

RED: ,

,

and

in addition to the current

. Like I said, it wouldn't change anything game-wise, just appearance wise, it'd still be just two sides, but it'd allow for more differences in the teams themselves since a G1 era Decepticon team (

) could have a different insignia than a BW era Decepticon team ('Predacon' team, whatever,

RED: ) even though they're part of the same faction.

I don't know... Maybe it's just a stupid idea caused by lack of sleep over the past two days, but I will admit I think it'd be nice... It'd make the teams more personalized if nothing else....

by **ShockwaveUK** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:09 am

I like that idea.

News Credits: 42 · by **Psychout** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:13 am

... I like it!

*considers a 'whole new flavour of alt hunt' potential*

by **Dreadwolf** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:17 am

I like this idea.

News Credits: 1 · by **Windracer** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:20 am

I'm gonna go with the bunch on this one and say I like this idea, too. :grin:

by **Z-z** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:35 am

You forgot

For both Bots & Cons

by **turbomagnus** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:44 am

No, Zz, I remembered it. I just chose not to include it since it's more of a third faction insignia than an Autobot or Decepticon one.

News Credits: 38 · by **Sunstar** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 11:07 am

I like the idea, but I would probably stay with my insignia.

by **Thanatos Prime** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 11:43 am

I posted this idea to glyph a long time ago, (back when there was three seperate HMW forums). He said he liked it and would consider it for v.2 or something like that. I still love the idea.

by **Phaze** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 11:50 am

i like the idea would it be possible for each team to have their own personal squad badge :???:

by **Prowl240z** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 11:54 am

I would hope is Bot selectable....

I ahve osme bots taht i want a a G1 and some i want as hunters and some that are clearly G2 :p

by **turbomagnus** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:03 pm

Phaze: Doubtful, if it was adopted, since it's one of those things where it'd be too easy for someone to upload some inappropriate image for a 'squad badge'. It'd just be a selectable icon like we have here on the forums.

240Z: Not what I originally planned on, I was thinking in terms of teams, but in the end it would be Glyph's decision not only how, but more importantly if it was done.

by **Kalon** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:19 pm

interesting idea

clearly you've been thinking. normally thats a bad thing turbo. this time we'll make an exception thou

by **Tammuz** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 12:22 pm

it would be a nice option, i'd prefer it being team specific, but being that i'm a GEEWUNNER! i don't really care that much.

News Credits: 402 · by **Mkall** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:16 pm

I remember when the new character profile screen appeared. There was a small problem and all of the SQL statements showed up at the top of the page.

My point?

two of the lines were very interesting:
Allegiance="Decepticon"
Faction="N/A"

or something like that. Anyways there's room in the table to have that feature someday.

News Credits: 1 · by **Redimus** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:30 pm

Zz wrote:You forgot

For both Bots & Cons

The min you add the same insignia for both factions, things would get complicated.

Anywho, yes, I like this idea too, but would it be for the entire team, or for each charecter?

News Credits: 1 · by **Windracer** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 5:48 pm

TBH I'd rather it be for individual characters, seeing as how some of our teams incorporate Transformers from multiple series'/subfactions... :-?

by **Z-z** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 5:56 pm

Redimus wrote:
Zz wrote:You forgot

For both Bots & Cons

The min you add the same insignia for both factions, things would get complicated.

Anywho, yes, I like this idea too, but would it be for the entire team, or for each character?

I understand that possibly being confusing, BUT perhaps some of the folks here would be up for the challenge of:
Autobot Bounty Hunter Insignia
Decepticon Bounty Hunter Insignia

The current Bounty Hunt insignia can represent neutral Bounty Hunters (neither bot or con)

Any takers for the challenge? :grin:

EDIT:

If all else fails, simply making the Bot one red & the Con insignia purple will fix any confusion

News Credits: 3 · by **Archanubis** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:08 pm

Doesn't this fall into Glyph's plans for "subfactions" within the game? :-?

by **ShockwaveUK** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:14 pm

Thunderscream wrote:Doesn't this fall into Glyph's plans for "subfactions" within the game?

Turbo is suggesting it be purely aesthetic for now, not dividing up factions or having to classify them differently.

by **turbomagnus** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 2:16 pm

shockwaveuk wrote:
Thunderscream wrote:Doesn't this fall into Glyph's plans for "subfactions" within the game?

Turbo is suggesting it be purely aesthetic for now, not dividing up factions or having to classify them differently.

Exactly. Thank you, shockwave.

News Credits: 226 · by **Burn** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 5:38 pm

shockwaveuk wrote:
Thunderscream wrote:Doesn't this fall into Glyph's plans for "subfactions" within the game?

Turbo is suggesting it be purely aesthetic for now, not dividing up factions or having to classify them differently.

So rather than devoting time to finishing V2 and introducing "subfactions", Glyph should take the time to code in a little cosmetic patch?

meh ... idea has merits, but in the end probably not worth the effort.

News Credits: 1 · by **Absolute Zero** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:23 am

Burn wrote:
shockwaveuk wrote:
Thunderscream wrote:Doesn't this fall into Glyph's plans for "subfactions" within the game?

Turbo is suggesting it be purely aesthetic for now, not dividing up factions or having to classify them differently.

So rather than devoting time to finishing V2 and introducing "subfactions", Glyph should take the time to code in a little cosmetic patch?

meh ... idea has merits, but in the end probably not worth the effort.

Especially when it wont be cosmetic in V2.

News Credits: 33 · by **Glyph** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:01 am

TBH almost all the work that would be needed to introduce this is already done. I already have a field in the DB - both in the team table and the character table - for 'subfaction', the function which displays a faction symbol already has a parameter for 'subfaction', the SQL statements which pull the characters' data out of the DB also pull out their 'subfaction' field (which is 'G1' for everyone atm - I think I took out all the places I was passing a default NULL to the faction symbol function and replaced it with the actual subfaction field from the character's data). Only thing I can't remember off the top of my head is whether the code expects the character to be tagged to a subfaction, or a team. I originally set it up on the expectation that it would be per-character, but then thought it would work better per-team.

In other words, this could pretty much be activated tomorrow. The main reasons it hasn't been are that it's always been some way down the priority list, that I plan to update the profile page anyway at some point so it makes sense to do all the additions at once, and that I have plans for it to work differently in V2 (for example: when you buy a 'Maximal upgrade' for your bot, you lose access to the vehicle modes [unless you buy the Transmetal upgrade as well!] and gain access to organic-looking beast modes, and your faction symbol changes to the appropriate BW symbol) and making it work one way now and changing it later would just be confusing.

OTOH, I could just throw it in there as a five-minute feature addition.

On team icons - very much in favour, and I was thinking 50x50 icons in the style of deviantart avatars. That's slated as a future team option, when I get around to redoing the character profile page to include a space to upload a picture of the character (because I can then reuse the code for the team icon).

--EDIT--
Testing subfactions with Gnarl - setting character subfaction to Blendtron and team subfaction to G2 Autobot. If everything checks out, all I'd need to do is add an option box to the character profile page.
Character profile page... Check
Profile page ranking box... Fail
Team profile... Fail
High score page... Fail
Game page header... Check
Arena queue display... Fail
Arena log... Fail
Mission log... Fail
BBG... Fail

OK, so not nearly as much as I thought works quite right yet. Looks like I'm still passing NULL to the function in several key places (because the subfaction thing wasn't active when I wrote it, natch). None of the items above are more than a two-line fix, though.

by **turbomagnus** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:25 am

So once again your tin foil hat fails and I read your mind, eh, Glyph? :lol:

I've got to say one thing though, HMW II will have terrain, a new look for mission/battle results, the Battle for Cybertron and all other kinds of new features, the whole reason some of us consider it less of 'Heavy Metal War version 2.0' than a whole new kind of Heavy Metal War (Like Red Alert to the original Command and Conquer game), so we're basically going to have to re-learn the game almost from scratch anyway, so why not toss it in as a five-minute thing? If nothing else, it'd let you see how it works and what needs tweaking before you add it to the coding for HMW II... :-?