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Full Version: Caps flipping/bumping finally gone?
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Hello community. Today, I'm bringing you some good news.

- Changed: Ambient NPC behaviour rework to reduce flipping frequency on capital ships.

A small line lost between many others. And yet, I hope it will bring a cool change for Disco general gameplay. Let's not waste time and let's see what this change brings.

It's not hard to understand this rework is about flipping, or bumping, or NPCs forcing your ship to make a 180° in 1 second when they collide you, whatever.
Caps flipping was and still is one of the major issue on our mod. I assure you that many before me tried to fix it to its very source, in vain. As for myself, I am just incompetent. But still, it wasn't a lost cause. If you cannot solve bumping directly, why not solving it but indirectly then?

That's exactly the purpose of this rework. NPCs are known for their evil intention to flip a capital ship or a transport (hello Barge players (: ) every time they see one. It's annoying, immersion breaking, and an absolute nightmare during fightings. If you look at the different threads of this section, you'll easily find one thread about the NPCs problem. Some people proposed various solutions, one of them being the NPC collision hitbox. In fact, if you were to remove it, the NPCs would fly through your vessel like a ghost. Efficient? Perhaps. Weird? Pretty much. Not that I don't like exotic solutions, but there certainly was another way to do this. And indeed there was one.

The trick was to rework ambient NPC behaviour (so not the PvE ones) to decrease the frequency of collisions with player ships. This means if you go farm into a PvE zone or making some missions, the chance to be flipped is high, as the PvE NPCs were unchanged.

NPC behaviour is very hardcoded. It wasn't simple as this area was very unknown, unexplored for almost everyone but , but who decided to play the Alzheimer and forgot everything.

But at least, here it is. Ambient NPCs now avoid your ships better, and at greater distances which therefore considerably decreases the chance, not to say the bad luck to be flipped. However, if your ship moves, it is still possible to be flipped, but because you fly at the NPC itself while the latter is not flying towards you at the same moment. But it does happens very rarely still. You have to keep in mind that bumping may still happen, under some conditions by NPCs, or by the players themselves. Either way, its frequency should be really decreased in ambient areas, at least to a very acceptable level.

A note for the Barge players: I'm not sure if the evasion distance is enough to make NPCs avoid the Barge for some angles. It is quite long, but all you have to do is to test it yourself, and if there is a problem, I'll try to figure this out.

Dealing with bumping is a good thing of course. But why to stop here when we can do more? Right now I am sure you're not ready for another wall of text. So I'll be straight. Another major issue with NPCs is that they attract your aim, with the crosshair, so you cannot shoot at the enemy. They're quite annoying when they fire at you all the time and follow you everywhere during fightings. You've experienced this? Then you'll be glad to learn this is now over. Yes yes, really over. How? Because they won't be able to follow you anymore if you move into one direction. They will fly on impulse, which means all the caps and fighters can just pass by them and you won't meet them again! This also plays for the flipping reduction a lot.

Thanks to all these changes, I also expect positive effects for snub fights. Perhaps the countless hostile NPCs firing at you when you try to duel an opponent will be reduced to a reasonable level. Time will say. In the meantime, go play the game, and have fun!

One last thing. I lied when I said NPC coding was a bit unknown to people. indeed does great work with NPCs and I'm sure he will continue that way. Go read and support his work here!