Level based monster spawning.

So I've been thinking we might benefit from looking at the source for the satore monster spawner, or one of the other monster managers around, and tweaking it to use a weighted system.

Here's my thoughts on the weights:

1) Wave.
2) Lowest level surviving player.
3) Size of map.
4) Number of players.
5) Average level player.

Based on the "weight" we have on the server, we begin spawning monsters at random (within weighted range), until we have an equivalent weight on the monster's side. Then we repeat that process a few (configurable) number of times each wave.

This way, the overall game still provides a challenge to everyone, but newbies wouldn't have to deal with a titanium titan, or a magma skaarj until they reached a little higher level, or significantly higher wave.

Any thoughts?

A difficult one this.

The suggestion seems to be that if only low level players are on, then the difficult monsters will not appear. I am not sure about this. Even low levels players can do well out of a titan wave, provided they keep back. It would be a shame to lose the titan waves.

I agree though that it is a lot easier with one level 10 player and 9 level 100 players, than with 10 level 10 players.

Perhaps we use the "weighting" to adjust the number of monsters, rather than their difficulty?

Certainly we need to increase the difficulty as the wave number increases. This should be in the type of monster, the number of monsters, and in the monsters AI.

Not sure about the size of map. The monsters usually spawn near players, and if not then the monster mover will put them there. And if people are daft enough to vote a tiny map or a massive map, so be it. I don't see that you could make the monsters easier just because the map is smaller? (And putting in fewer monsters of the same level is making it easier.)

Adjusting for the lowest level player. The RPG does that already. And I am not sure that I would want to remove that. I like the fact that high level players benefit from keeping low level players alive.

Normally the health and xp for a monster are static. As an alternative, we could vary those. So if just low level players are on, they get exactly the same number of monsters, but the monsters health and xp will be lower than if just high levels are on?

I don't like the idea of making it too easy. I think the ratio of monster health to monster xp ought to remain. The xp requirements are already weighted against the high level players, and so I don't think we need it to be easier for low levels to get xp. But perhaps we need to give them a fighting chance of getting to wave 16.

Sorry, a bit of a rambling response.

Szlat wrote:

A difficult one this.

Typically correct Yoda is.

Szlat wrote:

Even low levels players can do well out of a titan wave, provided they keep back. It would be a shame to lose the titan waves.

Perhaps we use the "weighting" to adjust the number of monsters, rather than their difficulty?

Certainly we need to increase the difficulty as the wave number increases. This should be in the type of monster, the number of monsters, and in the monsters AI.

These are acceptable suggestions in my opinion.

For lower level players who might take a significant period of time to make their way "through" a monster, the number of monsters at a given time can be the signifcant issue (along with any DR/DB stuff).

Since wave is one of the heavy weights, I'd say that it would be unlikely a titan would spawn in the lower levels if low level players were alive. Conversely, in the higher levels titans would be more common, even with lower level players alive, however, as the lower level players die, the bigger monsters spawn more.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

....however, as the lower level players die, the bigger monsters spawn more.

Is this a double whammy, as the RPG will be upping the DB/DR of the monsters at the same time?

Szlat wrote:

Is this a double whammy, as the RPG will be upping the DB/DR of the monsters at the same time?

It is sort of a double whammy, however maybe we turn down the monster level adjust to compensate.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

Szlat wrote:

Is this a double whammy, as the RPG will be upping the DB/DR of the monsters at the same time?

It is sort of a double whammy, however maybe we turn down the monster level adjust to compensate.

That could work well.

I think the standard invasion game has 16 monsters available to it.

The SatoreMonsterPackv120 mod gets round this by changing the 16 monsters every wave, as defined by the SMPWaves in the satoreMonsterPack.ini.

I think during the wave, the invasion game just picks a random monster to spawn from the list of monsters (function AddMonster in Invasion.uc).

To do what you want, we might need to update the 16 monsters each time someone dies or joins, as well as between waves.
The alternative would be to configure in 16 monsters per wave, with the lower level ones at the start and more difficult at the end. Then instead of choosing randomly from the 16 monsters, we would choose from 8. Which 8 would slide depending upon the average player level.

Specifying lists of monsters per wave would still allow us to have titan-only waves.

An alternative to changing the monsters according to the average player level would be to keep the same monsters but make them more difficult (e.g. more health, or speed). But this is similar to the DR/DB mod in the RPG, which doesn't work too well for very high levels.

I think the number of monsters spawned is already dependent upon the number of players - but this is done at the start of the wave. We could adjust this as players die - but I wouldn't want to make it too easy. I think we could probably just modify Invasion.MaxMonsters to change this.

I have a feeling the WaveDifficulty may just be used for configuring bots, not monsters - but I am not definite on that.

The Satore monster pack has another mode where you can pick percentage changes for monsters, and mark that they can show up from wave x-y. I've never played with this much, but it might be an interesting place to start learning, since it already takes a chunk of what we're thinking of doing.

I also think that it might be possible to have all monsters spawn as pupae, overide the mutator CheckReplacement method, and replace them as we need to with whatever makes the most sense.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

I also think that it might be possible to have all monsters spawn as pupae, overide the mutator CheckReplacement method, and replace them as we need to with whatever makes the most sense.

We could even just have one monster configured. When it spawns, it could determine what monster is required and spawn it.