Good for them. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2546306772?filter=archives&sort=timeI wonder if that can open a door for ZK somehow. I don't know how often ZK is mentionned in BAR circles, but seems like BAR is mentionned quite a lot in ZK circles.
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Like the title implies its not the first time he plays it, though afaik he hasnt played it much. I know he mentioned in passing 3 or so years ago that he had looked at "this really out there game called Zero-K". So he knows we exist, or knew anywho.
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I recall seeing something a while ago. He is good for highlighting confusing mechanics and UI issues. I assume that there is a bit of a tier system with streamers, where you need to work your way up to larger streamers from smaller ones. But people could try suggesting ZK.
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I know MandaloreGaming has Zero-K on his list of possible games to review, but it's been sitting there for years. His video "Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Review" has 1.4 Million views. Something like that could be a huge bolster to people trying Zero-K. Not sure how you could encourage a creator to pull the trigger on doing a Zero-K video.
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Yes yes I've been literally dreaming about the Mandalore day for ages, but it may well never come, he has a billion games on his list and he only gets around to doing a handful of games a year. Anyway Mandalore recently got a full time job at a games studio afaik so now he has way less time for this.
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I need to watch the whole VOD, but early on Day9 stated he didn't understand build priority and chat was not helpful at all. I think it's a widely misunderstood concept. If it's not clarified in the rest of the VOD, I was thinking of writing an email to explain the mechanic and mention something like "I play ZK but I assume it works the same in BAR... it goes like...". But before I do, it works the same in BAR right? I assume it's driven by the engine. Also, is there no medium prio in BAR? Or is it just hidden by default and can be shown with settings?
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Also Mandalore look like they fell off the surface of the planet. No activity in six months on YT and 9 months on Twitch.
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quote:
I need to watch the whole VOD, but early on Day9 stated he didn't understand build priority and chat was not helpful at all. I think it's a widely misunderstood concept.
If it's not clarified in the rest of the VOD, I was thinking of writing an email to explain the mechanic and mention something like "I play ZK but I assume it works the same in BAR... it goes like...".
But before I do, it works the same in BAR right? I assume it's driven by the engine.
Also, is there no medium prio in BAR? Or is it just hidden by default and can be shown with settings? |
BAR has "low" and "high" MF has "normal" and "high" These are implemented through gadgets so implementation details may vary, i don't think the engine has direct support for it.
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But otherwise it functions the same right? Metal first goes in high, demand from high is subtracted, if there is metal left it spills to low...?
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Don't try to explain BAR build priority. BAR uses a completely different implementation that, as far as I'm aware, is confusing and broken.
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1. The engine does not split resources evenly between projects by default. ZK priority fixes this, but I don't recall BAR priority doing so.
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2. BAR priority works by changing the buildpower of your lower priority constructors. So if normal priority is currently building at 25%, then the metal pull for these constructors will be 25% of their capacity. This makes it hard to tell how much metal you are really pulling.
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3. The BAR economy is designed to be hard to use. The numbers are wacky and in wacky ratios. Build priority is going to be more confusing in this situation.
They may have fixed some of these things. There are hacks that can be used to get real pull values for point two. Problem 1 would be mostly fixed by applying priority to absolutely everything (as ZK does), but doing so would exacerbate an unfixed Problem 2 (since then pull could never exceed income). Problem 3 is just fundamental and means they have to put in more work to teaching priority.
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Yah I realized I wasn't going to toutch that unless I spend more time than I'm currently willing learning BAR. I just went through economy tutorials, and BP is so messy in BAR. Holy crap. One thing I am not sure on that seems absolutely crazy about BAR is that everything needs metal, some things need energy (not to spend metal, but the building has an actual energy cost) which is fine, and build power... which is really time units if you think about it. So if I have a building that costs 100 metal and 100 BP, and I build it with a 10 BP con, I spend 10 metal per second for 10 seconds. Ok, same as ZK. But if I have a building that costs 1 000 000 metal, 100 BP and I build it with a 10 BP con, that same con now spends 100 000 metal per second for 10 seconds? Do I get this right? If so, how do you explain to new players that this con with 10 BP sometimes spends 10 metal per second, sometimes 100 000? This is of course an extreme example that doesn't exist in the game AFAIK, but if I understood the tutorial, that's how it would go. People already struggle with 1 BP = 1 M/S, and BAR wants different projects with different ratios? Brrrooooooooooo...
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Yea it's all simple math, you got it right. Resource spent per second = (build power) * (resource cost) / (build time) Substitute resource for metal or energy, and you have the per second draw of that resource. This is the theoretical formula for both games/ all TA inspired games. I don't know how exactly the build process slows once you do not have the resources in the bank to satisfy spending in BAR, but this is obviously complicated by the fact that every build project has a different metal to energy ratio, so if you had control of what projects were active under certain economic conditions, you could be short on metal or short on energy with the same economy. As     GoogleFrog said, zero-k handles spending all very nicely, I think in bar you'll see tiny low priority projects trickle along in BAR at the expense of megaprojects with a lot of high priority build power. All we gotta worry about in zk is smoothing expendature spikes so that overdrive energy spending does not fluctuate too drastically over time, earning us pennies of metal.
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 I was genuinely hoping someone was going to tell me that I was wrong and stupid. Or at least stupid. EDIT: To be fair though, ZK's economy would break if there was a third resource. Let's say we now have oil. How do you implement oil costs if they don't match metal 1:1? Actually, you don't even need a third resource. What if a building had a 100 metal cost and a 10 energy cost? ZK would now also have project based ratios unless it always matches metal 1:1, and if it does, why bother?
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I think having a consistent player base is a prerequisite to attracting a professional streamer, who often have schedules that they advertise ahead of time. If they log-in and nobody's on, that's telling them zk isn't part of a sustainable content producing model (even if technically there are times that games are guaranteed). BAR had a consistent player base before it attracted Drongo/Winter/Day[9]. So IMO, attracting a streamer is how we rapidly increase player-base once we've met a threshold we're not currently able to meet - it's not a solution to our current numbers. If we were to get a streamer Day[9] would be my pick (not that we'd be choosing). I think his interest in game design makes him ideal, because he's more likely to approach ZK's more esoteric mechanics like communism and overdrive with curiosity rather than discomfort/dismissal.
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TBH in the situation we are currently, the primary goal would just be to have eyeballs on the game. He spent 2/3 of the stream vs an inactive AI, just toying with units and trying to understand economy.
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TBH just watching him play and have fun with it makes me want to give it a go. The BP thing gives me a headache just thinking about how much work you'd have to put into refining your eco skills, but I do like having a whole new game to learn. I really like how the game ends. It's not a scuffle over whether to resign or not. People can stay in and fight to the death and the game will end decisively if they don't have a chance (due to chain reaction and the unit flood).
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He spent 2/3 of the stream vs an inactive AI, just toying with units and trying to understand economy. |
The playing is part of the payoff of the understanding, and the ability to play is evidence of there being something worth understanding. So I think   SnuggleBass's comment stands. So what we need is unchanged: someone has to step up and really push a marketing effort. Maybe this happens after someone steps up and pushes a basic graphics update. Not a highly-skilled graphics update, just a bunch of actual work. Cataloguing maps and BAR shaders, tweaking lighting configs and defaults. Curating existing tech and capabilities. I watched snippets of the game at the end and it mostly just reminded me of BA: units and tactics being rendered irrelevant by economy scaling and whatever has the most range.
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BA eco is too confusing, broken. A huge broken hacky mess. zero-K has nice eco, one of the best ecos of all times, everyone says that. Yeah right, and yet somehow more people are playing BA while zero-K is still trying to fill their single room lobby. quote:
People already struggle with 1 BP = 1 M/S, and BAR wants different projects with different ratios? Brrrooooooooooo... |
You mean people in zero-K do struggle with an "easy" (dumbed down) eco. BA has a more "complicated" eco and somehow players are doing okay. Why is it that? Instead of speculating just play a few matches. Nobody does any math while playing, it is done intuitively. It is a fake-problem, invented by zero-K lobsters to explain their mod design. Like factory plop, which is also a solution to a non-existent fake-problem. "Oh no, after waiting an hour a game to start now I have to wait 30 seconds for the factory to build." And then players take 2 minutes to ready up and the game is instantly paused for another 2 minutes because some guy is lagging, another needs to unfuck audio, or try to figure out where vehicles can go, all the shit you would normally do while the factory is being built. quote:
Not sure how you could encourage a creator to pull the trigger on doing a Zero-K video |
Money. The whole point of them making videos is money.
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