[Workshop Mode] Loot Quest - PvE RPG w Save Codes [v7.5.1.8]

Workshop Discussion
22

This is my favorite mode by far. Thanks Delwion. Is there any way I or us can assist you at hashing out the crash bugs? Documentation? More frequent minor change codes?

Things I’ve noticed that induce crashes:
If I host a game of 4, occasionally a player change from the other players will crash it. Player saves, some playtime, after loading a character crash it. If I’m running a solo game, any character change or save crashes it after 20 minutes on my loaded character. Going to test a game from scratch and see if the code has something to do with it. I’ve only seen one crash from teleport to spawn so far.

23

Thank you. I’m always grateful for all the players who help me test new versions. I usually host a new version as public game on the EU PC server as soon as it’s ready for testing.

I was able to implement most of the changes I mentioned above for the next update, the only thing missing now is the rule to show the code. I will very likely finish that tomorrow and then post a new code if there aren’t any major bugs that surface in the first real test game.

2 Likes
24

How will your password encryption change when you change the player stat values from vectors? I’ve been trying to decrypt how the password is made for a while now (great encryption method btw), and i hope the password system doesnt change too drastically so i can still use previous saves.

25

All previous passwords (version 1.0c and later) will still be valid and I try to make sure that doesn’t change in any future update. You shouldn’t notice any of the changes to item stats in the game since it’s just a different way to save the same values (that in the end may or may not help reduce the risk of server crashes).

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26 
 Hi i played and saved fine last night. But loading my save today has been an interesting experience. First whenever i pressed the "hello" key it made me fall through the world. Quit after about half an hour. 

 Then i noticed i can't change characters or the server will crash. But only if i load the save. Tested it on a new character and i can change characters on it just fine. It also won't save new champs i pickup. It will save experience although sometimes it sets the experience back a little.  I suppose that save is corrupted. Oh well i love this mode, i will start fresh.
27

One of the possible upgrades you can get is a teleport bound to “hello” that moves you forward a short distance the direction you are facing. If you are facing uphill or at a wall there is a good chance you will fall through the map as a result.

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28

Oh interesting i had no clue. Thanks for the explanation.

29

Loading characters, equipping items, and displaying your save code are actions that unfortunately seem to put a strain on the server, no matter how many wait actions I add to these rules. The higher rank an item is the worse it affects the server, which is more likely to crash, the more you perform these actions (even though the peak server load barely ever goes over 100 in testing). I suspect at this point, that there is a problem with player variables taking too many resources that I unfortunately do now know how to fix or that there are singular actions that are simply too much for the server (though I can’t imagine what that would be in the case of equipping an item). Running the game without effects and HUD texts does not help at all with this issue and there are many other possible causes I have ruled out (see “Why there will likely be no further updates for Loot Quest” in my opening post for more details). It’s interesting to note that in other game modes that have the excessive workshop load problem, you usually notice a type of micro-stutter effect for the bots and incorrectly displayed effects long before the server crashes. In Loot Quest the crashes happen without these prior indicators and often at moments when the latest peak server load displayed was 80 or lower.

30

If its not the server load, maybe its a memory leak or another memory issue?

31

At this point, I’m really out of ideas. The same rules that would cause very high peaks without any wait actions are the ones that that trigger the server crashes the most often/constistenly now. Maybe the wait actions only make the server load/peaks appear lower but don’t really help with rules that have too many actions.

Also the only difference between lower rank items and higher rank items is that the latter have a few low integer values instead of zeros. Yet the higher rank items are almost guaranteed to cause the crashes (and I already tried to disable potentially dangerous rules that happen a lot like “Player Dealt Damage”). At this point, my best guess is that the player variables have some kind of hidden limit per player that I crossed (number of players in team 2 also has no impact on how often the server crashes and when disabling all the loot dropping and picking up related rules, that also does not prevent the crashes from happening).

Update: I just found out something amazing when I removed most of the wait actions in the script in a last desperate attempt to create an “embrace the crash” version. The server actually crashes a lot later now, even though there are super-high peaks. So… it may just be that too many wait actions are what contributed to the problem. The server actually hasn’t crashed at all yet… even when I loaded a savegame with a high rank item, displayed my savecode about 20 times, and equipped/unquipped the high rank item about 20 times.

Update 2: I reduced the inventory size to 1 and changed a few more things to get a more stable version ^^ It still crashes when a lot of high rank items are in the game for a longer amount of time.

Update 3: After a lot of reworking the script, the game mode is a lot more stable, and crashes are actually quite rare, now :smiley: I will soon release more maps for this game mode as promised :slight_smile:

2 Likes
32

After the V3.1 update i havent had a single crash!!!
i played for about 5-6 hours, really loving this mode more now!!
:grin:

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33

anyone got a code that i can use xd?

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35

This is by far my favourite workshop mod I’ve played so far!

Good work Delwion! :smiley:

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36

I’ve heard about the infuriating infringement on creative coding the workshop includes, and I know there’s many issues with crashes and bugs that are already important. Being a bit of a coder myself, however, I do have one suggestion. Well, it’s more of a suggestion and a request.
Mainly, if at all possible, please include that the bots should be spawned before starting the match somewhere in your main prompt. It seems like a silly thing, but I (and possibly others interested in the mode) tried several times to start a lobby myself, only populating it after the game was loaded in. I took the time to figure it out, but there is the chance that potential players put this off as another “broken” game immediately.
I did have a small idea, though I don’t know if it’s possible. How hard would it be to scale drops/xp on the difficulty the bots are set to? I just ask as currently, there is no reason to play with anything other than the easiest bots. The balance of getting more xp for kills but getting killed more often seems to merit some thought - but again, if it’s even possible.

37

Thanks for your feedback.

There is currently no easy way I know of to get bot difficulty in in a workshop script. It could be possible to find out the difficulty if you monitor the bots’ behaviour in some way, for example their reaction time or effective damage dealt/damage taken (since hard bots actually have better stats), but that wouldn’t be easy to do for all heroes the AI can play and could possibly have a negative impact on performace so I don’t really want to try it for this game mode :slight_smile: It would be nice though, to have 3 difficulties built-in like that with different XP/loot rewards for each.

I never even realized that the bots won’t spawn if they aren’t added before the match starts since I always added them before starting, but I can see now why it’s happening: The script only checks for one bot at a time if it will spawn and the first bot to spawn is randomly chosen when the first player in team 2 spawns; so if there are no bots in team 1 when the first player spawns, no bot ever gets chosen to spawn next! I will add a hint to set up bots before the match starts to the description here and on the other websites where the game mode is listed, thank you.
(Also, the bastion bot is currently disabled due to issues with the damage received value so if someone were to add a bastion AI in team 1, that would also break enemy respawn.)

As for people taking the easiest route (easy difficulty bots): I think it’s not hard to cheat in an Overwatch workshop mode if someone wants to and I can’t really stop them from doing that. Personally, I think it’s less fun to make the game mode too easy, but if someone really wants to play with easy bots, I can’t stop them from doing it.

**Edit** (this edit is not a direct response to what you said, since you mentioned "creative coding" which I don't know much about, but rather my thoughts on limitations of the Overwatch workshop, in general):

Also, one quick note about the limitations of Overwatch workshop: Any creative project has some kind of limitations and that is fine. I personally think the Overwatch workshop does leave enough room to come up with some great ideas (I don’t consider any of my workshop modes to be particularly creative, but I have seen some made by other creators that are); the big problem, in my opinion, is not knowing what the limitations are. To use the example that Jeff Kaplan recently gave in a developer update: A sonnet follows certain rules in its composition, or it wouldn’t be classified as a sonnet anymore. These rules did not hinder poets like Shakespeare from expressing all their creativity and talent in such a strictly regulated form of poetry.

Writing the script for a complex project in the Overwatch workshop, however, sometimes feels like putting a lof of work into the composition of a sonnet that - when finally published - is met with rejection from all other artists and critics, deemed unacceptable by the entire literary world, banned from all courts and salons. And you try to refine and rewrite it many, many times, but nothing seems to help: it is never met with approval. Only years later do you find out the reason for its rejection: you weren’t supposed to use the letter a.

To be clear: I am thankful for the Overwatch workshop. I think it was a great addition to the game and I do have a pretty good idea of what its limitations are now, but it took me a while to find them :slight_smile:

38

Hey,

This mode is just awesome, but I have some wishes for improvement.

You could put all 6 codes together.
Then you have only one code and you can choose which map and therefore which difficulty you wanna play.

If you have questions about that, feel free to ask me.

39

Thanks for the input.

I considered adding a map detection system and putting the coordinates for all maps (or at least multiple maps) in the same script, but decided against it in the end, out of concern that it might have a negative impact on server stability (it took me forever to get rid of the crashes which is why I pretty much don’t want to risk adding anything to the script at the moment).

Also, there are going to be at least 16 maps total with at least 16 variables each. That might also lead to problems with the script size limit once again (even though the script currently only has 28 or 29 rules, depending on the map, I reached the script limit before with this game mode).

It would be great to have multiple/all maps in one script though and I will give it a go and test it for stability once I’ve completed all the maps :slight_smile:

2 Likes
40

Hello there!
Just wanted to let you know that i absolutely love this gamemode so far, just got a blue symmetra with turrets and ultimate, she’s super op and enjoyable.
I was wandering what are your plans on improving the gamemode? I think i have an idea on how to shorten the code, but i’ll need more time for research.
Possibly, when you might implement the new code system, it would be a good idea to make a tutorial on how to convert old code into new one, knowing every variable it carried. Not that it really matters, it never took me more then 3 minutes and 2 attempts to use the 40 digit one, just suggesting.
Keep up the good work, thank you!

1 Like
41

I’m glad you enjoy the gamemode :slight_smile:

Currently, I have no plans of making any major changes to Loot Quest’s mechanics. I’m working on adding the remaining high level maps instead (normally I get 1-2 done per day; today will be an exception where I probably can’t do any). As I mentioned in other replies before, the reasons I don’t want to add any new feature to the game mode at the moment is that it could endanger server stability and bring back the crashes. Once all maps are complete, I might add some new/removed features back in and then test if they have an impact on server stability (this testing takes a lot of time since the crashes often only happen after 30+ minutes when 4 players with high level items play the game actively).

I have no plans of changing the code system again, at this point. It pained me to make old codes invalid for v3.2 already, but I believe that change was necessary since the game mode got completely rebalanced to be more long-term progress oriented, and leaving in the powerful items that players had found in previous versions would have made the game too easy for them and left no incentive to find better items. If the code system gets changed again, then there needs to be an easy and convenient way to convert old codes to new ones. The codes currently save 18 stats of the equipped item (7 of them require 2 digits each, the others 1 digit each), the amount of money (4 digits), player level (2 digits), number of boss items (1 digit), XP% (4 digits), and use 4 digits for the code validation system (so there is a 1 in 10,000 chance to randomly enter a valid code).

Edit: A more efficient (and fun) way to do passcodes (for other game modes) might be to use hero icons instead of numbers (each hero icon currently has 30 different possible settings instead of just 10 that a one-digit number has) :slight_smile:

42

Hey there,

I just wanted to give feedback that I really enjoy playing this, alongside World of Overwatch. I wondered if it is possible to actually combine the mechanics of the two modes into one?
The item drops and upgrades of Loot Quest, with the overall setting and map of World of Overwatch.
Is something like this even possible?