Anyways, here’s the reason why I think the episodes needs to be updated (the following things here are very simple to fix):
Nobody commented after an hour? Guess I’ll do it then.
That’s it? That’s what you wanted to add to this topic? And why are your old posts strikethrough?
It will come to episodes, be patient.
It would only benefit iOS and that in my opinion can wait after CIU gets some new content.
Yeah, just very simple excel editing. We had a whole Weapon Balancing Program to get to this point. It’'s absolutely not a very simple excel editing and reworked weapons won’t come to episodes (IA’s words not mine). But CIU episode DLCs will get it.
Yeah. I was trying to thinking something more detail, but it’s very complicated and I think even you and me can’t truly understand what I told.
The “buffing weapons” that I mentioned are not reworking so that how it should be like CIU (e.g. Vulcan Chaingun lose accuracy). It’s only change the “damage value”.
i was kinda expecting the reopening of the topic to be more grand than this
only 5 lines were added
Maybe 5 more lines would be added in a week maximum? It’s worth waiting, right?
I’m not entirely certain what the point of unlocking this topic was, however given the opportunity let me reveal this:
This is a very recent development (within the past couple of months), but there are indeed plans to rework all episodes in a more modern format. They will obviously receive back-ported technical enhancements from CIU, but they will also be reformed into “Seasons” (base game + all seasonal variations in the same package).
Example: Chicken Invaders Season 3 (S03): Remastered base game + Christmas + Easter.
There are still several major challenges, both technical and commercial, but I’m hoping to overcome them progressively over the coming months.
Some examples of stumbling blocks:
Episodes are in 5:3 format, but CIU is in 16:9. This is most apparent in CI5, where planetary levels have to be reworked entirely to avoid seeing outside the level, or abruptly appearing/disappearing enemies.
Two-player on the same PC will need to be re-introduced.
How can career/progress from the episodes be transferred to the corresponding Season?
Are the Seasons going to be separate SKUs, or are they going to replace the existing episodes? How will existing purchases be handled? Can Steam DLCs be merged into the base game?
… and many more.
Well, we really need a different leaderboard for the new seasons though
Oh, I’m sorry. The reason why I asked you to reopen this topic because Episodes are very outdated, and I want to convince you to update them.
Anyways, does certain unlockables which already in episodes (e.g. Hen Solo, rare custom paintjob) be kept when reworking episodes?
If the planetary levels have to be reworked, then I assume this rework would make the games use CIU’s play area (960x540) instead of what they currently use (800x480), right?
What would happen with Chicken Invaders 2, since the remaster and HD updates made it still use the original play area?
Would Chicken Invaders 1 also be adapted into this format?
Are they really very outdated if you could find 5 lines of problems with them?
And IA already said in the past that he will update them so convincing wasn’t necessary.
You do love to complicate the naming.
Well, not really a problem since we know the waves work in CIU right? Except planetary missions because we know they require some more work to support randomly generating them, but still possible.
Yes it needs to. I’d love to play with guests in CIU and not have to download episodes.
If we’re talking about episode DLCs then I would leave the progress without option to transfer it. Using your keys from CIU should be already such an improvement. If the seasons are going to be their own stand-alone thing (but why though??) then that’s indeed tricky since it is possible to cheat the keys and have ungodly number of them and that may cause problems.
Well I hope the old versions are still kept. It’s good for preservation purposes and if we’re going to change from 5:3 to 16:9 then they are going to have some substantial differences.
I mean, you can easily handle it on your own site right? If someone has CI game bought there just give the new “season” to them. Even on Steam you could give a discount/free game if you already bought something. Like for example: discount for sequel for owners of first game.
I don’t think so, but you can make a new steam game. Skyrim did that when they released Special Edition. Owners of base game and every story DLC got it for free as a new game:
I feel like chicken invaders 1 “remastered” can be already renamed into S01 if we’re going for that scheme. In CIU it’s also not a problem since there is anniversary mission and that can be S01 episode DLC.
There are two options about episodes (seasons) progress:
Since there are still some people who don’t have a property internet, and some people who had been banned permanently from CIU, I think having two options would be better. It will allow people want to play episodes in both competitive way, or playing something more casual.
Seasons would clearly go on separate leaderboards. There will be significant changes to scoring mechanics back-ported from CIU. If nothing else, the weapons would function totally differently.
But, generally speaking, maintaining global leaderboards is a pain and I’m not certain if this feature will be included.
That’s not a valid reason for re-opening a topic. Only re-open a topic if you have something significant to add.
Generally, yes.
Yes
CI2 's tech is so outdated that it will have to be re-implemented from scratch. Luckily, it’s the simplest of the lot.
Probably not. There aren’t any “seasonal editions” for CI1 in order to form a “Season” anyway.
There are two separate issues here:
* There might be a special branch of CIU that has the capability to play CI5 planetary missions, but that’s only going to be temporary and for testing purposes.
I’m not planning on adding two-player to CIU as we know it today, only to the Seasons. You’re probably talking about adding episodes to CIU as DLC? The Seasons are meant to replace that idea. I’d really rather not have the same product as two different formats, it creates complications with players who bought one but not the other.
Agreed. But it’s only a problem if there are global leaderboards or some other means of comparison.
They will definitely be kept on the IA website, but I’m uncertain if/how this can be done on Steam.
Is that a Steam feature? Where you receive a discount on an item if you already own some other specified item?
What happened to the players who had purchased the original game?
Seasons don’t share progress with CIU. I’m talking about sharing (transferring) progress from the current episodes to their Season counterparts.
If seasons are to get CIU’s scoring mechanics, what would happen with weapons? Would they be the same as in the original games?
Well my excitement just dropped to 0.
You already have it thanks to CIU using all waves from CI4 and CI5. And when mission editor drops (if it drops since we have no access to what’s coming or not) I bet you players are gonna make “CI4 custom mission” and “CI5 but without planetary levels mission” or “CI3 but waves not in CIU are missing mission”
Making whole “seasons” scheme is much more complicated thinking than whatever complications would arise from you just grouping CI4 waves in CIU into one mission and sell it as package. Especially when you just made an update that had editions switching. Disk space and development time saving.
It certainly used to, but I don’t remember when was the last time I’ve received a discount in my inventory. Even when The Stanley Parable deluxe premiered you only had the discount option in the store if you had the original. So there was no notification if you didn’t follow the situation. Right now I have another game with that option in my library:
Nothing at all. It is still present in the library
Actually all games that were ever taken down from store (not due to them having illegal content ofc) are still available to players who bought them. I even still have linux versions of CI games so I have to make sure it doesn’t install that, but nowadays I run everything with Proton since native games have horrible performance in more and more games (Unity engine being the worst offender here)
Certain games on Steam can be downgraded from the Betas tab found in the selected game’s properties.
(Betas tab is basically a list of available branches that you can download and test out, including
testing or previous versions of games)
example:
I have some more things:
Yes
It will use the CIU UI engine, however it will be re-skinned to look as close to the original appearance as possible.
Yes
Unknown at this stage.
True. Still, consolidating everything into CIU exclusively is not a good move, commercially speaking (there are discoverability and visibility problems, and most players won’t even realize the option is there). Having separate Seasons would also allow bringing back Christmas, Easter, etc to iOS (where they have been removed), and hopefully also Android later on.
In principle I could also include them in CIU, but I would first need to find a good solution for situations where a player has bought one but expects access also to the other.
Just to add to my post.
I found what the upgrade discount uses on Steamworks
https://steamdb.info/subs/
Packages (Steamworks Documentation)
Maybe it will be useful for the “Seasons”. Also, how will you treat the situation where somebody has only the base game on Steam?
Some more questions about episode rework:
Of Course (NOT). CI3-CI5 Doesnt Have Multiplayer.
