Re: Borderlands ClapTrap episodes One and Two

On Oct 1, 12:17 am, AGENT47 <ks...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 30, 10:45 am, The alMIGHTY N <natle...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Sep 29, 4:13 pm, "ks...@xxxxxxxxx" <ks...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I know I'm probably the only one here excited about Borderlands with
its drop in drop out anytime 4 player co-op and over 7 million+
weapons.

The developers claim to have counted 17 million weapons. I'm a bit
skeptical about what they consider a "unique" weapon, though. From
what I've read, it seems that there's basically a "library" of
attributes that the game just randomly chooses and combines into an
object to create a new "weapon."

For example, say if you're playing Halo 3 and you see a needler on the
ground. You pick it up. It fires needles like it's supposed to. Okay,
cool. Then, you walk a little bit further and there's another needler
on the ground. You test it out and instead of firing needles it fires
shotgun shells. O-kay... That's another weapon. Then, you find another
needler, and although it looks exactly like a needler, it works like a
sniper rifle instead, firing sniper rifle rounds. And so forth.

If you start with as little as 10 different starting weapons with 10
different types of ammo, by doing this sort of mixing and matching,
you've already got almost 3.63 million "unique" weapons. Start with 11
starting weapons and ammo, and you're up to almost 40 million "unique"
weapons. That's assuming the only randomized attribute is the ammo
used. Throw in rate of fire, accuracy, etc. and you could have
millions of "unique" weapons just with a handful of seed attributes.

Anyways you gotta check out these hilarious videos promoting the game
if you haven't seen them they're the now famous Clap Trap episodes 1 &
2.

Episode One:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=876X30YznqE

Episode Two:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL4QNsaqnz4&feature=channel_page-Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Actually the weapons are quite inventive, there's a shotgun a dev
found that shoots green orbs that swirl around like missles then
exploded into electricity and when you kill an enemy the enemies head
electrifies and you see his skull.
The devs say themselves their surprised at the weapons they find.

The guns are quite unique from each other.

I don't think they are. Don't be surprised if you find a version of
every other "type" of weapon that does the exact same thing.

The fact that the developers are "discovering" these weapons tells you
that the game's really just using some sort of feature-randomization
algorithm to randomly generate these objects.

It seems like they basically built this randomization engine and fed
it a bunch of possible form factors, ammo, rates of fire, "special
effects," results, etc. and then just let it rip.

Shotgun that fires missiles? Check.

Shotgun that fires heat seeking missles? Check.

Shotgun that fires heat seeking missiles that swirl with purple
electricity? Check.

Shotgun that fires heat seeking missiles that swirl with purple
electricity and then turn the victim into a tuxedoed chicken? Check.

Pistol in each of those combinations? Check.

Sniper rifle in each of those combinations? Check.

And so on.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Borderlands ClapTrap episodes One and Two
    ... you walk a little bit further and there's another needler ... you've already got almost 3.63 million "unique" weapons. ... Shotgun that fires missiles? ... Shotgun that fires heat seeking missiles that swirl with purple ...
    (alt.games.video.xbox)
  • Re: Borderlands ClapTrap episodes One and Two
    ... you walk a little bit further and there's another needler ... you've already got almost 3.63 million "unique" weapons. ... Shotgun that fires missiles? ... Shotgun that fires heat seeking missiles that swirl with purple ...
    (alt.games.video.xbox)
  • Re: Borderlands ClapTrap episodes One and Two
    ... you walk a little bit further and there's another needler ... you've already got almost 3.63 million "unique" weapons. ... Shotgun that fires missiles? ... Shotgun that fires heat seeking missiles that swirl with purple ...
    (alt.games.video.xbox)