Giants level cap question

[Yaggleberry Finn]

Geekdad has another Skylanders article (www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/03/top-3-skylanders-giants/) where he includes this little nugget:

This leaves one outstanding question. Can the original figures take advantage of the higher level cap in Skylanders Giants. It seems likely that although you can use your existing characters in the new game it will only be the re-released figures that will be able to benefit from the higher levels.

There may be a technical reason why the original figures aren’t able to level up further. Certainly, if this is the case it would also make sense of the re-release of all the original figures for Skylanders Giants — rather than just the new ones.

I have asked Activision about this and it seems they are not ready to confirm how this raised level cap will work in detail. I suspect that some of these technical issues may still be being nailed down as there is still a good six months or so before the game is likely to release.

It's probably too early to speculate or grumble about this, but I will be stunned and pretty unhappy if there is an expanded level cap that my current Skylanders are unable to attain.

Simply put, Activision has to figure out a way to make this work with the previously released characters.

[graz73]

I would expect that existing skylanders could level up in the new game. the only problem might be, if the new game gives the existing characters new moves, what would happen if you went back and tried the new moves in the old game?

[convoy_avenger]

I think it's the game itself that has the restriction on level cap, not the figures. The figures just contain the data, but as graz73 pointed out, new moves, hats, etc, that are acquired would be hard to save on the toys if moves are hard coded to them.

Time will tell, I suppose!

[tyris01]

The level cap data on the Skylander is limited by the game and the programming of the Portal itself. You can hack it with an RFID to register as having more experience points, but it'll still cap at 10. Depending on how high those values go, it's not infeasible to have a level 15 guy on Giants that, when read on the regular Skylanders game, will still register as a 10.

The problem is whether or not the thing resets the experience points when set to that level. Currently there is a way to hack the figures to grant yourself a ridiculous amount of gold, but the game has a set cap, and once it reads you as having more, it sets you at the cap and re-writes that cap amount to the figure.

I'm not sure how the experience point thing works, but if it's the same way, and if they raise the level cap, then you would take a 'basic' Skylander that levelled to 15 (or whatever) on Giants, put it in the basic game, it would reset back down to 10, and then if you put it back on Giants, you'd have to re-level it.

Now, if they don't re-write the experience values, then it would read as 10 on the normal game and 15 on Giants. After a certain point, if they keep releasing games, it will hit the above scenario, but we're talking another 2-3 years, so yeah.

As for getting new moves... don't hope for it, cause it probably won't happen. The 'basic' ones aren't likely to get new moves. The 'upgraded' ones with the light technology and the Orange base... those will probably have new/more/different moves. So far the only ones we can confirm existing of those are a Prism Break and a Zook. Currently the Zooks we've seen with the orange base are prototypes of the cast, and don't have the light technology in them yet. The final versions we get will.). I can't remember if Cynder is one of those remakes or not, search online for her new sculpt and see if the base is orange.

[Winged Kitsune]

Hello! ^_^
I stumbled here by accident but just had to read once I saw the title. XP

Now, while my programming knowledge is limited to the basics(I prefer literature professions ^_^) my brother is a professional programmer so I asked for his opinion on this, he said the following which makes alot of sense:

"As far as the Skylander Figurines are concerned they do contain the ability to flash and rewrite various parts of data, however, upon closer inspection they seem to have certain limits as to what can be written/rewritten to them. In the case as described on this forum that they re-write back to pre-exiting data then yes, it might force any Skylander leveled up in a further game to have its level set back to the cap of a previous one when they re-enter an older game.

Looking up the soon-to-be released Skylander's Giants Game and the new figurines that they will release and from a little research I can almost garenty that all pre-existing skylanders will function with the new games and further games as they will simply have more data added/removed to there flash. However, I also believe that the reason that Activision is releasing new 'Orange Base' figurines is because they honestly didn't believe that the Skylanders Franchise would sell so well and thus in the digital architecture of the original figurines didn't have as much support in them for this 'expansion of functionality' and thus they have decided to correct this with the new figurines which I assume will have FAR better support for internal upgrading. Simply put, the old figurines have architectural limits and the new ones will probably correct this.

Either that... or Activision just wants more money. #sigh# "


Now I'm not sure about you guys, but that makes a WHOLE lot of sense... Our Skylanders weren't made for numerous expansions... but these new ones will have the architecture for that. Ofcourse my brother may be wrong, but you have to admit it makes alot of sense.

What do you guys think? Is this a feasible possibility?

[tyris01]

It's not even that. It's pure programming. The Orange base is simply to show that "This figure is meant to be used with the Skylanders: Giants game and any that came after it, but not the ones that came out before."

The area where the data is stored on the current RFID is limited by the software of the game, not the hardware of the portal. There are specific areas on it which tell the game "Do not rewrite or change this section." Chances are, they'll change the programming values on the figures so that when the old game sees it, areas it would normally be free to 'edit' and change the numbers on a normal figure, the new figure will basically say "No, you can't change this area."

Of course, we're all guessing at this point, but I'm going to feel safe in assuming that Orange Base figures will either not work with the old game at all, or they will work on it but you can't change their data (so they will 'show' as 10 if they can load, but it won't force them back down like it would the green base figures).

Moral of the story--Time travel should be one way. If you take your greens to Giants and back again, they'll probably go back down to 10.

On the upside, this can be fun and a good 'excuse' to level them with your kids again, despite purchasing all the upgrades.

[mirnkaya]

What I really don't understand is why no one mentions the simple and customary option of releasing a patch to the original game. This can make some changes to the current way the RFID is wired (such as not resetting values beyond the cap).

One additional ploy I think Activision would be smart to employ is have the "old" skylanders possess some special trait/power in the new game that would be unavailable to their new (i.e. re-issued) counterparts. This way the current players would be rewarded for their time and investment as well as encouraged to upgrade to the new game and this might also somewhat compensate for a level-cup should this not be able to resolved through patching and re-programming the hardware.

Another interesting option might be rewarding the player for having both the "classic" and the "new" skylander figures and somehow representing it in the game (example - new one gains a better starting point if he has the old one by his side etc.).

To summarize it - there are many creative ways to balance off the disadvantage of the original figures. Plus - from a collector's point of view - be sure that as time goes by, and especially if the game succeeds beyond the current two generation - the value of the original figures would go up not down (though unless Activition take steps to make the old figures matter in the new game, their price would surely go drastically down before going up again...).

Thoughts?

[Winged Kitsune]

Hmm... I think that it is indeed a very good idea to have 'rewards' for having the classic and new skylanders on the same game!!! ^_^ I think not only would that be a good marketing strategy for Activision, but also give us collectormaniacs something to strive for.

So if my characters got bonuses for having both, I would be very likely to buy a few more for those bonuses. ^_^ (that... and I want both Whirlwinds... >///////<)

[Radical Tropicon]

I agree, it would be smart to give players a bonus or "reward" for having the first generation of Skylanders. Fan appreciation would be super nice!
Now I can't wait to find out more about Giants. >_< the wait hurts!

[tyris01]

The problem with patching is that each different console version of the game uses different code for displaying it, controlling the Portal, etc. The only thing similar is the storage format used on the figures.

The company that made the game originally started it as a Wii game, and then basically paid other groups to adapt it to the different systems. Giants won't be that way, but for regular Skylanders, that's simply how it is. Honestly, I don't think they're going to spend even more money just to patch this version to fix it, especially since each time they do they run the risk of 'breaking' something that prevents it from working with the other systems. The only patches they're likely to do on our current Skylanders is to fix system-specific issues, like Lightning Rod's unbeatable Heroic Challenge on the PS3.

I hope that, when the second game comes out, they pre-plan for 'eventual' Skylander models to exist, but instead of trying to make a playable one, they make them work like the 'buff' items before the fact. Say, to keep it simple, there's a tag for Skylander #59 (Giants won't go this high, it'll bring us up to 48 basic ones, so at least 52 with the alts). We'll say they rotate through elements, and for whatever reason this one's Fire. OK, so they make some sort of effect, such as a Flame Shield or the like (little spinning fire orbs orbit your Skylander, do damage). Set that in the program, nice and simple. Then the new Skylanders game comes out, we'll call it "Skylanders: Nano" (it's about non-unique guys that are a third the size of normal ones, but are an entire 'group', like the Ice Climbers on Smash Brothers). Say it turns out that it's something like "Emberants", a clump of 3 literal Fire Ants. OK, cool, it's a Skylander in Nano, but if you put it on the portal for Giants, it instead summons the aforementioned Fire Shield. Then the game will have forwards AND backwards compatibility.

Not like to happen, but... you know, it would be neat.

[redtails]

From a programming background, if the RFID chips are set up in the way that most others are, it shouldn't be an issue to allow older figures to take advantage of the increased level cap.

reason being is that in a lot of games, the level is calculated by taking the number of experience points and comparing it to a table of levels... so, say you have 1000 xp, the system then goes "okay, they have 1000 xp... that means that they should be level 2" (just using these numbers as an example.)

the abilities shouldn't be an issue either because that can easily be taken care of with a binary table calculation algorithm... it's difficult to explain without a graphic but i'll try... see, when you have binary numbers, they're either 1's or 0's... so, imagine a table... if you have a value of 4, you convert it to binary and that'd be 100... a value of 6 would be 110... you can then use those binary values to check off a list... so, a value of 110 would mean that ability 1 is off (going right to left) 2 is on and 3 is on... that's not to say that that's how they're doing it but it is possible.

now, looking at the tech, there is the RFID antenna that can recieve and send the signal and a form of memory chip to store the values. most times the memory chip is just a mass of storage space and you only need one... and since the costs of solid state memory (which is likely what's in them... i won't dismantle one of my figures just to see this) are so cheap, it wouldn't be hard to get a 1 or 2 kb chip in there (and 1 or 2 kb's of space can hold a LOT of data... we're talking 1000-2000 bits of data. surely enough to store all this.)

so, i would surmise that a lot of this is purely based on the game's programming... and if it's on the game's programming, it'd be an easy thing to adjust so as to allow older figures to take advantage of the increased level cap. granted, the older game may not understand what to do with an XP value higher than it's cap and it could cause errors in the game... but if some of the hackers i've read about are telling the truth, adding excess XP won't actually change the gameplay, it'll just be at the cap.

so, the infrastructure is there which means that if Activision/Blizzard chooses to change this so that you HAVE you upgrade to the newer figures to take advantage of the increased level cap, that would probably mean it's more a marketing decision than a programming/logistics decision... and knowing Activision/Blizzard and their penchent for trying to wring as much money out of their customers as possible, i would not be surprised if that's the route they take.

if they do, however, take the road to gouge their customers, it'd lead to a lot of angry parents and saddened children... but if their track record has shown me anything, they don't care as much about how you like it, so long as you play it. i want to be proven wrong and be shown that they do care about P.R. but that could be asking a bit to much... they're one of the biggest gaming companies out there and they answer to their shareholders first and foremost... and that's just business.