Topic: [Game Mode] Cache [Version 5.1] (Read 38143 times)

Whimsical · « **on:** October 08, 2018, 03:20:18 pm »

(Full Disclosure: Don't know if this is an original idea, or based on something I've seen somewhere before and just forgot about.)

Name: Cache
Description:

This mode uses Deathmatch Scoring.
Each player spawns with 3 randomly generated weapons.
- Each weapon is sorted into 1 of 7 categories.
- A player will not receive more than 1 weapon from a given category.
- Each category is given a weight, they do not appear with equal probability.
- Each weapon in each category is also weighted. For example, if you get 'handguns', then you're more likely to see a DD44 than a Magnum.
- Note that the weapons are not weighted weakest to strongest. Instead, the goal was to make average weapons more likely to appear.
- When you get the weapon you are also given an amount of ammo based on the weapon. For example, a regular shotgun comes with more shells than an auto-shotgun.
- The weapons you get will be different on each respawn.
During the game, you can say "!" or "!voodoo" in the game chat to swap out for a new set of weapons, however, keep the following in mind.
During the game, you can say "!gesrocks" to see a list of your current weapons on screen.
You will be given 1 new weapon every 2 to 3 seconds until you are back up to 3.
This will first remove all of your current weapons, so using this option in the middle of a firefight is probably a bad idea.
You will, however, be able to use slappers until you have your first weapon.
The default timing is 2 seconds for your first weapon, and 3 seconds for the other two.
If you managed to score a kill with slappers while switching, the delay will be cancelled early, and you will complete the weapon switch.
Each time you switch weapons, the next switch will take +1 second longer on each phase of the switch. This is reset when you die or score a hat trick.
Switching weapons will award you with a small amount of armor when you get your 2nd weapon, and again on the 3rd.
If you die before scoring a kill, and within 15 seconds of spawning, you can type "!" or "!voodoo" you keep the weapons you died with when you respawn (in place of the weapons you would normally spawn with).
If you manage to score a hat trick (you made a kill with each of your weapons) you will also receive the following awards (note that if you switch your weapons, your progress towards this will be reset):
- You will score an additional kill.
- You will be able to swap out your weapons with no delay:
  - This must be within 10 seconds of receiving the award.
  - When you do so, one of the weapons will be either a Golden PP7, Golden Gun, Grenade Launcher, or RC-P90.
  - If you die before you perform the swap, but within the window to do so, you will spawn with 1 of the above weapons.
Some weapons will also confer additional benefits if you have them. Note, that if you swap weapons you lose the bonus.

The Hunting will give you an increase to your base speed.
The Klobb will give an increase to your damage
The Silenced versions of either the PP7 or D5K will hide you from radar.
The Throwing Knives count as kills with 2 different weapons, for the purpose of bonus kills and weapon switching. Additionally, if you spawned with them, your next switch will give you your first weapon right away, and reduce the time for subsequent weapons by 1.

CVars
The following cvar values can be changed for customizing the game mode to how you want it to play.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Name: cs_enableteamplay
Default: 1
Description: Enable Team Play during games.

Name: cs_disableroundtime
Default: 0
Description: If 1 at the start of the game, disables the round timer.

Name: cs_intromessage
Default: 5
Description: Time, in seconds, to display the intro message upon first spawn. Set to 0 to disable.

Name: cs_disablelaser
Default: 1
Description: If 1, the Moonraker Laser will not appear.
Notes: The Moonraker is considered a high tier weapon, and is a candidate for one of the weapons awarded on a hat trick.

Name: cs_entropyammo
Default: 1
Description: If 1, uses Entropy-Soldier's suggested ammo count instead of the defaults.

Name: cs_carrytime
Default: 15
Description: If 1 at the start of the game, disables the round timer.

Name: cs_scorelimit
Default: 0
Description: The number of kills a player needs to win the round (0 removes the limit).

Name: cs_enablenotifyremaining
Default: 1
Description: Shows message indicating how many kills until the player gets their bonus.

Name: cs_enableslapers
Default: 0
Description: Give players Slappers in addition to normal weapons.

Name: cs_enableswitching
Default: 1
Description: Allows weapons to be switched using the '1' or '!gesrocks' command.

Name: cs_enableawardswitch
Default: 1
Description: Enables free switching after scoring a kill with 3 different weapons.

Name: cs_awardswitchclass
Default: 1
Description: Gives the player a high tier weapon when they use their free switch.

Name: cs_enableawardswitchcarry
Default: 1
Description: Player will receive a high tier weapon if they die before using their free switch.

Name: cs_enableeffects
Default: 1
Description: Enables Special Weapon effects.

Name: cs_enablestealth
Default: 1
Description: Enables Silenced Weapon effects. Does nothing is cs_enableeffects is set to 0.

Name: cs_speedmultiplier
Default: 1.15
Description: Player's speed multiplier when they spawn with the Hunting Knife.

Name: cs_damagemultiplier
Default: 1.30
Description: Player's damage multiplier when they spawn with the Klobb.

Name: cs_enableubernormal
Default: 1
Description: Allows high tier weapons to be given to players at random (Doesn't affect cs_awardswitchclass).

Name: cs_awardautoswitch
Default: 0
Description: Player will automatically switch weapons when receiving a free switch.

Name: cs_switchdelay
Default: 10
Description: Delay between when a player requests a normal switch and when the switch happens.

Name: cs_switchtimepenalty
Default: 1
Description: Time, in seconds, to add on to the switch delay after each switch. Numbers from 0 to 9 are valid.
Notes: Numbers with more than 1 digit means that each digit (from left to right) will be added after the matching switch (So 12 will add 1 second on the 2nd switch attempt, and 2 seconds to the 3rd and later). These are cumulative. To stop accumulation, use a 0.

Name: cs_nodelayonkill
Default: 0
Description: If the switch delay should be ignored if the play has scored a kill.

Name: cs_knifeswitchdelay
Default: 3
Description: Delay between when the player requests a normal switch, if they spawned with Throwing Knives, and when the switch happens.

Name: cs_awardswitchduration
Default: 10
Description: Amount of a time a player has to claim their free switch.

Name: cs_switchdefenseless
Default: 1
Description: Removes all of a player's weapons when they request a normal switch.

Name: cs_switchslapers
Default: 1
Description: If player is given slappers during the delay when switching weapons.

Name: cs_switchonslapkill
Default: 1
Description: If enabled, and the player scores a kill with slappers while in the middle of switching weapons, the delay will be cancelled and the weapon switch will complete immediately.

Name: cs_enablearmorbonus
Default: 2
Description: If 1, armor will be awarded when switching after making kills. If 2, armor will be awarded after the 2nd and 3rd weapon is given during a switch.

Name: cs_switcharmorbonus
Default: 0.25
Description: Armor increase, as a multiple of the max armor a player can have, that will be added per unique weapon kill when a player switches.

Name: cs_enablearmoronaward
Default: 1
Description: If 1, then armor is also awarded with an award switch.

Name: cs_enablebonusarmorstacking
Default: 1
Description: If 1, then armor gained through bonuses can stack on to the player's armor total. If 0, then the player's armor will be set to their bonus, or their current armor, whichever is higher

Name: cs_bonus
Default: 1
Description: Amount of additional points a player scores after scoring a kill with each of their 3 weapons.

Name: cs_rs_enable
Default: 1
Description: If 1, enables rolling switch option. Gaining 1 weapon at a time, instead of all 3 at once, when switching.

Name: cs_rs_1
Default: 2
Description: Time, in seconds, for the first weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch.

Name: cs_rs_2
Default: 3
Description: Time, in seconds, for the second weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch.
Note: The time used here is in relation to the time since the switch started and not since the previous weapon was given. Also note that these happen in sequence, if this is set below the above time, then the game will wait for that time to pass, then give you both this and the previous weapon at the same time.

Name: cs_rs_3
Default: 3
Description: Time, in seconds, for the third weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch.
Note: The time used here is in relation to the time since the switch started and not since the previous weapon was given. Also note that these happen in sequence, if this is set below the above time, then the game will wait for that time to pass, then give you both this and the previous weapon at the same time.

Name: cs_rs_k1
Default: 0
Description: Time, in seconds, for the first weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch, if you started with Throwing Knives.

Name: cs_rs_k2
Default: 2
Description: Time, in seconds, for the second weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch, if you started with Throwing Knives.
Note: The time used here is in relation to the time since the switch started and not since the previous weapon was given. Also note that these happen in sequence, if this is set below the above time, then the game will wait for that time to pass, then give you both this and the previous weapon at the same time.

Name: cs_rs_k3
Default: 4
Description: Time, in seconds, for the third weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch, if you started with Throwing Knives.
Note: The time used here is in relation to the time since the switch started and not since the previous weapon was given. Also note that these happen in sequence, if this is set below the above time, then the game will wait for that time to pass, then give you both this and the previous weapon at the same time.

Name: cs_rs_x1
Default: 0
Description: Time, in seconds, for the first weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch if you have made a kill.

Name: cs_rs_x2
Default: 2
Description: Time, in seconds, for the second weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch if you have made a kill.
Note: The time used here is in relation to the time since the switch started and not since the previous weapon was given. Also note that these happen in sequence, if this is set below the above time, then the game will wait for that time to pass, then give you both this and the previous weapon at the same time.

Name: cs_rs_x3
Default: 4
Description: Time, in seconds, for the third weapon to be given during a Rolling Switch if you have made a kill.
Note: The time used here is in relation to the time since the switch started and not since the previous weapon was given. Also note that these happen in sequence, if this is set below the above time, then the game will wait for that time to pass, then give you both this and the previous weapon at the same time.

Name: cs_rs_p1
Default: 1
Description: Time, in seconds, to add on to the first weapon's rolling switch delay after each switch. Numbers from 0 to 9 are valid.
Note: Numbers with more than 1 digit means that each digit (from left to right) will be added after the matching switch (So 12 will add 1 second on the 2nd switch attempt, and 2 seconds to the 3rd and later). These are cumulative. To stop accumulation, use a 0.

Name: cs_rs_p2
Default: 2
Description: Time, in seconds, to add on to the second weapon's rolling switch delay after each switch. Numbers from 0 to 9 are valid.
Note: Numbers with more than 1 digit means that each digit (from left to right) will be added after the matching switch (So 12 will add 1 second on the 2nd switch attempt, and 2 seconds to the 3rd and later). These are cumulative. To stop accumulation, use a 0.

Name: cs_rs_p3
Default: 3
Description: Time, in seconds, to add on to the third weapon's rolling switch delay after each switch. Numbers from 0 to 9 are valid.
Note: Numbers with more than 1 digit means that each digit (from left to right) will be added after the matching switch (So 12 will add 1 second on the 2nd switch attempt, and 2 seconds to the 3rd and later). These are cumulative. To stop accumulation, use a 0.

Probabilities: Probabilities for categories and weapons appearing in any given set of 3 weapons. Calculated by generating 1000000 random weapon sets.
Categories:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Weapons:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Weapon Data: Table containing weights and ammo for each weapon.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Changelog:
Version 5 (Current)

Bugfix (5.1): Weapon switch progress bar now shows correctly when using the Throwing Knives.
(5.1): Added Entropy-Soldier's suggested ammo counts.
(5.1): Changed default damage bonus from Klobb to 30% instead of 50%.
Armor is now awarded on the 2nd and 3rd weapon of a rolling switch, instead of at the start. Number of kills is no longer relevant to the armor bonus.
Moonraker Laser no longer appears.
Each time you switch, the delays for the next switch are each increased by 1 second. This lasts until you score a hat trick or die.
When you switch, the time until completion is shown on screen along with a progress bar.
The magnum has +3 bullets.
More debug commands added for when sv_cheats is on (!noweapons, !noarmor, !heal).

Version 4

Spoiler for Hiden:

Version 3

Spoiler for Hiden:

Version 2

Spoiler for Hiden:

Closing Notes
Sadly my internet isn't good enough to actually play with other people, so I've only tested this mode against bots.
I also don't exactly know the balance for each weapon, so I'd be very much open to more experienced players giving their thoughts of what the weights on each category and weapon should be, along with the starting ammo counts.
Finally, feedback of any kind would be very much appreciated.

Special Thanks
A special thank you to Entropy-Soldier for all of his feedback and suggestion, both of which were invaluable for the development of this game mode.

Lastly,
Thank you for taking the time to read all of this ^_^.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #1 on:** October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am »

Sounds like a fun mode! I'll stick it on my server and let you know what everyone thinks. It's a shame you won't be able to play with us, but if I can get it working properly I'll try to record my gameplay so you can at least see a match with real players. I make a point of playing on Saturday nights but there's always a chance I'll end up playing sooner.

Just from looking over your post and the gamemode file, without any actual playtesting, here are my thoughts:

Weapon Balance Suggestions:

- The Silver PP7 and the Laser are good weapons, but not nearly as good as the Golden Gun, Gold PP7, or Grenade Launcher. Both of them are perhaps slightly better than the AR-33 in practice, even though they're a bit better on paper. Laser might be more useful in this mode though just because the infinite ammo makes it one of the few weapons you can use for an extended period. I'd say Silver PP7 should probably just be a normal pistol weapon, and given the laser's ammo situation it wouldn't hurt to leave it as an uber for now. It might not really be good enough to warrant keeping it for the infinite ammo when you can get easier to use and better weapons by switching, but it's hard to say without playtesting.

- Proximity Mines, even though they're not as directly powerful as these weapons, are also probably worthy of the “uber” category as they can get you a lot of kills for the minimal effort of throwing them into weird spots.

Here's my weapon/cost list for Investment Losses, for reference. It's balanced around infinite ammo so the mines and rocket launcher are higher than they otherwise would be, but otherwise this should be roughly the relative value of each weapon:

Spoiler for Hiden:

I'll have to get back to you on how the ammo counts affect how things play. It probably won't affect the relative strength of weapons too much but it will certainly change how they're used. Will be interesting to see.

Answers to your questions and a few additional suggestions:

- For the silenced weapons, you actually can hide the individual player's radar dot. You can do this by adding a custom radar contact to the player that uses a color with an alpha of 1, like so:

Code: [Select]

GERules.GetRadar().AddRadarContact( player, Glb.RADAR_TYPE_PLAYER, False, "", GEUtil.Color( 220, 220, 220, 1 ) )

- The Throwing Knife holding debuff is probably also doable but every player's inventory would need to be checked in OnThink as picking up throwing knives doesn't trigger the CanPlayerHaveItem callback in 5.0. You can make this have a minimal performance impact by limiting the check to once per second or so. It might be easier and more intuitive to just have this debuff apply for 5-10 seconds to players that get hit by the throwing knives, which is very easy to check in CalculateCustomDamage. This would be preferable to a server-wide debuff when one player has the throwing knives, because ~30% of the time someone's going to have the throwing knives so it will feel like a random punishment to the rest of the players that they can't do all that much to stop.

- It's probably better to use !voodoo instead of !gesrocks for the weapon swap command, as !gesrocks isn't bound by default in 5.0 and most gamemodes use !voodoo for their special input.

- It would be a good idea to give players the slappers during the weapon switch, because players who have no weapons will have no weapon animations and go into the reference pose for onlookers. Looks kind of silly.

- I'd recommend using GEUtil.GetTime() instead of round time for timer calculations, as round time can be set to 0 to disable it and play forever. It's not commonly done, but when it is it means you get stuck switching weapons forever.

Anyway, the mode's code is well organized, and I really like how you handled the cvars. Modes with lots of them tend to get a bit cluttered but your setup handled them in a very clean way. I might have to look into adopting a similar approach for our official modes.

Thanks for taking the time to make this! I hope everyone in the community has fun with it.

Troy · « **Reply #2 on:** October 09, 2018, 03:31:20 am »

Most impressive

null · « **Reply #3 on:** October 10, 2018, 12:38:03 am »

I like the idea of the game play, and i hope to test it out if its hosted on Saturday Night. I wasn't able to look at the code, or have any suggestions on the weapons yet, but once i play the mode, i'll have some feedback.

Whimsical · « **Reply #4 on:** October 11, 2018, 08:07:48 pm »

Just updated the game mode using feedback from Entropy-Soldier

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

Sounds like a fun mode! I'll stick it on my server and let you know what everyone thinks. It's a shame you won't be able to play with us, but if I can get it working properly I'll try to record my gameplay so you can at least see a match with real players. I make a point of playing on Saturday nights but there's always a chance I'll end up playing sooner.

Thank you, I really appreciate that.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

Just from looking over your post and the gamemode file, without any actual playtesting, here are my thoughts:

Weapon Balance Suggestions:

Here are my replies to your thoughts.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

- The Silver PP7 and the Laser are good weapons, but not nearly as good as the Golden Gun, Gold PP7, or Grenade Launcher. Both of them are perhaps slightly better than the AR-33 in practice, even though they're a bit better on paper. Laser might be more useful in this mode though just because the infinite ammo makes it one of the few weapons you can use for an extended period. I'd say Silver PP7 should probably just be a normal pistol weapon, and given the laser's ammo situation it wouldn't hurt to leave it as an uber for now. It might not really be good enough to warrant keeping it for the infinite ammo when you can get easier to use and better weapons by switching, but it's hard to say without playtesting.

I'll defer to your experience on this. I moved the Silver PP7 to Handguns, and it does feel right playtesting against bots. Since you included the Grenade Launcher with the Golden weapons, I added it to ubers (also to make sure there is a certain amount of variety there), with 6 Grenades to hopefully justify it. I think the Laser's ammo might still qualify it for the ubers list, though I did make it far more common in that list than it was before.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

- Proximity Mines, even though they're not as directly powerful as these weapons, are also probably worthy of the “uber” category as they can get you a lot of kills for the minimal effort of throwing them into weird spots.

That makes sense, I was never sure if the Proximity Mines were good at killing bots, or just good in general. I didn't add them to ubers though, since I don't think they give the feel I want the weapons in that category to have (or to be exact, the feel I want from award switching into one), still I made them less common in the Explosives lists, they now only have about a %2.8 chance of appears, as opposed to before where they were at %14.4.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

Here's my weapon/cost list for Investment Losses, for reference. It's balanced around infinite ammo so the mines and rocket launcher are higher than they otherwise would be, but otherwise this should be roughly the relative value of each weapon:

Spoiler for Hiden:
Grenades : 400
Throwing Knives : 600
Klobb : 700
D5K Deutsche : 1500
Silenced D5K : 1500
Hunting Knife : 1800
DD44 : 2000
PP7 Silenced : 2000
PP7 : 2000
KF7 Soviet : 2500
Sniper Rifle : 3000
ZMG : 3500
Shotgun : 4000
Cougar Magnum : 4000
Phantom : 6000
AR-33 : 7000
Automatic Shotgun : 7000
Silver PP7 : 8000
Moonraker Laser : 10000
RCP-90 : 12000
Remote Mines : 12000
Rocket Launcher : 12000
Grenade Launcher : 14000
Golden Gun : 16000
Gold PP7 : 16000
Proximity Mines : 18000

I'll have to get back to you on how the ammo counts affect how things play. It probably won't affect the relative strength of weapons too much but it will certainly change how they're used. Will be interesting to see.

I don't know enough to really comment on those numbers, though I am curious as to how they are calculated, and why they are in the 1000s range. Also, Timed Mines don't appear to be listed.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

Answers to your questions and a few additional suggestions:

- For the silenced weapons, you actually can hide the individual player's radar dot. You can do this by adding a custom radar contact to the player that uses a color with an alpha of 1, like so:

Code: [Select]
GERules.GetRadar().AddRadarContact( player, Glb.RADAR_TYPE_PLAYER, False, "", GEUtil.Color( 220, 220, 220, 1 ) )

Done.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

- The Throwing Knife holding debuff is probably also doable but every player's inventory would need to be checked in OnThink as picking up throwing knives doesn't trigger the CanPlayerHaveItem callback in 5.0. You can make this have a minimal performance impact by limiting the check to once per second or so. It might be easier and more intuitive to just have this debuff apply for 5-10 seconds to players that get hit by the throwing knives, which is very easy to check in CalculateCustomDamage. This would be preferable to a server-wide debuff when one player has the throwing knives because ~30% of the time someone's going to have the throwing knives so it will feel like a random punishment to the rest of the players that they can't do all that much to stop.

I agree with you on the Throwing Knives debuff. It took me a while to think of what I wanted to replace it with since they seem to do enough damage to make an on hit debuff not as useful. I decided, in the end, to have them count twice towards your additional bonus point and award switch, and to have them reduce your switching time. They felt like a skill based weapon, so I felt the best way to handle them was to reward kills with them or to give a player a way to get rid of them quickly if they didn't want to use them.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

- It's probably better to use !voodoo instead of !gesrocks for the weapon swap command, as !gesrocks isn't bound by default in 5.0 and most gamemodes use !voodoo for their special input.

Done, you can now use either !voodoo or !gesrocks.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

- It would be a good idea to give players the slappers during the weapon switch, because players who have no weapons will have no weapon animations and go into the reference pose for onlookers. Looks kind of silly.

I can't argue with that logic, added. Also added a bonus where if you do kill someone with slappers, it will automatically complete the weapon switch, regardless of the remaining delay.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

- I'd recommend using GEUtil.GetTime() instead of round time for timer calculations, as round time can be set to 0 to disable it and play forever. It's not commonly done, but when it is it means you get stuck switching weapons forever.

Done.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

Anyway, the mode's code is well organized, and I really like how you handled the cvars. Modes with lots of them tend to get a bit cluttered but your setup handled them in a very clean way. I might have to look into adopting a similar approach for our official modes.

A very much appreciated compliment. I actually took the time to make sure everything was organized well. I also decided to make some adjustments to the code, specifically, I decided to label all the functions so they could be quickly searched, and reorder some of them so that it flows a bit better. I am curious about the cvars point though, specifically where my code differs from what the other modes do, since I don't think you mean (or at least I hope you don't mean) where I initialize it all in one block (which is the first thing I think of when I read that line).

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 09, 2018, 02:43:22 am

Thanks for taking the time to make this! I hope everyone in the community has fun with it.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I look foreward to seeing how this plays out with actual players.

Captain George · « **Reply #5 on:** October 11, 2018, 09:01:22 pm »

Seems like a good mode to me! I hope it becomes part of the offical game. I don't think this kind of mode ever existed so I believe it is original. I like how it differs from most modes. I look forward to playing it sometime when it releases. Do you need any help testing it? I have a sever, and I could get some people together to see how smooth and fluid it is.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #6 on:** October 12, 2018, 07:46:37 am »

This list of changes is great! I'm really looking forward to playing this mode on Saturday now.

Anyway, for the Investment Losses list, it's a custom gamemode where you get money for doing different things and can use it to buy items like weapons and powerups that get sold one at a time throughout the round. The money values are balanced around how useful each item is, and timed mines are excluded entirely because they didn't really have a place in the mode. Most players can't use them well, but with infinite ammo it's possible to just run around throwing them everywhere. Not really a problem until you consider that they'd need to be fairly cheap to be worth buying at all...and since the same item is offered to everyone each buy cycle it means suddenly 10 people are just throwing timed mines everywhere. For a gamemode like yours, where ammo is limited, I'd say they're about as good as the grenades in most cases.

For the cvars I was mostly talking about how you standardized the cvar information into a dictionary and then used that when interacting with them. I tried to standardize most systems in the gameplay code for 5.0 but console variables are one of the areas I didn't quite get around to. We have GEUtil.GetCVarValue for getting a console variable directly, but this has a few downsides mainly when it comes to sanitizing inputs, handling calculations that needed previous values of the cvar, and triggering events like leveling up players if the new variable value requires it. These were all possible to do but were cumbersome.
My predecessor introduced OnCvarChanged to, I assume, help with these issues but in the one mode that actually has more than 3 console variables, CaptureTheFlag, it caused a bit of redundancy in the code as generally all the cvars are just treated as entirely separate variables. It's not ultimately a huge problem as only one official mode has more than 3 cvars, but if it could be easier to have 5-10 cvars without increasing complexity for lower cvar counts it would be worth it.
There's a lot of nuanced details to capturing all the required functionality into a more streamlined system, as many times two different cvars can differ quite a bit in terms of what information they hold and what needs to happen when they're changed, but seeing your system makes me wonder if perhaps there's a way to do it that would be worthwhile to set up. I still need to standardize the console variable usage in gamemodes for 5.1, as most gamemodes still use GEUtil.GetCVarValue, so when I get around to that I might experiment with a convention similar to yours and see if it makes things easier to use overall. I kind of just accepted the current way as good enough, only ever coding 2-3 cvar modes myself, and never really thought about improving it.

Anyway, I've got the latest version up on my server so hopefully I'll have some gameplay footage uploaded for you by Sunday! I'll keep an eye on this thread just in case you have any last minute changes to make.

Whimsical · « **Reply #7 on:** October 12, 2018, 08:36:32 pm »

Made some minor edits to the file. Importantly, the .cfg file included now has the correct defaults settings (rather than settings I was testing with earlier). There is now a notification when you score a kill as to how many different weapons you need to kill with to get your bonus (Though I wasn't sure of exactly how to write it, so I'm open to changing it) though you can disable with message by setting the cvar "cs_enablenotifyremaining" to 0 (if the message proves annoying). When you spawn with Throwing Knives, you are now given a message notifying you of what they do. Finally, I moved the message strings to the top of the source file, so they can be changed easily.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #8 on:** October 14, 2018, 07:54:00 pm »

We got to play 2 matches of Cache last night, and while I personally found the mode fun it seemed rather polarizing among the other players. People seemed to be split 50/50 on if they enjoyed it or not, but no-one really gave me a clear reason as to why so I can only collect the comments I heard and try to extrapolate from there.

Anyway, some of the comments I heard were:

- Switching takes too long
- Not enough ammo
- It's not clear you start with 3 guns

It's easy to address these comments at face value but my interpretation is that most of the dissenters don't like how the switching mechanic is implemented. I personally avoided switching at all without the bonus, as it was generally better to just go huge with your good weapons, and if you died before running out of ammo just eat the respawn time versus waiting out the normal switch duration. A lot of people probably feel the current setup is unfair and random as you have to take a pretty big penalty if you spawn with a bad selection of guns.

Because of this, I'm kind of wondering if maybe the switching could happen incrementally instead of all at once. Something like:
Press G -> lose all current weapons except for slappers.
1/3 of switch time passes -> Get first weapon
2/3 of switch time passes -> Get second weapon
full switch time passes -> Get final weapon

With the option of rerolling again during the switch time to restart it if you don't like the guns you're getting.

Would make it clear you're getting 3 guns, give you a usable weapon much faster, and give more chances to roll for guns you like. Even 2-3 seconds is a long time to go without a gun in an open firefight, so this would still be something people would have to use strategically if they wanted to use it to the best effect.

Anyway, to me it's a pretty straightforward deathmatch variant, and while it probably needs a fair bit of tweaking the core concept seems pretty fun. I'll try adjusting some of the console variables and see if I can play a few more matches tonight. 2 matches is kind of a small sample size so I want to try it a few more times before trying to draw the final consensus. Investment Losses was pretty polarizing on its first few iterations too, but after adjusting some implementation details a lot of the players who hated it now say it's their favorite mode. It's just part of the gamemode development cycle, really. It's hard to get something with so many moving parts perfect on the first attempt.

As for that gameplay footage I promised, I had some issues with the footage from last night so I'm going to try a different method next time. -Hopefully- I'll have something for you in the next few days, but for now I hope a write up is enough info to go on.

I look forward to the next version of the mode!

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #9 on:** October 16, 2018, 02:38:43 am »

Gameplay footage, as promised. I didn't play quite as well as I would have liked, but eh, probably better for capturing a typical gameplay experience. Please suffer through my twitchy aim as best you can.

Sadly I didn't tweak the console variables like I was hoping to, but this is decent footage of the mode I feel. One thing I noticed while recording this is that it's pretty common to have loadouts like D5K, D5K(s), and DD44 where you don't have much hope of getting much done. These weapons are decent on their own, but the prevalence of the AR-33 and Auto Shotgun in other player's loadouts, which are both powerful and easy-to-use weapons, makes them very difficult to get more than 1 or 2 kills with.

Conversely, it's also possible to get loadouts like Golden Gun, Rocket Launcher, and Silenced PP7, which on paper seem really good...but the AR-33 and Auto Shotgun can still kill you very fast without armor and so losing these loadouts before really getting to use them is actually quite easy. Having 2 or 3 high powered weapons isn't all that much better than just having 1, but it certainly feels like you're losing a lot more when you die.

The solution to both of these problems, I feel, is guarantee a certain weapon strength distribution for each loadout granted. They shouldn't all be equal, as I feel the randomness is part of the mode, but they should all follow something similar to the following structure:

1 Good Weapon (AR33/Auto Shotgun to Golden Gun, better being rarer)
1 Average Weapon (ZMG-CMAG/Shotgun, not much bias in the random selection)
1 Weak Weapon (Klobb - DD44, weaker being rarer)

It would be fine to have overlap between the different classifications but something more structured like this would at least guarantee every player has a chance against any other player. The other player might have the Gold PP7 and they only have the AR-33, but they can overcome that with better deathmatching skills or strategy.

This mode has potential, I feel like all it really needs is the right tweaks and people will love it.

Whimsical · « **Reply #10 on:** October 18, 2018, 10:49:24 am »

(Just has a quick note, I had to break up writing this reply over 3 days, so I'm not sure if everything here is put together as well as I would like in terms of grammar and how well things flow)

Thank you for both replies, and the gameplay footage. Sorry, I wasn't able to reply right away, I've been a bit busy with classes. Still, I've had time to make a few improvements to the game mode (but have a couple more I want to add before releasing the next version). Before I get into my replies, I'll just give a quick note about myself, it might not seem relevant, but hopefully, it gives some context into my thought processes. I like playing Trading Card Games and have experimented with casual game design in regards to them (just between friends), and this mode adds some elements I like from those games to this game.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 14, 2018, 07:54:00 pm

We got to play 2 matches of Cache last night, and while I personally found the mode fun it seemed rather polarizing among the other players. People seemed to be split 50/50 on if they enjoyed it or not, but no-one really gave me a clear reason as to why so I can only collect the comments I heard and try to extrapolate from there.

Polarizing isn't bad, if people have a strong response about the game mode it means there is at least something there. Now it's just a matter of refining it.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 14, 2018, 07:54:00 pm

Anyway, some of the comments I heard were:

- Switching takes too long
- Not enough ammo
- It's not clear you start with 3 guns

1. Switching taking too long I can see, you mention switching again later so I'll put my thoughts there.
2. That's a little more tricky, managing limited ammo is supposed to be a part of being able to play this mode well, and ammo counts are supposed to act as a balancer for some weapons. That being said, I need to strike a balance. Is this a concern for all weapons overall, or just specific ones (and if so, which ones)?
3. Probably the best way to fix that is to print them on-screen somewhere when the player spawns. I'll see if I can't add it to the next version.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 14, 2018, 07:54:00 pm

It's easy to address these comments at face value but my interpretation is that most of the dissenters don't like how the switching mechanic is implemented. I personally avoided switching at all without the bonus, as it was generally better to just go huge with your good weapons, and if you died before running out of ammo just eat the respawn time versus waiting out the normal switch duration. A lot of people probably feel the current setup is unfair and random as you have to take a pretty big penalty if you spawn with a bad selection of guns.

Because of this, I'm kind of wondering if maybe the switching could happen incrementally instead of all at once. Something like:
Press G -> lose all current weapons except for slappers.
1/3 of switch time passes -> Get first weapon
2/3 of switch time passes -> Get second weapon
full switch time passes -> Get final weapon

With the option of rerolling again during the switch time to restart it if you don't like the guns you're getting.

Would make it clear you're getting 3 guns, give you a usable weapon much faster, and give more chances to roll for guns you like. Even 2-3 seconds is a long time to go without a gun in an open firefight, so this would still be something people would have to use strategically if they wanted to use it to the best effect.

To be fair, I kind of expected issues with the switching mechanic. I added it originally to deal with the fact you don't have Slappers, and thus it at least is in theory possible for all players to use up all the ammo on all their guns on a stage where you can't die from fall damage (thus, while very unlikely, leaving open the possibility of the game just halting). Later I expended the rules so it was more than just that, but getting it to work well is probably going to be more a case of trial and error. I do like your suggestion and want to at least implement it as an option. The other alternative is just adjusting the delay to be more reasonable. If you end up playing any more games between now and then, I would suggest setting "cs_switchdelay" to 5, if that still doesn't work then maybe set it to 3 and set "cs_knifeswitchdelay" to 1. The only problem with setting the delays lower is that I don't want people to constantly be rerolling until they get a strong set, since playing with (or around) less than ideal sets is supposed to be an aspect of the game mode.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 14, 2018, 07:54:00 pm

Anyway, to me it's a pretty straightforward deathmatch variant, and while it probably needs a fair bit of tweaking the core concept seems pretty fun. I'll try adjusting some of the console variables and see if I can play a few more matches tonight. 2 matches is kind of a small sample size so I want to try it a few more times before trying to draw the final consensus. Investment Losses was pretty polarizing on its first few iterations too, but after adjusting some implementation details a lot of the players who hated it now say it's their favorite mode. It's just part of the gamemode development cycle, really. It's hard to get something with so many moving parts perfect on the first attempt.

Thank you, I agree with you on all points here.

Quote

I look forward to the next version of the mode!

I look forward to it as well. I'll cover my planned changes at the end of this post and a bit during my reply to your other post.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 16, 2018, 02:38:43 am

Gameplay footage, as promised. I didn't play quite as well as I would have liked, but eh, probably better for capturing a typical gameplay experience. Please suffer through my twitchy aim as best you can.

Thanks. Gameplay-wise, much better than I can do. I'm not really the best FPS player. Seeing the gameplay in action though was really nice.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 16, 2018, 02:38:43 am

Sadly I didn't tweak the console variables like I was hoping to, but this is decent footage of the mode I feel. One thing I noticed while recording this is that it's pretty common to have loadouts like D5K, D5K(s), and DD44 where you don't have much hope of getting much done. These weapons are decent on their own, but the prevalence of the AR-33 and Auto Shotgun in other player's loadouts, which are both powerful and easy-to-use weapons, makes them very difficult to get more than 1 or 2 kills with.

Those kinds of loadouts shouldn't be exactly common, though maybe the prevalence of ARs and Auto Shotguns should be looked at?

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 16, 2018, 02:38:43 am

Conversely, it's also possible to get loadouts like Golden Gun, Rocket Launcher, and Silenced PP7, which on paper seem really good...but the AR-33 and Auto Shotgun can still kill you very fast without armor and so losing these loadouts before really getting to use them is actually quite easy. Having 2 or 3 high powered weapons isn't all that much better than just having 1, but it certainly feels like you're losing a lot more when you die.

I have added (what I hope is) a fix to this issue, or what should be a nice feature regardless. If you use the switch command ("!voodoo" or the others) after you die, so long as certain criteria are met, you can carry your loadout when you respawn (i.e. you keep the same guns after you die). The following must be met for weapons to be carried over.

The option only exists for a set time after getting the weapons (either after a respawn or a switch), by default the window is 15 seconds but can be adjusted with a cvar.
You must not have scored any kills with your current weapon set.

I'm not sure if criterion 2 is enough without the delay, it might be. Anyway, that should mitigate the sting of losing a strong set before you can use it.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 16, 2018, 02:38:43 am

The solution to both of these problems, I feel, is guarantee a certain weapon strength distribution for each loadout granted. They shouldn't all be equal, as I feel the randomness is part of the mode, but they should all follow something similar to the following structure:

1 Good Weapon (AR33/Auto Shotgun to Golden Gun, better being rarer)
1 Average Weapon (ZMG-CMAG/Shotgun, not much bias in the random selection)
1 Weak Weapon (Klobb - DD44, weaker being rarer)

It would be fine to have overlap between the different classifications but something more structured like this would at least guarantee every player has a chance against any other player. The other player might have the Gold PP7 and they only have the AR-33, but they can overcome that with better deathmatching skills or strategy.

That is supposed to be what breaking them into categories does. As noted, the randomness is a part of it, and I do want players to have to manage sub-par weapon sets. At the moment the fixes I want to try are weapon carrying (deals with losing good sets), making switching more viable (deals with mitigating very weak sets), and adjusting the weights on weapons and categories (as I feel that should be the first step before any major overhauls in the distribution method). Still, I won't rule this out as a possibility if weapon distribution keeps being a problem.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 16, 2018, 02:38:43 am

This mode has potential, I feel like all it really needs is the right tweaks and people will love it.

I agree, now I just need to make those tweaks and get gameplay data.

Now, as promised, here is my list of things that I want to add to the next version.

Weapon carry over, as detailed above (and is already scripted).
Your "rolling switch" idea (as I've come to think of it as).
Displaying weapon names on spawn (also worth asking if there is a way for players to set some local cvar equivalent so I can give them the option to disable this)
Lowering the rate of handgun appearance (possibly).

The last point leads to this last section. Since I haven't played with others, and not as knowledgeable about this game, I do have some question I want to ask that I can't really get answers to on my own.

How are the weights on the weapons and categories? Are there some weapons that appear more or less often than they should for their power?
Do the special effects applied to certain weapons feel impactful?
Do you feel properly incentivized to use all of the weapons in your given set?
In regards to your weapon distribution idea, I am giving thought to how I would go about it, and for that, I do need to know if I'm correct about the following. Would this be the correct ordering from best to worst sets:
- Good - Good - Good
- Good - Good - Average
- Good - Good - Bad
- Good - Average - Average
- Good - Average - Bad
- Average - Average - Average
- Good - Bad - Bad
- Average - Average - Bad
- Average - Bad - Bad
- Bad - Bad - Bad
I especially want to know if I'm correct in saying 3 Average weapons is better than a Good weapon and 2 Bad ones.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #11 on:** October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm »

I think handguns are usually pretty good, so no need to eliminate them from play. The true issue is just that the AR-33 and Autoshotgun are very easy to use and very powerful, so most guns just don't have a chance against someone who has one of those weapons + armor. Each loadout has roughly a 40% chance of getting one of those two guns so they end up being really common. The most common guns should at most probably be in the CMAG/Shotgun/Phantom range as these are all good weapons but generally limited in one way or another. Pistols and other guns still have a chance against them, even up close.

As for ammo, I think the Rocket Launcher perhaps gets 1 rocket too much and the shotgun deserves maybe 1 extra clip, but otherwise ammo hasn't been too bad. I think this is one of those situations where people complain about one thing but really the issue is somewhere else. In this case I feel it's just that switching was too costly so they felt constrained to their current weapons, so once they ran out of ammo for the good gun they weren't happy. The only real issue with ammo I feel is that sometimes you can get 2 weapons that share the same ammo type, and thus get a bunch of extra shots for the sniper rifle if you happened to get the KF7 as well. Didn't seem too game breaking when I played but it's worth noting.

Your other changes sound good and I'm excited to check them out! I'm a little skeptical on the weapon carry over as it feels kind of niche and I'm worried a lot of players won't pick up on it, but since it's already scripted it's worth giving it a few playtests at the very least.

As for your questions:

- As I said above, AR-33 and Autoshotgun make most of the other guns too difficult to use as nearly half the people you fight are going to have one of these weapons. It's honestly hard to judge the rest of the weapon balance because of how dominant those two weapons were. They should probably be a lot less common, maybe around 12% for the Autoshotgun and 10% for the AR-33.

- The special effects are actually pretty powerful but generally just serve to make the rest of the loadout better. Getting the Silenced PP7 or Klobb was usually a pretty good deal because the passive bonus they provide can be used with the other 2 weapons to great effect. Laser + Silenced PP7 + Klobb/Knife would probably be the best long-term loadout you can get in this mode. This is probably why the powerups were rather controversial, everyone loves getting the powerups but it really sucks when someone surprises you with an increased-damage Autoshotgun without ever being on the radar.

- Generally with everyone having the AR-33 or some other powerful weapon it was too costly to try and use your weaker guns with the exception of finishing someone off. The bonus for killing with all 3 guns was pretty powerful but unless I armor camped I struggled to use it since one of those weapons was usually the D5K or similar which wouldn't stand up to the AR-33 very well.

- Honestly I feel like Good-Good-Bad or even Good-Bad-Bad, depending on the ammo situation, are the best loadouts you can get, as usually the bad weapon has some bonus like extra damage or radar invisibility and you just don't have to use it. People complained about the low ammo but if you're conservative you can make 2 good weapons last a long time, especially if they share ammo with the bad weapon. Without taking the powerups into consideration, a loadout's strength mostly comes down to how many situations you have Good weapons for, how good those weapons actually are (Golden Gun > AR-33), and how much ammo you have for them. If you have the AR-33 or Laser your other loadout slots don't matter too much, if you have the Autoshotgun generally you also want a reasonable long-range weapon like the PP7 to compensate for the low shotgun ammo and limited effective range. The third loadout slot rarely comes into play unless it gives you a powerup or is something unique, like an explosive.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying out the new version of the mode once it's ready!

Whimsical · « **Reply #12 on:** November 03, 2018, 01:05:29 am »

Ok, again sorry for not getting back sooner, classes haven't given me much time to put everything I need together. I've had the changes done since about last week and just finished making the changes to update the main topic.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

I think handguns are usually pretty good, so no need to eliminate them from play. The true issue is just that the AR-33 and Autoshotgun are very easy to use and very powerful, so most guns just don't have a chance against someone who has one of those weapons + armor. Each loadout has roughly a 40% chance of getting one of those two guns so they end up being really common. The most common guns should at most probably be in the CMAG/Shotgun/Phantom range as these are all good weapons but generally limited in one way or another. Pistols and other guns still have a chance against them, even up close.

Ok, I've made some changes to the weapons table, bringing down the AR and Auto Shotgun and (very slightly) the Phantom, and giving a minor increase to the D5K, and a larger one to the Sniper Rifle, and a much larger one to the Shotgun (mostly a consequence of decreasing the Auto Shotgun) which actually makes it the most common weapon to get now (even more than the KF-7, since even while Rifles are the most common category, there are only 2 Shotgun options and one of those 2 is far more common than the other).

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

As for ammo, I think the Rocket Launcher perhaps gets 1 rocket too much and the shotgun deserves maybe 1 extra clip, but otherwise ammo hasn't been too bad. I think this is one of those situations where people complain about one thing but really the issue is somewhere else. In this case I feel it's just that switching was too costly so they felt constrained to their current weapons, so once they ran out of ammo for the good gun they weren't happy. The only real issue with ammo I feel is that sometimes you can get 2 weapons that share the same ammo type, and thus get a bunch of extra shots for the sniper rifle if you happened to get the KF7 as well. Didn't seem too game breaking when I played but it's worth noting.

I removed the extra rocket the Rocket Launcher can get (don't know if that's all that's needed, but probably best to test with that first), and gave the Shotgun the extra 5 Shells (again, mostly deferring to your expertise here). I implemented your suggestion for switching, and while I was originally just going to make it an alternative, when testing it I really liked it so it's enabled by default. On the topic of it though, I would like to point out that I had to rewrite the function that distributes weapons because it was not in any way able to handle giving them out one at a time (but I do feel that the functions are better designed because of it). In regards to weapons sharing the same ammo type, it was something I considered and decided to leave in. I think the only thing to watch out for is the D5K (Silenced) and the Klobb which have 200+ extra bullets (which I did give them so the player could make use of the extra ammo with other weapons).

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

Your other changes sound good and I'm excited to check them out! I'm a little skeptical on the weapon carry over as it feels kind of niche and I'm worried a lot of players won't pick up on it, but since it's already scripted it's worth giving it a few playtests at the very least.

I've found the carry option to be useful if I die after an award switch. Your concerns about players not noticing it is a good point, so I decided to add a hud message that appears when the player dies (and the requirements to carry are met) that notifies them of the option.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

As for your questions:

- As I said above, AR-33 and Autoshotgun make most of the other guns too difficult to use as nearly half the people you fight are going to have one of these weapons. It's honestly hard to judge the rest of the weapon balance because of how dominant those two weapons were. They should probably be a lot less common, maybe around 12% for the Autoshotgun and 10% for the AR-33.

I implemented those changes and made a couple other adjustments after seeing how the affected the probabilities. I'm kind of surprised that the Auto Shotgun is that good in comparison to the Shotgun, going by the GoldenEye Source wiki the numbers don't seem to be that different (aside from headshots), but I can see from actually using both that my initial assessments were off.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

- The special effects are actually pretty powerful but generally just serve to make the rest of the loadout better. Getting the Silenced PP7 or Klobb was usually a pretty good deal because the passive bonus they provide can be used with the other 2 weapons to great effect.

That is mostly by design since I didn't want to make those weapons as rare as Ubers, but I also didn't want to give the players weapons that were (at least in my opinion) that subpar.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

Laser + Silenced PP7 + Klobb/Knife would probably be the best long-term loadout you can get in this mode. This is probably why the powerups were rather controversial, everyone loves getting the powerups but it really sucks when someone surprises you with an increased-damage Autoshotgun without ever being on the radar.

That shouldn't actually happen since all of the weapons that confer passive bonuses are in the same category and thus you should only be able to get 1 of them in any given loadout. Getting multiples of these would be a bug.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

- Generally with everyone having the AR-33 or some other powerful weapon it was too costly to try and use your weaker guns with the exception of finishing someone off. The bonus for killing with all 3 guns was pretty powerful but unless I armour camped I struggled to use it since one of those weapons was usually the D5K or similar which wouldn't stand up to the AR-33 very well.

This should hopefully be a little easier to do now that the weapon odds favour the AR less. If you playtest this more, can you tell me if this is the case?

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

- Honestly I feel like Good-Good-Bad or even Good-Bad-Bad, depending on the ammo situation, are the best loadouts you can get, as usually the bad weapon has some bonus like extra damage or radar invisibility and you just don't have to use it.

That is what I was hoping for, to reduce the odds of particularly bad loadouts (ideally, while what you have isn't always going to be ideal, you should have at least something that you can make use of). Anyway, I was considering a different way to distribute weapons, but I didn't really like the samples that I got from it.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

People complained about the low ammo but if you're conservative you can make 2 good weapons last a long time, especially if they share ammo with the bad weapon.

I agree with you on being conservative with your ammo, it is supposed to be a key point of the mode (even if it might be a bit understated in my description), so while there might be some complaint, that is one thing I'm probably going to keep even so.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

Without taking the powerups into consideration, a loadout's strength mostly comes down to how many situations you have Good weapons for, how good those weapons actually are (Golden Gun > AR-33), and how much ammo you have for them. If you have the AR-33 or Laser your other loadout slots don't matter too much, if you have the Autoshotgun generally you also want a reasonable long-range weapon like the PP7 to compensate for the low shotgun ammo and limited effective range. The third loadout slot rarely comes into play unless it gives you a powerup or is something unique, like an explosive.

I'm guessing Laser because of the infinite ammo (I also take it that means it is worthy of its spot in the ubers list). For the AR, if it is still a problem after more playtesting maybe either move it to ubers or give it no spare ammo? The third slot should hopefully be there to help balance out your weapon selection (and to make sure that if you roll 1 really bad weapon, you still have a chance to have 2 decent weapons).

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on October 20, 2018, 04:11:55 pm

Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying out the new version of the mode once it's ready!

Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to provide feedback and answer my questions. It might have taken a while but the new version is now ready.

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you provide another recording? I actually did like seeing the game in action, and not just my game mode, seeing how people actually play GoldenEye Source was quite useful, for instance, I realized that I was probably depending more on crosshair aiming than I should be, and am now making an effort to score kills without pausing to aim.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #13 on:** November 03, 2018, 04:56:48 am »

I would say the laser is almost in a class of its own. It's about as good as the AR-33 unless you have amazing hitscan tracking, and actually much worse if your hitscan aim is bad, but the infinite ammo means it gives you an indefinite mid-tier loadout. If you get the guaranteed uber weapon switch it's usually worth it to switch though since all the other uber weapons are better than the laser and you probably won't live forever so it's best to chain upgrades if possible.

That being said, if you manage to snag a powerup like increased damage or radar invisibility along with the laser it's almost always worth keeping as it's now quite powerful and you'll never have to adapt your playstyle or deal with the chance of getting a sub-par loadout. I don't think this is really a bad thing but it makes the laser a rather unique weapon...not incredibly powerful on its own but very useful due to its consistency and ability to keep a power-up indefinitely.

Also shoot, I didn't realize you couldn't get two powerup weapons in one loadout, but it makes sense. I don't think this ever actually happened when I played, I just thought it was possible so I was giving it as an extreme example of how good the powerups could be. Makes sense that it's not!

Anyway, I'll try to get you another recording tomorrow night as it's dev night, but it does take some effort to set up so I might have to do it some time during the week instead. Either way, I'm really looking forward to checking this out! I'll be sure to give you a writeup on how it goes at the very least.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #14 on:** November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm »

I managed to get the demo recording working properly this time so it was a lot easier to get footage:

I feel like this version played pretty well and I didn't hear any complaining, so I feel that things are certainly on the right track now. The new weapon switch design is much more satisfying and useful, the reduced prevalence of the AR33 and auto shotgun had a huge impact on the viability of most loadouts, and the messages that tell you what weapons you have really help bring things together. It still didn't win an encore vote though, by a very small margin, which makes me feel it could use a few more tweaks.

The knife speed boost is perhaps a bit too good. The knife is actually already a really good situational weapon, and speed increases tend to be one of the more tactically useful abilities you can have. Moving faster lets you pick your fights, avoid enemy attacks, and reposition yourself quicker to get more opportunistic kills. It also stacks with strafe running so a 25% speed boost lets you run 75% faster than the base move speed instead of the standard 40%. It would probably be worth reducing the speed boost to 10% or 15% as it would still be very useful but not overwhelmingly so.

It might also be worth telling the player just how much of a damage/speed boost they're getting as it's useful information to have.

I'd also be interested in experimenting with giving the player a small amount of armor for switching weapons, as an extra incentive for doing so. Even with the new system that doesn't interrupt the momentum of the combat, I still found myself not using the switch function as much as I could have been. Maybe it could tie into your unique weapon kills, gaining 2 bars for each weapon you got a kill with. Would make switching without the full gamut not feel like you're throwing away progress on your current loadout.

Either way, I feel like the mode is polished enough to put it in rotation on my server. It's got a unique flow to it that most players might need some time to pick up on, but I'm confident they'll enjoy the mode once they figure it out. Thanks for all your work on it so far! It's coming along great.

Whimsical · « **Reply #15 on:** September 06, 2019, 01:01:04 am »

Well this has certainly been awhile. Sorry for leaving this mode for so long. I've made several updates to the game mode (see the changelog for full details).

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm

I managed to get the demo recording working properly this time so it was a lot easier to get footage:

Thank you, those videos are always appreciated.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm

I feel like this version played pretty well and I didn't hear any complaining, so I feel that things are certainly on the right track now. The new weapon switch design is much more satisfying and useful, the reduced prevalence of the AR33 and auto shotgun had a huge impact on the viability of most loadouts, and the messages that tell you what weapons you have really help bring things together.

Thank you, hopefully my latest updates are an even better improvement.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm

The knife speed boost is perhaps a bit too good. The knife is actually already a really good situational weapon, and speed increases tend to be one of the more tactically useful abilities you can have. Moving faster lets you pick your fights, avoid enemy attacks, and reposition yourself quicker to get more opportunistic kills. It also stacks with strafe running so a 25% speed boost lets you run 75% faster than the base move speed instead of the standard 40%. It would probably be worth reducing the speed boost to 10% or 15% as it would still be very useful but not overwhelmingly so.

I have implemented this, along with the ability to set the speed multiplier in the cfg file.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm

It might also be worth telling the player just how much of a damage/speed boost they're getting as it's useful information to have.

Done.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm

I'd also be interested in experimenting with giving the player a small amount of armor for switching weapons, as an extra incentive for doing so. Even with the new system that doesn't interrupt the momentum of the combat, I still found myself not using the switch function as much as I could have been. Maybe it could tie into your unique weapon kills, gaining 2 bars for each weapon you got a kill with. Would make switching without the full gamut not feel like you're throwing away progress on your current loadout.

Likewise, I have also implemented this. This is another edit that I rather like, and is currently set as the default for the mode, though I'm unsure if I should keep it like that. While I do like the extra armor, and feel that it adds some additional depth to the gameplay, I am a little worried that it adds even more complexities to the gameplay, and this mode already seems to have far more to it than the others that I've seen (at least of the ones shipped with GoldenEye Source). While this feature is in you, I've also added a shorter switch delay after your first kill (importantly, you will get the first weapon right away), the idea being that you can now switch for the armor in the middle of combat if things go badly (and judging when to do this should be another skill required of the players).

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on November 04, 2018, 06:32:07 pm

Either way, I feel like the mode is polished enough to put it in rotation on my server. It's got a unique flow to it that most players might need some time to pick up on, but I'm confident they'll enjoy the mode once they figure it out. Thanks for all your work on it so far! It's coming along great.

Thank you very much for that, and for the feedback.

CptLima · « **Reply #16 on:** September 06, 2019, 10:57:33 pm »

Cool stuff! Looking forward to it!

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #17 on:** September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am »

It's awesome to see you again! It sure has been a while but I've still got Cache running on my server and still have fun with it.

I'd say the addition of the new info text is very useful, and adds some nice polish to the mode. The armor change is also welcome, though I admit I actually experimented with adding this to the mode myself since I hadn't heard from you in a while and after some experimentation I think I settled on a way of doing it that actually works a bit better than my original suggestion.

More or less, it was just giving 2 bars of armor along with both the second and third weapon during the rolling switch (4 total), or 4 bars of armor along with the instant switch. This allows players who get a bad loadout a bit of extra incentive to switch it, and if you roll another bad loadout at least you can still get some extra armor for rolling again. Only giving armor on the second and third weapons means a player has to commit to the switch before getting rewarded for it, so they can't easily get armor during the middle of a fight which I feel is probably for the best.

The system implemented in this new version of the mode for sure had its own merits, and added a bit of extra depth to combat, but I share your concern that not everyone is going to pick up on it and be able to leverage it amidst all the other unique mechanics of the mode. It's also a little jarring to get the first weapon sooner along with the armor, as the normal rolling switch pace is quite comfortable and easy to get used to.

I have to say the timing of your return is actually pretty good, though, as I was actually thinking about this mode recently. I noticed that in general the best strategy was to switch loadouts often, immediately discarding the current loadout the moment the good weapons are out of ammo. However, most players don't really switch often and thus have worse weapons on average compared to those using the strategy I just laid out. Weapons that come with powerups also exacerbate this effect, as they make re-rolling constantly more likely to give you good powerups and thus possibly get a loadout able to net you 5-10 kills.

I was thinking it might not be a bad idea to introduce a mechanic that rewards sticking with one loadout, while also nerfing the ability to roll loadouts like RCP-90 + klobb, which are incredibly good.

The way it would work would be, instead of having powerups tied to a weapon, to have them instead occupy a 4th loadout slot. This final loadout element doesn't appear until ~10 seconds after getting all of your weapons (last weapon in rolling switch, after spawn, instant switch, etc). The powerup starts out weak, and slowly increases in strength every ~10 seconds or so, reaching max power after ~40 seconds. (Ex: 10% Damage Boost -> 20% Damage Boost -> 30% Damage Boost, etc). This would reward sticking with the same loadout a little longer even if the better weapons have had their ammo exhausted.

I'd say the radar invisibility powerup doesn't really fit with this scheme, so maybe swap that out and add some extra ones like Bullet Resistance/Explosion Resistance/etc for variety. It also wouldn't hurt to increase the ammo count of certain guns, like the Magnum, to allow people to continue to use them just a bit longer if desired. It also might be worth removing the laser outright, as it's always somewhat circumvented a core trait of the mode, and coupled with the proposed powerup system that would become even more significant.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Thanks for continuing to update the mode, and I'm excited to see what you put out next!

Whimsical · « **Reply #18 on:** September 10, 2019, 12:46:26 am »

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

It's awesome to see you again! It sure has been a while but I've still got Cache running on my server and still have fun with it.

Thank you, the fact that other people actually use my mode means that making it was well worth it for me.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

I'd say the addition of the new info text is very useful, and adds some nice polish to the mode.

Thank you, I'm glad that works out, I was a little worried that it would be distracting at the very start of the game.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

The armor change is also welcome, though I admit I actually experimented with adding this to the mode myself since I hadn't heard from you in a while and after some experimentation I think I settled on a way of doing it that actually works a bit better than my original suggestion.

More or less, it was just giving 2 bars of armor along with both the second and third weapon during the rolling switch (4 total), or 4 bars of armor along with the instant switch. This allows players who get a bad loadout a bit of extra incentive to switch it, and if you roll another bad loadout at least you can still get some extra armor for rolling again. Only giving armor on the second and third weapons means a player has to commit to the switch before getting rewarded for it, so they can't easily get armor during the middle of a fight which I feel is probably for the best.

In the middle works if you had to work for it (as under my system), but I agree that it shouldn't be completely free. I've implemented your system (I would like to see how you write the code for it, I found it a pain, though I also wanted to be able to toggle between the two modes via cvar so that probably made it harder). Still need to playtest with that mode a bit more so I don't know which I prefer.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

The system implemented in this new version of the mode for sure had its own merits, and added a bit of extra depth to combat, but I share your concern that not everyone is going to pick up on it and be able to leverage it amidst all the other unique mechanics of the mode. It's also a little jarring to get the first weapon sooner along with the armor, as the normal rolling switch pace is quite comfortable and easy to get used to.

I think that concern is enough to try your system out instead. I really don't want overload the players with things they can do. Getting the weapon sooner was done so that switching for the armor bonus in battle was a tactically viable option, rather than just leading to you getting shot to pieces. I'd say that if my armor system is used, the quick switch should probably also go with it, but if that armor system isn't used, the quick switching shouldn't be either. Anyway, I've disabled it for now since it now defaults to your armor system.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

I have to say the timing of your return is actually pretty good, though, as I was actually thinking about this mode recently. I noticed that in general the best strategy was to switch loadouts often, immediately discarding the current loadout the moment the good weapons are out of ammo. However, most players don't really switch often and thus have worse weapons on average compared to those using the strategy I just laid out. Weapons that come with powerups also exacerbate this effect, as they make re-rolling constantly more likely to give you good powerups and thus possibly get a loadout able to net you 5-10 kills.

I was thinking it might not be a bad idea to introduce a mechanic that rewards sticking with one loadout, while also nerfing the ability to roll loadouts like RCP-90 + klobb, which are incredibly good.

The way it would work would be, instead of having powerups tied to a weapon, to have them instead occupy a 4th loadout slot. This final loadout element doesn't appear until ~10 seconds after getting all of your weapons (last weapon in rolling switch, after spawn, instant switch, etc). The powerup starts out weak, and slowly increases in strength every ~10 seconds or so, reaching max power after ~40 seconds. (Ex: 10% Damage Boost -> 20% Damage Boost -> 30% Damage Boost, etc). This would reward sticking with the same loadout a little longer even if the better weapons have had their ammo exhausted.

I'd say the radar invisibility powerup doesn't really fit with this scheme, so maybe swap that out and add some extra ones like Bullet Resistance/Explosion Resistance/etc for variety.

I find it rather enjoyable that my game mode has lead to a discussion of that mode's metagame, anyway now to address the issues. I can't say I'm a fan of the suggestion, since it adds more complexity to the mode with the scaling power bonuses, plus it would require changing far more of the code than I would like to, and would also change it from what I really want the mode to be. The powerups added to certain weapons is to compensate a player for drawing a particularly bad weapon (or in the case of the Radar Invisibility, to make it so those weapons aren't strictly worse than their unsilenced version).

In regards to re rolling loadouts, I do want players to stick with them, that's why scoring a kill with all three weapons is supposed to be heavily rewarded (+1 extra kill, a free weapon swap, and an assured really good weapon). With all of that in mind, I think I've come up with a simpler alternative solution to the problem. I added a time penalty for subsequent switches. Using the rolling switches as an example, by default it takes 2/3/3 seconds to get your weapon, with this system if you switch a second time it takes 3/4/4 seconds, 4/5/5 for the third and so on. It resets if you score a hat trick, or if you die.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

It also wouldn't hurt to increase the ammo count of certain guns, like the Magnum, to allow people to continue to use them just a bit longer if desired. It also might be worth removing the laser outright, as it's always somewhat circumvented a core trait of the mode, and coupled with the proposed powerup system that would become even more significant.

I'll need more information for the weapon ammo, I'm a rather casual player of this game (mostly just playing against bots). I have added 3 extra bullets to the magnum, and wouldn't mind if you suggested better numbers, since I mostly went with what I felt was right but the numbers are probably off here and there. Though keep in mind, ammo is supposed to be limited, so I don't exactly want players to feel comfortable with the amount they have.

In regards to the laser, I added a cvar to disable it (and made disabled the default). I do want all the weapons to be included though, so if it's not problematic without the suggested system, I would like for it to be usable.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 08, 2019, 10:45:35 am

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. Thanks for continuing to update the mode, and I'm excited to see what you put out next!

Thank you for your thoughts. The newest version is now available, with several of your suggestions (as mentioned), and a few new things to go with it. I hope you enjoy the changes. I do enjoy working on this (baring the times when it. just. doesn't. want. to. work.) though I might slow down as my course work for this semester picks up. Hopefully I can get it to a place where I consider it "completed" (or at least to the point where only minor tweaks for balance would be needed) before then.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #19 on:** September 11, 2019, 06:01:46 am »

It's been a little while so I might be missing a change elsewhere, but to it looks like to implement the armor switch bonus I made the following change to cs_RollingSwitch:

Code: [Select]

        if not cats:
            player.StripAllWeapons()

to

Code: [Select]

        if not cats:
            player.StripAllWeapons()
        else:
            player.SetArmor( min(player.GetArmor() + 40, int(Glb.GE_MAX_ARMOR)) )

This avoids giving the armor when the first weapon is being assigned but grants it on all subsequent assignments. There's also a corresponding change to the function responsible for instant switches though it's a bit more straightforward. Of course, being a hardcoded behavior, it was a bit more straightforward to implement versus making it a toggle.

Regarding the powerups I'd say there's no worries if you don't want to switch up how things are. I feel that ultimately how the powerups work right now can be fun, it's just that I've noticed they tend to stack really well with other weapons, make the weapon giving the powerup fairly decent on its own, and let you keep the loadout for a very long time gettings lots of bonus points. On reflection, I think another fix for this would simply be to heavily reduce the amount of ammo these special weapon give. The Klobb especially can stack with weapons like the phantom giving around 300 damage boosted shots to use on a weapon that already hits pretty hard. It might also be worth reducing the Klobb's damage bonus to 20% or 30%. 50% is quite significant, especially on automatics like the Phantom or RCP-90.

As for the magnum and other weapons, I think many of the current ammo values are close to where they should be if ammo conservation is to be an important part of the mode. I was mainly suggesting increasing them if the alternative powerup system was used.

That being said, under the current system I'd say these ammo counts should give good results:

Code: [Select]

weaponList={
    "ubers":[(1,1),[[(1,1),"weapon_golden_pp7",0],[(2,2),"weapon_golden_gun",1],[(3,5),"weapon_grenade_launcher",3],[(6,8),"weapon_moonraker",0],[(8,10),"weapon_rcp90",0]],10],
    "handguns":[(2,21),[[(1,1),"weapon_silver_pp7",7],[(2,3),"weapon_cmag",7],[(4,6),"weapon_dd44",24],[(7,9),"weapon_pp7",21]],9],
    "shotguns":[(22,37),[[(1,1),"weapon_auto_shotgun",5],[(2,4),"weapon_shotgun",15]],4],
    "autos":[(38,60),[[(1,4),"weapon_phantom",50],[(5,8),"weapon_zmg",32],[(8,11),"weapon_d5k",30]],11],
    "rifles":[(61,82),[[(1,31),"weapon_sniper_rifle",16],[(32,45),"weapon_ar33",30],[(46,80),"weapon_kf7",60]],80],
    "explosives":[(83,94),[[(1,1),"weapon_timedmine",7],[(2,2),"weapon_proximitymine",3],[(3,7),"weapon_remotemine",4],[(8,9),"weapon_grenade",9], [(10,14),"weapon_rocket_launcher",1]],14],
    "specials":[(95,100),[[(1,4),"weapon_klobb",20],[(5,8),"weapon_knife",0],[(9,10),"weapon_knife_throwing",9],[(10,13),"weapon_pp7_silenced",7],[(14,15),"weapon_d5k_silenced",30]],15]}

The main changes being to reduce the ammo counts of some weapons like the D5K/KF7 as they actually do quite a bit of damage on headshot, and to heavily reduce special weapon ammo counts. Obviously you're free to make whatever changes to this you'd like, if you want to use it at all, but I figured my take on it will be useful.

Anyway, the switch time penalty on subsequent switches sounds interesting and I'm excited to see how it plays this Saturday!

Whimsical · « **Reply #20 on:** September 12, 2019, 08:41:00 pm »

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 11, 2019, 06:01:46 am

Regarding the powerups I'd say there's no worries if you don't want to switch up how things are. I feel that ultimately how the powerups work right now can be fun, it's just that I've noticed they tend to stack really well with other weapons, make the weapon giving the powerup fairly decent on its own, and let you keep the loadout for a very long time gettings lots of bonus points. On reflection, I think another fix for this would simply be to heavily reduce the amount of ammo these special weapon give. The Klobb especially can stack with weapons like the phantom giving around 300 damage boosted shots to use on a weapon that already hits pretty hard. It might also be worth reducing the Klobb's damage bonus to 20% or 30%. 50% is quite significant, especially on automatics like the Phantom or RCP-90.

That's a fair point, giving the Klobb both that amount of ammo on a 50% boost was probably too much. I've lowed the boost to 30% as suggested. If that's still too much it can be adjusted further with the cs_damagemultiplier cvar.

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 11, 2019, 06:01:46 am

As for the magnum and other weapons, I think many of the current ammo values are close to where they should be if ammo conservation is to be an important part of the mode. I was mainly suggesting increasing them if the alternative powerup system was used.

That being said, under the current system I'd say these ammo counts should give good results:

Spoiler for Hiden:

(Spoiler tag added to quote) I've implemented your suggested ammo counts. The ammo count lists can be changed via cvar (though not once the game has started) between yours or my original one (defaults to yours at the moment)

Quote from: Entropy-Soldier on September 11, 2019, 06:01:46 am

Anyway, the switch time penalty on subsequent switches sounds interesting and I'm excited to see how it plays this Saturday!

That should be fun. I don't suppose I could ask for a recording of that one, if it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Thank you again for all the help you given. I hope you enjoy the latest version.

Entropy-Soldier · « **Reply #21 on:** September 15, 2019, 11:50:58 pm »

Here's a gameplay video, as requested:

I hoped to cut down on the amount of time it takes to render and upload these videos by directly streaming it to youtube, but predictably the quality dropped quite a bit. Part of this is the stream settings, which I'll have to calibrate better in the future, but for now I hope this quality is acceptable. If not, please let me know and I can potentially just use the old method if I can't get nice stream quality.

Anyway, mode seemed to play pretty well, I really like the addition of the progress bar for weapon switches. I feel like the bar and associated text could potentially take up less screen space, but the idea is solid and with the scaling switch time it's useful to know how long is left before the next weapon.

New ammo counts and armor switching also seemed to work well, along with the klobb damage nerf, and I didn't feel like klobb+phantom was nearly as powerful this time. Overall things feel a bit more balanced and it feels like the strategy of constantly switching loadouts when you get a bad weapon does eventually catch up with you.

Nice work!

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