Editing and Customization > Community Content

[Game Mode] Cache [Version 5.1]

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Captain George:
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:
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:
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:
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:


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.

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