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[Whimsical]

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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]

Cool stuff! Looking forward to it!

[Entropy-Soldier]

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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:

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]}

(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)

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]

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!