Another SSP update, now with more PCP! KILL YOUR PARENTS!!!!!

[Postal]

How about adding a keybinding? Took me forever to get the grenades to work. I would like to see a shallow longer arc. Mind if I use the code? I got an idea I wanna try.

Other then that, I love it and no complaints, but add a readme/keybind!

 

[Kangus]

he's already promised me a keybind in the next build. yay!

 

[EvilDrWong]

Added the juggernauts' "Knockback" ability. Yes, i know it needs tweakage. Added quickie readme that sort of explains how to alter a species' statistics/abilities. Also includes a listing of the current Species Modifier classes (for reactive/command abilities)
KEYBIND!
Unless you're "2 l33t 4 me" i suggest overwriting your xUpgraded.ini with the one in the zip. Ill add some facilities to auto-update old ini's with the new ability listings sooner or later. GUI still not in the near future. Sorry, got bigger fish to fry atm.

Notes for anyone who uses this on a server:
First off... whoa! Kick ass! Thanks! Second - Everything will work as described. On command abilities are under construction, but even if the animation/effects arent in the right place, the abilities themselves ARE working.

 

[Azymn]

Awesome offhands DrWong.

Any chance of making the grenade damage customizable? It seems that they should hurt more than a single missile shot for what the cost is. The effects are great, I thought the radius of the explosion FX could be increased significantly What might be really fun is boosting the knockback so that even if they don't kill in 1 hit, they really toss someone...

I love what you've come up with - the species are really starting to feel truly unique.

 

[EvilDrWong]

As far as balancing goes, i want to strike a decent midrange between making the offhands more than just a novelty, but less than a mainstay. What i mean is, if people just run around only throwing grenades, why did i even bother getting all of this other crap working, ya know what i mean? But i dont want them to be so useless that people wouldnt consider using them... which is why so far, the strongest offhand is for the 'weakest' race. Sort of balance... but not really... i suppose.

Im working on fixing up the grenade aim, as it still doesnt work as well as i'd hope.

Adrenaline cost is fully up for debate. If its too high, go ahead and suggest some better values. At this point im really just trying to harvest any ideas... if its not obvious, im not exactly too creative The end goal for this mute is to:

1) give enough options to please a majority of people. Plan is for at least 10 command abilities, whether theyre used by default or not, and 5 for each of the other categories (give or take)
B) Provide an easy way to get your feet wet with scripting in a halfway noticable fashion* without having the common 'how the hell do i get this to work' worries.
^) Prove to myself that no amount of painful 'psychic coding'** can halt the production of a somewhat generic mutator

* Fully commented source will, of course, be put up in 'newbie friendly' areas with examples and a walkthrough on getting some form of command ability and reaction ability ingame and working.
** by Psychic Coding, i mean writing tons of functions and methods to automate the creation of new abilities. Hopefully making it as simple as a few default property changes.

edit: Thanks to everybody who'se downloaded any of the 7 releases so far sorry to keep changing and altering it like this, but improvements are improvements, right?

 

[SolaceEternal]

Uhh.. where's the link for the download? I loved the species mutator; thought it brought a nice little difference to it... if that made sense. Anyway. I could never quite figure out what the difference was between them.... what were they?

And. Um. Hi.

 

[Azymn]

As far as balancing goes, i want to strike a decent midrange between making the offhands more than just a novelty, but less than a mainstay.

Yes, I can totally appreciate that and i totally agree with you on the midrange. My suggestion to boost the grenades stems in part from a couple thoughts:

Rockets can be fired over and over and do the same amount of damage, they detonate on impact, and they don't cost any adrenaline. So after the novelty wore off, i haven't used the grenades at all. Giving them a larger blast radius and higher knockback and making them 1 hit kill at the dead center should still be balanced if you add a delay in which the attacker can't fire their weapon. Dodging makes it exceptionally easy to get out of the way of even a large blast radius.

Reasons for a 1 hit kill with grenades with 3+ second fuses:
- A rocket launcher takes someone out in 2 hits in less than 1.5 seconds
- Linkgun can kill in under 2 seconds
- Actually, most the weapons can kill in under 2-3 seconds
- All these weapons are highly accurate with a high rate of fire
- All these weapons are much harder to dodge than a grenade.
- None of these weapons have ammo limited by adrenaline

This would assume that grenades don't explode on impact, but only after their fuses run out. So I believe this magic midrange can be reached by always using a delayed fuse and boosting the damage to, say 150 or so. And constantly throwing grenades gives you a low rate of fire and makes you vulnerable to constant, accurate gunfire. Considering that they can consume adrenaline, they will be a rare commodity. It worked great in Halo - and UT2K4 has a much faster pace. I feel that if they are too weak, they will go unused. Anyone else agree/disagree?

 

[RegularX]

Wong, what would it take to add:

-Default Adrenaline Level
-Default Shield Level

 

[EvilDrWong]

default adren level - set
default shield level - set (though the shielding is... really screwed up in the code...)

Ok, grenades have been updated with a 'full damage' radius. Anything caught in that area takes full damage from the explosive, regardless of the distance from the blast. Things ouside of the 'full damage' radius, but still in the regular blast radius take the usual scaled-by-distance damage. With that radius crap said, grenade damage has been upped slightly: 95 for regular grenades, 110 for the slow and lofty Plasma grenades.

Ability effects, though not absolutely essential, are being reworked to reflect the changes in range and strength.

Adrenaline constraints relaxed a bunch. 3 for a grenade, 4 for plasma grenade, and 5 for the juggernaut's Knockback (which is still under heavy construction)

 

[Azymn]

Thanks for considering boosting the grenades DrWong. I don't mean to be pushy or make demands - I do know what it's like as i'm personally writing a mod right now (http://fm.mt-wudan.com) and i have people making demands of me everyday, and i don't want to make anyone else feel like that. I just really like what you've done (and i would've done it if you hadn't), so i have a vested interest in your mut.

When i first addressed offhand abilities (in a previous post), i actually just tried to think of unique abilities period, instead of just offhand weapons. If you still plan on making additional abilities, here's a few brainstorms that hopefully won't be super difficult code-wise:

Offhand weapons
Juggernaut:
- Punch (Super concentrated shield gun hit) with big knockback
Egyptian:
- Light of Osiris: targeting the ground brings a beam out of the sky to strike it (like the ion cannon, but only dealing damage to a diameter the size of the beam, ~3 feet)
Skaarj:
- Claw attack, like you already mentioned DrWong
- Tail spin: basically just like the Jugg's knockback attack, but with a different animation
Nightmare:
- Death's Grip: targeting the ground summons a trail of medium damage spikes from the player to the targeted spot (like a Lurker in starcraft - if it's too tricky to code, just one spike popping up would be cool)
- Blood Maggots: (basically just spidermines skinned all black with red/blood explosion fx)
Robot:
- ClusterMissiles: Bot fires 4 light damage missiles that follow target painter sight
- DrunkenMissiles: Bot fires 8 light damage missiles that randomly twirl out from center of robot
- Static Discharge: Bot releases arc in x foot radius, electrocuting (lightning gun fx) all in range

Passive Special Abilities
Human/Merc:
- Passive Shield regen
Robot:
- Self-Destruct (just a random chance of dealing radius damage on death with added FX)
- Passive ammo regen
- Mechanical Affinity: weapons do 50% more knockback due to robot's intrinsic knowledge of their usage
Gen Mo'Kai:
- Chain jumping: can jump again anytime for a cost of X adrenaline per jump past the normal double jump (upto 8 jumps or so).
Juggernaut:
- Immune to fall damage
Egyptian:
- Can dodge in the air
- Crouching before jumping triples the height of the jump
Skaarj:
- Natural Camoflauge: Invisible (just turn on the invisible combo) while crouching/not moving.
- Abrasive Armor - damage done simply by colliding with another player
Nightmare:
- Acidic blood - similar to thorns but only at a close proximity


Lots of these abilities could be mix-n-matched between species, but it's just a few things i had runnin through my head.
Lemme know what you think DrWong.

 

[EvilDrWong]

added the missile battery, 3 missiles firing on a 1/3 second timer once activated, with moderate damage. added the drunken missiles, 40 missiles that rapidfire on a 0.05 second timer once activated (no, this is not how it will be in the next release. just for testing )
As much fun as the drunk missile barrage is, theyre useless at range.

 

[RegularX]

Do you have a new version posted yet? Should I get you an upload slot at UnrealMods? ( would actually have to write the upload slots mind you... )

 

[RegularX]

Oh, and if you include the source next time, I'll add in Versatile Key Binds for you.

 

[EvilDrWong]

yeah, some space would be nice. I wont need much more than 100k, tbh And if the mute gets bigger than that ill split it into optional packs Source will be a seperate download, but itll get posted whenever i get this current stuff all fleshed out. Versatile Keybinds might be nice, but unless the demand is high, species will be limited to a single command ability and a single reaction ability... Originally that was for replication... but seeing as how all of the work is done serverside, there is really no need to have a static set, so if anyone wants it ill switch it to a dynamic array.

 

[Azymn]

A dynamic array would be cool - even just one more keybind that cycled progressively through the abilities would work.

The only problem with that is that you'd need at least 2 offhand abilities for each class so noone gets 'left out' - it will require a bit more balancing.

btw - is there any link where one could consistently grab the current beta? Or do you prefer to make the builds more solid between release?

 

[EvilDrWong]

At the moment whatever version is posted here is the most recent that ive put out for public consumption. In the mean time I've created 3 command abilities and added a couple features, but i want to make sure thats all working before I slap a new version up. One a day, though its great for my ego, probably gets old real quick for those of you who might be playing
Ill add a bit to the readme about 'screwing around' with the mute, cause via Set commands ive managed some really funny results thus far Juggling Hellbenders with the Juggernaut Knockback ability being probably the most amusing

I know this isnt intuitive in the least, but for anyone who wants to give a species more than one command ability, i think im going to try and hold the command for a very short time to allow extra input to modify which ability to use. cycling through available abilities wont be possible with a dynamic array, since it requires a bit of a hack to force-feed the client the info from the server's array... but i believe something like... press once to activate ability one, press twice really quick to activate ability two, three times for ability three (and so on, if there actually are command abilities in those slots) But by default the species will not have more than one command ability, so the only way to get more than one will be if you/server admin decides to add more.

edit: heh, the button says "post quick reply" but I doubt such a post is considered 'quick'

 

[RegularX]

Well the idea of VKB's is that once people start downloading a lot of gametypes/mutators, Epic's method of adding new key bind rapidly gets cumbersome (kinda like Epic's method of adding new gametypes, or mutators, or web admin...). Since you only need these keybinds while you are playing with the mutator or gametype, it seems silly to clog the keyboard with em.

Anyway, blah blah blah. I sound like a promo machine. I can drop them in seperate and we can try them out.

I'd probably have more note for you, but A) - since I'm trying this with Riftwar I've only tested 3 of the species and B) I think some of my notes are covered in your upcoming version.

And I've decided Dynamic Arrays are teh suck.

 

[SolaceEternal]

Brainstorm for people interested.

Perhaps a sheild as a class ability? I'm refering to an energy sheild similar to the (uh... just forgot the name ><; the sheildgun thingy), but different in the following examples.

1 Covers entire body (orb surrounding person.)

2 Prevents nearly ALL damage (instead of normal sheild only preventing some. I've always had difficulty trying to figure out what exactly it's supposed to block.) Only damage sustained while using the sheild would be environmental (lava, whatever) and super weapons. (poison too, if you're including that. Which would be another good idea; all (most?) attacks would poison another player for a short time. You could have the nightmares use it, and call it "decay".)

...erf. Got sidetracked. Anyway.

3 Recharges, but at a far slower rate than the sheildgun.

4 Can only be used while standing still and doing nothing else. (Preventing overuse by flag carriers.)



Another idea. Perhaps you could turn this into a "fragbuck" system, and make their chars fully customizable?

Just offering some thoughts.

 

[SolaceEternal]

...Um.. another idea, for the "Decay" ability I mentioned above. That might work out better as a "touch" ability.

 

[RegularX]

I really like the stationary shield idea. I had tried to build that into Riftwar, but it never quite worked out.