FreezeGUTS [v073b]

[donaldo]

There is fall damage after round end: If the round is ending and you are falling (countdown: 3 2 1 for example) and you respawn it's as if you would crash on the floor. You still have the speed and suddenly you are respawning and crash on the floor.

Oha... that shouldn't happen ... I tried to recreate this case but failed ... did always miss the countdown (died to early or had not enough speed) which level did you use for this effect to find?

A mutator for this gametype that boosts you when you aim and shoot on the ground would be pretty cool. Would you consider this?

... frozen player cannot shoot ... wouldn't this change the game play too much?

Any chance to make the bots "push" frozen enemies into their death? They just freeze them and melt others. Also, sometimes their moves are not very clever. Sometimes, instead of trying to melt the bunch of players on their team they just try to shoot the enemy player which is actually leaving, barely visible and didn't see this bot. It would be good if the bots would have some "priorities" depending on the situation.

You are right ... frozen players are no potential target for bot AI right now ... I will keep this in mind ... AIs should have the same rights as users though ... how would an AI recognize that a frozen pawn stands next to an abyss or some lava/fire ... sounds tricky ...

I could imagine that this gametype would rock on CTF maps and maybe even ONS maps (with or without vehicles)! DM maps are often too small for 32 players in this gametype without ending in a spamfest imo

Do you know how this is done? I guess the objectives of bots need somehow to be changed to DM instead of CTF or ONS objectives... right?

How about making the "automatic melting" in itself and the amount of hp that gets restored optional? And when friendly fire is enabled you can use a mean exploit.

Didn't had the time for configuration options yet But will have this in mind ... I also would like a friendly fire option like in BTFA4UT3 where you get frozen when you fire on team players

Xan has 3 skins in use and thus the 3rd skin (the cables) are not "frozen".

Huu ... didn't know that ... are there more of this kind? It should be possible to loop all skins of a pawn and set all skins to the frozen texture ... will give it a try!

This gametype is really great! I have much fun playing it. You did a good job there.

Thank you very much And thanks for all this feedback ... still a long way to becoming final I guess

[Sly.]

Oha... that shouldn't happen ... I tried to recreate this case but failed ... did always miss the countdown (died to early or had not enough speed) which level did you use for this effect to find?

I was testing my old Crane remake (reminds me that I wanted to reupload it someday).

... frozen player cannot shoot ... wouldn't this change the game play too much?

You misunderstood me on this aspect.
I meant some kind of heavy recoil but only when you're standing next to an object and a big knockback on teammates. Some kind of special mutator or option, just for this gametype would be truly amazing! This gametype reminds me a lot of the Q3 gametype which I enjoyed a lot and there are some servers that have "boosting" so that you can shoot your teammate to boots him/her across the room (he/she is basically flying due to the heavy knockback). Shooting with the Super Shock Rifle on the ground would boost you into the opposite direction which allows awesome movements and really tough fights in midair!
It's not really necessary, just an idea

You are right ... frozen players are no potential target for bot AI right now ... I will keep this in mind ... AIs should have the same rights as users though ... how would an AI recognize that a frozen pawn stands next to an abyss or some lava/fire ... sounds tricky ...

How about a check for the pathing network and for killvolumes they can push them in in a certain radius? Usually an abyss has no pathing.

Do you know how this is done? I guess the objectives of bots need somehow to be changed to DM instead of CTF or ONS objectives... right?

Sorry, I'm not much of a coder, but there is the vehicle Invasion (not Invasion Everywhere!) gametype that makes it possible to play INV on every kind of map. I don't know if the source code is on the internet, but trying to contact the author and asking him how he did it might work.

Didn't had the time for configuration options yet But will have this in mind ... I also would like a friendly fire option like in BTFA4UT3 where you get frozen when you fire on team players

That one is also an option. However, that "exploit" I mentioned has also quite some tactical part in it so I would make it optional as well.

Huu ... didn't know that ... are there more of this kind? It should be possible to loop all skins of a pawn and set all skins to the frozen texture ... will give it a try!

Xan is the only one I am aware of.

Thank you very much And thanks for all this feedback ... still a long way to becoming final I guess

No problem! I guess this gametype just offers too many possiblities

EDIT: Also, you can just melt players when standing still which makes it a bit too hard when you see an enemy but have to melt this player because you are last (imo). You become an easy target. Is there a way to make it possible to melt a player while moving around him?

[rejecht]

<Sliding pawns> I did have this problem. As far as I remember this had something to do with entering the Pawn's frozen state but without getting the 'landed' event where the velocity of the Pawn was set to zero. I added a condition that's set the velocity to zero when not in falling state.

Thanks for the tip.

How about a check for the pathing network and for killvolumes they can push them in in a certain radius? Usually an abyss has no pathing.

I wanted this, too. To solve the lack of paths, I would have the game learn positions where players died (checking DamageType).--I think it would be hard to pull this one off with a high success rate, but it would be awesome. I love AI getting better. Skynet is getting closer.



Bugs you mentioned:
I see you have the Trigger bug (Player Touch), as well. I think I figured this one out, but never tested it. The bug is probably the same as in 3SPN; the trigger maintains its own list of touching players, to reduce the number of non-player touchers to check, I guess; the engine already has the toucher in its own array or list, so when an ally auto-thaws beside another ally (the most typical situation), the engine has nothing new to report, and the trigger would never learn about it, since it is already within touch radius according to the engine's list. One solution -> once auto-thawed, traverse all touchers, and add self to touching players.


Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply.

[donaldo]

I see you have the Trigger bug (Player Touch), as well. I think I figured this one out, but never tested it. The bug is probably the same as in 3SPN; the trigger maintains its own list of touching players, to reduce the number of non-player touchers to check, I guess; the engine already has the toucher in its own array or list, so when an ally auto-thaws beside another ally (the most typical situation), the engine has nothing new to report, and the trigger would never learn about it, since it is already within touch radius according to the engine's list. One solution -> once auto-thawed, traverse all touchers, and add self to touching players.

I tried another solution which seems to work in FreezeGUTS (just tested it in offline game): do not remove toucher from the toucher array if toucher pawn gets only frozen. Perhaps it would also work for 4spn-freon:

• xx_pawn::froze(): this function is derived from died() and does inform all touching triggers that frozen pawn has 'died' (->T.PlayerToucherDied(self))==> exclude your thawing timer trigger from this loop!

• xx_trigger::touch(): allow also frozen pawns to be added to the array.

• xx_trigger::Timer(): make thawing not dependent on the Lenght of the toucher array but on the number of unfrozen touchers in that array!

In that way, you always have the list of touching pawns and you can decide on the touching pawns frozen state what to do. If frozen pawn next to another frozen pawn now thaws --> thawing is re-activated for the other frozen pawn.

Perhaps, you even might not need to use an array of your own anymore ... FreezGUTS does because it remembers how many seconds you did the thawing in order to decide on the score points.

[rejecht]

do not remove toucher from the toucher array if toucher pawn gets only frozen.

Thanks, and yeah--once I learned that TouchingActors was supposed to be fast, I figured I could use it in the Timer loop to check the state of touchers, since it has the same function with less maintenance--but, it requires a rewrite of the trigger, and I haven't gone through the code to see if removing the internal toucher list has any other side effects. Also, I am looking into an earlier idea related to how VolumeTimer works, which means that one could use a single Timer for thawing, instead of a separate timer for each trigger. This would result in a more synchronized thawing process. It won't disturb the match Timer in the game type, since it triggers at its own frequency, like a callback function.


(Freon: For now, I just added a call to TouchingActors (class'Freon_Trigger', FT) in Freon.PlayerThawed (), which calls FT.AddToucher (ThawedPawn), which does its checks etc (not end of round, same team, not frozen, etc).) -- It is now more difficult to kill players who are close to their frozen allies (bots, much like the sand people, may travel together in greater numbers); it's pretty much game over if you get in that situation now.)

I feel I'm hijacking your thread. Just got inspired by your work.

[donaldo]

Just uploaded beta version 5 with some bug fixes:

• There is fall damage after round end

• Xan has 3 skins in use and thus the 3rd skin (the cables) are not "frozen".

• I could imagine that this gametype would rock on CTF maps and maybe even ONS maps (with or without vehicles)!

Resolved Resolved Added support for CTF, DOM, ONS, and VCTF maps but without the game type specific objects and objectives. No vehicles are supported right now ... (thanks sly for finding those issues/recommendations ).

I see you have the Trigger bug (Player Touch), as well. I think I figured this one out ...

The player toucher bug where thawed player wouldn't thaw frozen pawns standing next to it is removed (thanks rejecht for the hints).

Several other bugs have been resolved (not all of them though ). Please, give it a try. I hadn't much time for multiplayer testing but will do so during the week. If you encounter any new issue ... please let me know.

[Infernus.]

No vehicles are supported right now ... I guess this would need the corresponding game type to be running (thanks sly for finding those issues/recommendations ).

Actually, it's pretty simple enabling vehicles. Just set 'bAllowVehicles' to true in the defaultproperties.

[chronox]

inf can u add this gametype to ur server it might be cool

[donaldo]

Actually, it's pretty simple enabling vehicles. Just set 'bAllowVehicles' to true in the defaultproperties.

Uh...ah ... it's really as simple as that ... me-sa feelin'sa kind-sa silly

Thanks for the hint! Have just tried it and vehicles do appear ... now I have to handle vehicle deaths ... didn't spend a thought about it before ...

[Sly.]

3 options:

1st:
Vehicle explodes, player gets ejected without damage (like in AS).

2nd:
Vehicle explodes, player is dead (as if he'd fall).

3rd:
Vehicle explodes, frozen player gets ejected.

It would be best to be able to choose between these three options

[Wormbo]

The real question is: Would this game type really benefit from vehicles? Personally I like vehicles, but they should be kept out of certain areas of the game. Considering the great advantage you have in a vehicle, I can't imagine any advantage for the game type itself gained by allowing vehicles. Even a small vehicle like the Manta or Scorpion are so much more powerful than a player on foot. They might not be able to take much beating, but e.g. the Manta has more fire power than most player weapons, considering it's a link gun with splash damage.

[donaldo]

The real question is: Would this game type really benefit from vehicles?

You definitely got a point here ... I'm not even sure if such big maps used for VCTF and ONS would be a benefit. It lacks somewhat of the fast pace action of the game type ... and finding the players in such big maps might become tedious ...

If someone tries a big map for FreezeGUTS ... I am looking forward to your feedback ...

On the other hand ... it could all be made configurable ... someday, couldn't it?

[chronox]

i can easily take down manta or scorp with shock beams once i hit 7 shots continuous on a raptor with shock and it blasted and couldnt even hit me once :P

[Wormbo]

i can easily take down manta or scorp with shock beams once i hit 7 shots continuous on a raptor with shock and it blasted and couldnt even hit me once :P

Which brings me back to my original point: What additional value would vehicles provide? Against beginners or with larger ones they are too deadly and weaker vehicles against skilled players are a disadvantage. In both cases gameplay suffers from them.

[Sly.]

You can still include them, just for fun. The gametype Assassin doesn't need vehicles either, however, they are quite fun and it's better suited for less competitive matches and still enjoyable.

Vehicles can also be a nice addition in multiplayer with skilled players: Manta taxis carrying the teammates, trying to pancake the other team, teammates jumping off and attacking and distracting them while the Manta continues the carnage. Or take two Hellbenders and hunt the other team down, snipe them with the twin beams, splatter them with the skymines, roadkill them, etc..
Think about it!