Wait a minute, xenocombat ist xenoswarm?
That mod was fun, yesterday!
Problems:
- recycle your and other strucutres (prevent blocking)
- very laggy (because of bots and no structure limit)
- make it harder ^^
- make bots smarter (here in the deep forum are allready some very sweet bots made by fans!)
- could you make the gorge explode and leave a spore cloud like the boomer in l4d? would make the gorge more dangerous.
At all, it was very fun to play, great work!
Good luck!
Here's a picture of the new class selection menu + color picker:
oooooohhhh, that was a "color picker" i always wonder what this bar means, i clicked on it, nothing happend ^^
Anyway, your team did a good job, i like this mod, makes NS2 way more fun and is a good alternative option to ns2 classic.
Edit:
If you want, i would like to help you creating images for the buy menu.
Quick examples for the boots:
Normally, this mod should not be playable because we havent published it yet, thats why its ultra alpha, has just a buy menu placeholder etc.
I dont think that you will find smarter bots, the problem is more the navigation mesh of some maps, which makes it hard for the bots to finda way.
Lerks are green because of (clientside) Alien Overhaul mod (can't remember by whom). I've had the same mass spawning with skulks in the same round. It always seems to happen on mineshaft around deposit and sorting though...
Ususally there' re only two Russian servers up for me, both of which run harder versions of the mod. I think it gives more HP to aliens, which is a good thing because the difficulty felt just right.
I like the idea of player controlled aliens. You'd have to scale them to marine players though to keep it fair, maybe 1/3 of marine player count?
There's a very minor bug I noticed:
Hive-vision (or whatever the orange outlines of friend and foe through walls is called) shows through weapons. For reference look at the screenshot I posted a page back. You can see the outlines through the weapon.
A human player on the alien side would make the game more lively and challenging.
Makes me think of a concept from an old CSS zombie mod. It was humans vs bots but if the humans started to get a win streak (say 3 in a row) then a zombie slot would open and a plyer could play as a zombie and thus be far more dangerous to the humans. If the humans won again then another slot opened etc...essentially if there were enough people willing to join the shambling horde the game would auto-balance.
@peregrinus - I've double checked the spawns and they are normal - not set to spawn 20 or anything. I've seen it twice on lerk spawn once as fade - always a different npc_wave_manager that bugs out. That said I too have not seen it on any other map.
Yesterday, as we tested mineshaft in our playtest with the new version,
that bug didn't occured. But we where only 4.
Edit:
The problem is the following: If you retrigger a wave spawner, it will not create a new one, cause you only place it once in the map,
it will trigger the current wave spawner, and just deactivate it, the next will just restart it. Need to think about a different system for this.
- the hives should have defences so it can scale in difficulty. In a team of 10, one rine shouldn't always be able to solo the hive.
- fills the room with spores sometimes, so players can't simply stand still shooting it, they'll need support.
- spawns many many eggs when attacked.
- bone shield
- spawns hydras and crags around the room
Yesterday, as we tested mineshaft in our playtest with the new version,
that bug didn't occured. But we where only 4.
Edit:
The problem is the following: If you retrigger a wave spawner, it will not create a new one, cause you only place it once in the map,
it will trigger the current wave spawner, and just deactivate it, the next will just restart it. Need to think about a different system for this.
I updated mineshaft multiple times yesterday - it should be much more difficult now. We were playtesting it last night a couple times and did not get the bug.
I was wondering about this - now in the hive room I'm trying to have a difficult final wave, but I realized if I have a wave that lasts 30 seconds it won't ever stack - just reset.
We've also been running into the NPC limit a fair amount, though I will admit when maxed server ticks already seem to take a hit so I'm not sure we can change much.
@peregrinus some good ideas in there. I like the thought of being able to place hydras - I haven't tried it yet. Scripting a bone spike would be cool.
The biggest ai change I want is to set different types of ai - e.g. a lerk that will spore instead of spike n bite, or a gorge that will bile instead of spit.
@peregrinus some good ideas in there. I like the thought of being able to place hydras - I haven't tried it yet. Scripting a bone spike would be cool.
The biggest ai change I want is to set different types of ai - e.g. a lerk that will spore instead of spike n bite, or a gorge that will bile instead of spit.
I've a work around for the bone wall. I'll add them into xs_maze tonight to see how the work out.
Get a Func_Moveable entity change the model to bonewall - Give it a move like door properties that move up. Hide it in the ground. Add a sound trigger. Volia. Will spring from floor each time. downside Undestroyable so make sure there is a path around.
I would think both those AI changes are proximity related. If lerks or Gorges get with X distance of a player. NPC's Weapon slot changes.
Updated xs_maze
New Room detailed.
Bone wall around the hive for testing.
Tweaked NPC wave spawners
Changed All NPC Wave spawners to delete NPC's from map if too far from players - Should help performance.
Changed NPC waves to get progressively tougher as you progress through map.
Removed middle hive till enemy waves added to that pathway.
Atmosphere changes - Darker, Shadows and Steam added for more atmosphere.
Tried the updated maze map for 5 mins (server crashed).
Noticed big difference in aliens spawning only where we were. And when I ran alone from the spawn to catch up with the team, aliens didn't spawn at those starting areas, but when I ran back to the spawn area then aliens did appear.
Bug where aliens don't recognise there is a wall and try to go through it.
See below, they were trying to go south through that wall. The onos was buggy too, it didn't animate it just glided along the floor. The onos should do more damage, like 2 or 3 hits and you die, otherwise there's no alien that's really threatening.
Tried the updated maze map for 5 mins (server crashed).
Noticed big difference in aliens spawning only where we were. And when I ran alone from the spawn to catch up with the team, aliens didn't spawn at those starting areas, but when I ran back to the spawn area then aliens did appear.
Bug where aliens don't recognise there is a wall and try to go through it.
See below, they were trying to go south through that wall. The onos was buggy too, it didn't animate it just glided along the floor. The onos should do more damage, like 2 or 3 hits and you die, otherwise there's no alien that's really threatening.
Cheers for testing Penegrinus.
Too answer some of your questions.
Server crash I've no idea about. Played the new version or 30 minutes on the russian server with 4 players till we destroyed the hive. Just bad luck maybe.
Some wave triggers have cool downs so if you run through them a second time before the cool down timer resets those waves won't trigger.
The other reason waves won't spawn is when the NPC limit counter is maxed. Limits 30 NPC's on the map. Triggers and NPC's are paused in a spawn queue till slots open up - Killed or erased if to far from players.
These safeguards are in for performance reasons.
Might be a pathing problem. But from your picture there is a sentry there it might of blocked the path as NPC do get stuck on sentries sometimes.
The Onos animation is out of my control, I get this bug too even in vanilla NS2 servers.
As for damage the onos do the closer you get to the hive the stronger the onos armor gets.
The Russian server is running a hacked version of the mod. So don't use it to gauge the balance of the mod.
The latest version of the mod only allows 2 sentries to be built per support marine. Makes it much much much tougher, And Magno boots are planned to have a finite life before recharging like the jet pack so you can't hide on the high walls indefinitly.
Thanks for clearing that stuff up. The changes made a big improvement. You can see from the screenshot above how players didn't even start building near the spawn.
I know about sentries blocking aliens (and used that as a shield device ^^) but in this case I believe that wasn't the issue.
2 sentry limit will be tough. I hope in the future it'll be possible to upgrade their damage, because that limit will make them useful only at the start of rounds.
Maybe you can throw in some other gadgets later on. Is there some code left over from the scrapped taser that could be used at all? Being able to slow down hordes would be a nice feature for this mod. I have a vague memory, maybe incorrect, that sentries used to have lasers in NS2 alpha or beta that would be cool in this mod. Going to check NS2HD archive to verify...
I had one idea that might help performance (not just in your map) and be awesome visually. When an alien (except onos) dies to a shotgun or rifle or sentry, or any kind of explosion - make them explode in the way railguns explode aliens. Then you don't have the rag dolls burdening the server and players will feel badass
@peregrinus on mineshaft - the onos get stuck frequently in sorting, and are goofishly easy to avoid with magno boots. Giving magno boots energy like jetpacks will help a lot.
Mineshaft still consistently has the mass spawn bug. It's gotten worse lately - I can't get through the map without it bugging. It's always a different npc_wave_manager that bugs though, so I'm not sure it's anything in the map causing the issue. The update to the more difficult version seems to cause the bug more often.
Mineshaft still consistently has the mass spawn bug. It's gotten worse lately - I can't get through the map without it bugging. It's always a different npc_wave_manager that bugs though, so I'm not sure it's anything in the map causing the issue. The update to the more difficult version seems to cause the bug more often.
*Edit* I've only just realised the new build likely broke XenoSwarm.
Been trying to catch you guys on steam the last few days.
I've been having issue with the tunnel spawners. After only a few NPC's spawn from them they stop spawning NPC's. I've steam on my mobile so when you see this message shoot me a chat message on steam
I'll send you the lastest map build with the issuses.
Just a quick update - our development version of xenoswarm is now back on track following the big b250 changes.
Also, we're currently a man down on the coding front, so we're looking for some coders with previous NS2 modding experience to help polish off the new respawn mechanic and some new placeholder weapons to give the classes more to differentiate them.
We're also looking for another modeller to help us make the new weapons look really awesome!
If you would like to help us, send me or Jibrail a PM or find us on Steam...
Project Titan Movement Test, Assets and ExtraEntitiesMod loaded,the only map that sorta works is mineshaft but needs the pathing updated . The rest of the maps out there have no pathing and xenoswarmvent's crashes after the first trigger is crossed. Would be nice to have working maps with this release
I've done a bit of testing also MCM and I'm getting crashes as well.
- Mods Loaded -
Project Titan Movement Test
Project Titan Assets
Extra Entities Mod
Runs fine for a few minutes then I will pass through a few triggers fine and I pass through a 3rd and get a crash to black screen. I can see a debug report popping up in the background but can get to it to see what went wrong. Can't bypass the black screen unless I force quit NS2 at which point the debug report also vanishes.
xs_mineshaft is updated with the new tunnels and the dialogue feature. I have not tested it much yet! I also fixed the minimap so that inaccessible areas are not visible (instead of white) - I forgot to change the alpha map before.
There is still a concern that I have: currently the single spawns trigger once for each person, balancing the game by spawning a separate set for each person. When we have an entity like the tunnel spawning infinite waves it doesn't scale for the number of people in the game. I'm not sure if it really should, but it doesn't scale the same as the rest of the spawns do, that's for sure.
I also have not tested yet if the tunnel is recreated if the trigger is enabled again - once destroyed does it stay destroyed? I have the triggers set to 'no respawn' but I want to know if there is a straggler that they won't re-trigger the tunnel.
Please revise the starting welcoming text to not say anything about typing a class into console and instead telling everyone how to pull up the class selection screen.
Also logic_dialogue displays longer text funny - please look into this and adjust the format to fit the window!
Last note: I am crashing a LOT when I test. No idea what the issue is - it happens during normal gameplay. I published the map anyway.
Once tunnels are destroyed they stay destroyed until the round resets. I think I need to work out a way you can have infinite spawns until the tunnel's gone but it will spawn a different number of enemies based on the player count... As it is, the enemies' health and armor and difficulty does scale with the player count so that will have some effect!
I'll have a play on your map today and see if I can adjust the dialogue text box boundaries. It's based on my own paragraph-splitting algorithm which might be slightly flaky!
I'll look into the crash issues - maybe there's something specific to your map as I've found it to be quite stable. Can you tell me if you get the crash problems on ns2_xs_descent?
It looks like there's a few problems that have come out of the woodwork with b251 (I think we were always accessing the npc waypoints in a dangerous way but now it's giving us errors to tell us that).
Once I've fixed those I'll be able to look at the map-specific crashes. I think my test map must be too simple to highlight them so I'll play a bit on xs_maze and xs_mineshaft. I should note that we didn't encounter any crashes in our playtest on tuesday...
Comments
That mod was fun, yesterday!
Problems:
- recycle your and other strucutres (prevent blocking)
- very laggy (because of bots and no structure limit)
- make it harder ^^
- make bots smarter (here in the deep forum are allready some very sweet bots made by fans!)
- could you make the gorge explode and leave a spore cloud like the boomer in l4d? would make the gorge more dangerous.
At all, it was very fun to play, great work!
Good luck!
oooooohhhh, that was a "color picker" i always wonder what this bar means, i clicked on it, nothing happend ^^
Anyway, your team did a good job, i like this mod, makes NS2 way more fun and is a good alternative option to ns2 classic.
Edit:
If you want, i would like to help you creating images for the buy menu.
Quick examples for the boots:
I dont think that you will find smarter bots, the problem is more the navigation mesh of some maps, which makes it hard for the bots to finda way.
Ususally there' re only two Russian servers up for me, both of which run harder versions of the mod. I think it gives more HP to aliens, which is a good thing because the difficulty felt just right.
I like the idea of player controlled aliens. You'd have to scale them to marine players though to keep it fair, maybe 1/3 of marine player count?
There's a very minor bug I noticed:
Hive-vision (or whatever the orange outlines of friend and foe through walls is called) shows through weapons. For reference look at the screenshot I posted a page back. You can see the outlines through the weapon.
Gorge boomer would be awesome!
Makes me think of a concept from an old CSS zombie mod. It was humans vs bots but if the humans started to get a win streak (say 3 in a row) then a zombie slot would open and a plyer could play as a zombie and thus be far more dangerous to the humans. If the humans won again then another slot opened etc...essentially if there were enough people willing to join the shambling horde the game would auto-balance.
later, this
my beloved magno boots
We'be now seen lerksplosion pictures, infinite fade iteration, when do we get to see the Onos circus?
that bug didn't occured. But we where only 4.
Edit:
The problem is the following: If you retrigger a wave spawner, it will not create a new one, cause you only place it once in the map,
it will trigger the current wave spawner, and just deactivate it, the next will just restart it. Need to think about a different system for this.
some ideas for the hive rooms
- the hives should have defences so it can scale in difficulty. In a team of 10, one rine shouldn't always be able to solo the hive.
- fills the room with spores sometimes, so players can't simply stand still shooting it, they'll need support.
- spawns many many eggs when attacked.
- bone shield
- spawns hydras and crags around the room
I updated mineshaft multiple times yesterday - it should be much more difficult now. We were playtesting it last night a couple times and did not get the bug.
I was wondering about this - now in the hive room I'm trying to have a difficult final wave, but I realized if I have a wave that lasts 30 seconds it won't ever stack - just reset.
We've also been running into the NPC limit a fair amount, though I will admit when maxed server ticks already seem to take a hit so I'm not sure we can change much.
@peregrinus some good ideas in there. I like the thought of being able to place hydras - I haven't tried it yet. Scripting a bone spike would be cool.
The biggest ai change I want is to set different types of ai - e.g. a lerk that will spore instead of spike n bite, or a gorge that will bile instead of spit.
I've a work around for the bone wall. I'll add them into xs_maze tonight to see how the work out.
Get a Func_Moveable entity change the model to bonewall - Give it a move like door properties that move up. Hide it in the ground. Add a sound trigger. Volia. Will spring from floor each time. downside Undestroyable so make sure there is a path around.
I would think both those AI changes are proximity related. If lerks or Gorges get with X distance of a player. NPC's Weapon slot changes.
Undestroyable bone walls could be a pain.
New Room detailed.
Bone wall around the hive for testing.
Tweaked NPC wave spawners
Changed All NPC Wave spawners to delete NPC's from map if too far from players - Should help performance.
Changed NPC waves to get progressively tougher as you progress through map.
Removed middle hive till enemy waves added to that pathway.
Atmosphere changes - Darker, Shadows and Steam added for more atmosphere.
Noticed big difference in aliens spawning only where we were. And when I ran alone from the spawn to catch up with the team, aliens didn't spawn at those starting areas, but when I ran back to the spawn area then aliens did appear.
Bug where aliens don't recognise there is a wall and try to go through it.
See below, they were trying to go south through that wall. The onos was buggy too, it didn't animate it just glided along the floor. The onos should do more damage, like 2 or 3 hits and you die, otherwise there's no alien that's really threatening.
Cheers for testing Penegrinus.
Too answer some of your questions.
Server crash I've no idea about. Played the new version or 30 minutes on the russian server with 4 players till we destroyed the hive. Just bad luck maybe.
Some wave triggers have cool downs so if you run through them a second time before the cool down timer resets those waves won't trigger.
The other reason waves won't spawn is when the NPC limit counter is maxed. Limits 30 NPC's on the map. Triggers and NPC's are paused in a spawn queue till slots open up - Killed or erased if to far from players.
These safeguards are in for performance reasons.
Might be a pathing problem. But from your picture there is a sentry there it might of blocked the path as NPC do get stuck on sentries sometimes.
The Onos animation is out of my control, I get this bug too even in vanilla NS2 servers.
As for damage the onos do the closer you get to the hive the stronger the onos armor gets.
The Russian server is running a hacked version of the mod. So don't use it to gauge the balance of the mod.
The latest version of the mod only allows 2 sentries to be built per support marine. Makes it much much much tougher, And Magno boots are planned to have a finite life before recharging like the jet pack so you can't hide on the high walls indefinitly.
I know about sentries blocking aliens (and used that as a shield device ^^) but in this case I believe that wasn't the issue.
2 sentry limit will be tough. I hope in the future it'll be possible to upgrade their damage, because that limit will make them useful only at the start of rounds.
Maybe you can throw in some other gadgets later on. Is there some code left over from the scrapped taser that could be used at all? Being able to slow down hordes would be a nice feature for this mod. I have a vague memory, maybe incorrect, that sentries used to have lasers in NS2 alpha or beta that would be cool in this mod. Going to check NS2HD archive to verify...
I had one idea that might help performance (not just in your map) and be awesome visually. When an alien (except onos) dies to a shotgun or rifle or sentry, or any kind of explosion - make them explode in the way railguns explode aliens. Then you don't have the rag dolls burdening the server and players will feel badass
fades get stuck a lot and they can't kill anything standing on a box. Can you teach them to double jump?
Onos get trapped here
Onos explosion
Mineshaft still consistently has the mass spawn bug. It's gotten worse lately - I can't get through the map without it bugging. It's always a different npc_wave_manager that bugs though, so I'm not sure it's anything in the map causing the issue. The update to the more difficult version seems to cause the bug more often.
i can have a look on it if you want me to
Been trying to catch you guys on steam the last few days.
I've been having issue with the tunnel spawners. After only a few NPC's spawn from them they stop spawning NPC's. I've steam on my mobile so when you see this message shoot me a chat message on steam
I'll send you the lastest map build with the issuses.
Also, we're currently a man down on the coding front, so we're looking for some coders with previous NS2 modding experience to help polish off the new respawn mechanic and some new placeholder weapons to give the classes more to differentiate them.
We're also looking for another modeller to help us make the new weapons look really awesome!
If you would like to help us, send me or Jibrail a PM or find us on Steam...
- Mods Loaded -
Project Titan Movement Test
Project Titan Assets
Extra Entities Mod
Runs fine for a few minutes then I will pass through a few triggers fine and I pass through a 3rd and get a crash to black screen. I can see a debug report popping up in the background but can get to it to see what went wrong. Can't bypass the black screen unless I force quit NS2 at which point the debug report also vanishes.
There is still a concern that I have: currently the single spawns trigger once for each person, balancing the game by spawning a separate set for each person. When we have an entity like the tunnel spawning infinite waves it doesn't scale for the number of people in the game. I'm not sure if it really should, but it doesn't scale the same as the rest of the spawns do, that's for sure.
I also have not tested yet if the tunnel is recreated if the trigger is enabled again - once destroyed does it stay destroyed? I have the triggers set to 'no respawn' but I want to know if there is a straggler that they won't re-trigger the tunnel.
Please revise the starting welcoming text to not say anything about typing a class into console and instead telling everyone how to pull up the class selection screen.
Also logic_dialogue displays longer text funny - please look into this and adjust the format to fit the window!
Last note: I am crashing a LOT when I test. No idea what the issue is - it happens during normal gameplay. I published the map anyway.
Once tunnels are destroyed they stay destroyed until the round resets. I think I need to work out a way you can have infinite spawns until the tunnel's gone but it will spawn a different number of enemies based on the player count... As it is, the enemies' health and armor and difficulty does scale with the player count so that will have some effect!
I'll have a play on your map today and see if I can adjust the dialogue text box boundaries. It's based on my own paragraph-splitting algorithm which might be slightly flaky!
I'll look into the crash issues - maybe there's something specific to your map as I've found it to be quite stable. Can you tell me if you get the crash problems on ns2_xs_descent?
Once I've fixed those I'll be able to look at the map-specific crashes. I think my test map must be too simple to highlight them so I'll play a bit on xs_maze and xs_mineshaft. I should note that we didn't encounter any crashes in our playtest on tuesday...
GW guys, this is what makes PC gaming so much more superior to console. Community created content, and awesome mods.
Can't wait to play it.