Fade Challenge Mode
BeigeAlert
Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
Greetings everybody! I'm finally ready to tear my hands away from the keyboard and release this thing. I call it the Fade Challenge mod!
You play as a lone fade, defending a single hive against endless waves of increasingly difficult marines on a slightly modified version of Platform from Biodome. If you or the hive dies, you lose, and the whole thing resets. This is a great way for new players to practice their fade skills, as well as a fun opportunity for veteran players to really test their mettle. (Wave 15 is ridiculous!)
This is only version 1.0 of the mod. Some areas could use some more polish, and I would love to tweak the bot ai a bit more. But I'd much rather get this thing in your hands so I can start getting some feedback.
Since this is a singleplayer mod and not a server mod, there's a couple extra steps you have to follow to use it.
First, follow this link and subscribe to the mod. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635745329
Next, open NS2, and activate the "Fade Challenge" mod in the mod menu.
Then, open your console, and type "map ns2_ch_fade". This will load the map and start up the challenge!
I'd love to hear how far people are getting. I have a difficult time getting past wave 15.
You play as a lone fade, defending a single hive against endless waves of increasingly difficult marines on a slightly modified version of Platform from Biodome. If you or the hive dies, you lose, and the whole thing resets. This is a great way for new players to practice their fade skills, as well as a fun opportunity for veteran players to really test their mettle. (Wave 15 is ridiculous!)
This is only version 1.0 of the mod. Some areas could use some more polish, and I would love to tweak the bot ai a bit more. But I'd much rather get this thing in your hands so I can start getting some feedback.
Since this is a singleplayer mod and not a server mod, there's a couple extra steps you have to follow to use it.
First, follow this link and subscribe to the mod. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635745329
Next, open NS2, and activate the "Fade Challenge" mod in the mod menu.
Then, open your console, and type "map ns2_ch_fade". This will load the map and start up the challenge!
I'd love to hear how far people are getting. I have a difficult time getting past wave 15.
Comments
We'll need some leaderboards for this pronto. Screenshots or Videos or it didn't happen people!
Levels 1-7 are incredibly easy. Marines can not damage the hive until level 8 with me. The mode is not even fun until level 12.
At level 13 there was an exo, and I literally said "Oh god an exo." I was a bit scared.
Requests:
1. Make it so we can choose a starting level. For example, I start at level 10 so I don't have to deal with easy levels 9 and below.
2. Instantly heal the fade to full health when the wave is cleared.
3. Unlock upgrades at different levels. Maybe unlock crag hive upgrades at level 13 or something?
4. More maps. Crossroads from summit might be good.
5. A new menu button, like ns2+ did that starts the mod.
Obligatory sceenshot.
I also turned on cheats, to have some more fun. Gamemode would work great with a lerk, with a few adjustments. I tried it out with lerk and it was fun.
Then I tried making an UBER fade. I gave myself 3 spurs, 3 shells, 3 veils, a crag by each end of the hive, and a second shift. I got through level 40 before I decided to quit. This was actually really fun past level 20. I was kept very busy killing all the marines. One thing to note though, is that I saw no dicernable difference in waves after I think level 30.
Maybe abilities should be unlocked as the waves get harder?
Also as nordic mentioned, Wave 9 is a steep difficulty spike: Wave 8 is the first to give you more than one marine at once, and Wave 9 suddenly has multiple marines from multiple directions.
I also expected shotguns sooner.
But I like where this is going. Are you going to develop this further?
Do the marines ADADAD like real marines?
Thank you man!
Please, make a way for us to choose the starting level
A console command would be enough
having a version of this that you can pick your map, earn points to get upgrades, have leaderboards etc could be amazing... you could even add achievements, maybe group up with friends to do a higher difficulty in co-op... this should be a gamemode that UWE officially takes hold of.
And like Nordic said, it is also very interesting as a Lerk, the only problem is that these marines seem to be prepared to shoot lifeforms only on close combat. Increase their range of view and this seems pretty much ready for lerks too
I definitely want to see @turtsmcgurt run this as a gorge.
This one is made of metal !
lol nice
The marines are pretty dumb, but it is still a decent fade exercise.
Awesome though, wish we could have seen something like this years ago and for more lifeforms.
Thanks, beige, and keep up the gud work!
I reached level 19 but sure can reach more.
Some suggestions:
Also I really don't like this shotgun aiming mechanic, looks like chance to hit (on closer distance) determined by random. But I hope you will fix that
Exquisite work, anyway! Mod already looks like pretty all-sufficient. Ns2 needs more single player mods like this.
Watching this video made me think "Man I really want this as a Multiplayer mode..." Then I realized it was basically just combat.
2. At 5 wave add metabolize. Set biomass level to 3.
3. At 10 wave add improvement metabolize. Set biomass level to 6.
4. At 15 wave set biomass level to 9 and drop Crag under Hive.
Additionally add console command for set a starting wave number.
I really like the idea of giving the fade metabolize -- maybe even advanced metabolize! -- instead of having a shift there. I'm going to make this a priority.
I also want to add functionality to give marines armor so they take more than 3 swipes to kill. If I can do that, and get marines to convincingly ADADADAD like a real marine, it should really improve the experience.
I would love to add in more maps, but I would much rather focus on gameplay stuff for the moment. If anybody wants to make their own maps for Fade Challenge, I'd be happy to add them to the mod. It could even be just an adaptation of an existing map. Crossroads would be pretty cool! Just make sure you run the editor from launchpad with the mod loaded. Otherwise, it'll delete a bunch of custom entities that are placed in the map. Also, try to cut out the parts of the map that won't be seen, to improve loading times.
As far as lerk mode goes... yea I suppose I could add it in. My original plan for this, was that the "fade challenge" mode was just one of many challenge modes that would accompany the revamped set of tutorials. Obviously that hasn't happened yet, but the plan was for the "lerk challenge" to be different than the fade challenge. My idea was you'd be a lerk following a skulk around a map, killing resource towers, and defending your skulk buddy against the marines that come to defend it. I do like the idea of being able to choose between the lerk and the fade for defending the hive though... hmm... would probably need to custom tailor the waves for each lifeform... AND for each map... whew this is turning into a lot of work all of a sudden...
About level skipping... I agree too! I'll figure something out...
I'll see if I can mock something up.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636208746
This is just so you can go have a look at it - it's still using the same waves beige's, because I tried making my own, but for some reason it didn't work. Expect a proper first release tomorrow noon (European time).
(In fact, half my time was spent trying to get these waves to work, but to no avail. Unfortunately I can't reach beige right now. Hopefully he will have an answer by tomorrow.)
But you'll be glad to hear that my version is hard as balls straight from the beginning
That example would also be very relevant to fade play. It would be interesting to restructure this to have a few tasks that you can run as either Lerk or Fade. Onos and Gorge would need their own tasks though. Frankly I'm a lot more a fan of giving love to the combat lifeforms before touching those two though.
Here is the video. Watch at 1.25x speed because I am not that exciting.
@BeigeAlert, can you make it so that the waves spawn from random sides. As it is right now, the waves spawn in a predictable pattern. Make it random.
I really am a bad fade. I am specifically bad at energy management, even with metabolize. In the video I linked, I also had an 86% fade accuracy because the marines are dumb. My point is, that a bad fade like me should not be able to do well like this in this mod. It shows how unrealistic it is.
I could add a function that randomizes the wave entrance. There's some situations where that would come in handy, but there's also others where you want a guaranteed spawn position, as not all spawn positions are created equal.
I kinda want this to be a Mid-point hive defend. Rather than the artificial third door, you could have marines come in from any one of 4 entrances. Somewhere like Falls or Hydroanalysis would be good.