Since there will be some changes in balancing for LMS in 1.5.1 and tChr expressed his concerns whether the new settings have been tested enough i've updated my LMS server.
I guess there will be some minor problems when people join with 1.5 clients, but i wanted to be a public test, so i don't want to block 1.5 users...

As for the changes:
Players spawn now with 250 hitpoints and 100 armor, so the are not that easy to nex anymore. However your hitpoints won't regenerate anymore (there's a serveroption to enable regenration, but it's off by default).

There's also a new system to prevent camping, by forcing you to move around. If you don't move a certain distance within 10 seconds, you will receive damage.

The server is hosted at 141.2.5.8 (hostname: "[RBI] LMS test")
enjoy

A forced movement system sounds kind of hackish. Trying to use a machine to make judgements such as what constitutes camping seems a little unreliable to me. I guess I'll have to try it out though.

Workaphobia wrote:A forced movement system sounds kind of hackish. Trying to use a machine to make judgements such as what constitutes camping seems a little unreliable to me. I guess I'll have to try it out though.

The reason i put that in: there are too many maps in Nexuiz that have spots where you could hide and probably no one will ever find you. That'll give you an unfair advantage in LMS, therefor i didn't enable those maps for LMS.

My hope is, that if the anti camping system works and is kinda balanced, i could add more maps in the LMS maprotation.

KadaverJack wrote: However your hitpoints won't regenerate anymore (there's a serveroption to enable regenration, but it's off by default).

Oh.. interesting That will actually make the problem i described earlier (about playing with few players will make them kiil each other by turn, first the one, then the other, the the one and so on) even worse

KadaverJack wrote:There's also a new system to prevent camping, by forcing you to move around. If you don't move a certain distance within 10 seconds, you will receive damage.

This is a good thign.. in theory. Luna showed me some evil spots yesterda.. y Gonna test it thuoghly

tChr wrote:Oh.. interesting That will actually make the problem i described earlier (about playing with few players will make them kiil each other by turn, first the one, then the other, the the one and so on) even worse

Well, i think that's better than the alternative... If there were healthpacks available, one player could dominate too easily imo.

KadaverJack wrote:

tChr wrote:Oh.. interesting That will actually make the problem i described earlier (about playing with few players will make them kiil each other by turn, first the one, then the other, the the one and so on) even worse

Well, i think that's better than the alternative... If there were healthpacks available, one player could dominate too easily imo.

Yeah. But I dont quite understand you rlogic here.. Noth making health regenerate as an alternative to haveing healthpacks.. thay are the opposite I would thinkt regenerating health was the alternative to having healt-packs, or having health-packs and not regenerating health

Edit or do you mean no heath rot?

Ok.. been testing a lil, so here starts the ranting Just been runnign around alone yet so more will probably come.

The anti-camping device is a good idea. owever would not work for larger caming areas, only quite small ones. As it is now, i get some camping damage while simulating the movements of a long fight in a rater confined area, thats not good, so the required area of movement should maybe be a little smaller.. But as a general, "move your ass coward"-hint i think its good.

Nice detail that the damage increases for each camping dmg. (or is the armor fooling me?)

I'd agree to no heath rot, but health-regen still makes sense to me. The lack of regen however is an advantage of large maps with few players. However when two players find each other on large maps they are more likely to fight to the death if they have decent health. If one has 5 HP left, he'd may run and try and camp to assainate the opponent. That would make the match last forever, wich is boring for the other players. (the allready dead ones)

Weither the increased startup heath is needed, i dont know.it makes the duels last longer, thats for sure. Weither this is good I'll get back to when I've played against someone however i think this migh give good players an unfair advantage.

tChr wrote:Yeah. But I dont quite understand you rlogic here.. Noth making health regenerate as an alternative to haveing healthpacks.. thay are the opposite I would thinkt regenerating health was the alternative to having healt-packs, or having health-packs and not regenerating health

I never said i see disabling regeneration as alternative to healthpacks, those changes were made long before you requested healthpacks
I disabled it for a very simple reason: the hitpoints and armor you have on spawn were increased drastically, so i thought when a player regenerates it'll take too long to kill him. That would take away too much of Nexuiz' speed imho.
And there was also a practical aspect: 250 hitpoints will drop way too fast, so i had to disable at least the health rot and disabling both was much less work

Edit or do you mean no heath rot?

Actually i mean both, regeneration and rot...

KadaverJack wrote:That would take away too much of Nexuiz' speed imho.
And there was also a practical aspect: 250 hitpoints will drop way too fast, so i had to disable at least the health rot and disabling both was much less work

That makes total sense

I've played some more with more players now.. its ok so far.. however the increased health makes you run out of ammo awfully fast.. maybe increase the ammo pick.up when gettign dead players' weapons?

tChr wrote:I've played some more with more players now.. its ok so far.. however the increased health makes you run out of ammo awfully fast.. maybe increase the ammo pick.up when gettign dead players' weapons?

You're getting the amount of ammo, the killed player had atm, not a fixed amount like in minstagib. But maybe i should raise the ammo you with a little.
50 instead of the current 30 would be ok i think... I'll try that later today.

KadaverJack wrote:

tChr wrote:I've played some more with more players now.. its ok so far.. however the increased health makes you run out of ammo awfully fast.. maybe increase the ammo pick.up when gettign dead players' weapons?

You're getting the amount of ammo, the killed player had atm, not a fixed amount like in minstagib. But maybe i should raise the ammo you with a little.
50 instead of the current 30 would be ok i think... I'll try that later today.

Thats cool,.- getting the same amount as the player had. I like that. It should be like that in regular game too.

I assume you eam amount you start with? that maeks sense.

Thise new features sonds interesting, ill hop on over to the testserver tonght and try them out.

One idea i had for a mod may be useabel as anticamping.. you need to kill someone (or do damage maybe) within X seconds or you helath will strat to drop.

If ya whanna go totaly spanced out you chould do something like letting the health drop all the time, an enable vampire. This would surely kill camping

tZork wrote:One idea i had for a mod may be useabel as anticamping.. you need to kill someone (or do damage maybe) within X seconds or you helath will strat to drop.

If ya whanna go totaly spanced out you chould do something like letting the health drop all the time, an enable vampire. This would surely kill camping

Not working, and will totally ruin the fun. I was playing once LMS on a server, and 2 ppl remained, me and some coward. I was strafejumping the whole map, zipping from one point to another, and I just could not find him. It was me, not the one who was camping, I tried to catch him. In a case like this would you still like to get some health from me?

Ok iv tested this for a few games now.

First off all the testserver gave be pain by beeing very choppy, felt like a bad day back in 1.2.1. This made it hard to detirmine how well this goes with the wepons since it put the nexgun more or less outa play. Is the server running a new engine? if so arent thise somewhat inpompatible with the engine in 1.5?

Balance stuff i noticed:
MG needs more ammo in LMS. maybe all guns do, when its just 2 players left it gets boring fast as you waste your more powerfull ammo before one of you dies (usualy)

Laser is the alfa and omega on spacemaps. Its totaly unbeatable to be able to kill someone with 250/100 with a single well aimd laserbolt.

Sugestions:
Add ammopack's where the big guns and/or powerupps are. Thise shuld give some of each type of ammo. Thise would make the game less focused on ammo and create some natural flow in the maps. The amt of ammo in thise pack should not be alot, say 6/10/20/6 rockets/cells/buttlets/shells or maybe even less would do it.

Nerf laser push on others, but keep selfpush.

Camping is not a good word for what ppl do in lms games. Campers stay in one place and fire. In lms this is not what happens, ppl hide in lms.

Not sure abt the anti "camping" system. Maybe some warning b4 it acctualt starts biting ya?

Id consider making two mods.. mLMS, like now and LMS wich is regular maps and items just with counting down deatsh instead of counting up kills

tZork wrote:First off all the testserver gave be pain by beeing very choppy, felt like a bad day back in 1.2.1. This made it hard to detirmine how well this goes with the wepons since it put the nexgun more or less outa play. Is the server running a new engine? if so arent thise somewhat inpompatible with the engine in 1.5?

It's running a self compiled 1.5 release engine.

Balance stuff i noticed:
MG needs more ammo in LMS. maybe all guns do, when its just 2 players left it gets boring fast as you waste your more powerfull ammo before one of you dies (usualy)

I'll try raising the starting ammo.

Add ammopack's where the big guns and/or powerupps are. Thise shuld give some of each type of ammo. Thise would make the game less focused on ammo and create some natural flow in the maps. The amt of ammo in thise pack should not be alot, say 6/10/20/6 rockets/cells/buttlets/shells or maybe even less would do it.

I'll consider that, but atm i don't have time for that

Nerf laser push on others, but keep selfpush.

I would rather lower it than completely disable it. After all every weapon has some force, you can even push players with the shotgun or MG, so it would be a bad thing if the laser had no force at all imho.

Camping is not a good word for what ppl do in lms games. Campers stay in one place and fire. In lms this is not what happens, ppl hide in lms.

Well, i might not fit a 100%, but it's the shortest way to put it and everyone should be able to get what is meant

Not sure abt the anti "camping" system. Maybe some warning b4 it acctualt starts biting ya?

Good idea...

The anti-camping system does hurt people who are chatting or have the console down. It should stay that way as otherwise campers would just use the console as a workaround for the anti-camping system.

Can bots play LMS? I see one problem for them is that sometimes they stay still for a while and will get hurt. They need to know that they've got to keep moving.

Perhaps there should be a way of limiting weapons on specific maps? The space maps could do with this.

Ed wrote:The anti-camping system does hurt people who are chatting or have the console down. It should stay that way as otherwise campers would just use the console as a workaround for the anti-camping system.

Perhaps i could give chatting ppl some extra second until the next check (a little gracetime). But that might also be abusable.

Can bots play LMS? I see one problem for them is that sometimes they stay still for a while and will get hurt. They need to know that they've got to keep moving.

There are no changes to the bots for LMS yet. But the new bots always keep moving, so they shouldn't have problems. The old bots otoh, will probably just stand still and die most of the time
The obvious solution for that problem would be to disable the campcheck for bots.

Perhaps there should be a way of limiting weapons on specific maps? The space maps could do with this.

I'll add that to my todo list

Not that I quetion your abilities as a programmer or anything , but i dont think its possible to make a fail-safe anti-camping system without adding info to the maps, as the maps are very differet. Some maps have campling places large enough to avoid the hurt, and some maps have som much confined space that you get camp hurt when fightinh..

I still think its good as a hint that the player is being a jerk, but leavt it at that. Instead of putting lots and lots of effort into trying to make this intelligent, wich I dont think is possible afterall a better way to do ut, could be to let other players know that camping is an issue and let them votekick the player instead.

KadaverJack wrote:

Ed wrote:The anti-camping system does hurt people who are chatting or have the console down. It should stay that way as otherwise campers would just use the console as a workaround for the anti-camping system.

Perhaps i could give chatting ppl some extra second until the next check (a little gracetime). But that might also be abusable.

Well a timeout-system would be nice for such things.. a player can call a timeout and the server will wait for up to one minute for him to timein again or continue after that minute no matter what.
I think this might also be abbused on public servers but its a nice feature to have for clanwars or ladder games where you know the people are not jerks

KadaverJack wrote:

Perhaps there should be a way of limiting weapons on specific maps? The space maps could do with this.

I'll add that to my todo list

Guess its time to think about mapcfg.. but i think you also need a little bit of code because lms does not use the g_start_* variables..
We should try to redesign most of this after 1.5.1

esteel wrote:

KadaverJack wrote:

Ed wrote:The anti-camping system does hurt people who are chatting or have the console down. It should stay that way as otherwise campers would just use the console as a workaround for the anti-camping system.

Perhaps i could give chatting ppl some extra second until the next check (a little gracetime). But that might also be abusable.

Well a timeout-system would be nice for such things.. a player can call a timeout and the server will wait for up to one minute for him to timein again or continue after that minute no matter what.
I think this might also be abbused on public servers but its a nice feature to have for clanwars or ladder games where you know the people are not jerks

Interesting. Do you mean that this should affect only the current user, or the netire game, so that time stops counting as well?

tChr wrote:Interesting. Do you mean that this should affect only the current user, or the netire game, so that time stops counting as well?

Other games stop the whole game and i like it this way too.. with a 5second countdown then the timein is started. I think this is a good system but as said it can be used by jerks so in other games its mostly used in clanwars (in case a phone is ringing or something)

esteel wrote:

tChr wrote:Interesting. Do you mean that this should affect only the current user, or the netire game, so that time stops counting as well?

Other games stop the whole game and i like it this way too.. with a 5second countdown then the timein is started. I think this is a good system but as said it can be used by jerks so in other games its mostly used in clanwars (in case a phone is ringing or something)

Yeah.. but enabling/disabling this would of cource be configurable...

tChr wrote:Yeah.. but enabling/disabling this would of cource be configurable...

Sure thing.. i'm just not sure its easy to implement with the current code.. there are lots of time checks in there and i think most of them would need to be changed for this..

You should really add healt charge up to some limit, because this serioulsy limits trick-jumping

esteel wrote:

tChr wrote:Yeah.. but enabling/disabling this would of cource be configurable...

Sure thing.. i'm just not sure its easy to implement with the current code.. there are lots of time checks in there and i think most of them would need to be changed for this..

Just set

Code: Select all

pausable 1

on the server. Then everyone can pause/continue the game with the pause key. There's not really a need to reimplement this in qc imho

KadaverJack wrote:

esteel wrote:

tChr wrote:Yeah.. but enabling/disabling this would of cource be configurable...

Sure thing.. i'm just not sure its easy to implement with the current code.. there are lots of time checks in there and i think most of them would need to be changed for this..

Just set

Code: Select all

pausable 1

on the server. Then everyone can pause/continue the game with the pause key. There's not really a need to reimplement this in qc imho

Seriously anoying atfer a while

If so it should pause (time-out) when everyone is dead, not starting again until after the time-out, then respawn all.

And please add more maps to the loop now that we test the anti-camping device.

KadaverJack wrote:Just set

Code: Select all

pausable 1

on the server. Then everyone can pause/continue the game with the pause key. There's not really a need to reimplement this in qc imho

Too exploidable, annoying and just ARGH.. but it might be used as a basis. It would be nice if only the same person can pause/unpause und only to so far a limited amount of time and count.

I played it again tonight and found the install killing anti-camp system a bit over the top. You join a server, try to say hi to everyone and get killed. I preferred the gradual hurting method, it reminded people to keep moving rather than just kill them.

I was also fighting against someone who was firing at me while only dodging a bit, because of this they got killed. Meant he lost a life and didn't really give me any satisfaction in seeing that happen.