Systems Being Worked On
 

I'm working on multiple systems at the same time so bare with me as I have outside obligations (such as college) that all come before this server. With that said, taking into account how busy my life has been lately, I've done quite a lot of stuff already on debug.


With superbikes, hoverbikes will now gain the ability to attach up to two weapons to them. When you enter a hoverbike you will be prompted with a notification on how to access the weapon attachment GUI, of which you can disable the notification from the GUI itself (as seen in the screenshot attached). From the weapon attachment GUI, there is a list of weapons that you can attach listed alphabetically, and you have customization to the point where you can choose to attach different weapons on each side of the bike (so you can have like a ghost rifle on the left side and a pumpkin rifle on the right). You can also unattach any weapons currently attached and you can move around with only one weapon attached if you would like. You fire the weapon(s) by pressing or holding the 'd' key.

Attaching weapons will cost you, though, since each of the attachable weapons has a set weight to them that will affect your speed. The type of weapon your have attached and the number of weapons attached (one, two, or none) will also have an affect on your speed. This affect on speed is felt when driving both forward and backward.

TODO: The GUI will probably be revamped before it's released to better the way it looks. Also, I'll probably make it so you can attach some sort of melee weapon to the front of the bike so that you can use it to crash into other players or bikes while dealing a high amount of damage.


I added a command for the events team so that they can limit the number of weapon attachments allowed in a map (to either none, one, or two). When an events team member uses this command on a map, everyone in that map will be notified and if you're currently on a bike the system will kick you off it to update to the new mode. If you had more weapons attached than the new allowed limit, the system will automatically remove any extra weapons attached to meet the restriction.


Your health is going to be converted to a shield-type system where you still see your health in the top-right GUI, but now there will be a new GUI (the shield GUI) at the top-center of your screen that will work solely as an indicator. Basically, when you take damage, your new shield GUI will decrease in accordance to your health, and if your health reaches a critical point, it will begin to blink to let you know that your shields are low.

There will be a shield regeneration system which means that medkits and other healing items are likely going to be removed. How the regeneration system works is that when you are hit, a 10 second timer is applied to you that must expire before your shields begin to regenerate. If you are hit again before the 10 second timer expires, then a new 10-second timer will be added on to you (the times do not stack, so don't worry about having a timer greater than 10 seconds) and you will have to wait another full 10 seconds before your shields regenerate. If you go 10 seconds without taking any damage, your shields will regain by 10 points every second until either your health is full or until your hurt again since this will prompt the system to stop your shields from regenerating.

This update will alter gameplay greatly for obvious reasons, and effects such as poison will not stop your shields from regenerating (though it will still affect your speed).

TODO: I've scripted most of the system already, I just need to add some sort of way for players to see when another player is low in shields. Also, I asked Elk to make a nice GUI for the shield meter, so I'm still waiting on him for the finished product.

NOTE: It's possible that shield regeneration will be disabled in certain maps (such as the spar maps) to prevent matches from going on forever. This, I'm sure, will be discussed further once everything is done.


This is mostly a job for the ganiers but I'm hoping to get one of our gani makers to make some dodge ganis so that I could script them into the movement system to add some versatility to gun fights. The dodging ganis would be some type of barrel rolls and side flips to make fighting more interesting.


I haven't started on this yet but I hope to implement some sort of system where you can choose what base you wish to spawn on in Iricia as long as your team owns that base. Most players seem to want this and I think it's a pretty good idea so I figure I'll work on it.


I made this system some years back but it was never released since Stefan had forgotten about it. I believe that I released a thread containing most of the details with the system so just search for it if you wish to read up on it but it's basically a system that will allow you to put up an action to kick a player from your team that will have to be approved by a majority of your teammates before the person is kicked.

Although the system is technically done I need to go back and rescript/restructure most of it since I made it at a time when I still had much to learn (still do, but I definitely know a lot more now than I did then).



Those are just some of the current things that I'm working on but other things are also being discussed that haven't really been finalized for release yet. I'm trying my best to keep you players informed so that you can all help steer Zone into the right direction with helpful suggestions, so feel free to give any thoughts or opinions on some of these updates or anything else that you would like to see added. :)

I'm liking most of the changes overall, just not a fan of the shields system. Great to see that Zone is being worked on though :)

Updated the original post to include the vote kicking system, but yes, I did draw the idea from Halo. The thing is that Zone is a futuristic server but the fighting is done in the same style as modern servers (such as Era with the health system and such), so it's pretty important to change gameplay dynamics to something more futuristic to keep things interesting. Shielding would definitely fall under futuristic and would hopefully change gameplay enough to make fighting more fun and tactical.

Mind you, a 10 second timer is pretty long so it's not like you regain your shields immediately. Also, if you're hurt with even one bullet while your shields are regenerating they will immediately stop regenerating until you go another 10 seconds without getting hurt. This number is of course adjustable but it seems like it would work right.

Even Call of Duty and Gears of War use a type of health-regeneration system so it all falls under a similar category.

Someone has never played every single "recent gen" FPS ever.

Everything sounds great except the shield thing... that's going to make a lot of the way the game is played change.
I like the new ways of dodging sounds fun (:

I think that the shield idea can be very good, but it have to be tested very well first, just get 2 pros to test it and check their opinions.

There is one more thing for the shields: It's planned that being hit/shot is not freezing you anymore. Instead of that the player will be slowed down for a very small moment.

that sounds pretty stupid because 1 bullet on them they slow down, you're using a shotgun in example and you get 1 bullet on them, they're slowed you point blank em and they're still slowed, and you practically rape them with no skill intended.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say. There should be different impact effects from weapons with more damage or different projectiles, if that's what you mean. If you shotgun someone in the face, (up close) they shouldn't be still standing, even with shields up. The target, if not dead, would fall over from the sheer force of impact. But of course, if you get nicked by a pellet, it'll hurt, but the stopping power from it is hardly sufficient enough to slow someone down. Possibly, if a target sustains heavy concentrated fire from a spread weapon, such as the shotgun, they will be frozen AND slowed momentarily after. See where I'm getting at? Point is, close quarter weapons will be more effective at a shorter range where the wielder can concentrate most of their fire at their target.

Off topic: Anyone else find it weird that the shotgun is a pump-action, but it fires two shots?

On topic: I don't like the shield idea, but perhaps it could be applied to vehicles instead. And for dodging, that idea sounds interesting, but then we'd need some sort of limit as to how much a player can perform such quick evasive movements. Dodging would make melee weapons more useful on the battlefield, but the problem is that if everyone's able to dodge using any weapon, it'd turn into "Ninja Space Battles." Perhaps the concept of dodging is best suited for weapons with low weight and of smaller size and less bulk.

Make a Plasma / Sticky Grenade, it was pretty much the main reason I played Halo. Might be a little difficult to perform a 2D plain like Graal though.

o_O. I have played pretty much every single recent FPS, you name it. COD4, Gears, i've played it all. Halo was just the reference that I had to shields. Don't assume that i've never played another FPS.

Mind you I miss the old FPS where there wasn't a regeneration system. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy COD, Gears and Halo quite a bit, but I miss the old stuff like Team Fortress :(..I suppose that's why TF2 is fun for me xD.

I suppose I should've referred to COD and Gears as well. And reading Stefan's post, being slowed down for a little sounds better. Hopefully this works out better than I imagine it will.

finnaly we got someone who work well on Zone
=D
i like Gambet's thingy

regeneration = do not want

rest is pretty sweet

Do you plan on releasing these one at a time, or all at the same time?

The thing is right now you cannot move at all, so that someone can shoot at you and you don't have a way to defend yourself. The new system will just slow you down for 0.5 - 1 second but not freeze.

0.5-1 second can go really quickly on zone, and i think it should be a bit less, if it can be balanced just right with the way freezing was i think this should work great.

I started on the new Iricia spawning system today and Elk also finished the shield GUI graphics which I think came out pretty amazing (here's an animation of it - make sure you have webpage animations enabled in your browser):


The GUI will be a bit complicated to script but I hope to implement it on the debug server when I get the chance. The little box on the side will contain your percentage of shield.

Looks nice, but definitely doesn't fit into the rest of Zone... which is pretty much all airbrush stuff and such.
Doesn't fit in with the rest of the GUI as well, unless you plan on remaking ALL of the GUI.

Elk wants to do that, he hates all the airbrushing in our current GUIs. Not sure if he'll ever get to it but he did mention that he wants to.

bring the origional zone gui back

Looks good, though I'm still against the idea of a shield and regeneration.... I like your other ideas.

I'm going to have fun playing Zone @ 1024x768.

while we are at it, lets bring the old inventory back too.
i think that one did fit better into zone.

I think it is a little bit.. Too big?

@ Neo, I agree. Bring the old invertory system back and also remove the hotkeys.

The graphic is amazing, but I do have to say it was a little too big when I checked it out on debug.

why would we need hotkeys when u could change weapon FASTER in the old inventory?
the new 1 made it so slow to change :asleep:

I'm planning to have the overall GUI suit the default Graal window but the GUI will be bigger than usual.

Things have to change, there are people with 30" monitors
what will they think? "look, whats that tiny lightblue thing over there"

If you can't play on atleast 800x600 then buy a bigger monitor or better graphics card, as the majority of people did.

Believe it or not size in inches doesn't mean everything, resolution plays the bigger role.

Yeah graphics cards totally have a lot to do with it. :rolleyes:

It's the 21st century, it's about time we go big. :cool: That's what she said


It really isn't that bad, I don't know why people play with such small resolutions anyways. You don't need to go full screen for it to not take up your entire screen so it's not like it's extremely limiting (I personally don't play on fullscreen since I usually have other stuff running and it looks fine for me).

The reality is that it's very large. If you think the user of a budget-game is going to run out and buy a new monitor or video card than you may be the unrealistic side of the fence.

On top of that, I usually prefer functional to aesthetic - this is needlessly larger than it has to be. A simple bar could be justified in this case... without the fuss about size and the creators insisting users invest a minimum of $175USD to enjoy their creation...?

My desktop PC is from 2001 (I'm running on a pentium 4 ><). It does have a flatscreen monitor which is nice but all of my specs are severely outdated (NVidia Geforce FX 5200...512 mb of RAM for crying out loud). Honestly, if you don't have an equal or better setup than this then I don't know what you're doing playing PC games.

It is pretty large when looking at the perspective that the game is played on but I suppose it can always be resized if necessary.

Gambet, you have the same specs as me :)

Getting a 24" monitor soon. :(

It's not so much about the performance of our PC's vs the resolution Graal is intended to be played on.

You are totally wrong there.

A user will not pay 175$ just to play graal, but other games aswell.
Every 2. household PC has a PC that can easily handle that resolution, I bet.
For 175$ you get something needlessly big.


Crono, "Graal" is intended to be played on the normal start resolution of the window
Zone might be an exception as it is not really "Graal" anymore

Only problem I see with the size is that trials have limited screensize(if they resize past a certain size, it just has black borders)--640x470 or so. That's really small, and that GUI does take up a hefty chunk of it.

However, the restriction itself is pretty stupid so...

Exactly, and how big is that? It's smaller than my resolution so it can't be 1024x768, so then why would a gui need to be even bigger than that?

I finished scripting the entire shielding system on debug for those with access to the server to go and check it out and let me know what they think. It came out pretty neat, especially the flashy effects when your shields are empty. :)

No problem to remove that restriction

Because Gui's sometimes can require the whole upper space of one's screen.

Take the GUI of a strategy game, why does it take up 1/8 of the screen in most cases ;P

Best is to make things optional, a way to turn it off :) It could also be possible to display it smaller for people with small screen (thanks to the gui system). Another way would be to show the hp/shield when it's changing and hide it once it's full. I don't think the size is a problem, the problem is when the screen is filled with unneccessary stuff. Better to display things bigger, but display only stuff that is important, and put other stuff in menus.

Maybe I'm a little late to the game...But whats all this shield buisness about? I thought the way HP handled now was just fine, shields are just adding more hp basically? z.z

Why not just make a way to minimize it into the old gui by adding a slot for the %. ( <--- HA! IT WERKED)