Insomnia Revival - The Zombies Are Coming

[Tyhm]

A lot of it's that we don't have a decent intro yet; there's no explanation of these things.

White FOV (I like that abbreviation): Nothing in the area
Blue FOV: Zombies in the area
Green FOV: Players in the area (should probably revise this so it's only Enemy players in the area, so you don't waste bullets on allied players that you won't be able to hit anyway)
Red FOV: You are shooting. It is calculating who's in the area and doing damage.
Pink FOV: You are holding a chainsaw. It is constantly reporting anyone in the pink square of doom.
No FOV: Your weapon is not loaded, or not readied (shotgun especially).

I don't want to discard a partially-full clip; this game is going to be ammo-stingy, so it's gonna be bad enough leaving shells in a spare shotgun, finding the wrong caliber bullet, etc. without penalizing people for reloading when they weren't empty. The penalty is that you wasted a few seconds; it's assumed that with the dragon's-blood-and-magic haversacks, you can shake a clip into it and the bullets go back into circulation...realism may be served by having the player hide behind a barrel furiously prying 9mm bullets out of a Tec9 magazine to click into a glock17 magazine, and fretting that they didn't pick up enough empty glock17 magazines, etc, but you can do that on your own server; it wouldn't serve the fun of Insomnia IMO, and my opinion matters here. ;-)
I suppose I could have it instead drop the ejected ammo on the ground, so that if you're running away you've just lost perfectly good ammo, whereas if you're taking your time you can conserve it. Similarly any accidentally or intentionally ejected unspent ammo (by readying when the chamber's already full)...but one of the "running gags" is going to be loading, readying, and reloading an autoloader so that you have a full mag plus one in the chamber, so that'd be annoying in the long haul.

I might give the option of a HUD instead of a graphical display, possibly as an upgrade. Not everyone likes the clock for player's HP either; the point is that you don't know exactly, so you can't plan to run through a mob of zombies because at worst they'll do 20hp and you have 23hp. (to that end I also have to randomize their damage a little bit...) Similarly, you may be able to quickly count how many bullets are left in a box, but good luck picking up a magazine and counting the bullets left within from glancing at the top!

As for tracers, there's a script in the works (as in, I'm still thinking about the implementation!) that'll show a blur whenever someone fires, showing its true trajectory (as opposed to the FOV's Projected Trajectory). It'll be instantaneous. There are also Actual Tracer Rounds for the various bullets (except shotgun shells); I may set a high negative-recoil on them, so that when you fire a tracer round you get a bonus on accuracy with your next shot. I may just have it do extra fire damage, haven't really decided yet...I'm supposed to be working on zombies, but Someone's gotta do the system...:-P

[Terazel Tenjin]

I think for the lack of indication on the firing of a weapon, a noticeable animation for the muzzle flash of a firearm would be sufficient. Since tracers will be actual ammunition, that can't be rendered as default for all firearms (and certainly not shotguns or 40mm grenades). I do agree that weapons feel like they lose a bit of "umph" without some sort of more visible indication that there's a point of impact.

As for ammo indication, I think it kind of works out better on an action level to leave it as a graphical indication rather than by pure numbers. Unless you count mentally each round expended, it's extremely difficult to fight and keep track of how much ammo you have left to use. An exact number works great for a more precise shooter game (FPS), but I think the graphical indication works well in this environment. But then again, combat is still being worked on a small scale so maybe this isn't the best gauge for how the system sound be yet...

Also per my sporadic discussions with Tyhm, combat and other combat-related realisms will have to be dialed back to work out a more balanced system...I'll still point out what's accurate and what's not on weapons here and there, but I already lost the fight on the talk of upgrades and upgrade slots for different weapon types to favor personal customization freedom and balance.

[Tyhm]

Muzzle Flashes added. Bonus cookie if you recognize the source.
And now the zombies are no longer silent, so you can both tell when they're near and when they've seen you. The audio sucks, if anyone would like to replace it they can feel free - just set the corresponding gani (insom_shuffle and insom_brains, .wav and .gani) to match lengths.
[fixed the tec 9. It helps when I remember to add the damn weapon whose script I'm trying to call. Works a beaut now.]
Made audio ganis to attr onto the player, so the chainsaw can run continuously even when the player changes ganis (walk and idle mostly) and so that when rechambering is implemented later on, the noise your gun makes is a function of what it's shooting, not what it normally sounds like (a modified shotgun firing bullets should make bullet noises, and a modified derringer shooting shotgun shells should sound like a shotgun). [edit: done now]

Also fixed that thing where if you tried to run away while shooting, you'd look like you were shooting in the wrong direction. Freaking sleep commands.

Still to do:
Figure out a Zombie Control System so I can keep track of 'em. Maybe finish the coding to make the player's corpse rise as a zombie. Maybe finish the coding so zombies keep their appearances when transferring from one mob to another.

[Tyhm]

Now the glow of an attack remains for a couple seconds, so you know for sure what the accuracy was when you shot it.

'course, PvP's still sketchy at range...not sure why, it's Codein's department.

[Tyhm]

Alright guys, Check In:
Zibou: You still around? We'll need to you to figure out the checklist to getting the server hosted if we're ever gonna get outta UC
Tyhm: Zombies are stalled on Graphics and Server Communication, Gun System's stalled on Upgrades System
Luda - how are those zombie graphics coming along?
Codein: Are you going to be able to finish the Upgrades System before you leave on your world tour? ;-D
Peo: Did you get Supplies figured out?
Sage (DeCeaseD): Are you still working on the tileset, or do we need to find someone else?
Smoothcriminal - you working on that still also too?
Swifty: How's the intro coming along?

[Codein]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

Codein: Are you going to be able to finish the Upgrades System before you leave on your world tour? ;-D

I've ran out of gold. No money to reupgrade yet

[Tyhm]

Got Codein gold; tweaked the gun system so that you focus on what's in front of you rather than looking in all directions. For a while it had an amusing glitch where everything was shaky-cam, but it was a little TOO shaky-cam, so I tweaked it down to shaky recoil and steady aim...

Oh, and PvP's fixed. :-D

[GillespieTAG]

I like this idea. Hope it goes well. :]

[Tyhm]

Thanks! We can use all the help we can get.

In other news, used some of what I learned smoothing out the mouse system to smooth out the zombies during lag; now, even if the lag means they should do one of those funny little "move" glitches and zap across the screen, now they just run to where they think they are on serverside. And I tweaked guns so they shoot where you think they are, not where the server thinks they are, and hit according to what's on your screen. I suppose that means a cheaty little bastard could hack himself a god weapon, but who even does that these days?

Also, the display's been rewired a bit; should automatically space for higher calibers now, and it has a space for showing the underslung soon as I get around to it. [edit] Even the glock.

If anyone knows off the top of their head what the code is for "that key that the player has associated with "sword", whatever it is, yeah display that", I'd appreciate it...I know it's like keydown(5), but for like showtext keycode(5)? Something like that...

And Swifty was working on the intro...I figure once we've got that, Peo's made a way to make money, the tilers have made a place to find supplies and a place to return them for cash, and Codein's made the upgrade system so there's something worth buying...

[Tyhm]

BTW, Insomnia can currently be logged onto normally in Client, but in RC you gotta make sure you're choosing Insomnia (Good One). Can't even tell how long that threw me...

[Geno]

just got done playing around on here. chainsaw mania. awesome. i have some prior levels experience from working on graal2001. and i could heavily edited the zombie heads you already have to make new ones. maybe post the sprites or whatever they are called and ill do some work.

[Tyhm]

Haha, there's no zombie heads. I just put a param3 overlay in the ganis over regular heads' "hurt" sprites, and I have it pick random heads from 0 to 300 (because those are the only ones I've figured out the right overlays for). That's why there are some with the wrong transparency and some are floating brains or eye overlays where the heads don't exist for some reason. :-P

If you're willing to continue and refine the "this head works with this overlay for this gani" experiment though, I'll give you all the RC you need. :-D

Or if you wanna make some zombie heads, that'd probably resolve a lot of the graphics-buffer-overload problem...I'm loading in a bunch of body and head space that never gets used...LUDA WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MAKING A ZOMBIE BODY GRAPHIC, BUT NOTHING YET...-_-

[Geno]

so just weed out all the heads that don't look normal (floating eyes/ brain)? that sounds pretty simple. and i could work on some custom zombie like heads too. just might take a little but hey ill give it a shot. as for bodies im not too great at making them look good but i an give that a small shot too.

[Tyhm]

Hell, you could just take the ganis and make a graphic sheet of that for all I care, and it'd still be an improvement in clientside efficiency...^_^

The floating eyes/brain only happens when the graphic doesn't exist, like if there's no such head as head224.png...
I'm still kinda on the fence as to whether I should have as many zombie heads as possible - one for every possible player head - or if I should try and trim it down to "zombie helmets, a few zombie boys, a few zombie girls"...or for that matter if I should try and make the zombies universally maintain the look of the player they were made from or just stay as Random Zombie Head per each clientside...

[Tyhm]

We got honds now. We might pull it off after all....