You were so scared.
But no one would listen,
'Cause no one else cared.
After my dreaming,
I woke with this fear:
What am I leaving,
When I'm done here?"
- Linkin Park, "Leave out all the rest"
Plenty of people have done many useful contributions to this community. For over a year I cried and whined about problems I perceived with the game that changed it from being a fun, action packed, and healthy competitive experience into becoming a slow, campy, randomly chaotic and therefore unhealthy cesspool of toxic tryhards.
There was only one person who chose to help me, Odex, the future dev himself. With his script S.F.D.C. I was able to move into the right direction and used it as a prototype to gather information on impact of gameplay and if the players would approach the game differently. From what I remember, the data gathered showed that the damage of weapons might have been balanced, however the general problems were still there and didn't detract campy and slow playstyles over taking risks and pushing aggressively.
I wanted to go further, not stopping at simply altering damages, but go deeper into changing the game design of "versus" itself and see how far I could push it. In my mind, the game mode was evolving, taking on a life of its own, a total overhaul.
I started slowly modifying existing scripts and seeing what they could do. I had no experience with reading code of this level and it was very tedious and frustrating. It didn't help that scripts are written by many different people with their own coding style and varying levels of readability.
Anyway enough on that, I worked on this script from 2021 - 2023. That is why I during this period was able to post several scripts on forums, I worked on them when I got too frustrated with writing the main script, or when I had to work on a new method I needed to improve in, in order to continue writing.
Listen, before anyone wants to chime in some negative opinion or ridicule my work, no one is forcing you to play this script, I only made it for like-minded people who are interested, if it doesn't fit you, feel free to move on. I truly believe that this game has at least one aspect that can appeal to almost any player or person. It is with the help of scripts that we can bring this aspect forth into the spotlight, and build a game mode with this at the centre, that can appeal to the player. We should get used to the idea that vanilla officials shouldn't be the only way to enjoy the game, because after all there is beauty underneath here somewhere, and as it is subjective there is no correct or incorrect way of playing the game. I encourage anyone to shape it in your image, and share your work with others. Maybe something can come of it? Maybe someone can say, "I didn't think of this before", or "this is a nice variation of the game; just needs some more tweaking".
Disclaimer: This script is not finished. I abandoned it in 2023 when I lost all interest in the game. I don't even know if it works in the current version of Steam, however it does work in Beta 1.0.2c.
What does this script do? (Good question, I hadn't opened it in over two years so I had to spend some time testing it)
Changes pacing of Versus
• Melee now moves slightly faster than gunners - Run&Gunning now has a challenge and is no longer a free win on low hp players
• Totally Unarmed, defenceless players take less bullet damage - Unrealistic? Who cares it makes it more fun to play instead of dying in 19 seconds.
• Camper punish - Instead of slowly regaining hp like in the flash SF, this one actively punishes you for camping by removing your gun inventory. Gotta go fast and keep pushing!
Gun rebalancing
• Bazooka now only carries 1 shot! Better make that free kill count.
○ Rocket Riding players can now choose to suicide explode themselves by pressing "Walk" key creating a massive ring of explosions - Risky for the bazooka shooter. Fun suicide message displays.
○ M60 moves super slow - Run&Gunning with M60 was basically a free win every time. Now it plays much more like an actual heavy mobile turret, destructive but immobile. 70 bullets only.
○ Sniper has 100% fixed crits which means consistent damage. Carbine has random crits. All other weapons have 0 crits and rebalanced damages.
Dives can now go even further and faster if holding sprint. It's now possible to dive over cover and catch the player behind it. No longer situations were jumping over cover = instant death against gunner (because block will end before you touch the ground). It also forces players to keep their distance from cover if they want to escape quickly.
○ Dives going further and taller actually re-enables wall-nailing in steam! And allows for new combo possibilities.
• Any weapon over a certain velocity (angular and linear), was most likely thrown, and upon reaching velocity 0 gets broken. Make those throws count! No more SuperThrowers Deluxe.
• Reduced throw, fall, explosion and fire damage. More effort to kill players. Less things that can randomly chip away your health = more damage the other players have to cause to you directly.
• Added stocks (extra lives), default is 2. This is because it's far more fun when you get a second chance, instead of having to wait an eternity.
• Rolls & Dives no longer have 10% chance of failing (except for Flaregun), or at least an extremely small chance. Honestly this one means a lot to me, because to this day I can remember the times I had to be the one rushing my camping opponent and tanking the 25 damage even though I rolled and was still punished for it. I mean with 20 seconds left what was I supposed to do? Let the game end in a stalemate again for the x time, just because the same person repeats the same favourable position?
• At the end of the round there is no winner declared. The Scoreboard resets every round - To this day I haven’t been able to implement a proper scoring system, remember this script is written for Beta, there was no ability to track player damages dealt (Ebomb09 got pretty close though, but I understood nothing of his script). The good thing is this doesn't incentivise winning at all costs anyway, and the focus can be on fighting the players which is far more exciting even when dying (which is why there are 2 stocks)
• No more random bouncing off maps! This script resets your velocity to 0 if you were falling downwards, and suddenly you go upwards (In the original Flash SF you cannot bounce either when falling from hights). Unfortunately certain problems with aerial kicks can arise if kicking a player who is already falling (like resetting his speed to 0, dropping him at your feet as you kneel, maybe good?).
Melee changes
Grab
○ Most notably grab punching a player now lands them at your feet! Grab can now properly complete the RPS cycle it was meant to be. It is no longer a tool for creating distance and ending melee fights. Therefore it also is difficult to get the "grab - free throw combo" that has oversaturated the melee for too long.
○ Grab-throwing players should no longer work in most situations (needs work). This one doesn't need explanation.
○ More risk to grab - During the grab you take more melee damage! Better be sure before committing.
• No more random kneels for jumping off hights or on. This one is possibly the biggest and most important change, no more randomly getting punished for being aggressive. You will never ever kneel again when you shouldn't, I cannot stress enough how different melee will play. The only downside is that it moves your worldposition, therefore the old aerial timings for combos have to be relearned, but a small sacrifice imo for having access to consistent punishes. No kneels in moving elevators for example!
• Blocking a certain amount of punches now gives you back HP! Almost like having an invisible meter to build up. This one was taken straight from Armadyl's Survivor script (2015). The only issue with this is people teaming to give back health to each other.
• Melee actions shouldn't drain stamina anymore (Also currently flawed, I could fix it later, but right now have to just upload this.) - No more running out of stamina mid fight. Far more interesting melee.
So I tested this script a few times in 2023, and received mostly positive feedback. The only negative feedback I ever heard was that the melee was "too strong", but that was from someone who had just started playing like 2 months ago so of course it's going to be hard for them. I am sad to say because it is a huge Frankenstein crossover of scripts, it has some performance issues I think. Also sometimes things don’t work out as intended (I was one dude working on this with no experience).
Things I could still do:
• Remove duds from mines/grenades. I thought about how to do it in Beta, and the only thing I could think of is an area trigger for mines, and a Grenade timer that counts from when a pin is pulled near a player. Of course detecting whose pin is pulled if 2 players are standing next to each other with grenades would proof very tricky. So I shelved that.
I actually made an extension script for Steam that does exactly this though (at least I hope it does...). It also forces the camera away to ignore the CPU's (something I cannot do in Beta), but that became irrelevant after "individual camera script" was made.
Ending Notes
I have a lot of unfinished projects and ides that I was working with up to 2023 when I simply got too much jumble with scripting in my head and I couldn't churn out anything at all. Like I previously mentioned, I have never properly learned to write any code whatsoever (other than looking up problems for debugging my problems) so all my scripts are based on what I could understand or make out from reading other people's work (which was of hugely varying quality). So I would like to immortalise these scripters right here for helping me many years later even though I never met them: "#Chelog (#Octohorp team)", "Armadyl5", "XHomie", "Zoke". Those I did interact with "Sree" and "NotBot" and finally Odex who I did chat with and who is still very active to this day. I didn't forget Antonikon, but his script was so long and complex I couldn't use any of it, it still is amazing though written almost a decade ago.
I remember having a lot of fun writing scripts and feel proud of the ones I did manage to post here on forums. Unfortunately when I tried to imitate the method XHomies scripts were written, I wrote myself into a corner and didn't understand how to fix it. Looking back I wished I hadn't attempted it and at least finished what I had worked on instead of having nothing.
Fortunately I found a copy of this script, dated 2023. The first part was written way back in 2021. This script was basically comprised of other people's scripts and that is actually what I had intended, that it was a culmination of others works, my way of honouring them even though I never met them. Of course that is why it looks so terrible and may not be the most smooth and efficient. But it works, so that was good enough for me. Just for a brief moment, I was able to visualise and partake in a fraction of my former vision.
I'm glad if this has interested someone, and if you would like you can test it out, but more importantly I want you to have Fun and a new experience. And maybe someone will catch a glimpse of the potential I saw.
Link To public script ->
SteamExpansion Script that is supposed to be run on steam version. I really don't know if it works properly... It was supposed to be detectable by my main script, but I never got around to adding extra text to the "ShowSettings".
Code: Select all
public void OnStartup()
{
Events.UpdateCallback.Start(CameraFocusUsers,0);
}
public void CameraFocusUsers(float ms)
{
foreach (IPlayer ply in Game.GetPlayers())
{
//Camera
if (ply.IsBot && ply.CustomID.Contains("P:U-C") ) { ply.SetCameraSecondaryFocusMode(CameraFocusMode.Ignore); }
//Exclusive No duds for grenades or mines.
if(ply.IsHoldingActiveThrowable)
ply.SetActiveThrowableTimer(ply.GetActiveThrowableTimer());
foreach (IObjectMineThrown mine in Game.GetObjectsByName("WpnMineThrown")){
if(mine.GetDudChance()!=0)
mine.SetDudChance(0);
}
}
}
