Samus Aran's Coop Mod

[Samus_Aran]

Allo everyone.

I have only just compiled my first progs.dat a day ago, but now I think I will be investing the time into learning enough about it to put together a nice coop-centric mod, though some of it will be good for single player as well.

So far my ideas for the mod include:

Unique Player Skins

High res player skins that are unique for each player. These are to be upsampled from some QuakeWorld skins I have, unless someone has some high res skins they want to offer. I don't want cartoony looks for anything in the mod, so it must look appropriate for the dark and grim Quake universe.

Player Pain Skins

Skins will get progressively beaten-up/bloody as the players take damage, to make it easy at a glance to see who in the group needs health the most. For instance different visuals at 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%.

Monster Pain Skins

All standard monsters to also have upsampled high res skins with visible damage.

Dying Penalty & Reviving Ability

A system wherein when a player dies, they may not respawn for a fixed time (this will be a server setting), such as 60 seconds. During the time they spend dead, any other living player may approach them and give them half of their own life to revive them. So if a player has 80 health and revives their friend, both will have 40 health. This will encourage cooperation and also will discourage players from dying, as they will have to wait to respawn. Their backpack will only drop once they respawn after the 60 seconds. This ability to give your friends 50% of your health will not be limited to when they are laying on the ground unconcious, it can be done any time. This allows for a much fairer sharing of powerups, such as the megahealth or even just health boxes.

Taking Weapons

The default option will have weapons being picked up like in single player. This will fix the issue in maps designed for single player which have triggers that operate on a weapon being taken (all too common) which breaks the map in coop mode. This also increases the realism, as each weapon becomes a significant find like in single player, and players need to decide on who gets to take it.

This can be turned off using an option, in which case by default each player may take the weapon, but only the first player will receive any ammunition from it.

Sharing Weapons & Ammo

Ability to give other players your ammo and weapons, by dropping them onto the ground nearby. The player dropping them loses them permanently, unless they decide to pick it back up.

One of the most common unrealistic problems encountered in coop for us is one player running out of ammo, and the others not being able to share theirs. Makes it feel very fake, this will help a lot, and again encourage cooperation.

Ammo & Health Across Multiple Levels

When a player respawns at the start after dying, they will have zero ammo and 100 health. I absolutely loathe how when players keep on dying, their ammo keeps on collecting. It makes playing an episode infinitely stupid. After the first level, all the players are stocked up on ammo, and every time they die on that second level they fully recharge all their ammo! I hate it! By the third level of any episode every weapon has 100 ammo. This way the player will need to go back to their dead body and reclaim their backpack, or else get some ammo hand-outs from their friends. I also hate how respawning resets players health to whatever it was when they entered the level, this is incredibly unfair for a player who starts with 50 health.

Optional Flashlight

Possibly an optional weapon 9 which is a flashlight. It could drain ammo while in use, or just be really slow to switch to and from, to discourage binding keys to insta-switch to it. Could be useful if one player is badly injured to light the area for the other players, or just for group exploring. With all those high tech weapons, you'd think someone would have a flashlight.

Coop Scoring System

The default scoring system used in coop is the same as DeathMatch, rewarding players for killing the other players, and deducting one point each time the level kills the player (lava/traps/etc.) This is a stupid scoring system for cooperative play.

A possible scoring system:

Killing a Zombie: +1 frag
Killing a Soldier/Enforcer/Spawn: +1 frag for each player that hurt it
Killing a Fiend/Vore: +2 frags for each player that hurt it
Killing a Shambler: +3 frags for each player that hurt it
Reviving an unconscious teammate: +5 frags
Falling unconscious: -10 frags
Dying (respawning): -15 frags
Knocking another player unconscious: -25 frags
Finding a level secret: +20 frags
Level completed: +20 frags for each player

Configuration System

Everything the mod changes will be optional. Some sort of server side options which will allow them to use only the components they like from the mod.

I think those are the things I want to get accomplished in this mod so far. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. My only rules for additions to this mod would be that they're not impossible to implement and they don't detract from the realism, but add to it. Oh, and encourage cooperation of the players!

So far I have the multiplayer skins thing worked out. It really makes coop a lot more enjoyable!

Next on my todo list is the progressively-bloody skins.

After that the ammo-dropping thing. I have played a mod years ago that allowed dropping of ammo, so I will try to find some existing QuakeC to use as a base. I'm not into reinventing the wheel, modifying existing QuakeC is very doable for me, but from-scratch is still a long ways off!

[Fragger]

Problem:
"one player running out of ammo, and the others not being able to share theirs."
Solution:
"Ability to give other players your ammo and weapons, by dropping them onto the ground nearby. The player dropping them loses them permanently, unless they decide to pick it back up."

Doesn't that put you back to square one?

[Samus_Aran]

Example player skins

Here's the first skin I upsampled for the player. I used bump mapping and various scaling methods to make it have rounded corners and a 3Dish look. I'll be releasing a set for this skin with progressively more blood and clothing rips, as my meager artistic abilities allow.



I also upscaled one other skin, though I won't be keeping this one included, as it's out-of-universe for Quake, being a noticeable figure from Predator, a rather famous movie.



And lastly an in-game shot of us being very cooperative with our new skins!

[Samus_Aran]

Problem:
"one player running out of ammo, and the others not being able to share theirs."
Solution:
"Ability to give other players your ammo and weapons, by dropping them onto the ground nearby. The player dropping them loses them permanently, unless they decide to pick it back up."

Doesn't that put you back to square one?

I'm not sure I see what you mean. The proposed functionality deals with the problems and solutions below.

Problem:
Player Jane has 89 buckshot. Player Bob has 0 buckshot and is getting bored of hitting the walls with his axe.

Solution:
Player Jane drops 40 buckshot on the ground. Player Bob picks it up. Lock'n'load, let's go.

Alternate Problem:
Player Jane has the grenade launcher and the rocket launcher. Player Bob has neither. They are about to enter the cemetery, full of zombies.

Alternate Solution:
Player Jane drops her grenade launcher on the ground. Player Bob picks it up. They proceed into the cemetery to gib some zombies.

Does that make it clearer? The thing about picking up your own ammo is simply:

Jane drops 40 buckshot for Bob, but he runs off like a madman into the vore pit with his axe flailing. Jane picks her buckshot back up and proceeds to snipe off the vores.

[Lightning_Hunter]

Nice idea. My brother and I used to play quite a bit of coop, and it did annoy us that we started with the same health + ammo from the previous level every time one of us died.

[gnounc]

Gun mounted Flashlights.
If you want realism, maybe you find a flashlight...and cant mount it until later, when you find the ducttape.

and then cant use it for a while because you have 1 D batter and 1 C battery and never thought it would come up
: |

[gnounc]

And then the guy you're stuck in hell with is running around screaming like a little bitch, and you gotta plug him between the eyes to put him out of his misery. Then MAYBE you can think straight long enough to get a grasp on just what thE FUCK IS GOING ON OMG IS THAT THING THROWING ITS BLOODY ARM AT YOU?! AHHHHH!
And you pick up your radio to see if you can glean some emergency information but NO! You're NOWHERE IN THE SAME FUCKING REALM as a radio tower what the fuck do you do NOW?! So you get out your ration tin and try to make fire out of zombie flesh and gunpowder... and you're looking for your lighter when you suddenly remember your wife got you to try to give up smoking just last week and now you'll never see her again BECAUSE THE BITCH TOOK YOUR LIGHTER.

[Samus_Aran]

@gnounc:
Very funny, har har.

Though I did specifically say I wouldn't want a flashlight that could be used at the same time as a weapon (mounted), as that would give a very unfair advantage to the players over the monsters, when fighting in dark areas.

[gnounc]

How about a flashlight that can only be used in conjunction with a pistol?

Cause a pistol is one handed?

I mean if you're playing coop, who wants to be the tool they designate as
flashlight holder?

OUR TEAM IS AWESOME *pats your back* GREAT JOB FLASHLIGHT HOLDER!

If they cant use any weapons, at least give them cool utilities like a grapple or something that
they can still use, that cant be used with weapons. To try to even out the "being a chump" factor

[Baker]

Allo everyone.

I have only just compiled my first progs.dat a day ago, but now I think I will be investing the time into learning enough about it to put together a nice coop-centric mod, though some of it will be good for single player as well.

So far my ideas for the mod include:

• High res player skins that are unique for each player. These are to be upsampled from some QuakeWorld skins I have, unless someone has some high res skins they want to offer. I don't want cartoony looks for anything in the mod, so it must look appropriate for the dark and grim Quake universe.
• Skins will get progressively beaten-up/bloody as the players take damage, to make it easy at a glance to see who in the group needs health the most. For instance different visuals at 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%.
• All standard monsters to also have upsampled high res skins with visible damage.
• A system wherein when a player dies, they may not respawn for a fixed time (this will be a server setting), such as 60 seconds. During the time they spend dead, any other living player may approach them and give them half of their own life to revive them. So if a player has 80 health and revives their friend, both will have 40 health. This will encourage cooperation and also will discourage players from dying, as they will have to wait to respawn. Their backpack will only drop once they respawn after the 60 seconds. This ability to give your friends 50% of your health will not be limited to when they are laying on the ground unconcious, it can be done any time. This allows for a much fairer sharing of powerups, such as the megahealth or even just health boxes.
• Ability to give other players your ammo and weapons, by dropping them onto the ground nearby. The player dropping them loses them permanently, unless they decide to pick it back up. One of the most common unrealistic problems encountered in coop for us is one player running out of ammo, and the others not being able to share theirs. Makes it feel very fake, this will help a lot, and again encourage cooperation.
• When a player respawns at the start after dying, they will have zero ammo and 100 health. I absolutely loathe how when players keep on dying, their ammo keeps on collecting. It makes playing an episode infinitely stupid. After the first level, all the players are stocked up on ammo, and every time they die on that second level they fully recharge all their ammo! I hate it! By the third level of any episode every weapon has 100 ammo. This way the player will need to go back to their dead body and reclaim their backpack, or else get some ammo hand-outs from their friends. I also hate how respawning resets players health to whatever it was when they entered the level, this is incredibly unfair for a player who starts with 50 health.
• Possibly an optional weapon 9 which is a flashlight. It could drain ammo while in use, or just be really slow to switch to and from, to discourage binding keys to insta-switch to it. Could be useful if one player is badly injured to light the area for the other players, or just for group exploring. With all those high tech weapons, you'd think someone would have a flashlight.

I think those are the things I want to get accomplished in this mod so far. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. My only rules for additions to this mod would be that they're not impossible to implement and they don't detract from the realism, but add to it. Oh, and encourage cooperation of the players!

So far I have the multiplayer skins thing worked out. It really makes coop a lot more enjoyable!

Next on my todo list is the progressively-bloody skins.

After that the ammo-dropping thing. I have played a mod years ago that allowed dropping of ammo, so I will try to find some existing QuakeC to use as a base. I'm not into reinventing the wheel, modifying existing QuakeC is very doable for me, but from-scratch is still a long ways off!

Some/much of this can be found in the RQuake mod.

It is an Open Source mod, so the source code is available.

Inside 3D has a great QuakeC tutorial section. And a rather solid selection of well-known QuakeC mods' source codes can be found here.

[Samus_Aran]

Some/much of this can be found in the RQuake mod.

It is an Open Source mod, so the source code is available.

Inside 3D has a great QuakeC tutorial section. And a rather solid selection of well-known QuakeC mods' source codes can be found here.

I had meant to say thank you for the Inside3D link you gave me the other day, as that is where I have been learning QuakeC from, many great tutorials there! I will check out that mod, too.

Edit:

Reading over the RQuake page reminded me of one other thing I can't stand about coop: the scoring system is utterly broken! You still get frags for killing the other players in coop, quite stupid.

Maybe something like this:

Killing a Zombie: +1 frag
Killing a Soldier/Enforcer/Spawn: +1 frag for each player that hurt it
Killing a Fiend/Vore: +2 frags for each player that hurt it
Killing a Shambler: +3 frags for each player that hurt it
Reviving an unconscious teammate: +5 frags
Falling unconscious: -10 frags
Dying (respawning): -15 frags
Knocking another player unconscious: -25 frags
Finding a level secret: +20 frags
Level completed: +20 frags for each player

I think this would make a much more meaningful scoring system for cooperative play.

[Dreadlorde]

I like the idea. This is definitely something me and my friend would use in coop.

Do you plan on releasing the source?

[gnounc]

I think you should use a generic "points" system. instead of 2 frags, like 200 POINTS!!!
and put a little rolling counter top right like they do in mario : )

And uh, dole out 1ups every 100,000 points or something

Or like quad damage every few thousand points or something.

[Trickle]

where is the server located?

[Trickle]

if you're going to be setting one up =]