But Seriously, Is Anyone Curious about sbdm?

[SpecialBomb]

I really want some feedback on the whole thing, so hear me out:

If you want to try it, my server is always up on the darkplaces list, therefore please use darkplaces. The hostname is "Specialbombs rasberry-pi DM" on the list.

Start it up on your own servers and try it out with some friends.

Pro players, you are my best bet on feedback, so please think hard.

Also, please note that this mod refuses to work on singleplayer, so you will unfortunately have to start an external server through commands. This is why I am hosting it myself.

To download it, you can clone this github here: https://github.com/SpecialBomb/sbdm/
The github repository has it precompiled, so don't worry about needing to do it yourself.

Here is a good video showing most features:
sbdm Demo 2

And finally, here are the current changes:

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sbdm

sbdm, or SpecialBomb's Death Match, is a mod that is aimed at making all of the weapons useful in their own way. For example, if you had the Nailgun, and got the Super Nailgun, why would you want to use the Nailgun anymore? This mod tries to fix that. It also adds more ways to move, and adds different ways of playing.

Weapon Changes

+The Axe now does 80 damage, making it a viable melee weapon.

+The Nailgun now throws nails, and they stick to the map. If they are touched by a player, they get damaged by it. The nails last a minute until they disappear, and can be destroyed using explosives.

+The Shotgun is now infinitly accurate, and does more damage. This is useful in long range encounters with enemies.

+The Double-Barreled Shotgun has a much larger square spread rather than a rectangular one, and does more damage. It also has kickback, which can be used for stopping in midair, or boosting jumps.

+The Super Nailgun no longer shoots nails, but rather acts like the Doom Chaingun.

+The lightning gun now acts very differently. You hold down you attack button to charge it, and you let go to fire. The more ammo and the longer you charge for, it will do more damage. It will use a max of 25 cells.

Gameplay Changes

+The Quad and Ring now drop on death. (needs improving)

+There is no longer any automatic weapon switching, besides on low ammo.

+Instagib axes can be enabled with "deathmatch 3". Disables item pickups, and spawns player with only an axe. The axe will do 1000 damage.

+Random spawns. (needs improving)

+Grenades aren't random.

+Rocket impact damage is always 120.

+Players won't keep weapons, ammo, health, and armor when changing levels.

+If someone were to hit you, and you fall into water, slime, or lava and die within 3 seconds, a frag will go to the attacker. (Essentially, you push someone into lava, you get a frag).

+Walljumping! (see below)

Other Changes

+You can look at a player to see their name.

+Drowning doesn't damage armor. (might not be working)

Other things will be added at some point.

Walljumping

To do walljumps, bind a key (perferrably mouse2) to "impulse 30." Using the bound key while your back is facing towards a wall, you will jump in the direction you are looking in. This can be useful for finding combos in maps that let you get around quicker than usual. Practice a bit to get used to it, because nothing will happen if you jump at the wrong angle. You can only walljump 3 times until you have to touch the ground again.
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Thank you, I have worked pretty hard on this, so I appreciate any criticism.

Note to Baker: I don't care if the Lightning Gun works like the Gauss Gun in Half-Life, I noticed that after I coded it in. Just saying.

[SpecialBomb]

I would also like to note that this is designed for QuakeWorld clients, as the movement is so much better compared to standard Quake, which will affect criticism of this mod.

[Lucifex]

Reminds me of NewDM.

Not a big fan of the lightning gun change or the wall-jumping. Seems kinda UT-ish. Charging up weapons in combat that's this fast-paced really breaks the flow. IMO keep the LG like the original Quake LG, instead have it update much faster but do less damage. Sort of like the Quake Live LG.

For spawns, NewDM used distance-based random spawns, meaning when you die you will attempt to spawn farthest away from either your attacker, or all other players. Worked quite well and greatly prevented cheap spawnkills.

Another remedy to spawnkills is starting the player with 125/150 health and having it rot back down to 100, or spawning them with a certain amount of armor (50 green armor for example). Starting out fully or mostly invisible and slowly dialing down the alpha until the player is fully visible and silent spawns is another suggestion for spawns.

Many mods use 3-5 second spawnshields which I personally hate and still doesn't really eliminate the spawn kill (attacker can just chase you down).

[Lucifex]

Is this also built around DP7 protocol support? Or are you interested in allowing other non-DP Quake clients to connect (QUAKE protocol)? If you want DP7, go with CSQC support. Infinite possibilities with CSQC.

Suggestions:

-Frikbot support. Maybe even Frogbots as Frikbots are kinda bad even when they are correctly implemented in Darkplaces. (helps with players, have them auto-removed once 2 players join the server or something similar)
-Custom map support / random mapcycle. Custom maps can be auto-downloaded via CURL/http support in .pk3 files when clients connect. I think the download limit is 250-500 kb/s which is very very fast for a custom map download. Though I think this may be a DP7 protocol specific feature...
-In-depth map-vote menu, user friendly (CSQC will help)
-Gyrophysics / stickphysics
-Gibs stay for much longer/permanent (maybe clientside gibs though DP7 servers can handle gibs just fine because of delta compression)

Sigh this is just starting to sound more and more like NewDM. From which what I understand was trying to achieve a similar purpose as to your mod. Better balance, more modern features, but still keeping the core Quake atmosphere/gameplay. The server stopped being hosted awhile ago and the author lost motivation to continue.

I could go on and on with suggestions but I don't want to seem overbearing. Great work though, good to see someone interested on improving Quake DM.

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I do enjoy some good DM so I may hop on the server every now and probably later tonight.

[SpecialBomb]

Thanks!

No, you can use any protocol, but the main reason I recommend DP7 is because of the spikes. If there are too many, it will cause massive lag on other protocols, but DP7 handles it absolutely flawlessly.

I like your idea with the invisible spawns, I might do it, and I am working on a spawning algorithm similar to the one you stated.

I do not agree with changing the lightning gun back. This is because the lightning gun does way too much damage per second in standard dm, and I had to balance that somehow. Getting taken down within 5 seconds with intense damage pushing is not good game balancing. The lightning gun in my mod is not designed as a main weapon, but as a speciality weapon where you need a high chance to kill with a high risk. You aren’t supposed to run around with it. This also makes it an interesting weapon with 2-3 players due to the amount of time between skirmishes, where the original one just feels unfair in these cases. I also changed it, because the Chain Gun would be way too similar, creating a problem I'm trying to solve.

The wall jump is hit or miss with some people, it was my response to the hook in RuneQuake. I can see why some don't like it, so I'm thinking of adding a no wall jump gamemode. I worked pretty hard on it when I was just learning (which I still am), so I am not going to flat out remove it. I feel that it opens up a wide variety of techniques and new skills, and that's why I added it. Btw, just because it's like UT isn't a bad thing. I like both games, and I think that the warring between them is absolutely idiotic.

I have no idea how to use frikbot, but Cobalt can help me out there. Bots are always good in a mod, but I just kinda suck at that kinda thing.

Custom map support is everywhere dude, and DP7 auto downloads (again, another reason to use it.) This mod is fully compatible with all standard maps, but not weapon placement wise due to my changes. dm1 seems to be a really good map for this for some odd reason.

Voting is also something I wanted to work on.

I wanted to code my own sticking for the nails, but I realized it would cause a lot of lag if a bunch of them moved at once (even in DP7), so I decided to not do it.

I don't really care about gore to be honest, but it should be easy to do.

I would also like to note that I have never played NewDM (I'm new to the scene), so I hope I'm not copying it inadvertently. I do want to change core Quake, but I want the feel of the game to still be there while feeling balanced. This whole thing is a self experiment to see if I want to design a game.

[SpecialBomb]

I also have some major questions:

Should I change the Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher?

What should I focus on?

Is the wall jump bad?

[Dutch]

My recommendation for you: feedback is good, to a certain degree. Feedback that is based on improvement, not subjective opinion, is the best. Example:

Scenario 1)

"The walljump would work better if [insert reason here]." This helps you decide, from other people's perspective, what would make YOUR idea even better.

Scenario 2)

"I don't like the walljump." This is subjective feedback. YOU had the idea to add the walljump in YOUR mod. Therefore your mod needs a walljump. That's not even open for discussion, right?

Never cater to the masses. Make the mod you want to make. Because in all honesty, you probably won't get many players anyways. I'd say better than 80% of Quakers are single player fanatics, 19% are hardcore old school Deathmatchers that don't like any kind of change whatsoever, 0.5% will want to be involved in perfecting your mod, and 0.5% will want you to completely change it into a mod that they themselves don't want to learn how to make.

Which brings me to my next point: you should definitely add bot support, that way you and your buddies can enjoy this mod with additional players.

I've been working my ass off last few months on a mod that I already know might only get 12 downloads. Lol. But it's all Good, I know my old man and I can play it and have fun, and I'm also having fun making it and learning cool shit in the process.

I will try and check this out sometime this month...very busy over the next few weeks, but the video looked promising.

[DeathMaster]

No. Stop asking. You're annoying me. I don't like mods. I don't even like Quake. Do I? Wait, I do. Then maybe I should. Right? I don't know, that depends. Is it a mod? It is. OK. In that case I might. Not. Not? That's a double negative. So yes.

I'll try this on some bots, give some feedback.

[DeathMaster]

I'm liking this, the nailgun and the lightning gun in particular, though I can see how people would be angry with that. Lord knows everyone wants that Gauss in HLDM.

In terms of the grenade launcher and rocket launcher: I think that since the rocket launcher is the most sought after weapon in any deathmatch/duel and is basically the perfect beast, I'd say what you should probably focus on is the grenade launcher. Some requests I'd have would include remote detonation and farther distance, or better yet the ability to charge your grenade for distance. If you could find a way to get that to work and somehow balance the lg, I'll gladly play it.

In terms of walljumping, I'm not a huge fan but players can probably decide on their own if they want to use it. The map I played on was incredibly small, so I may not have the best opinion. I'd say just keep on working on it. Again, this is the mod you want to make, so do what you feel is best for the mod. Keep in mind that Quake DM has become an incredibly niche market with the passage of time.

[nahuel]

hello i do not play MP.

-add frikbots to any mod is very very very simple!

-what about a modification for to use the weapons in singleplayer?

have a nice day

[SpecialBomb]

hello i do not play MP.

-add frikbots to any mod is very very very simple!

-what about a modification for to use the weapons in singleplayer?

have a nice day

Recently learned this from Cobalt, may add frikbots soon.

I have no idea what caused it to fuck up on singleplayer use, it just doesn’t work. I probably won't look into it though.

[SpecialBomb]

I'm liking this, the nailgun and the lightning gun in particular, though I can see how people would be angry with that. Lord knows everyone wants that Gauss in HLDM.

In terms of the grenade launcher and rocket launcher: I think that since the rocket launcher is the most sought after weapon in any deathmatch/duel and is basically the perfect beast, I'd say what you should probably focus on is the grenade launcher. Some requests I'd have would include remote detonation and farther distance, or better yet the ability to charge your grenade for distance. If you could find a way to get that to work and somehow balance the lg, I'll gladly play it.

In terms of walljumping, I'm not a huge fan but players can probably decide on their own if they want to use it. The map I played on was incredibly small, so I may not have the best opinion. I'd say just keep on working on it. Again, this is the mod you want to make, so do what you feel is best for the mod. Keep in mind that Quake DM has become an incredibly niche market with the passage of time.

I did have some ideas for the grenade launcher, which included sticky mines, and I will take your ideas into account too.

I honestly don't know what to do with the lg at this point. In one case, it's really good at dishing out instant damage at a very long distance (after charging of course), but in another, you could do more damage per second with the rocket launcher. One really crazy idea was another type of trap, where you would link one point to another, and a lighting bolt will be drawn between them. When a player would cross this "tripwire," it would do massive damage. However, I already have a trapping weapon, and an lg-like weapon (super nailgun).

My personal opinion on the walljump is that it is a useful tool. You can use it to get around faster (gives you 500qu/s when you walljump), get to certain places easier, and dodge rockets in some cases. I mainly added it to see if I could do it, and it turned out pretty well from playtesting with my friends. I even found out how to perfectly get around dm1 with it, which makes it really easy to catch up with people or get items first. I may post a video showing how I use it, just in case no one else is experiencing it the way I am. In the case someone didn't want to use it, they would be handicapping themselves in my opinion. Before the walljump, I had a kind of interesting mechanic I called switching, where your current xy momentum would be redirected in the direction you faced. Through playtesting, it kinda sucked, but it was really useful in cases where you messed up a jump, and wanted to recover. Afterwards, I thought of the walljump.

[Mugwump]

Hey, where did all the BDSM innuendo go?! It was funny...

I did have some ideas for the grenade launcher, which included sticky mines

Just rip the code from Scourge of Armagon. Though TBH, I never found a satisfying use for this weapon in Quake. The classic GL is much better IMHO. Also, the prox mines don't bounce on walls, which prevents this tactical use unless you can toggle ammo types.

[SpecialBomb]

Hey, where did all the BDSM innuendo go?! It was funny...


Just rip the code from Scourge of Armagon. Though TBH, I never found a satisfying use for this weapon in Quake. The classic GL is much better IMHO. Also, the prox mines don't bounce on walls, which prevents this tactical use unless you can toggle ammo types.

One of the things I'm trying to do here is be original, and also learn. Ripping code would just mean making a mod comp, not an actual original modification.

My idea for them is that you can have a max 3 of them on the world, but they would auto delete when you started spamming, so you could theoretically use them like the regular gl but without the bounce.

[Mugwump]

When you say auto delete, do you mean they'd just disappear or automatically explode? IMHO the second solution would be better.

I have no idea if it's possible in Quake, but I remember prox mines in a game (forgot which, maybe Star Wars Dark Forces?) that stuck only to the floor, not to the walls, so you could still use the walls to make them bounce around a corner before they stuck to the floor. I found this behavior very cool.