4 years later...

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Barbie
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4 years later...

Post by Barbie »

Look, mum, what I've found:
LongLastingAmp.jpg
"Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind." --Terry Pratchett
JackGriffin
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by JackGriffin »

I guess "Super" = "Virtually Unlimited".

It's a shame there became an arms race in UT, especially concerning MH. Mappers ended up messing so many things up trying to compensate for making monsters have too much health. I say this in full recognition that I am a chief offender: endless reloading ruined monster hunting. The overpowered weapons didn't help but it was chiefly not having to worry about your inventory that made it into this...mess.

It's too late now because no one would ever play it but ideally MH maps should be balanced so that they are tough but doable with stock weapons. It ought to be like BT and you shouldn't see the ends of maps until you git gud enough to make it there. Ammo should be a constant worry and it should be common knowledge on how to use nali seeds. Titans should scare you and you should have to plan out how to engage them.

Nah, guys like me gave you endless ammo and health and ruined everything. Now it's just room after room of endless waves of gib creation that takes multiple hits with a level 5 NW3 nuke to make a dent in.
Image

Sorry.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
Higor
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by Higor »

SET PLAYERPAWN DAMAGESCALING 5
Best command to 'quick-test' Coop and MH.

@JackGriffin, got any 'actual' MH maps that fill those criteria?
I gotta test and load more maps in my Dev2 server, at least to not get bored during my stay in the US.
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sektor2111
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by sektor2111 »

Hey, relax...
I was looking at texture in background... Nice ambience :loool: (speaking about some mental problems)
However relic of god bonus or item would be nice as a future implementation, player having it playing in God Mode for having pretty much no skill and being more retarded as possible, why do we need to make a sport or felling a challenge ? Actually we can only join in servers and... disconnecting later after collecting a large amount of score... by doing nothing. Yeah, a Join Score is also great: Thanks for visiting my server, you have a default 1.000.000.000.000 points.

If this is the future of doing MH servers and "maps" used, do not wait me to play there or making other MH maps virtually considering myself banned in those retarded servers. I'll keep my stuff only for myself without even to announce nothing if this dumbness spree will continue. I gotta think at some maps with stuff for making their mess closer to normality... destroying all Non Stock items used and code dropped into some mover or critical decoration - half stripped - to make life harder in dealing with it, and changing methods in each map...
I'm not going to repeat how many people have left because of crap which was happily brought to this game which was supposed to be a team-challenge. I'm not sure if they will ever return or how many will have a "back to stage" tryout.
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by nogardilaref »

One big problem with MH is that, when in the presence of powerful weapons, instead of toning down the weapons, mods and maps are used to tone up the monsters health and damage instead.
And then mods to increase health and ammo over time are added to compensate for the monsters... and then the monsters have their health, damage, and even speed, upped to fuck again, and so on and so forth in a ridiculous cycle, with the only limit being the actual 32bits integer overflow.

Dear admins: some of the most used mods in MH nowadays actually have settings to lower them down to reasonable values, so you can play normal MH maps with normal health.

The only reason to up the monsters health and damage to very high values is only in case you have a mod like UT2004 RPG mod, where such actually matters, as depending on your level and equipment alone you may need 100 shots or just 1 to kill a monster.
Another case are maps meant to be played exclusively with nukes, those are fun to play times to times though.
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by JackGriffin »

Higor wrote: @JackGriffin, got any 'actual' MH maps that fill those criteria?
I gotta test and load more maps in my Dev2 server, at least to not get bored during my stay in the US.
You coming along the west coast? If you pass by Oregon let me know, I'll treat you and yours to dinner.

I've toyed with this idea a lot a couple of years back when Nels was getting started with his MH version. I'm not a fan of bots but I think he was on to something. I looked at the default MH maps as well as some very early ones and made spreadsheets of the ammo pickups and weapons in some of those maps. I compared "available damage" to "monster total health" and found that you should have around 10-15% more damage available in the weapons and ammo. Certain weapons make this figure flexible since they often shoot wildly (enforcer) or are hard to score full damage hits (flak). This keeps your ammo low and forces you to constantly consider using the Chainsaw/Dispersion pistol to conserve.

I converted a few maps to test this with, making some adjustments to fit the criteria. It's pretty good actually just setting up along these simple rules of thumb. Place weapons and ammo sufficient to cover all monster health, add 10% to that in ammo and off you go. Bonus points for tweaking it to make players use close-up weapons to engage Titans, sniper skaarj, etc. It really takes some thought to make it tough but fair and doable. However the thrill of making it to the MHEnd with three bullets and 17 health is a feeling you have been missing, I promise you.

I'll look and see if I still have the maps. I'm pretty sure I have the spreadsheets still on a backup drive but I've probably not saved the maps. I put TEST into maps titles when I do things like this and periodically I purge all maps out of my dev install that are marked like this.

If any of you guys are done with over-the-top MH and want to play it the way it should be played I'd be game to make it. No bots, tough maps, no free health or ammo. In return you get excited again. Here, hop into the wayback machine a moment, I want you to remember something....

Your trapped in the hallway and you hear clicking. Quickly you realize it's the lights going out and darkness is coming your way. In seconds you are plunged into full darkness when suddenly the backup red lighting comes online and you have your first skaarj all over you. You remember that panic you felt? The anger when you died and had to redo it again and you still felt dread at it even though you now know what's coming? When was the last time you felt that in any of today's MH server?

f1BG7UEiFS0
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by Red_Fist »

nogardilaref wrote:One big problem with MH is that, when in the presence of powerful weapons, instead of toning down the weapons, mods and maps are used to tone up the monsters health and damage instead.
And then mods to increase health and ammo over time are added to compensate for the monsters... and then the monsters have their health, damage, and even speed, upped to fuck again, and so on and so forth in a ridiculous cycle, with the only limit being the actual 32bits integer overflow.

Dear admins: some of the most used mods in MH nowadays actually have settings to lower them down to reasonable values, so you can play normal MH maps with normal health.

The only reason to up the monsters health and damage to very high values is only in case you have a mod like UT2004 RPG mod, where such actually matters, as depending on your level and equipment alone you may need 100 shots or just 1 to kill a monster.
Another case are maps meant to be played exclusively with nukes, those are fun to play times to times though.
But here is the problem, if you make a map, and for online, one could assume there is 16 players, or 2.

So if you play a SP map one player you can at least count on some constant, it's really hard to know how to set things up.
a total spam fest with 16 players that takes 2 hours, one player would never finish.

Make it just right for one player, and a group blasts through in 2 minutes.

I never know what to do.
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sektor2111
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by sektor2111 »

Because none coder thinks at something "dynamic". When 22 players in a sunday in server X are arguing because they hunt monsters and each-other and all of them wants the best score, nothing is adjusting map for making more noise and distracting them to the game. Also I'm not interested to do such things because I'm always playing with bots and rarely with other human being in private, I have maps sorted and in good conditions for 5 hunters. Game difference between 3-5 hunters and 12-16 and 18-24 is insane. However I do not understand why 16 people do need heavy weapons like all of them are being retarded and cannot hunt using a lowered power. If 8/16 are aiming monster at head delivering 150 damage at a head-shot, I think 150 × 8 = 1200 damage. Then monster which health should have then ? One creature having 750 and being a bit of threat for 1 human, in above condition is turned into nothing challenging, first row of players is taking it down under one second.
What has to do mapper ? Mainly doesn't worth efforts. Triggers for UE are taking in account 4 touchers. ScriptedPawn has a team code optimized for 4 pawns - then 4 roamers. Reason for adding players ass in ass because server uses 32+ players (out of default array) overrides all my logic and understanding. Game has no challenge, players are bugging each-other and start arguing around, it's not thing else than a mess there.
In BattlingLottery map which I did those powerful Skaarjs are not gonna be a threat as long as in fore mentioned conditions I'm not sure if they can breath before being killed in seconds. Guided Redeemers, Invulnerability are just other legit cheats making more mess around. Question stays: Why do we need to do more maps then ? We cannot accomplish mission for a difficult Level since admins are ruining them properly in all the way making them useless. I was playing maps using only stock and then regenerators - VERY DIFFERENT. Bonuses are decreasing a difficulty from let's say virtually scale 3 to scale -5, more exactly NO difficulty. I really "forgot" to die ON-Line in some random server, to mention playing there for 2 hours and no player has entered - perhaps players are getting tired of this no skill game but admins are still blabbering with "cool stuff" unable to figure the useless setup which they consider normal.

Not the last I read advertising in a "MH server": "To Do List: Removal of ammo and items from maps." - yes is heavy to remove stuff... no wonder. So there is supposed to be only a regen game based on craps loaded.
Your map (RedFist) has items with desirability ? Good luck then ? These admins are not giving a sh!t on your work, they have "master plans". Good luck, admins, with your "MH mods", and <Good Bye> in advance !
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by nogardilaref »

But even if the map in question has a monster which requires 16 players shooting during 2 hours to kill, I find that simply stupid and the very definition of boring.
"Boss"-like monsters shouldn't take anything more than around 10 to 15 min to kill, maximum, and perhaps there should be a mod which could adjust the monsters health at least based on the number of players, by reading the number of recommended map players.

So if a monster health is 16000, and the map is targeted to 16 players, and only 1 is playing, it should be just 1000 instead. Then with 2 it would be 2000, 3 = 3000, and so on and so forth.

Other games like Killing Floor adjust the number of monsters per wave instead, except for the final boss which has its health adjusted, as well for semi-boss monsters, although KF is not MH-like, it's more like UT2004 Invasion, where you have waves rather than a coop campaign that you're meant to survive through.
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by JackGriffin »

I found that doing it in the reverse way works best overall. You just scale TakeDamage by the number of players. Set up the map to be played with high difficulty by a single person then start scaling damage when multiple people join. 3 people means damage is .33 of normal. Super simple and requires no calculations on the part of the mapper.

Yeah, I've thought too much about this.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by Red_Fist »

AND that is the other monkey wrench tossed in, use a hit point of 1, some server dude will use some mod to make it 10,000,000.

Or mess with pickups, so what IS the guidline,

Build with only 1 player in mind and let the server mess it up ?

Or make everything too much that 1 can never finish ? I can't think past 1 player as long as it's hard enough.

I think making it hard and long for one player is probably the most normal way, and let the server mess it up, but offline the map will be what you made (unless they use mutator) But if they have to use a mutator at home for one player, means the map was built with too much.
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by papercoffee »

@Jack & Nog
Such kind of Monster-Health scaling mutator would be absolutely useful and awesome.
But what about overpowered weapons?
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by sektor2111 »

Mmm... I'm closer to what Jack said but not like that. I would scale monster damage without touching player. Let jesters to be happy with their weapons but... because are too many, allow monster to crush them properly with triple damage if 30 hunters are attacking. Why players ? They still don't have enough ?
But if you need to remove player power is is advisable to No more give any bonus if we have more than 3 hunters. What for ? Do they still feel wick and need damage and redeemers. Why ?
First of all because admins will not change mods in 3 seconds I would go for an experimental map having some crap into MyLevel. I wanna see who will use it. Depending on users number you might figure if idea is capturing attention else doesn't worth efforts for doing it.
For me simple by hunting in a team-work is more than suffice and leaving away too many advantages...

We have the technology to develop paths, to add items even in empty maps - including PlayerStarts (now I really cannot find that crap for tweaking...). So that "we need regen because maps are empty" is just a bullshit excuse for making a mess. You can quit regenerating and developing load spots.
Sample:
At this moment I added some stuff around second start location because there weaponry were really poor, impossible to kill those monsters with spawning inventory in (du)-Dormant. Player has to move back for items so using a secondary spot is a stupidity in such case because you will have a double road to do for being loaded so definition "shortcut" is a myth. Of course it was addressing regens used but we can attack it as long as in game is not a read-only thing - I can even setup new MonsterEvent Messages and all those things in run-time. Completing stuff is a simple task due to builder which I did generating spawn code from a temporary copy of map, it's simple to adjust a Level and quitting stupid mods ruining timers. Not to mention advantages to increase stability by adjusting insane set actors.
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by JackGriffin »

The whole point of this would be to build a server package that doesn't use extended weapons, more damage, etc. Look, if you *really* want to limit it I'll build a system that admins won't be able to bypass and add what they want. It misses the point though that there exists a group of players that would like to do the maps as they were intended, using stock weapons and stock ammo and having to play conservatively.

I'm not for telling admins how to set up their servers but I'd be happy to script a back-to-basics server that plays monsterhunting like it should be. You could edit a shit ton of the existing maps to be compatible using the formula I proposed earlier (total health +10% for how much ammo) but also bearing in mind that monster numbers also need to be considered to prevent overwhelming.

I'm off next week. I might start working on this. Is anyone else interested? I mean seriously interested? I think I'm going to do a new MH but stripped back to simplicity.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Re: 4 years later...

Post by papercoffee »

JackGriffin wrote:Is anyone else interested? I mean seriously interested? I think I'm going to do a new MH but stripped back to simplicity.
Well, I am.
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