The Stalker

[NaRyan]

Any chance for access to the svn?
I have a 16 slot server sitting unused since the gamemode it ran is not available for gmod13.
And the members of my community loved Stalker back when it was on fretta.

I know you have mentioned putting it on workshop, however trying to get players to install a workshop addon at times seems to be as much use as explaining quantum physics to a bird.

[twoski]

I'd rather not give too many people SVN access because i'm frequently updating and breaking things on the SVN so i need to be in contact with whoever has access.

[CowThing]

Removing the heal and making the corpses give [B].2 * ( your max health - your current health )[/B] would make it so the stalker has to kill a lot more often. The stalker would have to kill 5 people to get nearly full hp from really low, I think that should be fine.

As for what should replace the heal, how about a psychic shield. Costs 100 energy to activate and makes you immune to bullets for 4 or 5 seconds, the shield is also much more visible than the stalker, maybe 50 transparency, and after the shield is down the stalker will glow for a few more seconds similar to healing effect.

Or reanimate corpse, costs 100 energy. You need a marine corpse. It could give a very small amount of hp to the stalker, and create a zombie. The zombie should be a bit faster than players or the same speed as them. His hp could be [B]100+(living marines*10)[/B]. He will chase down the marines which could be a good distraction allowing the stalker to come in and attack.

[PrOctavius]

Oh my, I remember having played this a while back. Was pretty fun, hopefully it will be fun again. Gonna keep an eye on this gamemode.

[twoski]

[QUOTE=CowThing;38192830]Removing the heal and making the corpses give [B].2 * ( your max health - your current health )[/B] would make it so the stalker has to kill a lot more often. The stalker would have to kill 5 people to get nearly full hp from really low, I think that should be fine.

As for what should replace the heal, how about a psychic shield. Costs 100 energy to activate and makes you immune to bullets for 4 or 5 seconds, the shield is also much more visible than the stalker, maybe 50 transparency, and after the shield is down the stalker will glow for a few more seconds similar to healing effect.

Or reanimate corpse, costs 100 energy. You need a marine corpse. It could give a very small amount of hp to the stalker, and create a zombie. The zombie should be a bit faster than players or the same speed as them. His hp could be [B]100+(living marines*10)[/B]. He will chase down the marines which could be a good distraction allowing the stalker to come in and attack.[/QUOTE]

Not sure i like the idea of zombies. Although it's a step in the right direction.

For now, i'm nerfing the heal down to 25%, buffing the health earned from kills/eating corpses, and slightly upping the damage scale for soldiers some more.

I'm playing with flashlights right now. [url=http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1215271&p=38195424&viewfull=1#post38195424]I'm having a hard time coming up with a good alternative to the shitty default flashlights.[/url]

[yopie96]

This looks pretty cool, I tried joining a couple of the servers. They had people playing on them at the time, but when I tried to join it said it wasn't responding. And do you have any idea when the gamemode will be available to download? I might put this on my server.

[ScoutKing]

Just make the stalker more visible/Beef up the scanner, and leave the HP as is.

[twoski]

Okay i committed a pretty big update. Dunno how this will work out.

- Flashlights are now 100% lua handled. No idea what kind of performance hit this may have with lots of players.
- Stalker is now back to his normal look, he should be easier to see than he previously was.
- Updated the look and sounds of the stim injector.
- Removed the movement speed perk and replaced it with a flashlight enhancement perk.
- Stalker is nerfed so you have to play more aggressively now.
- Made a bunch of gameplay settings shit use convars.
- Fixed P90 holdtype.
- Added visual effects to mind flay and also made it more intense.
- Regeneration ability has a more obnoxious sound now.

[yopie96]

Is the majority of that stuff going to be cvars or easily adjustable Lua codes for when it starts being used by other people? I'm itching to see how I'd run my own version of it.
Finally got to play it, and aside from the Stalker being 90+% invisible at the time, it was awesome.

[twoski]

I didn't really make an effort to make the loadout code super modular so if you're planning on adding additional weapon choices then you're going to have to dig around and change some things. This was kind of on purpose, because the more complex the loadouts become, the harder it is to balance them. And any extra weapons would be redundant.

If you can think of some gameplay aspect that you want to control with a convar, ask about it here and i'll change it to a convar if it really warrants it.

[lua]
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_num_rounds", "15", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the number of rounds before map change. (def 15)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_health", "100", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the base amount of health the stalker spawns with. (def 100)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_add_health", "20", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the amount of health the stalker spawns with (per human). (def 20)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_gib_health", "10", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the amount of health the stalker gets from eating corpses. (def 10)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_kill_health", "25", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the amount of health the stalker gets from killing a human. (def 25)" )[/lua]

[skullorz]

[QUOTE=twoski;38207141]I didn't really make an effort to make the loadout code super modular so if you're planning on adding additional weapon choices then you're going to have to dig around and change some things. This was kind of on purpose, because the more complex the loadouts become, the harder it is to balance them. And any extra weapons would be redundant.

If you can think of some gameplay aspect that you want to control with a convar, ask about it here and i'll change it to a convar if it really warrants it.

[lua]
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_num_rounds", "15", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the number of rounds before map change. (def 15)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_health", "100", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the base amount of health the stalker spawns with. (def 100)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_add_health", "20", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the amount of health the stalker spawns with (per human). (def 20)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_gib_health", "10", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the amount of health the stalker gets from eating corpses. (def 10)" )
CreateConVar( "sv_ts_stalker_kill_health", "25", { FCVAR_ARCHIVE, FCVAR_NOTIFY, FCVAR_SERVER_CAN_EXECUTE }, "Controls the amount of health the stalker gets from killing a human. (def 25)" )[/lua][/QUOTE]

Damage per unit of time, where damage and unit of time are convars that affect the stalker.

[twoski]

Okay i changed the way that the health drain works since it wasn't scaling properly into games with lots of players.

You now lose (by default) 1 percent of your health every 1.2 seconds. The percent value is floored instead of rounded so basically, for every 100 health you have you will lose 1 health every 1.2 seconds. I've made the percent amount and time per drain a convar as well.

So the stalker will die in 120 seconds from full health if it takes no damage and doesn't heal.

Also, it seems that the serverside flashlights aren't causing any problems. So that's pretty cool.

[ScoutKing]

I think you should give him less health to begin with, and scale back on the degeneration % (personally i dont think degeneration is a good idea) at all, sorry).
So the stalkers nerfed still, but the player can still take his time/not rush/have some fun, but at the same time its not balls to the wall unbalanced as it was before.

Still mad respect on the work you've been doing, and all the servers are pretty much full right now; Maybe TTT, ZombieS and DarkRP will have a new competitor.

[twoski]

The servers aren't running my most recent patch which converts to percentage based. I think this model will actually work.

Currently, the stalker loses the same amount of health no matter how many players there are. I think it's 1 health per 1.5 seconds. So if there are 20 players, the stalker will spawn with 500 health and lose 1 health every 1.5 seconds. Which is retarded since it would take 750 seconds for the stalker to die of natural causes, and that's not factoring in any damage he takes or healing that he does.

Now compare that to my new model. 1% of 500 health is 5, and the stalker will lose 5 health every 1.2 seconds. This means that in 120 seconds he will be dead. What makes this model good is that it's scaled based on the amount of soldiers. If there are 10 soldiers, it will still take 120 seconds for the stalker to die of natural causes.

This alone is enough to keep him on his toes i think. I've reduced healing to 20% (yet another nerf) so now in order to survive you either have to bank all your mana for your heal ability (which will barely sustain you) or play more aggressively.

I'm interested in seeing how this patch works out.

[ScoutKing]

Currently, if its a full server, the stalker has to eat every body he can find if they want to stay alive because the players are so trigger happy they'll end up hitting you anyways.
The way it is right now is perfect actually, you can hunt for the stalker, and kill him, and the stalker to can rip your shit if hes decent/good.

You may want to rethink the round system a little bit though, i prefered the new one, where if you won a round as a stalker you got to be him again, and so and and so on, but for balanced/gameplay purposes, since theres more players that would piss people off to no end, so maybe make it where if you win the round as a stalker you get another round and after that regardless if you win or lose, it randomizes.

[NaRyan]

Using the most recent up date of Stalker.
GMOD server is up to date, and I only have 1 addon on the server (Evolve)
Server has Counter-Strike:Source & TF2 content on it.

I had this error spammed to server console several times.

[quote]
[ERROR] ...s/stalker/entities/entities/sent_tripmine_laser/init.lua:54: Tried to use invalid object (type IPhysicsObject) (Object was NULL or not of the right type)
1. IsAsleep - [C]:-1
2. unknown - ...s/stalker/entities/entities/sent_tripmine_laser/init.lua:54[/quote]

Also this one, save error as above but had more lines in it.
[quote]
[ERROR] ...s/stalker/entities/entities/sent_tripmine_laser/init.lua:54: Tried to use invalid object (type IPhysicsObject) (Object was NULL or not of the right type)
1. IsAsleep - [C]:-1
2. unknown - ...s/stalker/entities/entities/sent_tripmine_laser/init.lua:54
3. Spawn - [C]:-1
4. CreateDeathRagdoll - gamemodes/stalker/gamemode/ply_extension.lua:718
5. OnDeath - gamemodes/stalker/gamemode/ply_extension.lua:697
6. unknown - gamemodes/stalker/gamemode/init.lua:519
7. TakeDamage - [C]:-1
8. MeleeTrace - ...modes/stalker/entities/weapons/weapon_stalker/shared.lua:188
9. unknown - ...modes/stalker/entities/weapons/weapon_stalker/shared.lua:157[/quote]

I have also been getting complaints about players being able to no-clip around.
That bug seemed to happen at random, to random players, and it caused a lot of complaints since players would just go out the level and let the stalker die.

Not sure if it still happens after latest update, will let you know if it does.

[Doctor Dave]

There's some bug I found, when I was spectating, I was opening up the scoreboard, and then I had some lua error and I wasn't able to close it.
Whenever I press tab again, all the players except the stalker disappear.
[T]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/920118814651544261/E47EAACCB62486FD08CBFC96373E16F1F3DC9AA8[/T]

[ERROR] gamemodes/stalker/gamemode/cl_scoreboard.lua:331: attempt to index upvalue 'SCOREBOARD' (a nil value)
1. unknown - gamemodes/stalker/gamemode/cl_scoreboard.lua:331

[twoski]

I was missing a validity check in the laser code and i fixed that scoreboard bug.

I fixed the shitty prediction on the famas (i hope) so now it actually shoots 3 shot bursts.

[NaRyan]

Not seen the noclip bug happen since I last updated.
And the server has been busy since I last updated it.
Even had Garry on the server a few times.

[James0roll]

A gamemode thread without photos is like porn without masturbation or any, porn.

[NaRyan]

Using latest version, got this error printed to server console a few times.
(it has been spammed a few 100 times now)

[quote]
[ERROR] ...modes/stalker/entities/entities/sent_droppedgun/init.lua:60: Tried to use a NULL entity!
1. GetClass - [C]:-1
2. unknown - ...modes/stalker/entities/entities/sent_droppedgun/init.lua:60[/quote]

[iGustopher]

[QUOTE=NaRyan;38218224]Using latest version, got this error printed to server console a few times.
(it has been spammed a few 100 times now)[/QUOTE]

I haven't seen this error yet, interesting. Are you sure you're using the latest version?

[twoski]

[QUOTE=NaRyan;38218224]Using latest version, got this error printed to server console a few times.
(it has been spammed a few 100 times now)[/QUOTE]

Thanks, patched.

I need screenshots and gameplay videos of this, if someone feels like filming themselves playing that would be cool.

Also, it looks like my latest round of nerfs finally hit the stalker hard. People have been dying a lot more as stalker. I'm going to slightly un-nerf the drain time.

[zackh]

Can I get SVN access?

[twoski]

Unless you are hosting dedis, the answer is no. I'm going to be uploading this gamemode to the steam workshop as soon as i get a new laptop.

[skullorz]

[QUOTE=twoski;38227024]Unless you are hosting dedis, the answer is no. I'm going to be uploading this gamemode to the steam workshop as soon as i get a new laptop.[/QUOTE]

I'll host a dedi. Just send me a message. Sorry about ReDead, but the NPCs broke after that update :P

[twoski]

I committed another update today.

- Fixed the following miscellaneous bugs:
- Ammo displaying incorrectly for P90.
- Players teleporting under the floor when they die instead of spectating their corpse.
- Wrong mouse sensitivity for scoped SG552.
- Weapon dropping bug.

- Redid the FAMAS because the old one was poorly predicted. I should also note that the FAMAS will now always shoot one very accurate bullet and 2 less accurate bullets with each burst.
- Added convars for friendly fire and friendly fire damage scale (by default, friendly fire is on and teammates deal 5% damage to eachother).
- Added a message that prints the next map before the map changes.

[Chewgum]

Are you using ViewPunch serverside? It seems a bit unresponsive or slow when shooting a weapon.

[twoski]

It's called from both sides i think. I'll make sure it's clientside. Also i'm going to implement some anti-material hack measures since it's entirely possible with lua.

I've also found an old map i was working on some time ago so i think i'll finish it up.

TODO:

- Get a new texture for the stalker that uses blur. (done)
- Fix the claws not hitting sometimes. (done)
- Adjust the bleed effect and make it a little less intense.

[ScoutKing]

Friendly fire is causing people to go crazy/causing drama because some people just shoot at teammates