[Release] Brace a4 - Duos Deathmatch

[TinMan]

Hoo it’s been a while. Hadn’t really touched brace-dev for much more than a day or so since last version (nearly a year now? lol), but over this last week after playing a few games I though I’d work at it. Initially it was just going to be a few tweaks but after the simple question by none other than timestart ‘Can you play strogg?’ I though I’d bite the bullet.
So that’s the big ‘feature’ of this version, you can now play Strogg. It’s rough as hell of course but there’s fun to be had there.

Either join the ICE brace server and say yessir to download or
Manual download: http://etqw.nett.org/download/etqw/mods/brace-a4-13.zip

Readme dump activate!

= Brace - A Duo/Tag-Team mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars =
Version: a4 - Date: 2010-08-20
Author: Jarad Hansen aka TinMan aka Tex

NOTE: This is an Alpha version.
While theoretically the worst that will happen is the game crashes, I hold no responsibility if your computer explodes in a ball of incandescent fury.

= Gameplay =
Players must team up with another player to scavenge the level for pickups - weapons ammo, health, repair packs and fuel cells while fighting other teams.
XP is given for damaging enemies and finding and using pickups. Team with most XP at end of match wins.
Crates of resources or weapons are drooped at intervals, destroy them to gain their contents.
Vehicles are also dropped, they are up for grabs to whoever can get to them first.
Players drop their pickups upon death, will lose any resources they have acquired by using packs.

= Buddying Up =
The fireteam panel at the top left of the hud will show you your fireteam name and your buddy (if you have one).
You will be automatically assigned a team and a buddy, but you can press numpad Enter to set up your own. If you have a bot on your team you will have to drop it from your fireteam before inviting anyone else to join.
All players can revive a team mate using the activate button, though it takes several seconds.

= How to do stuff =
To pick up ‘pickups’(weapons and packs), aim at them and pressing Use (‘F’ key by default).
To ‘use’ a pack (get it’s resources), press alt-fire while holding one (Right Mouse by default). Or press the enter/exit key while looking at a pack on the ground.
Normal fire drops the currently held pack.
Hold fire to install the currently held pack in a vehicle.
To drop a weapon or item press ‘’ ( can be rebound via controls/weapons menu ).

= Further Info =
Players are limited to holding two primary weapons at a time. The pistol and mac pistol you spawn with cannot be dropped, however you can pick up an aditional side-arm.
Players are limited to holding two packs of any mix.
You can read the type of pickup by looking at it.

When players are close to their teammate this shows as a lit icon in the fireteam list, they are considered ‘braced’ which gives some bonuses:
Armor: Takes the edge off some damage.
Health regeneration: A higher limit than when solo. Health only regeneration kicks in after several seconds of taking no damage, and is only there to stop a few hits while trying to find some health.

Pickup Types:
Weapons.
Grenades.
Mines - Can be used by any class, will auto arm on drop/setup.

In mixed sides mode (gdf/strogg) you’ll get the equivalent weapon/item when picking one of the other sides.

GDF:
Packs: Can be picked up (limit of two) and used to gain the resource, or given/installed to a ally/vehicle.
Health packs.
Ammo packs - for players or vehicles.
Fuel Cells - used for class tools or vehicles.

Strogg:
Simplestroy: Drops from dead bodies, use use key :o.
Stroyent Cells, can be picked up and used or given to ally.

Class tools: Now require ‘power’ instead of a recharging bar, power works like an ammo type and is gained from fuel cells.
GDF Classes:
Soldier: Has more health, HE charge requires about 1 pack of power.
Medic: Still has instant revive, can also heal teammates and self with defribs, but has less health.
Engineer: Requires power to use the repair pliers.
FieldOps: Requires power to throw air strike markers one pack gives two strikes. Has a radio that lets them listen for audible beeps from pickups.
Covert: Requires power to enable smoke grenades or third eye. Runs faster than other classes when carrying silenced pistol.

= Known bugs and Limitations =
On initial map start the server (including ‘Play Computer’) spawns approximately 150 pickups which are physics objects, so there will be a few frames of punishment CPU/bandwidth wise until they settle.
Likewise during each drop wave.

NOTE: See changelog.txt for more info.

= Using the Mod =
NOTE: This mod is for Quake Wars version 1.5, it will not work on earlier or later versions.

1. Installation: Unzip brace-a4.zip into Quake Wars folder. Or connect to a server running Brace with auto-download.

2. Loading the mod:
   Load Quake Wars and choose Brace from the mods menu.
   At the console you can run the ‘gamename’ command to check if the mod loaded.
   brace must be loaded before attempting to connect to a server running brace.

3. Playing the mod:
   Play against Computer, or start a server, or connect to a server running brace.

Playing computer or setting server:
The game sets the time limit to 30 minutes itself. It plays well with around 12 players/bots. With 16 players or over play starts to get a bit more dicey.
A server.cfg is in documentation folder.

= Server Hosts =
Look through ‘documentation/server settings’ files, brace specific settings or notes are tagged with // BRACE //

= Performance =
Running a bot game takes a bit of CPU power, the more bots you have the bigger the hit. The system does scale the bots thinking rate down if your system isn’t handling thing well, but there is a limit. Therefore it may be necessary to drop some of your settings down a notch to get a more consistent experience. Of course if you mainly play bots anyway you would have already done this.

= Feedback =
Email me at tinman_squad at hotmail, or post on the splash damage forums, or catch me online.

= Distribution =
Distribute as you will, just keep the zip unmodified. Sweet.

= Thanks and credits to =
Those running servers and those still playing the mod.
Splash Damage and id Software for the awesome game/engine.
Cody64 for his blood mod.
reyalP for wheeled vehicle handling improvements.
Everyone who’s given feedback online and at the community forums.

= Final Thoughts =
Another big gap in development. Even though just rough/initial Strogg support they play fun (of course a big part of that is the solid base of vanilla combat/tools and the awesome maps), the combined health/ammo - shared ammo for most weapons, and stroyent dropped by boddies give the strogg a more gung-ho combat oriented feel opposed to the gdf. Pretty much as soon as you get a good weapon for you and your buddy you go looking for someone to hurt, while with gdf you tend to scavenge longer to get some good packs to supplement. Playing a few bot games the XP gap between my team and next seems to be much larger than playing gdf bot games, I’ll have to see what I can do there.

[TinMan]

=========
Changelog

================
Version a4
Date: 2010-08-20

• Fix team chat showing as fireteam chat

• Sniper rifle damage returned to vanilla

• Trojan AA lock-on Anansi

• Fix vehicle cycle all positions

• Added EMP grenades

• End game cam focused on conflict point

• Max frag grenades held reduced to 3

• Bumblebee added to drop schedule game_stages23

• Huskies added to drop schedule game_stages23

• Fix crash if an airdrop referred to a non existent deployobject

• Bots pickup mines (still don’t use them)

• Rough Strogg support

• Dead bodies drop Simplestroy, a light stroyent with a hint of cilantro.

• Either side (gdf/strogg) can pick up the equivalent weapon/pickup of the other side.

• Two new drop schedules - game_stages23_strogg, game_stages23_mixed

• Server .cfgs added to switch between the sides/modes. si_max* is only enforced on team join though so players will have to manually switch out if a side is switched off.

=Know issues=

• No balance (even attempted) for mixed sides.

• When picking up item of other side you will get the equivalent item, but it will not switch to that item.

• On strogg picking up a second weapon of the type you have will freeze the current weapon and will not allow it to fire, switching to another item and back will fix it.

• Strogg fireteam colors not correct for enemy arrow and scoreboards.

• Default fireteam names are shared between sides.

• Some maps still have gdf base defenses, and some maps have a conflict point right in the base.

• On strogg the revival tool will not automatically activate with use (except for technician), will have to manually switch to it and use.

=Bots=

• Strogg bots will try and pick up GDF packs and weapons they can’t use.
• Strogg bots will try to use lightning gun past its range
• Strogg bots will use lightning gun like a pistol (repeated fire instead of hold fire).
• Strogg technicians will try to heal/supply ally when it does not have that ability

[Violator]

yay for brace Nice stuff tex and good to see the strogg making an appearance. One idea to help the startup lag, how about staggering seperate threads to spawn in say 10 or so objects every 10 secs or so rather than 150 in one go (ie chatty not chunky ;)). Downside to that is players may see the objects spawning in.

[TinMan]

More issues:
There’s an end game crash for clients :o

The strogg and mixed drop schedules have a lot less vehicles. For two reasons, I haven’t updated the strogg vehicles to use resources yet, and (as Azuvector also found out while doing his own mod) the most of the strogg vehicles don’t airdrop right, either they ignore that they’ll clip through stuff or they’ll receive massive damage (much worse than some of my gdf loldrops).

The current stogg vehicle drops also seem to lag out the server horrendously, much worse than gdf.

[Azuvector]

The strogg and mixed drop schedules have a lot less vehicles. For two reasons, I haven’t updated the strogg vehicles to use resources yet, and (as Azuvector also found out while doing his own mod) the most of the strogg vehicles don’t airdrop right, either they ignore that they’ll clip through stuff or they’ll receive massive damage (much worse than some of my gdf loldrops).

For the record, I’ve only found issues with the Desecrator and Hog(The Tormentor’s legs sometimes do some odd stuff, but it typically lands perfectly fine, so long as you don’t drop it on a steep hill and have it fall over.). Teleport dropping them works as a workaround, and is fairly painless to implement. Script source is included with QWTA, isn’t much if any of it done in actual code.

The current stogg vehicle drops also seem to lag out the server horrendously, much worse than gdf.

Not sure what’s up with that, no one’s reported anything like it to me for QWTA. Sure its the server? Might be the client choking on all the reentry effects trails. IIRC Brace airdrops a lot of stuff quite frequently, especially near the end of the round.

[light_sh4v0r]

Welcome back Tex
Looking great, will have a bash next week when I find someone to play with!

[Susefreak]

Any chance of a mac compile? Would be awesome!

[Scrupus]

@Susefreak: it’s probably best to wait for the end game crash to be fixed before even thinking about a mac build

But the last dev version (that was installed today) seems to handle it better - too early to say for sure, but just played 3 matches without any crash!

The new strogg support is awesome, even with the current “rough” alpha implementation.

Hunting for victims, killing them and then feeding on the dropped stroy cells is quite exiting, and it’s also very nice to have the good old stroggs back in play! :oppressor:

So thanks a lot for the new version TinMan!

I’ll hope to invite to a new Strogg Brace Party as soon as the crash bug is confirmed to be fixed

[TinMan]

Violator: That’s an idea. Alternately I’d could try to shift the match start till after it settles down from the items spawn.

Teleport dropping them works as a workaround, and is fairly painless to implement. Script source is included with QWTA, isn’t much if any of it done in actual code.

Ta, I’ll poke around at some point.

Sure its the server? Might be the client choking on all the reentry effects trails. IIRC Brace airdrops a lot of stuff quite frequently, especially near the end of the round.

It’s very noticeable at the last strogg drop, big yellow chunks on the lagometer, and it’s only dropping 4 strogg vehicles and a few crates, pretty much same as gdf drop wise except 3-4 times worse lag wise - on my machine at least (this is with my 400ms ping though :o).

The issue may be my relative lack of clear-drop-point checking It was ok with gdf drops which physically chute them, from my brief look the strog drop manually sets the origin rather than a physics move, thus the situations of being part way through world geometry.
It’s possible that’s what’s killing things, the physics system trying to deal with such intersections.
I noticed prior with gdf there’s also slowdown when vehicles chute down on to an odd spot of geometry and can’t settle, except there it’s not lag so much as low framerate, I’ll have to throw process monitor on my client and see if the cpu is getting hammered.
Scrupus, any chance of you doing some kind of monitoring of the server while you’re playing through?

Susefreak: I appreciate your tireless championing of mac support, however it will have to wait till I’ve sorted a few issues out since I’ve been practically throwing on a new build a day :o

Scrupus: Thanks for the server Scrupus!

[Scrupus]

I’ve played through a few more maps, still no crashing so last build seems promising!

Haven’t seen any huge spikes on the last drop yet either, except for one map (slipgate).

I’m running munin stats on the server and some short load spikes are shown there, but that could be something else (one of the other servers spawning bots fex). But will take a closer look on next tests if the drop lag continues.

But it seems better, and I think you can try to add a few more vehicles on next build.

oh btw, I forgot to say that I reduced the bot_aimskill from 2 to 1 yesterday, that might explain some of the xp diff on humans vs strogg. All those aimboted lightning_pistols was just a bit too much

Quick list of some bugs that you probably are aware of, but for the record (and also so others are aware):

• Fireteam colors above enemy heads are either black or orange, not the fw color.
• Bots don’t realize when they are out of ammo, I saw 2 of them chasing each other in an endless dance
• GDF gates doesn’t open for strogg on some maps (canyon fex).
• It seems that ammo pr weapon type is sticky, so when you throw an empty one and pick another, it’s still empty. Not 100% sure though, could be unlucky pickups.
• Strogg can not pickup packs and some other human weapons, like silenced pistol.
• Mines don’t work. If you trigger one you get stunned for a while and then released. (could be funny feature though).
• Bots sometimes start running off searching for something unknown.
• The crates often disappear from the radar after a short while.

Tweaks:

• The lightning gun is very noisy and long-distance - should maybe be swapped with blaster as default weapon.
• Even if the stroyent supply is better than I thought on the first maps, the simplestroy amount should maybe be a tad higher. When playing with bots it’s usually plenty after some massacres, but worried it might be tight with humans.
• More crate drops (both for gdf and strogg mode). Maybe some crates with “tools” like mines and grenades?

Feature requests: I’ll wait with most of those, so just a few for now (same as mentioned in mail).

• King of the hill mode cvar. With this set, the leading team is always easy to spot on radar or indicators, motivating other teams to hunt them down. Will make it much harder to win, and give people “something more to do”. I know the focal point is supposed to handle this in a way, but more “motivation” could be needed.

• Trophy mode cvar: more or less like the one above, except there is a single item that teams can carry around, which gives xp pr. minute when holding or some other “benefit”. Should probably not generate xp while in vehicles.

[TinMan]

A few changes up on the ICE Brace server over previous:
Fixed strogg mines
Strogg revive tool now via activate on downed buddy, tool not selectable in weaponswitch.
Lightning pistol removed from default strogg loadout
Lightning pistol now equivalent pickup for gdf silenced machine pistol.
Strogg blaster decreased spread, reduced overheat rate and cooldown time, reduced damage
Field ops health now 125
Fireteam colors and default names now consistent across sides
Command map player arrows now fireteam colored

[Scrupus]

I’ve played about 6 rounds with the latest version now, and must say it’s getting pretty stable and playable now

All the latest changes seems to work as intended, and the only main showstopper left IMHO is the laggy strogg drops.

Haven’t had a single end map crash yet either, and blaster as default is much better!

Played the last 3 maps in mixed mode (as strogg) - it’s pretty challenging even with bot aim on lowest, but human team still beats them in the long run. But great fun!

The team colors on the map and radar are really cool, but I have one concern - just as it makes it easier to hunt the leading team, it also makes it easier to hunt the weakest teams… :infiltrator:

Not sure if that will be a problem or not, so let’s see but watch out for potential “abuse”.

The radar “hide” range could maybe be slightly wider, nor sure yet.

So almost ready for party I think - but strogg really need some vehicles, and the drop lag is quite annoying. Is there some other way to spawn strogg vehicles as a quick workaround, like closer to ground or on ground maybe?

btw we had an incident on refinery today, a desecrator got stuck in air above one of those islands

[TinMan]

I was wrestling with a bug for a while for my drop check code - thanks again Scrupus for your help narrowing it down, and improved strogg side support a bit (though it’s still not complete), then ended adding a feature that I hadn’t planned until next version (the briefcase, as described below), so I’ve put myself in a silly position where that now needs some work on it to smooth over some issues.
Still, a4 was just going to be the rough as hell initial strogg support, so I suppose this can live for now. I’ll mull it over a bit whether to set this up as a4s actual release or not :}

Ver a4-12 - currently up on ICE server
Changes over last:

Progression schedule defs (set via brace_progressiondef cvar) renamed from game_stages* to progression_gdf, progression_strogg, progression_mixed
New preferred colorization of Brace - ^7Br^Dac^7e - White with a and c in middle orange, representing two players back to back, beset on all sides, or some such pretentious crap
Server configs in documentation updated to reflect above.

Strogg can use stroy tool to gain stroyent from dead bodies.
Crates command icons now set to neutral/viewable for both teams at all ranges
Global radar inner fade range increased by ~1000 units.
Picking up the same item as you are holding will re-switch to that item, is better feedback and fixes an issue where it would prevent you from being able to fire the item after pickup of a second of same type.
Pickup up equivalent of opposite sides item will now switch to that item.
Three types of stroyent cells analogous to the gdf packs - green - health, blue - ammo, red - power.
Strogg Aggressor has it’s plasma charges back, needs one red cell gives 2 charges.
Strogg Oppressor has it’s violator back, needs one red cell to give two strikes.
Fixed end of game Scud not consistently getting kills.
Improved bots handling of stuck situations, with suicide as a last resort, helps greatly when bots are dropped on hills they can’t nav off, previously you would often get 3-4 bots stuck on the hill edges of some maps for the duration of the match
Strogg vehicle drops are use the gdf drop/chute mechanism, should prevent the drop-into geometry.
Yeah that bug on my improved drop check system is still doing my head in, so this is a compromise for now.
Added a few more conflict points to some maps.

The Briefcase:
A briefcase is dropped to the conflict point on match start.
Picking up the briefcase gives you 0.25 XP (yeah xp is a float, so the in game display will round).
While holding the Briefcase you get 1 XP every 10 seconds, not if you are in a vehicle however.
The MCP now targets its scud at the briefcase when it launches it at map end.
Whoever is holding the briefcase gets credit for the scud kills.
If the briefcase is dropped and not picked up in 60 seconds it will return to where it was airdropped.

Issues - I’ve nailed most of the prior mentioned ones from the first a4 release, but of course I’ve added more:
Bots don’t use stroytool on dead bodies
May be issues with bots not picking up opposite sides equivalent packs.
Oppressor bots don’t use violator.
No view model differences between the different stroy types.
The briefcase may sometimes be dropped to a difficult position.
May sometimes be dropped near the center, where the mcp is dropped, so upon return you won’t be able to get at it :o

Thoughts/brain dump on the briefcase:
As a concrete/signposted objective it pulls things together kinda nice, there’s a balance issue to consider as far as the amount of xp on pickup and over time.

There’s also the consideration of the fact it can draw attention away from the current leaders if they don’t have the briefcase, but then again the only real reason to seek out the leaders is to try and break their team by killing them, taking their stuff and having them spawn apart.

Otherwise the usual fracas around the briefcase may be a good way to get points even if you don’t grab the case. The bots may be a bit too focused on grabbing it however, and also don’t support each other as well as they should.
Also to stop the case from being bogged down in the same area too long, you’ll notice human players will more sensibly grab the case and get out of the crossfire, either re-engaging the following enemy from a stronger position, or just keeping running.

Apart from that, if you’re diligent at searching you can still be competitive by scavenging stuff away from the fray, and of course the vehicles - either using one to rampage, or killing one should bring your score up.

Even before this, you could control the pace somewhat yourself, the games progression of spawn times and locations is still a soft enforcement (except towards the end if you die ), so if you need a breather you can stay away from the central fray. Reusing the datadisc pickup/dropped voice over and messages is a mixed blessing, good in that it gives clear feedback, bad in that it devolves into spam when there’s rapid change of carriers, and can give a false sense of urgency/stress counter to the pacing.

When throwing in the feature I initially removed the mcp completely and had the briefcase drop at conflict point center (where mcp goes), and had the briefcase explode at map end (damn terrists and their briefcase nukes), however I soon realized the mcp scud is just such a good indicator that the map is going to end, and SD did such a glorious job with its effects it’s nice to keep.

An obvious step to try next is to have the conflict point focused around the briefcase itself rather than the static point through the whole match, as things can get disconnected towards the end where the spawntime/distance keeps most of the fray around the static point rather than the case.
In general I wanted to explore more wider use of the map space anyway, something that I had in initial versions prior to the conflict points.
In general I suppose I’m (maybe foolishly) wanting to find a balance between freedom and focus.

I had thought of something along the lines of king of the hill - as in areas to hold to gain xp (this is way back last time I was actively working on brace), but scrupus suggestion (as seen in post above as ‘trophy mode’) worked out nice as something quick to implement, reusing the existing carryable objective stuff.

Like I said, it’s already playing quite fun, but needs work, I think I say that every version heh

[light_sh4v0r]

I really like the briefcase idea, especially the SSM on it at map end
strogg opressor on your team is a big advantage here, a shield will protect you from the blast so you could just run into the open just before the SSM launches and have all the other players caught in the explosion while you turtle in your shield.
Should be fun, I’ll hopefully be trying this tonight, anyone with me?

[Scrupus]

The latest release is great!

I’m up for a few rounds now if anyone is interested.

And Brace party next weekend!

[light_sh4v0r]

oops, forgot all about it
Someone spam me next time people are on, I need a reminder.

[SphereCow]

I would really like to play this. Sounds bad ass.

[TinMan]

Another couple of changes up:
Conflict point (drives position of spawn points and airdrops) now follows briefcase.
Briefcase pickup and drop audio cues changed from the datadisc voiceovers to beep cues.

Hope to see people try it over the weekend

[SphereCow]

Brace is extremely fun. You guys need to play it. Seriously. <<< My serious face. Come play.

[Breo]

I want to try it but for some reason it says download failed :mad::mad: