[LMS mod] Last Man Standing Stall prevention system! (LMSGas)

[CutmanMike]

There has been a discussion about using some kind of time limit to prevent stalling in LMS games (or just to prevent extremely long LMS battles from occurring). This has been a problem for a long time and we've all been victim to it so it's time to try some solutions! I present to you, LMSGas!

(click to show/hide)

Information

LMSGas adds a new rule to Last Man Standing and Team Last Man Standing. After 3 minutes (by default, can be changed via the new server variable lmsgas_time) a warning will appear on the screen announcing that Roboenza is spreading. The map will start spewing a deadly Roboenza based gas! It is focuses around a point in the map (chosen randomly) and sloooooowly closes in on that point in a big circle. You can visually see the circle by the pink Roboenza effects flying upward and via the automap. Players who hang around in the gas will suffer damage over time that scales up the more gas you inhale! This forces players to come out of hiding and hunt down the remaining opposition or have their life drained and lose the game.

Server Hosting

This mod only works with LMS and Team LMS, other game modes are ignored.
I briefly tested Classes with this mod (Yes, even Wood Man dies to the gas).

There are some server variables you can tweak to change the experience:

 lmsgas_time - Time in seconds until the Gas spawns (default 180 aka 3 minutes).
 lmsgas_speed - Additional speed the gas moves in map units per second (default 0).
 lmsgas_damage - Gas damage multiplier. The gas damage still scales up regardless of this setting (default 1). Change to 0 for no damage, 2x damage etc. 

Download

http://cutstuff.net/files/LMSGas-4.pk3

Feel free to host elsewhere. Also feel free to take the mod and implement it in your own, I don't mind. 

To quickly check out what the mod is doing, type "set lmsgas_time 5" on the console and boot up a Last Man Standing game with a few bots in offline skirmish.

[MusashiAA]

MM5CHA: It can spawn in either the far left or the far right, and teams/players on the side outside the circle will start getting damage almost as soon as the gas spawns...

Also, there seems to be an issue with the gas despawning midround, though it might have to do with setting the timelimit beforehand...for some reason, I changed the time limit between rounds, and when the next round came and the gas started pouring in, the moment the last man standing on one team was left, the gas just desapawned??? It's pretty iffy to test this for now, it's still quite novel.

[Orange juice :l]

Would be very nice to give the gas a visible effect outside the safe zone so you can see where danger is. Not sure I like the ring visible on the map, it immediately tells you where the safe zone is and kills the "impending doom" vibe. Other things I can think of are possible toggles for incremental gas closing and gas closing rate.

[JaxOf7]

First off, just wanna say I love this mod. I've never been a believer that matches should last so long just because one person is being a cowardly dick, or that being cowardly should have so much advantage. It solves things similar to what I try to solve with Tension mod, except here, player stats remain consistent. Also this mod actually handles the issue of peacers (griefers on opposite teams decide they don't wanna fight, forcing the server to do a kick).

Anyway, straight improvements:
*Should really have the safe center marked on the minimap, and maybe be visible in game. Just a clarity issue is all.
*The safe center and the gas should display on the minimap before the gas actually starts. (Maybe the skull icons could just be gray?) Once again, clarity issue, to make sure no one gets completely blindsided by the gas.

And now the thorny issue:
*Safe center spawning. There are 2 ways to do this I can think of.
*(Current) Just pick a random player spawn. This creates a problem with linear maps such as MM5CHA; A team spawns on one side, the other team spawns on the other. Since a safe center is determined by a single spawn's location, one of the teams is going to have an advantage since the other team must move into their side. It's overall not-quite fair.
*Average out the player spawn locations, placing a safe center at their center. This creates a problem with multilevel maps like MM1ICE, as the safe center can go out of bounds, creating ambiguity on where players should head if they don't want to get gassed. Overall more fair, but it has an issue.

[CutmanMike]

We have conflicting thoughts on whether there should be clarity of where the safe zone is. Looks like I hit an awkward middleground there.

I like the ring being chosen at random locations as it is always (ok mostly) gonna be different when the Gas starts coming. Obviously this becomes an issue when both teams immediately spawn and the Gas comes in but don't forget the mod was designed to stop stalling games, not to have the gas be unleashed immediately. In my mind by the time the gas comes, there's only 2-3 players left so it doesn't matter where the ring starts, everyone has to move.

Also, there seems to be an issue with the gas despawning midround, though it might have to do with setting the timelimit beforehand...for some reason, I changed the time limit between rounds, and when the next round came and the gas started pouring in, the moment the last man standing on one team was left, the gas just desapawned??? It's pretty iffy to test this for now, it's still quite novel.

I'll look into that.

*Average out the player spawn locations, placing a safe center at their center. This creates a problem with multilevel maps like MM1ICE, as the safe center can go out of bounds, creating ambiguity on where players should head if they don't want to get gassed. Overall more fair, but it has an issue.

A neat idea, but math hurts. Also an actor controls the Ring and may end up being spawned inside a wall (causing an awkward area for the ring or not spawning the actor at all).

Would be very nice to give the gas a visible effect outside the safe zone so you can see where danger is

I don't know how to do this without potentially overloading on FX projectiles (imagine it on a map like mm2dw1). If anyone has any good ways to do it be my guest and try.

[MegaVile]

There is a problem I thought of just now
If the gas goes to a specific location, the people can just migrate to a NEW hiding spot. Meaning while one spot is canceled, other spots still remain

[CutmanMike]

Anything outside of the circle takes damage from the gas. The only places to hide are within the circle which eventually becomes too tight to hide.

[CutmanMike]

Bump with a new version!

* Changed the custom server variables (see first post for more details.)
* Improved the gas "wall" visuals slightly.
* The gas ring size/speed is increased if players are outside of the ring when it is created.
* When near the gas your screen will turn pink (instead of flashing pink while you are in the gas.)
* Added a particle effect around the player when he is near/in the gas.
* Added an in game visual of where the gas ring is closing in on, represented by a tall beacon of light. Only spawns once the gas starts.
* Fixed a bug where the gas particles would not spawn in lower areas of the map.
* Various other little tweaks.

Edit: I made a dumb error which caused some horrific lag. Fixed and re-uploaded as version 3!

[CutmanMike]

Badabump! http://cutstuff.net/files/LMSGas-4.pk3

* Fixed a bug where if a map was too big players would get caught in the extending gas, doing rapid damage to them.
* Fixed a bug where the Gas simply would not start (involved players disconnecting).
* Made the Gas FX go away a little bit sooner, to hopefully improve performance.