Another Mayday - An experimental survival invasion mod. [v1b update]

[TerminusEst13]

"They're coming!"
"Again?! There was another attack just an hour ago!"
"They used it as a distraction to invade this spot!"
"The military can't defend against this assault! The civilians need to be evacuated!"
"Call the Robot Masters! Call for the mercenaries, tell 'em we have a defense job!"
"Sound out another mayday! We have to defend this ship!"


So what's this, then?:
Another Mayday is a survival invasion gameplay mode that forsakes the whole "Deathmatch" part of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch. A little bit proof-of-concept and a little bit something an attempt at something potentially bigger, Another Mayday provides a pseudo-invasion competitive-cooperative experience that I like a lot. Then again, I'm slightly biased.

The set-up is simple.
Load up on any Deathmatch map (as long as they have co-op starts), or a built-in map. Players spawn in with limited lives (traditionally one), and enemies will spawn throughout the map to a specific timer. The enemies will continue to spawn as long as the timer is active, forming an ever-encroaching horde to overwhelm the players with sheer numbers, picking them off one by one. Once the timer hits zero, a boss will spawn to harass any remaining survivors!
For every enemy slain, zenny erupts out of their body because video games. Picking up this zenny will heal for 1 HP, but more importantly will also add to a score supplementing the amount of enemies a player's killed.
After the boss is defeated, all survivors will have their zenny compared. The player with the highest amount wins!

Since the mod essentially boils down to just code and a map, this is theoretically capable of being loaded alongside additional gameplay mods.


Setting Up:
If you'd like to host this mod, please do the following:
- Host server in Survival Cooperative. Make sure sv_maxlives is above 0! (Currently preferred at 1)
- Set up a DM maplist. Large maps very much preferred! (Please don't use MM2CRA)
 ^- you can include invmap01 if you want. i guess.
- Use some custom cvars to tweak as you see fit:
 ^- mayday_timelimit to determine how many minutes a match lasts. (Default 5)
 ^- mayday_countdown to determine how long until a match starts. (Default 20)
 ^- mayday_frequency to determine how many seconds between enemy spaws at. (Default 3)
 ^- mayday_perplayerdelay to include an additional delay to the spawn rate, with each player adding an additional 3 tics to the spawn rate. (Default 1)
 ^- mayday_beatcall to include a (deprecated) BeatCall to pick you out of (some) deathpits. (Given that the old BeatCall is deprecated, this is a temporary cvar to test public reaction. Please do not expect it to stay. Because of this, it defaults to 0)
- shoot the dudes
- don't get shot by the dudes
- yeah...


Maps:
INVMAP01: SEALAND FACTORY

Sealand is a tiny micronation begat from a reclaimed offshore fortress. While generally unnoticed by the greater world, its independence provides political refuge, and the abandoned military tech hides ancient treasures for plunderers. This, of course, makes it a viable target to attack...


Changelog:

(click to show/hide)

FROM V1 TO V1b:
=====================
SYSTEM:
- Players should now no longer get stuck on monsterblock lines. Why was that even being given to the players???
- Zenny is no longer blocked by shields.
- I thiiiiiink I fixed zenny desynch? I think. Probably not. But I hope so.
- Tengu Blade should no longer permanently freeze a player if they charge, swap to another map, pick up another, and then tap. What a specific bug.
- The Energy Balancer now drops ExitUnitItem instead of ExitUnit.
- Spark Chaser now properly homes in on enemies.
- I never expected a bunch of people to get into this. A new cvar, mayday_perplayerdelay, adds a delay on spawn per every additional player.
- A player who died during the pre-invasion phase won't spawn any additional monsters anymore.
- When there are multiple players when the boss spawns, and then the number dwindles down to one, intense music plays.
- Because of this, there's now intense music included for INVMAP01.
- mayday_beatcall has been implemented as a (TEMPORARY!) cvar. A lot of people don't like falling down a pit right away and dying instantly. That sucks. So (until a more elegant solution is found) with this cvar on, players start with one free (legacy) Beat call to lift themselves up.
As this is a deprecated item that doesn't have use on all maps, this cvar defaults to off. This is a temporary cvar to give a temporary solution to a problem.
Please expect more experimentation in the future.

MAP:
- Player spawns have been placed back just a touch.
- The weapons have been pulled out from the dragon's corpse and aren't blocked anymore.
- The deathpits now properly do 255 damage and respect BeatSupport.
- There is a small hole where floating monsters could fly out and become unkillable. This was fixed.

BOSS:
- There will no longer be any more freak accidents with the boss magically healing and spawning four more crystals.
- The boss no longer spawns at the players' spawn point. Telefragging with the Exit Unit is no longer feasible.
- The boss' healthbar should flicker a lot less.
- The boss' healthbar has been completely rewritten to be printed on clientside, rather than serverside.

ENEMIES:
- Apache Joes now have 60 HP, rather than 70 HP, due to how high they fly and their evasiveness.
- Apache Joes now have A_Look in their Idle state, maining they should regain aggro.
- Angry Bladers alternate between A_Chase and A_FastChase now.
- Hammer Joes no longer immediately return fire and go invulnerable after being lightly tapped by an attack.
- Killer Mets now have 60 HP instead of 70 HP, due to their high evasiveness with leaping.
- Assassin Joes now have 70 HP instead of 80 HP, due to their shield-happy nature.



FROM STARTUP TO V1:
=====================
BOSS:
- The boss health multiplier has been rehauled and now should no longer result in ridiculous health at higher player values.
- There is now a healthbar showcasing the boss' HP / status.
- Glass Joe Attack Crystal no longer has a small chance of turning perma-invuln.
- Glass Joe now moves slightly slower, from 8 to 6.
- When more than 1024 map units away from its target, Glass Joe now moves twice as fast.
- Glass Joe's attack crystal HP brought down from 450 to 400.
- Glass Joe's HP brought down from 1000 to 800.
- Glass Joe's death sound, crystal break sound, and explode sound has been reduced 3 decibels each.

ENEMIES:
- Basic Mets now have 25 HP, rather than 20.
- Bladers now have 20 HP, rather than 30 HP.
- Angry Bladers now have 30 HP, rather than 35 HP.
- Enemies are no longer moved horizontally with Wind Storm/Tornado Hold/Tornado Blow/Gravity Hold/etc.
- Apache Joes now properly respect Concrete Shot, Spark Shot, and Chill Spike.
- Bladers/Angry Bladers hit with Time Slow fly slower and attack slower.

MAP:
- INVMAP01 now has barricades placed around the map, so as to help with mass amounts of projectiles.

Download:
https://allfearthesentinel.net/zandronum/download.php?file=anothermayday-v1b.pk3 - AFTS link.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqm6gbjatf6lx8s/AnotherMayday-v1b.pk3?dl=1 - DropBox link.
https://allfearthesentinel.net/zandronum/download.php?file=anothermayday-v1b.pk3 - Google Drive link.


Known Issues:
- Sometimes enemies spawn weird and get stuck into walls or spawn in OOB areas. Need to refine that.
- Zenny killed from these enemies just lingers there, unable to be picked up.
- Black Hole Bomb doesn't drag enemies in, due to them not having player TIDs.
- Does not work well with the following maps:
 ^- MM6CEN (No co-op start)
 ^- MMBDYN (No co-op start)
 ^- MMBPIR (No co-op start)
 ^- MMVNEP (Boss spawns in an area it cannot move from)
 ^- MMCTF02 (No co-op start)
 ^- MMCTF04-12 (No co-op start)
 ^- MMCTF14-18 (No co-op start)
 ^- MMCTF20 (No co-op start)
 ^- MMCTF23 (No co-op start)
 ^- MMCTF25 (No co-op start)


Credits:

(click to show/hide)

GRAPHICS:
- CutmanMike:
 ^- BLAD* enemy frames for the Blader.
 ^- APAC* enemy frames for the Apache Joe.
 ^- GJ_B* shot frames for the Glass Joe.
- Atlantis no Nazo, for the GJ_X frames for the Glass Joe.
- Snatcher, for the GJ_TA frame for the Glass Joe's targetting.
- Kackebango, for the Hammer Joe.
- Batman: Return of the Joker, for the graphics used for INVMAPCD basis.

CODE:
- CutmanMike, letting me use MMSP as a basis for some enemies.

MUSIC:
- John Cade, creating the three-movement composition 4′33″ in 1952, sampled for QUIET. Licensed into the public domain.
- Ghidorah, for Toilet Story 4 u, released on ModArchive.org
- Norrin Radd, for A Castle Under Siege, released on ModArchive.org
- Top Gun - The Second Mission, for the 2P victory music.
- Dethlands, for the INVMAP01 intense music.

ETC:
- burningluna, for continuing to support and encourage me through everything. Thank you!
- CutmanMike, for starting off 8BDM. Thank you!
- Torr Samaho, for his incredible work in maintaining Zandronum. Thank you!

Thank you all for looking this over, and I hope you're willing to give it a shot.
This is my very first published 8BDM mod, and so I'm very curious to hear what folks think.
Please feel free to offer any critiques, suggestions, ideas, feedback, or more.

Please enjoy.

[Laggy Blazko]

I guess you're aware, but the boss fight lags a lot, to the point I can only fight it in singleplayer.

Fun mod tho. This game really needs more coop/survival stuff.

[LlamaHombre]

I was experiencing some strong lag as well, unfortunately.

The match I did get to play on Mercury was really fun though! I'd love to experience how other maps are effected by it.

[TerminusEst13]

I actually was not aware.
Fairly sure it's because of the boss HP bar, I'll see if I can figure out how to work around it.

Thank you for letting me know!

[JaxOf7]

I think the zenny gives too much health and also that it would be cool if it gave ammo.
So here's v1b zenny doing that.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/160882052177199104/777390595496738826/ZennyJb.pk3

[TerminusEst13]

Ah, this is interesting. Thank you very much for the mod. A little bit of playing and I could already feel the shift in dynamic.

Speaking of v1b. I released an update today.
A bit of a delay between v1 and v1b to address some urgent things, but there were things that I couldn't help.

Here's a changelog.

(click to show/hide)

SYSTEM:
- Players should now no longer get stuck on monsterblock lines. Why was that even being given to the players???
- Zenny is no longer blocked by shields.
- I thiiiiiink I fixed zenny desynch? I think. Probably not. But I hope so.
- Tengu Blade should no longer permanently freeze a player if they charge, swap to another map, pick up another, and then tap. What a specific bug.
- The Energy Balancer now drops ExitUnitItem instead of ExitUnit.
- Spark Chaser now properly homes in on enemies.
- I never expected a bunch of people to get into this. A new cvar, mayday_perplayerdelay, adds a delay on spawn per every additional player.
- A player who died during the pre-invasion phase won't spawn any additional monsters anymore.
- When there are multiple players when the boss spawns, and then the number dwindles down to one, intense music plays.
- Because of this, there's now intense music included for INVMAP01.
- mayday_beatcall has been implemented as a (TEMPORARY!) cvar. A lot of people don't like falling down a pit right away and dying instantly. That sucks. So (until a more elegant solution is found) with this cvar on, players start with one free (legacy) Beat call to lift themselves up.
As this is a deprecated item that doesn't have use on all maps, this cvar defaults to off. This is a temporary cvar to give a temporary solution to a problem.
Please expect more experimentation in the future.

MAP:
- Player spawns have been placed back just a touch.
- The weapons have been pulled out from the dragon's corpse and aren't blocked anymore.
- The deathpits now properly do 255 damage and respect BeatSupport.
- There is a small hole where floating monsters could fly out and become unkillable. This was fixed.

BOSS:
- There will no longer be any more freak accidents with the boss magically healing and spawning four more crystals.
- The boss no longer spawns at the players' spawn point. Telefragging with the Exit Unit is no longer feasible.
- The boss' healthbar should flicker a lot less.
- The boss' healthbar has been completely rewritten to be printed on clientside, rather than serverside.

ENEMIES:
- Apache Joes now have 60 HP, rather than 70 HP, due to how high they fly and their evasiveness.
- Apache Joes now have A_Look in their Idle state, maining they should regain aggro.
- Angry Bladers alternate between A_Chase and A_FastChase now.
- Hammer Joes no longer immediately return fire and go invulnerable after being lightly tapped by an attack.
- Killer Mets now have 60 HP instead of 70 HP, due to their high evasiveness with leaping.
- Assassin Joes now have 70 HP instead of 80 HP, due to their shield-happy nature.

I'm still in the v1 stages, where I'm experimenting around with things and trying to figure out what would be fun to do with this. There's a lot of possibilities.
No promises, but next for v1c I'd like to include a shop to buy stuff with collected zenny.

I'm hoping to start doing some additional bosses/enemies and to do some more intricate refinements to the existing ones (Glass Joe's really kind of simple, huh?) with v2.
It's been a lot of fun seeing folks shoot the dudes, but as it stands now just one dude to shoot at again and again can get kind of stale.

Thank you all for playing.

[Laggy Blazko]

Well, looks like all that boss lag is gone now. Good job.

[hansungkee]

so... What's Next Stage And Boss?

[hansungkee]

I Have an Ask : MM8BDM V6b Cames out...