So it's been a long while since any update, and some might consider it a wasted effort, but i had too much free time and decided to slowly update GVH bit by bit as a side-project to keep me busy. And it's gotten to a sizable point where it could probably be released as the next version, but it has some new technical additions which are still somewhat experimental so playtesting would reveal any problems so they can be fixed for release.
The update focuses on extra options towards teamwork, giving almost all of the classes an additional ability they can use to help their teammates (and sometimes themselves, too). A few buffs and nerfs got handed out like usual, and various general systems have been changed or improved, such as team balancing punishing team stacking more heavily with even higher buffs, should players intentionally stack the teams.
Some newly added abilities may seem a tad 'meh', but they where meant to aid your team, not make you a pro solo team wrecker. But otherwise, it's the good ol GVH you know and love (or that i ruined, but opinions vary). If you're sick of the new GVH spinoffs people keep making by all means give it a look.
//GLOBAL:
*The Class Info menu can now be triggered while spectating to open up a large help menu.
It contains information about general mechanics, introduction for newbies, even lists
the required controls, some less obvious mechanics, and the second page has technical stuff
like how to play singleplayer, or basic instructions on how to host your own server.
*After those two pages, you can scroll through all the human and ghoul's class pages
without having to enter the game to see the info about that class. (Had nothing better
to do anyway, so i basically wrote a freakin' manual for GVH in there, i guess...
Though i'd imagine the screen filling with text might scare some players off.)
*Added an message on the bottom of the screen for spectators recommending new players
to take a look at the class information page, which should help them get started.
The message will only display roughly 5 times or so, for each user, before it stops.
*All Ghouls drop their power on death, which Ghostbusters can collect to gain a weapon.
(Powers won't drop if a Ghostbuster kills a Ghoul directly or if it's LMS/TLMS and there
are no Ghostbusters around to capture those powers, help keep the map clean.)
(Creeper can also snatch away fallen Ghoul's power so that human's can't use it, and
he gains 3 stun ball ammo from those, too.)
*Team Balance now gives out better buffs depending on the amount of total players.
Which should hopefully deter people from stacking the teams or power up the smaller
team to keep the battle equal.
(Basically, the larger the player count, the stronger the buffs are. Extra-powerful
buffs are also granted to the sole player in 1vs3, 1vs4, etc, matches...)
*Team balance buffs have been increased from levels 1-5 to 1-10.
*Disabled more commands which could give unintended informational or viewing advantadges.
*Achievement list and classinfo list disappear when spectating, just as they would if you died.
*Rewrote the class descriptions that can be viewed in the Class Info menu.
*Inventory Items have Tags on them now. Looks better and sometimes has a helpful description, too.
*Weapons have tags too, meaning they got better-looking names as you scrollwheel through them.
*Achievement notifications on the bottom-left (telling who achieved what) last longer now.
*Added OpenGL lights to various effects and attacks:
Steam Cannon Altfire, Lightning Arrow, Cyborg Scanner, Frostbite's breath and frost clouds,
Lightning altfire, saw and ghost trap ammo pickups, dropped Ghoul powers, ammo packs, Choke's
health orbs, Ice Fountain, Sonic Echo, Soul Blasts, and Hunter's Wind Trap and creeper's death.
*Minor campaign adjustment. TLMS matches in the campaign will now give you bot allies,
but if you die, they die as well and you lose the round. Since bots are very poor at
finding enemies to fight, and it could take minutes before they finish the match.
*Stunned bots will now be able to fight back. Bots will have their speed crippled to 0.001,
unless the flag gvh_oldbotstun is enabled. This should be a little more fitting bot behaviour...
*Added bindable key which controls wether you want to enable or disable Creeper's pop up image.
It is not bound to any key by default, so set it up to be able to use it.
(Or manually set gvh_nocreeperpopup to true or false, that was the old way of doing it.)
*Also added an bindable key that toggles useitem ability reminders and hint messages, letting
you disable them or enable them with that key. (or enable gvh_nohintsandreminders manually.)
*Models are now no longer restricted by game settings. They can be enabled at will by with
the flag gl_use_models, or whatever option use in the options menu.
(If you use models and play online/vs bots, you may want to enable the gvh_nojitterbotspaz
flag. That way Jitterskull bots won't spaz all over the map which probably looks bad with models.)
*Changed the music system in Team DeathMatch to be more flexible about who's currently winning.
It can now ping-pong between the two songs should the teams constantly one-up eachother.
//YUREI
*The Yurei fight can now be started immediately by selecting 'Flames of the Spire' as
the campaign while the Yurei Battle file is loaded into the game.
*Yurei fight made compatible with most special abilities (though the Cyborg's scanner is
disabled for that fight).
*Plenty of bugs that where fixed. This thing was always quite buggy.
*Hard mode will now trigger when Skill is set to Nightmare as well, instead of only when
the compat_nopain flag was set to true. (Except during the campaign run.)
*Fixed spawned Creepers being useless, they actually kill you now, if you get too close.
They even come equipped with a constant death radius now so you REALLY shouldn't get close to them.
*Creepers will once again use their screamers if they kill you (those can be disabled with
the same option that prevents them during regular GVH matches).
*Yurei's Lightning now has a less rediculously wide hitbox.
*Hard Mode is slightly less cheap now, some attacks disappear faster, lightning count reduced.
(It's still cheap as hell though.)
*Yurei's death is alot less buggy now, sound-wise. It's not a real loop but eh, whatever works.
*Yurei's final phase now spawns Ghouls at roughly half health, even in singleplayer.
*Fixed Yurei calling an script that wasn't an attack.
*Dying to the Yurei's Heartbeat or Haunter attack is more noticable now (in a non-scary way),
and plays a sound, too. Should be less confusing for players about why they died.
*More failsafe scripts. This should make Yurei Battle fairly stable now, but still, its's not
perfect, so make sure to host it with map voting ON, so that players can reset if the yurei is
stuck and not doing anything.
//BOTS:
*Hunter Bots will use lightning at longer ranges, and switch to fire/ice if harmed,
as well as switch to fire when stunned. Basically making them fight smarter.
*Improved agressive behaviour of Sjas bots. They'll swoop down and attack on sight.
*Jitterskull Bots, after some hacking around, have slightly better moving AI, and
will now be able to (very) slowly roam around the map. (You may panic now.)
*Ghostbuster bots will deploy Ghost Traps more often when out of ammo and fleeing.
*Cyborg bots will now use their Scanner when not busy attacking any Ghouls.
*Sjas bots occasionally use their Echolocation ability while roaming around.
*Jitterskull bots may sometimes also move sideways, this doesn't help their perception,
but it lets them get around a bit better, instead of going back and forth.
*Engineer and Hunter Bots will now only rarely drop ammo with their projectiles, instead
of all the time, considering they never run out of ammo, and it made the map a mess.
//HUMANS:
*Marine now has a Smoke Grenade which, while harmless, can obscure vision into various
areas, like tight doorways, or hiding away ambushes, humans or traps.
Reusable, but with large cooldown, max limit of 10 smoke clouds on the map.
*Marine will slow down a little when firing the Machine Gun.
*Starts with 175 Clips instead of 200.
*Machinegun and pistols will not give Creepers a pain boost on hit.
*Smoke Clouds will disappear instantly on death if the match is not LMS or TLMS.
*Hunter now has an new ability called Wind Trap. Deploys a small wind orb that will
explode and push away enemies (and allies) with second use of the useinventory button.
It has a small cooldown on placement before you can detonate it, and a cooldown before
you can place another, however.
*Hunter's Lightning Arrow is now faster, and increases it's damage output faster per
distance covered then the previous version did, damage values where unchanged though.
It also makes noise as it travels through the air, and has an impact sound.
*Only one Lightning Arrow can be fired at a time now, to ensure the damage-boosting
effect of the arrow as it travels further is not being mistakenly altered.
(Not like you'll find many maps that let you shoot that rediculously far, anyway.)
*For safety reasons, Lightning Arrows disappear after flying an extremely long distance.
*Hunter's Lightning Arrow now has a small amount of target tracking after it's been in
the air for a moment, great up/down tracking, but sluggish left/right tracking.
(It's intended to aid in long-distance sniping, by making slightly-off shots hit more often.)
*Hunter's Normal Bow is now an infinite use weapon, given how it tends to be
overshadowed by his elemental bows. Still fairly good against Sjas, though.
*Arrows last longer now regardless of which bow they where fired with.
*Cyborg now has a secondary weapon, the Scanner, which if toggled on, targets Ghouls
for you, making them easier to spot (even Creepers, but only if they're close enough).
It will also target Ghouls through walls, should they be near enough to you.
It's altfire will perform an area scan which will detect enemies through walls in a
larger radius, and sends that scan information to human allies in sight as well
(if they're not too far away), though you can't attack while doing that.
*Plasma's minimum damage is slightly higher now. (Around 20-28 damage per shot.)
*Engineer can now drop ammo packs which replenish ammo, he can deploy up to 3 big one-use
ammo packs, and he can deploy a small but re-usable one that gives less ammo.
(Only the big ones give Steam Cannon ammo, though. And only 1 ammo per pack.)
*Engineer's Nail Gun can now swap better between main fire and altfire with minimal
delays, making the altfire more useful.
*Engineer's Saw Launcher now hurts a little more (though the damage is quite random),
and fires much faster. Increased capacity, and can deploy up to 20 saw traps.
Slightly larger hitbox for launched saws, too.
*Saws, when dropped as ammo, last much longer before disappearing.
*Saws will not drop as ammo when disarmed by a Creeper.
*Saw traps can be deployed faster when holding the altfire button, similar to how the
Ghostbuster deploys his traps.
*Saws now emit light when dropped as ammo, once again. Just like arrows do.
*All of Engineer's weapons now display both his saw and steam ammo, even if they don't use it.
*Ghostbuster, besides being able to pick up fallen Ghoul's powers now, has a small
damage nerf to his Blood Spreader (from 12 per hit to 6/7 per hit). The damn thing
was capable of sweeping away several Ghouls in one go!
*Active Ghost Traps will be re-usable IF the Ghostbuster kills a Ghoul with any of them.
(Except if a Creeper has damaged the trap with his trap disarming ability.)
*Bone Cannon has recieved a small nerf. It requires 48 ammo now and has a brief cooldown
before it can be used again (you can still switch to other weapons during this).
Now you REALLY have to make those shots count.
*Sped up weapon switching a little for Ghostbuster. Less time is wasted while the gun
is off-screen now, traps will also get (un)selected a bit faster then before.
*Ghostbuster's weapons display both proton and trap ammo at the same time.
//GHOULS:
*Sjas now has an new ability, Echo-Location, which tells Sjas of nearby enemies,
even through walls, and any nearby Ghouls will also recieve this information.
It has a cooldown and Sjas needs to wait to use it again, though.
(Like the Cyborg's Scanner, but with larger, wall-piercing range. Cooldown is reduced
in half while hiding and standing still.)
*When Sjas 'hides' by standing still somewhere, projectiles can't track him, and becomes
harder to target for cyborg's regular scanning ability.
*Sjas will slow down a tiny bit if hurt by something. Should help more to keep him away.
(Various rapid-fire attacks like pistol/MG bullets, blood spreader, nails and GB's default
proton weapon will stagger Sjas less, or not at all, though, for balance's sake.)
*Creeper now has the ability to disarm traps, when using useinventory near any traps.
It should damage up to 3 traps and traps generally break after 3 hits. The ability
does have a short cooldown to it so it will take a while to deal with a pile of traps.
*Creeper will also only scream in pain from attacks, not enviromental damage (meaning you
can traverse those long and damaging creeper passages without giving away your position).
*Creeper's melee attack does a static 1000 damage to ensure non-cheating players die on hit.
*Creeper's health regeneration on kill will slowly lose it's effectiveness per kill, to
about -10 health per kill, after the first kill, up to -50 health per kill max.
(Should stop creepers from being near-indestructable killing machines, and actually
have them die after a few kills, should the Humans have an semi-decent aim).
*Undead Phoenix achievement now only triggers when you heal to 60% health or more from
5% health or less. Making it less common as creeper's healing degrades.
*It will now take a bit longer before stun ball regeneration kicks in while waiting.
*Can't be tracked by seeker projectiles anymore (like GB's Soul Blasts or Lightning Arrows).
*Creeper can pick up all types of ammo from the battlefield to sabotage the Human's ammo
supplies (you know, ghost traps, saws, arrows, etc). Can also pick up fallen Ghoul's powers.
*Takes extra damage from the altfire of Engineer's Steam Cannon, making it more effecient as
an anti-creeper defence weapon. Should roughly be on par with Marine's Grenades, now.
*Jitterskull now takes 22% extra damage from enemies while charging, until he recovers
from charging (basically until he can move again), or until he kills a Human with the charge.
*Small decrease in Jitter's melee range (his bite, not his charging range).
*Jitterskull's bot weapon can only be used by bots now (since it's full of technical BS that
would get in the way of non-bot players). If collected anyway, it replaces itself with a
regular version for players, but bots can still collect and use the bot version.
*Attack range/radius has been decreased a small bit from 58 to 48.
*Choke now starts with 125 HP instead of 150. Though he also starts with 20 Blood now.
*Choke now gains some armor upon leeching a human's health with his bite.
Will go up to 40 armor max. Acts like Blue Armor.
*Choke also now has a new ability, Blood Transfusion. At the cost of 10 Blood he will
spit out an healing item that heals for 10hp, though they don't heal above max HP.
Should Choke not have enough Blood the remaining cost will be taken from his HP instead.
Blood is gained from biting humans. Gains extra blood on kill and extra blood with exessive
healing (basically healing over 125 HP). Good for healing wounded teammates at the cost of
Choke's own health, or for small heals with blood gained from enemies.
*Satan's Sniper achievement requires a bit less distance now for it to count.
*Choke needs to land from a bit more height to play his landing sound now. (Basically
i just disabled his landing sound but kept in his grunt sound, which is a longer
distance landing sound. The tiniest of height changes will no longer make noise.)
*Frost Bite can now use useinventory to spawn Frost Clouds that, while harmless, slow down
any human that goes through them, making areas of the map far more risky to pass through.
A Frostbite can only spawn up to 2 Frost Clouds at once, and there's a hard limit of 8
on the map in total, exessive clouds will just disappear (and return the ammo).
The longer the Human is in the cloud, the stronger the slow-down effect on them.
The clouds disappear faster upon death, though (roughly 3 times faster).
*In non-TLMS or LMS matches, ice clouds will disappear instantly on death.
//FIXES:
*Cyborgs and Ghostbusters get full ammo in the titlemap. Meaning the ammo-regenerating
flashes and noises won't show up anymore during the GVH intro.
*Ghostbuster can't get weapons from Ghouls anymore while he's dead. (Sometimes it
messes with the game in strange ways.)
*Cyborg's Fuel count and Choke's health will now display properly after they get drained from
using the relevant abilities. (Still a little weird for Choke on full health but it should be
fine once he gets below 150 HP.)
*Ghost Traps should hopefully display the energy cone when they're activated now.
And they should also stay in place when landing instead of sliding away client-side.
*Campaign Title Screen was fixed. (Assuming anyone even cares about the bot campaign.)
*Fixed the 1/2 damage output from Hunter's lightning rain when it was spawned by
his arrows, instead of his lightning magic altfire. Now does intended damage.
*Getting telefragged by moving through a recently-killed bot should no longer happen
as much in singleplayer, since you'll be briefly invincible (even to telefrags) when
killing an enemy in singleplayer. (The problem is singleplayer only, fortunately.)
Bot allies and enemies won't get this treatment, though. They still telefrag eachother,
occasionally. Not worth the risk of them accidently becoming invulnerable forever.
*And many more small, forgotten adjustments and fixes to the system in general.
//UNFIXED, UNFIXABLE OR POTENTIAL BUGS:
*Cyborg's Scan and presumably also Sjas's echo cannot locate enemies if they where in the
server before you joined, until they respawn. But this should only be a minor problem in TDM.
Gamemodes like TLMS should not suffer from this problem. (Suppose that's the cost of making
all of those scripts client-side. Less server lag that way.) Presumably unfixable.
*Yurei Battle is still a tad wonky about people dieing and restarting the search for a new
target with the Heartbeat attack. But there's just so many scripts... It'll work, mostly.
But there is a small existing chance the Yurei will stop showing up, so allow for map votes
if you're hosting!
*Sometimes classes might end up with a little bit of Choke's Blood armor, while they shouldn't.
Most likely because a choke bit them just before you killed them, or something like that,
or that the game changed targets while handing out blood armor. Who knows... Not a huge problem.
*Things get really weird if you change your class via the console, after defeating the Yurei,
before the map reset occurs, it may break weapon regeneration, firing, etc, so it is adviced
to simply not do it, just spectate or die in some way before changing class.
So, by all means, give it a go and post any feedback here if you want, on what might need changing. Assuming people still care about the original GVH anymore, anyway. :P
And i'm way too lazy to try and figure out IRC again to host a BE server, anyway (wish they'd simply have a webpage for that, by now), so if anyone else wants to give it a try, go ahead and host it on BE.
There's also been improvements to the singleplayer, like better TLMS matches, improved bot AI, being able to select Flames of the Spire in the menu, and whatnot.
(Edit: And if you want to use the slightly-improved bot AI on multiplayer, set gvh_advancedbots to 1. Or gvh_superbots 1, which is similar to the other, but lets bots cheat a little with bot-only special attacks.)
Now to wait it out and see if anyone still remotely cares. :P
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