TMK4's Workshop (News regarding grad life and, oh, Saxton Hale too)

[IamaMedalHunter]

I'd be interested in seeing this mod being updated again if it breaks out of the "melee main attack" routine.



Sure, it's inherited from Saxton Hale's fists, but why limit half of the bosses to melee range when they could be even more creative ? Especially Remilia Scarlet suffered from that : she's from a game with lots and lots of bullets wih many different patterns, and she was reduced to a rushing boss with really poor range. Having bosses with different mechanics and possibly covering midlong-range would definitely add a variety flavor that few bosses have brought until now. (Notable example : when Dio Flash saw the light of day even though it's a vampire lol, everyone liked him because he has an effective and unique mid-range mechanic, something we've never battled against before. It is exciting to both fight against and as this boss)
Moreover, in a game where a part of the players have ping over 100, it's very difficult for them to play as melee bosses because of a delay before the melee projectile is shot, and also because the survivors don't stand still. It usually results in the boss missing hits too often and make them say "yeah, ok ... I at least got one ..."

Then, there are bosses who just can't have anything else than melee. And that's not a real issue in itself, really. Super Macho Man has a great yet simple mechanic : stun then uppercut, completed with a speed boost. Macho Man is a very self-dynamic boss in that he can "help himself" and has options to spice up his game. On the other hand, Saxton Hale is just "punch". I get he's supposed to be the most basic, but his pattern is just bland.
What bosses need, if this project was to rebirth yet again, is "interesting interactivity" whether with themselves (like how the Genesis Unit worked together), or the players (only example I can think of is the Hypnosis item from the RaThor boss), or even the environment (Remilia's rage is highly dependent on the area).

Then there's the case of the secret bosses. I feel like they should be harvesting their gimmick even more to try making them unique and a bit more interesting to fight. For now, we have a boss with intimidating health, one who can knock away her foes, a duo with impressive (and hilarious) size, and then one with a completely unique key-combo mechanic. Except for the latter (because noone has ever seen him, and I think he's already very alright), secret bosses with a well pronounced gimmick and maybe with a very fun weakness to try exploiting would be worth going through the trouble of completing the special condition. Of course, it'd be preferable if the fight is fair so a reasonable player who died says "I think I could have avoided that if only ... Welp, nicely played." instead of "this was completely unfair and OP. There was no chance".

Finally, there's the thing about "super jumps". I believe they were incorporated so bosses "can reach campers". But this is not enough for it only boosts them where they are. Bosses need a way to punish them, so why not trying to incorporate the punishment with the super jump or in one of the boss's attacks ?
Moreover, there's the case where the boss is completely overwhelmed and surrounded. Being ambushed upon is very dire, so why not make the super jump into an emergency card ? Quote does that well because of his jetpack boost which allows him to escape quickly.
The point I'm trying to get across is that the standard super-jump items are not very interesting for the boss's moveset. Not only do they allow vertical mobility, but they should also definitely be a part of a boss's moveset, whether it's defensive(lie Dio's Time Stop jump) or offensive(a bit like Scrooge's exploding(?) landing), or even as a support move(like Gilgamesh's stomp jump)



Now, long things short :
-I'm interested in its revival if gameplay is polished more
-Do not limit yourselves to [close/melee]-range and be creative with the attack patterns
-Try incorporating Dynamic Interactivity to erase bland gameplay
-Do secret bosses with particular fights to make them unique
-"Super Jumps" should be more useful to the bosses

[Badz]

(Do note I haven't touched any form of SH or derivative of it in a mighty while, so I might be wrong on some points, but...)
I definitely agree with Medal about the bosses' gameplay: they really need to be changed from "absurd amount of HP with some OHKO punch attack". It's just not fun or interesting at all.
Speaking of the "absurd amount of HP" part, that's always bothered me about SH: bosses are ridiculously tanky, but in gameplay, they're actually really weak because they're slow and lack range to actually hit anything; in the end, it's usually the boss who runs away from the mass of angry players with ranged weapons, while it's the players that should be running in fear from the boss.
If you choose to revive this, you should consider making the bosses a lot more threatening and decreasing their HP accordingly. This would make the mode more interesting and (probably) help speeding up rounds, which I also recall being a problem.

[Hilman170499]

Actually, I have one suggestion for that mod:
If possible, it should be TLMS, except with team colours removed(and rename the teams appropriately). That way, the developer team can handle the alignment(who's on whose side) issue easily, which can be effective in the long run considering the new damage types some bosses get.

[Superjustinbros]

Last time I checked, the next version of Hale is scheduled to be in TLMS.

I had many, many ideas for how Hale could be revived and possibly improved while the bosses remain simple enough and are easy to use and learn.
These were my ideas of things that could be altered to the bosses from R++ if they ever return, mostly with the intent of further diverting the melee/close range bosses or giving them ranged options.

(click to show/hide)

?Saxton doesn't really have any problems, though he could punch a bit faster.
?CBS could have his arrows instantly fired when pressing Alt since his "rage" of stocking up arrows is instant. Skin could also use a few tweaks, like less goofy glasses and more realistic arrow storage pouch movement. The animated arrow on his HUD could also be improved.
?Ninja/Gentle Spy could have higher mobility and faster RoF with his sword, with the intent to rush after and beat down survivors.
?I can't think of anything for the See Bros, maybe just a small buff to HP?
?Morshu could return to just having a bomb (because his controls are confusing to figure out otherwise, with one command being triggered by tapping a fire button and another by holding it). However if Morshu should keep his full arsenal, they should be redrawn.
?Slender could have better range with his tentacle slap (which is more a maybe since it OHKO’s)
?Dio Flash’s The World should have small homing capabilities and steer itself towards targets, plus Dio can pull off punches himself while he waits for The World to return. Attempting to use Alt without enough power to rage (but enough energy for super jumping) would cause a weaker time freeze ala Item’s Hop, but instead Dio throws knives straight forward the next time he presses Main.
?The Ra Thors should return to being single bosses, but in rare cases they would be together.
?Quote and Curly's respective weapons should be buffed somewhat and travel slightly faster.
?Scrooge could wack up rocks from the ground to pick off ranged targets with Alt if he doesn't have enough energy to Rage. He would return to using just the Konami'd Moon theme and maybe use Ducktales 2 sounds on some encounters instead of Ducktales 1.
?Gilgamesh's HUD's should be re-drawn to show some kind of depth, a well as animate faster.
?Remilia ditches her melee and makes danmaku her new standard, with Alt just being an über version that gives armor and flight.
?Mudkip's Water Gun should be weaker, but with a better ROF, and the Treecko and Torchic summons spawn on top of Mudkip instead of off to the sides so they can't fail in tight spaces. Additionally, they should follow Mudkip more, and the effects of Torchic's Sunny Day is lessened visually (serving more as means to increase the effect of Treecko's HP restore).
?Starman has both his attacks combined into one, Main does a slash in front of him that also rains down a meteor where his crosshair is pointing.
?Tomahawk Talbain should have one constant level of darkness (like Slender’s), his axe swings faster (at the cost of some power), and Totem-Sama has a visible HP bar, casts spells faster, is smaller, and has retaliation fire (at the cost of slightly less HP). (A while back i also sent Star an 8-bit rendition of Totem-Sama, if that could be used here)
?The Genesis unit is heavily simplified to remove million-bar-syndrome (getting desperation attacks when only one remains, which replaces their main), M.Water can still cast shields on the other two by hitting Alt without Rage. In addition, all of the units should be incapable of being curb-stomped (especially Buster), and Hyperstorm H. should use his older, bigger skin.
?S.M.M is retooled to never have to charge to do effective attacks. His flashy intro should be shortened or removed completely.
?Guts man G's timer is scaled based on how many players there are, more players = less time
?Cave Johnson's lemons should have improved RoF, and the lemons from his Rage travel faster and further. The HUD should also be redrawn to be more dynamic and show depth.
?Franken-Stoneman has more options for summons and his meter charges slightly faster

[Dimpsy]

So you decide to opt out of Unholy's method of secret bosses... by doing Unholy's method of secret bosses... GG no re.
Anyways having this mod back... ehhhhh... depends because of a lot of the bad shit that came out of it including the community as a whole. Unholy really is the best way to make a Saxton Hale in 8BDM at the moment.
However do I object? No, I'm curious where you'd go without Stardust. I will say however that I really do not like any of Stardust's bosses because they tended to be too gimmicky for their own good making them really hard to fight let alone play as. Revamps of all R++ bosses would be a must, especially since all bosses with melee have a hard time getting any kills due to poor hitboxes.

Oh yea and for the bosses you are considering:
- Morshu: If you bring this one back, PLEASE revert him back to the old version, the newer one in R++ kind of blows.
- Gutsman G.: This boss was awful stally in my opinion.
- Pissed Off Roll: She really was not favored by the community due to being able to HEAL. So a complete redo of the boss would be needed.
- Slenderman: No.
- Mudkip: No.

I could go all day on potential boss ideas, some of which I believe are somewhere deep in R++'s coding since R++ was planning to bring back the Hyper cast (Sonic, Doomguy, Dark Pit who was my old work, etc), but if the mod was ever brought back and new bosses were considered I could probably give ya some. If ya want I might even offer to sprite/code, though I cannot keep my promise completely, especially with a mod that doesn't even exist at the moment.

[TailsMK4]

Ah, some great feedback, and some comments were mentioned that I had in mind when designing Rebirth prior to Star wanting to team up. I'll go over this one by one...

I'd be interested in seeing this mod being updated again if it breaks out of the "melee main attack" routine.

This would be a focus definitely. On the few bosses that would remain like this, they would have something that would help clear out crowds. I know at some point I wanted to give Saxton Hale the ability to stun or slow robots near him, since in VS. Saxton Hale which Silversin's SH was based from, he was able to shout out a taunt of some kind that left players around him scared.

*snippet regarding super jumps*

At the time R++ was going strong, we had been experimenting with diverse Super Jumps that had a second function to them. Seems like the idea is good, but needs to be executed more. There would definitely be some thinking regarding these.

(Do note I haven't touched any form of SH or derivative of it in a mighty while, so I might be wrong on some points, but...)
I definitely agree with Medal about the bosses' gameplay: they really need to be changed from "absurd amount of HP with some OHKO punch attack". It's just not fun or interesting at all.
Speaking of the "absurd amount of HP" part, that's always bothered me about SH: bosses are ridiculously tanky, but in gameplay, they're actually really weak because they're slow and lack range to actually hit anything; in the end, it's usually the boss who runs away from the mass of angry players with ranged weapons, while it's the players that should be running in fear from the boss.
If you choose to revive this, you should consider making the bosses a lot more threatening and decreasing their HP accordingly. This would make the mode more interesting and (probably) help speeding up rounds, which I also recall being a problem.

Part of this is why I'm considering porting bosses into Rebirth instead of working with R++, since we already had a different style of how bosses work. As boss health went down, the bosses ran faster. I recall we had the health of the bosses a bit lower than Silversin's. I have seen how tanky bosses work out. R++ Gilgamesh is capable of doing a lot of damage if his swords could hit...but being one of the slower bosses, it was possible to outrun him. It'll take some time to reverse the trend of drawn-out battles, but I believe Saxton Hale can adapt closer to the pace that Unholy provides, but still have the simplified gameplay that makes Saxton Hale easy to pick up.


Regarding Hilman's and Justin's comments, yes, Rebirth and R++ both were transitioning into TLMS during the final days of development. It not only makes it much easier to ensure attacks only hit certain targets (damagetypes for new attacks had to be ensured it hit the regular players but the boss itself should been immune to it), but it was also easier to tell who was who (in TLMS, you would know who the boss is just by checking the scoreboard). I would be continuing this.


Finally, regarding Justin's and Dimpsy's comments, I do have a few things to say.

-Morshu's R++ moveset was actually my idea and would have been the moveset in Rebirth. I'll see what I can do to make Morshu easier to use, but I personally thought the new moves made Morshu very unique as he was one of the few bosses that could adapt to changes in the environment or the opponents' strategies. I'd like to preserve that if possible, but perhaps having to tap or hold Main/Alt made him clunky to use.
-GutsManG was actually the first new boss for Rebirth. I intend to keep him in myself, but certainly could use some tweaks, maybe a makeover of some kind. My intention was for him to be the opposite gameplay-wise of Slenderman...kill the boss quickly, or the boss will kill you when time is up.
-The Ra Thor Duo was so both designs could be in the mod. I personally want to stay away from something Unholy does a lot...copies of the same boss with maybe something different for each copy (Hellbots, Devileyes, BusterExpert as well). While I will be keeping my design of Ra Thor, I'm open to how the other Ra Thors could get in too.
-Regarding OtakuAlex's Hyper Saxton Hale, the only boss I thought that was worth keeping was Mecha Hitler...the rest of the bosses weren't all that memorable, and Sonic I personally feel would work better as part of a team. I'm open to ideas regarding if any of those bosses should return.

Aside from these few notes, I'll definitely take into consideration the ideas mentioned by both of them. I'm going to wait a bit to see if there's more interest. I definitely would need some help if I were to take this up again. Thanks for the comments so far everyone.


EDIT: Basically, my goal would be to make the game much faster-paced like with Unholy, but be different enough that both can still co-exist. Unholy is a lot more chaotic than I intend to go with Saxton Hale, so people liking the really intense matches that Unholy provides will still have a large showing, but those wanting a break from Unholy or wanting an actual team-based mod would find a home in Saxton Hale.

[Superjustinbros]

I'll agree and say that as much as I'll take Unholy since I prefer more quick and chaotic things, Hale's more relaxed, team-based gameplay does appeal to me a certain extent and I'd love to see more of a teamwork element with this project much like TF2, with Auto and Roll having some dominance on the battlefield while still providing ample support and buffs for the allying survivors.

I didn't really go into a big amount of detail on how Auto and Roll could be retooled, though for Auto I have a feeling migrating this over to TLMS may make having some kind of sentry system for Auto work properly (as opposed to always shooting at allies). Roll meanwhile could have passive recovery and a heal beam that more closely matched the Medic's heal gun in performance (homing, inf energy (or faster charge), while maybe giving her alternate options to buff the team when an Auto isn't around. (You could also look to Overwatch's Torbjorn and Mercy respectively for ideas, though I wouldn't argue if you wanted to make Roll and Auto not that derivative from their original TF2 classes or their Overwatch counterparts.)

If I also remember, Star's class project did give various ways for all the classes, even the offensive ones, methods of supporting their teammates.

As for hale ideas, I did make a list of some ideas for Hales, mostly ones ported over from Freak Fortress but altered significantly to more resemble what they'd do in their home series (instead of just having basic OHKO melees). I also had the idea of "Reverse Hales" where one player becomes a random Hale while all the survivors morph into lesser, weaker Hales, sometimes led by a Hale of their own.

[SmashTheEchidna]

I am interested in seeing this get picked up again. I'm pretty much in agreement with Medal and Badz, as they summed up the general gameplay tweaks better than I could. But I do have some personal opinions on each of the bosses.

(click to show/hide)

Bosses I want back:

Saxton Hale: Saxton is pretty basic and I wouldn't change too much about him as he stands now. I like the idea of a battle roar that stuns nearby enemies. It could make his rage a little more useful when used together. I think.

Ghost of Starman: I don't think there's anything else you can do for this guy. He's good, and he should come back. It's kinda difficult to control his star attack, but in the right hands he is a monster.

Cave Johnson: Keep.

Gilgamesh: As much as I like Gilgamesh, he's very luck-based with his main attack and that's lead to a fair amount of raging. You have someone right where you want them, and *Dink* goes the Excalipoor's chip damage. On the other hand, I've been OHKO'd by his lightning from standing behind him, thinking I can get the jump on him while his focus is on someone else.
I don't think his main method of attacking should be so randomized. I know you guys wanted to have his multiple swords and all but surely there's another way to handle it?

Scrooge McDuck: I love this guy, but sometimes Scrooge just seems a little TOO powerful. He's the type of person who just stays on your (duck) tail, whacking you in the butt with a cane and you just can't shake him off. I've been on both the giving and receiving end of this. Scrooge is fast, his re-fire rate is one of the best out of all the bosses, and essentially has a room-clearing rage. Balance might have to be looked at.

Dio Flash: The only thing I would ever change about Dio right now is fitting him as a secret boss. I feel he's too special to be on the same level as mudkip or morshu, or most anyone else in the regulars. :V

Ra Thor - SAR: I'm guessing this is the one with the different types of projectiles? Yeah he was interesting, but I don't know how he'd fair on his own.

Super Macho Man: I feel some tweaks to his attack hitboxes are in order. I find it very difficult to hit anyone unless I'm right up on them, despite how ridiculously far Macho Man throws himself with each punch. Perhaps the farther away the opponent, the less damage and stun/knockback they'll take?

Quote and Curly Brace: I do like these two and the separate roles they play as a team, but again, balance should be looked at. As far as I know, in the version of SH that's been played recently, Quote's main, uncharged fire does a lot more damage than it probably should. You can also fire it at a decent rate, making the charges almost obsolete.

Genesis Unit: Aside from PO'd Roll and Ra Thor(s), these are our only megaman bosses! They gotta come back. I wouldn't mind seeing some changes made to them, maybe try to squeeze in some more abilities from their campaign battles? (i.e HSH's charge) I feel like in general, Buster Rod G is the only one who's actually dangerous, despite the fact that he always dies first! Admittedly we've been playing in a version where HSH's inhale is broke...

Unknown Robot Master: I liked this guy. He's kinda strategic with his flunkies. My only real complaint is the ludicrous HP on all his enemies. The hp on minions need to scale with the amount of players, much like the bosses do.

Tomahawk Talbain: The darkness gimmick gets on everyone's nerves and you all know it. That aside, he is very fun to play.

Gouki/Akuma: Dude I can't even give a proper judgement on this boss because I only ever fought him once--on the day he was made and released. All I can say about him is make his appearance time more reasonable. There is literally no reason to have a boss that's borderline impossible to reach without some sort of console command.

Captain Falcon: At this point don't count on me remaking his moveset. Instead, do you remember the Saxton Hale Classes mod? Captain Falcon in that worked close enough to what I'd envisioned. If you guys can get him to work more like that, then he'll be great. I may even continue spriting him to fit all his needs.



Bosses I'm on the fence with:

Ninja Spy: I'm very meh about ninja spy. He has "lives", but taking one down really doesn't feel like you actually killed him at all. My suggestion for this is to have him automatically respawn (like exit unit) while leaving behind a death explosion effect.

GutsManG: Interesting concept. You say you wanted to make him fundamentally opposite of slender, right? Well, ya did. But I'm not sure you planned to have the negative aspects go in reverse as well. With Slenderman, everyone is running/camping or otherwise trying to keep away until time runs out. With Gutsman G, It's the boss that's running/camping or otherwise trying to keep away until the time runs out. They're both still incredibly campy bosses no matter how you turn em.

Mudkip: Really don't care much for the guy. I mean, he's kinda okay and unique, but meh.
Torchic is a butt.

Seemen: If you rework these two to be a little different from Saxton himself, maybe make them both unique from each other (kinda like the Quote and Curly dynamic,) these guys could be interesting. As they stand now, the only thing I really care about is their heavy metal theme song.

Remilia Scarlet: As mentioned before, Remilia has SO MUCH potential here that isn't being used. As she stands now, she's too weak to do crap until her rage kicks in, in which she's too OP to keep around. The balance here is non-existent.


Bosses I really don't want back.

Morshu: get out morshu He started off as a literal recolor of one of my least favorite YD classes (at the time) with the persona of a living meme that got old decades ago. I'm honestly against having memes like this in the mod at all, and I feel we could do without them just fine. Personal bias aside, his tools make him interesting but his controls are too clunky to really be effective. he's also too slow to be an effective suicide bomber and that's a bad

Pissed Off Roll: Roll kinda stood out amongst the bosses with melee attacks. She is a pain in the butt to fight and she heals in her rage. She's fast and she literally knocks people around the stage. I never really cared much for this boss; she just kinda feels shoehorned in to me, but that's just me.

Gamma's Feet: wat

Christian Brutal Sniper: I always found this guy to be a cheap pain in the neck. A rage that gives him multiple instagib long-range shots, that he can save for later no less, really kills the flow of the gameplay to me. If he can just whip out a death arrow outta nowhere because of a rage he had five minutes ago, it's not hard to catch anyone off guard. Take that away and he's really just ninja spy without an extra life or invisibility.

Slenderman: Do I REALLY have to go into this? Few people actually like this boss. I've suggested some alternatives in the past, such as the Ultimate Chimera, but overall the gimmick of running away from the boss instead of fighting it hasn't shown to be very good.

Though you're probably not gonna wanna look into new bosses anytime soon, I've still got my list of ideas if you're interested.

[Superjustinbros]

If anyone wants them here's the DuckTales 2 sounds, at least the counterparts to those that are used alongside the hale itself.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l152d716fi8vq ... s.zip?dl=0
As I said my idea would be to play his existing DuckTales (1) sounds on one round then switch to DuckTales 2 sounds on another round. (Unless the ability to pick different sound sets per match via roulette can't be done)

[Isaac940]

Is it important that each of the survivors (is that what the term for the non-boss team is?) has just one life? I'd think reworking the boss battles with a concept similar to what the Light vs Wily beta had would improve things. Make it so that survivors respawn but each death moves a gauge one step closer to boss victory, while the boss has to just die once for survivor victory. You can then make it the norm that bosses are extremely effective and survivors will die a lot, and being caught in an ultimate move that's almost impossible to dodge cause you decided to join the fight at precisely the wrong time won't be as frustrating. Players wouldn't be sitting there waiting for the round to end when they died (especially annoying when whoops lol spawned next to ohko boss) and it could help with survivors trying to stall out the game. If some speed dude is just pinging you for tiny amounts and running away while his buddy the glass cannon is actively trying to fight you, you can simply ignore the ineffective dude and punch the points out of the power dude.

[RifleGod]

Unholy is really good, but Saxton just beats it in every category.

REVIVE IT

[Superjustinbros]

Is it important that each of the survivors (is that what the term for the non-boss team is?) has just one life? I'd think reworking the boss battles with a concept similar to what the Light vs Wily beta had would improve things. Make it so that survivors respawn but each death moves a gauge one step closer to boss victory, while the boss has to just die once for survivor victory. You can then make it the norm that bosses are extremely effective and survivors will die a lot, and being caught in an ultimate move that's almost impossible to dodge cause you decided to join the fight at precisely the wrong time won't be as frustrating. Players wouldn't be sitting there waiting for the round to end when they died (especially annoying when whoops lol spawned next to ohko boss) and it could help with survivors trying to stall out the game. If some speed dude is just pinging you for tiny amounts and running away while his buddy the glass cannon is actively trying to fight you, you can simply ignore the ineffective dude and punch the points out of the power dude.

As an option that would be interesting to see, though I think most would prefer just having one life per standard.

A way it could work is if a server has lives set up, each survivor is counted for every life they have when the Hale's starting HP is calculated, while the hale(s) always has 1 life and if just one is lost, the Hale will be rigged to stay dead.

[TailsMK4]

Just mentioning that since yesterday, I have started working on SH again. While a new release won't be out anytime soon, progress is being made to both add in some suggestions I have received as well as get a very outdated version of Saxton Hale more up to date, though that part is still wip. I'm looking for some people that have ideas for a new set of classes for SH, and/or want to make said classes. I'm afraid I do not have much to say regarding my expectations, cause I want to hear from everyone what the new classes should be like. The only comment provided for me so far was if there would be a healer (or medic) in the set, which I see no problems having a class be like that. I want some more input on what could be done regarding the player classes in the game. Otherwise, I guess that's all I have to say for now since I'm focusing on updating the game to work well both with TLMS and with the current version of MM8BDM. Porting over content from other SH mods would be the next focus after I consider the mod stable enough.

EDIT: I should mention that I'm experimenting with Isaac's idea, since I think that would provide a different take on the old everyone versus boss formula. That might change the way classes are viewed in some way, so there you go.

[fortegigasgospel]

I would say team based classes would be very well suited here, but I'd say make that a different version (or even just it's own class mod like I've been coming up with ideas for over in WIP's ideas thread), so that people can use whichever class mod they wish with it.
As for bosses, personally I say "Less meme bosses" since they usually run their course.
More Mega Man themed bosses would be nice. Sunstar, King, Wily Capsule, etc. Problem with that is when classes are loaded telling who is the boss and who isn't, which is where custom classes would come in handy since you don't need to have them use skins matching bosses, or if those classes are Mega Man characters not having the bosses show up as playable classes.
More diverse modes of combat for them I also agree upon, having them feel more appropriate then all having melee outside the ones who would use them anyway.

[Superjustinbros]

For me, I think the big targets would be to use less "Memetic Mutation" and have more ranged Hales, along with a builder/healer with more offensive presence.