Overly Chatty Penguins

The Ready Room => General => Topic started by: tankefugl (in a tent) on September 14, 2004, 02:55:33 AM

Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: tankefugl (in a tent) on September 14, 2004, 02:55:33 AM
Cloned from http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=80656 (http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=80656). I'm keeping this posted to the consties forum and some other smaller forums like this one because of bandwidth for the download.

... so it came to be that tankefugl became a bit tired of the leap-ish blink the fade had. I always envisioned the blink like a teleporting ability, but hopefully more usable than the stuck-ish blink from 1.04.

Friday, I downloaded the HL SDK with one goal set: To make a mod with a cooler blink. Today, I present you the tankefugl's blink mod.

Download it, uncompress it into the half-life folder. It will create a folder named "tankefugl". That's the mod. I used a random HLDM map I found laying around that doesn't rely on any sprites and such, and I also used two of the metabolize sounds from NS. I hope noone mind that I included them in the compressed file.

To test it, create a server with the map included. Bind any button to +blink, and play around. Hold down the +blink button to blink. When you do so, you will turn invisible and zoom in great speed in the direction you look (FOV increased, giving you an even increased feeling of WOAHGOINGFAST!). When you release the +blink button, you reappear again making the illusion of teleporting from A to B.

You also cannot fire. (The firing animation will still play, but you will do no damage or use any ammo.) I intend to make you invincible too when blinking, and to make you noclip vs. entities so you cannot pick up stuff or crash into people. However, this is just a proof-of-concept, so I doubt I will use much time to perfect it.

The file is located here (1mb only): http://mirror.playzen.net/halflife/modific...nkefugl-mod.rar (http://mirror.playzen.net/halflife/modifications/tanke/tankefugl-mod.rar)

We had a go at this today, playing 5-6 player HLDM with massive blinking. (As the blinking doesn't require any energy yet, you can do it a lot ...)

I'd be happy to give away the sourcecode or help out implementing this into NS somehow, if you ever would decide that this is indeed a cool thing.

Happy blinking!

(Btw, HL SDK is fun to play with.)
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Necrosis on September 14, 2004, 11:35:45 AM
HAXORZ!! JOO THEIFZ FLAYRA'S SOUNDAGE!!!


Looks interesting, will have to download sometime when I'm not spamming turbolaser in GC.

Any piccies for us?
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: SwiftSpear on September 14, 2004, 12:37:57 PM
A blink like this has been dicsussed at length on the NS discussions forum and the general consensus is that it was too over powered because it made the fade able to ninja (due to its invisability) in and out of combat so seemlessly that it would be impossible to kill by all but the luckiest of marine teams.   My simple solution?  force a charge time before the ability acctually begins working, but of course no one pays attention to my simple solutions (plus it kinda goes against the termology 'blink')
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Legionnaired on September 14, 2004, 12:50:54 PM
Of course, you could just make the fade have the armor of a wet paper bag, so that it dies in ~40 LMG bullets, and not even a whole shotgun shell.

Sure, it dies easy, but so do the marines it stalks silently.

Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: E-Fonzarelli on September 14, 2004, 06:44:58 PM
Back in the old days, the fade's blink, was very buggy, but did this whole teleportation thing...

anyone else remember that?
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: EmperorPenguin on September 14, 2004, 10:35:06 PM
Yeah.  It was closer to the orginal concept I guess, but the new one seems to work better/is less buggy.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Slink on September 14, 2004, 11:57:50 PM
you know what i'd like to see for the fade's blink?  i'd like to make it a blur effect, and give it  some semi-transparency.  definetly not full invisibility, maybe something like 40-60%, with the same sort of gradual in and out effect that the current cloaking has.  To me, this gives the fade much more of an atmosphere around the class, and more atmosphere is GOOD.

Let me clarify a few things.  I don't know a whole lot about coding, and even less about the half-life engine.  so i'm not really sure if this is possible, but by blur effect, i'm thinking simply making several of the same model without hitboxes, offset from the real model.  More complex would be to get a different model, and have it switch to that when you blink, but that soundsmuch more difficult to me.

i suppose an optional feature would be to throw in some physics reality here.  if a fade is truly invisible, then realistically, it cannon see.  That's because for it to be invisible, photons must be able to pass completely through it.  sooo, that means no photons can hit it's eyes, making a fade blind while it blinks.  Now, if you make it blurred, and semi-transparent, then you wouldn't have complete blindness, just less light hitting the eyes, so the effect would be darker than normal vision, and probably some blurring.  However, if you ask me, the whole "blindness while blinking" suffers from too much realism to be healthy for gameplay.

just my $0.25, feedback positive or negative is welcome.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: tankefugl (in a tent) on September 15, 2004, 01:32:43 AM
Feedback is good, thanks!

I'm working on moving the consties thread (where I will include all sane suggestions I get to this) out in the "open". I will, however, need a host for my 1mb file. My bandwidth is running out. If anyone can help me out, I'd really appreciate it.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: SwiftSpear on September 15, 2004, 05:20:19 PM
I can ask [WHO]Them if I'm allowed to host it... how many DLs would you be expecting?

I was thinking about this more and more ever since you started talking about it, specificly thinking about a way to balance an invisable blink for NS, here are my thoughts...

Well obviously, and initial response time as instant as the current blink would be unfair constidering that it would not be removing any disadvantages in any way, but would be adding a major advantage (no clip invincible/invisable fades) so I logically reasoned that there could be implimented a delay time before the ability acctually activated on press, but then I thought to myself that doing it that way would kind of wreck the hit and run viability of the fades, expecially in large games.  Sure the first hit would be alot easyer to hit when no one can see you approching, but how are you supposed to get out of say marine start with tonnes of fire concentrated on you, and no ability to escape by any means insantaniously.  In thinking about it more, I reasoned that perhaps blink could work like a sling shot... the farther you pull back, the farther you blink, or in this case, the longer you hold down the mouse key the longer you remain in blink state.  Of course there is no reason to force players who have held the key down for 20 seconds to remain blinking constantly for 20 seconds, so we would just make any action during blink state act as an interupt.  The major crutch in this line of reasoning I could see was, what would prevent a fade from just tapping the mouse key repeditively for a 3.0 style blink escape?  This issue I figured would have to be dealt with using strict energy costs... for instance, every use of blink instantly uses half your maximum energy, but as a trade off, you regain energy normally while in blink state, so there is an up side to using and planning the use of long blink times.  The blink outlined by my plans I think would feel much more like the blink described in the NS manual, and still have similar game ramifications as the current blink...
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 15, 2004, 06:40:27 PM
Quote
Well obviously, and initial response time as instant as the current blink would be unfair constidering that it would not be removing any disadvantages in any way, but would be adding a major advantage (no clip invincible/invisable fades) so I logically reasoned that there could be implimented a delay time before the ability acctually activated on press, but then I thought to myself that doing it that way would kind of wreck the hit and run viability of the fades, expecially in large games.  Sure the first hit would be alot easyer to hit when no one can see you approching, but how are you supposed to get out of say marine start with tonnes of fire concentrated on you, and no ability to escape by any means insantaniously.  In thinking about it more, I reasoned that perhaps blink could work like a sling shot... the farther you pull back, the farther you blink, or in this case, the longer you hold down the mouse key the longer you remain in blink state.  Of course there is no reason to force players who have held the key down for 20 seconds to remain blinking constantly for 20 seconds, so we would just make any action during blink state act as an interupt.  The major crutch in this line of reasoning I could see was, what would prevent a fade from just tapping the mouse key repeditively for a 3.0 style blink escape?  This issue I figured would have to be dealt with using strict energy costs... for instance, every use of blink instantly uses half your maximum energy, but as a trade off, you regain energy normally while in blink state, so there is an up side to using and planning the use of long blink times.  The blink outlined by my plans I think would feel much more like the blink described in the NS manual, and still have similar game ramifications as the current blink...
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I like the idea, but wouldn't a max charge be better? Charge up to a limit where it just stays if you hold longer. This could easily be accompanied with a sort of charge up sound, like the gauss gun in HLDM. It becomes higher and higher in pitch until it hits a ceiling and then it holds pitch. Of course the blink charge doesn't have to increase in pitch, but it'd be a continuously changing sound that stabalizes when fully charged.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: SwiftSpear on September 15, 2004, 09:48:13 PM
Quote
I like the idea, but wouldn't a max charge be better? Charge up to a limit where it just stays if you hold longer. This could easily be accompanied with a sort of charge up sound, like the gauss gun in HLDM. It becomes higher and higher in pitch until it hits a ceiling and then it holds pitch. Of course the blink charge doesn't have to increase in pitch, but it'd be a continuously changing sound that stabalizes when fully charged.
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I thougt about a max charge, and it made just as much sence to me, as long as the player still has the ability to interupt in mid blink.  A maximum value would probably be nessicary anyways to prevent variable overflow's which could potentially crash your average server.  I just didn't bother mentioning it since I assumed there would be a good chance it would be a logically assumed feature in development if it is nessicary.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: tankefugl (in a tent) on September 16, 2004, 02:26:05 AM
I've gotten a host for the file, but thanks for the offer.

On how to balance it, I've received quite a lot of ideas ... Check out the first post in http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=80722 (http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=80722)  for a list of things I'll try out. I'm 100% sure this can be done in a balanced fassion ;)
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 16, 2004, 03:45:28 PM
You know what's funny? I still don't have an account to the NS Forums :p


Tank:
 I noticed a post on the NS forums about initial and final velocity. Apparently, when you come out of a blink, you stop dead. In true teleportation, you appear at the destination with the same velocity as before you teleported. For examply, you're falling out of an airplane and 50 ft down, you teleport to the ground. Congratulations, you now have broken legs.
 My suggestion is to see if you can implement this concept into your blink, the return to your initial velocity. For testing this out in your own mod, I'd recommend removing worldspawn damage like the current fade.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: BobTheJanitor on September 16, 2004, 07:56:46 PM
Quote
I noticed a post on the NS forums about initial and final velocity. Apparently, when you come out of a blink, you stop dead. In true teleportation, you appear at the destination with the same velocity as before you teleported. For examply, you're falling out of an airplane and 50 ft down, you teleport to the ground. Congratulations, you now have broken legs.
 My suggestion is to see if you can implement this concept into your blink, the return to your initial velocity. For testing this out in your own mod, I'd recommend removing worldspawn damage like the current fade.
That might be confusing in the extreme though. If you want to be technical, velocity includes movement and direction. So you start out running north, go into blink, turn twice to the right, come up behind a marine facing south, come out of blink, and go flying backwards. :blink:
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 16, 2004, 08:38:56 PM
Quote
That might be confusing in the extreme though. If you want to be technical, velocity includes movement and direction. So you start out running north, go into blink, turn twice to the right, come up behind a marine facing south, come out of blink, and go flying backwards. :blink:
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Yes, that is why I was saying velocity instead of speed. But then again, I always invisioned Blink as a straight shot anyways.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: -Lancer- on September 21, 2004, 12:30:19 PM
Quote
Quote
That might be confusing in the extreme though. If you want to be technical, velocity includes movement and direction. So you start out running north, go into blink, turn twice to the right, come up behind a marine facing south, come out of blink, and go flying backwards. :blink:
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Yes, that is why I was saying velocity instead of speed. But then again, I always invisioned Blink as a straight shot anyways.
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I dont see why you should have the ability to turn when blinking, we never did before.
If you were to blink in the way mentionned above, you should only be able to do so in a straight line. and the only freedom you would have to turn would be on your own axis.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: That Annoying Kid on September 21, 2004, 12:45:54 PM
back in 1.xx blink was a straight shot, and I liked it as it was

[edit]
blinking behind marines was fun, becuase you would actually disapear, appear behind them, attack, and then be gone in a purple haze after attacking. If you BLINKED you missed it hafhafhaf
[/edit]
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 21, 2004, 01:28:41 PM
The only real reason why we can turn with the current blink is the same reason we can bunny hop, Air Control. It's a flaw in the physics engine that when you turn/strafe whatever in mid air while moving, you gain speed in a new direction. Thus you can turn and direct your motion in a new direction midflight. Bunny hopping is just turning a bit so you get that turning speed boost and then turning back, so your average direction is straight forward, but you get speed bonuses from turning. The old 1.xx blink kept pushing you in the straight path, therefore not allowing you to turn.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: tankefugl (in a tent) on September 22, 2004, 03:29:45 AM
The current blink doesn't rely on air acceleration (as bhop and curved leaps does) for controll. It simply propells the fade in the direction it looks, applying any friction that may apply.

The difference between all previous blinks and the blink I propose is that this blink is supposed to be a controllable teleport; make it usable yet cool. You disappear, and reapper somewhere else -- behind the marine.

By the way, check out the thread on the NS forums -- it's updated with bugfixes, smooth field of view and motionblur. It looks quite cool now  ;)
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 22, 2004, 05:11:42 PM
This may sound a bit cheesy, but I think the blink should be somewhat modeled after the "quick attack" of Pokemon. It's kind of hard to describe,
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Malibu Stacey on September 22, 2004, 08:37:02 PM
you're right that does sound cheesy.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: SheenaYanai on September 25, 2004, 03:57:23 AM
that blink mod sounds cool..  

because the name FADE is no longer justified for that class..  because everyone can cloak, and the fading away by blinking is also no longer given....

this would made the fade "fading" again
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: E-Fonzarelli on September 27, 2004, 01:39:51 PM
Quote
Let me clarify a few things.  I don't know a whole lot about coding, and even less about the half-life engine.  so i'm not really sure if this is possible, but by blur effect, i'm thinking simply making several of the same model without hitboxes, offset from the real model.  More complex would be to get a different model, and have it switch to that when you blink, but that soundsmuch more difficult to me.

What if you just made the fade instantly cloak when it was mid blink?

I mean shizzle... we've all tried to hit a blinking fade, and its not really possible to track one unless you are cheating or just plain lucky, or, like me, the fade has its moments where it gets frustrated and flubbers on a corner and gets stuck.

So... that being said, being invisible ONLY while you actually have the blink function in use - i'm not talking about "normal" blinking becuase we all know a good fade will never run out of adren while blinking, so it would have to be only while they were holding the button down...  

Now, you are probably saying - thats stupid, but think about it...  when a fade wants to blink out and get the fark out of somewhere in a hurry, the instant cloaking of it - even for a quarter of a second, would be really neat.  It might just confuse marines in where it was going - or, if you had a fade coming towards you, and it blinked, it might just disapear and start slashing you from the back.

Just a though.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: E-Fonzarelli on September 27, 2004, 01:42:28 PM
Quote
It's a flaw in the physics engine that when you turn/strafe whatever in mid air while moving, you gain speed in a new direction.


Actually, since HL is based on the quake 1 engine, and john carmack has said that it is something he left in the game purposely, I wouldn't call it a flaw.  I would call it valve's programming.   :ph34r:
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: lolfighter on September 28, 2004, 07:32:00 AM
Well...
In the real world, you can't really change direction while in midair. You can twist and bend your body and use inertia to turn yourself around even though the minimal friction that air provides doesn't really make for a good support of movement, but that's pretty much it. You can't kick off the air to provide extra movement, and you can't voluntarily slow yourself down. While in midair, only two forces are in effect: Air friction, which slows you down in whatever direction you're moving, and gravity, which speeds up your downward motion. You could make swimming motions to propel yourself forward or slow yourself down, but as air friction is so relatively minimal, so would the speed gain or loss be, so it's safe to ignore this.

In Half-Life, you have much greater control over your movement while in the air. You can speed up a little, and you can slow down almost instantly. You can jump directly upwards, then press forward in the air and land a little in front of your previous position. You can jump forward, then press backwards and stop in midair. And so on. This makes the exploit known as bunnyhopping possible. You can bunnyhop because you can do things that you can't do in the real world.

Why can you do this, though? Well, let's say you have to jump from one platform to another, a task that applies to both the real world and to Half-Life (although you do it a lot more in Half-Life). Both platforms are one by one meter, and there's two meters between them. In the real world, it's a comparatively simple task for somebody who has even the most basic control over his own body: Step back as far as you can, take a running start of one or two steps (there isn't really room for more), then jump. Because you have a lot of experience with how your body functions and what it's capable of, it's very easy to jump two meters (or two and a half to land right in the middle of the platform) with great precision. You can finely tune the forward and upward speed of the jump to get the exact trajectory you need.

This fine control is lacking in Half-Life because of the simplistic controls. You can pick between two forward speeds (walk and run) and a grand total of one upward speed (hit the jump key). So basically, you have two possible forward jumps to choose from, versus the almost infinite variety of jumps you can make in the real world. Needless to say, this could make jumping puzzles unnecessarily frustrating if you didn't have a few extra options. Say you have to make a jump: You're not sure whether a walking jump will carry you the necessary distance, and you're afraid of overshooting the target if you make a running jump. Without air control, you'd have a problem. With air control, you simply make the running jump, then hit backward to stop your forward motion as soon as you're over the spot where you want to land. That's why we have air control in Half-Life (and other first-person shooters), and because air control is pretty illogical by itself, it's hard to guard against exploiting it.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: tankefugl (in a tent) on September 28, 2004, 03:58:29 PM
E-Fonzarelli: Please check out http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=80722 (http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=80722) for the latest version. It does exactly what you suggest in your post.
come invincible.

lolfighter: As for air movement, you can actually do that in real life too. Use the torque of your body, and you'll curl because of the air friction. Not that you'll ever notice it while jumping, though ;)
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 28, 2004, 05:01:45 PM
At a fast enough speed, you can channel air resistance to a direction, thus aerodynamics. This is the concept behind rudders (in water and air, they're both fluids), fins, flaps, and spoilers.

Unfortunately, These are only useful at high speeds. The only thing in NS that might come close to it being any sort of a factor is a celerity fade blinking. And even then, the form of the fade is not suited to direct airflow in any useful manner. Even at a fade's speed, the directional power is minimal.

Now, as for the Lerk. He's a whole different story. He not only has wings that apparently provide a constant lift force, but he also flaps to provide thrust. his wings are specifically designed to control air flow around them, therefore controlling the direction of the air resistance. Using this, he can twist and turn and change directions midflight.

NS has those that shouldn't be affected by air control (but are) and those that are that are designed as if they are (even though code-wise, a lerk's flight isn't controlled propellent and air force)

Now from a gameplay perspective, Air control is quite an acceptable (and preferable) concept. Such as explained by lolfighter, air control is almost necessary to compensate for the user's lack of actual player control by using simpistic controls.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: BobTheJanitor on September 28, 2004, 06:33:51 PM
You know, I bet this is why lerks can't strafe in flight. If they could they could use air control to gain speed as they turned corners, instead of losing it. And that would be scary...
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on September 28, 2004, 07:20:55 PM
Quote
You know, I bet this is why lerks can't strafe in flight. If they could they could use air control to gain speed as they turned corners, instead of losing it. And that would be scary...
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Lerks, like other objects of flight, have three movement options, Roll, Pitch, and Yaw (http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/rocket_sci/shuttle/attitude/pyr.html). (notice how strafing is not among the movement, and for good reason)
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: BobTheJanitor on September 28, 2004, 10:21:46 PM
Oh just go ahead and derail everything further!  :p  Of course lerks couldn't really 'strafe' in flight, but they could roll to one side or the other in order to move in that direction. I wonder what a fully realistic flying system would feel like in NS. If you actually had to roll to the side and then look 'up' to turn. I bet it would split the love/hate of the flight system even more harshly.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: lolfighter on September 29, 2004, 08:10:52 AM
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[...]lolfighter: As for air movement, you can actually do that in real life too. Use the torque of your body, and you'll curl because of the air friction. Not that you'll ever notice it while jumping, though ;)[...]
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[...]You can twist and bend your body and use inertia to turn yourself around even though the minimal friction that air provides doesn't really make for a good support of movement, but that's pretty much it.[...]You could make swimming motions to propel yourself forward or slow yourself down, but as air friction is so relatively minimal, so would the speed gain or loss be, so it's safe to ignore this.[...]
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Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Malibu Stacey on October 01, 2004, 09:00:00 AM
Problem lies in comparing Lerks to earth dwelling flying things. They could make the Lerk strafe while flying and attribute it to the difference of where the Lerk evolved. They are called Aliens for a reason (unless the backstory turns out to be something horribly camp like the ending for the Star Wars New Jedi Order or the Zerg from Starcraft).
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on October 01, 2004, 09:40:12 AM
Aliens are still bound by the laws of physics. Physics is universal.

/offtopic

Tank, How goes the blinking? Where can I get teh latest version?
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Malibu Stacey on October 02, 2004, 10:16:36 PM
Yes Physics is universal but again you're assuming Lerks use aerofoils like every other earth dwelling object that flies to create lift. If they evolved in different circumstances than those on earth then it is concievable that they could have different methods to become airborne other than using aerofoils.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: Satiagraha on October 02, 2004, 10:57:55 PM
Are you suggesting bioelectric anti-grav? That's an interesting idea.

Yes, my assumptions were based on simplistic biomechanics. I hadn't thought of other more advanced forms of attaning flight.

Then again, Go Lerk strafing! The NS dev team said themselves that realism is at the very bottom of thier priorities. It's all about gameplay and atmosphere. So wheeee, I can't wait til strafing :D (even though they most likely won't impliment it...)
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: lolfighter on October 03, 2004, 07:37:42 AM
Except their wings look awfully much like, uh, wings. Of course, they might be decor, but I'm inclined to believe that they use 'em to fly with...
Think hummingbirds, though. They can not only "strafe" (fly sideways), but also hover in midair. There's no reason to believe that you are limited to flying forwards just because you use wings for generating lift. It all depends on what kind of wings you have.
Title: Tankefugl's Blink Mod!
Post by: DynamicPerformance on October 19, 2004, 02:42:08 AM
Heh, hummingbirds are awesome... :help:

//ontopic

I think that fades are overpowered as it is, not that i'm a particularly good one, but the average (I know, we're not ALL super-beings) player can't kill one by him/herself, let alone with 2-3 other marines helping.

So maybe, less armor and health? not too much just a little.
I'm trying to brainstorm some of the disadvantages to go with the new advantage of a invisible blink.  

Realism rocks! :D

Dynamicman out...