JK2++ Beta 3 Information!

[NK_Zephorath]

Visit: http://dev.wdonline.com

and http://forums.wdonline.com for more info.

 

What is JK2++?

 

JK2++ is a server-side modification of Jedi KnightII: Jedi Outcast. No client-side download is required.

Our Goal

 

To enhance the gameplay of Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, primarly with Force tweaks (mostly neutral), while adding a higher level of fun.

About the Team

 

The developers of JK2++ are:

 

[WD]Rage

[WD]ToRMeNt

 

We are all hardcore gamers coming from all walks of gaming life. We played Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight religously for years, primarly focusing on Full Force Battle Ground Jedi and Full Force Canyon Oasis.

What Has Been Changed

 

In our current version, the following are changed:

 

* Duration Force Powers Any duration force power can be terminated immediately instead of waiting 1.5 seconds.

 

* Neutral Force Powers Speed

o Mana cost brought down from 50 to 20

o Increase in speed by 10%

o Lasts for 10, 20, or 30 seconds dependant upon force level

* Sight

o Lasts for 10, 15, or 25 seconds dependant upon force level

* Jump

o Mana cost cut by 50%

o Is now slightly faster

 

* Dark Force Powers Grip

o Distance changed from 256 to 315

* Drain

o Mana cost cut by 30%

 

* Light Force Powers Heal

o Mana cost brought down from 50 to 40

o Increase heal amount to 40

 

* Sabering Light Stance

o Increase base damage to 50. Damage range from 2 - 50.

* Medium Stance

o Increase base damage to 75. Damage range from 2 - 85.

* Heavy Stance

o Increase base damage to 123. Damage range from 2 - 180.

 

* All Weapons You can now pick up any weapon, regardless if you're carrying it, and use it for ammo.

 

* Disrupter Primary Fire

o Increase damage to 70.

o Ammo consumption increased to 20.

o Firing time increased to 2 seconds.

* Secondary Fire

o Increase damage to 120.

o Ammo consumption increased to 42.5 at max charge.

 

* Destructive Electro-Magnetic Pulse 2 Gun (DEMP) Primary Fire

o Increase damage from 35 to 50.

* Secondary Fire

o Base damage increased from 8 to 12

 

* Rocket Launcher Rocket Launcher pickup now has 5 rockets.

* Ammo pickup now has 5 rockets.

 

* Admin Features Slapping

o Slaps the player. Pushes them back and takes damage. Takes a client number (not a name yet) as arguments.

* Renaming

o Rename any player. Takes a client number (not a name yet) and new name for arguments.

 

* Server Variables g_saberghoul2collision

o Set to a default of 1.

* g_sabertracesaberfirst

o Set to a default of 0.

* g_dismember

o Set to a default of 300.

 

What Is Left to Change

 

* Movement Disruptor

o Not sure if it's possible, but movement with scope zoom enabled.

* Miscellaneous

o Not sure if it's possible, but rolling with any weapon.

 

* Admin Features Make existing and future admin features take both a client name and number.

 

* Saber Blocking Tighten the blocking up some.

* Make a cvar to enable/disable changed blocking.

 

Testing

 

Test Servers:

WD Server - 146.20.43.203:28070

Rage and Honor - 65.113.116.20:28072

 

More test servers are desired. If interested contact Rage.

 

Any suggestions, comments, and questions are welcome. We need to extensively test JK2++ to work out any existing bugs and balance the gameplay. We also need to see how it works in CTF, TDM, and duels (after we change the saber aspect).

[Lord Nodata]

why are there no neutral or negative options in the poll? I hate being force-fed...

[NK_Zephorath]

LOL

It was meant as a joke.

We are looking for any kind of comments.

Be it good, bad, neutral, whatever. We are doing everything we can to make this mod fun for everyone, so PLEASE go to our forums at http://forums.wdonline.com and give us your opinion, because it can make a difference.

[GrEEk_OuTcAsT]

You make so many changes and many of them are not needed. Most of them unfortunately are newbie changes that are not needed and the only thing they do is to mess the player up with new gameplay styles. The Community has already splitted in many. 1.02, 1.03, SDK 1.03a etc. We need all the community to focus in one gameplay style.

[Lucky]

You guys haven't actually added anything yet, just fiddled with cvars.

 

+ is that saberrealistic option giving u trouble? It was crashing me incessantly when i thru it on.

 

 

 

Lucky

[Lucky]

Also, I got the roll and the disruptor working if you want it. I had to change clientside stuff tho and I've since completely ruined my version of the source, so i'd have to recreate it.

 

One more thing, I suggest you guys make the wall walking speed the same as whatever speed yer moving at, I did that and it made wall walking much more advantageous if you had speed/rage on.

 

+ you can bump up the speed to JK levels if you stick people to the ground. Check out the wall walking code again to see how thats done. Thats basically what JK did.

 

Last thing I was messin with was trying to make it so you could wall walk with a gun, wasn't having a lot of success and then I got really busy with school. Guys might want to consider implementing that.

 

Last thing, you guys have the ghoul2 cvar enabled yet? That'd help a crapload with most of the damage levels without really having to up them considerably.

 

 

Lucky

[QuietSith]

Updated - now Rage and Honor are Beta 3.

[NK_Zephorath]

Originally posted by GrEEk_OuTcAsT

You make so many changes and many of them are not needed. Most of them unfortunately are newbie changes that are not needed and the only thing they do is to mess the player up with new gameplay styles. The Community has already splitted in many. 1.02, 1.03, SDK 1.03a etc. We need all the community to focus in one gameplay style.

 

Care to explain? Newbie changes? Excuse my language, but what the **** are you talking about? 1.03 was released because NEWBIES whined about guns, dfa and a load of other things. I'm sorry, but we think 1.03 sucks. It ruined competitive gameplay, screwed guns and unbalanced the force powers. We are making the game more fun for EVERYONE.

 

Now, have you actually PLAYED the mod? No?

 

Well the people that have, love it. The most fun I've had in this game, is playing JK2++. Balanced forces, less mana cost, no assfighting, tweaked weapons, faster gameplay. This is what 1.03 SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

 

Lucky, I haven't done any coding on this, but I don't think we will allow walking while zoomed with disrupter simply because we have already increased the damage, and it would too powerful like that. As for the roll, is that possible while keeping it server side?

 

http://dev.wdonline.com

[QuietSith]

Originally posted by Lucky

You guys haven't actually added anything yet, just fiddled with cvars.

 

+ is that saberrealistic option giving u trouble? It was crashing me incessantly when i thru it on.

 

 

 

Lucky

 

Linux server here - never a problem with GSD settings.

[QuietSith]

Originally posted by GrEEk_OuTcAsT

You make so many changes and many of them are not needed. Most of them unfortunately are newbie changes that are not needed and the only thing they do is to mess the player up with new gameplay styles. The Community has already splitted in many. 1.02, 1.03, SDK 1.03a etc. We need all the community to focus in one gameplay style.

 

Hey genius - 1.03 is the newbie patch.

 

JK 2 ++ unnewbifies it and removes the spamming exploits that came in 1.03.

 

Community splitted?

 

I guess you better go save HL, Q3, and UT:

 

http://www.gamespy.com/stats/mods.asp?id=15&s=2

 

http://www.gamespy.com/stats/mods.asp?id=22&s=2

 

http://www.gamespy.com/stats/mods.asp?id=35&s=1

 

As you can see they really do stick to the default gameplay. Uh.. no.

[WD_Rage]

Originally posted by Lucky

You guys haven't actually added anything yet, just fiddled with cvars.

 

+ is that saberrealistic option giving u trouble? It was crashing me incessantly when i thru it on.

 

 

 

Lucky

 

Um, we've only fiddled with 3 cvars. Everything else can't be changed with cvars (at least to my knowledge).

 

As for the roll and disruptor movement, I figured it would have to be client-side in order for them to work properly. Our main focus has been with keeping the mod server-side. I technically got the rolling and movement with the disruptor working. However, little bugs kept them from working properly. If we ever need to go to a client-side mod, then the bugs will be gone.

[WD_Rage]

Originally posted by GrEEk_OuTcAsT

You make so many changes and many of them are not needed. Most of them unfortunately are newbie changes that are not needed and the only thing they do is to mess the player up with new gameplay styles. The Community has already splitted in many. 1.02, 1.03, SDK 1.03a etc. We need all the community to focus in one gameplay style.

 

Maybe you like the nerfed weapons and idiotic "balancing" of the force powers. I, and many others, do not. Because of 1.03 many, many people have stopped playing JK2.

 

What the community needs is game play that EVERYONE can enjoy, not only one group of the gaming community.

 

Don't knock it before you try it.

[Lucky]

As for the roll and disruptor movement, I figured it would have to be client-side in order for them to work properly. Our main focus has been with keeping the mod server-side. I technically got the rolling and movement with the disruptor working. However, little bugs kept them from working properly. If we ever need to go to a client-side mod, then the bugs will be gone.

 

Both of those you have to modify in the movement file, which is the same file on both the client and the server. Basically, for the disruptor you have rearrange some checks to get it to work, its pretty easy looking back on it. The wall walking and the rolling is also in that file, and its not too hard to get that to work either with a lil effort.

 

I dunno if that will force clients to dl yer mod or not, but it sounds like you've already changed a number of values in that file, so chances are it wont.

 

 

And you know the playerspeed variable? Well wall walking is capped to 200, with a nice comment next to it that says 'walking speed'. If you change that to the player's current movement speed then you don't slow down to wall walk.

 

Basically, if you have speed on or otherwise, you wall walk at the speed you were running at before you initiated the wall walk.

 

As for the cvar's comment, everything you've listed is a cvar or a structure member. They're simply values yer tweaking, it doesn't sound like yer adding any new code, just tweaking existant data.

 

You can only go so far doing that, if you guys can only change values at this point yer in for a long miserable road of learning how to mod q3 effectively.

 

Even getting the 'rolls with guns' and the 'moving while zoomed' working were difficult for me for that reason. And I didn't add a whole lot to get it to work.

 

But honestly, the game only needs the ammo un-nerfed and the sabers fiddled with, + a speed boost and it plays better than when it was released.

 

Finding every variable thats easily identifiable and commented and changing them for the hell of it is a good learning experience, but might not make for a necessary gameplay adjustment.

 

Ex- Why was the range of grip changed?

Ex2- Why was Jump changed at all?

 

Also, a lot of interesting and tempting variables in the source are used to initialize other variables, and if you tweak too many of those yer gonna screw up yer source in a way you might not understand how to unravel, much like I did on 3-4 occasions trying to get force jump to emmulate JK. Had to start over with a fresh copy cause i couldn't identify the problem. You might introduce new bugs, so be careful.

 

And one more thing, I imagine you remembered to take out all of the 1.03a nerfs? Walking backwards, and swinging with a saber were both modified in a fairly annoying way that involved movement in the source.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky

[WD_Rage]

Originally posted by Lucky

 

Both of those you have to modify in the movement file, which is the same file on both the client and the server. Basically, for the disruptor you have rearrange some checks to get it to work, its pretty easy looking back on it. The wall walking and the rolling is also in that file, and its not too hard to get that to work either with a lil effort.

 

I dunno if that will force clients to dl yer mod or not, but it sounds like you've already changed a number of values in that file, so chances are it wont.

If anything is editing on the client side, then a download is required, is my understanding. I realize the bg_pmove.c is shared between server and client, but wouldn't any change that could not be handled only by the server (like the rolling and disrutpor movement) require a client download? I got both working with no client-side files, however, little things (saber popping out during a roll, zoom not holding it's FOV during movement) kept me from digging any further; I had other things I needed to get to before I could spend time on them.

As for the cvar's comment, everything you've listed is a cvar or a structure member. They're simply values yer tweaking, it doesn't sound like yer adding any new code, just tweaking existant data.

 

You can only go so far doing that, if you guys can only change values at this point yer in for a long miserable road of learning how to mod q3 effectively.

I'll say it again - We've only fiddled with 3 cvars:

 

g_saberghoul2collision

g_sabertracesaberfirst

g_dismember

 

Everything else isn't a cvar that we've fiddled with. Yes, many changes were simple, but that's no reason to start spouting what you did. With our current goals, not much code has needed to be added. I've had to add some in some places, and I've had to take some out in some places. We're doing what we need. Nothing more, nothing less.

But honestly, the game only needs the ammo un-nerfed and the sabers fiddled with, + a speed boost and it plays better than when it was released.

 

Finding every variable thats easily identifiable and commented and changing them for the hell of it is a good learning experience, but might not make for a necessary gameplay adjustment.

 

Ex- Why was the range of grip changed?

Ex2- Why was Jump changed at all?

In your mind, the game only needs those tweaks. In ours, it doesn't. Every change we have made has been a thought out process. We didn't look over the code, find where it was easiest to edit, and say, "Ooooh. I'm going to edit that for the hell of it."

 

Even before the SDK was released, we already had a list of things we wanted to change. The grip distance and the jump velocities were only two. We have a reason for everything we change, and not one reason was "for the hell of it" or any variation thereof.

And one more thing, I imagine you remembered to take out all of the 1.03a nerfs? Walking backwards, and swinging with a saber were both modified in a fairly annoying way that involved movement in the source.

I'm not a saberist, so I didn't know there were such nerfs. You are the first person to say anything of it to me, at least.

[AgentScully]

* Sabering Light Stance

o Increase base damage to 50. Damage range from 2 - 50.

* Medium Stance

o Increase base damage to 75. Damage range from 2 - 85.

* Heavy Stance

o Increase base damage to 123. Damage range from 2 - 180.

 

This is even worse than 1.02, 123 base damage for red?? WTF? This makes red in 1.03 an unstoppable killing machine, specially now that you can do triple combos with it. All you've done is made duel's consist of a dance where the first person to connect with a red swing wins automatically, cuz all you have to do is basically hit once with red then finish with blue. Bleh, i understand what the others in this thread meant by newbie mod. Boy, is it ever!

[WD_Rage]

Actually, no one's every complained about it (red stance). Besides, the sabers were beefed up in mind to balance the weapons, not with duels in mind. However, when our server has been on duels, many saberists (some of which I asked to test it out) had no problem with getting around red stance. It's powerful, yes, but it ought to be.

 

As for it being newbie, play it before knocking it.

[NK_Zephorath]

This is even worse than 1.02, 123 base damage for red?? WTF? This makes red in 1.03 an unstoppable killing machine, specially now that you can do triple combos with it. All you've done is made duel's consist of a dance where the first person to connect with a red swing wins automatically, cuz all you have to do is basically hit once with red then finish with blue. Bleh, i understand what the others in this thread meant by newbie mod. Boy, is it ever!

 

If you can't avoid the red stance you deserve to die. How bout you come and play on our server and we'll see how you do against 'newbies' ?

[QuietSith]

Rage,

 

While I do like about 98% of what JK 2 ++ did - I do however think a couple of things need to be toned down:

 

Jump is just a wee bit too high - most people on those maps with lots of ledges tend to jump over them, it needs a little toning down - or there needs to be a way to jump less if you do something like tap a few times, etc.

 

As the guy said in LucasForums:

 

"This is even worse than 1.02, 123 base damage for red?? WTF? This makes red in 1.03 an unstoppable killing machine, specially now that you can do triple combos with it. All you've done is made duel's consist of a dance where the first person to connect with a red swing wins automatically, cuz all you have to do is basically hit once with red then finish with blue. Bleh, i understand what the others in this thread meant by newbie mod. Boy, is it ever!"

 

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=646079

 

After spec'ing people fight and duel, I can see what this guy is talking about.

 

It's now a red lunge spam fest instead of assfighting.

 

Perhaps you can tone down the red lunges or make them much more difficult to recover over - meaning a lot longer?

 

It gets much worse in duels with the lack of saber throw - there is no way to truly get close enough to the red lunger (the recovery time is much too short), in order to saber throw him into punishment for lunging.

 

I would figure the goal is to make no particular move spammable and abusable and unfortunately, as I'm seeing .. Red lunge is replacing assfighting, - please consider toning it down a bit (or a lot). Also, the option to saber throw in duels will stop a lot of these kinds of moves from being overly spammed.

 

Thank you.

[QuietSith]

Originally posted by NK_Zephorath

 

If you can't avoid the red stance you deserve to die. How bout you come and play on our server and we'll see how you do against 'newbies' ?

 

You know the same could be said about assfighting.

 

What's the point in beta testing if you are just going to flame people for offering the criticism that is requested!?!?

 

I think it's cool you are advertising the mod (with my server as one of the testers) but very uncool if you criticise people who are offering their ideas about it. That's a major turn off.

[NK_Zephorath]

While advertising the JK 2 ++ mod is great, and it's in beta (meaning wanting suggestions etc.) on the LucasForums and elsewhere I notice if a person launches any criticism they simply get super flamed back.

 

You're right, we want suggestions and constructive criticism. We DO NOT want people calling our mod 'newbie' or flamming us despite the efforts that we have made, and they have not.

 

It's now a red lunge spam fest instead of assfighting.

 

Did you play 1.02? People spammed all of the time, and people learned to stop it. It was not a big deal at all. You wanna know what I did? As soon as they left the ground, I did a DFA myself, and each time, I'd land right on their hand. That would teach 'em for a while. In 1.02, you could kill people with your saber stuck in the ground, and the DFA damage was ALWAYS a 1-hit kill, I don't think that people would spam it because red damage has increased, because DFA damage has not.

 

Red stance is slower than yellow and blue, and I am always switching between them. In 1.02 I could take anyone using red only, without DFA, because I knew the stance very well. Not many people are using the other stances yet because in 1.03 they sucked, and aren't used to the new damage yet.

 

Another thing, this mod was not designed for dueling. Its primary focus was to fix competitive ctf, and it is doing a great job of that. We need saber damage to be higher, in order to have a chance against gunners. It needs to be possible for a saberist to defeat and gunner, and now it is. Quite a few times I've been cut down by a saberist who just pulled me in and slashed. If we reduce damage again, saberists will be at a further disadvantage. The problem is finding a compromise.

 

Personally I'd rather see people spamming red stance than spamming DFA. However, if we reduce red stance damage, DFA spamming will only increase.

[IronJedi Kaga]

Just some general comments:

 

"To enhance the gameplay of Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, primarly with Force tweaks (mostly neutral), while adding a higher level of fun."

 

This was taken from the goals statement, yet in your most recent post (as of this post being typed) you say the mod is primarily desgined for CTF. That should be reflected in your goals or mission statement as opposed to saying enhancing JK2 gameplay overall.

 

As for the changes, I personally wouldnt call them "noob" , but there are several changes that seem uneccesary. Speed, jump, and sight were all fine (well with the exception of sight being mostly useless overall) prior to in 1.02 and 1.03. The only reason I can think fo for altering those powers at all, is some sort of attempt to work JK1 gameplay (aka speed nearly always on, and tons of jumping around) back into jk2.

 

The change to grip range seem uneccessary. As for drain, well lowering drain mana cost is just going to revive the drain whore problems that 1.02 had.

 

Heal change seems fine.

 

As for the weapon changes. The damage increases to the disrupter seem uneeded. The demp changes are good, the gun was near worthless. Rockets ammo changes are too much. On most maps missle ammo is right next to the launcher, gving one an automatic six missles which is plenty.

 

The pick up weapons for ammo is only going to promote camping as people no longer need to go search out ammo. Granted, it makes thigns easier for CTF, but hurts every other gameplay mode with weapons.

 

Saber damage is too high. There is barely any difference between the stances. Going by the base damage numbers you posted, both heavy and medium kill a spawned player in two hits. Light kills in 3. Even with 100/100 its 4 light, 3 medium, 2 heavy. With respect to the speed difference in saber styles, there's still little differential in the damage.The only time saber stances actually begin to make much of a difference is when fighting a player with 100/200 (health/shields) respectively. That doesnt happen often.

 

Some of the new admin "features" are pointless. Slapping/Punting have no purpose other than being there for admins to abuse. If someone is causing a problem on a server, you can verbally warn them, or just kick them. The only future for punting/slapping is for use when your just fooling around or for use by an abusive admin.

 

Overall I see it as useful for CTF only, and even then in limited use as some of the uneccessary (well IMO) force changes could turn some players away.

[NK_Zephorath]

As for the changes, I personally wouldnt call them "noob" , but there are several changes that seem uneccesary. Speed, jump, and sight were all fine (well with the exception of sight being mostly useless overall) prior to in 1.02 and 1.03. The only reason I can think fo for altering those powers at all, is some sort of attempt to work JK1 gameplay (aka speed nearly always on, and tons of jumping around) back into jk2.

 

Yep

 

The change to grip range seem uneccessary. As for drain, well lowering drain mana cost is just going to revive the drain whore problems that 1.02 had.

 

No, not really. We just want to balance the forces more. In 1.03, light absolutely destroys dark.

 

As for the weapon changes. The damage increases to the disrupter seem uneeded. The demp changes are good, the gun was near worthless. Rockets ammo changes are too much. On most maps missle ammo is right next to the launcher, gving one an automatic six missles which is plenty.

 

Weapon balance. Seriously, pre JK2++, the disrupter sucked bad, we thought a more 'rail-gun-like' disrupter would be better overall, because it is no longer useless, but I still wouldn't pick it over repeater/flech/rocket.

We agree with you on rockets, they are being changed back to 3 per pickup.

 

Saber damage is too high. There is barely any difference between the stances. Going by the base damage numbers you posted, both heavy and medium kill a spawned player in two hits. Light kills in 3. Even with 100/100 its 4 light, 3 medium, 2 heavy. With respect to the speed difference in saber styles, there's still little differential in the damage.The only time saber stances actually begin to make much of a difference is when fighting a player with 100/200 (health/shields) respectively. That doesnt happen often.

 

I will forward this, never thought of it.

 

 

 

Some of the new admin "features" are pointless. Slapping/Punting have no purpose other than being there for admins to abuse. If someone is causing a problem on a server, you can verbally warn them, or just kick them. The only future for punting/slapping is for use when your just fooling around or for use by an abusive admin.

 

Verbally warn? Come on slapping them is more fun. More admin options are being looked into.

 

Overall I see it as useful for CTF only, and even then in limited use as some of the uneccessary (well IMO) force changes could turn some players away.

 

That's why it is still in beta. I don't see the force being changed again, but we will try and make the mod better for dueling, ffa, tffa etc..

[WD] Thxs you for you input

[NK_Zephorath]

Concerning saber damage:

From [WD]Rage

 

Yes, they are close, but I wouldn't say they're too high. The saber is the ultimate weapon. The slightest touch dismembers an appendage or can kill. Game-wise, that philosophy doesn't work well, but there can be a compromise between game and movie.

 

When I started thinking of what damage to use for the sabers, I decided to make the saber more like JK1:

 

Primary swing - Didn't do as much damage as secondary. In about 3 or 4 swipes, the person's dead.

 

Secondary - Took away 98 health and 80 shields. If you got hurt in any area, anything more than taking two hit points, one slice of the secondary and you were dead.

 

I wanted to emulate that.

 

So Red/Heavy stance is now the secondary swing of JK1. It's strong and powerful, and makes you almost dead. Blue is the primary swing. Yellow is a compromise between blue and red. The saber damage system kept gunners at bay. Sabers weren't as good as guns in JK1, but you at least had a chance. Now it's the same in JK2. Saberists now have more of a chance against gunners than they did.

 

Now, base damage is decided upon a good, clean hit, which doesn't happen as much as non-clean hits (which cause less damage). On paper, the damage system seems high, but in reality, it's not.

[IronJedi Kaga]

Originally posted by NK_Zephorath

 

 

 

 

 

No, not really. We just want to balance the forces more. In 1.03, light absolutely destroys dark.

 

 

 

 

Well as for the JK feel, well I guess that personal preference. IMO Jk was very imbalanced and JK2 is overall much more balanced than the fiist.

 

As for the light destroys dark, I agree with you. Though I feel the answer is more in altering absorb with the "reverse ysmalri effect" so that the offensive force advantage returns to the darkside or at the very least the sides are left with equal offensive capability as opposed to altering, or returning drain to its 1.02 state.

[GrEEk_OuTcAsT]

Sorry for my first reply which was pretty quick but I was in hurry and I didn't analyzed your mod a lot.

 

I played for sometime your mod and it is good for team games but it probably sucks in Duels which is the "Main" JK2 Gametype.

 

My 90% of my games are duels and all the changes you made don't help it a lot. However even in this version jk2++ is BETTER than any other patch even in duel but it still needs further improvements in this.

 

And when I say Duel I don't mean only NF Duels but also Jedi Knight/Master Duels that have almost disappeared since 1.03. I will analyze my suggestions in your forum.