[RELEASED] [UT] The Last Fortress - Final

[salsaSkaarj]

The SK6 glow is a nice visual thingy but not necessary.
The chainclimbing problem isn't a permament thing. It takes some getting used to and doesn't bother me much.

The instakill clusterfucker attack from the tower (I take it that's when you have to cross the hanging bridge): at first I thought WTF is this, but later on I realised that having such an instakill situation (a single one) does have its value (it even provided a comical touch). After it happens, the player knows there was no way he could have foreseen it, but that moment is now over and the player can start to find out the location of the danger and work out the strategy to pass that difficulty.
I'ld say - leave this as it is, unless there have been too many complaints about it. Perhaps soem kind of signal whhc should make it clear to the player that it might be a good place for a savegame before trying to croos that bridge (not having a decent savegame at that point seemes to me the only negative aspect of that instakill).

[Buff Skeleton]

It was never supposed to kill you, though, under any circumstances. It never did in my playthroughs, but I never ventured close enough to the impact site to take damage from it. It's a bug, and I fixed it.

The first attack from any SK-6 Gunner should ALWAYS fail to kill the player, no matter what. Otherwise it's unfair.

[salsaSkaarj]

The first attack from any SK-6 Gunner should ALWAYS fail to kill the player, no matter what. Otherwise it's unfair.

I know it's unfair, and I had problems with that section the first time. BUT, later on I thought it was comical and found it a nice break in the fairness of the map - it is after all the only instakill situation and once you know where it comes from it's just a matter of planning your own SK-6 launch before the gunner does. It just presents another type of puzzle.

It's your map of course and I'll play the new version whichever way, but I'm keeping the old version for sake of nostalgy

[Buff Skeleton]

I'm still not sure how you manage to get killed by it, because it aims so high it always misses me whenever I play it, even on V1. It IS the first trooper and not the first brute, right? That's the one that is the "insta-kill" situation IF you are close enough to the wall impact?

In other news, I've majorly cleaned up some netcode fuckery and will be testing a lot of stuff online tonight. The custom player class is functional as well; now I just need new code for it and a new climbing actor (leaving the old ones enabled for legacy support for coop).

[salsaSkaarj]

I'm still not sure how you manage to get killed by it, because it aims so high it always misses me whenever I play it, even on V1. It IS the first trooper and not the first brute, right? That's the one that is the "insta-kill" situation IF you are close enough to the wall impact?

Now, you're confusing me.
The only instakill situation I encountered was when trying to cross a hanging bridge and there are 2 (I think) Skaarj in a tower. You can't see them, you don't know there there. Once you get to halfway the bridge, they appear (in your back) and shoot that Clusterfucker, not both at the same time. At that time you probably won't even know where they are. The way I passed was to advance to almost halfway the bridge, turn around, now facing that tower and retreat slowly until they appear, then, quickly fire an SK-6 and then a second one. No other clusterfucking situation was instakill at the first go..

[Buff Skeleton]

Ah yes, that one. On Hard and Unreal there are two gunners, but BOTH of them can be blown away with a single SK-6 rocket if you aim between them. I have moved the target a bit further for the one that hits the bridge, too, to make it a little less likely to kill you. But crossing that bridge should have been an obvious sign for trouble anyway considering how open and conspicuous it is

[Mister_Prophet]

Concerning the nuka-sniper that insta killed me, I guess I'm just unlucky But clearly you said it wasn't supposed to happen, so I feel better that I mentioned it.

As for what we discussed about the rope ladders, my issue with them is simply that they are a technical liability. I do not mean that they are a liability because taking the water route is a risky venture. I mean...the way they are set up just...it's like I'm stuck in invisible molasses, know what I mean? The fact that there are a number of ways the player will be in the position to use them (whether they are making a tactical miscalculation or not, especially if not) and that patrolling guards inside the walls can easily be missed for any number of reasons, climbing up and having your ability to dodge/counter impaired by a sticky climbing system that's easy to gimp up can be frustrating. Personally, as far as my game was concerned I just felt that it was too slow to ascend.

[Buff Skeleton]

I hopefully can address this with improved functionality. The goal is to allow the jump/crouch keys to move you up and down independent of where you're looking while still allowing you to leap off of the rope/whatever at any time, assuming lateral movement controls remain unlocked (but less... what's even the word for how it is now, loose?). You should feel more firmly "stuck" to the rope without being completely incapable of jumping off quickly, and you should feel like you have better climbing and shooting controls mid-climb. That's what I'm going to do everything I can to implement. I'll probably also speed up the climbing movement just a little bit and pass it off as the player being a super buff badass guy full of steroids.

I also fixed some horrible log-spamming bullshit for the SK-6 online. I think Core mentioned this and I forgot to change it; it was the tweenanim thing. Now the server and client logs are devoid of errors, so I think we're good on that front so far.

[Delacroix]

I think you should set another key to jump off the rope if Jump pushes up. Eg. an "Use" key that would be used to both grab and let go off the rope.

[ividyon]

Using the forward/backward keys to move up/down and Jump to jump off the rope is much better. Crouch could simply make you let go of the rope without pushing you in any direction.

[Buff Skeleton]

That's a good idea, sana! Either way, once the system is functional it shouldn't be hard to play around with key settings.

[Doublez-Down]

I dunno, but I'd just prefer a very small invisible lift that climbs me to the top of the rope instead of all the clunky controls. But I see what you're trying to do anyway. It's just that 95% of the time I just wanted to use the ropes to get back on the bridge, which doesn't really require all the technical mumbo jumbo you're doing. I mean it's going to be kinda unrealistic either way, and I'd have to be a buff badass to climb a rope with one hand while holding a gun in the other....not to mention my feet are just dangling as well

[Buff Skeleton]

Except the map is nearly breaching several different kinds of engine limits already and I reeeeeeally don't want to fuck around with BSP-based elevators which have scores of problems of their own. What if you fall off the mover while it's taking you up? You have to wait for it to reset. What if you don't get off the mover fast enough when it stops? You fall back down for no reason. What if the mover starts bugging out the way movers all love to? Collision problems, potential additional BSP problems, etc. Movers are TERRIBLE for this, seriously. Some custom code and custom actors will make everything work out.

[salsaSkaarj]

Except the map is nearly breaching several different kinds of engine limits already and I reeeeeeally don't want to fuck around with BSP-based elevators which have scores of problems of their own. What if you fall off the mover while it's taking you up? You have to wait for it to reset. What if you don't get off the mover fast enough when it stops? You fall back down for no reason. What if the mover starts bugging out the way movers all love to? Collision problems, potential additional BSP problems, etc. Movers are TERRIBLE for this, seriously. Some custom code and custom actors will make everything work out.

Sounds like some serious arguments here.
I am also in favour of keeping the ropes (revamped or not).
An argument I woudl like to bring forward (which I'm doing now) is that ropes fit the setting a lot better than any kind of elevator. The moat isn't used for anything really (perhaps for fishing or swimming) so why would anybody (or anything) have bothered to install elevators. The only necessity would be to be able to get out of the water and ropes are the quickest and most simple things to install.

[Buff Skeleton]

Honestly, if it were possible, this map wouldn't have ropes at all - you'd have to climb back up onto the boardwalk via the support pillars, and it would be really damn hard to do, because fortress moats aren't meant to be easy to get out of

Of course, that would shit all over the gameplay, and it's not technically feasible, so ropes were it. And since the ropes in their current form are still sorta shitting on the gameplay a little bit, at least as far as Proph and I discussed, they will be improved as much as they can be without becoming insta-teleporter magic yarns or something.

I guess you could explain away the ropes as things the Skaarj wrapped around poles for their own convenience in the event that any of them accidentally fell in the water during construction (due to the structural damage caused by their airborne artillery strikes). The original occupants of the fortress (i.e. the humans and Nali survivors) most definitely wouldn't have made it so easy.