Knife Basketball

[W*]

Script Name: Knife Basketball
Original Author(s): W*
Core Version: 2.6.3


This is an implementation of basketball in Soldat - it came as a consequence to Knife Volleyball.

It uses a knife as the ball. The action is very fast and the game implements as much real-life rules as possible.

Rules:

• You can handle the ball for max 2.6 seconds (this does NOT use Apponidle so it's EXACTLY 2.6 seconds).  If you don't throw the ball fast enough it's a foul.
• You can steal the ball from another player by punching him. However there's a chance this action will result in a personal foul.
• A team must complete its action in a given amount of time.
• Successfully throwing the knife into the basket yelds 2 points.
• Jumping from outside a certain area and then successfully throwing the knife into the basket yelds 3 points.
• After scoring, or throwing the ball out at the side of the other team, all players of a team must rush back to their side of the court. Failing to do so will result in a foul. However this is not necessary if the other team throws the ball out at their own side.
• After scoring, or out, the ball is respawned at the same side.

How to play:

• The game is ideally played by 4 or 6 players. More than 6 usually generates too much confusion and mass-stealing.
• The game is very immediate, and in my humble opinion really fun. There are no particular techniques to master, the best way to become proficient is just to play it a lot. With increasing experience you'll learn to anticipate where the knife will fall and what's the correct timing to attempt a steal.
• The skills involved in attacking are simply jumping (to achieve a favourable position for throwing/passing, and to evade incoming defenders) and knife-throwing (to pass successfully, and obviously to score).
• Defending benefits from some tactical insight. A successful intercept or block requires good timing.
• A key defending ability is 'disturbing'. When a player attempts to score he well get a scoring chance (expressed in %) that depends on two factors: distance from the basket and 'disturb' amount. Disturb occurs when there's one or more nearby enemies. The closer (and the more) they are, the less chances of scoring.
• A successful throw will become an actual scoring according to the scoring chance described above. If this chance is not met, the knife/ball will randomly bounce over the basket (rim) until it falls out the basket, gets intercepted, or finally goes 'into the net' (hence scoring).
• The above implies, gameplay-wise, that is always worth for one player of the defending team to go and disturb a tentative scorer, while another player should wait for a possible bounce and try to get the rebound.
• Conversely an attacker should try its best to evade and mis-direct defenders in order to get a clear shot, that is much more likely to go in. A teammate should if possible rush to try and get the ball after bounce, dunking the ball in right away.
• In general, there are no clear 'roles', nonetheless teammates should maintain a certain distance, and avoid rushing all to the ball every time - if nobody catches the ball the enemy will have a chance to a fast (and easy) counter-attack.

Technical considerations:
The game is NOT 100% bugs-free. There are many server-client lag issues which will result in disappearing knives, two knives present, etc. When playing remember that the SERVER decides, so don't trust your soldat client - if you see you got the knife but you don't see 'BALL', then you did NOT get the knife. The rule of thumb is: the more general lag, the more bugs. And as a corollary, the more players, the more bugs.

The higher rate of knife-exchanges (especially due to stealing) in basketball leads to a higher frequency of bugs. In order to lessen its unpleasant effects I had to enforce a frequent general status check, that will straight things out - e.g. remove any 'second' knife that could be present and make sure that the 'legitimate' ball-owner (as seen by the server) actually has a ball to handle.

It works - the 'disappearing knife' should occur, hopefully, not much often (and when it does, just wait a few seconds for a foul to be called - its actually another check ) - but a side effect is that you could get a 'confirmed' knife (and see 'BALL' in your screen) that disappears shortly after, in favour of another player (who also had a 'confirmed' knife in the same exact moment). It can be sometimes confusing but it's not difficult to get used to; and I think it does not hinder the enjoyability of the game.

There were additionally other soldat-related problems (like the instance of a player catching the knife and immediatly turning, that results in the curious behaviour of soldat thinking he loses and regains the knife in a matter of millisecods) that had to be addressed by other checks and exceptions.

I'm very open to opinions/suggestions regarding these bugs and ways to overcome them.

Also: do NOT enable free throws (see code), it's not 100% working yet.

Where to play:

• My own testserver (it can go down anytime and without notice): soldat://s4.ttwforums.com
• Jesus' Server: soldat://lep.strangled.net:23075 (awesome maxplayers=8, must be madness)

edit: added soldat.ini and mapslist.txt inside the zip, and attached 2 kb concept maps - there's a nice 3rd one by MetalWarrior, but it needs some editing. Mapmaking: see the concept maps, it should all be quite straightforward. If not, feel free to make additional inquiries.

[Kagesha]

hahaha i love both Soldat and basketball and for you to put them together is pretty awesome! I have downloaded it but i'm confused on what to do with everything Oh and also what maps are used for this?

[W*]

Uh well, re-download the stuff and extract it to your soldatserver folder, edit soldat.ini (that is provided now - admin pw is advisable). The script loads kb_weapons automatically.
I added two concept maps to 1st post (I had forgotten - again).
If anyone is interested in setting up a 'knife sports' server like my own testserver (it cycles thru kv and kb maps) let me know and I will assist - I can provide my own setup, or ScriptsManager will do as well. It would be VERY nice to have such a server since my own connection is unstable/has sometimes ugly ping/i do experiments with the server etc etc.

[Kagesha]

Yea i might be able to intrest the one particular nz server because they are still deciding on a script to put on their server..

[PANTERA]

I think that Idling bot are NOT the best solution for the basket system. I suggest also to use stationary guns for delimiting playing field areas. But maybe I just gave a fast and superficial look to the code. Have a look at my mod, which shares much of the ideas of this one: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=26130.0 good mod anyway

[Sir Jeremy]

Lmao This I got to see..

Basketball with knifes..sounds ..dangerous.

[Meecrob]

sounds fun

[NailsForLunch]

I can never get the script to work, for some unknown reason..