Chainsaw suggestion

[thegrandmaster]

Ok, probably been suggested before, but here it is again.

Chainsaws can be thrown a very short distance and slowly but can deal some damage.
It wouldn't be enough to kill unless the other player was travelling quickly.

[DarkCrusade]

I really like this idea

[KYnetiK]

I always liked it, but where would you draw the line?
Why not permit any similar mass of metal the same functionality? ie any weapon that is thrown causes damage relative to velocity

So many times as a sniper I encounter a wall of bullets that makes a shot impossible - instinctively I try to switch to knife and throw asap but alas i hurl my gun into the face of my opponent. It could at least have broken his nose or something! But I guess I can live with the fact that by dropping my gun, they also dropped their guard - and I still have a knife!

[thegrandmaster]

Yeah exactly! I think you should be able to do that

[DarkCrusade]

And walking over knives causes damage and cripples enemies!

[thegrandmaster]

And walking over knives causes damage and cripples enemies!

Err... not so sure on that one :L

[DarkCrusade]

More of a joke, because everyone was like "lets make Soldat realistic"

[thegrandmaster]

i do like the idea of throwing guns etc... I hate it when the noise comes up but you don't actually switch to secondary...
either A: the bug gets fixed or B: the guns you do throw incurrs damage

[KYnetiK]

A crippled gostek could open his inventory and tend to his wounds using his ration of styptic, bandages, and burn cream. Dont forget to carve those bullets out with your army knife, kids!

Either that or some kind of medical ninjutsu ....



The point here is that a game is a simple, closed system. And it needs to stay that way, or it becomes a mess. Soldat is teetering on the edge of the balance between simple and complex; or in other words - a good game, and a mathematical mess that can be mildly amusing.

All great things, games or not - are simple. Every answer to the most complex problems - were they not simple? Did you not ever slap yourself afterwards and say - how did that elude me for so long?! Life itself is a perfect example of the complexity inherent from mathematical simplicity. Game design must follow this also, and throwing that mighty spanner of 'realism' usually breaks any game.

Think of Rock-Paper-Scissors.  Remember playing this as a kid?
A perfectly fun and balanced system, and can be applied to so many game scenarios. Like a lot kids, you might start to add more elements such as fire, water, or dynamite etc to make things interesting. Ive seen posters with over 30 different symbols/elements and their corresponding win/lose rulesets. But as soon as you start introducing new elements it becomes a mess, unplayable and unpalatable. Needlessly confusing, too much to remember, and you forget about it and play with a ball for a while instead.

Soldat has long been balancing upon this problem. I think its the addition of little 'featurettes' like this which, while I agree are aesthetically awesome, will edge Soldat further into something beyond reasonable balance. You cant have everything in a game - thats what makes it a game - and what makes design an artform.

Like you said, just fix the bug of switching weapons. While Im at it - is this a bug? Or is this just bad coordination / rushing controls? I was never too sure....

[Monsteri]

Wise words 

[thegrandmaster]

Well if I hear the secondary switching noise, I presume it has switched and therefore throw the weapon... which is not always the case...
I get what you're saying though. It's valid.

[Outek]

I like it! nice idea.

[Poop]

Heres my suggestion for chainsaw, and since we have a new developer team they might do it.

Get rid of the chainsaw altogether, replace it with a flamethrower (Whcih works exactly like the chainsaw except can justifiably have more range). Plus it would be pretty cool.

OR just fucking improve chainsaw range, realism be damned (And fix the lag issues). The chainsaw can never be practical until it doesnt have to kill someone right in front of them (and not work half the time due to lag).

[mich1103]

I Love this idea :-)

[STM1993]

OR just f**king improve chainsaw range, realism be damned (And fix the lag issues). The chainsaw can never be practical until it doesnt have to kill someone right in front of them (and not work half the time due to lag).

While we're at it, the chainsaw shouldn't create a projectile at one exact point but should be a long line/box ranging from the hands to whatever length the chainsaw's speed value is.

[KYnetiK]

What the hell? The saw is using a particle hack for collision detection? HAHA! Thats some funny sh*t, explains everything about the saw. All it needs is a basic raycast from the player checking every n pixels up to distance p, and since p would be so small a distance the resolution would be perfect. Raycasting with dynamic velocity over netcode however? Thats something I question the efficiency of, but seriously - its gotta beat the plethora of saw reg issues due to its particle collision hack.

[thegrandmaster]

Heres my suggestion for chainsaw, and since we have a new developer team they might do it.

Get rid of the chainsaw altogether, replace it with a flamethrower (Whcih works exactly like the chainsaw except can justifiably have more range). Plus it would be pretty cool.

OR just f**king improve chainsaw range, realism be damned (And fix the lag issues). The chainsaw can never be practical until it doesnt have to kill someone right in front of them (and not work half the time due to lag).

Where the heck did flamethrower come from!?
I'd say no to that, chainsaw is fun

I'd increase the damage of chainsaw significantly, so running into someone ACTUALLY kills them rather than hurts in some cases. Increase it enough to put it beyond all reasonable doubt.

[STM1993]

I'd increase the damage of chainsaw significantly, so running into someone ACTUALLY kills them rather than hurts in some cases. Increase it enough to put it beyond all reasonable doubt.

It's because the saw doesn't kill in one hit if the saw touches the legs.

I told the Skoskav about it and they did increase it for the next balance. Last I saw, they raised the damage to 2500.

[demoniac93]

Sounds reasonable enough, maybe we can make it work like the fist, the fist is after all just a bunch of pixels colliding with another bunch of pixels, right? Can this be implemented to function with a thrown weapon?

[KYnetiK]

The problems with saw damage stem from the primitive collision detection the saw uses, which will almost always succumb to network effects, such as latency and lag exploits. Increasing the damage doesnt help when that variable isnt getting the opportunity to be processed.

Sounds reasonable enough, maybe we can make it work like the fist, the fist is after all just a bunch of pixels colliding with another bunch of pixels, right? Can this be implemented to function with a thrown weapon?

Sounds straight forward, but after discovering the saw collision mechanics, I wouldnt be surprised if melee works in a similar fashion. Pixels vs pixels sounds easy enough, but when it comes to programming it compounds pretty quickly.

Basically, there are 2 types of collision detection used in games : point collisions and shape collisions.

A point collision finds a coordinate and checks that against a 'bounding box' of another. In the case of bullets, it determines the coordinate of where it is and where it will be, and checks whether it is within the bounds. A thrown weapon could easily be treated as a bullet, except that the shape/rotation of the thrown weapon would not be computed, only its origin.

If you want shape collisions, you want it to be a static object vs a dynamic object ie a map polygon vs your gostek. Dynamic vs dynamic means far too many computations in terms of efficiency. Since a saws angle can change, so does the rotation of the raycasted damage area, and so does the amount of thinking the collision check has to do. Considering the thinking the engine would have to do, the saws cheap particle hack solution actually works quite well - except when it comes to a network. When a network is involved, the particle point used for the saw is too variable when you are moving at speed, and your opponent is moving at speed, and the network is computing where you are. Basically, without reliable coordinate values, any collision system will break down.