[Concept] Wouldn't it be cool if...

[techhead]

Time for Techhead's monthly mod idea post.
This month, we have a list of a bunch of little ideas, all of which would take client side changes and not very major game-play wise. Mostly just variety and eye-candy. Some are stolen from other places. Feel free to steal any or all of these for your mod(s).

New items since last edit are in bold, removed items have been struck-out

1. Mass-driver has rail-gun-like beam when it fires. Nothing too gaudy, just there. (Revealing location of sniper might affect balance)
2. Mass-driver zoom has a more "scopey" feel to it, instead of just making everything twice the size. Making it toggle would be nice, too.
3. Shotguns are pump action and loaded 1 round at a time, all four clip-based weapons shouldn't reload exactly the same. (New mechanic might also affect balance)
4. Grenades look more explosive-y
5. Flamer projectiles change color, starting at blue, going through red and orange towards yellow.
6. Flamer has very slight arc, not enough to be useful or harmful tactically, but it would be both prettier and more realistic. Realized that this would be trivial at best, and either unnoticeable or over-done at worst.
7. Creep on alien buildings scale to the amount of 'creep' the building creates, as in the kind that slows down humans when they walk by it.
8. Higher resolution creep texture.
9. Jetpack has lower pitch sound, and friendly jetpacks are extremely quiet.
10. Half-tone colors, explained in my post below.
11. Bigger and shinier Lucifer projectiles.
12. Lucifer creates a Particle system when charging, ala Metroid and the like.
13. Longer death-cam, that half second is often just too short, leaving you with a "what happened???" feeling. (Not sure if this actually requires any coding, or if it can be done with Cvars currently)
14. Current clips would be shows and grayed out with blaster wielded.
15. With mark-decon, some way of telling how many BP including marked structures.
16. Your idea can be here too! Just post it below and I'll add it to the growing list.

Remember, I made this topic for changes that are:
A. Can only be done with a client-side change.
B. Not too difficult to code, hopefully.
C. Would not affect balance more than trivially
D. Would not add a new mechanic, building, class, etc. Most of this stuff is eye-candy, graphical realism, or convenience.

[Troy1]

Slugs. for aliens (well, new buildable, but this one is piece of cake to implement).

1-3 BP 50hp trapper-like thing with only 1 function  - lay extra creep.

1) Can be built only in places with creep
2) Extends creep similarly to egg (not taken from SC)
3) Provides that extremely needed "slowdown" on humans.
4) If we have egg -> slug -> slug -> slug and if any of the slugs in the chain is killed, all the ones which are not connected to the egg directly or through another slug "die".


It is easily killed, so long line of slugs, just to build acids few kilometers away from the base will easily fail. Still laying some of them on the floor will produce trapper-like effect. and a good way to finish off the last 6BP left.

Pretty sure this will not hugely affect the gameplay.

[UniqPhoeniX]

Some comments about previous ideas & my ideas:
1. It would make MD users easily detectable.
5. The colors should be: light blue(only at the very beginning), light yellow, yellow, orange, red. And there should be more of those textures flying out of flamer OR just make it a good 3D animation =D. Something like THIS would look good.
7. How the hell are you supposed to hide an egg if it makes the whole area covered with creep texture? And it would be VERY low detail, buggy, and usually not covering the right area.

Adv flamer, uses napalm and can be used to set things on fire for a few seconds. THIS would be a new use for it.

[Troy1]

creep is the same thing as the eggs produce. Have you ever seen the creep an egg produces? Replace the egg model with slug-like, here you go.

[techhead]

New to the list: half-tone colors.

Instead of 8 colors, use 27. In a RGB color chart, from 0-2 here is an easy way of mapping the keyboard:
1-200 2-020 3-022 4-002 5-022 6-202 7-222 8-000
q-000 w-001 e-002 r-010 t-011 y-012 u-020 i-021 o-022
a-100 s-101 d-102 f-110 g-111 h-112 j-120 i-121 l-122
z-200 x-201 c-202 v-210 b-211 n-212 m-220 ,-221 .-222
The basic colors are the same in 1-8, and repeated in the grid.
Notable colors not available in the current coding are:
Gray-G
Orange-V
Pink-B (Not Magenta)
Violet-D (Again, different from Magenta)
I might post a pic with letters instead of text w/ numbers later.

[DarkEnix]

for my idea , it will be more realistic

Breathing affects scope and aims , making it harder to aim (but can toggle hold breath with a meter of holding breath bar , if holded under the bar , their hp will start to decrease) BrEATH ALl THE WaY !!! +D

n this would be great < +  =  >

XD

[Steely Ann]

Enix

A| This game is not realistic by any stretch of the imagination.  I play Flashpoint or Recon for that.
B| Ask yourself if that feature really "adds" to the Tremulous experience.
C| Do I have to use a separate key for that?  Eww.
D| NO U!!!!1112!!

[techhead]

Might I remind you, I made this topic is for things that would:
A) Not significantly impact game-play
B) Would be a tweak or mod to an existing weapon or buildable
C) Not too difficult to code
D) Probably function only as eye-candy, (graphical) realism, convenience, etc.
Everything I listed above (except the shotgun), I do not believe would affect balance much.
Everything I listed above (except my creep), I have seen either in a Trem mod, in a game utilizing Ioquake3, or I fully believe it would be easily done within the current engine.

Now then, to replies.

Troy1:
Your 'slug' would add an buildable to the game, and possibly affect balance, making easy base extensions without moving an egg to a more vulnerable spot. Not to mention how hard it would be to make large slug-chains die properly.

UsaKilleR:
1. I thought of that, but I really like the idea of a rail-gun-esque graphic in trem.
5. Exactly what kind of thing I had in mind.
7. Only the area that slows humans down would have the creep texture, not the creep that "powers" buildings. Hovel and OM have the two largest, followed by barricades, then tubes and eggs.

DarkEnix:
No, just no. Steely Ann has his response right on the money.

[==Troy==]

Actually, I had another idea :

Build time scaling.

Humans :

1) In the area of activity of a single repeater or RC the first building builds fast (1/2 normal build time). Second 3/4, 1, 1.5, 2 etc. something around exponential increase of the build time related to the number of building in the area of the power supply. If 2 areas overlap, a scaling is applied from both and averaged.
2) Ckit respawn time increased as well as the actual building build time. So you will have to wait longer for it if you build in already busy area.
3) The actual building time increased.
4) RC has a smaller expotential decay of the building time compared to the repeater.
5) If 2 buildings are built at the same time, the building time is averaged for both taking values of single build times for one, and the one after the first (if first is destroyed the second is updated to become first and the speed increased from the point where the first one was destroyed)

Aliens : Either the same, or completely opposite : the more you build, the faster it grows.

If aliens have the same method applied : Virtually we can allow unlimited bps then. The new outposts are established in a fast fashion, but overall building density cannot be reached to lag the server and make an assault impossible. In the alien case it is not the repeater areas, but every single building (but eggs, eggs are slowed down by the buildings which are not eggs as well) is slowing down the growth of the new building in the area of activity of it. The effect is cumulative, so if you have 2 acids close to each other, the area and time of the slowdown is increased. Every building have a fade off as well, so if you build very close, it will grow slowly, if few km away, it will grow fast. (buildings fighting for the creep with each other huh?)

If aliens have opposite, this means that a lucy which came into A base will not take it out completely, and the actual defences play a bigger role in A base structure, and for Humans, the camp is not useful, since their buildings will go down fast, leaving the integrity of the base naked. But on contrary encouraging to establish forward outposts, which can be easily rebuilt and supported.

[techhead]

Again with the coding issues and balance changes...

On another note, I'm adding even more stuff to the list.

[epsy]

1. Mass-driver has rail-gun-like beam when it fires. Nothing too gaudy, just there.

i just love the one from descent 3

[techhead]

Edited yet again, this time adding through item #15.

Cmon, no-one has anything to contribute to this thread?
Your minor idea could be included in someone's mod, or even 1.2!!!
(Or you could comment on my ideas, if you aren't feeling too inspired...)

[==Troy==]

Actually, I had another idea :

Build time scaling.

Humans :

1) In the area of activity of a single repeater or RC the first building builds fast (1/2 normal build time). Second 3/4, 1, 1.5, 2 etc. something around exponential increase of the build time related to the number of building in the area of the power supply. If 2 areas overlap, a scaling is applied from both and averaged.
2) Ckit respawn time increased as well as the actual building build time. So you will have to wait longer for it if you build in already busy area.
3) The actual building time increased.
4) RC has a smaller expotential decay of the building time compared to the repeater.
5) If 2 buildings are built at the same time, the building time is averaged for both taking values of single build times for one, and the one after the first (if first is destroyed the second is updated to become first and the speed increased from the point where the first one was destroyed)

Aliens : Either the same, or completely opposite : the more you build, the faster it grows.

If aliens have the same method applied : Virtually we can allow unlimited bps then. The new outposts are established in a fast fashion, but overall building density cannot be reached to lag the server and make an assault impossible. In the alien case it is not the repeater areas, but every single building (but eggs, eggs are slowed down by the buildings which are not eggs as well) is slowing down the growth of the new building in the area of activity of it. The effect is cumulative, so if you have 2 acids close to each other, the area and time of the slowdown is increased. Every building have a fade off as well, so if you build very close, it will grow slowly, if few km away, it will grow fast. (buildings fighting for the creep with each other huh?)

If aliens have opposite, this means that a lucy which came into A base will not take it out completely, and the actual defences play a bigger role in A base structure, and for Humans, the camp is not useful, since their buildings will go down fast, leaving the integrity of the base naked. But on contrary encouraging to establish forward outposts, which can be easily rebuilt and supported.

Implemented and in testing on Amsterdam Unlimited.

[Revan]

#4 this is needed I want a spherical BOOM! not a torch

[Circle]

2. Mass-driver zoom has a more "scopey" feel to it, instead of just making everything twice the size. Making it toggle would be nice, too.

Is this possible to do a hud mod or would you have to recode the client?

[maxell]

i was just reading the posts and i got an idea that the human flamer would stay the same (on the 1.1 version (orriginal version)) and also there would be a adv flamer which got the basics of a flamer and has a special atk which the flamer heats up and kills aliens in the area ( and also set them on fire) which might last like 10 seconds taking 7-10 hp each secon maybe less (comes at S3?) ... and also make a adv shotgun which can shot a double shot (comes at S2?) ....

and to make it even on the aliens side i was thinking of a "slug" like thing which is a booster kinda thing which make a heal circle which make you healing 2x as fast and gives you poision ( it is a booster basically only you evovle into one) (comes at S3?) and make all the adv things ( adv ara basi goon) that there primery atk would be 2x as strong like: a goon does 50 dmg on a headbite an advgoon would do 100 dmg on a head bite you get it?... it would make it kinda fair i guess