Murder Party is like FFA. I have not tested it with Team FFA, that probably will show weird things. The currently implemented rules are: - Everyone gets a target to kill - If you observe how your target dies a practically indestructible and undetectable little building will spawn for you (wherever your mouse happens to be). It gives + 100 metal and + 10000 energy. You also get a point. - If you observe how your killer dies you get half the bonus, but no point. - Observing how anyone else dies gives you -1 point and a little malus of -25 metal and - 2500 energy. - Once anyone dies targets are reassigned. - There is no actual game end trigger stuff. The game ends normally. However the points are posted in chat whenever a player gets/loses a point, so you can for now at least see what points players had. So technical issues that limit it to what it is: - I can get events for "something was observed to die". But not "I killed something". Thus the "if you observe" thing. - I cannot actually modify your resources. So I spawn buildings. They pop up wherever your mouse is. - To spawn those units cheats need to be enabled. To be precise the mod now includes the json to activate the create unit cheat. The mod takes care of "breaking" the normal hotkey, however a malicious person surely can get around that with a little bit of technical knowledge. It's the best I can do... - There is no easy way to send data between clients so synchronizing state is hard. - I'd like to set a custom icon on my bonus/malus units but the icon atlas scene seems to be impossible to mod with current server mods. Only works if it is reloaded by hand once in the lobby. - This shadows common.js to inject an entry into the scene_mod_list. I can't find a way to add a UI mod from a server mod without shadowing something. - I can't find properties on a unit to make it completely unreclaimable and unselectable. Can that be hacked into the unit spec somehow? Would be good for the bonus/malus "buildings". This at least makes them completely invisible to enemies: "ignore_sight": true, "ignore_radar": true It's a server mod on github for now: https://github.com/pamods/servermod-murderparty To play just download the zip and copy the mod folder to your server_mods directory (see the info about server mods in the sticky) All players need the "show cheat servers mod" enabled or they won't be able to see the games. Needs testing, it's close to a first REL version, but I don't have more time to do tests right now.
committed a bunch of updates - I've tested a bit and it seems only direct vision triggers the commander death events. So the game is about making sure you only see the death of the right players. I think that's not that bad. Could even add some interesting twists. - It should now be able to handle you leaving to the settings or reloading the scene or rejoining (rejoining actually does not work since PA server mods do not yet support that) - Players can't use the "create unit" cheat anymore without doing evil scripting stuff - The eco modification buildings are now 100% invisible to other players. Tomorrow I hope to make a testgame or two and then change the WiP to REL EDIT: Actually I am gonna prioritize my preparation for the last and final exam thing I have the day after tomorrow. So expect me to work again on this once I can call myself an officially trained programmer in less than 2 days right now Expect work on this today.
I have hosted a game now. To join it you need to: - use the PTE - have the "show cheat servers mod" enabled. (https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-show-cheat-servers.60533/)
Testing this kind of thing is rather hard on the PTE: There are like 0 players on it, and the need for the cheat mod makes it even harder. So yeah... can't test without enough players to play a proper FFA.
So got to play some test games. Worked for the most parts. 2 issues: 1.) In both games one player had some unknown hard bug that broke it for that player. The players in question were not able to use the debugger, so no idea what happened. 2.) The alerts system seems to choke on the death alerts for enemy buildings and can skip enemy commander destroyed alerts. I guess I should disable death alerts on any buildings.
Hey cola, just wanted to say that this idea is great and I am really looking forward to how you can make this better when the uber team gives us some more down to the server modability. Especially, i'm interested to see if they will give us a better way to sync state and send info to all the clients. I've got a few ideas running along the same vein as you in terms of changing the resourcing system and I would rather avoid spawning tiny invisible buildings all over the place to simulate basic resource changes. Edit: Also.. are you still seeing "choking" on the death alerts? Is it simply because the system is just "best effort" in that if there are too many alerts it simply drops them?
When I wrote this mod we had no access to the server. Since we have the server by now I am pretty sure it is possible to implement a server side scripted murder party that works without as many hacks. The calls to do stuff like "spawn unit" and "react to players lost his commander" are there. EDIT: What still sucks is the "you observed somebody died" issue I guess. Not sure actually about "best effort" alerts. They were like that in the past I think and there were (are?) bugs in the alerts system. I don't know what is fixed and what not. I.e. a few month ago killing a unit via nukes did not trigger any alerts. I think that changed by now.
@cola_colin "Reclaimable" "controllingArmy" The second one might make it unselectable, but then also remove the income. Worth a try i guess.
Are any of these blueprint parameters actually hooked up to the engine? And if so, how would one change something like controllingArmy on the fly?
@elodea have you seen controllingArmy and some of the other unused blueprint parameters actually working in a multiplayer game?
