Battlefront II: The Hunger Games [Version 1.0 Released!]

[LRKfm946]

Hey everyone! I'm excited to announce my first mod map release, The Hunger Games, in the next couple weeks!

*UPDATED 4/19/14*

WORLD DESCRIPTION
The world is split into 4 regions: swamp, forest, town, and mountains. In the center of the map, there is a very shallow, water-filled "crater" with a small island in the middle. The map is foggy with occasional thunder/lightning, and visibility is limited to about 30 meters. There are traps hidden throughout each of the four regions.

GAMEPLAY
All players will spawn in a waiting room. They will enter portals that will register them and teleport them to the center of the map. Once everyone is registered and ready, there will be a 30 second grace period during which everyone will disperse. During this time, players may not attack or follow one another. After the grace period is over, the Hunger Games begin and the last person or team alive wins!

MODES
Clone Wars Conquest - ALL ERAS Free for All Hunger Games
Clone Wars Hero Assault - ALL ERAS Team Hunger Games (Players fight in teams of 2)

SIDES
Republic/Empire:

• Clone Trooper
• Assault Trooper
• Clone Sharpshooter
• Clone Engineer
• Clone Commander
• Jet Trooper
• Imperial Officer
• Dark Trooper

Rebel/CIS:

• Rebel Soldier
• Rebel Vanguard
• Rebel Sniper
• Rebel Smuggler
• Bothan Spy
• Wookiee
• Super Battle Droid
• Magnaguard

(Note: I had to remove the droideka because it was causing crashing, and it is not suited for playing Hunger Games.)

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Units' minimap icons have been disabled.
• All units have boosted health and medium-strength shields (1000 damage).
• Units will spawn with 0 shields, and will have to find shield powerups hidden throughout the map.
• There are no health or ammo droids. Instead, powerups will spawn periodically throughout the map. There are four different "groups" of powerups:
  • 2 Dual powerups will spawn at each of the 4 cps, and at the center cp.
  • More dual powerups will be scattered around the map.
  • Shield powerups will also be scattered throughout the map.
  • There will be 4 "super-powerups", one hidden in each region. They won't expire until they are picked up, and after they are picked up they will not respawn like the other powerups.
• Every so often there will be a special "supply drop" in the center of the map. Anything could be dropped from a single dual powerup to buffs and full restores (full replenishment of health, ammo, energy, and shields).
• In order to prevent people from camping the whole time (which ruins the gameplay), there will be a "Camper Killer" feature. If a person camps for too long (2 minutes straight), they will start to slowly lose health and shields. They will have to keep moving for 30 seconds for it to stop.
• The free camera function is disabled. If you try to freecam, you will be killed and yelled at

SCREENSHOTS
Swamp:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Forest:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Town:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Mountains:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Center:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Night Mode:

Hidden/Spoiler:

My first models
Shield powerup:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Raxus boxes (scaling the stock one didn't work out so I just made some from scratch)

Hidden/Spoiler:

Youtube Videos
First Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th--EEBZYeA
Second Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdvpfK2zw8M

Online Beta Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=486VmTSFirA


To-Do List

• Super-powerups are not complete yet. I currently have 1-hit kill and invincibility. I still haven't decided what I'm going to make the other two do. I'm going to try adrenaline for one of them. If you have any ideas for super-powerups, please share them!
• I still have to finish coding the traps.
• I have to code the player registration for team mode, but that might have to wait until a v1.1 release of the map.
• GCW sounds are currently missing. For whatever reason I can NOT get custom sounds or side sounds working in a custom sound lvl. I can get lightning sounds to work but that's it. I'm running out of time on this project so if someone could be so kind as to make a sound lvl for me, that would be an amazing help and I would love them forever.
• Miscellaneous fixes/clean up in the world.

Known Bugs

• There's currently a bug that causes graphics issues, especially with water, when on full 1920x1080 resolution.
• The map CTDs when it finishes loading if you play another map and quit the session, then play this map. I'm not sure why it does that, but it's best to start up the game fresh before playing the map.
• During online testing, we found that if you wall glitch out of the registration room, you'll most likely CTD. I'm not sure why (probably has something to do with the shadow/rainshadow regions around the room, and the fact that it's underground), but I'm not too concerned with it, as it only happens as a result of intentional glitching.
• When playing online, the map seems to make the game very unstable with minimizing. If you minimize the game more than a couple times, or you leave it minimized for too long, it will probably crash. I'm still looking into the cause.

Online beta testing is 90% done. After a few hours of playing online with no server crashes, all that's left to do is balance out some of the units.

Overall, the map is 95% done, and should be release sometime in the next week!

[MileHighGuy]

WOW! That is all one map? how big is it? This looks very promising. Very impressive from such a new modder!

EDIT: I would try to contact [RDH]Zerted for the camper script thing. If anyone knows how to do it, it would be him.

EDIT:2 I'm willing to beta test if you need help.

[LRKfm946]

WOW! That is all one map? how big is it? This looks very promising. Very impressive from such a new modder!

Thanks! It's pretty decent-sized, maybe a bit smaller than Geonosis (and square). And perhaps I should've clarified, this isn't my first mod map, just my first map release. I did some modding several years ago, but never released any maps. I just picked up modding again last summer, and started this project about 2 months ago.

EDIT:2 I'm willing to beta test if you need help.

Sure! Shoot me a PM about it.

[Anakin]

Sounds interesting. But the pics are really dark. Have you changing lights??

[Noobasaurus]

It looks really good so far! I like the shield and powerup mechanics. However, to add on to what Anakin said, I think that there should be different times of day that you can play in. That would be awesome.

[LRKfm946]

Thanks! For some reason my screenshots always come out darker than what it actually looks like.

I do have some more things I want to try with the environment, all of them involving dynamic weather/time of day. It just depends on what's possible. What exactly can I do with the environment with the lua?
Is it possible to add animation to regions, or to move/resize regions via lua? If so, I could have some moving rainshadow regions for occasional rain.

On the topic of environmental effects, is there a type of region that blocks all environment fx? I'd like to get rid of the blur and pollen particles in the waiting room. Also, is it possible to blur/soften shadows cast by the sun?

[MileHighGuy]

https://sites.google.com/site/swbf2modt ... 2_lighting

Scroll to the bottom of the page. You blur it, control intensity, and bf2 also has hdr capability. It's something more people should take advantage of.

[Marth8880]

I do have some more things I want to try with the environment, all of them involving dynamic weather/time of day. It just depends on what's possible. What exactly can I do with the environment with the lua?

With Lua? Not really much if almost anything, sadly.

Is it possible to add animation to regions, or to move/resize regions via lua? If so, I could have some moving rainshadow regions for occasional rain.

Nope, but you might be able to deactivate a rainshadow region in-game using the DeactivateRegion Lua function, though I'm not sure if this would work for what you want. Alternatively, you could use the RemoveRegion function to completely delete the region, but you wouldn't be able to respawn the region like you would with ActivateRegion after DeactivateRegion.

On the topic of environmental effects, is there a type of region that blocks all environment fx? I'd like to get rid of the blur and pollen particles in the waiting room.

Nope. You can only block precipitation.

Also, is it possible to blur/soften shadows cast by the sun?

Nope. Although you can use a WorldShadowMap to create the illusion of soft prop shadows (see stock Endor ENVFX file), or if you don't care about said shadows darkening entities onto which its shadows are cast, you can always just burn your terrain.


EDIT:

https://sites.google.com/site/swbf2modt ... 2_lighting

Scroll to the bottom of the page. You blur it, control intensity, and bf2 also has hdr capability. It's something more people should take advantage of.

I want to say that I've tried this before and it didn't work, but I could be wrong. Whatever, it's always worth a try.

[MileHighGuy]

I thought Forcemaster had time of day in one of his maps? I remember it involved a rotating sky dome or something.

[Locutus]

Awesome!
I love the idea and the map looks much better than I expected.

Not totally sure about the maps size, though, it could imagine it to get boring if there are only a few players: I.e. my buddy kills me 40 seconds after the map started but then takes 8 minutes to find and kill the other two players on the map. So when I'm playing this online with my friends (4 people total) and one dies early you might want to consider of letting them respawn as those dog-like creatures (if I remember correctly from what little I know of the movie). Say, like, you can't win if you're a dog but you can still wampa your way through the map and try to kill people so you're kept busy. The dogs don't need to be strong but when you kill one you flash on the minimap revealing your position.

I'm not sure about the invincibility item either. It's surely fun to capture but when you stumble upon an enemy that is invincible I could imagine that it is very frustrating to run away and try to survive until it wears off. More energy and hard to kill, great, but invincibility? Not so sure about that.
Being able to sprint super fast on the other hand sounds like lots of fun to me, so this would probably my favorite item. You could also think of adding a powerful jetpack though I'm not sure if that fits the style of your map.

On a final note think about making the capture regions a good bit bigger so it's a little easier to find other players. No idea about the camping issue (but it would be great if you could work sth. out and released the scripts afterwards!) other than making each player suffer from constant health loss that is only stopped for a while if you find certain (frequently placed) med kits.


...I tend to sound negative, don't I? Don't let this demotivate you, I love what you have done so far!
The videos looks stunning and like a lot of fun!
Would love to beta test this online though I can't guarantee to give feedback within only a few days.

[JimmyAngler]

those dog-like creatures

Is that possible? Has anyone released a "dog-like" model that goes around on four legs? (Or at least the animations for one?)

[LRKfm946]

Thanks for all the feedback guys!

Not totally sure about the maps size, though, it could imagine it to get boring if there are only a few players: I.e. my buddy kills me 40 seconds after the map started but then takes 8 minutes to find and kill the other two players on the map. So when I'm playing this online with my friends (4 people total) and one dies early you might want to consider of letting them respawn as those dog-like creatures (if I remember correctly from what little I know of the movie). Say, like, you can't win if you're a dog but you can still wampa your way through the map and try to kill people so you're kept busy. The dogs don't need to be strong but when you kill one you flash on the minimap revealing your position.

I see what you're saying there. The map size shouldn't be too much of an issue. It's not much bigger than the map I currently use to play Hunger Games (Era Of Desann's Nal Hutta, great map btw ), and that map is almost perfectly sized, even for just 5 players or so.
And honestly, in my experience it's still entertaining to sit back and spectate the rest of the round. As long as it doesn't last for more than 10 or 15 minutes (which it rarely does), it shouldn't be that bad. But that's just me
I'll definitely try to implement something like that though to keep people occupied.

I'm not sure about the invincibility item either. It's surely fun to capture but when you stumble upon an enemy that is invincible I could imagine that it is very frustrating to run away and try to survive until it wears off. More energy and hard to kill, great, but invincibility? Not so sure about that.
Being able to sprint super fast on the other hand sounds like lots of fun to me, so this would probably my favorite item. You could also think of adding a powerful jetpack though I'm not sure if that fits the style of your map.

Right now, all of the super powers last for 45 seconds. But who knows, maybe you're right and it's way too over-powered. I won't know until I play several test rounds online.

On a final note think about making the capture regions a good bit bigger so it's a little easier to find other players.

I did increase the size of the capture regions quite a bit, especially the center one, but now that I think of it, I could probably make them a bit bigger.

No idea about the camping issue (but it would be great if you could work sth. out and released the scripts afterwards!) other than making each player suffer from constant health loss that is only stopped for a while if you find certain (frequently placed) med kits.

That's a good idea! If I get no luck with the real camper function, I might try something like that. Or maybe I could have a grid of regions across the map, and if a player stays in one region for too long, they'll get a slow health loss. I have a feeling that would be very inefficient memory-wise though.




UPDATE 4/8/14

Changes made since last post:

• The world is complete (all ZE work is done), and I added 2 new weather modes: rain and night (screenshots below)
• All powerup spawns are fully functional.
• I finally got XSI and ZETools working, so I was able to do some modeling. I added shadows to the Raxus buildings and messed with some rocks from BF1 Tatooine. I also made my first real attempt at creating some models from scratch, which came out pretty well! I made a shield powerup and some Raxus-style boxes of different sizes (pics below).
• I now know how to make the camper killer, I just have to make it (huge thanks to Zerted for helping me with that)

To-Do List

• Fix sounds. For some reason no matter what I do, I can't get my added sounds working except for the thunder. I've followed all the tutorials I can find, and nothing seems to work. It would be a HUGE help if someone would be willing to make a sound lvl for me (I posted in the request thread too). In the meantime, I'll start from scratch and give it one last shot.
• I need to redefine the Free Cam function to prevent cheaters from hiding and using free cam to fly around and find other people. I'm gonna have some fun with this one (more thanks to Zerted for help with this).
• I need to fix the shadows for the mountain rocks.
• I have to do the coding to make the traps functional.
• I have to set up a post-elimination activity (haven't decided what I'm going to do yet).
• I have to code the registration for team mode
• Other miscellaneous stuffs

I'm hoping to start online testing by the end of the week.

Screenshots
Mountains:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Rain and Night modes:

Hidden/Spoiler:

I know they look pretty dark in the pictures, but it's much better ingame. In my opinion, the night mode looks amazing


My first models

Shield powerup:

Hidden/Spoiler:

Raxus boxes (scaling the stock one didn't work out so I just made some from scratch)

Hidden/Spoiler:

[yuke5]

Nice work! The models and screenshots look great.

[Locutus]

Looks great, can't wait to test it:D

• I now know how to make the camper killer, I just have to make it (huge thanks to Zerted for helping me with that)

You need to tell us how you did that:D

[LRKfm946]

GREAT NEWS!! The Camper Killer is now complete and fully operational (with the exception of a small bug that you can't pick up health packs while you have the health degen, but I'll get that sorted out). Online beta testing will begin tonight (4/10/14) and continue until we get all the bugs ironed out. Those of you who have already contacted me about testing, I will send you the map along with server and time details when they are ready later tonight. Anyone else who wants to join, feel free to PM me.

EDIT:

You need to tell us how you did that:D

At last, here is the code you've been waiting for *drumroll*

Hidden/Spoiler:

[code]local unitLocations = {}
local minChange = 10

CamperKiller = function(self)
print("\nChecking for campers...")

local CampCheck = function( player, unit )
print("Checking player ", player)
if (player == nil) or (unit == nil) then return end --check input
local x, y, z = GetWorldPosition(unit)
local currentPosition = {x, y, z}
local previousPosition


--start tracking a new player
if unitLocations[player] == nil then
print("\tStarting to track player")
unitLocations[player] = currentPosition
--PrintMatrix(unitLocations[player])
return
else
--previous location = last stored location
print("\tPlayer is already being tracked.")
previousPosition = unitLocations[player]
end

--see if the player has been camping
if math.abs(previousPosition[1] - currentPosition[1]) < minChange
and math.abs(previousPosition[2] - currentPosition[2]) < 20
and math.abs(previousPosition[3] - currentPosition[3]) < minChange then
print("\tPlayer has not moved.")
--they've now been stationary for another interval, raise interval count
players_alive[player].intervalCount = players_alive[player].intervalCount + 1
print("\tPlayer has been in stationary for this many intervals:", players_alive[player].intervalCount)

--If they've been camping for long enough (90 seconds), then they're in trouble.
if players_alive[player].intervalCount >= 9 then
print("\tPlayer is camping, applying health degen.")

--They might have full health, so the health degen has to be triggered; take away 1 health unit
if players_alive[player].hurtCount == 0 then
unitHealth = (GetObjectHealth(unit) - 1)
SetProperty(unit, "CurHealth", unitHealth)
end
SetProperty(unit, "AddHealth", -10)

--they are now camping
if not players_alive[player].isCamping then
players_alive[player].isCamping = true
end

end


print(" ")
return

else -- their position has changed more than 10 units
print("\tPlayer has moved.")

--if they WERE camping
if players_alive[player].isCamping then

-- they're moving now so reduce the damage
SetProperty(unit, "AddHealth", -5)

--increase the number of intervals they've been hurt but moving
print("\tThe player was camping, so track amount of time they're still being hurt for.")
players_alive[player].hurtCount = players_alive[player].hurtCount + 1

--if they've kept moving while being hurt for 3 intervals, then they've had enough
if players_alive[player].hurtCount > 3 then
print("\tThey've kept moving, so stop hurting them and reset their info.")
-- reset everything
SetProperty(unit, "AddHealth", 0)
players_alive[player].isCamping = false
players_alive[player].intervalCount = 0
players_alive[player].hurtCount = 0

else -- if they haven't been hurt for long enough, keep hurting them
print("\tPlayer has been hurt for "..players_alive[player].hurtCount.." intervals.")
end

end
-- they've moved, so we need to record their new position
print("\tRecording their current position.\n")
unitLocations[player] = currentPosition
return
end
end

--run camp check for each player alive
local i, v
for i, v in pairs(players_alive) do
CampCheck(i, GetCharacterUnit(i) )
end

end


CamperKillerTimer = CreateTimer("CamperKillerTimer")
SetTimerValue(CamperKillerTimer , 10)
OnTimerElapse(
function(timer)
CamperKiller()
SetTimerValue(CamperKillerTimer, 10)
StartTimer(CamperKillerTimer)
end,
"CamperKillerTimer"
)
[/code]

Please note that the bug mentioned above still exists, I'll revise/repost the code when it's fixed.
EDIT (4/15/14): There were some errors in the code I first posted, it's updated now. The health pack bug hasn't been fixed yet though.


EDIT 2: Since almost everything is done except scripting, I thought I'd post a "Free Roam" beta version of the map so you guys can explore the world. All of the Hunger Games scripting is disabled, and when you spawn, you are placed in the center of the map instead of the waiting room so you can go explore. Any and all feedback is much appreciated, and if you find any problems, glitches, etc., please report them (screenshots would be awesome). Here are the issues I'm already aware of:

• Most of the weapon sounds are missing.
• I already know of one spot to get out of the map in the mountain area.
• There's a semi-floating object in the cave of the swamp area.
• The water glitch still occurs on 1920x1080 resolution, so if you use that resolution, you'll want to reduce it.
• The map still CTDs if you play another map before it.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. If you find anything else, let me know!

Note: Unfortunately, I no longer have access to ZeroEditor, so I can't make any further changes to the world other than what's possible by editing the text files. This mainly includes any terrain changes and adding new objects.

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://www.mediafire.com/?bp4id92cb9c1tb9





UPDATE 4/19/14
Online beta testing is 90% done. The other night we played the map online for a few hours without a single server crash. All that's left to do is play a few more rounds and see what units need to be balanced out. I'm thinking of just removing special units because they're way too overpowered compared to the normal ones. Usually when I played Hunger Games with my friends on the old map, we always made a rule that special units weren't allowed. What do you guys think?

Heres a video of one of our online rounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=486VmTSFirA
Be aware that rounds aren't usually that short. A typical round lasts around 8-12 minutes.

The OP has been updated with pics, features, to-dos, and bugs. Everything else that needs to be fixed is stuff that I need help with, mainly getting sounds and traps working. I asked about those here. Any help with that would be much appreciated.

Unsurprisingly, my gcw sounds STILL aren't working. No matter what I do, I can't get anything from my custom sound lvl to work except lightning sounds. If I don't get this working soon, then it would be a huuuuuuuuuge help if someone could kindly make a sound lvl for me. If you do this, I wil love you forever.

Has anyone downloaded the beta map I posted, and if so did you find any bugs or glitches that I haven't mentioned yet?

[KeepAmazinn]

To bad the online component of this game is shutting down

[MileHighGuy]

I cant wait to play this online with some people

[commanderawesome]

To bad the online component of this game is shutting down

Not nessesarily...
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=30026
http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=7692.0

[LRKfm946]

Version 1.0 has been released!! Release thread: http://www.gametoast.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=30098

Changes I made before the release:

• Changed sides to Republic/CIS and Rebels/Empire
• When registration is closed or ends, each person will get a full restore powerup to restore their ammo.
• Since I couldn't get the multiple weather modes to sync up among players online, for now the map only has 1 weather mode (dusk).

Thanks for all your help and suggestions! Keep an eye out for v1.1