singleplayer respawning

by Aardappel_ on 04/21/2006 01:03, 41 messages, last message: 06/07/2006 07:49, 6273 views, last view: 05/05/2024 17:49

As I am looking at whats still missing in the sauerbraten FPS, particularly on the SP side, one obvious thing is that loadgame/savegame is broken (though its easy to restore).

So I wanted to try out this recent SP map "vr", but had no savegame functionality, so had to make sure to not die at all.

I noticed how much more exciting playing the map without it was, as running into monsters around corners made me jump, and every little ambush made me feel "omg I am going to die!".

Of course, it is well known that having to start from scratch would be too frustrating for SP. So that got me thinking about alternative methods that would take out the frustration, but would keep some of the added excitement that having things at stake gives.

My idea is the following: add special SP spawning to SP. The way it would work is:

- respawn points are placed thruout an SP map, particularly in quieter areas before major battles.
- if you touch a respawn point (marked by some model), that becomes your current respawn point.
- if you die, you respawn at the current respawn point.

To give appropriate fear of death, yet make continuing after death possible, and easier every time it happens:


- all monsters and items stay where they were before you died. This means that if you are having a very difficult time, it becomes a little bit easier every time as monsters get killed.
- you will lose all your armour, and get all your ammo capped to a low amount (probably 5 each).
- to compensate, your health gets replenished fully, and you will get a large amount of pistol ammo
- your permanent powerups (currently the +10 health boost) will stay across respawns, as in DM (making them more useful!)

I think this would be a lot more interesting than load/save. It would feel less than just having to repeat a section, since it would be different every time. I think its a good balance between being punished for dying without the frustration, and increasing the excitement of battles.

Comments welcome. The rules as to what you lose and what you get when dying can be tweaked, of course.

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#22: ..

by hampus_ on 04/24/2006 15:12

I think it sounds like a great idea. I hate play things over and over again. But then I think a save game at last spawn point is required.

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#23: ..

by pushplay on 04/25/2006 01:49

>> world state _doesn't change_ as you respawn

Oh, I missed that. Now that's not a bad idea actually.

>> monsters steal a bunch of your gold every time they kill you

Now there's an idea. What if when you die you keep some fraction x of your ammo and 1-x of your ammo is distributed among the monsters around you when you were killed, dropped once you kill them. So you can get back to the level of ammo you were at before you just have to work for it.

As a side note to that it might be cool if monsters picked up ammo when they ran over it and you have to kill them to get it back.

>> At least with my proposed system, you are NEVER stuck!

That's not guaranteed once we have triggers. :)

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#24: Re: ..

by kurtis84 on 04/25/2006 03:11, refers to #23

Hm...this sounds a lot like coop gameplay...is this just coincidence? :)

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#25: I got it

by Pxtl on 04/25/2006 14:15

I was thinking it over, trying to reconcile the two opposing problems:

1) we don't want painful repetition, and
2) we don't want to starve the players of ammo and health (ammo-starvation may be produced by Aard's plan).
3) we don't want to make it too easy for them either.

So, here's my solution, that mixes my suggestions with Aards.

First, a clock. The Clock is God. The Clock is your score. Possibly, include a function be able to trigger text messages depending on the values of The Clock at the end of the map, so that the mapper can say "You suck, you took too long". Or maybe ABCDEF-style grading system like in Sega games.

Then, we make ammo respawning in singleplayer. Thus, if a player wants to go through the map at a paleolithic pace, they can - and they'll have an easier job of it because the ammo is coming back. But their score will suck.

Third, death adds one minute to the clock, caps your ammo at 5, and respawns all the map ammo (and other non-health pickups). So if a mapper wants to make sure that the player is well-armed after a respawn point, they litter ammo around it. The player can pick it up first time through, or fetch it again when they die.

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#26: ..

by makkE on 04/25/2006 17:45

Hmm pixtl, that would be unfair against people who prefer to play it cautious, not rushing in and hoping to survive. Plus some maps are designed towards rushing in=death. (mitaman´s maps come to mind).

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#27: Re: I got it

by Aardappel_ on 04/25/2006 18:40, refers to #25

yeah, sorry, I don't want to feel rushed all the time when I play. Time to appreciate the atmosphere etc :)

There will be a time towards the end, so you can compare your score vs others, if you are playing it competitively.

Everything respawning seems too much against the feel of SP (clearing a level).

I think everyone is taking this ammo starvation a bit too seriously. You will still have quite a bit of ammo. And the advantage that all monsters you killed don't come back. Yes, it will help if mappers distribute ammo more evenly, and yes, players may want to adopt a style where they only pick up things once they need them, and moreso when they have almost no health. That seems fine to me.

There has to be SOME punishment for death.

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#28: Re: I got it

by mitaman at dark cave on 04/25/2006 20:21, refers to #27

>>There has to be SOME punishment for death.<<

Send the player to doggie hell instead of people hell (sorry, could'nt resist the silly-ness)

MitaMAN

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#29: Re: I got it

by Pxtl on 04/25/2006 20:34, refers to #27

Oh, I just meant ammo respawning, not monsters.

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#30: SP Save/Load

by jojo on 04/26/2006 12:27

Hello, in the new 04/26/06 version the savegame/loadgame command doen´t work. Is there a way I can fix it?

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#31: Re: SP Save/Load

by Aardappel_ on 04/26/2006 19:20, refers to #30

it never worked. We're looking for what to replace it with in this thread.

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#32: Re: SP Save/Load

by CC_machine4 on 04/26/2006 19:42, refers to #30

i say again.. load and savegame DO work try it! just not very well and im not sure if it is in both linux and windows versions :/

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#33: so....

by Aardappel_ on 06/05/2006 04:42

After the discussion above, this system is now implemented (in CVS, will be in the next release). To give you all a taster, here's what it says in the docs... I player a few maps with this, and its a lot of fun!

========================

Classic SP works differently from most FPS games that employ a savegame based system (as did Sauerbraten's predecessor, Cube). The problem with savegames is that they take away any tension in gameplay, since you play without fear because you can make frequent saves, and when you do have to reload, its just an annoyance (or frustration, if you forgot to save for a while because it was going so well).

Instead of savegames, sauerbraten employs a novel system based on respawnpoints (not to be confused with checkpoints, which are just an annoying version of savegames). The major annoyance in other games comes from having to repeat the same thing, in Sauerbraten, you can die, and still never have to repeat the same gameplay again, yet you still have strong motivation not to die. This brings back the tension in gameplay, without the frustration.

The way it works that when you die, the world stays AS IS. Dead monsters stay dead, and alive ones just continue at their current location. You respawn, as if it were DM, at your last respawnpoint. Respawnpoints are entities placed by the level designers in various spots thruout the level, and the game remembers the last one you touched. You can touch these more than once. When you respawn, the evil monsters will have stolen your armour, and most of your ammo (currently they take 2/3rds, unless you have 5 or less, in which case they don't take anything).

On the good side, you will have all your health back (and you have kept any healthboost powerups!), and your starting supply of pistol ammo (see, the monsters are evil, but fair). The good thing is that this way, even though you are punished for dying, you are never stuck, since even if a group of monsters is very hard to overcome, they will be easier every time you try, since the dead ones stay dead (and the hurt ones stay hurt!). You may have to work with your pistol more, but that is part of the tradeoff. An additional motivation to not die, is that deaths are the most important component in reaching a good score on a level. Every time you finish a level, you will see a printout like this (this is me on a leasurely play through sp3):

time taken: 456.274000 seconds on skill level 3
player total damage dealt: 19412, damage wasted: 9573, accuracy(%): 66
player frags: 99, deaths: 0
TOTAL SCORE (1000/(deaths+1)+frags*10-seconds+accuracy+skill*25): 1675 (best sofar: 1675)

This gives you the stats of your game. The overal score is something that will be displayed in the menus next to the map name, so you can try and improve your best score, and compare to others. These score values are saved accross runs of the game (in bestscore_<mapname> aliases). The final formula has been tweaked such that:
* The number of deaths has the biggest impact on your score. You want to have 0 deaths for a good score.

* The second most important thing is frags, you want to make sure you have killed all monsters.

* The third most important thing is probably time... finish the map as quickly as you can

* another component is accuracy, which reflects shots fired compared to damage dealt (which is not the same as damage taken, i.e. it does not take into account if a rocket is mostly wasted because the monster only had 10 health).

* the last component is skill, multiplied by 25. If more agressive monsters don't phase you, then you can score more by playing on skill 10.

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#34: Re: so....

by Passa on 06/05/2006 08:04, refers to #33

Sounds good.. will test it out in the latest CVS release..

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#35: Re: so....

by kurtis84 on 06/06/2006 02:29, refers to #34

Cool...now I can build some SP maps :)

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#36: Re: so....

by Passa on 06/06/2006 07:56, refers to #35

Exactly what I was thinking!! (well actually, I already started a SP map, but I am not going much further into it until the next release with doors!!)

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#37: changes

by Aardappel_ on 06/06/2006 09:37

The previous formula was a bit convoluted. So metlslime had the idea to make it all based on time taken to complete the map, and make all the other things simply time penalties:

--- single player time score: ---
time taken: 155 seconds
time penalty for 1 deaths (1 minute each): 60 seconds
time penalty for 21 monsters remaining (10 seconds each): 210 seconds
time penalty for lower skill level (20 seconds each): 140 seconds
time penalty for missed shots (1 second each %): 25 seconds
TOTAL SCORE (time + time penalties): 590 seconds (best so far: 423 seconds)

That reads much easier I think, and gives you a good impression what you can save on to get a better score for the map.

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#38: Re: changes

by pushplay on 06/07/2006 02:21, refers to #37

Missed chaingun shots shouldn't be penalized as heavily as missed rockets. and missed sg shots should fall inbetween.

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#39: Re: changes

by Passa on 06/07/2006 02:53, refers to #38

Thats a good point. Also.. does it count as a miss if the rocket does not actually HIT the monster? For example, I do not always aim at the monsters, I instead kill them with splash damage etc.

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#40: Re: changes

by Aardappel_ on 06/07/2006 05:58, refers to #39

it already does. every time you shoot, it counts the damage you are potentially causing (i.e. 30 for the MG, 120 for the RL) to the damage that was actually caused.

If you hit a monster with splash, that will count as less accurate as hitting him spot on. The advantage is that you can damage more than one monster at a time. In theory you can get an accuracy of >100% if you mostly shoot rockets and they often damage multiple targets, though in a real SP map that never happens.

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#41: Re: changes

by pushplay on 06/07/2006 07:49, refers to #40

That's a fair system.

In Cube it was possible to damage to multiple monsters with the cg or rifle because damage was hitboxes but bullets were stopped with polygons. I can't recall if that changed in Sauer but that would be another way to >100% accuracy.

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