NewDM: A new look at Quake Deathmatch

[LordHavoc]

I object to the statement about the super nailgun being so inferior.

Against a skilled player with a rocket launcher it loses consistently, regardless of range.

With the increase in velocity it should win in longer range battles.

CS didn't change the damage per second at all, he just tweaked the fire rate - 9 damage per nail, 20 per second, rather than 18 damage per 2 nails at 10 per second.

[Polarite]

Suggestions :
Maybe change the fraglimit to 30 ?
Add some good custom maps.
Add observer modes.
More ammo !

[Canadian*Sniper]

Question: what is the current status of the SNG?

Old SNG = 100 ammo (2 nails are consumed with each shot), 18 damage/nail, 10 nails/sec, results in 180 damage/sec.

C*S, didn't you up the damage and rate of fire and velocity of the SNG?

Old SNG = 30 Nails on pickup, rest you mentioned above

NewDM SNG in 0.03 (currently running) = 50 nails on pickup. 400 ammo (1 nail cost), 9 damage/nail, 14 nails/sec, results in 126/sec

NewDM SNG in 0.04 so far (updating this Sunday) = same as 0.03 except for increased nail velocity (1000 to 2000).

I'm aware of the crappy SNG on the server now and was debating either increasing the damage from 9 to 13 (182 damage/sec) and/or increasing the nail velocity. Right now I've only increased the velocity.

The reason I nerfed the damage from 18 to 9 was because it was TOO good with the increased firing rate. It made the SSG a joke as well because you could circle around your SSGing opponent with the SNG and cream him in seconds.

^ This is my reasoning. Now discuss I just did the calculations. Now that I think about it, I should increase the damage up a tad shouldn't I? But then again, I made the nails fast. That would result in more hits than it did before. hmmmph..

CS didn't change the damage per second at all, he just tweaked the fire rate - 9 damage per nail, 20 per second, rather than 18 damage per 2 nails at 10 per second.

Sorry if I was misleading. I just did the calculations now.

[Lardarse]

It's interesting how episode 3 and 4 include their secret levels in the deathmatch rotation. Same goes for runes where they appear in deathmatch except for the episode 1 rune.

That's because of entity order.

[Canadian*Sniper]

Also, I didn't change the GL. And I kinda disagree with LH about the GL being a lower tier than the SSG. I got more kills with the GL than I did with the SSG in newDM. I tend to aim down and bounce them off the ground/walls to confuse my opponents.

[LordHavoc]

I get far more kills with SSG than GL, it is my second most sought after weapon in most levels after the RL, and sometimes the SSG is better than the RL.

Many SSG kills are not at point blank (using it as a melee weapon is incredibly effective, but not always possible), but simply repeated peppering with bullets from midrange, especially effective if interrupting a fight between players with tier 3 weapons.

[Canadian*Sniper]

decision made for now. Upgrading SNG firing rate from 14/sec to 20/sec with 9 damage. It just hit me that the SNG was basically just a NG that fired in a straight line with 4 extra nails. :/

[Canadian*Sniper]

Here's what you can expect for the weapons in NewDM 0.04 unless I make any more changes to them:

[COLOR="Pink"]AXE 40/sec
AXE + EYES 160/sec
SG 48/sec
SSG 120/sec
NG 90/sec
SNG 180/sec
GL 200/sec
RL 150/sec
LG 300/sec[/COLOR]

[COLOR="PaleTurquoise"][U][SIZE="4"]QUAD[/SIZE][/U]
AXE 160/sec
AXE + EYES 640/sec
SG 192/sec
SSG 480/sec
NG 360/sec
SNG 720/sec
GL 800/sec
RL 600/sec
LG 1200/sec[/COLOR]

These are the statistics of the weapons at their best. Not a single bullet missing.

*NOTE* this whole SSG vs SNG balance is giving me a headache I'm debating changing the SSG reload time back from 1.0 to 0.7.

edit:

OK! I made a few changes and probably won't change them until I get feedback on the next mod update (when I finish the rest on my list. It's time to update)

Here are the weapon stats:
AXE: nothing changed from Vanilla Quake except for x4 damage with EYES
SG: no change. normal pellet damage (4 damage).
NG: no change. normal nail velocity (1000)
SGG: widespread attack every second costin 4 shells firing 30 pellets that do 6 damage each.
SNG: fires nails twice as fast as the NG with nails moving at 2000 velocity. Does 9 damage per nail.
GL: no change.
RL: no change.
LG: updates 2.5 times faster but it 2.5 times weaker. In theory, this weapon does the same amount of damage it would do in Vanilla Quake.

Here's the update in the damage/sec:

[COLOR="Pink"]AXE 40/sec
AXE + EYES 160/sec
SG 48/sec
SSG 180/sec
NG 90/sec
SNG 180/sec
GL 200/sec
RL 150/sec
LG 300/sec[/COLOR]

[COLOR="PaleTurquoise"][U][SIZE="4"]QUAD[/SIZE][/U]
AXE 160/sec
AXE + EYES 640/sec
SG 192/sec
SSG 720/sec
NG 360/sec
SNG 720/sec
GL 800/sec
RL 600/sec
LG 1200/sec[/COLOR]

Picking up a weapon will now give you the same amount as a large ammo box
Shells: 25, 50
Nails: 50, 100
Rockets: 2, 4
Cells: 12, 24

Weapon drop will be in the next update as well. Hopefully ammo shortage will not be a problem.

[Canadian*Sniper]

I recoded items.qc to save me the future headaches. Picking up a weapon gives you LARGE ammo box amount. Picking up a dropped weapon gives you SMALL ammo box amount or less.

// removed all magic numbers. Good grief -.-; <-- Canadian*Sniper
float MAXSHELLS =	200;
float MAXNAILS =	400;
float MAXROCKETS =	40;
float MAXCELLS =	200;

float SMALLSHELLS =	25;
float LARGESHELLS =	50;
float SMALLNAILS =	50;
float LARGENAILS =	100;
float SMALLROCKETS =	3;
float LARGEROCKETS =	6;
float SMALLCELLS =	12;
float LARGECELLS =	24;

edit:

I'm dumb. rocket ammo is now 3,6

[foq]

Did you nerf the LG from the last version?? When I played whitehot I thought it was uber pwnage...

[Canadian*Sniper]

The LG in the current version updates every 0.03333 of a second <--- sys_ticrate. Of course this might be unstable. In the mod it updates every 0.01 of a second.

The newer version will fix this by making the LG update every 0.04 of a second. The LG should be just as powerful as it was in vanilla quake. Just updates more often.

[Frenzy]

Canadian Sniper you're a motherfuckin pimp.

[Canadian*Sniper]

Canadian Sniper you're a motherfuckin pimp.

Darkplaces is becoming a stronger quake protocol server the more people report bugs This is very beneficial me thinks

[Canadian*Sniper]

Hey if ammo still becomes a problem, I have an alternative idea for the weapon stay code. If you already have the weapon, you can still pick up Small ammo box ammo from it if you have less of that amount.

[LordHavoc]

It has been brought to my attention that aiming is a little off (typically down and to the right, but the direction actually depends on where you're aiming) in non-DP clients on whitehot.

This is an existing and rather famous Quake client bug (which means I can't fix it on the server), it is documented all the way back to 1997 or so on Quake related websites, and seems to still exist in ProQuake, JoeQuake, and Qrack, as well as any others that have not adopted my aiming fix.

On ProQuake servers this is normally hidden by the precise aiming that ProQuake servers support for ProQuake clients (which JoeQuake and Qrack identify themselves as), obviously whitehot is running DP and hence no precise aiming is active, and hence the bug in the ProQuake/JoeQuake/Qrack client becomes visible.

I can not make the server claim to be a ProQuake server, so the precise angles feature of ProQuake/JoeQuake/Qrack does not apply.

The fix for the frequently off-center shots is simple, but getting everyone to upgrade to a new version of these engines may not be so simple, and it is still worse than precise aim...

Note that DarkPlaces clients on Quake-protocol DarkPlaces servers do not get precise aim either, but they at least have this bug fixed (I fixed it years ago).

Here's the fix, in common.c:
void MSG_WriteAngle (sizebuf_t *sb, float f)
{
// 8bit angle rounding fix by LordHavoc (fixes the off-center shots bug on quake protocol servers)
//MSG_WriteByte (sb, ((int)f * 256 / 360) & 255);
MSG_WriteByte (sb, (int)floor(f * 256 / 360 + 0.5) & 255);
}

Baker and R00k: please adopt this fix.