Looking for Coder for KotH

[nesnl]

So I decided to write the rules for KotH (King of the Hill) mode and hopefully someone who knows how to code can write a log parser that will support this mode. If someone thinks they can write this, let me know and I will make up a quick few maps so that it can be used for testing and such.

Basically, KotH will be based on the TDM game mode and will require the server to monitor which players are on which team (among other things). The idea behind the mode is to have one player always on one team with every other player on the other team. The player who is on their own team is the "King" while the other players are trying to kill him/her to become "King". The way I envision maps is that all of the power-ups (and there will be quite a few) will all be team based power-ups for the "King" team. This means that the other players will not be able to pick up power-ups at all. This will be so that the King has any advantages he/she can get when taking on everyone else.

The basic coding is fairly simple. The game will start and the server will pick one random player to be "King." It will then spawn that player on the King team when the game begins with everyone else on the general team. Since it is TDM game mode the winner is determined by kills or time. Since we can't use kills (for many reasons), it must be timed based. The goal will be to rack up as many kills as possible as King in the time frame (let's say 10 minutes). And it's fairly safe to say that most kills will come from being the King. There will be of course kills from killing the King, but overall that should be a small amount.

Every time the King is killed the server will need to identify this and then switch the player who killed the King to the King team and switch the dead King to the general player side. Everyone else will stay alive. Towards the end of the time limit (let's say at 9:58 in a 10:00 game), the server should switch the player with the most kills to the King team and the player on the King team to the general team. This is to ensure that when the Winner screen comes up that only the person with the most kills is on the winning team.

Overall the coding should be fairly simple. There are some situations that could occur that would need separate code to handle.

If someone becomes King but then leaves the game or doesn't spawn for a certain amount of time (let's say 10 seconds). In this case the server should automatically revert back to the old King.

If someone tries to join the King team then it should automatically either make them spectate or put them on the general team.

If two or more players have the same amount of kills then either make the tie breaker based off deaths (whoever has least) or maybe whoever was King the longest.

If for some reason the general team has more kills than the King team at the end there should be something to deal with this. This would occur if people kept killing the King but the King wasn't getting any kills (so the total kills for the general team would be higher and hence a win in TDM mode). In this case either move everyone to the general team so that no one wins OR move the overall kills leader to the general team and everyone else to the King team so that the scoreboard still shows the highest kills as the winner.

There are probably a few other weird scenarios I forgot, but overall this is how it would be done. With the write log parser keeping track of everyone and passing commands to the server it should be fairly simple.

Feel free to ask questions or post suggestions.

[King!]

Someone read his post and tell me if its about me.

[tec27]

I demand 50% royalties from all profits on this.

Also, this is still on my to-do list. You have no faith in me Maimer :P

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by tec27

I demand 50% royalties from all profits on this.

Also, this is still on my to-do list. You have no faith in me Maimer :P

Considering we thought this up about 6 months ago and I haven't heard or talked to you on IRC in like 4 months, I think my 'lack of faith' isn't that hard to believe. How long is your to-do list anyway? have you finished school yet?

[tec27]

Nah, I completely understand, I was just joking. I've been done with school for the summer for about a month now, but I've been working on a couple other projects pretty much full time, so naturally things that will never reap any benefits outside of the enjoyment of others have to take a backseat ( =/ sucks tbh, I enjoy tinkering with stuff like this).

Someone else should totally pick up this idea though, it'd be real easy to do with a proper log parser (I was gonna make one that would allow me to trigger responses to specific logged events, then use that to respond to every possible situation in a KotH game). I don't think there's a whole lot of weird situations that can come up either, so it doesn't take a whole lot of thinking outside of understanding the basic game rules and how to use the server commands file stuff. Plus you'd be the first person to make a new game type using the server commands stuff (I think).

[Greekjr14]

Glad to see someone took this much of an interest into this kind of game mode hope it can be acheived.

[tec27]

I actually am working on this now. Parser's coming along pretty nicely and should be well suited for making more game modes after this one gets up and running. Source thus far should anyone like an example (Its written in Ruby):

http://pastebin.com/gSngen5v

[pig_bomb]

I feel like a lot of games will degenerate into king just running away from the other team being annoying

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by pig_bomb

I feel like a lot of games will degenerate into king just running away from the other team being annoying

I think you might be confusing the player known as "King!" and this game. While I could see this "running away and being annoying" being the case if "King!" were always the King!, but I think that most people will try to rack up some sweet multikills!

[Evan20000]

Will the King have any statistical advantages over the regular mob? I can see it very difficult for a lone king to break through planes flying in formation.

Another idea to mess around with; multiple Kings. What if there were 2-3 kings vs the rest? Obviously, the Kings shouldn't respawn, but that changes the mode to 1DM correct? Obviously that wouldn't work, but if you can find a way around it it would be a cool idea.

[King!]

Since maimer has found a coder, this thread is now about feudalism. Jawa when is feudalism2 coming out?

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by Evan20000

Will the King have any statistical advantages over the regular mob? I can see it very difficult for a lone king to break through planes flying in formation.

Another idea to mess around with; multiple Kings. What if there were 2-3 kings vs the rest? Obviously, the Kings shouldn't respawn, but that changes the mode to 1DM correct? Obviously that wouldn't work, but if you can find a way around it it would be a cool idea.

While there wont be any statistical advantage to being King in terms of health, damage, etc. There will be the power up advantage. The map will be like an FFA or TDM map except it will ahve numerous power ups (maybe like 15 or 20) that only the King will be able ot pick up (they will all be team specific). So there should be plenty of chances to get health, shields, etc.

As for your idea about "multi kings" it could work. The program would jsut have to recognize 2 or more kings at the same time and when one of them was killed it would act the same way. I say we concentrate on the first mode and then worry about multi kings later. Obviously the game is gonna be lame if it's like 20v1, but that can be tweaked with server sizes so that it works out well. Maybe something like 5v1 is best, we won't know until Tec27 finishes the mod. So keep bugging him about it.

[tec27]

I think there's a lot of stuff that can be tried once I get this setup. Variations of this game type, along with other games (tec27's Minigame FIESTA server coming soon :P ). I have code now that keeps track of players, their team, and kills/deaths/assists per player. I'm gonna try to move a lot of that code into a separate file cause I think the same tracking code for that stuff should work for pretty much every possible usage. After that, I can start working on having the server actually manage teams and keep a specific king on a specific team, but I might need some help testing at that point because unfortunately bots don't trigger team change notifications (I have no clue why).

Cliffnotes:
Stuff's coming along nicely, might need some testers to help me in the near future.

[[Y]]

So I herd tec needs halp.

So I volunteer.

[andy]

just pm me in game if/when you need some help, ill be happy to help.

[Evan20000]

PM me ingame or on the forums if you want me to test.

[tec27]

If the server is up, you all are free to join. The name is 'King of the Hill Mode'. The game is just about to a playable state atm, but I still need to take it down kinda frequently to change some code around and stuff. If I'm not on though, that should mean its open for testing for a good deal of time unless it crashes.

The map I have up right now really sucks for it and is not indicative of any of the maps we'll see in the future from Maimer, just in case you guys start wondering :P

Edit: Removed the server password to hopefully generate more play of it. I think the game is pretty much ready for fullscale testing now, minus actually having decent maps.

[tec27]

I ust played with like 4 people, it was tons of fun Definitely check it out guys, and hopefully Maimer can get us some better map variety in the next few days.

[Jewbacchus]

I can confirm it was fun. Give the King some big TBD bombs maybe, or bigger games might become not much fun. Also happy to test.

[Greekjr14]

Originally Posted by tec27

I ust played with like 4 people, it was tons of fun Definitely check it out guys, and hopefully Maimer can get us some better map variety in the next few days.

I just sent you a map to try to convert into a koth map. Oh btw a few of us played it tonight and we waited for like 2 minutes after the clock started and it didnt pick a king. We reset the map 3 times and it still didnt do it. Might need to look at that.

[wolf'j'max]

i think i am going to like it..

[andy]

atm the server isnt doing anything, not even welcoming you like it did yesterday..

[tec27]

Yeah, sorry, it crashed while I was asleep, so the script isn't running right now. I'm gonna fix that bug and start it back up right now.

[andy]

stop sleeping plz..












<3