Fragancia

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
Mapper
Hello! I've decided to make this thread to suggest if my map vsh_project_powerup_a16 could get playtested on your VSH servers, along with a few map edits of existing maps which are the following:

  • vsh_toys_b2_skial_v2
  • vsh_manncohq_v14_skial_v1
  • vsh_spaaaaaace_v1_s3_skial_v1
  • vsh_castle_siege_b11_skial_v1
  • vsh_weaponsdepot_lz_b2_skial_v1

The changes made to these maps are quality of life changes, such as more health and ammo pack scattered around the map, map exploit fixes and more! I've suffixed skial_v[number] to the map names as I don't know what naming conventions you use for edited maps made for the community, let me know if this is wrong.

More information can be viewed in the changlog spoiler.
Let me know what you think, if you agree or disagree to these changes, I made them based what I thought needed changing.

vsh_toys_b2_skial_v2
  • Added more health and ammo around the map
  • Trails attached the bosses to make it easier to spot the boss in a crowd(up to 4 trails are supported in case multi-bosses ever become a thing in VSH)
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
  • Stages change everytime Hale wins a round
  • Active capture point unlocks automatically after 2 minutes left on the clock.
  • Teams can't switch teams to prevent issues with the map logic
  • Active stage control point opens automatically after 2 minutes
  • Mission briefing shows a description of the VSH gamemode

vsh_manncohq_v14_skial_v1
  • Added more health and ammo around the map
  • Nerfed the func_nobuild on some buildings where engineers could benefit building on without the spots being too powerful
  • Trails attached the bosses to make it easier to spot the boss in a crowd(up to 4 trails are supported in case multi-bosses ever become a thing in VSH)
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
  • Made a non solid roof vent prop solid
  • Mission briefing shows a description of the VSH gamemode

vsh_spaaaaaace_v1_s3_skial_v1
  • Added more health and ammo around the map
  • Trails attached the bosses to make it easier to spot the boss in a crowd(up to 4 trails are supported in case multi-bosses ever become a thing in VSH)
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
  • Falling off the map as RED does not result in death anymore, you'll be teleported back onto the map
  • Made some spots with high potential of griefing for engineers unable to have buildings built on them
  • Fixed Hale being able to get out of the playing area near his spawn, he'll be teleported onto the map
  • Preemptively made some rocks outside the playing area not solid to players to avoid potiential exploits
  • Clipping has been improved all around the map
  • Capping the point time slightly extended from 4s to 10s
  • Broken gravity feature fixed, hit the red core to activate lowered gravity for 30 seconds, cooldown is 90 seconds, audio cues for when gravity turns on or off
  • Mission briefing shows a description of the VSH gamemode


vsh_castle_siege_b11_skial_v1

  • Added more health and ammo around the map
  • Trails attached the bosses to make it easier to spot the boss in a crowd(up to 4 trails are supported in case multi-bosses ever become a thing in VSH)
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
  • Mission briefing shows a description of the VSH gamemode

vsh_weaponsdepot_lz_b2_skial_v1
  • Added more health and ammo around the map
  • Trails attached the bosses to make it easier to spot the boss in a crowd(up to 4 trails are supported in case multi-bosses ever become a thing in VSH)
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
  • Fixed the doors closing automatically even if a player is within the required distance to open them
  • Boss AFK killer has been improved, it kills faster and is more precise
  • Mission briefing shows a description of the VSH gamemode
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Click this to download the map edits

One more thing, I have 2 config files for the maps: vsh_toys_b2_skial_v2 and vsh_project_powerup_a16
These config files are to be placed at tf/cfg on the server, which execute only when the mentioned maps are loaded to be played on. The configs contain these commands and will take into effect upon execution:
Code:
tf_bot_quota 3 expert
tf_bot_quota_mode fill
These are commands you are instructed to setup when installing VSH on your server which can be seen here https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=244209 but the way it differs from the configs is that tf_bot_quota is set to 2.

The config commands do the following, fills the server with 3 bots when a player has joined an empty server and the bots get kicked out as players join teams and when there's 3 players on server, all the bots will be kicked out.
It functions the same when a server is dropping in it's population, bots will fill in when there's below 3 players on the server.

Any changes made by the configs will be written over by the server config as the map specific configs execute after the server config when the server changes to another map as long you have those commands in your server config with the settings you want them to have for the other maps.

This is to keep interference with map logic and gameplay on these maps to a minimum, the maps work fine without them but it's always nice to take precautions to ensure everything goes smooth. Right now, 2 bots to fill in isn't enough, this situation can happen with only 2 bots filling in:
l5qHncx.jpg
the game is stuck like this forever until one player decides to switch to the empty team to get things started.
And since there's a player already in a team, the second bot is kicked and won't fill the empty team because the quota is set to 2.
A player stuck with the game like this may not realize that they should switch to the empty team for the game to start.
Setting tf_bot_quota to 3 will ensure there will always be someone on either team whether it's a player or a bot and this will no longer happen.

Click here to download the configs

Now onto the subject of my own creation for the VSH gamemode, vsh_project_powerup_a16, the name is currently a placeholder and the map is in it's alpha stages, I feel I've done all the testing I could have done on my own and with friends and now I feel it's ready for playtesting on a populated server. This map is designed for the VSH gamemode so keep that in mind if you decide to use it for Freak Fortress 2.

This map includes some features which I think people might like, and these are as follows:
  • Custom voice lines for all classes (Battlecry, Cheers, Jeers, Positive, Negative, Spy!)
  • Custom death screams, including ubercharge drops
  • Custom taunt music for the following taunts: Kazotsky Kick, The Didgeridrongo and The Bad Pipes
  • Special abilities granted to each class to mix up the gameplay
  • Easter eggs and more

Here are some pictures of the map itself:
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sitvbTK.jpg

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Click here to download the map

There's also the matter of the addition of Baby's Face Blaster, it was ported over from Freak Fortress 2 as this thread leads me to believe https://www.skial.com/threads/addition-of-baby-face-blaster-in-vsh.71572/
The OP of the thread believed it to be balanced to which I disagree, BFB as of now outshines all the other scatterguns with weapon attributes like these:
kDPy3bS.jpg

Why would you ever need to use the stock scattergun or any other primary when you have a weapon that deals more damage and lets you hit the speed cap in one meatshot? In the hands of a decent scout, you can basically take out huge chunks of Hale's health all on your own, his damage capabilities rival, hell I would even say outperforms the damage classes, why would you bother to hunt heads for increased speed and health to increase your capability to deal damage more reliably as a demo(knight) knowing the risks that comes with it when you can just equip the BFB and throw in some crit-a-cola usage and you got a way to deal great damage with minimal risk because the speed boost lets you escape hale's range with not many ways for Hale to do anything about it without a well timed rage.

Most of the downsides of this weapon are negligible at best, the health reduction doesn't do much as the damage sources in this gamemode for RED are either Hale, fall damage or map hazards, fall damage can be completely negated with Scout's double jump and Hale deals 202 in damage everytime except for Easter Bunny which deals 195.
Weapon spread increase doesn't really take into effect until you are gravely injured which you will rarely be given the aforementioned.

So given the problems this weapon has, I'd like to suggest a new build for this weapon shown below
37MqFto.png
  • Scout's movement speed has been slowed down to 369 Hammer Units per second from 400, which puts him at the speed of a demoknight with 4 heads.
  • Clip size is at 4 before you need to reload
  • Meatshots deal 89 and crticial meatshots deal 153
  • Boost reduced by a quarter of the boost bar on double jumps

Let me know what you think of these changes for the weapon.
The aim was to make this weapon more of a side grade.

And lastly, introducing fixed spread to the VSH servers for weapons that fire multiple pellets at once, e.g shotguns.

3TcfdQ7.jpg

Jb9duKy.jpg

Valve added a configurable variable (tf_use_fixed_weaponspreads 0/1)with the Meet Your Match update for competitive that can be enabled for fixed spread, set the variable to 1 for it to take into effect immediately. I believe this can be a good addition as shotguns get more reliable in terms of dealing damage and not being at the mercy of random number generation.

And we have reached the end of this post, thanks for taking your time reading these suggestions.
Let me know what you think of all this. Again, thanks.

Special thanks to @Khed for all his help and being the best guinea pig.
 

Meowcenary

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
Unless I'm missing something, you attatched trails to all the bosses with these changes?
 

Meowcenary

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
I like the changes overall but I personally disagree with the baby face blaster nerf

Scout in general on VSH is rather useless. Unless you have -realy- good aim, the majority of scouts usually get in no more than 1k-2k damage, 2k being on the high end

I think having the BFB is fine, it gives scouts somethnig to make them somewhat more viable
 

Fragancia

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
Mapper
I like the changes overall but I personally disagree with the baby face blaster nerf

Scout in general on VSH is rather useless. Unless you have -realy- good aim, the majority of scouts usually get in no more than 1k-2k damage, 2k being on the high end

I think having the BFB is fine, it gives scouts somethnig to make them somewhat more viable

Are you then saying you are fine with BFB completely outshining the other primaries, it has everything a scout could want, damage that rival powerclasses, movement speeds which hale can never hope to reach with downsides that to be honest really aren't that big of a problem for the scout?
Look it from the Hale's perspective, do you think a hale would find it fun to play against that?
 

Chance

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Are you then saying you are fine with BFB completely outshining the other primaries, it has everything a scout could want, damage that rival powerclasses, movement speeds which hale can never hope to reach with downsides that to be honest really aren't that big of a problem for the scout?
Look it from the Hale's perspective, do you think a hale would find it fun to play against that?
It's not really all that fun to chase a BFB Scout around but it's not hard to get them.
 

bonkboy273

Mildly Menacing Medic
I'm here to back up Fragancia on BFB Scouts, I have some recordings here that show that BFB Scout is far more capable than what most people think of currently. The following 2 videos show how BFB Scouts have the mobility and damage to outmaneuver hales while still doing devastating damage.


Here are 2 more clips with BFB Scout gameplay where the Hale simply gets sick and tired of chasing the Scout and is forced to cap, simply because the hale cannot be bothered to deal with him.


All in all, my stance on Scout in general is the fact that their job is not killing, but distracting the hale, to make way for the stronger classes to come in and go for the Backstabs and Market Gardens. For them to be outdone by some random Scout that simply has a gun with 25% bonus damage, which goes hand in hand with the movement speed boost they gain from the damage, I do believe that the nerf is necessary. I myself am a Scout main on VSH and I do 4000 to 5000 on average.
 

Fragancia

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
Mapper
Make seperate change threads for each suggestion.
I'm not sure why you have a problem with the suggestions being put in one thread, I've tried to structure everything in a easy to read manner and I felt making multiple threads for each suggestion is wasteful and besides as I see it there's no guidelines saying that you should separate suggestions into their own threads.
 

Percilius

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
FF2 Balancer
I'm here to back up Fragancia on BFB Scouts, I have some recordings here that show that BFB Scout is far more capable than what most people think of currently. The following 2 videos show how BFB Scouts have the mobility and damage to outmaneuver hales while still doing devastating damage.


Here are 2 more clips with BFB Scout gameplay where the Hale simply gets sick and tired of chasing the Scout and is forced to cap, simply because the hale cannot be bothered to deal with him.


All in all, my stance on Scout in general is the fact that their job is not killing, but distracting the hale, to make way for the stronger classes to come in and go for the Backstabs and Market Gardens. For them to be outdone by some random Scout that simply has a gun with 25% bonus damage, which goes hand in hand with the movement speed boost they gain from the damage, I do believe that the nerf is necessary. I myself am a Scout main on VSH and I do 4000 to 5000 on average.
The need for a nerf is not required as it slows down your speed and your health goes down to 85. I play on places like FF2 and VSH with the bfb and it's not that owerpowered in my opinion. Hale can kill a fast running scout by just super jumping towards him. Like I do more damage with the force a nature than the bfb so it's not really big of an issue.
 

bonkboy273

Mildly Menacing Medic
The need for a nerf is not required as it slows down your speed and your health goes down to 85. I play on places like FF2 and VSH with the bfb and it's not that owerpowered in my opinion. Hale can kill a fast running scout by just super jumping towards him. Like I do more damage with the force a nature than the bfb so it's not really big of an issue.

I'm not sure about how hitting 194*2 can even compare to 225*6 in perfect conditions, but a scout's entire clip in that weapon is just as much as a Demoman's grenade clip in that sense. Ontop of that, this is 22.5 damage per pellet, so even if you only land 8 of those that already is a Scatterguns pure meatshot damage. The damage that synergizes so extremely well with the boost that gives the scout more movement speed than the hale can be kept up pretty much 90% of the time when engaging vs a hale.

Also, if you watched the videos that were posted, you can actually see the Hale jumping after the Scout constantly, but the Scout simply outwits his jump and proceeds repeating the same process until raged or capped against.
 
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Meowcenary

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
Are you then saying you are fine with BFB completely outshining the other primaries?

That's the thing, scout's primary weapons are garbage in general. Having one weapon that's actually remotely viable for scout is a good thing because all his other weapons on VSH are sub par at best

If you want to go nerfing weapons based on the fact that they outshine others, then demoknights need to be nerfed into the ground, sniper rifles need a massive nerf too since they outshine the huntsman on VSH, medic crossbow would have to get nerfed too because of the needlegun, I could go on further

Point is nerfing a gun because its better than other weapons they have is not good logic since every class on VSH has weapons that are vastly better than others
 

Percilius

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
FF2 Balancer
After seeing bonkboy's first video, is it possible to get latespawns removed? It's pretty annoying when a hale is at low health and suddenly a late spawn happens.
I also support what meowcenary had said because most of scout's weapons are pretty shit.
 

bonkboy273

Mildly Menacing Medic
That's the thing, scout's primary weapons are garbage in general. Having one weapon that's actually remotely viable for scout is a good thing because all his other weapons on VSH are sub par at best

If you want to go nerfing weapons based on the fact that they outshine others, then demoknights need to be nerfed into the ground, sniper rifles need a massive nerf too since they outshine the huntsman on VSH, medic crossbow would have to get nerfed too because of the needlegun, I could go on further

Point is nerfing a gun because its better than other weapons they have is not good logic since every class on VSH has weapons that are vastly better than others

They aren't garbage at all, the stock Scattergun has amazing output when used properly, in an earlier comment you even stated that, as long the aim of said scout is decent they can pull of the damage with a BFB, this goes hand in hand with all of Scout's weapons. I see the stock Scattergun as the standard, this is what a Scout has to be able to use before considering other options.

For instance, a Shortstop may not have the damage of a Scattergun but the fact that it has mid-range coverage and only 4 pellets required to do damage makes it a far more consistent weapon, but this at cost of 20% damage. I want the Scout player to consider these options carefully. Ask himself what the best combination is. "Will I sacrifice 20% damage for mid-range coverage or do I pick the stock Scattergun because I believe that I can indeed play the Hale like a fiddle and get that meatshot."

The Force-A-Nature is a weapon that knocks the hale back, this can kill or save a teammate, especially when a Medic is healing the Scout or when an Engineer is running away, the hale will eventually jump after the Engineer, but at least the Scout bought some time for his teammates, this goes hand in hand with the mobility that this weapons gives, acting as an extra jump or even a jump booster to set up a Goomba Stomp.

In general the weapons have their own pros and cons, but this weapon simply shits on all of that, it is a direct upgrade to the Scattergun, it has stopping power along with absurd mobility, the weapon's fall off isn't even that much even at mid-range. It severely outclasses all weapons that the Scout had previously.

Please do not balance weapons around new players, that will only create more problems then solutions. I believe there is room for side-grades and gimmicks, but the Scout does not need a buff.
 

Pedro the fabulous

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
Master Mapper
I like many of the improvements on the already present maps. I don't like the trails though since it helps the reds even further (remember there's an overlay when a sniper uses the default rifle and hits hale) and many of the health/ammo packs could be gamechanging.

Part of the reason why I personally very rarely mess with the map's health packs is because one single pack can change the entire design of the map (specially towards engineers, demoknights, soldiers and snipers) -- and if I'm fixing a map I most definitely don't want to mess with the balance. (unless that's the problem you want to fix) Maps should be kept however the original mapper wanted them, and it's what makes a map. It's definitely not the same to see vsh_egyptyspot, a very open map with several safe spots with good health packs which favors soldiers, to have some of these packs be removed and people start going sniper even more. If people play a map because it's difficult, don't change it for them.

That being said, all of the other changes are great except for this one:
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
I'm not sure what exactly you did, but i'm confused about this change. Spawning and being forced to be unable to change teams is slightly annoying and so is respawning repeatedly on round start. Do you think the change is worth it?

As for your map, I think it's a really unique idea but it might either make players love it or just rtv/leave the server. Not sure how they'll react, but I really like it myself. +1 to try it out

The rest of your suggestions are a -1 from me. The cfgs are okay. BFB is fine as it is. If you still want it changed (because maybe i'm wrong), I recommend making a separate suggestion for it. The recoil spread could be left to a server vote, but most of the time it's not used on any vanilla server so it probably also applies here.

tl;dr +1 to your map, +0 because the edited maps could use some discussion on the hp/ammo packs and trails and -1 to everything else.

By the way, we don't really have any conventions when naming edited maps. Personally I just add _fix to the name, and if I see the amount of changes be enough I add _skial.
 

Fragancia

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
Mapper
I like many of the improvements on the already present maps. I don't like the trails though since it helps the reds even further (remember there's an overlay when a sniper uses the default rifle and hits hale).

The trails was something I decided to add to the boss when I noticed people had difficulty picking out hale from a crowd in the heat of battle, the trails are subject for change so let me know if you want the trails to be shorter or more transparent, etc.

Part of the reason why I personally very rarely mess with the map's health packs is because one single pack can change the entire design of the map (specially towards engineers, demoknights, soldiers and snipers) -- and if I'm fixing a map I most definitely don't want to mess with the balance. (unless that's the problem you want to fix) Maps should be kept however the original mapper wanted them, and it's what makes a map. It's definitely not the same to see vsh_egyptyspot, a very open map with several safe spots with good health packs which favors soldiers, to have some of these packs be removed and people start going sniper even more. If people play a map because it's difficult, don't change it for them.

The health and ammo additions is what I thought the maps could benefit from, I was careful with the placements of them, I did not add more than was needed and there's no full health packs added.

That being said, all of the other changes are great except for this one:
  • Medics gain 6 seconds of faster ubercharge rate at round start to help mitigate the lost time charging ubercharge when the time is counting down to start the round
I'm not sure what exactly you did, but i'm confused about this change. Spawning and being forced to be unable to change teams is slightly annoying and so is respawning repeatedly on round start. Do you think the change is worth it?

The respawning when the timer is ticking down to start the round removes any built up ubercharge medics might have so I decided to give them faster ubercharge to help them get that ubercharge they were going to get if they didn't get respawned.
I respawn the teams to get any non boss players out of the boss team after the first arena round so no one on RED mistakenly get a trail reserved for bosses.
My options as a mapper are limited so this is why it is as it is.

On the maps vsh_toys_b2_skial_v1 and vsh_project_powerup_a16, the respawns serve 2 purposes

  • Moving non-boss players from boss team
  • Prevent map logic problems caused from team switching.
Without getting too much into the technical details, Toys has multiple stages and they change everytime Hale wins a round, but there's a way to make it repeat first stage forever and that's switching to spectator and leaving one team empty, the boss can pull this off and people on red if there's a low enough population so I took measures against this using the tools at my disposal.
Same thing with vsh_project_powerup_a16, you can get the map to repeat the stage meant for the first arena round when the map is first loaded, it has reduced time and changed spawns closer to mid for a fast fight.

As for your map, I think it's a really unique idea but it might either make players love it or just rtv/leave the server. Not sure how they'll react, but I really like it myself. +1 to try it out

I'm curious about that myself, I think people will like it. I'm glad you liked it, thanks.
 

Pedro the fabulous

Totally Ordinary Human
Contributor
Master Mapper
Without getting too much into the technical details, Toys has multiple stages and they change everytime Hale wins a round, but there's a way to make it repeat first stage forever and that's switching to spectator and leaving one team empty, the boss can pull this off and people on red if there's a low enough population so I took measures against this using the tools at my disposal.
Same thing with vsh_project_powerup_a16, you can get the map to repeat the stage meant for the first arena round when the map is first loaded, it has reduced time and changed spawns closer to mid for a fast fight.
I never noticed this with the control point round entities, altough always wondered why the first round was always picked so often. Nice job finding it out!
 
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Fragancia

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
Mapper
I never noticed this with the control point round entities, altough always wondered why the first round was always picked so often. Nice job finding it out!
In Toys, I decided to remove the round entities, they were too much of a hassle to work with and they don't even make the map reset the entities which can cause problems so I went with env_global entity, you can achieve the same thing with more options.
 
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Cream Tea

Epic Skial Regular
Legendary Mapper
I like this except for the trails., It gives a very unfair advantage to the RED team.

Also sure BFB scouts can rack up damage, but there's a reason for that, they can run from hale easily.

I think BFB should stay banned because the only reason people used to choose it was to hold up the round.
 

Meowcenary

Gaben's Own Aimbot
Contributor
Either way I don't really care much what happens to the BFB but I do disagree with the trails thing

Trails should be left out IMO