Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3 Windows, Linux game

Introduction:

Well gang, it’s been a rough few months for us, and I’m afraid we have some terrible news to share with you all regarding our plans to release today. It’s difficult for me to say it here, so please just watch the video below (put together by Chanoc with Musical assistance from AniCator). Again, I can’t apologize enough.

Actual introduction:

HA HA YEAH THAT’S RIGHT WE DID RELEASE AFTER ALL ! WHAT NOW !?!
Alright now that that’s out of the way - Well, nobody believed we ever would (and for completely fair reasons lol), but my god we’re finally here. That being said, I wasn’t totally lying before. A lot did come up. Real world events that I won’t get into here, mixed with a REALLY poorly timed unwanted switch of content host, along with various dataloss that then came with that migration, all conspired to REALLY set us back behind schedule. In addition, I also got a NEW JOB a few months back that has totally demolished my free time! We really did have a nice and ordered checklist of what we wanted done for a release build following our release date reveal, but we unfortunately missed out on a good chunk of it. However, we know you’re tired of waiting, and following a number of REALLY fun playtests that only had minor/rare hiccups, we’ve decided to still release anyway. It’s going to be an Open Be- I mean, ‘Open Gamma’ test. What does that mean?? It means you’re gonna see bugs! You may even experience some rare crashes (hello, VPhysics!)! And not everything is finalized, either. That being said, we’ve still made absolutely MASSIVE strides these last few months, and I think the result will still be a fun ride. Please bear with us though as we continue to patch the game and get things where we really want them to be. In the meantime, just report any issues you find, and we’ll try and get them addressed as soon as we can. Just keep in mind though - we’re all volunteers doing this in our spare time. We’ll get the issues sorted, but it will take time. Thank you in advance for your understanding, and with that out of the way -

JABRONI BRAWL IS AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW ON STEAM. GO GET IT. OR DON’T. CLOSE THIS PAGE WHILE YOU STILL CAN! THANK YOU!!!!

And now, allow me to try and summarize the absolutely massive amount of work we’ve done these last 6 months:

Maps:

- Prop Build, by Chanoc

I’ll explain this further in the VScript section, but Chanoc has put together a team-based map that is focused around building forts and capturing flags. See below for more details!

- Killhouse, by Phone-Booth, with *4* props by Chanoc

Phone-Booth assembled a map based around the sort of obstacle courses you see in various training exercises. It’s a symmetrical map featuring two bases, making it ideal for team based gamemodes, but it also works well in our various DM gamemodes too.

- Bagman remake, by I_Van

Bagman has basically received a from-scratch remake, courtesy of I_Van. Like before, it’s a symmetrical map where two teams duke it out, though this time it’s just for Team Deathmatch.

- Crossfire Redux, originally by X-RaY, port by Missi

Little known fact about me - I’m a HUGE HL1DM junky. These days there’s a lot of maps that are commonly played on HL1DM, and chief among them is “Crossfire Redux”. I got a hold of the author and asked if we could port it to JB, and they not only agreed, but shared all their source files with us, too. Big thanks to Missi for getting it added!

- DoubleCross, originally by Dario Casali, port by Missi and Maplabs

What’s better than one crossfire? How about crossfire 2 ! From the original creator of crossfire comes this lesser-known sequel. It again features a courtyard area, empty buildings, and a turret-sporting bunker with a nuke in it. Thanks to Missi for the port, and the fine folks over at MapLabs for remaking the base geometry for us to use.

UI OVERHAUL

We’ve talked before about the UI overhaul, and it is finally here. Everythings changed just about, but let’s look at some key points:

Weapon selection and Kill feed

Probably not a surprise but yes we did finally get actual icons working. Big thanks to Dan Loeb for making them for us!

Player model selection

We have a preview for the player model selection window. Our goal is to eventually have an embedded 3D model preview that updates based on the color you select. We had this before the CS:GO port, but remaking it is proving tricky. So for now, it’s just a static screenshot. You can use the color bar at the bottom to find the right color.

Spectator UI

A nice spectator HUD was also made. Black bar at the top featuring various information about your current status and who you’re spectating, and the bottom of the hud will reflect what the person you’re spectating has.

Gamemode UI elements

Perhaps the most tricky and time consuming part, however, has been setting up all the UI for our MANY gamemodes ! We’ve got panels in the top left to list objectives and progress, map markers hovering over objectives/dropped flags, and other markers to help guide you along as you play. Likewise, your health and armor icons will be color coded when you’re playing in a team based gamemode.
This game is a HUGE mess of countless features, so hopefully this incredibly detailed HUD will help you make sense of what you’re seeing. Thanks Zero for sorting this all!

Votemenu panel
We’ve got a vote menu! And a LOT of work has gone into making it easy to use and understand for new players. First off, you’ll be greeted by the gamemode selector, which lists all the gamemodes along with a simple description:

After one has been chosen, you’ll then progress to the map selector. Here, you’ll see a thumbnail, name, the approximate size of the map, and (if applicable) what gametype the map is when played on Team Mission.

We have a LOT of maps, so hopefully this can help new players get acclimated quickly (and also avoid crowded servers accidentally voting on a very tiny map!)

KOTH zone color coding
The KOTH zone effect (used in battle royale and hotspot) has received quite the overall. Aside from being easier to see into, it will also now change colors to help denote its status. For hotspot for instance, it will start of white if no team is occupying it:

When one team has control over it, it’ll switch to that teams color:

And when multiple teams are contesting it, it’ll switch back to white:

For Battle Royale, it will color code itself to denote if you’re safely within the boundaries of the zone or not:

LEARN / FAQ:

Our game is massive, and even just saying that is still an understatement. We recognize that new players are gonna have their work cut out for them when it comes to familiarizing themselves with all there is to see and do in this game. So, to help, we build a series of guides to help them along their way (if they want to!). We have a bit of history on the project, a guide to our more unique gamemodes, a link to the Steam Guides page, and a shooting range for trying out all the guns!

Target Practice:

Yep, that’s right, we’ve got a place to learn the guns! Huge thanks to Phone-Booth and Chanoc for putting this gorgeous map together. Here you’ll find all the offense-type weapons we have, dummies to try them out on, and various hidden easter eggs to also help pass the time. Learning the guns is gonna be step 1 to even remotely standing a chance in this game, so we hope this will help you along your path to Jabroni Brawl Glory.

VScript mega-updates:

VScript is essentially a way for mappers to have an extreme amount of freedom in dictating how their maps run. This is done by writing code that makes use of various functions that need to be tied to specific parts of the core game. Zero has been hard at work improving and adding to our VScript functionality, so that mappers could really go nuts with JB.

Here’s an example Chanoc put together. It’s a map where teams built forts and then fight to steal each others flags twice. It’s all done through VScript!

VLua?
The expansion of VScript didn't stop with just Squirrel, as we've decided to also try some other languages. The first one that came to our mind was Lua, and with a little (several days long) magic touch, we've got it working as well, so if you as a mapper more familiar with Lua rather than Squirrel, you can try something you're used to!

VLocalize tool:

As you’ve probably noticed, we have a LOT of translators working on JB. In order to help them, Zero put together (using some scattered scraps of Valve’s code) a working Localisation Editor. This gives an interface whereby you select what file you want to translate (if first starting off, you’ll use a blank file), it compares the contents of the file against the English file (which we keep updates), and then displays in an orderly fashion every string you’ve done, and every string you still need to translate. It’s a huge timesaver, and has proven to be an invaluable asset in our ongoing quest to have JB translated to as many languages as possible!

Steam Chat filtering and nicknames:

Two new features have been added to the user interface page of our game settings. The first will replace all player names in a server with a random selection from a safe-for-work names list. This is handy for anyone streaming who doesn’t want someone with a rude name getting in their footage. The second feature pulls from your steam friends list - if you applied a nickname to a friend on Steam, you’ll see that nickname show up when you see them in JB! NEAT !

Content mounting:

Yep, it’s a standard feature these days, and now we have it, too! We’ve mentioned before how you can run through the entire HL1 campaign if you supply the maps, but now we’ve made it even easier by adding a feature in the options page which will link JB to your maps folder directly. Just make sure you have Half-Life: Source installed, but once you do, you can then literally just open your console and type “map c0a0” to go to the very start of the Half-Life campaign!

Optimization, again ! :

We’ve done a number of playtests at this point with packed servers on various Dedicated Server set-ups, and slowly identified all the biggest optimization issues we faced. Some of our more spammy weapons were reworked to be less particle intensive, the sound system was optimized to put less strain on the server when lots of guns are going off at once, and certain map entities were also optimized to avoid server hang-ups on round restarts. In the case of that final topic, the culprit turned out to be env_smokestack, an ancient entity that one of our maps was using for a flaming torch. It’s no longer an issue, now!
I.imgur.com

SvT - Sneak’s Nightvision:

A lot of our SvT maps involve Sneak shutting off the lights in various areas. To help this not hinder him as well, we gave Sneak a passive nightvision buff, whereby he’s able to see in the dark much better than the terrorists are, without the aid of a flashlight. It’s a simple change, but it’s helped a great deal in making him even deadlier.

Before:

After:

Pretty big difference!

New particle effects:

Housemaster’s been hard at work as always on new and wonderful particle effects. Here’s a new explosion effect that you’ll see in our release build:

Gold texture:

Chanoc helped create a new gold effect texture for us, to get something that could hold up in various types of map lighting.

TIMEWARP MUTATOR:

We’ve added a mutator that randomly shifts the timescale for the match, at random intervals and to random (capped) extents. The result is as absurd as you’d imagine. As a bonus, you can also choose to let it mess with voice chat pitch as well. Just don’t expect to be able to understand what anyone is saying when you change this, though.

Voice work

A huge thanks to Redd, who also went above and beyond working towards filling all the gaps in our game’s voice requirements. He’s taken on sorting our main default voice set, and he’s definitely doing some great work. Look forward to hearing more from him soon.

Haiku : ) )

Did you know Half-Life: Opposing Force had a secret ‘haiku’ console command to print haikus to the screen, using random text from the game’s files? It’s true!

So, we added to JB as well:

Don’t worry - it took literally minutes to implement.

HELP WANTED:

As I’ve said before, mappers are always welcome, but only if you’re QUITE experienced enough.

Programmers would be great, but because we’ll have to get you licensed through Valve, you’ll need to be someone with a traceable track record and a lot of experience with Source. But YEAH this would definitely be a big help!

For translators, we’re almost always looking for more help (we’ve got Russian covered at least). If you want to assist, please let us know over our discord!

Ultimately though, if you’re really good at any aspect of Source modding, just hit us up on our discord and we’ll see if we can make it work. Thanks!

IN CLOSING:

TEN. LONG. YEARS. (off and on) And we’re finally here. It’s impossible to believe, but somehow, against all odds, we finally have something released. I still remember the very early testing Jim and I did back in 2012. In fact, I still saved all my screenshots! Here’s my very first five screenshots for JB, in order!

Setting up ricocheting bullets. The very first JB screenshot!

Our first crash, from the gravity mines no less! They’ve given us COUNTLESS crashes over the years. Some things never change.

The first test of the fart pistol! Disgusting !!

It’s a cat!

It’s too many cats! Shortly after this came our very second crash, in fact. Oops!

It’s been an absolutely wild journey. As I’ve said numerous times now, I literally could NOT have done any of this without the help and patience of the amazing group of modders I’ve gotten to know over this last decade. God knows I never really known what the fuck I’m doing, but thanks to their wisdom and experience, we’ve managed to finally get something shipped out the door! An impossible mission were it in anyone else’s hands, but they somehow pulled it off! So, a huge THANK YOU to all the people that helped us along the way! And an absolutely MASSIVE thank you to Zero, who has worked tirelessly to get the unstable monstrosity he inherited into working order and even more gigantic. We would’ve been dead in the water ten times over without his help, so THANK YOU ZERO !

And now, some links!
Our NEW WEBSITE
Our NEW REDDIT
Bug Tracker
Discord

Please do come and join us on Discord. It’s the best way to find out what we’re up to as we continue to develop this ungodly mess that is JABRONI BRAWL