A
new hope... I mean road! GraviNULL is back! Read on for more!
What happened?
Development had halted for a while, I was feeling insecure in general about the future of the mod and wanted to dilly dally a bit on other stuff, after a month or two(possibly three) Wills contacted me, saying GraviNULL was in the top 3 downloads of the month for PC Gamer and was on the cover disc. I actually had been contacted about that shortly after the mod's alpha release, but after giving the go-ahead never received word back.
Anyway, point is, me and Wills had a chat and I finnally got some spirit again to work on GraviNULL, this time choosing to focus on adding the Racing mode which I myself was looking the most forward to, putting Hazard and Puzzle mode on the backburner.
So what's new?
The first map for racing mode was playtested recently, alot of work will need to be done on both the map and the gamemode itself, but it's off on a good start.
The map in particular has been created by me, with *gasp* dev textures, but coding is my game and with mapping I got nothing to gain, so that's what I'll be going back to, Bekey is from now on gonna take gentle care of my map and dress it up in a fancy graphical dress, to satisfy the visual desires of your eyes.
I simply did this to raise the spirits, as the team is busy with their own lives and it's important a leader leads both in action and in words, since I couldn't hold playtests to demonstrate my activity without a proper map I then decided to take some initiative and build the basic layout of the first ever racing map myself, to have one of the mappers make it look pretty later on.
Bottom line the progress comes down to:
- Racing mode with a finish line and invisible checkpoints to counter "cheating";
- New entity: gn_speed_boost, model created and animated by "GuessMyName"; It's function is obvious :P
- New entity: item_air_grapple_anchor, model created and animated by "GuessMyName";
Like it's brother the surface mounted grapple anchor, but non-solid and can float in the air.
Ofcourse you'd like to see this in action, so here's a very early development demonstration video. Entirely unproffessional, but we don't mind giving refunds for the trauma your eyes will have to endure looking at a map using dev textures.
What no pictures? This is an outrage!:
I gave you plenty, a video is worth a thousand pictures!
There may be some soon when the map has received it's make-over though.
Community Question #1:
Should Hazard appear in the beta release?
Hazard, which has been shown in the previous newspost may or may not be in the upcoming release, my question to the people reading this now is, would you like to see it?
For clarity, Hazard and Race are both race like modes, the distinction is that in Hazard there's a "get from A to B alive" scenario with (lethal) obstacles blocking the path, whereas racing is all about speed and dying is not issue. In shorter:
Race = speed first
Hazard = survival first
Just post in the comments, if there's alot of nay-sayers preffering Racing then Hazard will remain in the backburner like it is, until a future version, if not they may be bundled together.
Community Question #2:
What changes would you like to see to Deathmatch?
First up, in response to people saying there being too much chaos in a filled server, the maximum player limit has been lowered to 8.
Would there be people interested in seeing even lower? Possibly even a Duel mode where you sit in spectator watching 2 people duke it out, until one kicks the bucket and you can give it a shot?
Also Race mode has special mine pickups planned, non solid and without physics acting like wel... a pickup, if picked up they resemble a special mine type but in your gravity gun as if you absorbed it like normal.
Would you like to see these pickups appear in Deathmatch as well, or do you prefer the standard mine filled room approach?
What other changes would you like to see to the Deathmatch mode and what maps do you think could use improvement and specify what improvement you'd like to see.
Submitting your reply:
Simply place a reply here on this newspost or on our forums(see below).
There's no judging based on how much karma someone has given, so be fair about it and respect anothers opinion and desires.
We will use this to decide what direction we should be taking GraviNULL in.
We thank everyone that is willing to take the time, helping us build a great mod that everyone can enjoy.
Looking for forums?
You can find those here
Official servers hosted by:
That was all for now, don't forget to watch us if you aren't already!
Looking good, sticking with Half-life 2 then?
Ok so my answers are:
Q1: Yea I would like to see it, looks like a fun and addicting game mode even if there are some bugs in it I would put up with them, plus would be nice to get a head start on making maps for it.
Q2:
For death match I would like to see a smaller map or two, the big ones are fun but it can be hard to keep track of your target in such a big space.
Power ups sound good too, maybe have one that lets you choose one enemy to highlight so that you can keep track of them easier and single out that target, it would un-highlight after they die or a set amount of time.
Oh and for the dev textures, I always found them nice in a way, just sorta clean and a nice stylized sorta look. Maybe that's just me.
Keep up the good work and I hope I didn't ramble too much.
1. Alright then, I take it you're interested in mapping for it? In which case it'd be worth shipping the mode even with 1 map. That's a +10 on the "should I add" scale :P
2. I agree, but for me only really in gn_core, which is HUGE. What other maps do you think are too large?
Track powerup sounds ok, however pickups are supposed to work like regular mines, in the sense they're shot from an "absorbed" state, I wonder how'd that best be balanced in terms of damage usefullness, after all, the most use it'd have is in gn_worse, the others are too open for it to mater a whole lot.
I agree on the dev textures, ofcourse, they do make things look very much WIP, but still better than putting over some crappy texture work :) Regardless, Bekey is turning it into something interesting already.
Very much looking forward to seeing it in a more interesting shape and ofcourse showing it to you all.
Thanks for the feedback!
1. Yea, I had an idea for a death match map back when you released the alpha, kinda got side tracked so I didn't finish it until lately. So yea I will hopefully wip up a map for it once it released (if you do go ahead with it). Here is a screen shot of that map I was on about,https://www.moddb.com/members/stealthclaw/images/screen-shots-from-the-map-gn-nexus I didn't want to link it to you mod with out your go ahead.
2. gn_Core would be the main one but gn_Space feels a bit on the big side too.
Ah, I misunderstood how the power ups where to be handled, the tack idea was manly to help balance some of the large map and maybe for other maps that may be in the works.
Oh and one last idea (you probability have a whole load of game types on your plate already). But what about a game mode where you have to collect the mines and bring them back to your base and the first team to reach a limit wins, the main concept about it is that the mine you have to collect are still dangerous to the enemy and that you have to sorta pass the mine to your team mates, so it "should" encourage team work.
1. Very nice :D You may wanna consider contacting Bekey about it: Moddb.com He's intending to write up some mapping tips for GraviNULL and has suggested adding a community made map in the next release, run through it with him and who knows :P
2. Concerning gn_core, according to Bekey, gn_core uses the same size for the main cylinder as his own map, so they're both equally big... amazingly. I think for space the same thing counts, both seem huge due to the see through walls. Bekey is looking into fixing Asskicker's map(gn_space), gn_core is a bit of tough one concerning "size".
About the gamemodes, yeah got a lot of em and still need the time to write some of them up for future re-evaluation, I'll put yours up too, it's a good one.
P.S
Any chance you'd be willing to join the team? :P
Never shot, never hit I say. It's ok if you can't or don't want to.
I can tell you more about the team and how we work if you want to know more, I'll be watching this area for your reply the coming days.
Join the team, really? Id be honored if you would put up with me.
:D I've sent you an informational message about the team.
Great :D
My answers to the questions are:
1. Yes, is should It sounds fun and would add a bit more variety to the next beta.
2. I think you should keep it at 8, that sounds reasonable. Also, I think the power ups should be a voting feature, so that people in the server vote on weather they should have it enabled, or at the least an option to enable disable.
1. Cool
2. Interesting thought, but whether that's needed will depend on their usefullness. Still I'll remember that.
Awesome !!! :D
Awesome!
Question 1: Why not? Put it NOW!!
Question 2: Depending on the map, 8 players is a really big deal, and the idea of the DUEL could be used in case of a tie, so the 2 guys with the best score would duel alone and who win the duel would win the match, and about the special pickups, I think that it's a good idea, but it depends pretty much of which are the good things that it can give and the bad things, if putting this, be sure that it won't just benefit the players, but will also be able of killing them.
1. Pain in the ***, people won't care, deadline(or more like a winline I don't necessarily need to keep). Case 2 doesn't seem to be ... the case.
2. Duel in that way would unneeded, as right now it's unquestionable who wins regardless. Well, 99,9% of the cases, making a gamemode over that 0.01% is a waste really.
The idea is that pickups will be random, possibly level designers could specify what appears in them though, something I hadn't thought of yet until you mentioned this.
In race mode pickups won't be able of killing, nothing will. In deathmatch they'll all be lethal ofcourse, unless they'd provide such an overkill advantage that something needs to balance it out.
awesome stuff!!!
Actually, 4v4 team based modes can be interesting but you gotta be innovative with the weapons.
In zero gravity, why not make the weapon the ability to grab and pull players to make them fly into environmental hazards, and powerups that pushes players.
I've actually thought about the grappling off other players before, without the pulling though. It's an interesting idea and one I might end up trying during private testing. The pulling part I'll probably leave out though.
As for powerups pushing players, the speed boosts don't fill that job for you?
Concering team modes; Deathmatch doesn't really make it worth it considering the size of the maps.
Maybe there'll be a team mode someday, but primarily movement based modes will be first, keeping all the teams stuff for last.
amaZing!
Great to see this getting some more love both from devs and gamers :)
The race mode looks so much better than what I was thinking when I first heard the idea long ago. Great work!!
My answers to questions:
1. I agree with others that it would be nice to test it out even if it has some bugs. This way we can give you more feedback into making it better.
2. I also agree with others that 8 is fine but I wouldn't really like to see a duel mode. I do like the idea of team death match with some of the interesting grappling off team mates ideas you were tossing around. If you need more players than just raise the limit on team dm modes to 12 or 16. Maybe with colored mines that only one team could use or maybe have one mine that is like the flag and has to be passed around to the goal by your team but can be stolen by the other team. Just flying some crazy ideas at you to see if it brings any ideas out :)
Finally pick ups in dm would change things up so an option for them and possibly ability to vote for them would be sweet.
Keep up the great work
Concerning 2. Bekey cooked up a crazy awesome team mode. Won't be in the upcoming beta release, but definitely on the list of modes to do :P
If you value your sanity, don't click this link with a picture of his idea: Bekey.half-lifecreations.com
I like it, really works well with the momentum theme in the game!
I played it all day! all the night!with my friends! so much fun!I cannot wait to try the racing thing!
Cool, LAN or Internet? Any changes you'd like to see to deathmatch mode or the maps?
INTERNET! I would like it to have shorter charge time for the blue balls!!! I LOVE THEM! I SHOT IT TOWARD MY BUDDIES AND HOCK THE BALL.