Conquest Mode Dev-Log news

Conquest mode was a rapidly developed project of mine which had a very interesting and exciting evolve. With a total development time of 14 days, conquest mode is an interesting sandbox Singleplayer mode with tons of potential of actual time is put in it.

During the development, at the end of each day, I kept notes of what features were created for the mode. What follows is the developer-log/diary i wrote each day of development. Keep in mind that most of it is written on rush.

Why read this? Understanding the journey through which developers go though to provide a game for you is a great way to appreciate the quality of the game/mod even more. It also shows you how much time and effort the developers go through to provide you, the player, a stable and balanced experienced. And it's always an interesting thing to read if one's into these things.

Hope you find it interesting. Enjoy.

Day 1: February 27, 2021.
Worked on the flag system, managed to make a working system of capturable flag points that can be captured from both teams when neutral, and become neutral if the other team owns it so they can be captured. Player has a temporary team change system so we can test both sides. The flag model move method can be buggy and cause it to be misplaced and go under ground if the capture system is abused, meaning that player can go in and out of the radius and mess the move time. Also worked on a hud system that has a load bar for capturing. It also has good progress but it's quite buggy at this point. The base of it works, we need to make some better flag.states in the capturing methods because sometimes it isn't showing what it should. The bar is not working at all, it shows but it doesn't load as it should. Find a way to balance the amount of the bar properly with the values needed.

Day 2: February 28, 2021.
Fixed all problems in flag system, Flag system now works as indented without problems so far. All flag conditions and capture functions work together nicely along with NPC capturing. Player is also included in their team's flag touching check. Added a small debug hud for flags on the left. Will remove later. Changed the flag prefab to fit a more dynamic system. No prefab is needed for the flag now, everything is now automatically set in code except the collision. There is one collision prefab that has 12 clip brushmodels that are attached to every flag automatically. Which means max flag number is 12. Everything else works with the flag init code. Radius and height can be added in the script ent of the flag in radiant. Player spawns for each flag are also necessary now. At least 2 script_origins must be connected to the flag ent.
Flag to spawns not reverse. Progressed the team system by adding a lot of hud elements. Team points bars on both sides, team icon, team point numbers (those might need realignment towards the top) and finally added a smart total flag hud display that shows how many flags are out there and what team is each. Also shows if they are being contested or captured by flashing the respective color.

Day 3: March 1, 2021.
Almost perfected Top hud. Most items are better aligned and the whole thing is more balanced. One last fix would be to put the capture flags in an order or something. But it's not mandatory. Started Gameplay Logic. Player now has a pre-match menu with 3 phases. Select Team(only available at match start). Select class placeholder, and then worked on a spawn select. It's not exactly how I've planned it, but it works good for now. Spawn select basically cycles with W and S like arrows between the player's team captured points. Once selected they can spawn in a BF1 MP style. When player "dies" (no health system yet) they're put back in the intermission to select class and spawn. A placeholder menu for weapon classes and teams is set. Will be polished later. Bot logic has began and it's in an "okayish" state. Bots now have all the necessary spawn logic settings. They spawn in random flag points and sit still for now. We will work on a capture and combat logic later. They are all assigned in arrays and its now better calculated how they capture points. This works good with the team selection at start since we can put different aitypes. Player death npc also added. Very basic so far. Spawn delay is now calculated by dividing the team's captured flags with the total flags in the map. If 0 then max time.

Day 4: March 2, 2021.
Expanded the bot spawn logic to create a bot behavior. Now bots can play the game alone and come up with random victories or defeats like they should. Worked on the bot logic on moving to enemy flags, wait for them to be captured and then move to other enemy flags. The moving system uses the spawns so the spawns must be inside the flag radius. That is because the pole clip is solid and npcs cant walk through it.
We may find a solution like maybe make it a player clip instead of metal clip. To be seen.
Bots are now split to attackers and defenders. Attackers go from point to point and defenders stay at the spawn defending. The ratio is 2/3 of total team bots attackers and 1/3 defenders. Works okay so far may do changes to it only if necessary. Match logic implemented. Victory and Defeat are now possible. Ending HUD and game end functions added. Need to expand to them for it to be 100% solid also terminate any remaining necessary hud functions from before. End screen victory condition text was tricky to do because the structure of the function and the statements was messy from start but now it's all solid and working. Not very easy to edit, but good enough. We still get a strange error of no free actors and undefined when using maxteambots=15 but it seems harmless so far. Overall looks great so far, the bot gameplay is fun to watch. The mode is implemented in Welltown map for further texting and it works great.

Day 5: March 3, 2021.
Fixed the player spawn system. Player can now spawn properly, flags that are captured by enemies can't be selected, if a player has a flag selected for spawn and while having it selected enemies capture it then this flag gets deselected and the next valid player's team flag is selected if one exists. If new flags get captured player can cycle through them too dynamically. Also added a cool detail to the spawning movement.
Spawns can now support 2 extra targeted orgs to bypass the spawn transition and avoid clipping through walls. It can either be 1 or 2 or none extra orgs. Their time is calculated by their distance to make the transition smoother. Finally found a solution for the defenders and attackers. The system now works better. First spawners are all attackers and when the first flag is captured 1/3 of the whole team is defenders and finds flags to defend. Seems stable so far. Added pseudo-health system and healthbar from survival mode. Player can now die and respawn as indented. The problem with the npc spawners error could be due to too few spawner ents in the map. Try adding 3 for every spawner. Will be alright to have 12 spawners.

Day 6: March 4, 2021.
Reduced the flag limit to 8 flags. Seems more balanced. It is suggested to limit the npcs to 24 max. But the error still insists. Other than not much work was done on cod4 conquest today. I ported conquest code in waw, and tried to set up a sp tetsmap to see if conquest works. After TONS of edits in the parts of the code that handle player it actually did go somewhere. It's buggy and it crashes but it sparked my interest to resume coop testing for waw. And we did get some results. seems like the get_players() function needs to be called constantly for player definitions to work. Really good coop script results are in sab1 (sabotage from cod4 specops) We did extensive testings with good online pals who offered to test and I figured out good functions out of it. Also managed to test with 4 players too! Tomorrow we should resume conquest mode to finish it to a somewhat stable form. Menus should also be coded appropriately.

Day 7: March 5, 2021.
Worked on the weapon class menu for both teams, didn't give us too much trouble. Results are very satisfying and working greatly. Other than that, today I tried to port all cod4 models, and textures in waw.
Big mistake. 90% of textures didn't work. Waw mod tools got messed up, i tried to reinstall and now there are stuff missing for some reason. We saved all we could from our coop work and codes. But we can't compile anything for now. Let's officially give up waw since it wastes so much time and gives nothing. Last version of sabotage got sv and av playermodels which was cool but unfortunately couldn't work 100%.

Day 8: March 6, 2021.
Developed a class system for both player and npcs. NPCs skins are decided regarding the class they chose.
Their class is totally random. No ratio or anything. Keep it this way. Only 2 spawners are now required only.
One for axis and one for allies. Plus one for player death NPC. If player is allies, ally bots have sas skin and enemies spetsnaz. Enemies go to spetsnaz team and allies go to sas team same as player. If player is axis, ally bots have spetsnaz skin and enemies have sas. Enemies go to sas team and allies go to spetsnaz team same as player. No need for other npc aitypes. When player dies their death npc now spawns like they should. The death npc choses class based on player's class and is given player's current weapon and appropriate skin. A cool camera trick is also implemented on player's death. Just like BF1942 player tracks upwards while looking on player's death position. When reached a certain height, and if player's killer exists and is alive, camera points to killer. Very useful function. Menu text buttons now look better when selected.

Day 9: March 7, 2021.
Managed to make a fully functional and cool spawn select menu. It's a good replacement for the real time spawn. Map icons are nicely matching teams and npcs. Still trying to find out how to make enemies appear at all times. Flags are pointed in the map using objectives. Since objectives only show on map when on current state, they are all current causing the objective lines to show up. To prevent that I replaced the objective_line image with a transparent image. It will require mod but it's fine anyway. Colors will be set to green vs red. Modifications to the mode can be allowed by users so they can set their own map icons and team colors. Other than that, these are the final steps, we need to balance out some defenders and go2flag logics to add some more variety on the paths. Then implement the healthpacks and ammopacks weapons, build mod, test and ready for release.

Day 10: March 9, 2021.
Setup poses scene of each AI class and took screenshots and imported images in mod. Added them in menu and resized the image item of characters to fit aspect ratio. Created ammo and health crates like BF1942 working only for player. Can't seem to find a way to make weapon of ammo and health pack. We may scrap the idea and leave medic class medpack-less. On the other hand, lack of ammo pack on support class is okay. Experimented with the idea to make a brush-square based flag capture radius trigger, but didn't work too well. Keeping circular radius trigger just like bf1942.

Day 11: March 10, 2021.
Balanced bot logic and removed the defenders logic, it turned out too peaceful and less chaotic = less fun. The fighting is more tense and fun now, it's better without defenders. Minor bugs only. Bypassed the undefined when spawning bot error, added spawn-failed and returned if true. Also made bots go to other flags other than the closest capturable flag. Makes bots split up and populate the map leading to more chaotic gunfights. We've made a good flag allow spawn system, now flags that are owned by team1 and team2 troops are in it capturing or just contesting, the flag disallows spawn for both player and bots. But if it's the last flag of the team, then they can spawn to prevent easy victory.

Day 12: March 17, 2021.
Worked on Rooftops 2 for a while. Took a break from working on conquest.
Now that I resumed, I organized the mod files and mod assets mainly to have a stable menu without unused stuff. Menu is now functional but we need to find a way to allow players to set their match options. Speaking of match options, the match settings can now be set from map's code before initialization. User can set their own match settings before initialization but be ware of the functions and variables/objects that are used that need initialization. This will be worked later if we manage to make PLAYERS select settings from inside the menu. Other than that, worked on making the points easier to select. Added Letter Icons on each one but cod4 has up until E letter. Users of the open source can add their compass icons later to increase the number. The function is easily editable.

Day 13: March 18, 2021.
Updated menu files and worked on the levels menu. Levels menu now has match options that player can set. No profile needed, the dvars are defined once menu opens. They also don't need to be saved so they are zeroed each time game menu opens or match starts. The menu visuals are also improved, and player stats are now visible on pause and tab menu. Added minimap and sorted the hud elements so that the tab map wont go under them. Removed stock compass since we added minimap. Also sorted the minimap flag icons so npcs and player are under them so the flag letters and colors are more visible. Worked on making the Mimimap not overlap with the right team points bar. On 4:3 resolutions it did, the solution to this was to write down all resolutions where this overlap occurs and in minimap.inc we created two minimaps one is positioned on the top right corner and shows only on resolutions that it doesn't overlaps with the right points bar, and the other positioning is right under the right team points bar and shows on any other resolution apart from the ones where it overlaps. Revised the spawn delay of bots. Now it feels more balanced. When 1 flag remains for a team, bots spawn slower on purpose to give a chance to players to win the game by conquering all flags. Also increased the reduce amount threshold of the team points bar when all team flags conquered in the ending functions so if its over 1k it reduces faster. Finally, we fixed the flag map icon blink system into a much better system. Also moved it in the flags category. Much easier to read and edit now. Overall very productive day.

Day 14: March 19, 2021.
Found a compromising solution for the menu problem. The match settings now are above the minimap preview of the map, but their position vary between resolutions.. however it's not overlapping too much with the left menu items. It's a good enough solution for now. Later, I decided that instead of levelshot we will have minimap preview showing all positions of the flags and stuff, png and psd files will be provided with the open source so players can place their own flags in their own maps. It will be tricky to add the maps in their menu files as there you must know what you're doing. Also improved and balanced the point reduce system to a more balanced reduce time. It can be improved however with some time calculation.
Made the team point top bar to turn invisible when 0 and team points if under 0 don't show minus number, turn to 0 instead. Revised the bot_behaviour. Now the bots go to flag system is slightly better, they still go through poles, but they go out of it right after. Overall their attacker logic is quite better. Considered returning the defender system but it wasn't really worth the try. Maybe an other time. Besides, keeping everyone as attacker is way more chaotic and versatile. Added music and sounds for all beginning and victory cases, captured flag lost flag, time and other. Added end time music and time tick thingy when low time. Also music works in a way that it can't overlap. At this point, we are ready for a playable version. Alpha testing will start soon.