Further Code & General Update news - Critical Point: Incursion

presents you...

Dear Community,

Here we are again with some updates, just to keep you informed on our increasing progress! We see the light at the end of the tunnel and everything is starting to come together piece by piece. This edition focuses on our code, weapons and animation departments to wet your appetite.

Gameplay

The brains

We have finished up working on our gameplay handling, how players join the server, how a round ends, etc. This has been a very complicated and long task as it is the base of our game, to accumulate kills, deaths, and scoring whilst factoring in game objectives, team win, draw and loss.

Aim Error & Recoil

Kolby, our mathematics whiz, has set up a brilliant development tool to handle these settings, which we (devs and testers) can tweak and fine tune for each weapon manually.

Character Animation

Hamid and Proto have been working on our 3rd-person character animation and animtree which has been hugely improved. We have pistol, SMG, and rifle animations set up, including player movement. They are looking great, and seeing another player in-game running around normally is a huge step. There are required tweaks to fix some player rotations/visible holes, but overall this is nearly done.

Weapon functionality

We now have a completed and fully functional pistol, SMG, and shotgun in-game, which includes completed code mechanics and 1st-person animations combined.

These are now waiting for the correct sounds to be synced with each weapon to really bring them alive and roaring away as you squeeze the trigger! Bullet impact effects from Molez are also in-game and looking sweet, we are currently tidying this up to work on different material types in order to show different effects as necessary (just to go one step further)!
One of our latest weapons to be completed is our HK G3kA4, so we would like to show that off to you!

Hit directional indicators

As part of our gameplay code, we have included directional arrows to show where a player is being shot from. During intense and fast action, the arrows will assist in informing the player which direction the enemy is attacking from.

Armour System

Our armour system is now in place; this is a hugely complex piece of coding from Kolby which I can't even begin to explain in detail. To summarise, this system takes the given damage factor of a weapon hit and calculates how to apply this to the player. It works out the multiplier factor depending if it is a head, body or leg shot. Mitigation is the percentage of how much of the damage is absorbed by the specified armour.

Of course, after the 1st shot the health and mitigation value of the armour is reduced, so it works out again how to calculate the mitigation and health value further. Each shot will do damage to a player, but it gives you a big advantage in having armour and purchasing it strategically.

Head Armor
Max Health Max Mitigation % Damage Multiplier
100 75% 2.0

Body Armor
Max Health Max Mitigation % Damage Multiplier
100 50% 1.0

Leg Armor
Max Health Max Mitigation % Damage Multiplier
60 50% 0.75

Features

Forceteams:

Rogue has also been busy - now our game can smartly calculate what to do if a player joins the server as we have introduced a bPlayersBalanceTeams function.
This is configurable server-side by admins, and when turned off it prevents players being able to join a team. Instead, they are forced onto the team with the smaller number of players (if equal, it puts them onto the losing team). This also looks to balance teams automatically at the end of each round.

Alongside this, we have introduced a further manual admin command "BalanceTeams" which can be summoned during a round or start of a round (during buytime). This will also do the same as the above but allows an admin to even teams as long as NO damage has been done in the same round by any player.

This will prevent the issue where sometimes people leave at the start of a round/buytime resulting in the opposition having a bigger advantage.

Vote:

Proto has coded in the above feature.
Usage:
- A player can vote anyone in the server, his own team or other team
- A player can vote more than 1 person. There is no limit on how many people you can vote.
- A player opens the "Console" and types Vote "X" where X is the ID of a player.
// This shows a message on the HUD: "Player X voted Player Z out"

Vote count:
To be kicked or removed from server, a player needs to receive a minimum 51% of votes.
That means for example:
1on1: not possible to vote other player out
2on2: 3 would need to vote the same person
3on3: 4 would need to vote the same person
4on4: 5 would need to vote the same person

This prevents 1 team being able to vote the whole team out and killing servers.
If kicked, the player is temporarily suspended from the server until the end of the map.

Remember me:

Proto went a step further and has introduced a "remember player" function, this works in conjunction with the VOTE system, so if a player is temporarily removed from the server, they are not able to join until a new map change.

This will later be expanded and used to remember player stats/weapons/money when disconnecting/crashing during an active round.
More on that will come later!

Say & Teamsay chat facility:

Rogue has implemented our custom chat system to allow players to communicate during play.
This takes into consideration normal players, dead players, admins and spectators alike.

Usage:
- you press the say or teamsay (pre-configured bind key) and start typing
- you can press ESC to cancel typing at any point
- when typing, it does not overwrite previous text
- 1 comment is limited to 130 characters, including spaces. The player is prevented from typing more
- it keeps the last 6 comments from any players visible on the screen
- each single comment of text remains visible for a maximum of 10 seconds
- if a new msg is added after the 6th comment, the oldest one is removed from the list and replaced with the new one (in a cycle process)

Note: for testing purposes the chat facility has been coded and wrote onto the Canvas, it will be later moved to scaleform and will read and look visually much better!

Rules:
- Dead players cannot talk with alive players with say or teamsay.
- Dead players can view comments from alive players, but not vice versa.
- Administrators can also use say/teamsay depending on what team they are on, but cannot talk to alive players if they are dead either (to prevent abuse)

Whisper:

This is a system to allow players to "whisper" messages to other players in the server. Proto has coded this in which works similar to the Say/ Teamsay, except that these are private messages between 2 players only.

Usage:
- A player can whisper to anyone in the server, either on his own team or the other team
- A player can whisper to more than 1 person. There is no limit to how many people you can whisper with.
- Each whisper has the same character length as the normal say/teamsay feature
- When pressing a pre-configured whisper key, the console is opened with "Whisper" pre-written

Whisper:
- A player opens the "Console" and types Whisper "X" "call me" where X is the ID of a player and "call me" is the message.
// This shows a message on the chat HUD in the same area as the say/teamsay

Ignore:

Another nifty feature we've finished and closed off is our ignore system, done by Proto. This allows any player to ignore someone else's comments and messages if they are annoying you.
Often we find that it's minor features that make a huge experience playing online, where games are ridden with spammers, flamers and generally annoying people. This allows you to settle the issue in a mature manner

Usage:
type into console: ignore "Player ID"
e.g. ignore 45
// this is confirmed into the player console and within the Event HUD area with message "you are now ignoring player "name""

This has further functions:
- unignore "ID" so you can unignore someone
- ignore ALL to ignore everyone if you want to concentrate on gaming only
- ignore NONE to activate the chat facility again

That's all for now! Keep holding tight and we promise the wait shall be worthwhile!
If you like what you're seeing, then "Like" our Facebook page and if you want more click "Share" and will continue to provide you with updates.

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All the best,
Your Critical Point team