So far in this up and coming update:
-Added the botmatch menu pictured. There is a lot of room leftover that I’m still not sure what to do with.
-Added a difficulty selector to the set up server menu. This should make games more accessible to differently skilled players. Also note that 25 HP healers become 50 HP healers on lower difficulty settings.
-Added the blasters stay toggle switch to the gameplay options menu. Sometimes playing on a server with this value different than yours will cause your value to be overwritten. This provides an easy way to fix this, or even practice or play singleplayer with this setting on for a change of pace.
-The mutator string text field will now save the last used mutator string. The game must successfully launch the server or match, and it will not save a blank string. This will eventually be replaced by a selection menu, rather than the string input field.
-Finished the last character bios.
In order to fully utilize some of the features of this update, I have also included a patching executable that will add the necessary lines to your Nerf.ini file and any previous ini updates should you need it.
At this point I just want to see if there are any easy map fixes before I ship out the update.
This is a picture of the working tab selector that allows you to access the botmatch setup menu. Right now, all the options are based on the set up server menu, so a few of them will be stripped out for the final release (such as dedicated/participate, which is not needed for single player).
I know this doesn’t look much different from the currently released version of NAB, but what you are looking at here is actually two different menus. The first serves as a parent container to hold the buttons that will be used to navigate the child menus.This is a huge milestone for me as setting this up was about 80% of the work, and the most difficult part of the code. The rest is fairly easy as it is based off code that runs in two other menus in the game.
The position and style of the ‘Start Botmatch’ button is completely beta and is only there for testing purposes. I will most likely be switching it over to the ‘three ovals serving as tabs’ method as seen on the options menu. One will of course be the ‘stats’ tab as pictured here, the second ‘botmatch’ and the third is still up for grabs… possibly a place to access the yet to be built global stats website, but that’s a completely different story and would not be for a while anyway.
However, there is still much work to be done. Once I modify the menu to have the aforementioned tabs, I will still need to code the botmatch menu. Luckily, most of the code work there involves taking the setup server menu code and stripping/replacing bits of it. Regardless, this means I’ll be able to accelerate my work and get another update out soon.
Which brings me to my next point, the mutator selection window. This addition will not come out this next update. I will likely work on it after I finish the botmatch menu so I can plug the mutator selection window into both the botmatch and server menus at the same time. This feature might take quite a lot of time and effort to implement, but please be patient; after all I am only one man and I can only code so fast. However, I think once both of these items are complete, I will have solved two of the major inconveniences of NAB. One of the biggest reasons why people don’t set up more servers or play more maps in singleplayer is because of the need to type long and foreign console commands. A regular user should never have to access a console in order to get to the main content of any game. Accessibility is key to playability.
More shots of PM-BlacktopRemix, this time with a fair amount of lighting and a huge amount of details added. Yet, I still want to add more.
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As this map continues to grow, it is slowly becoming more and more surreal. Buildings and doors are appearing in areas that would be impractical if not unrealistic, and the whole place is looking like someone took a few city blocks and crunched them into way too little space. In short, this place feels like the city equivalent of the Winchester Mystery House.
Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering, that’s 4022 surfaces so far.
More WIP screenshots of the PM-BlacktopRemix renovation. You’ll notice how I’m slowly making texture seams and the main box that encompasses the world disappear. There’s still more work to be done, but the original was 675 surfaces and this so far is 3278, so I’d say it is an improvement for sure.
Sometimes I wonder if people really understand what I’m trying to do with renovations. It is not just about making the map look pretty. My NAB map renovation projects are made to be a re-imagining of the original author’s intent. That is to say, a person has an idea, and it is a wonderful idea in the conceptual stage. But then the same people lose patience or realize they are not as adept with 3D art as they thought and they give up or run out of time or patience.
I try to breathe new life into these less than perfect maps, and while it may be true that it lacks much of the original construction, I always start by recreating every last brush of the original before adding new content. The idea behind this is to not only make it resemble the original in structure, but also in flow. When it really comes down to it, the environment itself does little more than control the flow of fighting. The eye candy and wow factor is all adjustable on a sliding scale of time and effort, and contributes little if not nothing to the actual fighting. *
You might think it seems a little presumptuous to remake someone’s work like this, but to this date I have only gotten two kinds of reactions from original authors (80% of original authors don’t even play NAB anymore anyway) as paraphrased below.
“That piece of junk? I made that when I was like ten, (thanks for fixing / I don’t care that you fixed) it up.”
“I am so happy that you remade my map, it is really cool and it is like really close to my original idea.”
So yeah, I think I’m doing a pretty good job so far. **
* Don’t get me wrong, looks make you want to spend more time overall in an arena, but good flow can make an ugly map playable. I will admit however that being immersed in a particularly pretty arena will result in some affects to gameplay if you stand still, staring at the neat building or whatever for too long as I aim my Triplestrike alt-fire at the back of your head.
** Actually, I do get negative reactions to renovations on occasion, they’re just all from BENJAMIN. I swear Ben, if you complain about this one as much as you did PM-Railroad (WHICH I REMIND YOU was nearly identical to the original) I swear I will make all your NAB guns explode each time you fire them!
There I was just considering simply remaking only what was in the original level, and then suddenly I couldn’t stop building more and more details into it. The map is obviously still very BETA, but I’m really loving it so far.
To be honest, I always thought the NAB CP 2.5 would be the best thing to happen to NAB for a while. I never expected to be in charge of the thing, just to update the content. I never expected to run the community, nor maintain the Updater.
Yet here I am, years after I dug this game out of the bargain bin at a Comp USA with a steady stream of people who still take an interest in NAB and find the time to really play it.
I also never expected to become a programmer either. That was a huge surprise. My first experiences with coding were frustrating and boring. Turns out you just have to look at it differently. In some cases however, some bits of code are just a brick wall covered in spikes. Which is why the Menu Update Part Two is taking so long.
I’ve coded up about a dozen possible solutions to my problem, but the issue is none of them worked. What I want to do is link a botmatch menu up to the singleplayer stats page. Seems easy enough, until you start trying to wrap your head around parent window code dependencies.
Ultimately, I think my solution will be along these lines…
I have to remove most of the code from the stats window and put it into a new, child window. Then using some previous examples, model the stats window to open the new child window, with the botmatch button that will force the parent window to switch to a different child window, namely the botmatch setup window. Of course, a button back to the stats child window will be required too.
So I guess the whole point of this is to let you all know that the wheels are still turning, albeit slowly and with a grinding noise to rival a wood chipper full of Backstreet Boys merchandise. I’m going to eventually get this all settled, then I’ll be able to work on the next huge challenge, the Mutator Selection menu. Even though it’s mostly going to be ‘just copy/adapt the code from UT’, I don’t even know how I’m going to approach that one, possibly in a haz-mat suit with a 15 foot pole and a bomb-defusing robot.
