Fade Challenge Mode

BeigeAlert

Greetings everybody! I'm finally ready to tear my hands away from the keyboard and release this thing. I call it the Fade Challenge mod!

You play as a lone fade, defending a single hive against endless waves of increasingly difficult marines on a slightly modified version of Platform from Biodome. If you or the hive dies, you lose, and the whole thing resets. This is a great way for new players to practice their fade skills, as well as a fun opportunity for veteran players to really test their mettle. (Wave 15 is ridiculous!)

This is only version 1.0 of the mod. Some areas could use some more polish, and I would love to tweak the bot ai a bit more. But I'd much rather get this thing in your hands so I can start getting some feedback.

Since this is a singleplayer mod and not a server mod, there's a couple extra steps you have to follow to use it.
First, follow this link and subscribe to the mod. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635745329
Next, open NS2, and activate the "Fade Challenge" mod in the mod menu.
Then, open your console, and type "map ns2_ch_fade". This will load the map and start up the challenge!

I'd love to hear how far people are getting. I have a difficult time getting past wave 15.

SamG2020

I played two rounds. First time I made it to round 9 and then to round 10. I'm not experienced with the fade, but this seems like a great way to practice landing hits! I found the AI became pretty tough once they bunched up and focused the hive. I think it would be a little bit easier if the map area were larger so that there was a greater opportunity to take a few out before they group up.

Calego

BeigeAlert wrote: »

Greetings everybody! I'm finally ready to tear my hands away from the keyboard and release this thing. I call it the Fade Challenge mod!

You play as a lone fade, defending a single hive against endless waves of increasingly difficult marines on a slightly modified version of Platform from Biodome. If you or the hive dies, you lose, and the whole thing resets. This is a great way for new players to practice their fade skills, as well as a fun opportunity for veteran players to really test their mettle. (Wave 15 is ridiculous!)

This is only version 1.0 of the mod. Some areas could use some more polish, and I would love to tweak the bot ai a bit more. But I'd much rather get this thing in your hands so I can start getting some feedback.

Since this is a singleplayer mod and not a server mod, there's a couple extra steps you have to follow to use it.
First, follow this link and subscribe to the mod. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635745329
Next, open NS2, and activate the "Fade Challenge" mod in the mod menu.
Then, open your console, and type "map ns2_ch_fade". This will load the map and start up the challenge!

I'd love to hear how far people are getting. I have a difficult time getting past wave 15.

We'll need some leaderboards for this pronto. Screenshots or Videos or it didn't happen people!

Nordic

First try I got to level 10, before I died doing something stupid. 2nd try I got to level 14. I am not even a good fade. I can not get past level 14.

Levels 1-7 are incredibly easy. Marines can not damage the hive until level 8 with me. The mode is not even fun until level 12.

At level 13 there was an exo, and I literally said "Oh god an exo." I was a bit scared.

Requests:
1. Make it so we can choose a starting level. For example, I start at level 10 so I don't have to deal with easy levels 9 and below.
2. Instantly heal the fade to full health when the wave is cleared.
3. Unlock upgrades at different levels. Maybe unlock crag hive upgrades at level 13 or something?
4. More maps. Crossroads from summit might be good.
5. A new menu button, like ns2+ did that starts the mod.

Obligatory sceenshot.

I also turned on cheats, to have some more fun. Gamemode would work great with a lerk, with a few adjustments. I tried it out with lerk and it was fun.

Then I tried making an UBER fade. I gave myself 3 spurs, 3 shells, 3 veils, a crag by each end of the hive, and a second shift. I got through level 40 before I decided to quit. This was actually really fun past level 20. I was kept very busy killing all the marines. One thing to note though, is that I saw no dicernable difference in waves after I think level 30.

Vetinari

As a very non-fade person this might be interesting to look at. I never liked the whole metabolize thing, but now that there's this to practice...

Vetinari

Ah, well. No metabolize training because no metabolize.
Maybe abilities should be unlocked as the waves get harder?

Also as nordic mentioned, Wave 9 is a steep difficulty spike: Wave 8 is the first to give you more than one marine at once, and Wave 9 suddenly has multiple marines from multiple directions.
I also expected shotguns sooner.

But I like where this is going. Are you going to develop this further?

meatmachine

At work at the moment and just saw this.
Do the marines ADADAD like real marines?

Asraniel

Could this be extended to other lifeforms, as well as marines? I always wanted a mode like that to train basic marine vs skulk. The skulk bots are reasonably good, so that should work out?

Blrg

This is awesome!
Thank you man!

Please, make a way for us to choose the starting level
A console command would be enough

Kasharic

@BeigeAlert why isn't this official!

having a version of this that you can pick your map, earn points to get upgrades, have leaderboards etc could be amazing... you could even add achievements, maybe group up with friends to do a higher difficulty in co-op... this should be a gamemode that UWE officially takes hold of.

Blrg

I would prefer not having the shift in there. For me one of the most challenging parts of the fade is the energy management. With that shift it is impossible to run out of energy. Change the shift for metabolize maybe?

And like Nordic said, it is also very interesting as a Lerk, the only problem is that these marines seem to be prepared to shoot lifeforms only on close combat. Increase their range of view and this seems pretty much ready for lerks too

Calego

I haven't tried it yet (pushing these things out at 1 am, shame on you...), but I like the ideas of progressive enhancement for the Fade as the levels increase. I also agree that energy management is the entirety of the skill behind good fades, after movement and accuracy (which both build into energy management). So having it as just a hive, with maybe a crag next to it is probably a good idea. Perhaps at later levels a shift spawns somewhere in the room, maybe in a corner so you have to manage your energy, then retreat to the shift, then go have at it again.

I definitely want to see @turtsmcgurt run this as a gorge.

RevanCorana

What trickery is this ?
This one is made of metal !

lol nice

Ixian

Two comments; The build up is VERY slow, and I would love to have metabolise as a part of it. Some kind of menu would be awesome to choose some details about what kind of run you want. Want metabolise, check, want a shift?, check, want to start at lvl ___, want carapace, check. I like, but i want to love it, just cant yet ^^

unrendered

(deleted message)

Nordic

meatmachine wrote: »

At work at the moment and just saw this.
Do the marines ADADAD like real marines?

The marines are pretty dumb, but it is still a decent fade exercise.

Saffron_baker

Ill finaly become better!

2cough

As a bad fade, I can say that this has already helped me. First go, level 9. Third go, level 13. As others have mentioned, swapping the shift for meta would be nice as my biggest problem is energy management and this removes that from the equation.

Awesome though, wish we could have seen something like this years ago and for more lifeforms.

Thanks, beige, and keep up the gud work!

CRaZyCAT_Rus

Very good for warm up. Great job!
I reached level 19 but sure can reach more.


Some suggestions:

1. Would be nice if there will be 2 difficulty levels: 1) With shift and metabolize, 2) with metabolize only
2. Set biomass level on 3, it's strange situation when alien reach fades with no biomass..
3. Level from 1 to 6 should be replaced by 3 simple levels (1 separate marine, 2 separate marines and 3..)
4. If fade reach level 12 once, he should auto-skip levels from 1 to 6 (after reset)
5. If fade reach level 14 once, he should auto-skip levels from 1 to 8 (after reset)
6. If fade reach level 19 once, he should auto-skip levels from 1 to 12 (after reset)

Also I really don't like this shotgun aiming mechanic, looks like chance to hit (on closer distance) determined by random. But I hope you will fix that

Exquisite work, anyway! Mod already looks like pretty all-sufficient. Ns2 needs more single player mods like this.

Calego

CRaZyCAT_Rus wrote: »

Very good for warm up. Great job!
I reached level 19 but sure can reach more.


Some suggestions:

1. Would be nice if there will be 2 difficulty levels: 1) With shift and metabolize, 2) with metabolize only
2. Set biomass level on 3, it's strange situation when alien reach fades with no biomass..
3. Level from 1 to 6 should be replaced by 3 simple levels (1 separate marine, 2 separate marines and 3..)
4. If fade reach level 12 once, he should auto-skip levels from 1 to 6 (after reset)
5. If fade reach level 14 once, he should auto-skip levels from 1 to 8 (after reset)
6. If fade reach level 19 once, he should auto-skip levels from 1 to 12 (after reset)

Also I really don't like this shotgun aiming mechanic, looks like chance to hit (on closer distance) determined by random. But I hope you will fix that

Exquisite work, anyway! Mod already looks like pretty all-sufficient. Ns2 needs more single player mods like this.

Watching this video made me think "Man I really want this as a Multiplayer mode..." Then I realized it was basically just combat.

Well

1. Remove Shift.
2. At 5 wave add metabolize. Set biomass level to 3.
3. At 10 wave add improvement metabolize. Set biomass level to 6.
4. At 15 wave set biomass level to 9 and drop Crag under Hive.

Additionally add console command for set a starting wave number.

BeigeAlert

Thanks for all the great feedback everybody! I'm definitely feeling encouraged to spend more time refining this. There were definitely some things I wanted to put into the mod, but if I didn't just pick a time and release it, it would never get done! Refining the waves is definitely on my todo list. I want to make sure I get the difficulty ramp just right. Only thing keeping me from doing that is time -- it takes a ridiculous amount of time to debug this thing, as you can't get a really good feel for the difficulty of a single wave on its own. Having all this feedback from you guys goes a long way to helping me identify the problem areas;

I really like the idea of giving the fade metabolize -- maybe even advanced metabolize! -- instead of having a shift there. I'm going to make this a priority.

I also want to add functionality to give marines armor so they take more than 3 swipes to kill. If I can do that, and get marines to convincingly ADADADAD like a real marine, it should really improve the experience.

I would love to add in more maps, but I would much rather focus on gameplay stuff for the moment. If anybody wants to make their own maps for Fade Challenge, I'd be happy to add them to the mod. It could even be just an adaptation of an existing map. Crossroads would be pretty cool! Just make sure you run the editor from launchpad with the mod loaded. Otherwise, it'll delete a bunch of custom entities that are placed in the map. Also, try to cut out the parts of the map that won't be seen, to improve loading times.

As far as lerk mode goes... yea I suppose I could add it in. My original plan for this, was that the "fade challenge" mode was just one of many challenge modes that would accompany the revamped set of tutorials. Obviously that hasn't happened yet, but the plan was for the "lerk challenge" to be different than the fade challenge. My idea was you'd be a lerk following a skulk around a map, killing resource towers, and defending your skulk buddy against the marines that come to defend it. I do like the idea of being able to choose between the lerk and the fade for defending the hive though... hmm... would probably need to custom tailor the waves for each lifeform... AND for each map... whew this is turning into a lot of work all of a sudden...

About level skipping... I agree too! I'll figure something out...

Vetinari

BeigeAlert wrote: »

aps, but I would much rather focus on gameplay stuff for the moment. If anybody wants to make their own maps for Fade Challenge, I'd be happy to add them to the mod. It could even be just an adaptation of an existing map. Crossroads would be pretty cool! Just make sure you run the editor from launchpad with the mod loaded. Otherwise, it'll delete a bunch of custom entities that are placed in the map. Also, try to cut out the parts of the map that won't be seen, to improve loading times.

I'll see if I can mock something up.

Vetinari

Alright, here we go.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636208746

This is just so you can go have a look at it - it's still using the same waves beige's, because I tried making my own, but for some reason it didn't work. Expect a proper first release tomorrow noon (European time).

(In fact, half my time was spent trying to get these waves to work, but to no avail. Unfortunately I can't reach beige right now. Hopefully he will have an answer by tomorrow.)

But you'll be glad to hear that my version is hard as balls straight from the beginning

Calego

BeigeAlert wrote: »

As far as lerk mode goes... yea I suppose I could add it in. My original plan for this, was that the "fade challenge" mode was just one of many challenge modes that would accompany the revamped set of tutorials. Obviously that hasn't happened yet, but the plan was for the "lerk challenge" to be different than the fade challenge. My idea was you'd be a lerk following a skulk around a map, killing resource towers, and defending your skulk buddy against the marines that come to defend it. I do like the idea of being able to choose between the lerk and the fade for defending the hive though... hmm... would probably need to custom tailor the waves for each lifeform... AND for each map... whew this is turning into a lot of work all of a sudden...

That example would also be very relevant to fade play. It would be interesting to restructure this to have a few tasks that you can run as either Lerk or Fade. Onos and Gorge would need their own tasks though. Frankly I'm a lot more a fan of giving love to the combat lifeforms before touching those two though.

Nordic

I BROKE THROUGH LEVEL 15! I did it without cheats too. Here is the video.

Here is the video. Watch at 1.25x speed because I am not that exciting.

@BeigeAlert, can you make it so that the waves spawn from random sides. As it is right now, the waves spawn in a predictable pattern. Make it random.


I really am a bad fade. I am specifically bad at energy management, even with metabolize. In the video I linked, I also had an 86% fade accuracy because the marines are dumb. My point is, that a bad fade like me should not be able to do well like this in this mod. It shows how unrealistic it is.

BeigeAlert

Nordic wrote: »

I BROKE THROUGH LEVEL 15! I did it without cheats too. Here is the video.

Here is the video. Watch at 1.25x speed because I am not that exciting.

@BeigeAlert, can you make it so that the waves spawn from random sides. As it is right now, the waves spawn in a predictable pattern. Make it random.


I really am a bad fade. I am specifically bad at energy management, even with metabolize. In the video I linked, I also had an 86% fade accuracy because the marines are dumb. My point is, that a bad fade like me should not be able to do well like this in this mod. It shows how unrealistic it is.

I could add a function that randomizes the wave entrance. There's some situations where that would come in handy, but there's also others where you want a guaranteed spawn position, as not all spawn positions are created equal.

Nordic

I agree. The spawn behind platform rt is really strong.

Calego

BeigeAlert wrote: »

Nordic wrote: »

I BROKE THROUGH LEVEL 15! I did it without cheats too. Here is the video.

Here is the video. Watch at 1.25x speed because I am not that exciting.

@BeigeAlert, can you make it so that the waves spawn from random sides. As it is right now, the waves spawn in a predictable pattern. Make it random.


I really am a bad fade. I am specifically bad at energy management, even with metabolize. In the video I linked, I also had an 86% fade accuracy because the marines are dumb. My point is, that a bad fade like me should not be able to do well like this in this mod. It shows how unrealistic it is.

I could add a function that randomizes the wave entrance. There's some situations where that would come in handy, but there's also others where you want a guaranteed spawn position, as not all spawn positions are created equal.

I kinda want this to be a Mid-point hive defend. Rather than the artificial third door, you could have marines come in from any one of 4 entrances. Somewhere like Falls or Hydroanalysis would be good.

NotPaLaGi

Are the bots hardcoded to stop in place when shooting? As soon as you land that first swipe, you know they are just going to stand in place and try and shoot you. If they keep moving or had a small dodge type mechanic where I actually had to try and predict where they will be with my next swipe (like a normal player), it would made this much more fun.

Ixian

When you guys play it, are you dodging the way you would in a normal match/against humans?