Jun 6, 2022

ENDGAME BETA HAS BEEN RELEASED! Info and how to play!

FIREFIGHT RELOADED - Bitl

Hi all,

As the ENDGAME Beta was finished rather early, I decided to release the beta branch today!

To download the beta, right click your FIREFIGHT RELOADED listing in Steam and go to Properties.

Afterwards, go down to BETAS and switch the beta to "endgame-beta"

Steam will then install the update.

As of the current version of the ENDGAME BETA, here is the full list of additions since the default version of FIREFIGHT currently on Steam:

The ENDGAME Update ------------------ - Fixed a bug where closing the PLAYER MODEL menu sets your model to the currently selected model. - Enabled player bleeding in singleplayer. - Added respawning to singleplayer. - In HARDCORE Mode and on the max level, respawning is disabled and you will go to the credits upon death. - Whenever you respawn, you will keep half of the EXP you gained. If you keep losing EXP, you'll eventually drop down a level. - Upon reaching the maximum level and dying, you will reach the credits. - Combine Aces now shoot their secondary fire more often and will also fire their entire magazine. - The following commands now have autocomplete: - npc_create - npc_create_aimed - npc_create_equipment - Changed the kick a bit: - The kick has a longer delay. - The kick takes 2 hits to kill a combine soldier rather than 1. - The kick now allows you to kick people across the room so you can blast them with a rifle. - The kick now allows you to send an explosive barrel across the room and watchh it explode an enemy. - The kick will no longer gib opponents. - The kick has a reduced screen shake. - Removed the Jetpack - Added the Grappling Beam to the set of default weapons. - Press the Grappling Beam button to use it. - When active, using the Grappling Beam in mid-air grants the user 70% damage resistance. In addition, the damage of the user's kick is multiplied by 3. - The player is able to grapple onto enemies and items. - The Grapple Beam will only grapple on valid surfaces. The Beam will warn you with a sound cue if it cannot grapple to a certain point. - Fixed a bug where the MP5 didn't count Kash, EXP, or kills. - Fixed and updated the FGD. - Reskinned the arms, gordon model, and kick to blue. For reasons. - Old player model included. - Added an option to disable Portal 2 damage sounds. - The health will now recharge in intervals of 20. - There is an option to disable this function. - The health will now discharge if the health is above your maximum health (def. 200). - If the health is at or above 1000, the health will discharge faster. - Removed the More Health and More Armor Perks. - Removed the Max Armor and Mega Gravity Gun Upgrades. - Increased the Max Health upgrade cost to 50 Kash. - You can now only buy 15 Max Health upgrades, bringing you up to 350 max health. - You now respawn with all max health upgrades you have bought from the store. - Fixed a bug where all possible items wouldn't drop. - Added 2 new items: Big Healthkit and Big Suit Battery. - Big Healthkit gives the player 50 health. - Big Suit Battery gives the player 50 armor. - When you get to your max level, all your weapons will become part of the Mega Gravity Gun. - You can buy/earn/pick up weapons but you cannot keep them upon respawn. - The Shotgun now has a Semi-Automatic fire mode that can be accessed by pressing the Special Attack key. - Removed unused bindings. - Fixed up the Death of a Hero Achievement (validate during open beta) - All combine soldiers now have the ability to jump. - Gave the M249 Para better recoil. - The M249 Para now instantly kills on headshot (much like the Shotgun, 357, and the Sniper Rifle). - Lowered the recoil of the OICW. - Fixed a bug where Hornets can sometimes stay in mid-air. - sk_healthcharger_usesmoney and sk_suitcharger_usesmoney are now disabled by default. - Fixed a bug where ammo/items couldn't spawn. - Fixed a bug where the game kept setting the player's Kash to their Starting Kash amount on respawn. - Removed Multiplayer options from the Main Menu. - Changed the color of the Ministrider's armor to be the same color as the original Half-Life 2 Episode 1 variant. (check) - Fixed an issue where the Max Health upgrade only brought you to 300 health. - Added a new NPC: npc_player! - These spawn rarely and randomly. You will be notified first hand when these spawn. - They have a distintive blue outline and will follow you if they see you. - They dynamically switch weapons depending on how far an enemy is away from them. - They either use their own model or use the player's current model. - You can now slice Zombies in half with the Katana. - Zombies will now have a random chance of burning on fire after an explosion. - Added new intro video by DeviantXS. - Disabled Gamemodes by default to complement the Wave System. - They can be re-enabled with the "Restore pre-ENDGAME spawners" option in the ADVANCED OPTIONS. - Made gamemodes function more reliably. - Fixed many crashes! - Fixed the health regeneration rate perk not actually affecting health regeneration rate. - Decreased the maximum level from 50 to 20. - Removed the following achievements due to unfixable issues or being nearly impossible to get: - Note: If you already had progress for these achievements, or you have already unlocked them, progress and achievements will be kept on your Steam Account, and they can be achieved again using older versions of the mod. - Killionare - Fixed broken pain sounds on some NPCs. - Fixed "Schrodinger's Crouch". - Fixed nexttoken RCE exploit. - Fixed color correction. - Fixed issues with high FOV. - Fixed the game not loading map prefixes properly for gamemodes. - Added the "Entity Tolerance" option, to adjust the number of entities one could have on screen at once. - Removed the "NPC Limit" option in favor of "Entity Tolerance". - Updated the SDK's UI. - Added a proper Workshop Uploader to the SDK. - Lowered the volume of the Katana's sounds. - Buffed the Katana's damage. - The Katana is worse against Antlion Guards and Antlion Guardians than other enemies. - Added option to toggle glow outlines. - Added a new NPC Attributes system that allows the spawner to create unique enemy variants. - Added 6 new NPC variants: - Super Ace (Based on the Combine Ace): Faster, stronger, and more terrifying to fight. - Anti-Aircraft Hunter (Based on the Hunter): A stronger Hunter that fires RPG rockets. - Demolitions Hunter (Based on the Hunter): A stronger Hunter that fires frag grenades (and Incendiary Grenades on Hard and above). - Elite Hunter (Based on the Hunter): A stronger Hunter that fires Combine Balls. - Boom Squid (Based on the Bullsquid): A stronger Bullsquid that fires SMG rockets. - Elite Metrocops with the Metrocop AI. - Reworked Ministrider NPC. - Combine Shotgunners, Aces with shotguns, and player allies with shotguns will now randomly fire their secondary fire when moving, and only fire with secondary fire when standing still. - Combine Shotgunners and Aces with shotguns will get this bonus if the difficulty is on Hard or above. - Player allies will get this bonus if the difficulty is on Easy to Hard. - Super Aces will have this regardless of what difficulty it is on. - Added 2 new Tools to the SDK: - Workshop Uploader - Map Compiler - Increased the maximum number of threads that can be used with map compiling (256 instead of 32) - Increased map compilation performance - Increased VBSP map brush limit. (Credit to https://github.com/James-Holloway/source-sdk-2013-VBSP-improvements) - Disabled AI thinking optimizations. - Increased AI focus time. - Combine Aces and Elites now will take 1.5x more damage to the head instead of 2x the damage. - Combine enemies will no longer play a death sound when decapitated or on headshot. - Added Rocket Jumping. - Added the Incendiary Grenade, a secondary grenade that can set an entire area on fire. - It can be switched to by pressing the Special Attack button. - Zombines and Combine Soldiers can use them on Hard difficulty and above. - Gave the player 5 SMG grenades on spawn. - Removed the following weapons/items due to balance issues: - Egon/Gluon Gun (too overpowered and way too buggy to keep in-game) - Flare Gun (replaced with the Incendiary Grenade, doesn't fit with the gameplay) - Deagle (doesn't do anything different than the 357 Magnum other than firing speed and magazines) - Removed the following enemies due to balance issues: - Cremator (Was originally added as a way for the game to clean up dead bodies. After the function to remove bodies was removed due to instability, the enemy became basically useless and didn't fit in the game overall.) - Combine Guard (Didn't fit the game due to his slow speed. Basically replaced by the Elite Hunter.) - Fixed various "double body" issues with zombies. - Increased the spread of the M249 Para to affect hordes of enemies. - You can now throw knives at the enemy with your secondary fire. - Revamped the buy menu to be more moddable and streamlined. - Combine Elites, Aces, and Elite Hunters will fire instant-kill Combine Balls on the Very Hard difficulty and above. - You can now adjust how slow time moves in Bullettime. - The player now moves faster when in Bullettime mode. - Disabled double jumping due to incompatibility with bunnyhopping. - Improved the Combine Assassin AI and Model. (Credits to Maestra Fénix! https://github.com/MaestroFenix/restored_assassin) - A playermodel based on this model was also added! - Assassins are now able to throw Frag and Fire grenades (Fire grenades on Hard difficulty and above)! - The Katana now has a "Honorbound" mechanic. - If you kill an enemy with the Katana in Bullettime mode, half of the enemy's max health will be given to you. - On top of that, you can chain kill up to 5 enemies to get up to double the max health of the previously killed enemy. After 15 enemies, the kill multiplier will be disabled. - After leaving Bullettime you need to wait 5 seconds before you can use the kill multiplier again. - While the Katana is equipped in Bullettime mode with an active kill multiplier, you will not autoswitch to newly received weapons, nor be able to switch between weapons. - Fixed the Katana's hit registration. - The Katana now has more "reach". - Health regeneration is disabled by default in Classic mode, HARDCORE mode, and on any difficulty at Very Hard or higher. - In order to aquire health regeneration with either of these settings, you must unlock the Health Regeneration Perk. - Hunters can now jump. - Reverted from automatic navmesh based node placement to manual node placement due to issues. - You no longer spawn with the Katana. - It can be unlocked in-game when leveling up or by purchasing it with Kash in the Store. - Added the following enemies to the enemy roster: - Stalkers - Striders (requires "AllowLargeNPCs" to be set in order to spawn.) - Added a new map: dm_underpass! - Redid the perk system, giving it mod support and beter expandability. - Claw Scanners are faster in difficulties Very Hard and above. - If a strider is spawned in the level, they will warn them of the enemy's position. - Fixed a bug where killing Rollermines didn't count as a kill. - Antlions no longer kill Combine Soldiers instantly on difficulties harder than Easy and unless they are allied with the player. - The player and allies may now be allied with Antlions with the Bugbait. - The bugbait can now be acquired as a random reward at or after Level 10. - Antlions will be immune to friendly fire damage and will be fully healed in all difficulties below Very Hard. - Much like Player Allies, they will spawn with a blue outline. - This does not happen in Antlion Assault. - Added Lone Wolf mode: No allies will spawn. - The Combine Ace now has damage resistant armor vs most weapons. - This damage resistance activates in difficuties over Easy. - The damage resistance breaks at half health. You will know when it breaks when the Ace stops producing sparks when hit. - The damage resistance percentage depends on difficulty. - Normal-Hard: 4 damage per hit - Very Hard-NIGHTMARE: 2 damage per hit - Explosives have a greater effect on its shields then bullets. - 30%-50% of tamage from explosions is taken depending of difficulty. - The Ace will create a harmless yellow sonic blast when their damage resistance is destroyed. - The Katana is the only weapon that can slice through the armor effectively. - This can be disabled in the ADVANCED OPTIONS menu. - Combine Aces now rarely reload. - To balance this, Combine Aces now inflict less damage than before, no longer melee, and no longer use their secondary fire. - Combine enemies will now drop items when gibbed. - Changed the formula for leveling up. - Zombines now spawn in COMBINE FIREFIGHT. - Added a wave system/spawner difficulty system. - When the player levels up, the spawners will spawn tougher and tougher enemies based on an adaptive spawnlist system. - You can change your spawnlist in the "change spawnlist" menu. - You can now completely disable autoswitching. - Lowered the amount of manhacks a Metrocop would hold at once. - Your currently selected map now saves to a file. - Rare NPCs now spawn more on higher difficulties. - Added Death Notices.

Note that the build you are about to test is not the current development version, but is way more further ahead than the old "snapshot" branch. The "snapshot" branch will be replaced with the "endgame-beta" branch and future updates (if any) will be pushed into that branch until ENDGAME is finished later this year.

I hope everyone enjoys the ENDGAME BETA, and I will release more updates regarding future developments!

May 13, 2022

ENDGAME Monthly Update (May 2022) - OPEN BETA ANNOUNCEMENT!

FIREFIGHT RELOADED - Bitl

Hi everyone, and welcome to this month's devlog for ENDGAME. We're going to get right into the details of what happened this month!

ENDING FIXES

One of the goals for ENDGAME was to give FIREFIGHT RELOADED not only a proper goal (get to the highest level and get the mega gravity gun), but a proper ending as well. In the beta (info below), you may notice that when you die in Hardcore Mode or at the max level, the screen just fades to red.

I decided to fix this by making the screen fade properly to black, and by giving it some Half-Life 1 styled text that changes depending if you're at the max level or if you're in Hardcore Mode (the ending text always shows up at the max level, regardless if Hardcore Mode is on or not)

REWARD SYSTEM REWRITE

Much like the Shop, the reward system has been completely rewritten to be more moddable and expandable. Rather than loading each list at once, the mod will load a random rewards list file and grab a random reward from it. If it can't get any reward after a certain amount of tries (3, is adjustable in the ADVANCED ), it'll try to get the 1st or second item from the list. if it can't get ANYTHING, it'll give you a healthkit or suit battery.

This means, like the Shop, custom weapons can now be added to the rewards system. This opens up a lot of new possibilities for modders.

This addition also adds separate item types into the game. These tell the rewards system which item to spawn.

Item Types
FR_HEALTHKIT = Basic healthkit.
FR_BATTERY = Basic suit battery.
FR_HEALTHKIT_BIG = Large healthkit, gives 50 HP.
FR_BATTERY_BIG = Large battery, gives 50 Armor.
FR_WEAPON = A Weapon.
FR_AMMOWEAPON = An ammo entity that spawns a weapon if the player doesn't have it (grenade and slam)
FR_AMMO = Weapon ammo
FR_PERK = A perk.
FR_KASHBONUS = A Kash bonus which is based on your level (player's level * 10)
FR_SERVERCMD = A command executed by the server.
FR_CLIENTCMD = A command executed by the player.

Yes, you heard that right. you can make the player execute commands when they get a reward! I plan on writing a guide soon, so there will be more information about this in the future.

Here's a bit of one of the files:

"Rewards" { "1" { "name" "#GameUI_Store_Buy_HealthKit" "item_type" "1" "min_level" "1" "unlocks_in_iron_kick" "1" } "2" { "name" "#GameUI_Store_Buy_SuitBattery" "item_type" "2" "min_level" "1" "unlocks_in_iron_kick" "1" } "3" { "name" "#GameUI_Store_Buy_FragGrenade" "item_type" "6" "min_level" "3" "weapon_classname" "item_ammo_grenade" } ... (continued) }

You can change language strings with regular text.

A NEW SPECIES OF ALLY

Upon reaching level 10, you have the chance to receive a Pheropod, also known as Bugbait, to make Antlions your allies. Upon throwing it, all Antlions, present and future, will become your allies. Throw the Bugbait to move Antlions to a specific point, or squeeze it with the secondary fire to make them follow you.

LONE WOLF AND IRON KICK MODES

Speaking of allies, if you don't want any allies at all, you can enable the new Lone Wolf mode. This also makes the Bugbait not be an award.

Want to kick everything in your path? Play the new Iron Kick mode, which buffs the damage of the kick, destroying anything in your path. However, you don't spawn with any weapons, can't pick up any weapons, and Health Regen is an unlockable perk, rather than it being unlocked by default (a new feature in ENDGAME).

The Health Regen is also an unlockable perk in Hardcore mode, Classic mode, and difficulties Very Hard and up. You can disable this behavior in the ADVANCED OPTIONS menu, alongside enabling it for all modes.

COMBINE ACE CHANGES

The Combine Ace has gotten a few AI changes which makes him more similar to his interpretation in SMOD. He will barely reload, no longer throw grenades or uses melee, and sometimes he will take cover from an enemy before engaging for the first time.

Now, to the BIG system....

THE "WAVE" SYSTEM

Early in ENDGAME's development, one of the plans was to add in a wave system which will spawn enemies in waves (ala Killing Floor and TF2's MvM), rather than focus on the endless stream of enemies FIREFIGHT RELOADED is known for. However, this system was more difficult to plan out than I thought. I was trying to answer one question: How can I make a wave system FEEL like it's FIREFIGHT RELOADED, while also solving one of the main issues FIREFIGHT has been experiencing for years; player progression?

Player progression is a major issue in FIREFIGHT RELOADED. As of the latest stable version of the last update, the game will spawn many different types of enemies, but there wasn't a clear difficulty curve as the player continued to level up.

So you might ask: Why is "wave" in quotes in the title? Well, I figured out how a wave system should be implemented in FR: when the player levels up, spawn harder and harder enemies until the player reaches the maximum level (now 20 from the original 50). The player's level acts as the waves counter and the spawners will naturally spawn harder enemies as you progress, rather than stopping the spawners for a minute, then restarting like most titles.

This doesn't make it a traditional wave system, but it's a wave system that is uniquely FIREFIGHT. It's not quite like Killing Floor or MvM, but it fits in with FIREFIGHT's "endless enemy" game design, and fixes the issue with player progression.

The system loads a spawnlist of enemies, them trims it to the enemies that can be spawned at the player's level. This way, the spawner doesn't have awkwardly long pauses when trying to spawn enemies.

Within the first 3-5 levels/waves, players will notice that the progression moves quick. This is to build up the initial enemy counts and to teach new players about defeating different enemies.

Despite the system not being like a traditional wave system, it fixes the long-standing issue of progression.

Here's another sneak peek at one of the files.

"default" { //LEVEL 1 "1" { "classname" "npc_metropolice" } "2" { "classname" "npc_headcrab" } //LEVEL 2 "3" { "classname" "npc_zombie" "min_level" "2" } "4" { "classname" "npc_zombie_torso" "min_level" "2" } "5" { "classname" "npc_headcrab_fast" "min_level" "2" } //LEVEL 3 "6" { //elite metrocops "classname" "npc_metropolice" "preset" "1" "min_level" "3" } ... (continued) }

ENDGAME OPEN BETA

Now, to explain why this was posted so early.

On June 10th, I plan on opening the floodgates and allowing players to try out this newer version of ENDGAME. If you want to try it NOW, I have posted the ENDGAME beta branch code in the official Discord server. (https://discord.gg/4MfShzF) This version is a slightly less stable version of what will be released on June 10th. However, if you don't mind waiting, a blog post will be released soon with all the information regarding the version of ENDGAME you will be playing.

Note that there won't be a lot of new content in either version of ENDGAME. This is one of the main focuses moving forward, alongside the creation of a proper Linux/SteamOS port.

I hope everyone enjoys what I've been working on for ENDGAME. It's been a long road, but I feel that ENDGAME will make FIREFIGHT more fun and enjoyable.

- Bitl

May 1, 2022

ENDGAME Monthly Update (April 2022)

FIREFIGHT RELOADED - Bitl

Hi everyone, and welcome to this month's ENDGAME blog post! I have a lot of things to discuss about, so let's get on with it!

Last month, I released a snapshot for ENDGAME intended to showcase the fixes I have implemented for crashes. The users who have played it have shared that crashes are reduced or even removed, however I am not done with this yet. I plan on doing more internal playtesting to iron out more crashes and bugs, especially since I implemented more gameplay stuff this month.

However, before we move on, I want to address that as of the latest internal development version, a lot of fixes from the GitHub Source 2013 repo have been implemented in FIREFIGHT RELOADED, as originally discussed in last month's blog post. This means when ENDGAME comes out, it will be the most stable version of FIREFIGHT RELOADED released by far. There's still work to be done on the project, but stability is the number one concern with the project currently to give players the experience I want to deliver with ENDGAME.

NOW, we get into the gameplay stuff. Lots of things have been done recently.

NPC ATTRIBUTE SYSTEM

Last month, I discussed about a NPC attribute system that would dynamically change an NPC's stats and allow for more unique encounters. Well, I just added the system, and I'll explain how it all works!

The attribute system allows the game to load NPC presets based on a file used to manipulate specific stats (speed, health, color, etc.) for NPCs. In addition, NPCS can have custom attributes that change the behavior of NPCs. This means that the modder can create many different NPC types to spawn into a world with no real limits attached to it. This is important for the new wave system to make encounters feel unique but familiar at the same time. Attributes can also be loaded at any time, so anything related to the NPC can be adjusted in real time.

Below is an example of what a script will look like:

//Ministrider "npc_hunter_preset4" { "new_model" "models/hunter_colorable.mdl" "is_rare" "1" "new_projectile" "5" "new_material_color" "26 52 64" "volley_size" "18" "use_ministrider_sounds" "1" "persist" "0" }

The system can:
- Forcefully give attributes to an NPC (this will be done during the beginning of a wave when NPCs spawn)
- or give a spawned NPC a random preset if there is one (which is done for pre-ENDGAME gamemodes. This can be disabled if you want an experience closer to pre-ENDGAME FR.

Now, enough of the technical blabber, let's showcase the first NPC presets!

THE SUPER ACE!

He's stronger, faster, and more deadly than any Combine Soldier in FIREFIGHT RELOADED. He can catch up to the player and destroy them in a matter of moments, unlike the Combine Ace he's built off of. Fortunately, they're easy to see with the red outline around them, so you'll definitely know when one is spawned into the world. They're also super rare, so keep an eye out for them when you see them. All of the following variants are like this.

THE BOOM SQUID!

He's stronger than the normal Bullsquid. Unlike his normal brethren, he throws batches of SMG grenades as his enemies, which explains his health buff.

THE NEW HUNTERS:

From left to right:
Anti-Aircraft Hunter: Stronger and fires RPG Rockets.
Demolitions Hunter: Stronger and fires Frag or Immolation Grenades.
Elite Hunter: Stronger and fires Combine Balls.

In addition, the Ministrider has been moved to a variant of the Hunter, and the Elite Metrocop will also sometimes spawn with Metrocop AI!

Currently, the system is limited, however opens up a new host of possibilities for the mod and modders alike. The plan is to not only implement this system to NPCs, but also to allow other entities to be custom. It's too early to tell how many attributes will be added, but this system will be built on and improved as development continues.

THE SDK TOOLS

For most of you eagle eyed players, you might have noticed that the SDK recently received 2 new custom tools in the Snapshot branch: the WORKSHOP UPLOADER and the MAP COMPILER!

The Workshop Uploader allows the modder to upload and edit their mods with relative ease. One can update their mod avatar, description and files with the click of only a few buttons. This is significantly easier than the SteamCMD method, and will be the supported method upon ENDGAME's release. A guide for it will be written eventually, but you can check it out in the latest SDK snapshot.

In addition, a command line tool named the Map Compiler was added recently, allowing for quick and easy compilations of maps. It's way faster than using Hammer for compiling, as there's barely any overhead when compiling a map under it. In addition, you can compile multiple maps in one session. Even though you can only compile 1 map at a time, you can load and compile map after map without needing to restart the program. In addition, it is pre configured for a fast compile experience, while also not sacrificing on map build quality. This tool is also available though the SDK Snapshot.

Not included with the SDK Snapshots were various changes and modifications did to the SDK tools. Since you can mod the various map compilation tools with the source code included in Source SDK 2013, I have done some modifications to the tools that will allow mappers to have more performance, more resources available to them, and higher limits. These changes include:

- Support for up to 256 threads from the original 16, meaning that modern Ryzen Threadripper processors will be able to compile maps faster.
- Removed useless debug code, allowing for better performance when using the tools
- A slightly higher brush limit, allowing mappers to push the Source Engine's limits even further.

ALLY AI CHANGES.

Back to discussion about the mod for a bit, Player Allies will now use the Rebel AI rather than the Combine AI, allowing them to join your squad and can be recalled to other locations of the map. In addition, they have more models available, and have a chance to use the player's model, as seen here:

Now, in order for this to work with custom playermodels, the following code must be added to the QC files before any animation files:

Masculine models: $includemodel "humans/male_shared.mdl" $includemodel "humans/male_ss.mdl" $includemodel "humans/male_gestures.mdl" $includemodel "humans/male_postures.mdl" $includemodel "elitepolice_animations.mdl" Feminine models: $includemodel "humans/female_shared.mdl" $includemodel "humans/female_ss.mdl" $includemodel "humans/female_gestures.mdl" $includemodel "humans/female_postures.mdl" $includemodel "alyx_animations.mdl"

If these animations are not included, a warning will tell you to check a command called debug_check_incompatible_models. An example output is displayed here with a playermodel from the Workshop:

NEW ENEMIES????

Yes, you heard that right, 2 new enemies are getting added to the roster: the STALKER and (maybe) the STRIDER.

The Stalker has the same AI from Half-Life 2: Episode 1, but are hostile immediately when spawning. They are currently considered a Common enemy, however I plan on changing it to a Rare enemy at some point, since you don't see them much until the end of Half-Life 2 and into Episode 1. They are weak, but their laser attack can destroy you if you are not moving.

As for the STRIDER, let's address some things first:

As of right now, the Strider cannot move, because the Deathmatch maps are not set up for that. However, they are still devastating enemies and will stomp you when you get close. You can also grapple on them, like this. You can also damage them by kicking and with the usual explosives and combine balls.

Some issues are currently getting worked out with them, such as the "they do not move yet" issue, and an issue where they get flung into the atmosphere when a force is applied to it (This has been fixed with most things that apply a force, like kicks and bullsquids as of the writing of this blog post). They are still a highly experimental enemy which may get removed from the spawner list at any point due to the issues with their design. However, it is one experiment that I want to continue doing as long as I can. Currently, they only spawn in dm_runoff and dm_overwatch as Rare enemies.

KNIFE THROWING

You can now press the secondary fire to throw knifes at enemies. This was a cut change early on when knives were in development, however I figured out how to implement them in a way that functioned properly.

KATANA REBALANCE

The Katana has been completely readjusted, making it the most powerful melee weapon in the game. It has a chance to cut through multiple enemies, improved hit detection, and can cause more damage to most enemies.

In addition, it has a new "Honorbound" mode that activates when in bullettime. I'll let the internal changelog notes explain it for me.

- If you kill an enemy with the Katana in Bullettime mode, half of the enemy's max health will be given to you. - On top of that, you can chain kill up to 5 enemies to get up to double the max health of the previously killed enemy. After 15 enemies, the kill multiplier will be disabled. - After leaving Bullettime you need to wait 5 seconds before you can use the kill multiplier again. - While the Katana is equipped in Bullettime mode with an active kill multiplier, you will not autoswitch to newly received weapons, nor be able to switch between weapons (unless it is the Grappling Beam).

This allows the wielder to regain health if they are low on it.

With the new additions, the Katana is no longer a weapon the player gets on Spawn. In order to get it, the player must unlock it or receive it from the Buy menu.

Speaking of...

THE BUY MENU UPDATES!

THE BUY MENU HAS BEEN COMPLETELY REDONE! This was done so custom weapon creators can integrate their weapons using a "shopcatalog" script file.

"ShopCatalog" { "1" { "name" "HealthKit" "price" "10" "command" "healthkit" } }

You can either modify the "shopcatalog_default.txt" to include your item, or add it in a separate text file named with the "shopcatalog_" prefix. This allows Workshop creators to add weapons to the shop menu without overriding anything.

OTHER CHANGES

Here's some other changes done recently:

- Added Rocket Jumping, allowing for players to reach great heights - Increased grappling beam speed when holding down the crouch button, allowing players to reach new areas fast. - Fixed various "double body" issues with zombies. - Increased the spread of the M249 Para to affect hordes of enemies. - Combine Elites, Aces, and Elite Hunters will fire instant-kill Combine Balls on the Very Hard difficulty and above. - You can now adjust how slow time moves in Bullettime. - The player now moves faster when in Bullettime mode. - Disabled double jumping due to incompatibility with bunnyhopping. - Improved the Combine Assassin AI and Model. (Credits to Maestra Fénix! https://github.com/MaestroFenix/restored_assassin) - A playermodel based on this model was also added! - Assassins are now able to throw Frag and Fire grenades (Fire grenades on Hard difficulty and above)! - Added more models for the Player Ally to use. - Hunters can now jump. - Reverted from automatic navmesh based node placement to manual node placement due to issues.

REBALANCING

Let's now discuss about the future going forward. Now that a lot of crashes and bugs have been ironed out, gameplay changes will become the main focus of ENDGAME. One plan I discussed in the past was to remove or rebalance weapons and NPCs, so let's talk about what's happening with that.

During development of the Endgame update, a few weapons and 2 enemies were cut. The Gluon Gun was removed early in Endgame's development due to the overpowered nature of the weapon. However, I want to address the other elephants in the room.

Our first one is the flare gun. The flare gun is the only weapon currently in FIREFIGHT RELOADED that can set an enemy on fire, which gives it a use in the weapon sandbox. What makes it a candidate for rebalancing or removal though is the fact that it is a single-shot pistol with a slow reload time. Since you can't just spray it at other enemies, you have to exclusively prioritize a single target to get shot with the flare. While this isn't inherently a bad thing, it's kind of the antithesis of FIREFIGHT RELOADED in a way. The mod is about not just focusing on a single target, but many targets all at once with the weapons you have. The quicker you can deal out damage, the greater chance you'll succeed.

To keep it in FIREFIGHT, it has to dish out plenty of damage between multiple enemies, rather than one at a time. So if that's the case, why not just increase the fire rate, increase the damage of the projectile, and decrease the reload time? While that's not a bad idea for the flare gun, it still has the issue of being a single shot weapon. With the sniper rifle, it has only 2 shots per reload and has a large amount of damage that can be dealt to enemies. The flare gun on the other hand is a single shot pistol that even if you rebalanced the damage of the flare it still wouldn't deliver enough damage to be an effective weapon.

The solution to this is to have a weapon that can dish out a ton of damage, while also setting fire to a decently large area. That's where the upcoming incendiary grenade will come in. Like the original fragmentation grenade, it will set off an explosion, however it will also set a small area on fire for a small period of time. Enemies who walk over the fire will be engulfed in flame, similar to shots from the flare gun. It will also be a fire mode for the original grenade, allowing you or the enemy (on hard or higher difficulties) to use this new fire grenade type.

The flare gun at that point would basically be obsolete. All of the issues with it would be null and void because there would be a weapon that does the same thing as the flare gun, but better for the game in general.

Next up: the Deagle. The Deagle was basically the .357 Magnum, but with Pistol fire rate and magazines. The .357 Magnum basically made the Deagle's use case irrelevant and it was redundant as a result. The .357 Magnum does the same things the Deagle does, so there was no point in reinventing the wheel.

In addition, the Cremator was cut from the game, although not for balance or redundancy reasons. The Cremator was originally added in as a way for FIREFIGHT RELOADED to clean enemy corpses. However, due to a crash discovered during its implementation, the corpse cleaning functionality was removed. The Cremator became a slow moving neutral enemy that attacked the player when provoked. However, this didn't fit FIREFIGHT's gameplay style of "run around and kill everything in sight". Although I didn't want to remove the Cremator (it is one of my favorite enemies after all), it had to be removed because it just didn't fit FIREFIGHT, and the original purpose of it was basically nullified.

The Combine Guard was also removed, as its purpose was overridden by the Elite Hunter, in addition to its slow movement.

The double-jumping ability was also removed due to conflicts with the Bunnyhop ability, and making movement unreliable. As a result, it ended up getting removed from the mod.

I don't like removing things from the mod that were there before, but it had to be done to address concerns I had with balancing the mod.

Now, back to better news.

PLANNED CONTENT

In addition, I have some things in mind for planned content to add to the game, namely maps.

dm_underpass is currently fully noded and ready to place spawners and items in. It will be the next Half-Life 2 Deathmatch map to make it to FIREFIGHT RELOADED.

In addition, I was experimenting with the possibility of adding maps from Half-Life 2 Survivor Ver2.0. Theyare noded out of the box, making them easy to implement straight into FIREFIGHT with a mapadd script. However, I am still experimenting with this addition, so it may or may not be added in the future.

gm_flatgrass in the images is only used for illustration purposes and won't be adapted for FIREFIGHT RELOADED gameplay, sadly :(

I've also been thinking about adding Alien Swarm aliens to the game, as I thought they would fit in with the general Half-Life aesthetic. I'm still figuring out if they'll ACTUALLY fit in, however.

Maybe I'll also add in Half-Life Alyx enemies, who knows?

I plan on adding content as soon as I finish the Wave System, which is planned to get worked on during May and/or June. More content is planned to be announced soon.

WALLPAPERS

Finally, I made some new backgrounds for FR in SFM to cerebrate the new update. I decided that FIREFIGHT should have something better than a reused dark messiah wallpaper, so I made these:

Feel free to use these as your desktop or phone background!

I hope you all enjoyed the lengthy blog post. It was a lot of things to report on, and I heavily doubt people will like the fact that I have cut content. However, I hope that the addition of more content and features balances all of that out.

- Bitl