POWERPILLZ v0.75 © AZ Development Team 2000
Design Document by Iain McGinniss
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What is Powerpillz?
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The Gameplay - In Depth
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The In-Game HUD
1. What is Powerpillz?
The central concept of powerpillz is hardly
original, although it's implementation to the FPS genre is (as far as I can
see). The way the game works is that the two teams start off as normal, but with
a standard set of weapons (the machinegun, the shotgun and the gauntlet) and a
weapon of your choice: anything but the BFG. However from this point both teams
hunt for the powerpill, a bubble-like object in the map which gives that team
ultimate control over the enemy team. By this I mean that the enemy team has no
weapons other than the machinegun and gauntlet, and a weakened machinegun at
that, while your team (the hunting team if you will) has the standard set of
weapons and the weapon of your choice. When the pill is picked up, that team
will have the status of 'hunters' for 60 seconds, or until the enemy team is
picks up a new powerpill.
From this, frantic gameplay can develop as the
hunting team try to kill the hunted team as quickly as possible while they have
a heavy advantage, and simultaneously trying to prevent the faster moving hunted players
from finding a new powerpill and therefore stealing control of the game. I find
this highly appealing, and I hope you do as well >8^)
2. The Gameplay - In Depth
Within this section I will discuss the specifics of how the gameplay works,
so that you can gain a higher understanding of how the mod will operate in
real-time with a varying number of players...
The Powerpill
The powerpill has a very specific behaviour, while I will describe within
this section. Firstly, the pill will spawn from the second that the server first
loads the map, meaning that the powerpill is available from the teams from the
instant of the level loading. The pill will then remain at this location for 60
seconds unless picked up by a team. If the 60 seconds expire, it will respawn
into another location of the map. The pill spawns into weapon locations of the
map, and cannot be moved from these positions. While we had originally hoped to
spawn the pills into the weapon locations and move them in a random direction
from there, we found that if they are static to the weapon locations that the
bots work a lot better and so for the sake of single player gaming, we have set
this in stone.
Now, when a pill is picked up it will give control to that team. The opposite
team will also have all weapons removed apart from the machinegun and gauntlet.
Their machinegun is also 40% weaker than a normal machinegun, putting them at a
further disadvantage. However, they will also be able to move and shoot 30%
faster than the hunted team, making escape from death a bit easier for them. The
newly appointed hunting team will receive the weapon of their choice (defined
when they play powerpillz via the menu, which is then stored in a cvar in their
configuration file for future games.) in addition to the standard weapon set (the
shotgun, machinegun, shotgun and gauntlet). The player's chosen weapon can be
changed at any time during the game, but will not take affect until the player
next dies (so if they are desperate for a different weapon they will have to
lose their team a point in the form of a negative frag for a suicide or being
killed by the enemy team).
The players will receive a set amount of ammunition for the specific weapon
that they choose, the details of which are shown below:
Grenade Launcher: 10 grenades
Rocket Launcher: 10 rockets
Lightning Gun: 75 units
Railgun: 10 slugs
Plasma Gun: 75 units
To supplement their ammunition, the players can collect the ammo crates that
can be found in all the usual places for ammunition in the map, which currently
have the rocket symbol on them. When collected, these crates will give the
player a specific amount of ammo for their chosen weapon in addition to 5 shells
for their shotgun. The usual maximum ammo limitation of 200 units per weapon
still applies. The amount of ammo a crate will give for a specific weapon is
shown below:
Grenade Launcher: 5 grenades
Rocket Launcher: 5 rockets
Lightning Gun: 50 units
Railgun: 5 slugs
Plasma Gun: 25 units
The player that picks up the pill will receive the bonus of being the
"super-player", and will receive a random power-up which will last
until his team is no longer the hunting team, in addition to his weapons being
twice as powerful as normal. This power up can be haste, quad damage
(effectively giving him 8x damage!), regeneration or invisibility. This player will be a
formidable player to avoid for the hunted team. This player will emit a purple light
and will have a purple field around him however so it will be easy to tell
who the super-player is.
While the hunters are in control, the hunting team cannot pick up the
Powerpill. All they can do is guard it from the panicked hunted team, until it
respawns 60 seconds later.
The hunters can only remain in a dominating position for 60 seconds, after
which they will return to their ordinary status. The hunted team will also
regain all their weapons and lose their 30% speed increase. This way one team will not be able to remain in a hunting position for the
entire length of the game, making things a little fairer.
Weapon Choice
When A player first connects to the server, he is able to select his weapon
of choice via the in-game menu, below the team menu. The default selection is
the rocket launcher, and any weapon except from the BFG or the standard weapon
set (machinegun, gauntlet or shotgun) can be selected.
Scoring
The scoring system has been modified to fit the new style of play, and
balance out the game a little better:
Hunter kills hunted - 1 point
Hunted kills hunter - 2 points
Any non-hunted player picks up a power pill - 2 points
Hunter kills himself - -1 point
Hunted kills himself (only possible by hellfog and usual environmental hazards)
- -1 point
From this, the game play is a little more balanced in
favour of the hunted team: should they manage to kill a hunter then they will
gain double the normal amount of points (or frags, if you will). The rest is
self-explanatory.
New Server Cvars
New console variables have been added to the game to give
the server operator more flexibility on his Powerpillz server. The new cvars are
listed below:
g_fragsforpill (0 or 1,
default 1) - This variable allows you to switch on or off teams gaining points
for collecting the powerpill. This shouldn't really be necessary however if you
can't stand the thought of players getting frags for nothing (like Paul) then
switch this off; this will mean that the only way teams can gain frags is by
killing each other.
pp_respawntime (any positive
integer value, default 15) - This variable allows you to control the length of
time after a pill pickup that a new pill will spawn into the map. The default is
15 seconds, however you can make it any positive value you wish however I
recommend values between 0 and 30 otherwise play may become tedious.
pp_controltime (any positive
integer value, default 60) - This variable allows you to control the length of
time that a team will remain in control for after picking up a pill unless the
other team picks up a newly respawned pill. The standard value for this is 60
seconds, should you wish to modify this then I suggest you use values between
the range of 30 to 120 seconds as gameplay may become tedious and unfair
otherwise.
New Client Cvars
A new console variable has been added on the client side to
store the player's weapon choice. This will allow more advanced players to
change their weapon choice without having to use the in-game menu, and also
allows their choice to be persistent across multiple quake loads.
cg_weaponchoice (integer
between 4 and 8, default 5) - This is the variable that controls the weapon
choice. The integer value stored represents the weapon number corresponding to
the weapon with that number on the keyboard. If you have modified your keyboard
configuration and cannot remember the number of the weapons, here is a list of
the allowed weapons:
Grenade Launcher - number 4
Rocket Launcher - number 5
Lightning Gun - number 6
Railgun - number 7
Plasma Gun - number 8
Maps
Powerpillz will work on any standard death match or team play map, but not
on CTF maps. This is because the base style of play doesn't really make sense in
the powerpillz context, as a smooth, flowing map is required for the game to
make sense.
2. The In-Game HUD
The
In-Game HUD has been modified to show what's going on at a glance to the player.
The main change is in the scores section at the bottom left of the screen. Look
at the picture on the left. This is the new layout and look of the two teams.
When you join a team, a coloured pulsing outline appears round it (as shown on
the right). When a team becomes hunted (i.e. the other team pick up the pill)
it's icon greys over, as shown in the picture on the right where the red team
have become the hunted team. The same applies for the blue team.
To tell
how long your team or the enemy team has left in control, you can look to the
timer that appears on the HUD after a team has picked up the pill. The timer
will count down from the maximum time a team can be in control (normally 60
seconds, however the server can modify this to any value it pleases). The hand
of the clock moves, 1 rotation for every 6 seconds however it is not in time
with the real clock, it is merely for decoration.