<![CDATA[Forerunner Gaming - Dev blog]]> https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/ Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:08:08 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Realms Devblog 2k19.]]> https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=7859 Thu, 10 Jan 2019 13:56:08 +0000 https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=7859
I figure it's due for an update, to let you guys know a few more things about the gamemode, and some of the changes being made behind the scenes. Also to let you know how much is left before the first beta. First off, let me start by explaining what this is.

Realms is a gamemode I started work on a few years back. It started out with ONE simple idea: A way to play and progress through FRG without needing to play TTT.

Realms is NOT a MMORPG. Realms is much more modest in what its trying to achieve. I want to make a smaller PvE focused gamemode, that you can play with or without others, at any time and chose your own goals, with its own separate player progression, and its own unique loot and traits. The ultimate goal in the gamemode is to level up your player, put stat points into abilities that enhance your player, so that you can take on tougher enemies, and hunt for rare/unique loot. You can bring your weapons into it, anything you obtain anywhere else is allowed, however, your damage is subject to modifiers which are applied based on your players stats (or gear as well).  I'll explain more about that later on.

Okay now that that is out of the way, let's talk about some of the things I have been working on, on and off, since the last devblog/update.


First off, I have revamped a lot of my original Player Stat plans, and finished implementing a few of them last night. Let's go into detail about some of these.

Let me first explain damage: Damage in Realms is not 1:1 your weapons damage, like you are used to. There are numerous modifiers applied to it to scale it in more interesting/RPG-esque ways, including RNG chances at 'crit' hits, which increase your damage dealt quite a bit for that shot. Since the last update, I've completely removed the possibility to proc 0's based on the enemies defense stat. Instead, the enemies defense stat is used to apply a damage dampener proc upon your incoming damage. The higher their defense, the more likely your damage dealt to them will be dampened a bit. The amount its dampened is currently determined between your level, their level, your str + dex, and their defense.

Lets talk about 2 of the stats:
  • Strength.
    • This stat defines your maximum damage, relative to the weapon you're using. Note that it can exceed your weapons base damage! The higher you make this stat, the harder you can hit, but the more your damage will vary on average. This also affects your crit damage in a non 1:1 ratio, meaning more strength = higher crit damage multiplier ON TOP of already doing more crit damage because of higher hits, but that is subject to change.
  • Dexterity.
    • This stat defines your minimum damage, relative to the weapon you're using. If you raise this too high above your strength, it becomes your new max damage, and your strength becomes your minimum. Increasing this stat makes your damage more consistent.
(do note there's more than these 2 stats)

Now say I take a normal eerie galil into realms to fight an enemy, right now:


As you can see, I don't really do too much damage. my damage range is 1.9 - 5.2 (oh yeah, Damage does not round in realms!), however, now lets make my strength 100:



As you can see, I absolutely shred it with 100 strength, however, my damage varies quite wildly. You can see some 4's, 8's then some much larger numbers.

Now lets see what happens if I decrease my strength to 50, and increase my dexterity as well:



Much more consistent.

You can build your player to play how you'd like. If you'd like to be a super hard hitting dude and rely on huge crits, you can min/max your stats and gear to do everything to maximize your highest possible hit.

If you'd rather be more consistent, but lose out on those harder hits, you can do a mix between.
If you want it all, you can attempt to find armor sets or realms specific traits that increase the strength/dexterity of your player while equipped!


Another thing I improved upon dramatically is the 3rd person mode's accuracy. It is now PERFECTLY accurate and your shots will meet where you're aiming pretty much every time.

The first iteration of the system suffered from inaccuracy due to differences in perspective between where you're looking in 3rd person, and where your player is actually looking/what they can actually see.



As you see here (yellow = player trace, green = 3rd person view trace), it was easy to get completely misaligned due to perspective differences. This caused me a lot of frustration. The original method just did a trace from the 3rd person view, and made the player face towards the position that trace hit. It worked sometimes, but other times you'd hit a tree when you were trying to aim behind it.

So then I tried moving the 3rd person camera over a bit to more align with the player:


This worked rather well, only a few very small issues with it not aligning, however the player took up way too much of the screen here, so that was also no good.

Then I started thinking, source engine fires bullets from players eyes then covers it up by using effects to shoot a particle from your weapon, to the location where your hit-scan bullet hit. I thought I'd try the same thing and finally I arrived to this solution:


As you see here, my shots are always going to where my crosshair is pointing.


The way I achieved this is basically: fake it 'till you make it. It actually adjusts your players shoot position to shoot from the 3rd person crosshair, rather than your player models Eye position, then it just fires a tracer from your weapon model to the location the bullet shot from your 3d perspective hit. It works like a charm, and you never feel like you're hitting a tree or something else when you're not supposed to.




I'll finish off this devblog with a few Frequently asked questions:

  1. Does Realms have its own currency or Inventory system?
    Realms does have its own currency. Your current inventory and coins will be useful there too, but realms will have a variety of exclusive items that can only be used on the game mode (such as Armor sets)
  2. How many players will Realms support?
    I'm looking at 32 players per server, with multiple servers. I may be looking into porting my 'realm' system from IoD (instancing) and applying 'channels' to realms so the map isn't too over populated.
  3. Is there anything else to do besides kill stuff?
    Currently, it's all about killing enemies, leveling up your player, and hunting rare realms unique loot (such as sick armor sets).
  4. Can I use any playermodel on realms?
    No. Realms has its own specific playermodel, thus coinshop accessories are also disabled on the game mode (armor sets would look super weird with tons of accessories every where).
  5. Will there be any bosses?
    Yes! There will be 'world bosses' that have a chance to spawn each time you kill an enemy. These wont have crazy mechanics, and will mostly pretty simple due to the fact they can pop up almost anywhere, and wont have a specific arena designed for them though, but they will have unique loot only they can drop, so they are worth killing. I also Currently have plans for one world dungeon, which I don't want to disclose too much about, but I'd love for there to be more. They could even be seperate-server type events like IoD, but with more people.
  6. When is the beta, and is it closed or open?
    I don't have a date yet, I have projects on hold for this, it all depends on if I run into anymore roadblocks or demotivate. But you guys help keep me motivated with how much you are looking forward to this. However, it's also quite nerve racking because there's a lot of hype that has been built up for this, and I don't want to disappoint. I have a feeling a lot of you are thinking this is some huge open world MMORPG type gamemode, but it's not. That is simply not practical to do in GMOD, way too many limitations, so lets try and keep our expectations modest!

    Oh also, it will be a closed beta for the start of it, just so I can make sure everything functions as intended, and get good feedback before unleashing it to the full community. You only get one first impression, and a lot of times that means a lot when it comes to games. I am hoping to use feedback gathered from a closed beta to much improve upon my ideas, and hear what you guys think of everything in general.
  7. Will there be quests or anything?
    The first thing I will be implementing in terms of 'quests' or 'tasks' is akin to runescapes "Slayer". You will talk to an NPC on the lobby (or maybe within realms), and they will assign you a random amount of a certain monster to kill. Completing it could grant you some points to spend on something from them (TBD) and some bonus XP possibly.


That's all for now guys, I know it's not diving too much into specifics, but I figured some of you may be interested to know at least some things that are going on behind the scenes.

I have a few more things to finish revamping, then I'm going to focus on adding enemies and uniques. Depending on if I run into any snags, or try to implement the instancing feature, and as long as nothing else comes up, the beta will happen sometime after that.]]>
I figure it's due for an update, to let you guys know a few more things about the gamemode, and some of the changes being made behind the scenes. Also to let you know how much is left before the first beta. First off, let me start by explaining what this is.

Realms is a gamemode I started work on a few years back. It started out with ONE simple idea: A way to play and progress through FRG without needing to play TTT.

Realms is NOT a MMORPG. Realms is much more modest in what its trying to achieve. I want to make a smaller PvE focused gamemode, that you can play with or without others, at any time and chose your own goals, with its own separate player progression, and its own unique loot and traits. The ultimate goal in the gamemode is to level up your player, put stat points into abilities that enhance your player, so that you can take on tougher enemies, and hunt for rare/unique loot. You can bring your weapons into it, anything you obtain anywhere else is allowed, however, your damage is subject to modifiers which are applied based on your players stats (or gear as well).  I'll explain more about that later on.

Okay now that that is out of the way, let's talk about some of the things I have been working on, on and off, since the last devblog/update.


First off, I have revamped a lot of my original Player Stat plans, and finished implementing a few of them last night. Let's go into detail about some of these.

Let me first explain damage: Damage in Realms is not 1:1 your weapons damage, like you are used to. There are numerous modifiers applied to it to scale it in more interesting/RPG-esque ways, including RNG chances at 'crit' hits, which increase your damage dealt quite a bit for that shot. Since the last update, I've completely removed the possibility to proc 0's based on the enemies defense stat. Instead, the enemies defense stat is used to apply a damage dampener proc upon your incoming damage. The higher their defense, the more likely your damage dealt to them will be dampened a bit. The amount its dampened is currently determined between your level, their level, your str + dex, and their defense.

Lets talk about 2 of the stats:
  • Strength.
    • This stat defines your maximum damage, relative to the weapon you're using. Note that it can exceed your weapons base damage! The higher you make this stat, the harder you can hit, but the more your damage will vary on average. This also affects your crit damage in a non 1:1 ratio, meaning more strength = higher crit damage multiplier ON TOP of already doing more crit damage because of higher hits, but that is subject to change.
  • Dexterity.
    • This stat defines your minimum damage, relative to the weapon you're using. If you raise this too high above your strength, it becomes your new max damage, and your strength becomes your minimum. Increasing this stat makes your damage more consistent.
(do note there's more than these 2 stats)

Now say I take a normal eerie galil into realms to fight an enemy, right now:


As you can see, I don't really do too much damage. my damage range is 1.9 - 5.2 (oh yeah, Damage does not round in realms!), however, now lets make my strength 100:



As you can see, I absolutely shred it with 100 strength, however, my damage varies quite wildly. You can see some 4's, 8's then some much larger numbers.

Now lets see what happens if I decrease my strength to 50, and increase my dexterity as well:



Much more consistent.

You can build your player to play how you'd like. If you'd like to be a super hard hitting dude and rely on huge crits, you can min/max your stats and gear to do everything to maximize your highest possible hit.

If you'd rather be more consistent, but lose out on those harder hits, you can do a mix between.
If you want it all, you can attempt to find armor sets or realms specific traits that increase the strength/dexterity of your player while equipped!


Another thing I improved upon dramatically is the 3rd person mode's accuracy. It is now PERFECTLY accurate and your shots will meet where you're aiming pretty much every time.

The first iteration of the system suffered from inaccuracy due to differences in perspective between where you're looking in 3rd person, and where your player is actually looking/what they can actually see.



As you see here (yellow = player trace, green = 3rd person view trace), it was easy to get completely misaligned due to perspective differences. This caused me a lot of frustration. The original method just did a trace from the 3rd person view, and made the player face towards the position that trace hit. It worked sometimes, but other times you'd hit a tree when you were trying to aim behind it.

So then I tried moving the 3rd person camera over a bit to more align with the player:


This worked rather well, only a few very small issues with it not aligning, however the player took up way too much of the screen here, so that was also no good.

Then I started thinking, source engine fires bullets from players eyes then covers it up by using effects to shoot a particle from your weapon, to the location where your hit-scan bullet hit. I thought I'd try the same thing and finally I arrived to this solution:


As you see here, my shots are always going to where my crosshair is pointing.


The way I achieved this is basically: fake it 'till you make it. It actually adjusts your players shoot position to shoot from the 3rd person crosshair, rather than your player models Eye position, then it just fires a tracer from your weapon model to the location the bullet shot from your 3d perspective hit. It works like a charm, and you never feel like you're hitting a tree or something else when you're not supposed to.




I'll finish off this devblog with a few Frequently asked questions:

  1. Does Realms have its own currency or Inventory system?
    Realms does have its own currency. Your current inventory and coins will be useful there too, but realms will have a variety of exclusive items that can only be used on the game mode (such as Armor sets)
  2. How many players will Realms support?
    I'm looking at 32 players per server, with multiple servers. I may be looking into porting my 'realm' system from IoD (instancing) and applying 'channels' to realms so the map isn't too over populated.
  3. Is there anything else to do besides kill stuff?
    Currently, it's all about killing enemies, leveling up your player, and hunting rare realms unique loot (such as sick armor sets).
  4. Can I use any playermodel on realms?
    No. Realms has its own specific playermodel, thus coinshop accessories are also disabled on the game mode (armor sets would look super weird with tons of accessories every where).
  5. Will there be any bosses?
    Yes! There will be 'world bosses' that have a chance to spawn each time you kill an enemy. These wont have crazy mechanics, and will mostly pretty simple due to the fact they can pop up almost anywhere, and wont have a specific arena designed for them though, but they will have unique loot only they can drop, so they are worth killing. I also Currently have plans for one world dungeon, which I don't want to disclose too much about, but I'd love for there to be more. They could even be seperate-server type events like IoD, but with more people.
  6. When is the beta, and is it closed or open?
    I don't have a date yet, I have projects on hold for this, it all depends on if I run into anymore roadblocks or demotivate. But you guys help keep me motivated with how much you are looking forward to this. However, it's also quite nerve racking because there's a lot of hype that has been built up for this, and I don't want to disappoint. I have a feeling a lot of you are thinking this is some huge open world MMORPG type gamemode, but it's not. That is simply not practical to do in GMOD, way too many limitations, so lets try and keep our expectations modest!

    Oh also, it will be a closed beta for the start of it, just so I can make sure everything functions as intended, and get good feedback before unleashing it to the full community. You only get one first impression, and a lot of times that means a lot when it comes to games. I am hoping to use feedback gathered from a closed beta to much improve upon my ideas, and hear what you guys think of everything in general.
  7. Will there be quests or anything?
    The first thing I will be implementing in terms of 'quests' or 'tasks' is akin to runescapes "Slayer". You will talk to an NPC on the lobby (or maybe within realms), and they will assign you a random amount of a certain monster to kill. Completing it could grant you some points to spend on something from them (TBD) and some bonus XP possibly.


That's all for now guys, I know it's not diving too much into specifics, but I figured some of you may be interested to know at least some things that are going on behind the scenes.

I have a few more things to finish revamping, then I'm going to focus on adding enemies and uniques. Depending on if I run into any snags, or try to implement the instancing feature, and as long as nothing else comes up, the beta will happen sometime after that.]]> <![CDATA[What new gamemode(s) would you like to see on FRG?]]> https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=6007 Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:13:40 +0000 https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=6007
Now before you go and comment DarkRP or something similar, keep this in mind, the gamemode should be able to have the inventory added to it without completely changing the flow of the gamemode, while also adding a decent amount of depth to it. An example of a gamemode where the inventory really wouldn't add any depth would be Prop Hunt. Yeah, people could get their loadouts if they aren't props, but that really doesn't change the game enough to really justify having it.

Now personally, I think a Jailbreak server would be our best bet. It could be easily modified to work with the inventory system, and I think overall it would be perceived well by you guys.

What do you guys think?
Also, I just want to make it clear that even if we get more gamemodes, development on TTT or anything else will not be slowed down or halted because of it.]]>
Now before you go and comment DarkRP or something similar, keep this in mind, the gamemode should be able to have the inventory added to it without completely changing the flow of the gamemode, while also adding a decent amount of depth to it. An example of a gamemode where the inventory really wouldn't add any depth would be Prop Hunt. Yeah, people could get their loadouts if they aren't props, but that really doesn't change the game enough to really justify having it.

Now personally, I think a Jailbreak server would be our best bet. It could be easily modified to work with the inventory system, and I think overall it would be perceived well by you guys.

What do you guys think?
Also, I just want to make it clear that even if we get more gamemodes, development on TTT or anything else will not be slowed down or halted because of it.]]> <![CDATA[Who's ready?]]> https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=5566 Sun, 21 May 2017 21:24:16 +0000 https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=5566 Image]]> Image]]> <![CDATA[Dev blog #2 (April 2017 - Realms only!)]]> https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=5400 Sat, 01 Apr 2017 06:21:42 +0000 https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=5400

So, Realms!
Or as my bad logo/name says:
Image

I'm sure you guys have heard of it by now, no? Well to summarize, it's this project I've been working on as a new big step for FRG, it's a world where you can jump in, kill some enemies, get some loot and have some fun. So far it's gained an overwhelming amount of support, which I'm very thankful for!

Now, let's talk specifics, I have a lot of the framework of realms pretty constructed. First off, let's talk about the Damage system realms currently is setup for:

Realms will have quite the interesting damage mechanics.
  • All weapons will have a maximum effective range, which will give each weapon it's place and role.
    This is in place to ensure different weapon types may be preferred over others, depending on the enemies you are fighting. I feel this should make things quite interesting.
  • Damage will NOT be a consistent number. Don't panic, this doesn't mean the damage stat on your weapon is useless. This simply means in Realms, more is at play. Instead of outputting a static damage number based on your weapon alone, you will output a range between a calculated min damage, and your weapons max damage. You WILL have a chance to hit 0's based on something disclosed later on in this post.

Moving on, Realms will have it's own Player Progression through what I'm calling "Combat Levels". Every Combat Level you gain you will gain "Player Level XP". Player Level is your current Level on TTT/Lobby/Survive, etc. Not only will you gain some Player Level XP, you will gain an attribute point.

So, when you slay an enemy in Realms, you gain Combat Experience, which in turn helps to level up your "Combat Level".

Once you have an Attribute Point ( AP ), you can then spend it on specific attributes for your player(will disclose attributes at a later date). These attributes will help you fully utilize your weapons, making it so you hit less zeros, have a more accurate damage range, longer fire range, etc. As well as give an entirely new progression aspect to give people something to work for. Not to mention it helps make it so veteran players with lots of really good items can't jump in and just destroy all the mobs with ease. You have to work for it no matter what weapons you start with!

So to summarize that, in order to utilize your weapons to the fullest, you must gain Combat Levels and spend AP on attributes to increase your effectiveness with your weapons on Realms. This is open to feedback/suggestions. if you don't really like this it can be changed. However, I love this aspect, it really keeps things interesting and opens up more options to balance enemies for me.

Now, lets talk enemies.

Realms will feature quite a few unique enemies of various difficulties. Each enemy will have a name and a "Combat Level" of their own, as well as a "Defense stat". This stat will be used in the damage calculations along side with your players attribute stats to determine the damage, or a possible 'miss'. The higher defense an enemy has, the more likely you will be to miss. Missing just means you hit a 0! This opens a very good way for me to make things interesting. (it also helps determine your proc chance on any applicable suffixes/traits)

All enemies will have this little health bar that displays their name, level, and HP. Their name/level color correlates to your Combat Level, meaning if their level/name is green, they are lower level than you. If they are orange/red, they are higher level, and thus tougher to kill. The health bar will only show up when they are damage by you or you look at them.
(damage numbers disabled for this one Wink )
Image
Image

Enemies will have an "Aggro range", or so I'm calling it; This means if the enemy wanders too far outside of this radius for too long, they will "Reset", which will cause them to stop attacking you, run back to their spawn area and regenerate HP. This stops players from kiting enemies around some of the zones, or bringing tougher enemies to 'newbier' zones.

Enemies will also have a rare, 'named'(or boss) version of them. These are tougher than the normal variant, but offer more XP/Loot/possibly unique loot.

On to the map!

The current Realms map is a good Starting point. It's not quite what I want the FULL map to be, but it will work great for the beta and for 'starter' areas. I won't reveal too much about the map, but I will state there are four zones connected by tunnels and I'd say each zone is approximately 6,000x6,000 units. The map is pretty well optimized and all 'trees' have a fairly small fade-out distance. It also has a relatively low render distance and a fog to help cover that up.

Image


Welp, that's really all I wanted to share with you guys for now. There's still quite a bit more left unsaid, but I don't want to ruin all of the surprises!

I will however answer a few commonly asked questions:
  1. Will there be Items unique to Realms?
    Yes.. There will be DROPS that you can only obtain on realms, and SOME items you can only USE on realms, however, all items will remain in your GLOBAL inventory across all servers. You just may not be able to actually use some on some servers.
  2. Will realms be a fresh start?(blank Inventories)
    No it won't be. The reasoning is I don't want to 'split' the community anymore than this may already do. I want to give players alternative ways to progress through FRG without being forced to play TTT to do so. You certainly have the option to scrap your Inventory and start fresh though!
  3. Will there be PvP?
    Currently I don't have any framework laid out for PVP, but it's certainly a possibility in the future. I know Aresuft had some cool PVP ideas for it
  4. Will there be 'classes' on realms that players can pick?
    Well. Kind of? You can build your player to be more of a tank, or DPS. Along with that I plan to have special items(like staffs) that do things a class might do (like group healing/buffing/debuffing enemies, etc), but besides that there aren't really any laid out classes for a player to select. They kind of decide how they want to play themselves with no starting UI dictating their role
  5. Will there be any dungeon type stuff?
    Well, you will have to wait and see for this one Wink

If you guys have anymore questions, feel free to ask.]]>

So, Realms!
Or as my bad logo/name says:
Image

I'm sure you guys have heard of it by now, no? Well to summarize, it's this project I've been working on as a new big step for FRG, it's a world where you can jump in, kill some enemies, get some loot and have some fun. So far it's gained an overwhelming amount of support, which I'm very thankful for!

Now, let's talk specifics, I have a lot of the framework of realms pretty constructed. First off, let's talk about the Damage system realms currently is setup for:

Realms will have quite the interesting damage mechanics.
  • All weapons will have a maximum effective range, which will give each weapon it's place and role.
    This is in place to ensure different weapon types may be preferred over others, depending on the enemies you are fighting. I feel this should make things quite interesting.
  • Damage will NOT be a consistent number. Don't panic, this doesn't mean the damage stat on your weapon is useless. This simply means in Realms, more is at play. Instead of outputting a static damage number based on your weapon alone, you will output a range between a calculated min damage, and your weapons max damage. You WILL have a chance to hit 0's based on something disclosed later on in this post.

Moving on, Realms will have it's own Player Progression through what I'm calling "Combat Levels". Every Combat Level you gain you will gain "Player Level XP". Player Level is your current Level on TTT/Lobby/Survive, etc. Not only will you gain some Player Level XP, you will gain an attribute point.

So, when you slay an enemy in Realms, you gain Combat Experience, which in turn helps to level up your "Combat Level".

Once you have an Attribute Point ( AP ), you can then spend it on specific attributes for your player(will disclose attributes at a later date). These attributes will help you fully utilize your weapons, making it so you hit less zeros, have a more accurate damage range, longer fire range, etc. As well as give an entirely new progression aspect to give people something to work for. Not to mention it helps make it so veteran players with lots of really good items can't jump in and just destroy all the mobs with ease. You have to work for it no matter what weapons you start with!

So to summarize that, in order to utilize your weapons to the fullest, you must gain Combat Levels and spend AP on attributes to increase your effectiveness with your weapons on Realms. This is open to feedback/suggestions. if you don't really like this it can be changed. However, I love this aspect, it really keeps things interesting and opens up more options to balance enemies for me.

Now, lets talk enemies.

Realms will feature quite a few unique enemies of various difficulties. Each enemy will have a name and a "Combat Level" of their own, as well as a "Defense stat". This stat will be used in the damage calculations along side with your players attribute stats to determine the damage, or a possible 'miss'. The higher defense an enemy has, the more likely you will be to miss. Missing just means you hit a 0! This opens a very good way for me to make things interesting. (it also helps determine your proc chance on any applicable suffixes/traits)

All enemies will have this little health bar that displays their name, level, and HP. Their name/level color correlates to your Combat Level, meaning if their level/name is green, they are lower level than you. If they are orange/red, they are higher level, and thus tougher to kill. The health bar will only show up when they are damage by you or you look at them.
(damage numbers disabled for this one Wink )
Image
Image

Enemies will have an "Aggro range", or so I'm calling it; This means if the enemy wanders too far outside of this radius for too long, they will "Reset", which will cause them to stop attacking you, run back to their spawn area and regenerate HP. This stops players from kiting enemies around some of the zones, or bringing tougher enemies to 'newbier' zones.

Enemies will also have a rare, 'named'(or boss) version of them. These are tougher than the normal variant, but offer more XP/Loot/possibly unique loot.

On to the map!

The current Realms map is a good Starting point. It's not quite what I want the FULL map to be, but it will work great for the beta and for 'starter' areas. I won't reveal too much about the map, but I will state there are four zones connected by tunnels and I'd say each zone is approximately 6,000x6,000 units. The map is pretty well optimized and all 'trees' have a fairly small fade-out distance. It also has a relatively low render distance and a fog to help cover that up.

Image


Welp, that's really all I wanted to share with you guys for now. There's still quite a bit more left unsaid, but I don't want to ruin all of the surprises!

I will however answer a few commonly asked questions:
  1. Will there be Items unique to Realms?
    Yes.. There will be DROPS that you can only obtain on realms, and SOME items you can only USE on realms, however, all items will remain in your GLOBAL inventory across all servers. You just may not be able to actually use some on some servers.
  2. Will realms be a fresh start?(blank Inventories)
    No it won't be. The reasoning is I don't want to 'split' the community anymore than this may already do. I want to give players alternative ways to progress through FRG without being forced to play TTT to do so. You certainly have the option to scrap your Inventory and start fresh though!
  3. Will there be PvP?
    Currently I don't have any framework laid out for PVP, but it's certainly a possibility in the future. I know Aresuft had some cool PVP ideas for it
  4. Will there be 'classes' on realms that players can pick?
    Well. Kind of? You can build your player to be more of a tank, or DPS. Along with that I plan to have special items(like staffs) that do things a class might do (like group healing/buffing/debuffing enemies, etc), but besides that there aren't really any laid out classes for a player to select. They kind of decide how they want to play themselves with no starting UI dictating their role
  5. Will there be any dungeon type stuff?
    Well, you will have to wait and see for this one Wink

If you guys have anymore questions, feel free to ask.]]> <![CDATA[Dev blog #1 (March 2017)]]> https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=5306 Thu, 02 Mar 2017 14:53:58 +0000 https://forerunnergaming.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=5306
So in the next update I plan on helping this with a few things:
  • Enhanceable Starter weapons. New Starter weapons will be added and become enhanceable, all current ones will stay the same, however they will also automatically have a random suffix on them.
    They will be able to be enhanced to be fairly good, but players will not be able to use them after a certain level. I'm thinking around level 10 or so. This should allow them to be able to compete with most weapons while building up coins and what not so that they could afford their own by the time they can't use their starter anymore.
  • Giving one of each weapon type to the player, this not only allows them to play with what weapon they want, but also gives them a goal to level multiple to the max if possible.
  • Better post-round drops. I will be making ALL post-round drops more common, and happen a lot more frequently. You should be seeing rares and what not fairly often post-round. I don't see this hurting anything as most of these are key'd, but this would also help new players get some decent loot.
  • Free untradeable Rune of Power at level 2.


Followed by those changes I am introducing some fairly big gameplay changes to help balance our TTT aspect.

Basically guns with stats don't entirely fit into TTT well, to help counter that I am making powerful weapons HARDER to use.

Starting with this next update there will be:
  • Jumping inaccuracy. Currently this can be set per weapon, but it defaults at -50% accuracy.
  • Inaccuracy that builds up the more you shoot in a row (for fully automatic weapons). This helps discourage full on spraying.
  • More severe and noticeable recoil based on the damage/firerate stats of the weapon.
Image

I'm hoping this will help make things more fun and enjoyable, however, last time I tested things like these out people didn't like them so much. So I guess we will see!

On top of those balancing changes I have made some changes to crates so you should almost never, if ever, land next to a godlike. Sometimes you may see some in there, but it should rarely ever land next to it. I've also re-organized a lot of the crates and made making changes to them easier from here on out.

While messing around with some effects, I managed to create a low cost fake Depth-of-field for weapons. I don't know if you guys would like to see this, but it couldn't hurt to have it as a setting:
Image

That's a rather low quality gif, for a higher quality version check :


Pretty interesting effect, it really helps you focus on what you're aiming at.


I'll go ahead and just list some more things coming in the next update (these are finished or mostly finished):
  • Tobais' Crosshair Customization system.
  • Enhanceable Crate II
  • Headshot kills with weapons that have high headshot multipliers will explode heads.
  • Damage indicators now have a bigger brighter number for headshots.
  • Tobias made smoke grenades better. You can no longer see names through them.
    (no beaver damagelogs yet ;,( )


Now that you have a little taste of what is to come for the TTT server. I have a big project to announce:

Image
(working Title/logo)

This is a brand new RPG-like gamemode for GMOD I'm developing.

In the Realm, you can team up with friends, create a party, or just do your own thing. You traverse through the world slaying monsters and other various mobs for XP and Loot. Each mob containing possible unique drops.

As well as having mobs, each mob death will have a chance to spawn a World Boss variant for that zone.

These bosses will be tough and you will likely not be able to solo it! If all players die in the radius of it or players leave the aggro range for too long, its HP will reset!

They will award good XP and good loot, with the chance for a piece of a 'set'. Each boss having their own sets of items you can hunt down.

As you see though, there's no REAL objective other than to kill stuff and hang out with friends/hunt loot, so ontop of this I plan to have an NPC on the lobby that can give you 'quests' for the Realm. That is, kill x amount of y(similar to runescape's Slayer skill), in exchange for something I haven't quite figured out yet. Not sure if I want to do straight rewards, or some kind of XP, or fragments.

Oh yeah, and each Realm server will support possible up to 40 players, and have no level requirement to join. It's a new way to progress through FRG.

So that's what I have in the works currently! I have no ETA on any of these as I still have a lot I need to do, but I'll let you guys know when I have a general idea!

With these dev blogs, I've decided to be more transparent with the community on what I'm working on, I'm not sure if you guys like this approach but I'm willing to try it out for awhile at least. Let me know what you think!]]>
So in the next update I plan on helping this with a few things:
  • Enhanceable Starter weapons. New Starter weapons will be added and become enhanceable, all current ones will stay the same, however they will also automatically have a random suffix on them.
    They will be able to be enhanced to be fairly good, but players will not be able to use them after a certain level. I'm thinking around level 10 or so. This should allow them to be able to compete with most weapons while building up coins and what not so that they could afford their own by the time they can't use their starter anymore.
  • Giving one of each weapon type to the player, this not only allows them to play with what weapon they want, but also gives them a goal to level multiple to the max if possible.
  • Better post-round drops. I will be making ALL post-round drops more common, and happen a lot more frequently. You should be seeing rares and what not fairly often post-round. I don't see this hurting anything as most of these are key'd, but this would also help new players get some decent loot.
  • Free untradeable Rune of Power at level 2.


Followed by those changes I am introducing some fairly big gameplay changes to help balance our TTT aspect.

Basically guns with stats don't entirely fit into TTT well, to help counter that I am making powerful weapons HARDER to use.

Starting with this next update there will be:
  • Jumping inaccuracy. Currently this can be set per weapon, but it defaults at -50% accuracy.
  • Inaccuracy that builds up the more you shoot in a row (for fully automatic weapons). This helps discourage full on spraying.
  • More severe and noticeable recoil based on the damage/firerate stats of the weapon.
Image

I'm hoping this will help make things more fun and enjoyable, however, last time I tested things like these out people didn't like them so much. So I guess we will see!

On top of those balancing changes I have made some changes to crates so you should almost never, if ever, land next to a godlike. Sometimes you may see some in there, but it should rarely ever land next to it. I've also re-organized a lot of the crates and made making changes to them easier from here on out.

While messing around with some effects, I managed to create a low cost fake Depth-of-field for weapons. I don't know if you guys would like to see this, but it couldn't hurt to have it as a setting:
Image

That's a rather low quality gif, for a higher quality version check :


Pretty interesting effect, it really helps you focus on what you're aiming at.


I'll go ahead and just list some more things coming in the next update (these are finished or mostly finished):
  • Tobais' Crosshair Customization system.
  • Enhanceable Crate II
  • Headshot kills with weapons that have high headshot multipliers will explode heads.
  • Damage indicators now have a bigger brighter number for headshots.
  • Tobias made smoke grenades better. You can no longer see names through them.
    (no beaver damagelogs yet ;,( )


Now that you have a little taste of what is to come for the TTT server. I have a big project to announce:

Image
(working Title/logo)

This is a brand new RPG-like gamemode for GMOD I'm developing.

In the Realm, you can team up with friends, create a party, or just do your own thing. You traverse through the world slaying monsters and other various mobs for XP and Loot. Each mob containing possible unique drops.

As well as having mobs, each mob death will have a chance to spawn a World Boss variant for that zone.

These bosses will be tough and you will likely not be able to solo it! If all players die in the radius of it or players leave the aggro range for too long, its HP will reset!

They will award good XP and good loot, with the chance for a piece of a 'set'. Each boss having their own sets of items you can hunt down.

As you see though, there's no REAL objective other than to kill stuff and hang out with friends/hunt loot, so ontop of this I plan to have an NPC on the lobby that can give you 'quests' for the Realm. That is, kill x amount of y(similar to runescape's Slayer skill), in exchange for something I haven't quite figured out yet. Not sure if I want to do straight rewards, or some kind of XP, or fragments.

Oh yeah, and each Realm server will support possible up to 40 players, and have no level requirement to join. It's a new way to progress through FRG.

So that's what I have in the works currently! I have no ETA on any of these as I still have a lot I need to do, but I'll let you guys know when I have a general idea!

With these dev blogs, I've decided to be more transparent with the community on what I'm working on, I'm not sure if you guys like this approach but I'm willing to try it out for awhile at least. Let me know what you think!]]>