"Avatar Health VS Enemies Count - I'll think about adding an option to increase the AI count but it would be off by default. Would be especially bad in open environments. As for the player's health, it is already scaling in accordance to level and has been tweaked to feel challenging. I'm afraid increasing it will make the game easier with more small encounters."
Oh, didn't know about the scaling! But still, I think Complex Control as at its best when it's at its most chaotic. If you increase the player's health, then yes, small encounters won't be as challenging. But if you increase the number of enemies, there won't BE small encounters. I suggest you add it as an optional difficulty setting to see what you think. As the mod currently stands, I find it difficult to achieve high streaks because there just aren't enough enemies to kill in quick succession. Most of the time, I'll find one or two, kill them, then spend several seconds finding more. I'll give you an example: have you ever played JUST CAUSE 3? The game allows the player to use tethers and explosives to destroy things and kill enemies in inventive ways. But doing so leaves you very vulnerable, so you're encouraged NOT to use tethers because it's safer and more efficient to just shoot the enemies. In order to REALLY have fun with the tether system, I had to use godmode via trainers. The gameplay balance doesn't play to JUST CAUSE 3's strengths. I feel the same way about this mod: the player's health is balanced for small encounters, not chaotic shootouts, and so it never gets as crazy and intense as it could be.
"Dumb AI - I haven't seen many cases of them not attacking, the dodge roll is all in my script. Everything else is the systemic R* AI."
I think the moment that made me notice it was when I accidentally blinked into a group of three enemies, and they all took so long to attack me that I was able to kill all three before any of them fired a single shot (and they were not clustered together, they were a good 40 degrees apart from each other). Sometimes enemies won't press their advantage.
"SUPERJUMP - That was in the mod before I shipped before I added Blink Teleport, I removed it because it made you a flying punching bag and it was mostly useless. Blink was a much better option."
I'll defend this one on the following basis: the player often lacks a good angle to aim blink. On more than one occasion, I needed to get to the minuscule final zone but I was too far to make it on foot. I tried blinking to it, but since it was at a bad angle, I missed it. Superjump would allow the player to get a better angle for blink. The two abilities can add up to better mobility in general, and also jumping saves you from spending an energy bar. If all you want is to get to the top of a building to survey the battlefield, you can just jump instead of blinking. And while yes, superjump certainly makes you an easy target, that's only the case if you use it at the wrong time. It's an ability to be used to get TO the enemies, not away from them. And it can actually be used to get away from them if you use a JUMP + BLINK combo. Jump to get a better angle for blink and then blink away.
"FLASH - The locomotion system can handle so much. I think other modders found work-arounds. When I tried myself back then, my character would run like they are skating on ice and you'd lose all control of your character. It didn't feel fun at all."
It's true, if done via trainers, superspeed kills the player's ability to steer while they sprint and can lead to lots of unintended issues. It might take too much coding to get it working properly, so nevermind that.
"BACKFIRE - 3 Seconds is a very long time. Tactikal does the same thing except it will disarm opponents thus not killing them. The ability also lasts 1 second."
3 seconds IS a long time, come to think of it. I'll agree with 1, but I still defend Backfire because of the following scenario: say you notice a group of enemies clustered together. In normal circumstances, blinking into them would be suicide. But a player with Backfire can use it in their favor. Blink into them, and once they've started attacking you, activate the ability. Anybody who catches on fire counts as a kill and can be ignored, letting you focus on enemies who weren't affected. For balancing reasons, I'd suggest a longer cooldown than Tactical, since the latter requires more work (you have to activate the ability THEN kill the opponents it affected. BACKFIRE just kills them right away, hence longer cooldown).
"HIJACKER - After you take control of the Helicopter, what do you do with it? There's no mounted guns."
There's several scenarios where it could be useful: 1 - You're low on health. Teleporting to a helicopter gives you instant protection, much like your vehicle, at the same time as it kills all the opponents inside. 2 - You're too far from the next zone and three blinks won't be enough to get you there. Teleport to a helicopter and you can make it. 3 - You're too far from the majority of enemies. Teleport to a helicopter and you can fly over to them, perhaps aim the helicopter at them before you bail out. In any case, you have ten seconds to do any of that. Maybe five, if ten is too much. So even if the helicopter has no guns, it's still useful to briefly hijack it.
"SURPRISE - So a mix of SWAPCORE and COMMANDO? I feel like it would make SWAPCORE less effective. Suggestion?"
Sorry, I didn't explain it well. SURPRISE would teleport you to within 15 feet of the nearest enemy. It's not an aimed ability. The mod would detect whichever enemy's nearest and just teleport the player to their vicinity. It's an useful ability to keep the player near the action, but it's also risky: you don't know how many enemies will be near the one you teleport.
"HAWK - If you do it while your health is low, there's a good change the AIs on the ground will shoot you on your way down."
You can just blink away. HAWK would get you instantly out of their sight, and as you come down, you can choose somewhere to blink to. You don't need to land on the same place you just left. It's a quick way to get out of danger while also killing an enemy of your choice.
"FRIENDMAKER - But they can still die? I'll think about it. Would need a very long cooldown, Keep in mind Union spawns an invincible ally every 3X streak and only 3 or 4 times."
I'd suggest that yes, they can still die, and once they die, it counts as your kill. This would be a good ability to use against elites with RPGs. But really, it would work in various situations, particularly against enemies that drive vehicles. Turn the passenger into an ally and they just kick the driver out of the car. Turn the driver into an ally and they start running over other enemies. Etc. Etc. Mind you, I don't know which of those behaviours would have to be coded and which would happen automatically. Might be way more trouble than it's worth.
"I digged in and searched the forums for Auto Sprint / Sprint Toggle / Always Sprint.. Unfortunately there's no easy way in script. I recommend you get software to simulate a key press. As annoying as it is. There are no natives that will make it a toggle or always on, I think they're just "getters" for knowing if the player actually is sprinting. On controller it's worse because you have to TAP A constantly."
Well, that's a shame, but to be honest I kind of expected it. Rockstar is bizarrely committed to this convoluted movement system. They scrapped it for MAX PAYNE 3, absolutely NO-ONE complained, the game was praised for its responsive controls, and on RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 Rockstar brought back the shitty controls, shittier than ever. Go figure.
"Also not forgetting your feedback on the subtle zone notifications. I'll improve it in the next update.
Thanks for the feedback!"
My pleasure! I hope you find some of those suggestions helpful in some way. And thank YOU for your excellent mod.
Hey! I've commented before with detailed feedback but never addressed your follow-up comment, my apologies for that. I've recently gone back to playing GTA 5 and I installed your mod. It's still awesome and evolving beautifully (I see you've implemented the zero-gravity power I suggested, and it's wonderful). I've a few more ideas, if you're interested. No idea how feasible any of them are, but hey, no harm in suggesting:
- The blink ability is a bit finicky when it comes to climbing buildings. You need to be aiming really close to the edge or you'll just blink into the wall. I suggest making the game's interpretation of that command more forgiving to make traversal easier.
- Speaking of which, aim-based abilities should be more forgiving in general. If you're aiming vaguely towards an enemy, it should be enough for the ability to target that enemy (within reason, of course, otherwise you may always attack the nearest enemy rather than those further away).
- The abilities that have you spawn behind an enemy with a melee weapon should automatically attack that enemy. GTA 5's controls are notoriously clunky and it can be quite easy to attack the air rather than the enemy.
- "Prone" is a bit of an useless ability that doesn't really fit the fast-paced spirit of the mod.
- Speaking of which, the vanilla game's baffling insistence in having the player keep pressing the run button to move quickly also makes gameplay clunky for this mod. If you can make characters run by default, I'd recommend you do so. Having to keep X or SHIFT pressed gets in the way and no sane person would want to walk while playing this mod.
- Increase the player's health so that you can increase the number of enemies. The mod has a bit too much downtime. You can go a long time without engaging anybody depending on how quickly you eliminate the competition or how far away from you they end up, and not only does that kill the pacing, it also prevents you from achieving high kill streaks. If there's more enemies, that would be improved, but it would also result in the player dying very quickly. Hence increased health.
- The sound effect that indicates the countdown to a new zone is very discreet and easy to miss. It resulted in quite a few frustrating deaths. I recommend that you have the screen flash very briefly when the countdown starts (like you do when the player leaves the zone) so that we know it's time to move.
- Enemy AI can be a bit too stupid, and I don't know if that's from vanilla or your mod. They'll suddenly decide not to attack you or just roll for no adequate reason. This may be an attempt to prevent killing the player too quickly, so once again I think increased health would help.
- And now, a few suggestions of abilities:
SUPERJUMP (passive) - The avatar can jump very, very high (enough to clear small buildings).
FLASH (active) - Allows the avatar to run very very fast for 5 seconds, useful for clearing large distances without always relying on your car.
BACKFIRE (active) - For 3 seconds, any enemy who attacks you catches on fire and dies. Very useful if you happen to end up in the middle of a group of enemies. A red sphere could appear around the player to indicate the ability is activated (as is the case with invincibility's blue sphere).
HIJACKER (active) - Take control of any helicopter you aim at, throwing out all the passengers. After ten seconds with you in control, the helicopter tosses you out and just spirals towards the ground.
SURPRISE (active) - Teleports you to the nearest enemy. Very useful if you happen to be too far from the action.
HAWK (active) - Teleports you and the enemy you're aiming at to 350 feet directly above your location. You both fall, but only they die. This is useful not only to kill one enemy but also in case your health is low and you need to get away from the action. Just aim at an enemy and away you go, without leaving the zone.
FRIENDMAKER (active) - Turns enemy you're aiming at into a permanent ally.
That's about it. Hope you find some of that useful. Great, great work with this mod.
One of the best mods I've ever played. I've got some criticisms, but first, some praise:
- Interface is so clean and well-designed that it doesn't even feel like a mod. Hell, it doesn't even feel like something Rockstar would design. It's better. Health indicator, for a start, is much clearer and more efficient than the one in vanilla GTA 5.
- Database clearly and succintly explains gameplay mechanics. Which are great, by the way.
- Teleporting in and out of your car makes for wonderfully fast-paced gameplay.
- Parachuting enemies will sometimes misjudge their landings and faceplant on the asphalt, or smack straight into a building, and it's hilarious.
- The maps where matches happen were very well-chosen and make for excellent battlefields.
- Regenerating health allows room for mistakes and glorious comebacks for careful players.
- Abilities are fun, especially the drone.
- Avatars have quite a bit of personality to their design.
- Integration with vanilla GTA 5 is seamless and devoid of any conflicts.
- So far, for me, it's completely bug-free.
- It's just really goddamn fun and comes at no cost to vanilla GTA 5.
Now, some criticisms.
- Merit system is grindy and unrewarding, especially for a single-player game. It would be more fun if you could simply keep the avatar when you win a match.
- There should be an endless mode without penalties to play around in and practice with your avatars. You don't really get a chance to practice with them and it can be difficult to make the most of an avatar's powers on the first go as you don't remember clearly what they are. So you're more likely to die on that first go and never see your avatar again. Plus, game mechanics are too fun for there NOT to be an endless mode.
- Motorcyclists can't be knocked off their bikes by hitting them with your car. It would be much more fun if they could be knocked off.
- I find the enemies a bit too accurate, which, granted, is a problem with vanilla GTA 5. I'd recommend having their accuracy worsen considerably more with distance.
- Enemies are surprisingly resistant to being run over by your car. They go flying, but they often don't die after impacts that should really have killed them. Their resistance could be nerfed a bit.
- There could be more abilities, sillier and more inventive. For instance, spawning a truck that runs over the enemy you're aiming at, setting people on fire, creating a zero gravity field around them that causes them to helplessly drift away from the ground. Of course, no idea how complicated those would be to implement, but it's a testament to how well-designed this mod is that it even seems feasible.
To summarize, fantastic mod. Congratulations to @THEAETIK for a truly professional and talented work of game design.
I've tested the flexibility of this mod with a few different types of missions. There's a shitload of great stuff that's possible, but I did come upon a few things that could be added with relative ease ("relative" because I'm fully aware of how hard programming and debugging can be):
01 - Adding a "neutral" category of actor, who upon being attacked can either fight back or flee (there could be an option for this).
02 - Adding an .ini file that allows the player to customize the prop list. For instance, I don't make racing missions, so the many racing props are stuff I don't use. If the list of available props was customizable through an .ini file, I could delete those props and add others that aren't in the mod by default. Since my missions mostly involve shootouts, I'd favor props that provide cover.
03 - The "Kill Actor" objective offers much fewer parameters for the spawned actor than the actor menu does. I'd suggest offering as many options, but there's a potentially better solution: have the "Kill Actor" objective refer to a GROUP of actors, just like the "Get in Vehicles" objective doesn't spawn a vehicle and instead tells you to refer to a group of vehicles separately spawned in the vehicle menu. It's more flexible that way.
04 - Task sequences work remarkably well. There's a few more that would improve the feature even further: first, "Play Scenario" for a certain duration. Second, a simple "Attack Player" (with the option to override "block non temporary events", in case the mission designer wants to ensure that the actors will keep attacking player no matter what distractions come their way). Third, "Shoot At", which will make the actor fire at wherever the waypoint is. Fourth, "AttackActor", which will lead to the selected actor being attacked by those who have that task sequence. And finally, "Die", with a parameter for bodies to not disappear. Useful for spreading pre-existing corpses around a level. Okay, just one more thing: on "Follow Nav Mesh to Coord", adding a parameter for walking mode, so that we could have actors walking drunk or injured.
05 - Spawning vehicles with actors already inside. On the vehicle parameters, you could pick a group number and the actors belonging to that group number would spawn along with the vehicle. If the number of actors exceeds the number of seats, a warning could inform the user of that. The actors in that group would also have to be designated correctly: if there's more than one driver, it doesn't work, and if there's only passengers, it doesn't work either. The reason for adding this feature is that actors get incredibly confused when you spawn them outside of cars and tell them to go in, plus it's needlessly time-consuming to do it that way.
06 - Option to have bigger checkpoint markers. Currently, checkpoints are small and finicky, which is bad for fast-paced missions. Their size could, perhaps, be customizable just like the "Wander Range" bubble is?
07 - The cutscene feature could use an option to just cut to the camera position. Right now, the camera slowly moves towards the cutscene point. There's other obvious improvements the feature could have, but I take it you're well aware of them and that they aren't a priority currently, so I'll just leave this one suggestion since it seems easy to add. Also: an option to delete ALL cutscene points, since I've had issues with them becoming impossible to delete.
08 - "Destroy Prop" objective. That would allow for missions such as entering a warehouse and destroying the drug stashes.
09 - "Startpoint Spawn Marker" option: you could pick an area near the startpoint for the player to be teleported to when you choose to load the mission. By default that marker wouldn't exist, and would only be added if the mission designer wanted it.
10 - Submenus. Right now, it takes a lot of scrolling to, for instance, set actor parameters. There's currently five categories of NPC you can pick from when choosing the model for the actor, and all of them could be under a "choose model" submenu (which could include the "variation" parameter and all the customizable appearance options such as "FACE", "HEAD COLOR", etc.). Other submenus could be "Combat", "Driving", "Tasks" and, when in doubt, "Miscellaneous".
I hope some of this is in any way useful to you. Cheers. :)
@aimless I see. Thanks for the detailed explanation. :) The relationship group problem affects only the gangs? An NPC set to "enemy" would not suffer from the same bug?
I'll leave this as a suggestion for a future update, if it interests you. A parameter under the "Enemy" category, setting up the NPC for stealth behaviour, being able to lose you and search for you. Just the relatively simple script you outlined would revolutionize mission design in GTA V. Flanking enemies would actually become possible, for starters. Thanks again for your reply! :)
@aimless You're welcome. :) The amount of work that has gone and continues to go into this mod is incredible. One question, since you seem very knowledgeable of the code at this point: how flexible is the AI for "enemy" when it comes to stealth mechanics, even rudimentary ones? In vanilla GTA 5, enemies know your XYZ at all times, whether or not they have line of sight (except cops, who CAN lose you after a while). Would it be possible for a modder to have enemies keep attacking your last-seen XYZ until they realize you're no longer there (vanilla AI always tries to flank you, so they'd quickly notice it) and then go into a search mode (pretty much the "wander" command within a certain sphere, perhaps with enemies running instead of walking) until they find you?
Full-blown stealth mechanics get way more complicated than that, of course, I'm just wondering if a modder could theoretically do it even at a rudimentary level.
@sjaak327 Hey, Sjaak, do you think that for the next update you could allow animations to be chosen by index number, both for the player and for peds they spawn? The Scene Director mod has a separate text file containing an animation index that your trainer could use for this.
Thank you, as ever, for your continued support of this fantastic trainer.
Hey, Josh, on the current version the peds stay completely limp at all times, with no Euphoria behavior neither when grabbed nor when thrown. Can this be added? This is an incredible mod that is so close to being perfect.
@GTATerminal My suggestion is: the peds keep their hands up by default after you take them as hostages. In order for them to lower your hands, you have to tell them to do so, in which case they just go into their normal idle, as if not to call any attention from passersby. They already act normally if you tell them to follow you, so having their hands restrained behind their backs doesn't fit the animset. Go with the normal idle. :)
Another thing: the current animation for "down on ground" looks like the ped is injured, and the transition from the previous animation doesn't blend well. I get that finding the best animations is a nightmare, so here's a few suggestions that may transition fairly well into one another: there are three animations -- an intro, an idle and an outro -- that function perfectly as a "down on ground" order; the ped goes straight down on their stomachs:
In the current system, where the player must tell the ped to stand up before transitioning them to "down on knees" or "down on ground", those two anim sets would work better than the current ones, I find. And they may even blend well enough into one another, with a bit of experimentation, allowing for direct transition from "down on knees" to "down on ground".
If, however, you want the ped to lay down on their backs instead of stomach, I haven't found a smooth transition for that yet. I did, however, find a better animation than the one currently used: missprologueig_1(at)idle_loop_femalehostage
Finally: could you make the menu also controllable with numpad. 8, 4, 6 and 2 for directions, 5 for enter, 0 for backing out? It's more confortable, as the numpad is closer to the mouse. :)
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@THEAETIK
"Avatar Health VS Enemies Count - I'll think about adding an option to increase the AI count but it would be off by default. Would be especially bad in open environments. As for the player's health, it is already scaling in accordance to level and has been tweaked to feel challenging. I'm afraid increasing it will make the game easier with more small encounters."
Oh, didn't know about the scaling! But still, I think Complex Control as at its best when it's at its most chaotic. If you increase the player's health, then yes, small encounters won't be as challenging. But if you increase the number of enemies, there won't BE small encounters. I suggest you add it as an optional difficulty setting to see what you think. As the mod currently stands, I find it difficult to achieve high streaks because there just aren't enough enemies to kill in quick succession. Most of the time, I'll find one or two, kill them, then spend several seconds finding more. I'll give you an example: have you ever played JUST CAUSE 3? The game allows the player to use tethers and explosives to destroy things and kill enemies in inventive ways. But doing so leaves you very vulnerable, so you're encouraged NOT to use tethers because it's safer and more efficient to just shoot the enemies. In order to REALLY have fun with the tether system, I had to use godmode via trainers. The gameplay balance doesn't play to JUST CAUSE 3's strengths. I feel the same way about this mod: the player's health is balanced for small encounters, not chaotic shootouts, and so it never gets as crazy and intense as it could be.
"Dumb AI - I haven't seen many cases of them not attacking, the dodge roll is all in my script. Everything else is the systemic R* AI."
I think the moment that made me notice it was when I accidentally blinked into a group of three enemies, and they all took so long to attack me that I was able to kill all three before any of them fired a single shot (and they were not clustered together, they were a good 40 degrees apart from each other). Sometimes enemies won't press their advantage.
"SUPERJUMP - That was in the mod before I shipped before I added Blink Teleport, I removed it because it made you a flying punching bag and it was mostly useless. Blink was a much better option."
I'll defend this one on the following basis: the player often lacks a good angle to aim blink. On more than one occasion, I needed to get to the minuscule final zone but I was too far to make it on foot. I tried blinking to it, but since it was at a bad angle, I missed it. Superjump would allow the player to get a better angle for blink. The two abilities can add up to better mobility in general, and also jumping saves you from spending an energy bar. If all you want is to get to the top of a building to survey the battlefield, you can just jump instead of blinking. And while yes, superjump certainly makes you an easy target, that's only the case if you use it at the wrong time. It's an ability to be used to get TO the enemies, not away from them. And it can actually be used to get away from them if you use a JUMP + BLINK combo. Jump to get a better angle for blink and then blink away.
"FLASH - The locomotion system can handle so much. I think other modders found work-arounds. When I tried myself back then, my character would run like they are skating on ice and you'd lose all control of your character. It didn't feel fun at all."
It's true, if done via trainers, superspeed kills the player's ability to steer while they sprint and can lead to lots of unintended issues. It might take too much coding to get it working properly, so nevermind that.
"BACKFIRE - 3 Seconds is a very long time. Tactikal does the same thing except it will disarm opponents thus not killing them. The ability also lasts 1 second."
3 seconds IS a long time, come to think of it. I'll agree with 1, but I still defend Backfire because of the following scenario: say you notice a group of enemies clustered together. In normal circumstances, blinking into them would be suicide. But a player with Backfire can use it in their favor. Blink into them, and once they've started attacking you, activate the ability. Anybody who catches on fire counts as a kill and can be ignored, letting you focus on enemies who weren't affected. For balancing reasons, I'd suggest a longer cooldown than Tactical, since the latter requires more work (you have to activate the ability THEN kill the opponents it affected. BACKFIRE just kills them right away, hence longer cooldown).
"HIJACKER - After you take control of the Helicopter, what do you do with it? There's no mounted guns."
There's several scenarios where it could be useful: 1 - You're low on health. Teleporting to a helicopter gives you instant protection, much like your vehicle, at the same time as it kills all the opponents inside. 2 - You're too far from the next zone and three blinks won't be enough to get you there. Teleport to a helicopter and you can make it. 3 - You're too far from the majority of enemies. Teleport to a helicopter and you can fly over to them, perhaps aim the helicopter at them before you bail out. In any case, you have ten seconds to do any of that. Maybe five, if ten is too much. So even if the helicopter has no guns, it's still useful to briefly hijack it.
"SURPRISE - So a mix of SWAPCORE and COMMANDO? I feel like it would make SWAPCORE less effective. Suggestion?"
Sorry, I didn't explain it well. SURPRISE would teleport you to within 15 feet of the nearest enemy. It's not an aimed ability. The mod would detect whichever enemy's nearest and just teleport the player to their vicinity. It's an useful ability to keep the player near the action, but it's also risky: you don't know how many enemies will be near the one you teleport.
"HAWK - If you do it while your health is low, there's a good change the AIs on the ground will shoot you on your way down."
You can just blink away. HAWK would get you instantly out of their sight, and as you come down, you can choose somewhere to blink to. You don't need to land on the same place you just left. It's a quick way to get out of danger while also killing an enemy of your choice.
"FRIENDMAKER - But they can still die? I'll think about it. Would need a very long cooldown, Keep in mind Union spawns an invincible ally every 3X streak and only 3 or 4 times."
I'd suggest that yes, they can still die, and once they die, it counts as your kill. This would be a good ability to use against elites with RPGs. But really, it would work in various situations, particularly against enemies that drive vehicles. Turn the passenger into an ally and they just kick the driver out of the car. Turn the driver into an ally and they start running over other enemies. Etc. Etc. Mind you, I don't know which of those behaviours would have to be coded and which would happen automatically. Might be way more trouble than it's worth.
"I digged in and searched the forums for Auto Sprint / Sprint Toggle / Always Sprint.. Unfortunately there's no easy way in script. I recommend you get software to simulate a key press. As annoying as it is. There are no natives that will make it a toggle or always on, I think they're just "getters" for knowing if the player actually is sprinting. On controller it's worse because you have to TAP A constantly."
Well, that's a shame, but to be honest I kind of expected it. Rockstar is bizarrely committed to this convoluted movement system. They scrapped it for MAX PAYNE 3, absolutely NO-ONE complained, the game was praised for its responsive controls, and on RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 Rockstar brought back the shitty controls, shittier than ever. Go figure.
"Also not forgetting your feedback on the subtle zone notifications. I'll improve it in the next update.
Thanks for the feedback!"
My pleasure! I hope you find some of those suggestions helpful in some way. And thank YOU for your excellent mod.
Hey! I've commented before with detailed feedback but never addressed your follow-up comment, my apologies for that. I've recently gone back to playing GTA 5 and I installed your mod. It's still awesome and evolving beautifully (I see you've implemented the zero-gravity power I suggested, and it's wonderful). I've a few more ideas, if you're interested. No idea how feasible any of them are, but hey, no harm in suggesting:
- The blink ability is a bit finicky when it comes to climbing buildings. You need to be aiming really close to the edge or you'll just blink into the wall. I suggest making the game's interpretation of that command more forgiving to make traversal easier.
- Speaking of which, aim-based abilities should be more forgiving in general. If you're aiming vaguely towards an enemy, it should be enough for the ability to target that enemy (within reason, of course, otherwise you may always attack the nearest enemy rather than those further away).
- The abilities that have you spawn behind an enemy with a melee weapon should automatically attack that enemy. GTA 5's controls are notoriously clunky and it can be quite easy to attack the air rather than the enemy.
- "Prone" is a bit of an useless ability that doesn't really fit the fast-paced spirit of the mod.
- Speaking of which, the vanilla game's baffling insistence in having the player keep pressing the run button to move quickly also makes gameplay clunky for this mod. If you can make characters run by default, I'd recommend you do so. Having to keep X or SHIFT pressed gets in the way and no sane person would want to walk while playing this mod.
- Increase the player's health so that you can increase the number of enemies. The mod has a bit too much downtime. You can go a long time without engaging anybody depending on how quickly you eliminate the competition or how far away from you they end up, and not only does that kill the pacing, it also prevents you from achieving high kill streaks. If there's more enemies, that would be improved, but it would also result in the player dying very quickly. Hence increased health.
- The sound effect that indicates the countdown to a new zone is very discreet and easy to miss. It resulted in quite a few frustrating deaths. I recommend that you have the screen flash very briefly when the countdown starts (like you do when the player leaves the zone) so that we know it's time to move.
- Enemy AI can be a bit too stupid, and I don't know if that's from vanilla or your mod. They'll suddenly decide not to attack you or just roll for no adequate reason. This may be an attempt to prevent killing the player too quickly, so once again I think increased health would help.
- And now, a few suggestions of abilities:
SUPERJUMP (passive) - The avatar can jump very, very high (enough to clear small buildings).
FLASH (active) - Allows the avatar to run very very fast for 5 seconds, useful for clearing large distances without always relying on your car.
BACKFIRE (active) - For 3 seconds, any enemy who attacks you catches on fire and dies. Very useful if you happen to end up in the middle of a group of enemies. A red sphere could appear around the player to indicate the ability is activated (as is the case with invincibility's blue sphere).
HIJACKER (active) - Take control of any helicopter you aim at, throwing out all the passengers. After ten seconds with you in control, the helicopter tosses you out and just spirals towards the ground.
SURPRISE (active) - Teleports you to the nearest enemy. Very useful if you happen to be too far from the action.
HAWK (active) - Teleports you and the enemy you're aiming at to 350 feet directly above your location. You both fall, but only they die. This is useful not only to kill one enemy but also in case your health is low and you need to get away from the action. Just aim at an enemy and away you go, without leaving the zone.
FRIENDMAKER (active) - Turns enemy you're aiming at into a permanent ally.
That's about it. Hope you find some of that useful. Great, great work with this mod.
One of the best mods I've ever played. I've got some criticisms, but first, some praise:
- Interface is so clean and well-designed that it doesn't even feel like a mod. Hell, it doesn't even feel like something Rockstar would design. It's better. Health indicator, for a start, is much clearer and more efficient than the one in vanilla GTA 5.
- Database clearly and succintly explains gameplay mechanics. Which are great, by the way.
- Teleporting in and out of your car makes for wonderfully fast-paced gameplay.
- Parachuting enemies will sometimes misjudge their landings and faceplant on the asphalt, or smack straight into a building, and it's hilarious.
- The maps where matches happen were very well-chosen and make for excellent battlefields.
- Regenerating health allows room for mistakes and glorious comebacks for careful players.
- Abilities are fun, especially the drone.
- Avatars have quite a bit of personality to their design.
- Integration with vanilla GTA 5 is seamless and devoid of any conflicts.
- So far, for me, it's completely bug-free.
- It's just really goddamn fun and comes at no cost to vanilla GTA 5.
Now, some criticisms.
- Merit system is grindy and unrewarding, especially for a single-player game. It would be more fun if you could simply keep the avatar when you win a match.
- There should be an endless mode without penalties to play around in and practice with your avatars. You don't really get a chance to practice with them and it can be difficult to make the most of an avatar's powers on the first go as you don't remember clearly what they are. So you're more likely to die on that first go and never see your avatar again. Plus, game mechanics are too fun for there NOT to be an endless mode.
- Motorcyclists can't be knocked off their bikes by hitting them with your car. It would be much more fun if they could be knocked off.
- I find the enemies a bit too accurate, which, granted, is a problem with vanilla GTA 5. I'd recommend having their accuracy worsen considerably more with distance.
- Enemies are surprisingly resistant to being run over by your car. They go flying, but they often don't die after impacts that should really have killed them. Their resistance could be nerfed a bit.
- There could be more abilities, sillier and more inventive. For instance, spawning a truck that runs over the enemy you're aiming at, setting people on fire, creating a zero gravity field around them that causes them to helplessly drift away from the ground. Of course, no idea how complicated those would be to implement, but it's a testament to how well-designed this mod is that it even seems feasible.
To summarize, fantastic mod. Congratulations to @THEAETIK for a truly professional and talented work of game design.
I've tested the flexibility of this mod with a few different types of missions. There's a shitload of great stuff that's possible, but I did come upon a few things that could be added with relative ease ("relative" because I'm fully aware of how hard programming and debugging can be):
01 - Adding a "neutral" category of actor, who upon being attacked can either fight back or flee (there could be an option for this).
02 - Adding an .ini file that allows the player to customize the prop list. For instance, I don't make racing missions, so the many racing props are stuff I don't use. If the list of available props was customizable through an .ini file, I could delete those props and add others that aren't in the mod by default. Since my missions mostly involve shootouts, I'd favor props that provide cover.
03 - The "Kill Actor" objective offers much fewer parameters for the spawned actor than the actor menu does. I'd suggest offering as many options, but there's a potentially better solution: have the "Kill Actor" objective refer to a GROUP of actors, just like the "Get in Vehicles" objective doesn't spawn a vehicle and instead tells you to refer to a group of vehicles separately spawned in the vehicle menu. It's more flexible that way.
04 - Task sequences work remarkably well. There's a few more that would improve the feature even further: first, "Play Scenario" for a certain duration. Second, a simple "Attack Player" (with the option to override "block non temporary events", in case the mission designer wants to ensure that the actors will keep attacking player no matter what distractions come their way). Third, "Shoot At", which will make the actor fire at wherever the waypoint is. Fourth, "AttackActor", which will lead to the selected actor being attacked by those who have that task sequence. And finally, "Die", with a parameter for bodies to not disappear. Useful for spreading pre-existing corpses around a level. Okay, just one more thing: on "Follow Nav Mesh to Coord", adding a parameter for walking mode, so that we could have actors walking drunk or injured.
05 - Spawning vehicles with actors already inside. On the vehicle parameters, you could pick a group number and the actors belonging to that group number would spawn along with the vehicle. If the number of actors exceeds the number of seats, a warning could inform the user of that. The actors in that group would also have to be designated correctly: if there's more than one driver, it doesn't work, and if there's only passengers, it doesn't work either. The reason for adding this feature is that actors get incredibly confused when you spawn them outside of cars and tell them to go in, plus it's needlessly time-consuming to do it that way.
06 - Option to have bigger checkpoint markers. Currently, checkpoints are small and finicky, which is bad for fast-paced missions. Their size could, perhaps, be customizable just like the "Wander Range" bubble is?
07 - The cutscene feature could use an option to just cut to the camera position. Right now, the camera slowly moves towards the cutscene point. There's other obvious improvements the feature could have, but I take it you're well aware of them and that they aren't a priority currently, so I'll just leave this one suggestion since it seems easy to add. Also: an option to delete ALL cutscene points, since I've had issues with them becoming impossible to delete.
08 - "Destroy Prop" objective. That would allow for missions such as entering a warehouse and destroying the drug stashes.
09 - "Startpoint Spawn Marker" option: you could pick an area near the startpoint for the player to be teleported to when you choose to load the mission. By default that marker wouldn't exist, and would only be added if the mission designer wanted it.
10 - Submenus. Right now, it takes a lot of scrolling to, for instance, set actor parameters. There's currently five categories of NPC you can pick from when choosing the model for the actor, and all of them could be under a "choose model" submenu (which could include the "variation" parameter and all the customizable appearance options such as "FACE", "HEAD COLOR", etc.). Other submenus could be "Combat", "Driving", "Tasks" and, when in doubt, "Miscellaneous".
I hope some of this is in any way useful to you. Cheers. :)
@aimless I see. Thanks for the detailed explanation. :) The relationship group problem affects only the gangs? An NPC set to "enemy" would not suffer from the same bug?
I'll leave this as a suggestion for a future update, if it interests you. A parameter under the "Enemy" category, setting up the NPC for stealth behaviour, being able to lose you and search for you. Just the relatively simple script you outlined would revolutionize mission design in GTA V. Flanking enemies would actually become possible, for starters. Thanks again for your reply! :)
@aimless You're welcome. :) The amount of work that has gone and continues to go into this mod is incredible. One question, since you seem very knowledgeable of the code at this point: how flexible is the AI for "enemy" when it comes to stealth mechanics, even rudimentary ones? In vanilla GTA 5, enemies know your XYZ at all times, whether or not they have line of sight (except cops, who CAN lose you after a while). Would it be possible for a modder to have enemies keep attacking your last-seen XYZ until they realize you're no longer there (vanilla AI always tries to flank you, so they'd quickly notice it) and then go into a search mode (pretty much the "wander" command within a certain sphere, perhaps with enemies running instead of walking) until they find you?
Full-blown stealth mechanics get way more complicated than that, of course, I'm just wondering if a modder could theoretically do it even at a rudimentary level.
@aimless, this is an astonishing mod. Just amazing. Thank you.
@sjaak327 Hey, Sjaak, do you think that for the next update you could allow animations to be chosen by index number, both for the player and for peds they spawn? The Scene Director mod has a separate text file containing an animation index that your trainer could use for this.
Thank you, as ever, for your continued support of this fantastic trainer.
Hey, Josh, on the current version the peds stay completely limp at all times, with no Euphoria behavior neither when grabbed nor when thrown. Can this be added? This is an incredible mod that is so close to being perfect.
@GTATerminal My suggestion is: the peds keep their hands up by default after you take them as hostages. In order for them to lower your hands, you have to tell them to do so, in which case they just go into their normal idle, as if not to call any attention from passersby. They already act normally if you tell them to follow you, so having their hands restrained behind their backs doesn't fit the animset. Go with the normal idle. :)
Another thing: the current animation for "down on ground" looks like the ped is injured, and the transition from the previous animation doesn't blend well. I get that finding the best animations is a nightmare, so here's a few suggestions that may transition fairly well into one another: there are three animations -- an intro, an idle and an outro -- that function perfectly as a "down on ground" order; the ped goes straight down on their stomachs:
mp_bank_heist_1 prone_r_front_intro
prone_r_loop
prone_r_outro
And three more that are perfect as "down on knees" anims:
random(at)getawaydriver idle_2_hands_up
idle_a
hands_up_2_idle
In the current system, where the player must tell the ped to stand up before transitioning them to "down on knees" or "down on ground", those two anim sets would work better than the current ones, I find. And they may even blend well enough into one another, with a bit of experimentation, allowing for direct transition from "down on knees" to "down on ground".
If, however, you want the ped to lay down on their backs instead of stomach, I haven't found a smooth transition for that yet. I did, however, find a better animation than the one currently used: missprologueig_1(at)idle_loop_femalehostage
Finally: could you make the menu also controllable with numpad. 8, 4, 6 and 2 for directions, 5 for enter, 0 for backing out? It's more confortable, as the numpad is closer to the mouse. :)
I hope this helped in some way