[L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (1.3.2)
 

I created this plugin as a competitive L4D player, and being frustrated that most competitive teams are easily able to walk out of a level with 170-180 health bonuses quite easily, bar lucky early tank spawns on certain levels.

I designed this plugin to increase the difference in score at the end of a level, and to more accurately reflect what team is beating the other, while trying to maintain the same gameplay L4D already has.

If you need help installing this plugin for the PTV tournament please refer to this post.


Features

• Replace all Medkits with Pills - This will remove all medkits in the game, including safehouse, nm3 ambulance, and finale kits, and replace them with pills.
• Add 4 kits in finale- This will make sure there are 4 medkits by the finale button.
• Disable Autoshotguns and Rifles - Replaces Autoshotguns with Pump Shotguns, and Rifles with Uzis
• Enable Autoshotguns and Rifles in Finales - Allows you to control how many AS/AR spawn in finales.
• Stop Rushing/"Pre-Mollying" AI Tanks - The AI tank is frozen in place before a player gets control, And after 2 seconds of control, you will be extinguished and given full health. Giving you 2 seconds to run out of a pre-molly.
• Adds pausing to L4D - Hate it when a player disconnects or otherwise the game is unexpectedly stopped mid game? Now if both teams agree, the game can be paused until they are ready to play again. This is as close I can get to stopping all activity during the pause, but it could be exploited still by a "convenient pause" so both teams must agree.

CVARS

• l4d_comp_version (1.3.2) - The plugin version
• l4d_comp_enable (0) - Globally Enable/Disable the plugin
• l4d_kit_disable (1) - Enable/Disable converting all kits to pills
• l4d_finale_kit_enable (1) - Enable/Disable making sure 4 kits are present in the finale
• l4d_finale_tier2_enable (3) - 0: No tier 2 in finale; 1: All tier 2 spawns in finale; 2: Survivors get 1 Autoshotgun and 1 Rifle; 3: Survivors get 1 AS and AR in safe room, and another AS and AR at finale button.
• l4d_tier2_disable (1) - Enable/Disable converting autoshotguns and rifles to their tier 1 equivalents
• l4d_tankfix (1) - Enable/Disable the tweaks to prevent rushing AI tanks.
• l4d_dupepillfix (1) - Enable/Disable trying to delete duplicate pills
• l4d_tankcontrolfix (1) - Enable/Disable showing tanks their control in a hint box if they lost their rage meter
• l4d_pauseenabled (1) - Enable/Disable allowing players to pause the game

Commands

• sm_fpause (type !fpause in chat) - Requests a pause for the game. The other team must agree by typing !fpause as well. (NOTE: !pause(sm_pause) is used by Downtown1's Ready Up Plugin, so I opted to use !fpause)
• sm_funpause (type !funpause in chat) - Unpauses the game, as long as you are on a valid team it will instantly unpause the game. Can also be used to cancel your team's pending request to pause.
• sm_forcepause (type !forcepause in chat) - Admin command to force toggling pausing. Requires ban permissions.

Known Bugs/Issues

• Survivor bots prefer tier 2. This means all bots will pick up hunting rifles, since there is only tier 1 and hunting rifles available.
  

Shoutouts

• Downtown1 - For inadvertently getting me interested in coding a plugin, and answering my questions. Also, the code to stop the director is from his plugin, for which he credited Liam.
• Blight Gaming L4D - My L4D team for their help trying to improve L4D, and making it a competitive game. And putting up with arbitrary bug testing.
• Vyxx - For creating ASCII art and a config for this plugin.
• AtomicStryker - The idea to detect survivor's distance to crescendo events was from his Survivor AI fixes plugin.
• depraved and Xanath - A very special shoutout to the biggest fans of the plugin, and really helping to get the plugin out there and used. It wouldn't have been as popular as it is without you.
• Jerkstore - He will always be known for his personality in the L4D community. And for his relationship with the witch.
• Pwnage TV - For being the first tournament to use my plugin, and help make it the new standard of comp l4d.

I hope to continually improve on this plugin, and would like to know other improvements that you think could be made to Competitive L4D.

This plugin is being used in PTV's current L4D tournament, and other future tournaments are considering it.

This plugin is designed to be used in conjunction with a competitive config, and in order to be loaded on the most popular configs.

Notes on casual version:
Current Version: 1.3.2-casual

This version is designed for server owners that plan to have the plugin enabled and active all the time. Generally because it is a public server or some other server that an admin will not be on all the time, and the plugin has to run without an admin execing a config or restarting the map.

Specific changes:

• l4d_comp_enable defaults to 1
• Automatically disables the plugin if the server is in co-op mode
• Adds CVAR l4d_comp_casual_enablereset (defaults to 1) which will automatically enable the plugin when mp_gamemode is versus.
• The above CVAR will also change the pill conversion cvars, and may conflict if you try to run CEVO config on a co-op server

Updates:

1.3.2 - Fixed a typo.
1.3.1 - Reworked Infected 'spawn time' allocation to prevent rare bugs where the wrong person got a 'spawn time'.
1.3.0 - Removed the need to put a timer on converting kits, which resulted in a cosmetic bug
- Tweaked ghost spawn time calculation for after the game is paused. Any feedback is appreciated.
- Re-added support to disable the 4 finale kits.
- Now uses the proper cvar to disable the director converting pills, which was an issue if you did not use a cfg with this plugin.
1.2.3 - Fixed weapon pickups while paused to work as they did before CC DLC.
- Added CC1's Howitzer crescendo to the places where you can not pause.
1.2.2b - Hotfix to have l4d_comp_enable default to 0 again.
1.2.2 - Fixed Kits not appearing in finale because of Crash Course DLC
- Fixed Tier 2 not removing in finales because of CC
- Fixed Tier 2 not removing in the CC map
- Removes the tank control hintbox when the tank is lit again.
- Medkits now spawn correctly in finales without having to pick up pills first
1.2.1 - Removed that NM3 ambulance kit for good.
1.2.0 -Added unpause countdown timer.
1.1.3 - Quick fix to stop dropping weapons if there are too many on the ground already.
1.1.2 - Added a dropweapon function to the plugin, allowing me to completely avoid deleting weapons picked up in pausemode
- Also allowed me to fix a problem with finale tier 2, where you were able to delete one of your limited tier 2 weapons by doing a specific sequence of picking weapons up.
1.1.1 - Fixed having to delete the majority of items survivors pick up in pause mode
- Added enabling tier 2 for finale using l4d_finale_tier2_enable
- Fixed a cosmetic bug
- Removed NM3 ambulance kit again
- Fixed some coding errors
1.1.0 - Vastly improved pause functionality.
- Found a way to fix the duplicate pill glitch, and implemented it.
- Changed the way tier 2 is removed to remove some cosmetic bugs.
- added admin sm_forcepause command.
1.0.0 -Added pause functionality
- Fixed bug causing the AI tank to freeze for 5 seconds when a player passed to it
- Added tank control in a hint box for the tank if he lost his real control meter due to a pre-molly
- Attempted to fix valve's bug that causes duplicate medkits(pills) to spawn in the safe room
0.2.1 - Fixed bug that caused tanks to be extinguished at unintended times.
0.2.0 - Fixed bug that caused incompatibilities with Downtown1's ready up mod because of 0.1.2.
- Removed comp_ffannounce to make it it's own plugin.
0.1.2 - Fixed bug that caused tier 2 to spawn under certain circumstances
0.1.1 - Changed cvar and plugin names to be more user friendly
0.1.0 - Initial Release

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

I like the sound of this!

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

I think you can make the compplugin_ffannounce feature a seperate plugin, I'll most definitely get that if you made one. :D

The plugin sounds good for matches! :)

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

I was considering that, but with so many friendly fire plugins (mind you I am not aware of any that announces total damage immediatly after like mine), I do not think it would get much notice by itself.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

Disabling the M6 and replacing with an UZI and he auto with a pumpshotgun is unfair.

The survivors have to scale somewhere with strenght or IT IS BORING.

Sorry. Do not approve this imo. Cute idea but ... Not really.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

Yeah precisely. We need that :D

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

I just split up the plugins, you can find the FF plugin here:
http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?p=902507

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

As Frustian said, some teams enter the safe room with 170-190 hb with cevo now. There are teams that are already strong enough on survivor. This plugin is designed to make it more competitive. Tanks are scarier on tier 1. Rounds are harder with no medkits. Tanks are more fun to play when they're not pre-lit. If it's not for you, then ignore it, but having a flippant attitude about a pretty cool plugin is disrespectful.

I think a lot of competitive l4d players have wanted something like this, and I'm glad to see it realized. One minor nitpick,
Some servers run modified tank health, it'd probably be better to retrieve that from the con-var.
Otherwise, this looks like a cool plugin and I hope it receives adoption by some servers.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

Have you checked it on the DA finale? Where sometimes the tank will spawn in the fire pit?

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

Thanks nolimit, I'll add that in the next update.

And roy, it should extinguish any fire, whether from a molly or environmental such as fire barrel or the fire pit.

I have no way to reliably run into such a spawn though, so if it doesn't work I'd love to know.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

Do you think I should praise him before I give out critic?

I do not think it's the "Player fault" if they are good! If you are bluntly too silly to avoid bullets with a tank, then get used to dying all the time. How to avoid? Ever tried running from one object to another to hide behind it or lure survivors to you? Its not hard. Its not even hard when they have the tier2 weapons.

And PILLS only restore 50 Health temporarily. So in addition to make it fair. "Fairplay" is an iron rule by the way and I think that this addon spoils it and makes it too easy for noobs, newbies and people who pretend to know how to play.

There is a reason there are tier2 weapons at specific points, simply because the Valve maps are scaling with difficulty over distance reached. Why? Even been barfbagged 2-3 times after another and found yourself death even with tier2 weapons? I did.

To make it simply and annoyingly cruely clear:

This addon is for newbies or noobies who want to play against teams who are far more skilled than themselves. Tuning their capacity of skill down by spoiling the game's mechanics on an uneven base.

For me, this addon is simply but useless. It is surely an nice idea but look on the terribad side of it all!: The noobs will be scaled down too and lose immedietly.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

Stop bitching dude, i mean really, if you dont like it - dont use it or turn off weapons replacement. If you are too PRO for this stuff, why you even bother to post here? To support your ego? I see your posts in almost every plugin and everywhere you saying the same thing "i'm disapprove" or something like that. Wtf, are you approver ? No. So why you say stuff like this.

Btw, stripper pro mod replaces tier 2 weapons too. I dont like idea of removing 2 tier, but im not bitching about this all along. And wtf that silly tank speaking? Didnt you ever got caught in fire because stupid AI walked into it before you take control of tank? What about pills also? In default l4d gameplay (4x4, no mods) its is too obvious balance is shifted to survivors benefits. Why not making it alittle harder?

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

Looks very nice, iam going to give it a try tonight,

Thx for sharing.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

Btw, a friend of mine tested it, he needed to replace all meds with pills (cause pills addiction was there also :)), and it worked!

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

Obviously you don't play competitive l4d. Please don't respond to this thread anymore because I don't think the plugin is directed at those who don't even play the game other than to pub, and probably still lose in your case. You have absolutely no idea how the game plays in a competitive environment.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin
 

Oh boy, fun time!

Yes. This mod is excellent.

I don't even have the energy to respond to this. I had a huge rant typed out, but I realized that Xanath said it best.

Back To Your Pub.

tl;dr Great job Frustian.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

This plugin is great, and seperates the men from the boys. YAY =]

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.0)
 

I agree with Roy, it worx perfectly thx for making this 1.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

I love this so much, keep up the good work!


No medkits and no tank pre-lights is fantastic.


But i am also one that would prefer tier2 to stay by making them spawn late on every map.


And finally, if there ever is a way to have uniform item spawns for each team that will be the complete dream config.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Just install this and disable the T2 weapon thing. Then install Stripper mod and the Ydiss' ProMaps configs. If you don't want all the non-T2 stuff, just delete all of the 1-3 stage configs and edit the 4-5 configs accordingly (they're pretty obvious when you look at them).

@Frus... had some weird issues on Death Toll 1 with this. We had 2 pills and 2 health packs at the start, and 2 more health packs and pills in the map. This happened for both teams. Players were able to heal as the health kits were normal. However, upon reaching the safe room the scores were based on if the health packs remaining were actually pills. I didn't have the cevo healthpack cvars in there during the game, but just added them back in to try helping reduce the issue.

Other than that it seemed to work really well. :)

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

I must preface by saying that I have not used this plugin yet but by golly please release the "TankFix" as its own plugin...now! (excited there)

Regardless of the current conversation about competitiveness and skill level of teams, the tank spawning on fire is such an idiotic occurance that its a travesty that this is not officially fixed by Valve. I have one friend that this happens to...a lot; it upsets him to no end.

Anyways, this should be available to all servers, vanilla or competitive as it affects us all. I actually think it deserves its own place on the list and will become popular in it's own right as I intend to try this now and turn off everything except tankfix.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Confirmed the score problem on BH tonight. First team through had their score capped at 200 on stage 1, 296 on stage 2, and then 3-5 seemed normal. The other team's score worked fine. Not sure what the problem is.

Also, on the BH finale we entered the house to find 4 pills instead of kits. After a while I grabbed one, it went into my inventory as pills, and the rest changed into full kits. The other team had 4 kits there. Could this be a problem with the cevo kit conversion cvars or is it something else?

I also just installed the Ready Up plugin, so there's a chance that could be causing the score issue. Will test further when I have a chance.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

hi good work wioth the plugin but
i have the same problems in deathtoll
and more one (sorry for bad inglish),i like 4 medkits in de start of all maps
howto
?
tanks for much and please update the plugin with new cevos and bugfixes
the comunity has very apreciated of this. ^^
tank's a lot

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

As far as the score and healthkit bugs, My plugin does not touch the score at all, any issues you have will be from vanilla L4D or other plugins you have. Depending how you have you server set up, you need to make you are restarting the level after changing mp_gamemode versus and changing this plugin's cvars. The only time I have seen the healthkits at the start is when the cvar to disable all healthkits is not activated. The plugin will try to disable that cvar when the map loads, so once again, make sure you are restarting the map before playing, and you don't have any plugins or configs relating to changing how many medkits there are.

@Chilly: read the known bugs, that will happen if somebody on your team did not grab a set of pills at the beginning.

@quad: I am not intending to create a balanced pub config in any way. I am well aware that with everything enabled this plugin is not suitable for pubs, and I have no intention of balancing it as such, or creating a separate pub version.

@bispoom: All the cvars are in my first post. If you set these 3 cvars only the tankfix and tier 2 disable will be enabled.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Ahh, that's what happened. We noticed an extra set of pills in the beginning, but everyone had theirs. I've seen that happen on rare occasions with kits too, where a team gets an extra. I'll just instruct our players to shoot a teammate once and have them take their pills so all can be picked up right away.

You might want to consider it on your end as well, though. Maybe make the kits the ones in the starting safe room and the pills at the finale itself? That way the functionality would work right and they'd just have to leave the extra kit @ the start. Dunno if that would work for all situations though. Hope you figure something out. :)

I've disabled the ready up plugin and removed all other customized settings other than Ydiss' ProMaps configs w/ Stripper. Will report back. Thanks for your help and kudos for a good mod.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Figured it out. We had Ready Up doing the mid-round re-ready, which was forcing one team's score to 200 and then to 200*multiplier-teamdamage_during_restart. So I fixed that and it's confirmed it has nothing to do with this mod. :) Thanks again.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

I would prefer to have the kits at the finaleitself, if only for continuity. As far as the bug L4D has spawning an extra kit (or in this mod's case, a set of pills) I did not realize it would cause only 3 kits to spawn at the finale.

I have no idea what causes the bug, but I'll try to get around to doing something about it breaking the plugin.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

I'll be more specific about what happened so you can troubleshoot it better. We had 5 pills in the safe room and we each took 1, leaving 1 set behind. When we got to the BH farmhouse, there were 4 sets of pills on the table. We hadn't used any of our pills yet so we left them. After the first tank, I needed to take my pills and grabbed a replacement from the table which left 3. Immediately upon picking up the pills the remaining 3 turned into health packs. The pills I picked up went into my inventory as pills, as expected. HTH.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

I would like to request something, - for a tank to spawn everyround. It would be even more competitive and even scarier for the survivors. This game's intention is to allow survivors to crawl into the safehouse and not running healthily even with pills.(i think). And even normal coordinated attacks could not damage the survivors much(depending on the team), so having a tank everyround could allow a tremendous change in the gameplay. Don't flame me pls, sorry for my bad english :D

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Hello,

nice Plugin but im missing one Option. Can you include a CVAR which enables a medkit for each survivor in Safehouse but converts the rest of the maps in pills? I think at the beginning its better to have 4 medkits for the start. It will be great if you could do this because we have then 2 options with your plugin. 1st option =only pills 2nd option 4 medkits in saferooms, rest pills.



Greets

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

That can be achieved by ingame cvars
director_convert_pills 0
director_vs_convert_pills 0 (thats for versus mode)
director_scavenge_item_override 1 This will ensure you wont find any random medkits, except for safehouse's and finale's.

Use these and disable plugin's option to replace startup medkits. And you will get what you want - only 4 meds and the rest are pills around map.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

hmmm,

and where can i use this cvars? I want that they are always active. I dont want to type them if im in the game u know?


Dont understand it completely.


director_convert_pills 0 = medkits not converted?



director_vs_convert_pills 0 (thats for versus mode) = medkits not converted for vs?

director_scavenge_item_override 1 This will ensure you wont find any random medkits, except for safehouse's and finale's. = medkits found in safehouse and finale and rest are pills?

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

This is a plugin to create a certain defined setting. Like CEVO (No Meds, Tank ever level....) it is static. You don't see people calling CEVO config Meds + Tank ever level or Pills + Random Tanks. Same applies to this config.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Put these in server.cfg or sourcemod.cfg. Its easy. And make sure to use sm_cvar before. For example : sm_cvar director_vs_convert_pills 0
BTW this means that PILLS wont be converted into medkits :)

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Right from the CEVO config. Just add to your server.cfg.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

While you are correct, you must also disable witch spawns on level 1 and 5. Otherwise if a witch spawns on those levels a tank will not.

The full code you require is

The tank flow variation cvar is not necessary, you could remove it if you want.

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

If I intend to use tankfix only, can I include the plugin and use the tankfix CVAR only...or must I use all CVARS and disable every other command I do not want executed?

Another way to ask the question is, without CVARS entered in server.cfg and the plugin loaded on the server, is anything (like defaults) being modified/controlled?

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

Yeah i also felt that the tank fix was the most practical and useful :oops:

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (0.2.1)
 

If you install the plugin and don't touch any cvars, it will not do anything. After l4d_comp_enabled is 1, it will go to all the individual cvars which default to be on (the global cvar overrides the individual ones).

If you only want the tank fix part of the the plugin, you will want this in your server.cfg

The only cvar this plugin changes is it will try to set director_convert_pills to 0 if you have l4d_kit_disable 1

Re: [L4D] Frustian's Competitive L4D Plugin (1.0.0)
 

I just uploaded version 1.0.0. Sorry for taking a while with it.

I haven't had a lot of testing with it so I expect some silly little bug to crop up, especially with something as big as adding pause functionality.

But almost every part of the plugin was re-written in some way so anything can pop up.

Just a note, I haven't been able to reproduce the duplicate pill glitch, so if anybody sees the message [SM] Glitched Pills Removed, or 5 pills in the safe room let me know.