Credit to Chdata for improvements to HUD stability and slam particles, and a fix for a crash I guess? related to Taunt'em.
Downloads and Requirements saxton_revamp_v1_0_5.zip - All the files. MODEL FILES MUST EXIST ON SERVER SIDE or some aesthetic features will malfunction. (i.e. flaming particles will be at his feet) Dynamic Defaults - Dynamic Defaults ensure base abilities don't interact with these rages. Taunt'em - You only need to install the gamedata for this. If you don't have it, Saxton Slam will not animate. Saxton's rages will still function without it, aside from the aesthetic fail. Please note that if you have an old version of the Taunt'em gamedata, you need to get the latest one deep in the thread.
Lengthy Skippable Exposition
Saxton Hale has been personally beating the guts out of training with his mercenaries since late 1970. Countless mercenaries have fallen before the might of his fists, while managing to best him quite often as well. However, ever since he began the slaughter exercise, people have been questioning his methods. These concerns started as murmurs, which spread as rumors, which lead to formal investigations. Mercenaries alleging that they were poisoned before the bouts. Engineers claiming their buildings were tampered with. The truth had to be known.
Investigating a man like Saxton Hale is not a task for the faint of heart, or the small of stature. Numerous government and private investigators would follow him around, only to disappear under mysterious circumstances. It was not until a certain New Zealand native, dressed in black, was paid a handsome sum that the truth could finally be ascertained. Incidentally, this nameless investigator never did meet our mercenaries face-to-face. And for good reasons.
Three months and fifteen dead Mann Co operatives later, the investigation bore fruit. It turns out that the Administrator herself had implanted subliminal messages in her routine broadcasts -- a form of hypnosis which planted a suggestion, causing the mercenaries to quiver in fear and lose their footing whenever Saxton made a boisterous yell. As for the equipment malfunctions, it turns out that the sentry gun barrels had a peculiar defect, causing them to crack from the same sonic force. While the latter may have been a coincidence, the mercenaries were outraged. They confronted the man: Eight revivals later, he finally confessed to his involvement with the scandals.
Saxton was publicly ostracized. Many companies of mercenaries refused to fight him outright. Others upgraded their equipment stores as a means to counter his sleazy tactics. The man himself grew more distant from the exercise. He felt that he had lost touch with his roots. He realized that his skills were waning as he got older. He realized that the only way to restore his reputation would be to train -- return to the primate hell which molded him into the strongest man alive. This time with iron chains linking his hands and feet, he would go toe to toe with gorillas, lions, elephants, lemurs, tour guides and squirrels -- anyone that stood in his way, his mighty fists would cut through like butter.
One week later, he returned to Teufort and challenged his most vocal critics. Vowing to only use his mighty fists to take down his adversaries, he proceeded to annihilate some of his best mercenaries. He lunged, fist forward, cutting through a crowd of them. He leapt high and came crashing down toward the earth, causing the ground to crack and shake. In a fit of uncontrolled rage, he struck his foes so rapidly that he could light them on fire. Saxton Hale was back. No tricks, no sabotage, the strongest man alive has returned to reclaim his name. Do you have what it takes to take him down?
Video Demonstration
Abilities Saxton Lunge
Saxton lunges at enemies, pushing them out of the way and doing decent damage. Instantly destroys sentries.
Activated with RELOAD. 20 rage, 10 second cooldown.
Ubered targets are unharmed, but receive knockback.
Goes through players. I temporarily change collision groups of everyone, then change them back when it's safe to do so.
Has a custom animation, due to using condition 83 which puts the player in the kart_dash animation.
Not usable underwater, but usable while treading water.
Saxton Slam
Saxton slams down upon enemies, instantly killing anything in his immediate path and causing a damaging shockwave/earthquake.
Activated with MIDDLE MOUSE. 30 rage, 15 second cooldown, must be executed in midair.
Ubered targets are unharmed, but receive knockback.
Targets with a ground clearance of 80 hammer units or more are unharmed.
Swimming targets are unharmed. (submerged or treading water)
Landing in neck-high water or deeper will most likely waste the rage.
Uses two very complicated tricks to allow him to execute a redone pyro animation. (taunt_party_trick) I do this with a physics prop at his feet and class switching.
Saxton Berserk
His E rage causes him to go berserk, swinging rapidly and gaining knockback immunity. Each hit is weaker than his normal hit, but can instakill a non-wrangled sentry. He also gains speed.
I've set him to have rapid fire fists that set targets on fire and cause minicrits to already ignited targets. This is easily overriden.
You can also limit the duration of the fire, since I found typical afterburn duration to be killing even soldiers with one hit. My first version set it to 2.5 seconds.
He also gets flaming fists for the duration of the rage.
Known Issues
Since this is modding, nothing can ever be perfect. Remaining issues include:
If you choose to display health, the health value will be slightly inaccurate. This is because there is no way to get current hale health that's compatible with both 1.10.X and <= 1.9.X versions of FF2. I've at least taken steps to keep it from jumping around constantly.
To allow Saxton's lunge ability to work and not be godawful, I temporarily change the collision group of all living players. While he's in this state projectiles go through him.
The hale in third person mode will not see proper animations for Lunge and Berserk, but every other player will see it.
Saxton Lunge sucks with hills and low doorways. A bit of a limit of aerial charge abilities. (of which I've written many) Players will pick up on this and roll with it.
Credits
Coded by sarysa
Model by thePFA, with a few custom animations added by sarysa
Chdata for improvements to HUD stability and the idea/early implementation of slam particles.
Some stocks taken from FF2 base, by multiple authors
Some stocks taken from Friagram's public code, or influenced by him. (i.e. attaching particle to attachment)
Force taunt code by FlaminSarge
Special thanks to SHADoW NiNE TReS for giving it an early look, which should make this early beta run a lot smoother.
Thanks to SHADoW, Chdata, Kedata, Wildcard, and many others for testing him and providing feedback.
Final Thoughts
I guess you're probably wondering why I made this. I kind of wonder it myself. I just know I'm opening myself up to a boatload of criticism. I've long felt that FF2 has tons of untapped potential. I've thrown all sorts of spaghetti at the wall on VSP and quite a lot has stuck, but I guess I'm kind of part of the problem. Keeping virtually everything private is forcing talented modelers to continue to stick fear, uber, and new weapon on everything that they release -- leading to an army of reskinned clones from a wide range of fandoms.
That all said, it also dawned on me that a lot of people resort to these old standards because these are the pack-in abilities, the familiar. People have gotten way too comfortable with primitive rages (like Saxton's) that aren't really fun, don't really fit the character too well, and honestly seems more like a placeholder than actual boss powers -- especially compared to things like Friagram's Halloween packs. As long as the pack-in abilities are what they are, the army of well modeled but boring to play against clones will grow and grow.
So while I have no plans to make any of my private code public, I would like to start releasing more new material for characters that sorely need them. While I hate that stupid little fear rage with a passion, I get that HHH Jr., for example, should have it as it makes him a playable version of his larger counterpart. Saxton Hale, on the other hand, uses sweeping physical attacks -- he can do better.
It would be great if these abilities got official support, became the new pack-ins, but I'm not optimistic to the point of foolishness. I get that while a large number of servers dislike Saxton and remove them from their rosters, a number of other folks like him the way he is. I get that it could be polarizing. On the other hand, they'll still have Spongebob or Gangplank or Freddy Fazbear or Mario or Luigi or [insert just about any famous character here] to fall back upon because old Saxton is literally the most cloned character out there.
I figure that worst case, this dramatic boss drop fails, the devs of FF2 and VSH tell me to go to hell, but some communities use this version anyway...and VSP might get a replacement version of Iron Will. (another Saxton clone, muscles included :p ) So it won't all be for naught.
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