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.
This is amazing and looks fun, the only thing people probably will complain about is it's OP; but the fun factor [at least it looks fun] I think will supercede that greatly. And with proper tweaking it probably won't be / already isn't op.
The only thing I think is off is that his uppercut animation is slow; should make that faster. Or get rid of it, I don't particularly think it's necessary.
It's not all that hard to add stuff to VSH. So I might. [If you're okay with that]. But hmm. As an alternate way to play Hale? Replacement? Extra? Rare [lol not rare].
Making bosses like this is something I envisioned to and was gonna slightly touch on with a Remilia Scarlet I have planned to have controls like in Hisoutensoku. I have a dash made actually.
But this is full on beyond what I would've ever figured out how to do on my own.
Well, in terms of physical abilities. I've had plenty of danmaku / AoE things in mind.
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So I tried out the boss.
Koishi had normal weighdown on it. I suppose that's fine.
The only things I thought were weird:
You can lunge downwards. Upwards lunge I guess is okay. For whatever reason I think being able to do it downwards is weird.
Uppercut needs to at least be a faster / stronger looking animation.
I think it'd be better to use TFCond_DefenseBuffNoCritBlock instead of TFCond_MegaHeal or whatever the quick fix thing is, for making the boss unable to be knocked back. It has a side effect of lowered damage, but that can be undone in ontakedamage if you need.
Mainly cause megaheal has healing particles.
Any reason not using SyncHud?
Maybe I'd give this boss no knockback resist [dunno what he has now], as he has more physically augmenting moves.
I'm gonna say the damage output looks fine. At 90~ish max per hits with some of these moves being spammable [or should I say, re-usable], it's not necessarily one hit kills and still gives people time to go heal but are also fast with more AoE.
Edit: Well, maybe nerf slam by 10-20%.
Edit 2: I forgot, Lunge also puts you into melee distance a lot easier. And melee distance is kill distance. In which case I would probably knock it down to 50-75 damage.
Often boss balance can depend on whether or not a boss can one hit people and mobility.
Too bad I can't do anything to models. This blows my remilia jump out of the water.
Maybe try "firedeath" or the GRU death texture for berserker? Purgatory for the shockwave when not directly stomped by it.
Also the afterburn hits 12 per tick, probably cause of the damage attrib on fists. Not sure if intended.
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The decompile/recompile process surely broke some aspects of the model.
Nothing popped out at me as particularly broken, but I don't model at all.
Broken health display
FF2 problem. Rewrite ff2.
Lunge ability physics / collision
When I try porting it I'll check out the rocket thing I guess.
If anyone reports getting stuck in the boss after lunge, this might be useful:
The hale in third person mode will not see proper animations for Lunge and Berserk, but every other player will see it.
Never done animation stuff. Can't help there.
I hear the slam uses the pyro pool taunt and changes the boss to a pyro and spawns a floor under him. Is that true? Does setting m_nSequence do anything or something? I guess a taunt is required if you're gonna stop him in place like that. Does SetEntityflags FL_ONGROUND work in place of spawning a floor?
Soldiers don't get set on fire by his rapid fire fists. Blame Valve. (soldiers have always been wonky with FF2)
I blame FF2. Try adding the attribute 'set damagetype ignite' or whatever it was called.
Saxton Lunge sucks against some terrain ... Players will pick up on this and roll with it.
Agreed.
Saxton's left hook animation
All I can say is that it's too slow. It needs to be more sudden/jarring. It looks more like he slowly pushes his fist upwards then slowly retracts it. Or removed.
It'd be funny if we could add "apply z velocity on damage" to those animations.
Well I'm glad the response has been positive so far. I really want this to take off, so at least for this project, I'll be a lot more accomodating than I have been in the past.
Replies for Chdata:
This is amazing and looks fun, the only thing people probably will complain about is it's OP
What's funny is when testing on shadow93's server with 3 people, folks were having trouble with him. Though again, it was just 3 people. This version of Saxton has mainly crowd control, with berserk allowing Saxton to more easily catch up to scouts.
But if you want to talk OP, I won as classic Saxton once on TFF x10 map Chamber of Exitgency, while completely hammered. I mean I was so drunk I was sick most of the following day. That server is famous for being difficult to play as hale on. Eight second fear every 2000HP is a lot.
The only thing I think is off is that his uppercut animation is slow; should make that faster. Or get rid of it, I don't particularly think it's necessary.
Keep in mind that the model itself is also in beta. In fact it has "beta1" in the name to acknowledge this...since when you update a model, you have to give it a new name. That animation is barebones because I wanted overall feedback on the project before doing it justice, and making crouch/swim versions. The purpose of the animation was to have him alternate between fists during his berserker rage, but what actually happened was it randomly shows up while his class is a soldier. I will do more experimentation with this...probably assign the soldier's normal attack animations to his right fist. (since left fist, right fist, and generic melee are all distinct animations)
I'm also hoping I can get the source SMD/DMX/VTA/QC files from thePFA so I can compile the animations into them. (though please for the love of god not Mediafire, put it on Dropbox and send it to me, I'll happily host it on my malware-free website) I know I must have butchered thePFA's model in some way. Also if I could learn what version of source engine you compiled them against and what compile options you used, that would be great. A couple of the facial flexes were invalid for me and I had to comment them out.
It's not all that hard to add stuff to VSH. So I might. [If you're okay with that]
That's what I'm hoping for, though I'd recommend waiting until the final version...if the conversion process is time consuming.
You can lunge downwards. Upwards lunge I guess is okay. For whatever reason I think being able to do it downwards is weird.
Yep, it's three dimensional. However I could add an option for pitch constraints if such is desired. I'm thinking of adding second optional abilities for slam and lunge that house advanced options.
I think it'd be better to use TFCond_DefenseBuffNoCritBlock instead of TFCond_MegaHeal
Personally I like the fact MegaHeal stands out, but I could make advanced options for these as well, but doesn't TFCond_DefenseBuffNoCritBlock have a green effect or something? A couple VSP bosses use this.
Any reason not using SyncHud?
Honestly? Lack of experience with such a HUD. That said, I've configured it in a way that it will not flicker if Dynamic Defaults is enabled. Can one channel be used for two HUDs with two different colors?
Maybe I'd give this boss no knockback resist [dunno what he has now]
He only has knockback resist during his rages. He needs it lunge since it could easily be stopped dead otherwise. Slam needs it for the 0.1 seconds where he's initiating the taunt animation but it'd also look weird if he were sent flying while doing his cannonball-into-the-ground. As for berserk, this compensates for his weak per-hit attack power and his overall lack of sentry stun. (all his moves are strong against buildings)
Outside of his rage, he takes typical knockback. No condition 252.
Edit: Well, maybe nerf slam by 10-20%.
Keep in mind that players get a 1.1+ second warning to run from the epicenter, and damage decay is exponential, not linear. That's why the base is 200.
Lunge also puts you into melee distance a lot easier.
But don't forget, it takes practice to get a true sense of where Lunge is going to end.
Maybe try "firedeath" or the GRU death texture for berserker? Purgatory for the shockwave when not directly stomped by it.
I could add aesthetics overrides to aforementioned advanced options.
Also the afterburn hits 12 per tick, probably cause of the damage attrib on fists. Not sure if intended.
It's due to minicrits, but also because FF2 triples the damage of all low damage. That's why I added the parameter for limiting afterburn duration.
If VSH no longer does that nonsense, then you'll probably want to let the afterburn run its course.
<unstuck code>
I've tried trace hulls like that before and they have failed randomly for me. I actually have made another method which traces a ton of rays in a specific pattern which I use for point teleport. (it's since been added to shadow's Blitzkrieg boss) However even THAT occasionally fails with players...though it's very rare. I honestly think there's no better method than the rectangle test. (plus it's cheaper than trace)
BTW, I believe the reason my manual trace code fails on players is because of the direction of the trace. Players are probably hit when entering their rectangle, but not when exiting. So tracing while deep inside a player would never hit them.
set damagetype ignite
Already on the gloves. And that fails to ignite soldiers. I do it manually in OnTakeDamage. It's flawed, as fire cannot be refreshed properly, but sometimes the hale's weapon is reported as the soldier's own shotgun. I had the same problems when managing the fire of this boss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX6tnXDR0qc
Also, TFF (Team Fortress and Friends) Bonk Boy boss also has a problem with soldiers and damage. This is due to them using attribute 138 for adjusting player damage. It fails with all soldiers.
your boss is OP, replace his rage with a tickle move that gives people overheal
I mean,
I run an option for 'Lunatic' mode on my server.
Starts you with 1/3rd hp and you can't rage at all. The meter doesn't even show up.
This is "Normal" mode for veterans. Starting with 6k hp vs 24 players or 9k vs 32.
And my rage stun time scales by however many people are caught in it, to reduce solo rage effectiveness.
Since vanilla Hale is op, it's sort of subjective. But all of this does give him easier ways to kill people and close gaps from what I tried. It does look a hella lot cooler at least. I've always wanted to do stuff like this but I never bother to touch modeling.
Gap closing is a big reason super jump is OP. People can't run away from a good super jumper.
So essentially I'd say this will lower the skill ceiling for Hale to be able to lunge directly at people.
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I ought to mention the other animations seem pretty good. I haven't seen 'berserk punching' since I was the boss in thirdperson, but the firstperson was handled well at least. The slam animation and subsequent effects are done very well. And I'm a very strict on aesthetics person.
Yes, defensebuff has an effect similar to the minicrit glow pretty much. I just think it's more appropriate just cause overheal particles. I could always attach some other particle if I really wanted I guess.
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Can one channel be used for two HUDs with two different colors?
I assume you mean syncHUD. The point of synchud is to replace old hudtext with new ones so they don't do that overlapping thing like in your hud, so I don't think you can use two huds on one channel.
In which case make another channel.
Though I think there's some lame restriction on channels, like 12 or something. You'd only need 3-4 from what I saw on your boss. And I would've probably done my own hud.
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1.1+ second
Old rage has a 0.6 second warning. Regardless any less than 2 seconds is too fast for most people to react to. [I can react to 0.6 sometimes].
Given that it's exponential I'll suppose that it's fine though, probably can escape lethal damage if you're smart enough to move away, since unlike weighdown it's not instant and has a tell.
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Getting used to lunge
Eh, maybe I'm just very adaptable.
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That unstuck code's tested and never seemed to fail, but yeah I was thinking rectangle check might be better. Just never bothered to write one.
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fire soldiers now
Those sound like some extravagant bugs I've never had with ignite. o.O
0.6 second rage warning? Must be specific to VSH. On FF2, the stun just happens. No counter except being good at predicting the hale as a medic, or scattering when the rage bar hits a certain point.
So MegaHeal cannot be replaced. It's the only thing out there providing complete and utter knockback immunity. TFCond_DefenseBuffedNoCritBlock does not provide any kind of knockback immunity.
So here are the fixes I've added to the code:
Added a pitch constraint option for lunge. Going to ship it with -45 degrees to 45 degrees. (I think it was during our extended session on Shadow's server that Chdata noted vertical lunging is weird) If pitch is beyond these limits, it's set to the closest limit. (no error/failure)
Fixed it so BossTeam is set to FF2_GetBossTeam() at the start of every round. Should allow saxton to work if he's on RED. (I can't test this myself)
Add an option to Berserk to allow using weak knockback immunity (as an alternative to MegaHeal), which unlike MegaHeal will not prevent airblasts or stuns.
Fixed a bug where far away demos would lose their shields, while close demos would be hit through their shields. (backwards logic ftw)
Made it so water is better handled. Standing in a 5HU puddle of water will no longer make you immune to slam, or cause slam/lunge to fail or be unusable. Only players who are swimming (m_nWaterLevel >= 2) or treading water (m_nWaterLevel == 1 and FL_ONGROUND is not set) will be immune to slam. Lunge will be usable if m_nWaterLevel is 1, but not 2-3. Slam will succeed if the hale is m_nWaterLevel <= 1, and rarely 2 or 3. (since the rage success check is made before the rage end check...I'm just going to let this one slide, since the hale must've been moving very fast that one frame) I'm also aware that in rare cases, someone jumping around shallow water might be deemed immune when they shouldn't...but there's nothing I can do about this.
Added a completely optional ability for advanced options. These options include setting additional conditions to execute during each of Saxton's abilities, and overriding death icons.
Fixed a bug where FOV would get stuck at a high value when using Slam immediately after Lunge.
Fixed model to use thePFA's source files, meaning all the features of the original should work.
Fixed the left hook animation to run faster, and strike sooner than later. (frame 10 instead of frame 14) It still kind of looks crappy, but I'm an amateur.
Added left hook animation for crouch. There is no underwater left hand animation for the Heavy, so I didn't make one for Saxton.
Fixed the ragdoll.
Gave him Soldier gibs.
Gave him an uber skin. (even though his rages don't give him uber, it was simple enough to add)
And that fails to ignite soldiers. I do it manually in OnTakeDamage. It's flawed, as fire cannot be refreshed properly, but sometimes the hale's weapon is reported as the soldier's own shotgun. I had the same problems when managing the fire of this boss: 
Linear Mode
