[NgBUCKWANGS]

I did a crazy amount of testing today and am convinced I was wrong about L4DToolZ. Those games I had without crashes was just sheer luck. I now figured out a way to somewhat-reliably crash the server when playing as SI in campaign and it has to do with SI not having arms. These guys spawn in as dummies the surviving bots won't attack. I noticed that if someone comes in without arms and then disconnects, they'll crash the server.

A couple times tonight, we had a boomer and jockey without arms. I asked the players to leave and sure enough, the server crashed. Does anyone know how to guarantee those arms? I think I'll end up making a post about this problem but if anyone has an idea, I'm all ears. Thanks!

[NgBUCKWANGS]

For those of you that would like a preview of playing as SI in campaign without all the crashes, try 0.1.20. I believe but am not entirely certain that the crashing is fixed. It had nothing to do with L4DToolZ (my bad) but seems like everything to do with precaching some infected models. I perhaps went a bit overboard in the precaching but I seemed to have also definitely stopped the crashing in my tests.

Be aware (be very aware) if you switch anyone to SI during a campaign round, an algorithm will kick in for the entirety of that round to help the SI continue spawning. It can get pretty aggressive pretty quickly and you may even find it overwhelming. I haven't uploaded this to my gitlab nor the main post. For those of you following, you'll find it here only until I am better able to test and guarantee that it works the way it should.

As always, any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

[NgBUCKWANGS]

hey fellas, in the last release I thought I solved the crashing when playing SI in campaign. Although precaching seemed to help with stock campaigns, the solution just did not want to work with Ravenholm and it forced me to look into it all over again. I've come up with another solution that does not involve precaching at all and works in stock and custom campaigns and I'll be uploading it here.

This release is experimental and does have some new features that may or may not work the way I want them too and any feedback is always appreciated.

• You can start every round with a set number of survivors (but their inventory is not carried over across maps)
• You can now give the tank a chunk of health per survivor (e.g., 2500 is default multiplied by N survivors)
• you can set up a spawn interval in which the SI team size will match the survivors and spawn in (default is 90 seconds)

None of this should kick in on unsuspecting players. Most people playing with ABM don't know it's there.

So how does it work? Only when the survivor team size is > 4, 2 things will happen. The tanks health chunk is applied (12 survivors makes the tank 2500 * 12 in health) and 12 SI will wave in every 90 seconds (ABM does not stop what the director spawns in between those 90 seconds).

If someone goes over to SI during a regular campaign, the spawning of SI will also work in 2 additional waves. The full wave is 1/3 of the default of 90 seconds to 30. The half wave is 1/2 of that from 30 to 15. It's expected that if someone goes SI during a regular campaign all hell will break loose too.

This is for fun and the possibility to play as SI when you're not supposed too. The following cvars should be added to your abm.cfg if they're not already there.

// Extra survivors to start the round with 
// -
// Default: "0"
abm_extraplayers "0"

// SI full team spawn in (5 x N)
// -
// Default: "18"
abm_spawninterval "18"

// Health chunk per survivor on 5+ missions
// -
// Default: "2500"
abm_tankchunkhp "2500"

abm_extraplayers is added to abm_minplayers (default is 4)
abm_spawninterval is 5 x N, the default is 18 (5 x 18 = 90 seconds)
abm_tankchunkhp is the chunk of health multipled by survivors

I want to do some testing on all this before I make a commit. Let me know how it's working out for you? Thanks!

[Edison1318]

Originally Posted by NgBUCKWANGS hey fellas, in the last release I thought I solved the crashing when playing SI in campaign. Although precaching seemed to help with stock campaigns, the solution just did not want to work with Ravenholm and it forced me to look into it all over again. I've come up with another solution that does not involve precaching at all and works in stock and custom campaigns and I'll be uploading it here. This release is experimental and does have some new features that may or may not work the way I want them too and any feedback is always appreciated. You can start every round with a set number of survivors (but their inventory is not carried over across maps) You can now give the tank a chunk of health per survivor (e.g., 2500 is default multiplied by N survivors) you can set up a spawn interval in which the SI team size will match the survivors and spawn in (default is 90 seconds) None of this should kick in on unsuspecting players. Most people playing with ABM don't know it's there. So how does it work? Only when the survivor team size is > 4, 2 things will happen. The tanks health chunk is applied (12 survivors makes the tank 2500 * 12 in health) and 12 SI will wave in every 90 seconds (ABM does not stop what the director spawns in between those 90 seconds). If someone goes over to SI during a regular campaign, the spawning of SI will also work in 2 additional waves. The full wave is 1/3 of the default of 90 seconds to 30. The half wave is 1/2 of that from 30 to 15. It's expected that if someone goes SI during a regular campaign all hell will break loose too. This is for fun and the possibility to play as SI when you're not supposed too. The following cvars should be added to your abm.cfg if they're not already there. // Extra survivors to start the round with // - // Default: "0" abm_extraplayers "0" // SI full team spawn in (5 x N) // - // Default: "18" abm_spawninterval "18" // Health chunk per survivor on 5+ missions // - // Default: "2500" abm_tankchunkhp "2500" abm_extraplayers is added to abm_minplayers (default is 4) abm_spawninterval is 5 x N, the default is 18 (5 x 18 = 90 seconds) abm_tankchunkhp is the chunk of health multipled by survivors I want to do some testing on all this before I make a commit. Let me know how it's working out for you? Thanks!

Wait, so when i used this plugin, does that mean i don't need to use superversus plugin anymore?

[NgBUCKWANGS]

Originally Posted by Edison1318 Wait, so when i used this plugin, does that mean i don't need to use superversus plugin anymore?

I was inspired by MultiSlots and only ever used it for my needs. I never used SuperVersus except for performance reasons on the bridge in Dam it 2 chapter 1 and the Bloody Tracks finale. I don't even really know the SuperVersus feature set. I'm sorry. ABM is more of a fast changing experimental plugin that's moving in a pretty obvious direction and may not be as stable as you like when you need it most.

I do vouch that it will not blow up anything you hold dear to you. Try it and see?

[Edison1318]

Originally Posted by NgBUCKWANGS I was inspired by MultiSlots and only ever used it for my needs. I never used SuperVersus except for performance reasons on the bridge in Dam it 2 chapter 1 and the Bloody Tracks finale. I don't even really know the SuperVersus feature set. I'm sorry. ABM is more of a fast changing experimental plugin that's moving in a pretty obvious direction and may not be as stable as you like when you need it most. I do vouch that it will not blow up anything you hold dear to you. Try it and see?

So this plugin is similar to Multislots, well i used Superversus for extra survivors. I'll give it a try without using Superversus.

[NgBUCKWANGS]

Originally Posted by Edison1318 So this plugin is similar to Multislots, well i used Superversus for extra survivors. I'll give it a try without using Superversus.

If you like the idea of starting out your rounds with extra survivors, the next upload will work way better. It's already implemented along with way better support for switching teams. I'll upload when I have the chance.

Thanks 😀

[NgBUCKWANGS]

Hello fellas, version 0.1.22 has far better support for starting off with extra survivors and joining teams. Only admins will see the special infected team option with !join and any players pushed onto SI by an admin will also see it.

Several notes come to mind with this release. One, extra survivors do not spawn in until all players are loaded. This is by design as it helps with keeping the models unique. So, if you set abm_extraplayers to 4 and your abm_minplayers is also set to 4, you should end up with 8 survivors at the beginning of every round. Your total set of survivors every round should also be unique.

Another note is, If you do this and someone leaves, a bot will disappear. I have not yet implemented anything to prevent this from happening but check it out, it shows what's possible so far and it's good. Once a surviving team goes over the count of 4 in campaign mode, an auto difficulty kicks in that at first may feel normal but turns to brutal the moment you sleep on it (I promise you this).

This release also enforces that no one can go spectator without literally using !join 1 or using the !join menu to do so. If ABM finds you on the spectating team under any other circumstance, you will in under 5 seconds get moved back to your home team. This is to solve a bug that affects people losing control of their character by idling and then by the beard of Zeus getting stuck on the spectator team.

You should now be able to bounce around with !join from any team to any team in any order. You can go from idle to spectator to survivor, infected, spectator, idle and it should just work. Note that SI do not idle, if someone on SI chooses idle, they'll go onto team spectator, this is expected.

As always thanks for any feedback

[NgBUCKWANGS]

Hello fellas, I've committed and uploaded 0.1.23. It has experimental support for abm_extraplayers where when a person leaves this cvar is considered before removing any extra bots. It also includes experimental support for locking (with -l) and unlocking (with -u) cvars over the console. No more having to edit the plugins config for a cvar change to stick. So, during a game if you decide to give all extra bots "rifles", on map change, they'll all spawn with rifles and will continue to spawn with rifles on every new map change until you either unlock the cvar or use -l again with a value.

Some examples of locking are

• abm_extraplayers -l 2 // on every new map change, you'll get 2 survivors
• abm_primaryweapon -l rifle // on every new map change, new bots will have rifles

Locking and unlocking cvars applies to every cvar ABM has. If you do not lock a cvar change done through the console, on every map change, whatever you have set in the config will overwrite whatever you assigned in the console. Using the -l option to lock cvars will reset the cvar back to what you expect if it ever changes automatically.

Some examples of unlocking are

• abm_extraplayers -u 2 // if the cvar is different in your config, that's used on map changed
• abm_primaryweapon -u // without a value, the old value is used and will change on map change

Let me know what you think. Thanks

[cravenge]

I think I'll go with the 0.1.21 version for now because, for some odd reasons, it conflicts with my DAP plugin.