SamsaraHold Resurrection + Enhancer

[Phoenix7786]

Total noob question here: Me and my brother started playing this together on his custom server. Is there any way to save the progress we make as far as clearing levels goes? Sometimes he has to shut down his computer and we lose our progress.

[Untitled]

Total noob question here: Me and my brother started playing this together on his custom server. Is there any way to save the progress we make as far as clearing levels goes? Sometimes he has to shut down his computer and we lose our progress.

Alas, no, there isn't.

I probably should re-host the master server - I've just been so busy these last couple weeks I haven't been able to find the time to do so - and, alas, I won't until next weekend. It'll be up then (and, if, by sheer miracle, with the alpha for the next version).

Here's a couple debug commands:

In Mission:
"Puke 930 1" Skips the current wave.
"Puke 910" Instantly wins the mission.
Intermission:
"Puke 766" Unlocks all tiers instantly - accesses all hard modes. Good luck.
"Puke 900" Initiates the final mission.

[Phoenix7786]

Hey those will still help by allowing us to insta-win missions we've previously cleared. As server host, would he just ~ and type from there?

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Hey those will still help by allowing us to insta-win missions we've previously cleared. As server host, would he just ~ and type from there?

Depends on if your online or local area network.

Online, you'll need a remote console, and enter things through that (which is what I do, but that's mostly because I host everything through #bestever).

Local Area Network (ie p2p) has a designated server host, so there might in that case - I don't know.

Again, sorry for not hosting in recent history - I've just been busy.

[HexaDoken]

Zandronum doesn't p2p, lan or otherwise. You will either need to type this from the server console window, or use remote console. A client can activate remote console by using the send_password command in console(rcon password has to be obviously set on the server beforehand), and after that prefixing any console command that is meant to be sent to the server with the word "rcon", e.g. "rcon puke 900".

Alternatively, you might be able to skip the whole rcon business by setting sv_cheats to true. I am not aware of how exactly do those scripts work, but chances are that if cheats are available any client will be able to puke them via console right off, rcon or not.

[Phoenix7786]

We've got a lan server spoofed through Hamachi, but we should know what the password has been set to.

EDIT: Yeah was as easy as rcon puke 910
Takes all of 5 minutes to reclaim our progress. Thanks Chummers!

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First alpha of 0.12 is out!

Have fun, as per usual.

(of course, the actual 0.12 won't be out until like when zandronum 2.0 comes out, but whatever, alpha stage)

[bruiserdaemon]

hmmm i just tried alpha 0.12 but for most missions i found nothing so difficult as you say on UV... others are very challenging as i like. Particularly, the early missions are easy, not on par with the great difficulty of tier 6.

There are bugs: first, when you restock an item type of which you already have one or two in you inventory, it is possible that another slot of the same item appears on the inventory, so that you could find yourself having 2 ( previous slot ) + another 3 ( new slot ) quad damage, making a total of 5 ( i just throw away the old 2 in order to not cheat ).

If you save game during a mission some monster will come back to like but they are invincible and make the mission tedious, the only solution so far is to not save at all and save only back at the marine base.

Last, can you upload a readme where you list all of the characters and weapons special bonus and maluses?? Parias has a defense bonus against demonic attacks but you didn't list it at all.

[bruiserdaemon]

Just found a game breaking bug on map 4 of tier 5: wave 7 is broken, can't advance to the next wave even after killing all the demons!

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Just found a game breaking bug on map 4 of tier 5: wave 7 is broken, can't advance to the next wave even after killing all the demons!

Already fixed -
Changelog for Alpha 2:
-STR24 no longer freezes at wave 7.
-STR27 no longer freezes at wave 5.
-Nerfed BJ's ripper rockets.
-Axes no longer hurt cores.

[Untitled]

and 2nd alpha is out!

As of this posting, tier 1 is completed, server is up.

As usual, have fun.

[bruiserdaemon]

There is one big bug i just found out... final boss of final map makes the game crash after too many skeletons being spawned... impossible to beat!

As usual i will post some other suggestion, which as usual shouldn't take much time but are very beneficial for the gameplay:

- overmind still too easy: just need one quad damage and one invulnerability to smash him down ( alone ).
- many maps have some weak waves coupled with strong waves... you should just look at the weak waves and add some numbers, not much work at all.
- there is still the bug i posted about before: for some reason you can buy another slot for the same item at the marine base, ending up with 2 slots for the same item ( doubling your items ).
- another bug involves the marine help spawn: for some reason sometimes the spawning is screwed up and instead of the regular spawn, some space marines will spawn on the same point, ending up with 4-5 marines overlapped on each other, unable to move and shoot until you kill some of them.

Some maps are really crazy, i love the amount of powerful monsters you put in, some others are nearly identical to vanilla stronghold and feel too easy.... pump up the weaker waves! Don't fear for the excess of difficulty... players always end up winning one way or another and there are plenty of lives.

[bruiserdaemon]

Let's say that the quad damage is totally OP... any wave will be torn apart with the right weapon, including bosses and the overmind. It would be much better if say, you make it double damage instead of 4x or replace it with the elite reinforcements wich are funny to use but aren't nearly as effective as a quad sphere coupled with the right weapon. Parias wraithverge, doomguy repeater and bj's rocket launcher for example become total overkill.

[Espio]

Quad's fine. Sometimes overkill is necessary on some maps/waves.

[bruiserdaemon]

How is it fine somethin which lets you lame rush maps?? Quad is OP

[Untitled]

There is one big bug i just found out... final boss of final map makes the game crash after too many skeletons being spawned... impossible to beat!

As usual i will post some other suggestion, which as usual shouldn't take much time but are very beneficial for the gameplay:

- overmind still too easy: just need one quad damage and one invulnerability to smash him down ( alone ).

You need to understand that originally the overmind mechanics were very different - I'm honestly not entirely satisfied by the results right now, but the problem is if I did it the way I wanted to, the overmind would randomly die for no goddamn reason whatsoever So I'm trying not to mess with him.
Though, your numbers seem impossible - the overmind, on single player, has a total of 55 seconds of APROP_INVULNERABILITY protecting him - a quad damage only lasts 30 seconds, unless you used one of the FOILINVUL weapons - Lava Nails (and ONLY lava), Fusion Pistol, Axe, and Flechette. And yes, future updates will fix this kind of thing, because people have started to abuse it online.
Honestly, it's best if I can figure out what powerups players are using to stop this kind of thing, but I don't know how.

- many maps have some weak waves coupled with strong waves... you should just look at the weak waves and add some numbers, not much work at all.

That actually doesn't work!

Weak waves generally don't make it past the spawn point - as such, increasing their numbers will make the wave longer, but not actually much harder. Also remember, multiplayer will then make it even easier (but more tedious).

Also, I'm crap at figuring out purely from monster type what waves will be hard and what waves will be easy.

- there is still the bug i posted about before: for some reason you can buy another slot for the same item at the marine base, ending up with 2 slots for the same item ( doubling your items ).

Haven't been able to replicate on-server, so I can't actually do anything about this one.

- another bug involves the marine help spawn: for some reason sometimes the spawning is screwed up and instead of the regular spawn, some space marines will spawn on the same point, ending up with 4-5 marines overlapped on each other, unable to move and shoot until you kill some of them.

Have you been playing samsarahold? marines can move through each other, which cancels out the stacking problem (not gonna lie, I don't test the not-samsara patch all that much, so it's probably a problem there).

[bruiserdaemon]

Yeah i was using the Axe to tear down the overmind... the fact the he targets only the cores is somewhat lame, he should target the player from time to time or when you get close to him.

As for the waves, i'd do that by myself if i were able to use editors but i'm not... there are waves which are indeed a bit easy. More than that, some maps need more waves... for example, tier 6 map 2 has strong early waves but weak later waves?? Doesn't make sense. Even on nightmare, you can beat them alone with a bit of brains.

As for the other bugs i don't know if i'm loading things correctly, i just load them using doomseeker and in the order you spoke before... i don't know what i'm doing wrong.

[bruiserdaemon]

Hard mode on replay is the actual challenge i seek... but it is pointless to play since you can get to the next missions anyway. You should make players do replay every mission on hard if they want to pass to the next tier. Can you do that?

[Untitled]

Sorry about not replying to the whole thread - I was dealing with real life concerns.

Yeah i was using the Axe to tear down the overmind... the fact the he targets only the cores is somewhat lame, he should target the player from time to time or when you get close to him.

I'm hesitant to do that, but mostly because it would make multiplayer mode even easier - gives you even more time (as the cores take longer to kill on multiplayer mode, just like the overmind does).

The other issue is that getting the overmind to react to players requires getting it into it's pain state. The problem? It's pain state reacts to damage, which can't be dealt while it's invincible.

This is actually a quite interesting problem.

Basically, the crux of the issue is that the overmind's primary defense mechanism is to turn invincible (with the invincibility time increasing with playercount).

Originally, the defense mechanism was for it to gain more health with playercount, which I'd still use if it weren't for one problem:

Setting it's health randomly crashes it. For no reason. And only within samsarahold - this never happened in original stronghold. As such, it's health must remain fixed, which means that it must also gain more invincibility time, which means you can't put it into it's pain state, which means you can't get it to react to you.

Until this stops happening, I can't do naught. I actually wanted to add the feature in earlier, so heh.

As for the waves, i'd do that by myself if i were able to use editors but i'm not... there are waves which are indeed a bit easy. More than that, some maps need more waves... for example, tier 6 map 2 has strong early waves but weak later waves?? Doesn't make sense. Even on nightmare, you can beat them alone with a bit of brains.

As for the other bugs i don't know if i'm loading things correctly, i just load them using doomseeker and in the order you spoke before... i don't know what i'm doing wrong.

Admittedly, balance is a bit wonky in places - I have to admit, difficulty is actually not at all intuitive - some waves appear hard on paper and then aren't that bad. Some waves aren't that bad on paper and then are wtf levels of hard. And then some waves look wtf hard on paper and are REALLY wtf hard in game. As such, I tend to stick on the easier side - I have made legitimately item-check levels before, and everyone hated them. Samsarahold actually removes a bunch of them - the only super-notable one is Wave 19 of STR35, which is deliberate, since I don't want people cheesing stuff afterwards.

Just some personal terminology: "Item Checks" refer to individual waves which are impossible such that the only way to beat them is quad+invuln/smart bomb/I win button/etc.

These aren't fun. No one likes barely surviving only to find that the last wave is legitimately not possible for them to beat.

Tier 6 Mission 2 on single player is interesting in that it's early waves aren't so much hard because the monster content is difficult so much as it's hard because they overwhelm you, and you don't have the weapons to effectively combat all of the monsters - as such, they move forward. Combined with the double entrance map layout, it's nasty.

By comparison, waves 4-6 aren't as bad because A: you have a plasma rifle B: the bosses are used sparingly and you can handle them one at a time rather than all at once and C: there's some powerups by then. I can tell you this trend reverses in multiplayer - which is why a lot of balance suggestions I take with a grain of salt; I ALWAYS have to consider what multiple players does to a mission.

Hard mode on replay is the actual challenge i seek... but it is pointless to play since you can get to the next missions anyway. You should make players do replay every mission on hard if they want to pass to the next tier. Can you do that?

As much as I'd like to, not gonna do that because as much as I hate to admit it, many players of samsarahold's - actually surprisingly extensive - playerbase aren't really into it, and as such, forcing such a challenge would be brutally discouraging - that, and not all of the hard modes have been tested by myself, so some of them might be off the wall insane.

There is one big bug i just found out... final boss of final map makes the game crash after too many skeletons being spawned... impossible to beat!

Noted, thank you - the "Packet Annihilator", as I like to call him, is getting some nerfs to his lagromancy, in hopefully the next alpha.

Speaking of next alpha, due to being busy with real life, don't expect a new alpha this week. Sorry about that.

Some maps are really crazy, i love the amount of powerful monsters you put in, some others are nearly identical to vanilla stronghold and feel too easy.... pump up the weaker waves! Don't fear for the excess of difficulty... players always end up winning one way or another and there are plenty of lives.

I try to be careful, because remember - this is intended for multiplayer modes. Wanna know what multiplayer does?

It adds more monsters, scaling with player count.

This means I can't get too crazy - no one wants to find out that a wave that is hard in single player is a wall of pyrodemons.

Or, to give a oversimplied example: 1 player can fight 2 pyrodemons with an SSG, although it requires some amount of skill - not everyone will find it easy. 8 players cannot fight 12 pyrodemons, when equipped with SSGs. Not terribly hard to find out why - it doesn't matter what kills you, and with that many, it becomes virtually impossible to avoid the simply ridiculous amount of fire.

As such, I should be very careful - honestly more careful then I usually am - about adding in higher-tier monsters.

Let's say that the quad damage is totally OP... any wave will be torn apart with the right weapon, including bosses and the overmind. It would be much better if say, you make it double damage instead of 4x or replace it with the elite reinforcements wich are funny to use but aren't nearly as effective as a quad sphere coupled with the right weapon. Parias wraithverge, doomguy repeater and bj's rocket launcher for example become total overkill.

The thing is, it's 500 credits for what only lasts 30 seconds - honestly, in some cases sentry turrets are a better investment. Scratch that, they're the better investment in the majority of cases, if you place them well. Combine that with the fact that you'll probably want 400 credits for an invulnerability - 900 credits down the drain to cheese, what, one wave? Unless you have a BFG-tier weapon, making that many credits back is very hard in that timeframe.

Ok, not gonna lie, quad wraithverge is ridiculous. But then again, it always has been. It's the nature of the weapon.

Also not gonna lie, BJ's rocket launcher is ridiculous too.

But those are both powerful weapons in their own right - the quad amplifies that.

And that's the thing - the quad damage only really works if you already have your best weapons. It's a desperation tactic - an item you can only use in very specific circumstances.

Quad's fine. Sometimes overkill is necessary on some maps/waves.

It shouldn't be, but Espio's right - some waves, particularly in tier six, can get kind of ridiculous.

How is it fine somethin which lets you lame rush maps?? Quad is OP

Because you can only rush single waves with this - and yes, killing an entire wave is powerful, but it
A: requires you already have your best weapons for best effectiveness (meaning it's not as much of a help in earlier waves),
B: can only be used once, for 30 seconds, meaning that it can only help with individual waves and not the mission as a whole, and
C: generally doesn't make its money back, unless you quad wraithverge.

This will not help you rush an entire map.

[bruiserdaemon]

Well oook... if you talk about casual players who do not know well the game, they will be cruelly owned. On the other hand i wonder if 4 or more players place all their turrets correctly and summon elite reinforcements... they can virtually sit down and wait. I can already do this on some maps.

You should do something like this: 2 game modes, one is the current game as it is, another is for the experienced stronghold players ( simply switch all maps to hard mode ). You can switch it at the marine base if the game gets tedious, simple as that. Default difficulty should be UV, there is no point choosing lower ones, the game is nowhere difficult par se if you use your power ups correctly.