Rifle Platoon 0.8b readme
Rifle
Platoon is a realism mod for Call of Duty. It has most of the realism features
which most of the realism mods out there have, as well as some new
not-seen-before-in-CoD features.
Disclaimer: this is a beta release! I worked on this on
and off as sort of a “pet project”, never meant to be released to any public
except maybe my clan, and now rushed out because some people on the IWNation
forums demanded some of the features in it J.
I tried to polish
some stuff up this last week or so, but there are sure to be some bugs or
glitches, especially when playing with more than a handful of players as I
never tried that yet. In-game, console statements might appear telling you some
function has started or what the status of a weapon or player is (although some
statements about damage dropoff and distance were left in intentionally so you
guys can help me and each other to tweak stuff – if you want to have these
shown, set g_showdebugmessages to “1” in the server cfg). Also, modders going
through the code will find plenty of comments, TODO’s, and redundant, unused,
inefficient or unpolished code etc.
Finally,
the best way to run this is with no other mods in your main folder. I’m not
sure yet why exactly it was, but two clan members were continuously kicked
and/or got weird menu behavior because they had an admin mod called HLCRCON
running.
Why the name?
One of the
things this mod tries to enforce, in fact its very basis, is (semi-)realistic
squad composition. As the max number of people in a server is 64, and one team
of 32 would just about form a rifle platoon (barring the command section), I
decided to use it (I first thought of Rifle Squad, as the game is much more
likely to be played 10 vs10, but the RS acronym is already taken a few times J ).
Installation
The new
menus needed for the class system, as well as the changed weapon files, make
this mod clientside; both the clients and the server need the pk3 file.
It can
just be put into the “main” directory within the CoD installation directory. As
this is a beta, and as yet untested with other mods, the best way to go would
be to have no other mods in your main directory. If you experience weird
behavior like getting kicked, weird server messages etc, your first action
should be to check for any other mods, including admin mods and mods which are
not supposed to interfere with other mods, and remove them.
The
Elimination gametype (the only supported gametype right now) should work fine
on any map that has retrieval spawn points, as those are the spawn points used
(so while Elimination bears some resemblance to TDM, it does NOT use those
spawns).
I have
not checked how RP fares when put into its own mod folder, started with fs_game
etc.
A sample
server cfg file is included in the pk3 file.
Features
Many of
these features can be set to off, but this is a realism mod so they should stay
on ;-).
n
New
gametype: Elimination – see below for a description.
n
Class
system – see below for a description of the various classes.
n
More
realistic squad composition – see below for a description of the various
restrictions.
n
No
carrying two primaries – picking up a primary will make you drop the one you’re
holding.
n
Reload
by clip – reloading when your clip is not empty yet will still deduct a full
clip’s worth of bullets from your ammo, but the bullets you had left in the
clip come back later as “used” clips when your full clips are spent.
n
More
realistic ammo counts.
n
Damage
dropoff – the further you are away from your target, the less damage you do.
Respective ranges of the weapons are based on their real counterparts (but
scaled down to fit the CoD maps); some weapons (SMG’s and pistols mainly) won’t
do any damage if the target is too far away.
n
Movement
speed based on primary carried – no speed boost when switching to pistol or
nades. Primary weapons are divided into 5 weight classes, and for many the
speed has been toned down based on their realistic weights. See below for some
details on how this affects certain weapons.
n
Changed
weapon stats to decrease accuracy when unaimed, view bob when aimed, and more
realistic weights as mentioned above. Also increased damage from most guns to
work better with the damage dropoff system.
n
No
crosshair in unaimed mode.
n
No
kill confirmations or any visual clue on the scoreboard that you killed
someone. You only know for sure if you see his dead body up close ;-).
n
Dizzy
spells - when health gets below 20, you suffer from dizzy spells every 10-20
seconds, lasting 3 seconds or so. Keep that in mind if you’re about to rush
around a corner!
n
No
compass friendlies and no map except if you’re an officer.
n
The
usual: shellshock when losing a certain amount of health to grenades, rockets
or getting bashed on the head, forced prone if hit by a grenade or shot in the
legs/feet or taking damage from falling (keeping you down for a number of
seconds based on how much damage you sustained), drop weapon when hit in the
arm/hand, …
What does it NOT have?
Obviously,
naming every single feature Rifle Platoon could have but doesn’t would take a
while, but it might be good to know that RP does not contain ANY new skins,
models, weapons, sounds, animations etc – all the RP features were added in
script and by changing weapon files. Also, right now it only works on the new
simple Elimination gametype, although it will support more gametypes in
upcoming releases.
Elimination gametype
Elimination
is a very simple gametype, meant to enable testing of RP’s realism features
without having to focus on the gametype itself (yeah I could have used stock
TDM, but that just doesn’t fit with the realism thought).
Basically,
it’s TDM, but with no respawn, and the two teams spawning in fixed positions
(usually on two sides of the map, the S&D or Retrieval spawns).
Class system
The name
for this mod comes from the real-life platoon structure it’s based on: the
rifle platoon, which in turn consisted of three rifle squads (and a command
squad).
A rifle
squad had a pretty standard composition in all WW2 armies, differing only in
the number of men in them (ranging from 9 to 12). It was formed by an officer,
a second-in-command, an LMG gunner with his loader, and the rest riflemen.
Snipers and medics were kept higher up in the hierarchy on company level, as
were SMG’s, to be handed out when necessary (and when time permitted it).
In this mod, I use 10 men as a base for
determining restrictions. For every 10 men or part thereof, a team can have:
n
one
officer
n
one
sniper
n
one
medic
n
one
LMG gunner
n
two
close combat gunners (SMG’s)
This means
a team with 1-10 players can have max one officer, one LMG gunner etc, while a
team of 11-20 players can have two officers, four CC gunners and so on.
Additionally,
a player cannot pick a “specialist” (ie non-rifleman) class if there are
already more specialists than riflemen, for example a team of 8 or 9 players
will always have at least 4 riflemen, a team of 10-11 players will have at
least 5 riflemen etc. Of course, if there are 10 players and then all the
riflemen leave the server, the team will consist of only specialists… this
won’t happen too often, and no action to rectify this is taken (except that
anyone joining the team will HAVE to be a rifleman).
Loadouts. All classes have a choice of at least two
loadouts. This may be a choice between having a pistol and some ammo or two nades, an M1 Carbine or an M1 Garand, or in the case of
officers and medics even a choice between only a pistol or a rifle or smg (which choice isn’t as easy as you’d think
because of the added weight!).
Officer. The officer is the only class who can view
the map, and also the only class who sees his teammates on the compass. In the
works is a menu (well the menu is already there, but it doesn’t have any
contents yet ;-) where the officer can check on his team’s members’ health and
ammo count. When I have converted Headquarters to RP the officer will be the
only one to see the location of the radio on the compass, which should make
things interesting.
Medic. The medic can heal other players. To this
end, he has a certain number of medic points (which correspond to health
points). The medic is himself not very suited to the real fighting (having very
little ammo for whatever weapon you pick for him, and he can’t heal himself),
but he can of course keep the rest of his team functioning that much longer.
The medic
can heal teammates he’s next to by pressing and holding the use key. He gets
points for healing a certain amount of health. Healing doesn’t work when either
player is moving, shooting or meleeing, and stops if either player does that
once healing started, so pick your time and place carefully!
LMG Gunner, Close Combat Gunner, Sniper,
Rifleman. These
classes speak for themselves pretty much. This mod tries to place them more
squarely in the role they’re meant for (you won’t see any across-the-map
sniping with an SMG or pistol in this mod, nor a sniper whipping out an SMG and
happily joining the room-to-room fighting), but their weapons are what you
would expect: the LMG, SMG, sniper rifle and regular rifle.
Special class: veteran. The veteran is not a class you can
pick; instead, you can become a veteran by surviving a minimum of three rounds
in a row, and making a certain amount of kills during those three rounds.
Veterans count as the class they were when they became veterans (or became when
they were veterans), so the restrictions mentioned still stand: a veteran can
be a medic, sniper or close combat gunner just as easily as a “regular”
rifleman!
Veterans
have 120 health points, and for some classes one or more new loadout options
will appear. Veteran medics can heal an extra 50 health points.
Note that a
veteran stops being a veteran when he gets killed! If you have a veteran-only
loadout when you get killed, you will be presented with the normal loadout
window for your class when you spawn again (unless you pick a new loadout
before that).
Weight system
The primary
weapons have been divided into 5 weight classes, each with their own
moveSpeedScale (in-game move speed). Having the same speed no matter if you
switch to pistol or grenades is accomplished by actually having 6 different
versions of the pistols and grenades: one as they are in the stock game (for
players without primary weapons), and one for each of the weight classes. If a
player carries a primary of a certain weight class, he automatically gets the
pistol and grenades of the same weight class (if he has a pistol and/or
grenades in the first place).
As I would
need many many more weight classes, as well as versions of each weight class
for all primaries, to make a system where your speed is determined by all
weapons (not just your primary, but also primaryb, pistol, grenades and ammo),
this is impossible with this system: the game only supports 64 weapon files
loaded :/ .
Below is a
table with the weight classes, their moveSpeedScales, and the weapons in that
class. Note that some weapons have switched from very light to quite heavy
compared to the stock game! I used the real-life weight of a loaded weapon to
divide the weapons among the weight classes.
|
weight class |
moveSpeedScale |
Weapons |
|
none |
1.2 |
pistol
and/or nades only (no primary weapon) |
|
1 |
1.15 |
M1
Carbine, Sten |
|
2 |
1.1 |
Lee Enfield, Kar98K, Mosin Nagant, Springfield, Kar98K scoped, Mosin Nagant scoped |
|
3 |
1.05 |
MP40, M1
Garand |
|
4 |
1 |
MP44,
Thompson, PPSh, FG42 |
|
5 |
0.9 |
|
Known bugs
As
mentioned earlier, there are sure to be some bugs and glitches in this mod, as
it’s a first public release, and a rushed one at that. I would love to hear
about any bug, glitch or weird behavior, as well as ideas for features which
would fit in the mod!
However,
some bugs are already known, and some features have their basics in the code
but have not been tested or activated yet.
Officer – view map – The map is only supposed to be viewable by the
officer class. Other classes can indeed not see it, but the officer can’t
either, unless he’s playing on the (non-dedicated) server… Not sure what could
cause this.
Next round starting message – at the end of a round, a message
is shown along the lines of “Waiting for round 5 to start…”. This message IS
shown, but it’s hidden behind the scoreboard, and I haven’t checked on how to
remove that in code yet.
Debug messages – while playing, sometimes a message may
appear in the console telling you how far away from the player you shot you
were, how much the damage was before and after applying the damage dropoff
system, what function the code is executing etc.
Veterans – while players who are flagged as veterans
should get the higher health value and the added loadout options, the system to
determine if a player actually IS a veteran is not in place yet (ie nobody will
become a veteran no matter how many kills you have and how many rounds you
survive). This also means the MP44 (or StG44) is not available at all – this is
a veteran-only weapon.
Future of Rifle Platoon
Because
this is something I do for fun first, and only became something to release to
the public a week or two ago, I will definitely keep on playing around and see
what features can be added which increase realism while not impeding
playablility too much, no matter if Rifle Platoon is praised or ground into the
dirt.
The first
things I plan to work on are:
n
Compatibility
with the stock Headquarters gametype and my own Escape gametype.
n
New
classes: LMG loader and scout. The LMG gunner will get limited ammo, needing a
loader to be max effective, enforcing more teamwork. The scout will be the
fastest moving, but will have less health (easier to wound/kill because he is
lighter equipped). He will have the infiltration skill as outlined below.
n
Infiltration
skill for scout class – scouts start a round a certain number of seconds
earlier than the other player types (I got this idea from the IWNation forums,
I thought in the hardcore realism thread, but I can’t find it mentioned
anymore).
n
Veteran
status – surviving a certain number of rounds while having made a certain
number of kills during them gives a player the veteran status. Some code for
this is already present, but incomplete. The description of the class system
above gives more details of the veteran status.
n
There
should be a lot of possibilities to make the weapons more realistic; there are
lots and lots of settings I have no clue what they do and/or how they are
supposed to be used. Also, I made accuracy worse and aimed view wobble more for
all weapons, but without taking any weapon specifics in mind (ie the aimed
wobble should probably be based on the weapon weight etc). Weapon files will
probably be changed with every version ;-).
A little
farther along the road I hope to add the following (although some seem
impossible right now due to limitations of what’s available/possible in
script):
n
Compatibility
with more gametypes, preferably a conquest-like one, an S&D-like one
(Demolition?), and maybe Retrieval.
n
New
class: Engineer. He would have an advantage in planting and defusing
explosives, and hopefully by that time we know and can do enough to have him be
able to plant mines and expacks or something.
n
Some
sort of stamina / heart rate system, with different movement speeds (walk, jog,
sprint).
n
More
detailed weight system, to take into account not only the primary weapon but
all equipment carried.
n
Binoculars
for the officer class.
n
Bullet
drop.
Would be so
cool, but I can’t do it:
n
new
skins, especially for medic and officer.
n
New
weapons, with number one on my list the russian LMG (DP), closely followed by a
deployable MG42, and some veteran-only weapons like the SVT40.
I’m sure
there’s a lot of features either already out there in some mod or as yet not
implemented anywhere that would fit right in in RP! If you’re interested in
seeing those in a future version of Rifle Platoon, be sure to e-mail me about
them, or post on the IW Nation forums.
I’m always
open to suggestions and ideas!
Credits
Most of the
features in this mod were coded by myself, even when there were versions of the
feature out there already.
I used the
medic functionality from Ravir’s Demolition mod as a base for my own medic.
Even though the way a medic works in Rifle Platoon is quite different, the
animations used to show you’re healing or getting healed, and the basic idea of
the medic code, are his.
Some of the
features, most notably the damage dropoff system, I discussed on the IWNation
forums, to get
Finally, I’d
like to thank my clan mates, especially Frags, Pirate, Thor, Mystie and Dune,
for helping me test stuff.
If you feel
you deserve named credit for whatever reason, be sure to contact me! It’s not
my intent to steal other people’s code or ideas (as opposed to using them and
giving credit for it that is – as a programmer I know the value of code reuse).
Contact details
The best
way to reach me is probably by posting on the IWNation forums (http://www.iwnation.com/Forums/index.php),
preferably the modding ones.
For private
discussions you can e-mail me on pkortlevers@hotmail.com.
I’m not really into PM’ing on the forums I visit, so don’t expect a quick reply
if you PM me ;-).