What is jawnmode?
JawnMode is a few tweaks to QW to promote additional skills and remove
randomness that negates existing skills. You can toggle it in mods that
support it (KTX supports it from me) with the command "jawnmode" in the
console, if you want to try it.
Read more here.

After reading the link above, these changes has been made by me:
* Your xy-speed is preserved through teleporters and is capped according to a cvar k_teleport_cap (use /teleportcap <percent to subtract from original speed>, a good value is 24.
* Lowered SNG damage to 16, was 18.
* Increased SSG damage (84 is max, was 64), increased SSG reload time (0.8 s, was 0.7 s).
* Reverted armor absorption rates for YA and RA, only GA is now changed (0.4 instead of 0.3).
* When you're gibbed, you'll not be able to respawn instantly (the same 900 ms wait time applies there).
* Fairpacks (drop last weapon fired) enabled. [disputed and disabled in the latest version]
* New "fair spawns" spawnmode, read at http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/viewpoll.php?pid=23616#p23616.

Why jawnmode?
To promote a more fair environment without random being a factor in the
gameplay. The mode can be altered later on for improvements, for example
I'm thinking about adding this as a hardcoded setting too. Also stuff like this
could use a tryout.

It could be tried out one season or so, post your thoughts about it.
Remember, it's about having fun.

yes

No.

When trying to introduce something unpopular to QW, new maps in this case, it makes no sense to introduce something even more unpopular (changing physics/gameplay mechanics). That's like so kenya^2 !

My thoughts exactly! Try introducing these things in a TB3 tourney, chances are skyhigh that the people playing in those tourneys are conservative players in general that don't like to try new things.

In my opinion it is quite right time to see a tournament in this mode. I'd also like pm_airstep be enabled very much.

The QW scene is very conservative and not really open to change. Thus it makes no sense to introduce two new things at once. I personally love the the idea of the kenya tourneys but trying new gameplay mechanics as well is too much for me, especially because i think that some randomness is good. "Luck is a skill", you know?

There is already a game and community with all these features - it's called Challenge Promode Arena.

Oh, an irony!
Hehe, in the end, you all have your scepticism, but if such tourney starts, some players join it and they will have fun and maybe they give some feedback to improving the mod. And that is the point.

i like some parts of jawnmode.

However i dont like the faster nails for duels, as it wouldnt be as good bunny-blocker on lets say dm6,dm4

On maps with large open areas (cmt4,cmt3 comes to mind) faster nails could make these weapons more usefull.

When it comes to faster nails, I'm thinking of large maps like DM3, just to take a TB3 example. On kenya maps (that tend to be much larger) it's more useful though, especially on bunny-maps with alot of ramps and long corridors.
The non-random stuff is just an obviously neccessary tweak, you can't argue about this with any other argument than "it's been there all the time", and then you are a hypocrite if you're playing with r_fullbrightSkins and any other client than QWCL etc.

Better GA would make stuff more interesting as well, as you can actually gain something from taking the time to snatch it before attacking, I know that on 2on2 DM6 you don't usually wait for the GA because it gives too little for the 20 second wait.

How about fairpacks? Again this is a more interesting mode to play with since it completely eliminates weapon scripts and activates another skill: Shoot SG before dying or you'll end up dropping RL.

Removal of death animations that differ in time (anything other than the more common 900 ms) have been stripped out, also something completely obvious to me since you'll be able to get a skill of spawning exactly when the animation is over if the animation is the same time length, always.

..and they have much more than qw to offer, ctf for example

And a DM mode that changes every second month. Enough offtopic though. :p

GA is still important now though as if you grab it, you can survive one full direct rocket hit compared to if you didn't have it. It's the small things that adds up to a bigger picture.

Made some more modifications to jawnmode in latest KTX:

* Your xy-speed is preserved through teleporters and is capped according to a cvar k_teleport_cap (use /teleportcap <percent to subtract from original speed>
* Fallbunny has the same cap-feature (k_fallbunny_cap and /fallbunnycap), for compromising the discussion about it on or off and perhaps adding some more skill to it.

I tried /teleportcap 25 and /fallbunnycap 5, seems like pretty good values.

I'm probably going to add a "weighted spawn-system" too that basically makes sure you spawn evenly on all spawns, a feature I personally think would make a positive difference. I can go into more specifics on how it works after it's done.

What are your thoughts on this?

heh

when a feature negates skill, it's a bad feature cause it negates skill
when a feature promotes skill, it's a bad feature cause it's new

In this point your mod tries to go into too many directions. You already have 1) remove randomness 2) increase power of existing items like *nailgun, green armor and now you are adding completely new skill. That's ok, but now I don't know what are you plans with your mod, you think that it will become new standard or that will co-exist with existing mods? In my opinion if you add this, it will never become a new standard, because it adds completely new skill and if you put a switch/limit on it, noone will use the switch/limit.
About fallbunny - take a deep breath and force only one solution on it imho, otherwise the discussions about one of the most unimportant gameplay features will never end.


That sentence doesn't say absolutely anything.
In every good spawn system it has to be easy to understand
- how does the algorithm work in detail,
- what are the probabilities for any scenario in the game and
- how it affects the gameplay

In the current spawn system:
- the algorithm is easy to understand, howeever noone knows how all those spawn modes work
- the probabilities are easy to calculate because the random function is very well known (I'm talking about the maths side of it, that's important)
- it is known how it affects the gameplay because it's used for many years

In the current system you also do spawn evenly on all spawns! - yes you do, because that's how probability works.

What I'm trying to say - when I've made my own "smart spawn point probabilities" system, the algorithm was simple and the probabilities of some scenarios were simple too. But I'm not able to answer for example "What is the probability, that a player will spawn on point A twich as much then on point B."
You can answer that for current spawn system, it's some not hard maths, but if you start designing your algorithm wrongly, you will not be able to answer such questions.

I only like the fairpacks

The plans for now is to try it in FTK a bit and see how the response is, and either:
1) Place it into rules, or
2) Make a different league

I'm thinking that FFA in particular would be fine with this mode, because of the nature of FFA. 1on1 etc however is harder and requires more thought and planning for it to work out, but I'm hoping that it will make its way into KTK eventually. For now I'm adding these things as experiments to see how it works out and advertise it so people know that the mode exists.


The reasons why I didn't explain it further was:
* It's not implemented yet
* I didn't think anyone would care about details
* I was tired

But here goes:

Each player gets their own set of spawn point weights, for example for 6 spawn points of the map, you (individually) get a list of them all set to 1:
1 1 1 1 1 1

Now when you're going to spawn, it checks all points for newly spawned players (every new spawnmodel does this btw) and sets NUMSPOTS to how many free spots are available.
Let's say all spots are free for our first spawn, it now creates a random number RND = [0..NUMSPOTS-1] = [0..6-1] = [0..5]
Let's say it picks 3.14.
Now the algorithm picks a spot based on this simplified algorithm:

Try SPOT #1: Subtract SPOT #1's weight from RND, is RND <= 0?
If so, pick this spot, or else repeat for SPOT #2, SPOT #3, etc etc...

SPOT = SPOT #1;
while (RND >= 0)
{
RND = RND - SPOT_WEIGHT;

BESTSPOT = SPOT;
SPOT = SPOT->NEXT;
}

We can see that in the example it will do this:
Subtract SPOT #1's weight (1) and get 2.14 (not <= 0 so don't pick SPOT #1)
Subtract SPOT #2's weight (1) and get 1.14 (not <= 0 so don't pick SPOT #2)
Subtract SPOT #3's weight (1) and get 0.14 (not <= 0 so don't pick SPOT #3)
Subtract SPOT #4's weight (1) and get -0.86 (this is <= 0 so pick SPOT #4).
SPOT #4 is picked!

Now it takes the weight of spot #4, divides it by 2 (this was your idea Johnny ), and distributes the rest amongst the other spots, like so:
1.1 1.1 1.1 0.5 1.1 1.1

So the sum is always the number of spawn points on the map, that's the point of weights.

And now the process is done, we spawn! Now when the next time you spawn comes, you'll have less probability to spawn at SPOT #4 and more probability to spawn on the other spots (equal probability in this example).
After a while it could look like this:
0.1 0.6 0.8 1.9 2.4 0.2

Which again, means that you have a low spawn-count on SPOT #5, and therefore have a higher probability to spawn there in the future.

So Johnny, you say that I can't tell the probability of spawning here? I beg to differ:
0.1 / 6 ~= 1.7%
0.6 / 6 = 10.0%
0.8 / 6 ~= 13.3%
1.9 / 6 ~= 31.7%
2.4 / 6 = 40.0%
0.2 / 6 ~= 3.3%

Which brings -> 1.7% 10.0% 13.3% 31.7% 40.0% 3.3%

Remark: The numbers are actually floats, so they're not limited to just one decimal, I just use it for simplification.

This was written kinda hasty, hope it's not too messy to grasp...

As I've said, the algorithm description is only one third of what makes good spawn system. What this algorithm only does in my opinion, is that it decreases the variance. But can you proove it?

No.

I don't understand why randomness should be reduced, anyway. It just adds variance to the game. While it might give a slight underdog better chances to win, it does not _negate_ skill. It is not unfair (as long as random number generator isn't biased ). And reacting to random events is a skill too.

I agree with Kalma. Why delete all the random fun

To be honest I the changes don't seem to affect the gameplay too much. Only way I could notice that jawnmode was used on FTK3 was the Jawnmode On text at countdown. I would still like to play with original setting in the future (that includes fallbunny on).

I want fairpacks!!!!

I'm a long-time proponent of "unfairpacks": drop the current weapon if it was being fired at the time of death, otherwise drop nothing.

This is exactly what happens when shotgun scripts are used.

so if u have 0 rox and RL and want teammate to sg you for the pack?

wouldnt be possible with your method tonik.

However i think that would be the best solution. Or even better. Players can toggle drop-selected/drop-if-being-fired

I think he was talking about FFA mod willgurth and not 4on4

Here's an idea, you could make it drop the current weapon in a teamkill

EDIT: oops, you can't select a weapon without ammo in QW

Sassa: I'm looking for a solution for all game modes. I find it annoying that people have to employ client-side scripts to be competitive. I would be happy to see a ruleset where shotgun scripts would be redundant.

Easier configuration = easier to get into the game for a noob.

Happy to see some ideas and comments here!

It's possible to make jawnmode act different in different game modes, this is kinda my plan. For example, visible packs could either be enabled for DMM3 and disabled for DMM1, or enabled for FFA, and disabled for all other types. Give some suggestions to what you think should be enabled/disabled when a certain variable/mode/gametype is set.
I agree fully with you Tonik that there should be a solution to weaponscripts, fairpacks was one candidate, you have another which I must say sounds better in tactical games (4on4). In FFA I could implement something that drops ALL weapons and one ammopack, what do you think?

BTW, the airstep code seems much nicer now so it will probably be inserted as enabled in jawnmode. Would be cool if vb could look here as well, the creator of jawnmode, but he's nowhere to be found.

Now after playing a few rounds with jawnmode i must day i don't like it. At least not in ffa. Yes, it is fun to zip up/down stairs at amazing speed but speed is not everything. I think mappers not only make stairs to provide access to other levels but also to slow down the map in certain places to promote more tactical play.
But what is really annoying with jawnmode is that the lower tier weapons got much better and the armors nerfed. This leads to gameplay that is terribly reminding me of the cess you see in Q3A. QW ffa is fast and hectic anyway but with jawnmode turned on you die much faster than usually and all the time you have the feeling that you just cannot do anything against it.

I'd like some clarification:

"JawnMode is a few tweaks to QW to promote additional skills and remove randomness that negates existing skills."

Please tell me why the following has been changed:

NG: Nail speed increased from 1000 to 1800.
SNG: Nail speed increased from 1000 to 1800.
Lavaballs: Removed in JawnMode.
Dynamic lights: No pent glow on spawn in DMM4.

How does the above reduce randomness, and why change those things?

and the biggie:

GA: Protection now 50% (1:1), was 30%
RA: Protection now 75% (1:3), was 80%
YA: Protection now 67% (1:2), was 60%

why?