Survival 2.0

by Benoit

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Uploaded Jul 28th, 2020 for Marathon Infinity

Description

I released a new survival script for marathon infinity based on the first one made by MegaByte.

In This Edition:

  • Continuous wave of aliens, rather than round based combat.

  • The number of spawned aliens is capped at 50, in order to avoid AI frozen monsters.

  • Almost every type of monsters are used. They spawn from the easiest to the hardest to fight.

  • Bobs are included to help the player. A random invincibility power up will also spawn in the map to call in bobs when picked up.

  • The script works on almost all maps. Aliens can sometimes spawn in unreachable places but the script will handle this. Just ignore it. The script works better on some maps.

  • Players health will regenerate after some time if they're not taking damage.

The rest of the rules should be the same that in the first survival. Including reviving mates, if everyone dies the game ends,...

Some settings can also be modified in the lua script like regenerating life, bob powerup, dead body boucing, ...

I advise to play in normal mode until 3 or 4 players. It will be hard enough. Major damage is good for 4 to 6 players and total carnage for more.

Warning : Do not host it with HD Monsters Texture or it will crash. The game must load all monster collections and HD Monsters Texture will cause an insufficient ram error.

Also do not host on any maps that are extremely large or small because monster generation is based on the area and size of each level.

Thanks to aquateenhgrfrce for his suggestions and his help for testing the script.

Version 1.7

1.2 : A survival generator has been implemented. You can now customize the survival by choosing your opponents, your allies, the different levels of difficulty and the probability of spawning for each monster. You will find it in the zip folder with the survival script and the folder "Ressources" containing images for the generator. You need Java to execute it. Place the application Survival_Generator.jar in the same folder that the folder "Ressources" then you can run it.

1.3 : Ask it and you got it. I made updates for the application just for you WindBreaker :D You can now load an existing survival file in the application to make modifications. You can also edit the time of a round. But you can only load survival scripts which have been created with the generator and which have not been manually modified (except for the settings of course) That means you can't load the original survival 2.0 script but you can load the one in the actually zip folder which has been generated with the application.

1.3.1 : The display of the timer after 1 hour of gameplay has been fixed. Thanks HailErdogan to have found that bug.

1.4 : Monsters dead animation has been fixed. If you noticed when a monster dies, his body does not move and can sometimes be frozen, floating in the air. Same thing for the drones/juggernauts which often explode in the air. All is properly working with this version. These corrections also improve the fluidity of the game, that's why I really advise you to use this version.

Addition : a new functionnality has also been implemented with this version. (disabling/enabling in the settings of the script) You can teleport to the plateform you are aiming by pressing the microphone key. You need your oxygen bar full to use it and teleport will drain it. The bar will fill up with the time.

1.5 : Monsters won't spawn anymore in unreachable areas except for maps which don't have hill. In this case, the script will work like for the version 1.4.

1.5.1 : - Disconnected players are not displayed anymore with the minimal display. - Sometimes the character of a player who get disconnected could stay alive, he now correctly dies. - When you generate a script with allies major or minor aliens and play it with an opposite difficulty, for instance, minor aliens with total carnage difficulty, only major aliens will spawn and they won't be friendly. This has been fixed.

1.6 : - Minor bugs fixed. - Bug with the generator's performance fixed. - Added the possibility to choose the number of aliens by setting the options in the lua script. - The name and the health of the target you are aiming are now displayed. Red for ennemies, green for allies. - The score's calcul has been reviewed. It increases by dealing damages to ennemies and killing them. It decreases by dealing damages to allies and killing them. Revive a mate and kill yourself will also change your score.

1.7 : - Added missing monsters "Tick" in the generator (minor, major and kamikaze) as suggested by Tycho X. - Added possibility to group monster families by team in the generator by right-clicking on a monster to attribute him a color (see screens). Monsters with the same color are on the same team. Which means enemies or allies with different colors will fight each other. If no color are attributed, it works by default "Ally vs Enemies". This was also suggested by Tycho X. - Monsters teleport in the map instead of spawning from nowhere. - Small other improvements with monster spawning.

Comment: - If you want to use the generator to make your own script with the script's latest version, you obviously need to use the latest version of the generator. - If you want to upgrade a version of a custom survival script you made, just load it in the generator and regenarate it to be upgraded to the last version.

Since the original game doesn't allow more than 32 active ennemies in the same time. I recommand you to change it. Especialy if you play big maps with a lot of aliens or if you want to change manualy the number of aliens as explained in the 1.6 section. For that, go into your marathon folder, script folder, open marathon infinity.mml with your text editor and replace the number paths value = "32" by the number you want (power of 2 and max 512). If there is no such thing in the file, you have to add it yourself like this:

<dynamic_limits> <paths value="128"/> </dynamic_limits>

inside the <marathon> tag.

Let me know if you find some bugs or if you have suggestions.

Answer to helviusrufus: Haha indeed. Sorry for that and thanks for you feedback. I focused on the generator and forgot to upload the new version of the script with it. You could have still upgrade yours by loading it in the generator 1.7 and regenerating it. I have added the script in the archive but it's possible you don't see it right now if you browser cached your previous download. If so you will have to either wait or download if from a different browser or delete your browser cache.

7 Reviews

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

It's there now

helviusrufus on Jul 30th, 2020, Version 1.7

It's there now. I don't have java and just experimented with some minor changes manually just to see what'd happen. One o my resistances to changes is that the enemy really doesn't care about your preferences, so mostly I just fight against whatever comes along. It's good fun and I doubt that any changes I did would make it any better. Also, making changes directly teaches me how lua works. It's a multi purpose package.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

AWOL

helviusrufus on Jul 30th, 2020, Version 1.7

There is no script in the download, just pgn files. The 5 star is for the older version which I have and use.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

Brilliant

Vice on Oct 27th, 2019, Version 1.6

Brilliant script; dare I say, all I've ever wanted.

Just a few things:

1) I noticed the Ticks (Energy, Oxygen, Kamikaze) were missing. Having those added would be nice as those units are sometimes replaced with customs.

2) Alignment. I understand it is a neat feature to be able to define friend and foe by simply selecting the units you want. However I have two issues with this: for one, the script does not allow you to mix units which would normally fight together, i.e. pit BOBs against VacBOBs. Furthermore, this dumbs down combat to a basic 'player + allies' vs 'enemy'. This means that units which under normal circumstances would kill each other don't. This bugs me especially as I want a "UESC vs Pfhor vs Salinger/Dangi" scenario – a free-for-all of sorts.

Anyways, I am now officially rambling. Great script, 10/10 would recommend, hope to maybe see an update sometime again.

EDIT: the solution to point 2) would be to have an option to turn off auto-alignments and let the map/game's .phyA take care of business.

  • Currently 1/5 Stars.

not conclusive

tyhy1 on Sep 3rd, 2016, Version 1.6

thx for creating this but i dont have the knowledge to get it to work.

i dont know where to place the .lua file and thus cant give it a good review...

what would be nice is to have it have a little ''starters'' guide in the next version.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

Surprising Addition to an Improved Script

windbreaker on May 23rd, 2016, Version 1.3

Survival 2.0 manages to improve on some of the problems presented in Megabyte's script, by eliminating rounds and implementing continuous waves, as well as tweaking enemy balance and adding Bobs. The slow build in difficulty up to the rocket juggernauts is more rewarding and engaging in my opinion. Having the ability to call in Bobs for reinforcements adds another layer to the game as well, and has rekindled my own and others' interest in the survival gametype.

However, the biggest addition to this version is Ben's survival script generator, which allows the player to easily design and implement their own survival scripts. While still somewhat limited at this point (you can't open existing scripts as far as I know), the user interface is pretty intuitive, and the ability to customize your own survival script is worth the price of admission on its own. So far I haven't run into any problems with it. Well worth the download, and good job Benoit!

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

I like shooting pfhor

HailErdogan on May 13th, 2016, Version 1.2

Pew pew. This is fun and gives me shit to do when I don't want to write my homework. I can't survive for 5 minutes once the red s'pht'kr appear.

Seriously, this got me and my brother back into Marathon. Me likey.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

great stuff

aquateenhgrfrce on Mar 4th, 2016, Version 1.1

You took survival from its original form and made it 10x better. Completely alien from the original script, even the code doesn't resemble the original code at all.

Having a continuous stream of aliens definitely adds to the tension of the gameplay requiring much more attention to team effort. Also the addition to bobs to help out the team is a nice touch.

Its progressively climbing difficulty greatly adds to the challenge of the gameplay. No more 30 min slug and chug fests until the players tired out that plagued the old survival script, instead a slow build up of harder opponents that requires some bit of strategy and teamwork. Most games only last about 12 mins, which is good because people tend to get tired of long and repetitive fighting.

Another good thing about this script is that the player can no longer just camp and blast aliens from a safe zone on any map. Players are always kept on their toes and constantly moving in order to survive.

Just one thing, the upper display text sometimes gets cut-off for windowed mode players such as myself. Not really much you can do about unless if there is a way to have the text create a new-line lua. Also I still think that the call-in-bob powerups should be something other than an invincibility powerup.

Other than that, my main gripes are due to the limitations of the games engine and are totally beyond your control.(i.e. needing to limit the amount of aliens because A1's engine only allows for 32 active monsters at the same time, something that shouldn't even be an issue with today's hardware, and not turning off angry bobs that feel betrayed because lua doesn't handle anything like that)

5/5

12 Screenshots

Pink monsters will fight yellow monsters here

Screenshot titled "Pink monsters will fight yellow monsters here"

Attribute a team to a family of monsters

Screenshot titled "Attribute a team to a family of monsters"