Originally posted by Kerry:

Guess I know what I'll be doing over the holiday weekend...

I will love you forever... no homo lol.

I have a unit test folder with a distribution of simple time-profiled cases. If anything seems to take more time than it should, I'll be sure to post a bug report, although it may take awhile for me to get back to you on the updates (I'm a freshman in college-- I'm 19-- and taking summer school b/c of my accelerated medical track).

My friend says he would appreciate:

- Spawn bots
- Kick bots
- Change player model

Okay, thanks Kerry. ChangeLevel() would let us do some awesome things. Zelda-style maps for example. Players can gather around a store's door, one guy "uses" the door, and the map changes to the campaign's store map. All we need to do is pass the return location and map name via SaveTable(). This even lets us to re-use maps from other maps-- kind of like "modular" mapping. What's fantastic is that if I wanted to create an _enormous_ map (like in Skyrim), I can break up the map into visible chunks and transition players between different maps-- essentially creating one giant world. My friend also wants to use ChangeLevel() for his Half Life 2 -style map where maps transition without saferooms.


More function ideas...

- z_spawn auto (instead of specifying position, let the director pick out the pos)
- Fake client command (non-networked / server executed)
- Emit sound
- Drop spit at location
- Drop molotov at location
- Vomit on player
- Bile player
- Respawn player (i.e. CTerrorPlayer::RoundRespawn)
- Defib player
- Revive incapped player
- Set black/white count
- Set glow color
- Set player movement speed (currently we can "slow" players down by setting the friction kv, but can't speed them up)
- Get entity owner (netprop m_hOwnerEntity)

... and I have a lot more if you want lol.

Awesome! Thank you very much...

EDIT: Any news on netprops and ChangeLevel()? Is it fair for me to expect them?

Once upon a time, there was Microsoft. They killed the start menu and forced people to use a tablet screen on a desktop computer. The end result: Windows 8. The moral? There were a lot of suggestions that could have made Windows 8 a success. There were suggestions that would have given the developers more capability to create incredible software. There were suggestions that would have made Windows 8 the new Windows XP. Yet, Microsoft trashed it all, thanks to their preconceived notions about the results of the "Customer Improvement Program."

I hate to sound pessimistic, so I apologize if I come across as rude / angry (in fact I'm not angry or trying to be rude-- I love the new updates in the beta). Thankfully, Valve is nothing like Microsoft. All I can say is that my expectation was far too high. I thought that I could trash both HammerCode and SourceMod to make my maps/mods fully independent. EMS gave me a lot more to work with (I no longer had to detour so many functions on the c++ end and keep up with the signature scanning / vfunc table on IDA), but the darn vscripts always leave out one or two essential functions. I mean, the API even teases us by giving a set function without a get function.

Overall, the updates are great, and satisfactory to an extent (I only speak on the programming side-- I have no experience with the new workshop yet). After all, there are dozens upon dozens of new updates, fixes, and functions, which is very appreciable for a game that is almost 4 years old. Yet, the things that were desperately wanted by several ambitious developers were never given. That's akin to shooting oneself in the foot because who knows, the modders may have created some wildly popular mod that would in the end make the company richer. I'm only dreaming of course.

I really like the new updates, and I am happy that Valve tries hard to keep things fresh. That's why I have stuck with Steam for so long (even though I barely play games anymore). I only wish that they would reconsider some of the stuff here. Seeing how they're rolling _out_ of the beta soon AFAIK, it's sad that the requested functions won't happen.

That comprises my review.

I found another bug, but I won't even bother reporting it, because it probably will get ignored like usual.

I also confirm:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Left 4 Dead 2 Beta\left4dead2_dlc3\pak01_dir.vpk loaded.
Search for 'toilet_glass.mdl' returned 0 results.
Search for 'shrub_oak1.mdl' returned 0 results.
Search for 'tree_birch1.mdl' returned 0 results.
Search for 'bookshelf.mdl' returned 0 results.

Adding bots can be done with engine->CreateFakeClient(), then setting the "classname" KV to SurvivorBot, and lastly setting the model. All three can be done quite easily because the functions are already there. I really wish they would make those functions available for modders to use, along with the netprop function and engine->ChangeLevel(). Sadly I don't think anyone from Valve even read the VScript Suggestions thread.

Adding netprop support should be rather easy. Creating a C function is documented here[www.squirrel-lang.org], and it's pretty self explanatory; secondly, creating a Set Netprop function is as easy as looking up the prop in the send table and datamap and modifying it, optionally caching the offset for increased efficiency on multiple lookups. Takes like 30 seconds to code, and it's well tested (take a look at SourceMod if no one believes me).

If there's a reason why Valve won't provide such a function, I'd really love to know... Maybe it wasn't in their original roadmap / plan and I totally understand that (time constraints, budgets, etc). Still, it makes me kind of upset. I was really hoping they would add a get/set netprop function and engine->ChangeLevel() too. My great ideas for my campaign are down the drain without those.

The addition of a game event listener was very effective, but without some basic commands, I will still have to ask my users to install SourceMod or HammerCode for simple things.

Well, hopefully Valve will provide more compatibility in Source2 so modders like us can make Valve rich by modding things for other players for free.

Originally posted by shotgunefx:

Still would really love to be able to set/reset incap count.

The m_currentReviveCount netprop can be used... if Valve provides a netprop function.

Sadly, I don't think that may happen anymore, seeing how things are appearing to be wrapping up (I may be wrong). Well, that leaves my VSLib permanently in the dumps... I wasted so many hours on that-- makes me upset :(