Difference between revisions of "Serpentine"

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'''The text below is from the original Serpentine Homepage:'''
'''Some of the content below is from the original Serpentine Homepage'''


'''Serpentine is a conversion for Unreal.'''  
'''Serpentine is a conversion for Unreal.'''  
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So what are you waiting for? Go download it already. ;)  
So what are you waiting for? Go download it already. ;)  


'''FireArms101:'''


Listen up, troops, this is your range instructor speaking.
* [[Serpentine Introduction]]
 
I hear you drove the final nail in the coffin of the Nazi regime - you've battled the alien menaces at Phobos and Deimos, and you've run wild through Hell itself. You've fearlessly slain Fiends and Shamblers, gave old Chthon a buzz, and gibbed Shub-Niggurath down to chunks small enough to dine on. You've kicked so much Skaarj ass that your boots are starting to smell like lizard meat, and you've singlehandedly won more gunfights than you can remember. You're probably thinking you know your way around a first person shooter pretty well by now.
 
Well, that was then, and this is now... the times have changed.
 
Back then, handling your gun was simple point and click. Couldn't have been easier - hell, you even had a glowing crosshair on your HUD. I'm afraid Serpentine doesn't work that way. These are real guns, and real guns call for a bit of real tactics and training.
Reloading (or, "Bang Bang Bang Click Damn Damn Damn!!!")
 
Each gun, regardless of the feed system, has a maximum capacity for ammuntition. The Ithaca holds 4 shells, the Remington 700 holds 5 rounds, the 1911 holds 7+1, the Glock holds 17+1, the Aug holds 20, and the MP5, 30.
 
These aren't movie guns - you know, the ones that you can fire full-auto for most of an action thriller before running empty? Serpentine is rooted more firmly in reality, and limited capacity is a fact of life.
 
Your ammunition meter on your HUD (if you have it enabled) shows you the amount of loose ammunition you have in your pocket, for the currently selected gun. Notice, it doesn't drop when you pull the trigger - it drops when you reload. You might have a 0 showing, and still have a full clip - it would simply mean you had nothing more to reload with.
 
If you reload before the gun is completely empty - you automatically scavenge the remaining ammunition from the gun back out into your pocket, so you never lose any ammo. Thus, if you can afford the time spent vulnerable, reloading whenever you get a chance to is a very valid tactic, ensuring your gun is topped off for the next firefight.
 
Reloading itself is accomplished by binding a key to button bExtra3 - for example,
set input X button bExtra3
would bind your X key to be reload. In the case of gun with a removable magazine, you'd tap it once to change clips - if the gun forces you to reload it one at a time (like the Ithaca and the Remington) you'd have to hit X for each round you wanted stuffed in. This is a pain in the ass, and the chief advantage of a having a detachable magazine, although it does allow you to pause halfway through a reload if someone interrupts you.
 
Note that occasionally it's faster to switch to a full gun than reload the one that you're using - and it tends to suck to switch to a weapon to find that you left it empty. When you get a breather, it's often wise to reload every gun in your inventory, just in case.
"Plus One"
 
You'll often see us designate a weapon as holding 7+1 rounds, or 17+1 - the +1 means that one round can be carried in the chamber. Some would claim that this is a dangerous way to carry a pistol - it certainly does keep it closer to readiness at all times. The practical upshot of +1 is shown by this example...
 
I have a totally empty Colt 1911a1 (0 in the magazine, 0 in the chamber). I slap a clip into it. (I now have 7 in the magazine and 0 in the chamber) Then I rack the slide, which takes 1 from the magazine and chambers it. Now we have 6 in the magazine and 1 in the chamber, right? Well, if I reload -again-, pulling the clip, stuffing another round in it to top it up, and then slapping the clip back in, we now have 7 in the magazine and 1 in the chamber - 8 rounds total.
 
So, if the pistol is shot all the way empty, until it locks open, you'll get 7 rounds when you reload. Reload *again*, and you get the 8th round.
 
Or, if you reload any time before the gun is totally empty (i.e. it still has 1 in the chamber) you'll go straight to 8. This is a reason to pace yourself, and reload whenever possible - BEFORE the gun is empty.
The Trigger (or, more importantly, the Disconnector)
 
In reality, if you pick up a loaded 1911, aim it downrange, and squeeze the trigger, it will go off. Once. Bang, and the slide flies back, ejecting the empty, comes forward, chambering the next round from the magazine... then it waits patiently for you, even though you're still squeezing the trigger. To make it fire again, you have to RELEASE the trigger, then pull it *again*.
 
This is due to a very handy little bit of machinery inside the trigger group called the Disconnector. Were it not for the disconnector, the pistol would be fully automatic. Full auto with a 7 round clip is ridiculous - it's only barely useful with a clip of 30, and it doesn't come into it's own until you've got 100+ round belts.
 
In Serpentine, your fire button IS the trigger. The same rules apply - hold it, and a pistol fires once. Release it, then hit it again for the next shot. You can happily walk around for as long as you like with your finger mashing the trigger - it won't do you a bit of good, unless the gun is capable of fully automatic fire.
Accuracy
 
The one cardinal rule of the rifleman is, "Only Hits Count". This applies to every firearm in Serpentine. (The RPG-7 and the grenades remain exceptions to this otherwise universal rule.) Unlike some games or popular movies, simply unleashing a massive torrent of firepower across a room doesn't generally result in kills. A miss is a miss, and missing someone 30 times with an MP5 will hurt them less than hitting them once with a Glock. Keep your cool!
 
Accuracy is a learned skill in Serpentine, just as in reality. Guns have sights for a REASON - learn to use them. Using the sights and getting a properly aligned sight picture is the single major difference between gangstas capping their own buddies in the ass more often than their enemies, and IPSC champions making 4 hits each to 3 man-sized targets (that's 12 aimed shots total, in a drill called El Presidante), in under 7 seconds - counting a fast draw and a mandatory reload in the middle.
 
The sights are your friend. While you may be able to estimate the point of impact while hip-shooting, you'll never be as accurate as you can be by pulling up a sight picture... besides, why make things harder on yourself? Altfire will bring the gun up to where you can use the targetting system (if it has one). From this view, you'll be able to tell precisely where the gun is pointed. The down side of this stance is that your mobility is somewhat reduced, and your field of view is partially blocked. So, you'll want to use it at the right times - when you've got a moment to go for a steadier shot.
 
Now, just being able to see where the gun is pointed helps a lot. Once you get the knack of aligning the sights over the target, you'll be fairly competent. However, it's not the whole picture. Bullets, while fast, do NOT travel instantaneously - thus, you have to compensate for two more factors if you want to be a crack shot.
 
One is lead (Rhymes with 'Bleed'. As in, leading ahead of the target. Not as in the metal that bullets are made of). Because the bullet takes time to reach it's target, the target may have moved slightly by the time the bullet arrives. In long-range shooting with slow bullets against fast targets, you may find you have to aim ahead of the person and shoot at where they will be by the time the bullet arrives. This is a skill you may have developed back as far as Doom, to tag running people with a rocket.
 
The second factor is drop. The bullet is effected by gravity during the entire course of it's flight between the barrel and the target. This means that the path of the bullet curves to form a nice ballistic trajectory. If you aim directly at a feature on a distant clifface with your .45, squeeze off a round and watch, you'll see that the point of impact is many yards below where the gun was pointed. The slower the bullet is moving and the farther away the target is, the more you will have to aim above your target's head to compensate for this effect. This aiming above is called "Hold-over".
 
Different cartridges have different effects. A .45 is a slow, heavy bullet, which means it does lots of damage but requires lots of lead and holdover at range. A 9mm is a light, fast bullet, which reduces the amount of damage it can do but makes it more accurate at longer ranges. The rifle calibers are extremely fast by comparison to the pistol rounds. (Detailed specifications of each of these calibers can be found in the technical weapon data section.)
Long-Range Shooting
 
Guns in Serpentine don't really have a maximum range - they have a maximum EFFECTIVE range where your odds of managing to hit anyone drop too load to really be worth the attempt. Your individual Maximum Effective Range will vary with your own personal marksmanship as a player. Being able to estimate range, knowing how the guns act, and how much drop and how much lead to expect at that range can all combine to let you hit someone with your .45 "way out past Fort Mudge" - a definate tactical advantage.
 
If you're looking to improve your accuracy, my advice is to practice engaging targets at different ranges with each of the guns. The Glock is a pretty flat-shooter out to intermediate range; the .45 is a pumpkin-tosser. Long-range work is pretty much impossible with the Ithaca since the shot pattern is spread so wide as to be an annoyance to your target, at best. The MP5 is not a good choice for long-range shooting; this variant fires from an open bolt, which aids cooling but significantly reduces accuracy. The Aug and the Remington 700 are both excellent choices for long range sniping since the rifle calibers offer roughly two to three times the velocity of the pistols - that means less holdover and less lead to factor in. The Remington also has the advantage of a 4x scope.
 
When shooting for accuracy, be aware of recoil - while you CAN hurry your next shot and squeeze it off while the gun is still recoiling, the accuracy of that shot will be degraded. A long string of rapid-fire has a cumulative error effect. Your maximum rate of CONTROLLED fire is achieved by waiting for the gun to make a full stop, then squeezing off the next round. This phenominon also occurs with burst and full-auto; there's a marked tendancy for the shots to spray... fine at close quarters, but highly ineffective at long range.
Speed
 
Accuracy makes up half of combat marksmanship. The second half is speed. The best way to describe the feeling of rapid, accurate fire is "Take your time, just as fast as you can.". Remember, it means NOTHING to be the fastest gun if you missed! The drill I recommend to improve your speed is to practice engaging multiple targets as rapidly as you can WITHOUT missing once. Even if you can afford the wasted ammunition, you CANNOT afford the wasted time in a genuine firefight. If you miss, you're going too fast - take a deep breath, slow down, and gradually start accellerating toward your limit again, engaging the targets in a deliberate pattern. Change patterns and targets often, otherwise you'll just be learning a specific choreographed dance, which isn't very useful in combat.
 
Always remember, hit versus miss is a much more important distinction than fast versus slow - you should only be working on your speed once you're confident with your accuracy.
Tactics
 
Lastly, rememeber that there is a tactical situation where each gun is the ideal choice, and every one of them has a role. Pick the weapon most suited to your own tastes and to the situation you find yourself in - if you've got a Glock and an Ithaca, and somebody pops up off across the courtyard from you at long range, the Glock is going to put down more damage out there than the Ithaca will. Seems funny for the little 9mm to be outdoing the hefty shotgun, but it's true - at long range. No weapon is the best, or even close, at everything - there's no magic whoop-ass-with-no -drawbacks gun in the game. We set things up that way very carefully, so that with any gun, if you can force the right situation, you can beat someone with any other gun, given a bit of skill. Tactics work both ways - use the best gun for the situation, and if you're limited to using a certain gun by preferance or necessity, then force that type of situation on your foe. Say you've only got a sniper rifle - you'd better find somewhere inaccessable with a nice view to hide out in. Or, say you've only got an MP-5... you'd better be hanging out somewhere with a lot of tight blind corners and narrow hallways.
 
Hopefully, the things I've said will help keep some of you alive out there. With enough practice, you'll all develop your own personal style - assuming of course that you don't get your frigging head blown off first.
Dismissed!




'''Weapons'''
'''Weapons'''


[[Glock 17 and MP-5 (9mm)]]
* [[Glock 17 and MP-5 (9mm)]]
 
[[Colt 1911 (.45 ACP)]]
 
[[Ithaca Stakeout (12 Gauge)]]
 
[[Steyr AUG (.223)]]
 
[[Remington 700 (.308)]]
 
[[Mark 67 Frag Grenade]]
 
[[RPG-7]]
 
 
'''The Team:'''
 
'''Bane - Unrealscript'''
 
 
Little did I know, the day I sniped my first bot in Serpentine, that I'd one day be able to officially sneak backdoors and cheats into it... ;)
 
 
Since the first time I fired up Serpentine, it has remained one of my absolute favourites among mods. So, when Unreal v2.20 once again broke Serpentine's bots, something made even worse by the fact that we were talking about the Final Beta here, I decided to try to fix them myself. When I'd actually managed to make them walk, I considered contacting the Crystalline team to see if they would be interested in implementing the tweaks into the upcoming 224 version of Serpentine.
 
 
With Aie leaving the project, I got the chance to wrap up the project, adding all the various tweaks and obscure features I'd developed. Now, "wrap up" has a terrible ring to it, especially since it would mean that many of the ideas that still remained to be implemented would never become realised. However, after seeing my virtual puppy-eyes, Latham naturally couldn't reject my suggestion to let the project remain open.
 
 
So, from hereon, make sure that any mail bombs are sent to me, and not Aie!?! as he will be completely innocent where future bugs are concerned.
 
 
Bane / Franz Kresten
 
 
'''Latham - Project Lead'''
 
 
Longhair gentlefreak, cynical idealist, and resident weapons afficianado.
 
 
Cycles. Wheels within wheels. My previous bio alluded to the cyclical nature of development, as I run the circle from enthused to burned out and back again. As the hamster wheel spun, I found I wasn't quite ready to let go of Serpentine after all.
 
 
Something of Bane's exuberance seems to have rubbed off on me, what can I say?
 
 
So, Serpentine development continues, on one condition...
 
 
If you mail me asking us to include a new weapon in Serpentine, I'll devour your still beating heart with a knife and a fork before your wide and death-glazing eyes. Just so you know. :)
 
Latham / Deric Ruhl
 
 
'''Aie!?! - Coder / Net Presence'''
 
 
Long Live Serpentine... Serpentine Rest in Peace
 
 
A History of Serpentine
 
 
I've been programming in various languages for 15 years now, including off and on professionally for the last eight. After meeting Latham in 1991 and realizing shortly thereafter that we had the same goals in what we wanted games to be like, we started trying to write our own game. You've never heard of it, nor have you heard of the 8 or 9 other titles that we built design docs for, and went about implementing the WRONG way, with the youthful idealism that hallmarks most startup development teams today.
 
 
When I picked up Unreal to try at our Memorial Day LAN party (June 1998), we were blown away by the graphics, and the texturing abilities and lighting that Unreal offered, but single player play seemed to end about 6 levels in, and we were put off by the ineffectual weapons which promoted spraying into a corridor and praying that you -MIGHT- get a hit. After everyone had gone home, I fired up UnrealED and started poking around to see what I could pull up. After two really crappy levels I concluded (like I have with every FPS in the past) that I am not a mapper. 8). Then I started playing around poking through the UnrealScript that runs the game. Right about that time, the very incomplete but hellaciously useful nevertheless Unreal documentation appeared out at Tim Sweeneys website.
 
 
Armed with the knowledge of how to create a new package, compiling and loading it into the game, I began playing around with a copy of the Automag, trying to fix all of the problems we had with the way it had felt. When I demoed the new version to Latham there was that spark of 'Kick Ass! We should go through and tweak all the weapons to play how we want'. Latham picked up his copy of Unreal the next day.
 
 
After another week or so, we had something that had most of the basics that you see in Serpentine today, the only thing missing was a new model. Latham built I don't know how many different versions of the 1911 before we finally had one that worked with Unreal. Many thanks go out to Ian Dacek who helped us get the finicky at best 3ds2unr working, and to Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart for mentioning UNMIRROR=1 one day on irc. Of course unmirror is undocumented, like all of the #exec commands that one uses to import models and textures but it solved the last big problem Latham had.
 
 
It was now almost the middle of June, and there had only been 3 other weapons released for Unreal. The Quad Shotgun which used a mesh that was left in Unreal but never used. The Double Automags, which basically had two Automags, akimbo, and another Shotgun also using the mesh from Unreal. Latham and I were looking at the then budding scene and decided that instead of keeping our new gun to ourselves, that we'd release it to the scene, and we went through and picked out a handful of weapons which we thought would be reasonably balanced, that we had decided we needed for LAN play, and built the first Serpentine Website.
 
 
After looking around, we decided to ask Unreal.org (the hand rules!) to host us... when Max and Morn saw the screenshots they offered us a spot. We told them we didn't want to p1mp our site at all until we had a download ready, because both Latham and I firmly believe that without content, TC's, PC's and other mods, are all vapour and should be working on their content, not p1mping their egos with flashy websites and such. Somehow a link to our site got out a couple days before our first release, and we were flooded with email. We released at Midnight that Friday, and set a tradition of Midnight releases with an accompanying release party in #unreal and #unrealed on Gameslink IRC.
 
 
A few weeks later came SBeta2 with the Ithaca. Shortly after that we picked up Arteris to do maps for us. One of my favorite maps 'SerpTemple' came out of that period in our development. Unfortunately within a couple of months, due to some weasel-like moves by one of the 'Corporate Style, Cookie Cutter Fan Sites' (You know who you are), Morn (which IMO just cause) became disgusted with how the scene was turning out, and closed Unreal.org. He gratiously allowed us to keep our site there until we could find a new home for it. After looking over the scene, and considering Latham's dislike of one of the admins (no longer present) at UnrealNation, and my dislike of the style of business that CriticalMass uses for its PlanetXXX series of fan sites, we asked Greygore of Unrealized.com if we could host with him. I offered to cover our bandwidth costs (which at the time consisted of a regular 200-500 downloads a day during the inbetween time of releases, and peaking at around 2000 downloads during the first four hours after the release of SBeta3. At the time, our package was roughly a meg in size, you do the math.) Greygore thought about it for a few days, since he doesn't host sites normally. When we saw him next he had decided to let us live there. We even had our own subdomain: serpentine.unrealized.com. Life was good.
 
 
SBeta4, while never released was a major turning point in Serpentine, at that stage I knew that in order to finish the project (which was looking like we might be able to do, for the first time in our history of working together) I'd have to redesign the way the code functioned. Latham decided at the same time, that a graphics overhaul was due, now that we were both immensely more comfortable with the do's and don'ts of Unreal Editting. After almost two months, we released SBeta5 and with it, the neverending gush of fanmail increased in volume. Unrealized and Serpentine had outgrown their hosting requirements, and due to some issues with the different serverside programs available, unrealized.com (and us along with it) switched hosts again, this time to besthost.net. Unfortunately, though they offered a much better deal on bandwidth and server space, and had all of the server apps we needed, they didnt offer subdomains. So after just one short release serpentine.unrealized.com was no more. We were back to plain old, boring unrealized.com/serpentine.
 
 
Somewhere between SBeta5 and SBeta6, Arteris left the group after a falling out over the future of Serpentine. Back down to just two members, we began cranking away on Beta6. Beta6 was our best release imo to date, because it showed that after 6 months in the scene, we were still able to hold our own, and with all of the weapons in, (the Aug was only a preview, and imo shouldn't have been left in the replacer tables) the end was in sight. We had introduced realistic ballistics to the gaming scene, and had pushed the emphasis finally from HopRunStrafeHaHaIKilledYou, to one of thinking, taking cover, reloading when you had time. In effect, what -we- thought an FPS should be like.
 
 
Unreal 220 was released a few weeks after SBeta6, and with it, broke Serpentine such that it was unplayable. Epic promised the community a new version, 221 which would fix 220's bugs, but would break compatibility again. We told our fans... 'Wait... What good will it do for us to release a 220 compatible version, if Epic's releasing 221 any time now, and it'll break again?' By February, patience was growing thin, and I started fixing Serpentine to function with 220, and again, the impending release of 221 was close, so I put Serpentine aside to wait for the release. By the middle of March, with 221 still very much vapourware, Latham and I decided that with Serpentine -><- close to being finished, we would go ahead and release a 220 version. After all... nobody besides a select few alphatesters had been able to play Serpentine since December. By this time, my disgust with the entire scene peaked, and I wanted out... no matter what. Over a feverpitched couple of days, I finished all of the changes for 220, fixed the Augs behaviour, re-implemented the sound syncing and such for the animations, and innumerable other changes. The results of that are what you see in SerpFinal. There are a few changes I made after sending it to the testers (splashes for brash, and cavitation trails for grenade shrapnel and such underwater), but rather than delay the release any longer, I am holding those features for the inevitable maintenance release when Epic finally does release the next version, which was to be called 221, and then 222, and now as of yesterday (as I write this) 223.
 


Every version of Unreal, has broken the behaviour of Serpentine in one manner or another, bot ai, walking while aimed, there are lots of different little kludges we've had to pull, a lot of inelegant code written, to make Serpentine play as it does, while staying within the limits of Unreal. It could use another complete code rewrite... but after ten months of continuous burn, ecstasy, depression, withdrawal, repeat and the way the Unreal Scene has gone, it is time for an end to it all.
* [[Colt 1911 (.45 ACP)]]


* [[Ithaca Stakeout (12 Gauge)]]


Perhaps one day, I'll be enthused with Unreal again... but I doubt I'll start another project using it, unless it is with a commercially licensed copy of the engine, and financial backing. That will probably never happen, so don't hold your breath.
* [[Steyr AUG (.223)]]


* [[Remington 700 (.308)]]


If any of you would like to reach me, my address is below... I probably won't answer any more email regarding Serpentine, no offense. Also any requests for new weapons, or continuation of Serpentine will be read amusedly, and then deleted. 8) Serpentine has been a learning experience for me, and has finally given me the confidence that I can see a design spec through to completion. Hopefully it won't soon be forgotten.
* [[Mark 67 Frag Grenade]]


* [[RPG-7]]


Aie!?! / Michael Flannery


'''Team'''
* [[Serpentine Team]]


----


'''FAQ:'''
'''FAQ:'''


'''How do I reload?'''
* How do I reload?


Since Serpentine doesn't have a menu for that, you need to enter a command manually into console:
Since Serpentine doesn't have a menu for that, you need to enter a command manually into console:
Line 207: Line 47:


"set input middlemouse button bExtra3"
"set input middlemouse button bExtra3"
[[Category:Mods]]

Latest revision as of 17:36, 10 September 2011

Some of the content below is from the original Serpentine Homepage

Serpentine is a conversion for Unreal.

It centers around the concept of replacing the Unreal weapons with modern real-world firearms. It moves the emphasis of play off lightning reflexes and dodging, on to tactical thinking and guile. The goal was to create a more believable, more visceral deathmatch environment, and to bring back the kind of satisfying firepower that we miss from the days of Doom.

If you find normal Unreal to be too twitchy, or don't find the original weapons to be very satisfying, Serpentine may be just what you've been hoping for. On the other hand, if you're looking for arcade action and you enjoy being able to dodge and jump with inhuman agility, you likely won't enjoy Serpentine much; it was never intended to be for everyone.

All in all, Serpentine represents a serious effort to recapture the feeling of enjoyment that we get from recreational shooting, and to boil that experience down into a deathmatch format for our lan parties. In Serpenting there's a lot of fancy hardware that we only wish we could own, but they all share a common feel with the way our guns behave, and look, and sound.

So what are you waiting for? Go download it already. ;)



Weapons


Team


FAQ:

  • How do I reload?

Since Serpentine doesn't have a menu for that, you need to enter a command manually into console:

"set input X button bExtra3"

While "X" has to be replaced with the button you want. So if you want to use middle mousebutton f.e. then the command would be:

"set input middlemouse button bExtra3"