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KF Project Santa

Changes till now:

  • Added new muzzle flash
  • Added shatter effect
  • Added impact effect of ice darts
  • Glowing light indicate low power (no ammo)
We will release a new beta really soon.



Atm we are thinking of a solution how to prevent frozen zeds from blocking a hallway or door. Imo possible solutions would be:

  • Frozen ZEDs can be moved by other ZEDs
  • Frozen ZEDs get destroyed by other ZEDs (would be OP too)
  • Frozen ZEDs do not have a collision (very unrealistic)
It would be great if you guys give us could give us some input on how to solve this problem. :)
 
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Atm we are thinking of a solution how to prevent frozen zeds from blocking a hallway or door. Imo possible solutions would be:

  • Frozen ZEDs can be moved by other ZEDs
  • Frozen ZEDs get destroyed by other ZEDs (would be OP too)
  • Frozen ZEDs do not have a collision (very unrealistic)
Frankly, none of these would be good.

Moveable frozen zeds would look silly and improve situation only marginally, as in hallways there is only limited space to where zeds can be moved, and it would still become corked, just a little slower, while presumably introducing all kinds of glitches.

Moving zeds shattering the frozen ones would be just insanely OP.

Frozen zeds having no collision would make no sense whatsoever.


In my opinion, there are two options:

1) severely reduce Cryo driver's freezing potential by one of or a combination of tweaks:

  • lowering freezing potential or increasing freeze threshold for smaller zeds (while ~one mag for freezing SC should probably stay, trash should be way harder to freeze than it is now).

  • lowering freeze effect's splash radius - if you don't want it to affect only single zed at a time, then 2 zeds closely grouped is absolute max in my opinion

2) dramatically altering the way alt fire works:

  • it could work similarly to blowerthrower's alt - releasing, let's say three streams of cryo at once, capable of freezing about 3-4 closely grouped zeds at a time, with a long pause before you can shoot it again

  • or pressing alt fire would start 2,5-3 second continuous stream of cryo, that's somewhat difficult to control due to kickback, even more severe than the flamethrower has. Magazine should be depleted after 2-3 such bursts, and there should be a significant delay before you can do that again

  • ideally, alt fire should have its own timer, so it wouldn't prevent the player from using primary firing mode or changing weapons, just prevent spamming cryo streams. I think one cryo burst allowed per 6 seconds sounds reasonable.
 
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Changes from BETA 02 to BETA 03:

  • Added new muzzle flash
  • Added shatter effect
  • Added impact effect of ice darts
  • Added new secondary fire effect
  • Adjusted splash texture
  • Glowing light indicate low power (no ammo)
  • Adjusted timing of reload time
  • Reduced splash radius
After this release we will probably start with balancing.

and:
  • Shotgun damage multiplier on frozen zeds reverted back to 3x. Other non-explosive weapons still have 5x.
  • Made possible to shoot nitro at burning zeds. First, it reduces burn time. Then stops burning and starts freezing.
  • Shooting nitro at burning teammates reduces their burn time.
  • Mutator has config option to disable spawning with the gun. Can be set in mutator options or in webadmin (Defaults -> IJC).
 
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First of all, I like the new fx, cryo stream and decals look much better.

Ice dart projectile looks neat. The impact effect is a nice touch, however, it currently looks more like an exploding snowball. Maybe those white particles could be more 'sharp'? Or at least a bit smaller and faster moving.

Lights on the gun indicating ammo level is a very nice touch.

The muzzle smoke in primary fire is perfect, however, in secondary mode I'd say it's too severe, obstructs vision a lot. Perhaps it could be even removed altogether, as updated cryo stream graphics will make it sufficiently foggy :)

The thing that kinda doesn't make sense is that the gun generates flash while firing. It is not that much of an issue when using primary mode, but the light it continuously casts around upon releasing cryo stream looks just strange. Imo light at firing should be removed in both modes.

Shatter effect is nice (perhaps chunks could be a bit bigger? right now they are too small to even represent a mass of a shattered crawler), but zeds killed by ice shards doesn't shatter, just go ragdoll while maintaining icy texture, which still looks silly, especially when playing as sharpie, but also when for example, you just kill a crawler with 3 icicles. Can shattering effect be applied if zeds die by any damage source while frozen? Because I doubt people will change weapons after freezing a small zed to finish it.

Balance-wise, didn't do a lot of testing, but so far 5x damage for weapons other than explosives/shotgun pellets kinda makes sense, gives a sharp some kind of countermeasures vs frozen zeds and is absolutely lethal when coupled with commandos, however, I'd still prefer a solution without removing headzones.

Reduced splash radius of the cryo makes you use a bit more of ammo to keep multiple zeds frozen, but is far from resolving corked corridors issue.

More of bug report: stalkers frozen during attack are guaranteed to become idle if you move away from their melee distance. It sometimes happens with other zeds, but stalkers seem most vulnerable to this bug. As with pretty much anything that messes with the zed speeds, the gun can be used to trigger slowbugs in scrakes and gorefasts, but I understand that's an issue within the KF code, not the cryo.
 
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Work on particles is still in progress. You'll see significant update in Beta 4.

Weapon doesn't generate a flash. It is frosty fog around cryogenic substance. You were asking for harder firing with secondary fire. And you got it: significantly reduced visibility :cool:
*EDIT*: If you 3rd person model weapon flash, then it will be fixed too.

Meat chunks are low in number because zed bodies mostly consists from the dosh. You will see this in the next update. But check your graphic options: chunk amount depends from World Detail setting, because we are thinking about low-hardware owners too.

Shattering frozen zeds with primary fire will be in Beta 4.
 
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Changes from BETA 03 to BETA 04:

Features:


  • Added glow effect to the 3rd person
  • Dosh drop on shattering

Balance changes:

  • Ice darts can do shattering now
  • Melle freeze damage multiplier lowered to 3x, buzzsaw - 2x
  • Weapon headshot damage multiplier is taken into account now

BugFix:


  • fixed bug which was unfreezing zeds too fast
  • fixed some animations of frozen zeds
  • fixed speed of raged Scrake after unfreeze
  • adjusted 3rd person model
  • changes 3rd person muzzle light
 
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Weapon doesn't generate a flash. It is frosty fog around cryogenic substance.

I wasn't talking about the muzzle flash, but the dynamic light it generates upon firing, lighting walls around the player, etc. I think there is no reason for it, as presumably that weapon doesn't operate by combustion of propellant? :)

Meat chunks are low in number because zed bodies mostly consists from the dosh. You will see this in the next update. But check your graphic options: chunk amount depends from World Detail setting, because we are thinking about low-hardware owners too.

Yeah, I know that performance can be an issue here, that's why I said the chunks should be just bigger (as in volume, scale), not more plentiful.

Shattering frozen zeds with primary fire will be in Beta 4.

Great to know :)
 
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I'll just scribble ideas here;

*Small or medium targets should be frozen solid with ease when you spam it.
*Frozen small targets (Stalkers, Clots, Crawlers) should shatter as something else bumps them. No one will miss them anyway.
*Higher tier Medium targets like Sirens, Husks and Gorefasts should take mediocre damage from bumping to others.
*Small or Medium, all frozen solid targets should instantly die and shatter when a Siren screams near them. Big targets should take really high damage from Siren screams when frozen, sometimes causing them to maul poor Siren after being tortured inside that icy shell.
*On tall targets (Scrake, Fleshpound and Bloat) it should be able to locally damage them. For example; sticking cryo liquid around its feet to slow them down, or splash it to their face to cause disorientation. That won't give any extra vulnerability to them but slow them to a snail's pace or have them wandering around losing their aggro.
*Fleshpounds and Scrakes eventually will break free from stubborn cryo liquid around their feet or face when they enrage from taking damage or keeping sight. Fleshpound will not stay calm as you keep line of sight and you gotta keep damaging the Scrake to keep him slowed.

No idea about how freezing a big target shall work, but I figure there should be a difference between trying to freeze a weakened Fleshpound and fully vital one.
My idea was dealing a certain percent of current hp under a time period for this to happen. If you're dealing with a fully vital Fleshpound then Freezer Gun requires you to deal 33% of its "current" hp (fully vital is around 5.9k at HoE 6p) under 5 seconds which is around 2k.
As you may guess, no way you can deal this amount of damage in 5 sec period to the FP beyond its 50% innate resistances. But, if you were to deal with a weakened 2k hp one or with less player count, then yes; no problem at all.

Now if I head to the theory crafting; period might be longer but it'd be so tense that it only allows a Commando with good aim to freeze Fleshpound by reloading hastily.
 
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there's a lot of weapons in KF you could question the realism of lol, take the zed gun with its weird plasma fire for example
Well plasma projectiles aren't unrealistic. The ZED does have that low velocity which is weird, but then again I don't feel like plasma projectiles would drop very much.
But I digress. The freezy gun isn't even in the realm of serious realism, so go crazy. But I do like my projectiles fast.
 
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First, I listed features which are impossible to implement due to technical reason, unless weapon will be incorporated into the stock game (as premium DLC, cough, cough):
  • headshots on frozen zeds;
  • bumping frozen zeds;
  • moving or destroying them on touch;
  • local hits and freezing separate body part;
  • fully fix 3rd person model's collision with an arm.

Now answering your questions.

Unlike bullets that gain velocity from gunpowder explosion, ice darts are shot by air pressure. So it is logically that their speed is lower. However, we could increase it a little bit.

Nitrogen liquid spray range is short due to balance reasons. And it is here to stay.

I see no reasons why wounded body could require less nitrogen to freeze than healthy.

Siren's scream shattering ice - is a good idea. But I need to look if it is technically possible.
 
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Speed of the ice darts is just fine in my opinion.

The range at which cryo can be poured is actually surprisingly long, when you raise the gun and shoot at a ballistic trajectory. No need for changes here.

Siren's scream shattering frozen zeds sounds like a nice idea, and in a way it would be a kind of countermeasure, making corking the hallways with zeds a little harder to pull off. If a scream would also send a torrent of ice shards made from the frozen zeds towards the players and damage them, it would be a really interesting mechanic :)

Zeds shatter nicely from primary fire... with the exception of those killed by single headshot by a sharpshooter :D These still go into ragdoll with ice texture. I suppose it's some kind of issue with different damage types applied in certain order? If a crawler/stalker/clot is killed by a single headshot by any other class it shatters as it should.
 
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