[MOD] UPDATED! Psyrgery's Damage balance tweak for C:MD Freeplay!

[Psyrgery]

So, after much testing and tweaking, my tweak for balacing damage dealt/taken in Freeplay mode is finally here!

Of course, given how C:MD deals with the ZAD files you'll need to drop this tweaked scripts.ZAD into your Carmageddon Max Damage/ZAD/ folder and replace the old one (always make a backup!) with the new one. Of course, you will be blocked from playing multiplayer and getting owned by Front/STS/Saicor and the other guys unless you use the vanilla scripts.zad file.

Here's the link to download the new tweaks.

So, what's included in this mod?

- Improved damage balance. Offense is increased in your car and decreased on your opponents. You can still be wrecked but it's not as frustrating as before.

- Say goodbye to unfair and cheap deaths when hitting a wall after being rubbed or hit by an opponent. The wall-ricochet effect that dealt shitloads of damage to your car has been reduced to a tiny % of what it used to be, increasing survivavility by a great amount (your opponents can benefit as well)

- Your opponents are now much slower (reduced to a 45% of how fast they were before). No longer you will see how the slowest car can leave you in the dust at the start of the race, they feel much closer to how they would drive if controlled by the player.

- Cars have been tweaked according to their Mass. A small % of damage have been added to cars in relation to their weight. The Eagle R has a 13% increase in damage due to its 1.300Kg weight, The Plow has a 60% increase in damage due to its 6000kg. weight. IMHO, after much testing, I think it makes cars more balanced in general. The Eagle (driven by the player) can now take on Crazor (driven by the AI), but Crazor can deal a shitload of damage to the Eagle if it hits the later hard enough, which makes the player confident enough to fight it but having to be focused so as not to make mistakes and get wrecked.

- Car splitting is 50% harder to pull off. It felt a bit easy and fake before, but now it feels as an accomplishment when you pull it off, as in Carmageddon 2.

- Given the way this tweak works, now you will benefit more from crushing your opponents into walls, just like in ol' Carmageddon 1.

I think that sums it up for now, your feedback will be much appreciated and please kindly ignore spelling errors in this posts

[B.A.]

Seems pretty neat to me. I really love the game don't get me wrong, but damage balances and didn't give me the true Carmageddon feel, so that's why I stopped playing the game so soon. Even full spec I could not destroy any vehicle with the CU:NT, but another CU:NT would wreck me when I'm driving in Don Dumpster.

And comparing to walls, cars feel like soft cushions.

Still love the rest of the game design though!

Did not read your link, but is this available for Ps4?

Thanks a lot!

[Psyrgery]

Sorry B.A. I don't think there's an easy way to mod the PS4 C:MD, my mod only works on the Pc game

But yeah, the damage balance in the game is a bit off and far less fun than in previous Carmageddons

[Trent]

Yeah the PS4 version isn't moddable at all.

Psyrgery, could you repack only the moddifed scripts into a new zad file and distribute that with the instructions to just rename the original scripts.zad to scripts_main.zad and place the mod's zad in the ZAD folder?

As I mentioned in the blood mod threads, altering the original ZAD files and redistrubiting the entire file is very bad. Modded files should always be in their own ZAD files for maximum compatibility and efficiency.

[Fuelinjectedsuicidemachine]

Sorry B.A. I don't think there's an easy way to mod the PS4 C:MD, my mod only works on the Pc gameBut yeah, the damage balance in the game is a bit off and far less fun than in previous Carmageddons

Damage balancing is a lot better than in C:R, but not quite as it was in the old Carmas. Interestingly I found the easy difficulty to be the most similar to earlier games, so I'm not ashamed to admit to stick to it, at least in Freeplay. You still get wrecked more easily than in C1/C2, but I feel like that's what it should have been in the first place in C1/C2 too. In the old games the player was always OP, whereas in C: MD the AI seems to have the edge stats wise. But contrary to C:R the opponents still receive damage from a head on crash (how much depends on vehicle/speed), even if they were favored (i. e. faster). That's more like C2 and C1 was.

The enormous amount of damage the AI or the player receives for crashes with solid objects is sometimes indeed over the top, but more often than not it's hilarious, I think. Or opponents splitting themselves in reverse, hehe. BTW splitting was far easier to achieve in C2. It happened so often, you could call it regular. It's already toned down in C: MD, IMO.

For the moment I'm relatively ok with the balancing, but I'll try your mod out, if I'm tired of it. I used it too in C: R and it was very needed.

[Psyrgery]

Yeah the PS4 version isn't moddable at all.

Psyrgery, could you repack only the moddifed scripts into a new zad file and distribute that with the instructions to just rename the original scripts.zad to scripts_main.zad and place the mod's zad in the ZAD folder?

As I mentioned in the blood mod threads, altering the original ZAD files and redistrubiting the entire file is very bad. Modded files should always be in their own ZAD files for maximum compatibility and efficiency.

Thanks for the suggestion Trent, will do as soom as I get home

EDIT: Changed the old link with a new one including the original scripts.zad

[Fuelinjectedsuicidemachine]

Actually decided to give this a try for a change after playing C: MD excessively the last 2 weeks or so and yeah, it's very good. To be honest, I even was a bit exhausted of the game in the last few days, but this mod makes it feel fresh again. Opponents seem to take a bit more damage, so I can enjoy the damage and damage progression more on them. Also player car durabilty has notably increased, so it's more like C1 or C2 in that regard, good work indeed! Now it's even a bit too easy on normal, hehe. Also I'm a bit baffled that a weight formula like the clever one from you isn't already in C: MD. It certainly would make sense IMO and weight was a major factor for damage output potential in the old Carmas anyway. Applying only an offensive value to give the cars power feels a bit...unnatural.

Additionally I fiddled a bit with Trent's Supermod for C: R and now I can enjoy the best features of this mod too, in C: MD. Looking forward to an official release of the Supermod for C:MD anyway, but I guess the Minge tool is priority at the moment and I was a bit impatient today, hehe.

Thanks Psyrgery and also Trent!

[Psyrgery]

Thanks for your comments Fuelinjector!

Anyways, yesterday I found out that the mod is messing with the lighter cars (1 ton and below), non-upgraded light cars not only are too fragile, but they take damage when hitting other cars, it's likely that I'll have to remade the tweaks from scratch.

As for the way older Carmageddons handled damage, I've always felt that the games were meant to be easy in order to be "enjoyable" in my humble opinion. Not only is the feeling of "winning" satisfactory, but slowly turning your opponents into small cubes of scrap, or splitting them in half while enjoying the freedom the game offered is what a Carmageddon is all about. I understand that there's people out there looking for a challenge and I've always thought that having different choices of difficulties is better aimed at different crowds. The way C:MD handles damage is not difficult, but unfair and frustrating: Opponents seem to hit you harder than you, AI is a lot of times cheap and gang up on you, and being pinned against a wall is death. If an opponent ever rubs you while you're on mid-air and land on the floor, you're going to take a ton of damage...

Anyways, before I work on the new tweak I've uploaded a newer tweak, which is the same as the old one but now includes a new one with lower gravity, in order to make the game feel even closer than C1/C2

Thanks once again for the comments Fuelinjector!

[Fuelinjectedsuicidemachine]

Anyways, yesterday I found out that the mod is messing with the lighter cars (1 ton and below), non-upgraded light cars not only are too fragile, but they take damage when hitting other cars, it's likely that I'll have to remade the tweaks from scratch.

Oh ok, didn't notice that so far. I've played with the Buggy and 3 Armor and seemed ok.

As for the way older Carmageddons handled damage, I've always felt that the games were meant to be easy in order to be "enjoyable" in my humble opinion. Not only is the feeling of "winning" satisfactory, but slowly turning your opponents into small cubes of scrap, or splitting them in half while enjoying the freedom the game offered is what a Carmageddon is all about. I understand that there's people out there looking for a challenge and I've always thought that having different choices of difficulties is better aimed at different crowds. The way C:MD handles damage is not difficult, but unfair and frustrating: Opponents seem to hit you harder than you, AI is a lot of times cheap and gang up on you, and being pinned against a wall is death. If an opponent ever rubs you while you're on mid-air and land on the floor, you're going to take a ton of damage...

Yeah, Carmageddon was never a particulary difficult game, it was all about the fun and the possibilities of the physics sandbox. At best it was a slightly bigger challenge if you faced big guys with small, light cars, but even that was doable.

The AI in C:MD might be a bit unfair or gang up on you, but wasn't it the same in C1/C2? Only difference is the AI in C:MD actually fucks you up, if you're not careful or fast enough. Also I like the falling damage, to be honest. Makes for nice wrecks and it's usually the opponents fate, not my, hehe. I miss these kind of crashes a bit with the mod. Maybe you could increase the damage a bit for next release? Or eventually I can set it up for myself.

Anyways, before I work on the new tweak I've uploaded a newer tweak, which is the same as the old one but now includes a new one with lower gravity, in order to make the game feel even closer than C1/C2

Will definately try this one out!.

[Psyrgery]

Okay, just updated the mod, you can download it from the first post :D

[The Don Killuminati]

I decided to give your balance tweak a go and I must say this is pretty damn perfect. Even though I didn't hate the default damage settings as much, your tweaked settings are a godsend. Every hit feels so much more meaningful now and I'm no longer scared out of my mind when in close proximity of a wall or an opponent hahah.

-I do wonder how this tweak will affect power ups though.

-Also, for your testing environment what difficulty do you play on? I'm on hard and it still feels amazing, but I don't know how much the difficulty will effect the feel of the tweak.

I created this account just to say thanks for taking the time and creating this tweak, It feels like a completely different game now!! ;)

[Psyrgery]

Gee Don Killuminati, I had never got that much praise before, I feel flattened, thank you so much :)

Concerning the difficulty setting the mod is meant to be played on is the Normal difficulty. People might find it a bit too easy, but I've always felt that Carmageddon were easy games. In Classic Carmas, in tier1 or in tiers where your car has not been upgraded yet it does not take too much effort to destroy the light cars such as the Countslash, whereas more armored cars can take more time (like fighting the Twister using the Eagle, for example). Given how different classic Carmas dealt with damage balancing, my aim was to make Max Damage "feel" closer to classic carmas, not make it just the same.

In Max Damage, the speed is almost the most important factor when dealing damage, which plays against the player. Opponents are much, much faster than the player car, so much that I reduced their speed to a 40% and they still are faster than a non-upgraded player car. Plus, there was the wall-ricochet effect that deals too much damage to your car, even after only being rubbed by an opponent, the game "tags" your car for an "x" amount of seconds in which you will be severely damaged if you hit a wall. It's strange because opponents do not seem to be afected.

Plus, opponent AI is way more aggressive than in previous Carma. I just don't get the "An opponent will always be chasing the player to keep him busy" thing, it does not feel right imho. I think using some kind of custom AI patterns for different opponents would be interesting, such as some opponents being more aggressive or passive than others. The sum of all of that (Speed = more damage, aggressive AI, opponents being always faster and wall-ricochet damage multiplayer) is what makes C:MD so frustrating to play in Freeplay mode, which is the mode everyone should play for a quick and satisfactory game, not seeing your credits into the great negatives by being constantly ganged up by fast opponents that deal too much damage to have any fun at all.

Anyway, the mod is still under constant tweaking in order to make it different for different players!

[Fuelinjectedsuicidemachine]

In Max Damage, the speed is almost the most important factor when dealing damage, which plays against the player. Opponents are much, much faster than the player car, so much that I reduced their speed to a 40% and they still are faster than a non-upgraded player car.

Wow, really? I always wondered why even the Volkswrecker is faster than my light super sports car. Thought they're clearly faster than me, but not this much. Though I'm playing with max power on most cars. AI obviously has "cheat engine", hehe.

Plus, there was the wall-ricochet effect that deals too much damage to your car, even after only being rubbed by an opponent, the game "tags" your car for an "x" amount of seconds in which you will be severely damaged if you hit a wall. It's strange because opponents do not seem to be afected.

They are affected. I even was annoyed sometimes, that they'd kill themselves easily through a reverse in a building or wall after touched them. Doesn't feel very rewarding. It has to happen in a more natural way. If they'd sustain only 20 % to 30 % of the damage as it is now, I would be ok with it. Because than, they at least need to be in a bad shape to kill themselves that way.

Plus, opponent AI is way more aggressive than in previous Carma. I just don't get the "An opponent will always be chasing the player to keep him busy" thing, it does not feel right imho.

I don't get it too, because strangely it rarely happens to me in Freeplay Classic Carma. Most of the time the idiots are battling for 30-45 seconds with me only to drive away and return in 1 or 2 minutes to battle for 30 seconds again. Or they're just driving around the track. Do they fear me or what, lol? I'd say the AI should be even more aggressive. Sure, AI is more agile and better than in previous Carmas, but not any more aggressive. But maybe my memory is wrong and I just set their aggressiveness higher back then. ;)

I think using some kind of custom AI patterns for different opponents would be interesting, such as some opponents being more aggressive or passive than others.

That would be ideal. Funny thing is, I always felt like some opponents in C2 were more aggressive than others, especially Abba Cab. This guy was a pain in the butt. You couldn't even knock him out (stun) with heavy blows sometimes, it was crazy.

The sum of all of that (Speed = more damage, aggressive AI, opponents being always faster and wall-ricochet damage multiplayer) is what makes C:MD so frustrating to play in Freeplay mode, which is the mode everyone should play for a quick and satisfactory game, not seeing your credits into the great negatives by being constantly ganged up by fast opponents that deal too much damage to have any fun at all.

Hmmm, I didn't experience any of this very commonly (except the higher opponent speed), but I see where you are coming from. It's definately more "relaxing" with your balancing and it may even suit the game better in the long run. No cheap deaths for player and AI is good.

Anyway, the mod is still under constant tweaking in order to make it different for different players!

You mean like in the sense of customization options? That would be great!

[The Don Killuminati]

Gee Don Killuminati, I had never got that much praise before, I feel flattened, thank you so much :)

Hahaha, just giving credit where credit is due. Keep up the work and I look forward to future updates ;)

[Psyrgery]

Hey guys!

After lots of tweaking and messing with many configurations files, rather than updating my old tweaks I decided to work on another set of tweaks based on comments from the Steam discussion forum. I've seen recent activity of people complaining about messy handling (this never gets old doesn't it) and decided I would make the game feel more "arcade". And thus, CARCADEmageddon tweaks was born!

It's still an experimental file which reuses part of my old balacing tweaks and that will be scrapped and used as reference for making a better mod in the future.

Anyway, before I scrapped this I decided I would share it with you guys and get some feedback from you guys.

Download it here!

(I've also replaced the old link from the OP, which was broken due to Dropbox having modified their file sharing politics)

[panic]

This just made the game near perfect for me (if only they'd let us use mod cars as opponents?), i can't believe i missed this thread. Brilliant work, i just had a 20 minute banger battle with ed hunter and grimm brothers in the carrerasaur and it was all so satisfying to see the cars slowly get banged up without weird shit happening.

[Gunsmith]

Hey guys!

I decided to work on another set of tweaks based on comments from the Steam discussion forum.

I wouldn't waste your efforts pandering to the steam forums, the stupid there will literally give you eye cancer.

[Trent]

I wouldn't waste your efforts pandering to the steam forums, the stupid there will literally give you eye cancer.

That's the truth right there. Just have to look at the amount of people who still complain in the Reincarnation forums about the game not running and are completely ignorant of Max Damage's existence.

[flykas]

Hey, I tired out this tweak. It is pretty cool. Maybe a bit easy to play, but it reminds more of C2 where you have more time to explore when other aren't constantly chasing you. Also you git rid of that very annoying fall damage when opponent touches your car, that was the worst thing.

But I wanted to ask, did you do something to gravity ? Or I am imagining it. Somehow it feels that cars are able to jump further..

[ZeMantras]

i have been trying this Mod! infact i just kinda registered here to comment on your work.

thank god someone is tweaking the damage system in this game, damage system in max damage is fuckedup :( my biggest issue with the game is beeing worked on! thnksss! i hate it wen the enemies just slightly touch u, u hit a wall with almost no speed and almost die, i was starting to believe the damage system was badly broken.

With your mod this issue no longer happens! Unfortunately i have to say the game is too easy now, even playing on hard with no powerups is way too easy. I endup finishing a game almost not repairing my vehicle and I no longer fear the biggest meanest vehicles :(

ATM trying to remove all my vec upgrades to see if i get some better balance.

hmm be careful with the steam comments, the place is total cancer, most of the people there are still bitching about " muuuh controls"

thnks for taking on the task in tweaking the much needed damage system

EDIT: So I removed most of my Armor and offensive upgrades, setting armor to no upgrade and offensive to 1 or 2 and the engine set to max or almost max, in most vehicles made it alot more enjoyable :D cant thank enough for your scripts

[Psyrgery]

Geez ZeMantras, thanks for the kind words :D

Glad that it actually made our experience with the game better!

[flykas]

Yeah, the game experience is really improved :] It reminds the gameplay of classic carma games. Too bad that it cannot be used for career mode at the moment.

Also maybe it could be improved further, I'd say it should be tweaked to be harder on hard difficulty because with upgraded parts, oponents barely damage you. Also I noticed that there is something up with fall damage or when using oponent tosser then opponent vehicles isn't really taking much damage.

[ZeMantras]

It really did improve the experience! love it! in most cases wen i setup my armor to minimum its alright! u start to receive some damage! Heavy enemies like the truck will do serious DMG toyou , if you set the offensive to a lower value too, you start to bring back that frustration a little bit, u will do less DMG and batles will last longer, wich for me is good.

Made a video yesterday, some testing i guess and having fun most of all ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_8HeH66esw