SUPER SURF (standalone surf game)

[Enhex]

I'm making a standalone Surf game and I'm hoping I could get some help here.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVDeuqd59Ec

Features
For the player:
- Auto jump - no need for hack'ish mouse wheel jump binding
- Restart/checkpoint button - don't have to wait until you hit the ground
- Start and end zones - pre-strafe possible.
- Player skins (works like sprays)
Example:
Editing skin (http://i.imgur.com/FGcsCxY.jpg)
In-game front (http://i.imgur.com/iLsbdif.jpg)
In-game back (http://i.imgur.com/wMTqdoS.jpg)
- Personal record tracker (client side so works on all servers)
- UI & UX improvements
- In-game browser (can be used to automatically open internet radio / YouTube playlist)
- No speed limit (for now at least)
- Spectator
- No vertical ramp clipping
- "classic" and "super" modes
Classic inspires to stay true to the source as much as possible.
Super attempts to create an experience which is more fast paced, more "classic racing".
Super mode also offers lower entry barrier for new players.

For the mapper:
- Level editor that works out of the box (those who work with gmod/css know the pain)
- Restart/checkpoint button - Mappers don't need to cover everything with teleport triggers
- No need for skybox brushes
- No need to seal the level, no leaks
- Maximum vertex precision in the file format, prevents clipping problems

For the host:
- No need to specially configure a server for surfing to work - air accel, fall damage, etc.

The game is still in early development so not all the features are implemented yet.


Test Build:
https://enhex.itch.io/super-surf
Gets updated once in a while, link stays the same.

Right now there are only few test maps I made. You can make your own levels using the editor, which is very similar to Hammer.

If you have suggestions or questions let me know.

[Prostagma]

Would definitly like it if u could add a way to get a turnbind in there. Also I don't really like the idea that the timer starts as soon as u spawn. ^^

[Sunday :B]

looks and sounds pretty g00d mayn! would buy

[Enhex]

Would definitly like it if u could add a way to get a turnbind in there. Also I don't really like the idea that the timer starts as soon as u spawn. ^^

What's a turnbind? Strafing to the direction you turn?
Also regarding the timer I'll add a countdown later, like any other racing game, so you have few seconds to get ready and set before you go.
Or maybe a button to press once you're ready to go.

Btw I'm working on few cool features right now. One of them is to be able to import levels into Blender for lightmap baking. I really hope that it will work.

[swagman1999]

sorry if this comes off as rude but why are you trying to recreate a game that you don't know anything about and have no passion for?

[Enhex]

sorry if this comes off as rude but why are you trying to recreate a game that you don't know anything about and have no passion for?

I have no problem with rudeness, but please don't represent your opinions as facts, that's lying.

In my defense:
I probably played on surf maps ever sense I got CS:S, which is about +10 years. The fact that I'm not a hardcore surfer doesn't mean that I don't know anything about it. In fact I understand it so well I was able to recreate it, down to the physics engine level.

To answer the legitimate question "Why are you making a surf game?":
My main passion is programming and designing systems. I first started working on the level editor because I didn't like the level editor paradigm which is used in engines like Unity and Unreal, and I couldn't find an alternative. The editors I didn't like requires the level designer to be a 3D artist (know how to use a fully featured 3D software) which makes the entry barrier very high and basically makes a mapping community not feasible.
After I had the core of the editor ready I needed to make a game that uses it. At the beginning I thought to make some sort of "Treasure Hunt" game with puzzles and traps. Later I figured out surf is much more suitable for a brush-like level editor and it would be much nicer because no one made a standalone surf game, and the UX has quite a lot of place for improvement.

I may not be as passionate as you about surfing itself, and that's why I'm here, to ask for feedback from those who do.
Some like to surf, some like to map, and some like to program, and these things aren't mutually exclusive, they're beneficial to each other.


EDIT:
Also how come you, "swagman1999", an account created only 2 days after my introduction thread, only got 2 posts on this forum and both of them are negative replies to me?
I suspect this is a fake account made by some mapper I tried to team up with earlier on. I checked if any of them have accounts on this forum and the only active one is Juxtapo.
Not only that while we teamed up he didn't do anything and lied that he's "busy" with +100 "past 2 weeks" hours on Steam, now he tries to malevolently attack me here.

[Juxtapo]

x

[Enhex]

I was the main one trying to move the project forward and when you weren't taking our suggestions to heart I wanted to back out of the project but I didn't want to leave you with no help/advice after everyone else bailed but you still weren't making any progress I could contribute to.

Can you name a single thing that you contributed?
The only things you did were to ignore my messages and lie that you're busy.

Also "swagman1999" is obviously a fake account of someone from this forum who knew about this project and hates it/me.
If it isn't you, then who else could it be? Do you realize the list of people that match these requirement consist of one person?
Should I be surprised if you're lying (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_lying) about that too?

I just hope other people here don't mind the drama.
But if you see fraud, and don't shout "fraud", you are a fraud.

[Juxtapo]

x

[Syncronyze]

To me, it just seems like a worse version than we already have. As a consumer, there's no reason I would play your standalone when there's already a developed community with plenty of players, servers and maps running perfectly.

Your "features" are hardly improvements, if not they're already in the game. (Talking about KSF)

Auto jump - no need for hack'ish mouse wheel jump binding
-Has been around for quite some time, and in CSGO is global.

Proper timer - starts when the player can move (no pre-hopping)
-No prehopping has already been added into KSF, and a lot of people enjoy the prestrafing that is currently in the game (adds more skill to the starts).

Restart button - don't have to wait until you hit the ground
-Again, a feature included inside of KSF and most other servers.

Player skins (works like sprays)
-I don't really understand, but if it's a spray type thing, then once again we have that.

Personal record tracker (client side so works on all servers)
-KSF already has this across all of their servers, CSGO and CSS (CSGO & CSS stats are separate, but can be access on either)

Speed displayed in recognizable units (km/h)
-km/h? this is a feature that you're trying to push? it's hardly recognizable in the video game world, and you can see in your video, you go 200 km/h which is clearly not "realistic". Even if you called it dicks per month, it'd still mean the same because it's just relative to what you're doing. You're comparing km/h to km/h just like you'd be comparing u/s to u/s. m/s would make more sense in this case anyway.

In-game browser (can be used to automatically open internet radio / YouTube playlist)
-Been added both through steam, and ingame (KSF has it, atleast).

No speed limit (for now at least)
-The speed limit can be adjusted to the map, (omnific, reprise, unicorn to name a few), and at 10k u/s (which is what omnific & unicorn are set to) it's ridiculously fast to the point that it's basically a limit where it's just not really fun to surf.


So, what I'm asking is why, as a consumer, I would play your game? What's the appeal to it? It only has a very loose feel of surf and isn't really appealing to me as a player.

It's definitely a neat project, it's just that I don't see it going very far as it offers almost no reasons for me to choose it over the options already available and established.

[They call me queer]

In fact I understand it so well I was able to recreate it, down to the physics engine level.

This is unimpressive for 3 reasons.
1.) 99% of games since 1996 have it built into their engine.
2.) It's an extremely simple concept.
3.) You didn't do a very good job quite obviously because of how slow you fall.

[Enhex]

This is unimpressive for 3 reasons.
1.) 99% of games since 1996 have it built into their engine.
2.) It's an extremely simple concept.
3.) You didn't do a very good job quite obviously because of how slow you fall.

First of all I appreciate the feedback, and I'd like to make few things clear.

1. I only know about Source engine, that's a single instance.
2. It isn't straightforward at the physics engine level. You're welcome to try to implement it yourself if you don't believe me.
3. That's just setting a single variable, that's completely meaningless.
Source have x2 normal gravity and my project has x1.6.
If players would prefer stronger gravity it takes a second to change, and it could be made configurable.

Regarding the previous post:

- u/s isn't a recognizable unit. You don't measure things IRL with u/s (which is actually inches per second).
That means you have no references to how fast your speed is. In the video 200km/h is your actual speed, it's just that the level has huge scale (which is my bad).

- The in-game browser can be used to save the URL you enter and automatically open it when you start the game. (You can enter a music playlist/radio for example)

- Player skin is like weapon skins in CS:GO but for how the player looks (other players can see), but without having to pay for that and you just need to pick an image (like sprays).
To make a skin all you need is basic knowledge of who to use image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, etc).
That means you can put whatever you want on your player, be creative. I think it adds a lot of value to the multiplayer, checking out what other players came up with.
Here, I just made an example:
Editing skin (http://i.imgur.com/FGcsCxY.jpg)
In-game front (http://i.imgur.com/iLsbdif.jpg)
In-game back (http://i.imgur.com/wMTqdoS.jpg)

The rest of your arguments are things that KSF added with mods. That's a good sign because it shows these are things that people want. The problem is that it's only KSF you're talking about, not all surf servers.

Other than that you ignore the benefits the mapper/host gets.
I'm sure KSF had to put a lot of work to make their servers as good as they're, and not all hosts are going to do that. Most will start with only setting air_accel and using surf maps.
For the mapper a lot of overhead work and pitfalls are removed. That means making maps will be faster and easier.

[Syncronyze]

Okay, to begin, we're two different people who commented. You implied that it was "my previous post" when it simply wasn't.

Saying that km/h is more recognizable is stupid. It's a video game world, and like I said in my previous post, you have no reference to what a kilometer is. It literally doesn't even need to be any units after the number, and in my opinion it wouldn't matter. Claiming that it's a feature is stupid. It could literally say "22" is your walking speed, and "200" is your average ramp seed. It does not make a difference because there's no point of reference for what exactly it is you're measuring when you're surfing. A stage can feel so much smaller simply by raising the speed, and much larger by lowering it. If you look at something like surf_stonework3, it doesn't feel all that big, yet you're going 3500u/s but often times it doesn't feel that way, but if you compared any of the ramps, pillars and such to the player models side-by-side they'd feel almost out of place. Simply because you're going so fast. Point is: the units doesn't matter, what it's measured in simply does not matter, and thus it being advertised as a "feature" is just stupid.

In-game browser is hardly something I care about. It's a "whatever" feature in my opinion, as in I wouldn't miss it if it wasn't there but I guess it's a neat option. Nothing we don't already have anyway.

Player skins seem a bit silly, but again same premise as above, where I wouldn't miss it if it was removed.

Yes, I am talking about KSF. You know why? Because you're on KSF forums, and this is a community built for surf. The reason that KSF is the most competitive network out there is not only because it's the oldest remaining community, but because it's for the most part well managed with a strong community behind it. Sure, there are some examples of bad in it, but that goes for anything anywhere.

As for the mapping section I felt the points weren't even worth my time to cover, but since you're very adamant of me covering it, here you go. As a mapper myself, yes hammer does have a hard learning curve, but for me it did work out of the box. All I had to do was go into my /cstrike/bin folder and launch the .exe. As for the rest, it's little things that aren't really a challenge, and really only remove a small portion of what makes up the mapping process. Most maps are indoors anyway, so adding walls that fit together (without gaps) is still there, and the rest is detailing. Yeah, there's some instances where it would be nice not to have to worry about leaks or skybox brushes, but there's nothing in that section that would make me jump ship to start working on your version for unless the community was there to back it. Hardly anything that would revolutionize mapping as you insist it would. Sidenote- Trigger_teleports are nice aswell for both the player AND the mapper, as it allows for nice walls, with a quick way to get back to the spawn if you fuck up (See: surf_lt_unicorn)

And the communities that are out there, if they do not want to compete with the standard then they will fail. A skill server without a timer will be dead in the water. If a community is what you want, then yes of course you're going to have to put time and effort to collect mods and things to ensure people want to stay. As it stands now, if you want to host your own server for your buddies, it's ridiculously simple.

You need to realize that the community needs to come first, because you can interest mappers and you can interest hosts, but it doesn't matter if there's nobody to play the maps and play the servers. You should start listening to the feedback you received and not just take it like your way is the right way, because chances are if you're receiving feedback, it's because people care. When you stop receiving feedback, that means people don't care anymore.

To clarify the point of my argument: Why would I as a consumer, not as a mapper or a host, want to play this version over the established version we have already?

[Enhex]

You like what there's on the KSF servers and you don't want to change anything, therefore you have no interest in any other surf game. That's fine.

Regarding feedback, the only feedback from the previous posts was an implicit "gravity is too low".
So I'll test increasing the gravity to x2.

But saying "Some of the things are already modded in on our specific community, and for the rest I don't like them", which is basically "I don't want anything different, and I reject anything that's different" isn't useful feedback, what can I do with? It's useless.

If you're really want to help you could learn about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_criticism and take an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_approach

[Enhex]

I chatted with Syncronyze on Steam and several things came up:

My map format has maximum vertex precision. No vertex deformation.
That fixes some clipping problems.

Syncronyze said that the autojump implementation used by surf servers can randomly fail. Mine doesn't.

No clipping with vertical ramps.

"classic" and "super" modes
Classic inspires to stay true to the source as much as possible.
Super attempts to create an experience which is more fast paced, more "classic racing".
Super mode also offers lower entry barrier for new players.

Since there'll be a classic mode a VMF map importer makes sense. Though VMF is a proprietary file format so it'll require a permission from Valve.

start and end zones - pre-strafe possible.
I still want to find an elegant solution for preventing pre-hopping.

Turn key binds

checkpoints - can be used to return to the last stage beginning. Removes the need for teleporters.

Spectator mode.

[SyFo is CP]

Please add a race feature, like a feature where you could challenge players to a race :)

[evolv]

It has potential but needs two things.
1. Some type of new feature or function that sets the stand-alone mod apart from regular surf.
2. A baseline community that is willing to adopt your surf mod over pre-existing ones on CSS/CSGO.

[Enhex]

Please add a race feature, like a feature where you could challenge players to a race :)
Race is a good suggestion.
Wouldn't a race including all the players would be more exciting?
Maybe an open challenge, letting anyone on the server join if they want to?


It has potential but needs two things.
1. Some type of new feature or function that sets the stand-alone mod apart from regular surf.
2. A baseline community that is willing to adopt your surf mod over pre-existing ones on CSS/CSGO.

Now it really depends how you define "regular surf". I'd define it as what you can get without modding, otherwise what's regular about it?
If you don't consider mods as regular surf then standardizing the good ones makes the game stand apart. That's how mods like CS and TF became standalone games. CS and TF date back to Quake 1 mods:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOwPcmcOSNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FVJ__rBFxk (I'm sure you wouldn't call this regular CTF in Quake 1)
If you do consider mods so basically the only things that would count are things which are impossible to achieve with modding games based on Source. In that case the game engine level stuff like physics stability (like some of the clipping problems), tools, special features, and defaults are the places for improvement.

Regarding a community it's a matter of finding people who're interested in the game.
That also connects to point #1 - Making the game have all the good stuff from the get go means all player will have the best experience, and more of them will stick around.
If you compare it to Source games, you can't even open a Surf server without knowing how to configure it and getting some surf maps.
bigger community around a game is important because it leads to more maps and servers, which means better experience.

[streebree]

The reason people like surfing is because it has a high learning curve, allows pixel perfect execution, and an endless potential to always be smoother. For example, strafing adds a slight amount of speed if done slowly but takes away speed if done too fast. These mechanics allow for route optimization and endless improvements. They are incredibly difficult which makes the community very competitive. People like surfing because of how difficult it is, yet relaxing, giving you a goal to slowly work up to.

What you’re trying to do is create a game that is easier to pick up, with less penalty for turning too fast or having to prestrafe. This is not going to appeal to anyone here at ksf because most of them could master it in 15 minutes. Your only hope is that it will appeal to people who aren’t familiar with surfing and just want to hang out with friends or something. However, to them it will probably seem boring and overly simple. The way I see it, you’ll have to drastically change the core concept of your game if it will ever succeed. For example you could:

1. Make a single player story mode that plays like its own puzzle game like portal or maybe an adventure game / platformer like Mario 64 where the adventure is the focus, not speedruns.

2. Make the level editor so simple anyone can open it, create something and play with friends immediately. Like as simple as drag and drop blocks with a "submit map" button that sends it to the server you’re on. The next map will be the map you submitted and people can then vote on whether it should be added to the normal rotation. I'm basing this off the trackmania games. They got popular because of how easy they were to map for with a fast map rotation.


A few extra side notes:

- I don’t know anyone who left ksf because of ramp glitches, vertical surfing, or bhopping. I don’t think people care about that stuff enough to leave css.

- I don’t know any games that succeeded because their servers were super easy to set up. Think about minecraft. That game was incredibly successful, yet for 2 years the server system was impossible to set up for anyone not familiar with routers and port forwarding, etc. Focus on the game, not the technical aspects.

- An easier version of surfing already exists. 100 tick servers serve this purpose exceedingly well. We could also just increase air accel if we wanted it to be even easier.

- In game browser sounds like a slower way to alt-tab. Plus, the browser probably doesn’t have add-ons like adblocker and it probably doesn’t have my bookmarks saved. I’ll never use it.

So yeah, if you make the game a clone of css surfing, it will have no appeal. You should try to innovate because that’s what people here want to play. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

[horsefeathers]

So I fiddled around with the level editor and this is what I came up with: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17419604/surf_bricks.lvl
its not much, but it was good for gauging how far your level editor and your game needs to come. Firstly the mouse input lag is better than before but its still pretty bad. I found it very hard to be precise while surfing. Also your lighting engine needs and update, I'm looking for baked lighting, bounce light, and directional lighting (like a sun). A nice feature also would be light textures.

So for the editor, these are some things that I think need to be added:
1) Mouse drive on the 3d view. The 3d camera is very hard to control right now with just using wasd and arrow keys
2) Clip tool (or slice). This is probably the most useful tool in hammer and certain things are very difficult without it.
3) Brush groups/object groups. These are pretty standard and also very useful.

Now some other useful things that I missed from hammer:
1) window edge scroll (when dragging something past the bound of the window, the window should scroll)
2) different tools to modify brushes quickly from the 3d view, like rotate
3) vis groups, these are user defined groups of object that control visibility.
4) brown lines; in hammer there are brown lines ever 1024 units. this is very helpfull gauging distance when zoomed out.
5) bigger grids when zoomed out; in hammer when you zoom out, the grid size changes. when you zoom out you see less grid lines.
6) property buttons. on the side panel with properties and everything, none the fields have button to modify there value.
7) color picker, wherever there is a color option there should be a color picker for convenience
8) change vertex snapping; right now whenever you move something, it will snap to a vertex, I like this in principle especially for making ramps, but when moving a large selection, I found that it would snap to a vertex off screen and I would have to zoom out to position it properly. perhaps you could make it an action by holding a key down while moving.

[Mooster Cow]

k

[They call me queer]

1. I only know about Source engine, that's a single instance.
http://i.imgur.com/59UVHoW.png
There's your list of engines capable of Surf.


2. Make the level editor so simple anyone can open it, create something and play with friends immediately. Like as simple as drag and drop blocks with a "submit map" button that sends it to the server you’re on. The next map will be the map you submitted and people can then vote on whether it should be added to the normal rotation. I'm basing this off the trackmania games. They got popular because of how easy they were to map for with a fast map rotation.

This is a good idea in theory, but in practice it's wretched. Making it easy for anyone to make a map means there is a colossal cesspool of terrible maps. Trackmania only works because of prefabs.

There's already a standalone surf type mod. It failed. There's also already another one in the works by people more qualified than yourself. And there's also a Quake based mod that will feature surf as an aspect of it also in development.

[Enhex]

streebree:

http://i.imgur.com/V0ngm7V.png

That's a valid argument and that's why I suggested having two modes - "classic" and "super".
"classic" maintains the high skill high competition pixel perfect "fuck up by 1 milliradian and you start over" experience.
"super" offers a more classic racing experience - the challenge isn't to make it to the end, but to make it to the end before the other guy does.

You can't design a game towards an elite because an elite will always be small. What about all the other people? They don't deserve to have a game they can enjoy?

I can't see how you make a story/puzzle driven game out of a racing game. These are completely different experiences.

I don't know any simpler method for 3D level creation that could work other than brush-like editing. Prefabs obviously can't work with surf.
The "submit map" is a nice idea.

extra notes stuff:

These are examples for things you can't improve with modding.

Port forwarding is required for hosting any kind of server, not just minecraft and not just games.


horsefeathers:

Regarding input lag, did you have vsync enabled? With vsync I do sense lag.

Baking lightmaps is a feature I suppose to work on soon. I want to use Blender so it will have everything.

Regarding the editor these are all things which are in my TODO list, which is pretty long. Keep in mind I'm a single programmer who's filling a lot of roles, so it's going to take time.
My strategy is to first reach a working usable state, and later add features according to their priority.

[horsefeathers]

Disabling vsync cleared the lag up. Also I think the camera might be a little too high on the character. Sometimes when I think I'm going to hit my head, I don't; other times I don't think I will hit my feet, but I do.

[Maltsns]

That's a valid argument and that's why I suggested having two modes - "classic" and "super".
"classic" maintains the high skill high competition pixel perfect "fuck up by 1 milliradian and you start over" experience.

Shouldn't that be done through level design instead? One of the reasons surf is pretty popular is because even on maps that a person can beat on their first day of surfing, theres still so many mechanics in the game you can improve and master which will allow you to get a better time.

[They call me queer]

You can't design a game towards an elite because an elite will always be small. What about all the other people? They don't deserve to have a game they can enjoy?

Trackmania places a start, an end, and gives you a certain amount of certain pieces to design your own track, and then you set a time on it. The only thing factored into the rankings is the player's time. I believe all pieces must be used.


You can't design a game towards an elite because an elite will always be small. What about all the other people? They don't deserve to have a game they can enjoy?
Surf is an extreme niche, and because it is a game based on mechanics, it will always be geared to the 'elite' market. The only reason surf continues with a sustained playerbase is because it is actually a part of a game that is very popular. Surf would be a fraction of what it is today if it was not part of Counter-strike.

[Syncronyze]

I'd like to point out that streebee and evolv have the exact same point as I do. All of my posts, and chat messages to you were about one simple point: there's no reason to switch to your mod over what we have now. All of your "features" are, like I pointed out, irrelevant and aren't actually improvements. The few issues that we have in surf, that your version fixes, isn't enough, in my opinion, to need or want to switch to another surf game.

It's not as if anyone has been begging for a stand-alone game, so if you're going to continue you're going to have to sell us on your game. I've asked you this question time after time and yet you keep ignoring it or talking about how good the hosting and mapping portion is. Tell us why we need to change to your game (as a player not as a content creator or a host). From what I'm reading here is that my point is valid and that none of your features in your main post are actually relevant; they don't sell us on your game, and the few features that would appeal to surfers (such as less RNG built into the game like 100% bhops, less ramp bugs and vertical surf) are so minuscule on the grand scale of switching over to a whole new game isn't worth the good majority of people's effort.

If you're trying to appeal to a casual crowd, you've come to the wrong place to do it.

[Enhex]

Disabling vsync cleared the lag up. Also I think the camera might be a little too high on the character. Sometimes when I think I'm going to hit my head, I don't; other times I don't think I will hit my feet, but I do.
The character is a capsule shape, 1.7m high, and the camera is 1.55m high.
It might be a matter of getting used to it.


Shouldn't that be done through level design instead? One of the reasons surf is pretty popular is because even on maps that a person can beat on their first day of surfing, theres still so many mechanics in the game you can improve and master which will allow you to get a better time.

That's right, but there are other things like being able to recover from a mess up and maintaining speed which depend on different mechanics.
If you compare it to car racing games, it's like not having to manually switch gears. The rational is to let the player focus on other things.
That changes the experience, making a new game, and that's the goal of "super" mode.



Surf is an extreme niche, and because it is a game based on mechanics, it will always be geared to the 'elite' market. The only reason surf continues with a sustained playerbase is because it is actually a part of a game that is very popular. Surf would be a fraction of what it is today if it was not part of Counter-strike.
Actually surf isn't an extreme niche, skill surf is. I remember when I polled info about "how many people play surf at the current moment?" the result was 2k-5k, which is a lot and would rank at the top 30-40 most currently played games on Steam (at least when I checked).
I assume most of the servers are combat surf.

Syncronyze:
I don't ignore your question, you ignore my answer, which is simple - look at the features list.
Usually then you go "but we already have what I care about modded in", then I point out the other stuff, which are mapping/hosting.
My goal here is to get feedback.

[Syncronyze]

Yes, and my answer is always simple: Nobody is going to map for a game that has no player base, and nobody is going to host for a game that has no player base. In other words, player bases mean everything, and if you can't realize that you're not going to generate a player based off features that require one then you're going to have a bad time. You need features that are relevant and innovative for the player not the mapper or the host.. As it stands only few of your features are actually innovative, and of those none of them are relevant, and those that are relevant are minor improvements (vertical ramp clipping, making surf a little less RNG based etc.) Once again, in other words, nothing that will make people start jumping ship from CSS or CSGO.

Subjectively speaking, I'd rather have quality hosts and communities than a bunch of shitty ones, and if that means more legwork for the host to prevent the shitty ones from infecting the community making the quality ones smaller then so be it. And I don't believe I'm alone on this.

[They call me queer]

Actually surf isn't an extreme niche, skill surf is. I remember when I polled info about "how many people play surf at the current moment?" the result was 2k-5k, which is a lot and would rank at the top 30-40 most currently played games on Steam (at least when I checked).
I assume most of the servers are combat surf.

There are 1.2-1.5 unique connections to KSF every day.

5k is niche. There are more people that play Quake.

[Blink]

As it is right now, your game is just a copy of KSF servers with the only improvement to gameplay being no rampglitches.

Skillsurf being an extremely competitive community, I'm surprised I haven't seen any discussion about a ranking system. For me to be interested in this game you would have to have a database similar to KSF that will record a personal record of any player in any server with the specific "competitive/classic" configurations, allowing players to go on single player to a map they want at any time to break their records without having to wait for a vote and convincing 20 rookies to vote for your map. Also this competitive mode should have SourceTV type of thing that saves WRs for anyone to see.

If your game doesn't have something unique like this, I don't see more than a few people switching from CSS to your game. If you're looking to get any profit from your project I think you should've gone with the "treasure hunt" game.

[Enhex]

As it is right now, your game is just a copy of KSF servers with the only improvement to gameplay being no rampglitches.

Skillsurf being an extremely competitive community, I'm surprised I haven't seen any discussion about a ranking system. For me to be interested in this game you would have to have a database similar to KSF that will record a personal record of any player in any server with the specific "competitive/classic" configurations, allowing players to go on single player to a map they want at any time to break their records without having to wait for a vote and convincing 20 rookies to vote for your map. Also this competitive mode should have SourceTV type of thing that saves WRs for anyone to see.

If your game doesn't have something unique like this, I don't see more than a few people switching from CSS to your game. If you're looking to get any profit from your project I think you should've gone with the "treasure hunt" game.

I already thought about it before. The only problem is making sure the player didn't cheat, which can be done. Though that's something that will come at the end of the development.

[Sacred]

As it is right now, your game is just a copy of KSF servers with the only improvement to gameplay being no rampglitches.

Skillsurf being an extremely competitive community, I'm surprised I haven't seen any discussion about a ranking system. For me to be interested in this game you would have to have a database similar to KSF that will record a personal record of any player in any server with the specific "competitive/classic" configurations, allowing players to go on single player to a map they want at any time to break their records without having to wait for a vote and convincing 20 rookies to vote for your map. Also this competitive mode should have SourceTV type of thing that saves WRs for anyone to see.

If your game doesn't have something unique like this, I don't see more than a few people switching from CSS to your game. If you're looking to get any profit from your project I think you should've gone with the "treasure hunt" game.

I didn't bother making a reply yet but this kind of sums up what I would have said. Really no reason for your game to exist right now, sorry.

[Crayz]

I support your project. I'm picturing a standalone game where content creators can upload and submit their maps which are then rated by the community, option to enable/disable the map for server owners, and automatically inserted into the global database ready for people to load up in single or multiplayer & grind for times competing for either server or global rank.

There's much more possibility then just that, but the game has to be created with a decent level of quality to give surfers the incentive to leave CS:S/CS:GO/TF2/whatever. Keep at it

[mbsurfer]

The biggest benefit I see from this is making a private server to surf without having connect to the online ones while still being able to upload times to global stats. Having shitty internet sucks.

[Sorry]

Did you ever check out Kzmod for some ideas? It was a similar effort for counterstrike game modes including surf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKm0KJd3hyQ

An incredible amount of work went into it by many dedicated people, tons of improvements over cs, many great maps (loads of them even got ported back over into css), built in timers/mechanics/leaderboards/game types/models/sounds/etc. It really was amazing but it died over and over after any attempt to revive it because in the end people just played the base counterstrike game. Looking at what you've got so far I don't think there's anything that would sway players over but I'll be sure to check back when you're further along in development. You'll definitely want to think about some things beyond what surfing in CSS has to offer though rather than just improving what we already have.

The main appeal of a standalone project like this for me would be a better GUI than what we deal with in CSS, made with just surfing in mind, letting any player quickly browse leaderboards, instantly watch replays and go for records without needing to play on a server. Think games like inMomentum which is pretty much a standalone in the same vein as defrag and bhop.

The other thing that looked like it could have great potential is a map builder that takes some of the effort out of using hammer, just quality of life functions like a dynamic surf ramp creation tool are a great start. The amount of stuff you can do in hammer is crazy but nobody has made a CSS map anywhere near the editor's full potential. A few people have done some really interesting things, especially in kz (rest in peace aoki), and I guess it's mostly just stuff that would polish maps aesthetically and not effect gameplay but there's a huge lack of literature for these advanced things and having to fuck around with .dlls just to hack some functions in, so I'd definitely be interested in what you come up with to bring that to the average user. But then again I'd probably be more excited if it could create compatible maps that I could just play in CSS.

I think classic mode and super mode is a terrible idea, if you want low skill requirement content or a race/fast version do it with a map, not a mode. Make it super easy or fast paced with boosters/starting gates, whatever, just not by changing the settings you're playing on. It's like vq3/cpm for defrag players, autohop/easy servers for bhop players and 100 tick servers for surf players, all it does is fracture the community. Work out what settings you want at the start and stick to them using mapping to get the gameplay you want.

The other thing is that no amount of features will matter compared to how the gameplay feels, but I can't try it out right now.

I honestly wish you good luck, I was a huge kzmod fan and I don't think any harm could come from your game so I hope your effort isn't for nothing.

[alnoise]

Is this still in progress? I see so much potential in this game.

[Colt]

Hi there. Not sure if anyone has actually noticed this, but the link seems to be broken. Please update the thread if this is the case, and let me know if it's still up.
Really hope that it hasn't been discontinued, even though it's been nearly a year. Anyways, you have my full support for your game, and hope to play it soon!

[FluX]

I was honestly going to make a surf game, but I guess it's alright that you're doing it aswell, best of luck on it! If you need help w/ it let me know, I'm a game designer aswell.

[arxxy]

fix link please :)))

[arxxy]

fixed dropbox pls

[horsefeathers]

i still have an old version if you want that

https://mega.nz/#!9Y4jTSKA!EUZWdrCOWpfy6QyYEibATmk1Z05-UtIMWOJEqo0Gn3Y

[Enhex]

Some people requested me to provide a new download link, here you go:
https://enhex.itch.io/super-surf