RLS - Really Lazy Students

Hey there, it's been a long time, and to my surprise, I have received countless requests to bring servers back. I didn't feel like keeping the old builds due to the large amount of an unfinished features and countless bugs and awful player base of either complete noobs or sweaty 'l33t' players, not to mention I got really mad at server-side limitations at some point and started making a standalone ssdk2013 game with a really simple yet true name of "Half-Life 2: Multiplayer". While the game is only at it's first development stage, I was brought back to RLS by Klizmotron & simm25. Big thanks to them for their endless support during hard times and desire to keep the project alive. I have been inspired by their desire to play at RLS and here is the result: I have spent a couple of weeks fixing everything up and we're back to 5 different servers with unique gamemode setups. While you can read more about the servers at the main page, I will only summarize what I think is the most important:

- Balance:
It is really the only major reason why this game is truly dead. Not because it's community, not because Valve has abandoned the game, but exactly because the divergence in average skill level. My main goal was to make it easier for new players to gain kills and still have fun in process. While I cannot teach new players to shoot and jump properly, I can compute their combat efficiency either buff or nerf some certain player. Current changes allow everyone to utilize gravity gun yo-yo tricks and double punt acceleration of phys objects by only M1->M2/M1->M1 combos without need of using scripts or anything like that. Catching objects made easier. New damage system is accounting for damage falloff, so you don't accidentally get -225 headshot from across the whole map. Combat Efficiency will be also used to give losing players per-spawn buffs like additional armor, increased armor effectiveness or additional weapons on respawn. For those who do too well, it will decrease their armor effectiveness and/or give less items. This is not yet completely implemented, but I am working on the balance pretty much every day, so expect all sorts of improvements every now and then.

-New HUD:
Suggested by Klizmotron, we have decided to completely wipe out the stock weapon selector, which, unfortunately, makes it impossible to add custom items into the HUD, and since we have a lot of custom stuff, it's been optimal to create our own server-side weapon selector which looks and works pretty much the same way as the stock one, except for it's a little bit more enhanced in functionality, is bug-free and has kind of fancier animations. It supports hud_fastswitch and allows you to drop weapons with right mouse button. I have then decided to also add a shop, which you can access by pressing ALT once (this may change in the future). You can spend your credits to buy weapons, ammo and upgrades used by different gamemodes.

- Combat Ranks:
There is a built-in ranking system inspired by Elite: Dangerous. Combat Rank directly depends on an amount of damage you deal during combat and affects your Combat Efficiency. The amount of XP you earn is affected by your-to-enemy Combat Rank ratio as well as your-to-enemy Combat Efficiency ratio. Dealing damage to higher ranked enemies is rewarded with faster ranking progression. The primal rank purpose is to balance old and new players and equalize their skill level since it directly affects your combat.

- Combat Efficiency:
Combat Efficiency (CE) is measured between 0-100% and represents how successful you are in combat. If your CE is < 10%, you are most likely having troubles killing anyone while CE > 90% means that you are almost impossible to kill. The server may ask you to accept Easy/Hard skill level if it detects that your CE is too low or too high. Accepting new skill level may either reduce or increase the amount of XP/Credits you earn during gameplay as well as make it either harder or easier for you to gain kills.

There are also a lot of small changes and improvements and I won't be able to list all of them here because I may simply not remember all of them. Join now and check it out for yourself!