[Open Assets] Juicebox Guava

Meta

• Juicebox is now Reusable. I've been away from addon dev for a while, and the community has been up to some crazy involved stuff, to the point where interop is impossible without deep access to every dependency. If I'm not working on this, it doesn't feel fair to tell other people that they can't work on it either: let's see what you've got!
• If you make changes to Juicebox beyond obvious bugfixes, do me a solid and make sure your changes are clear; change the filename, change the scoreboard lines in init.lua (Ctrl+F HOSTMOD), and add your own name in place of or next to my own (ctrl+f "Tyron"). You're not required to do this, Reusable means no strings attached—but it'd be a favor to me. Thanks for being cool!

Gameplay Changes

• Technical Recovery now drains ~50% of your current gate meter. (Quick Recovery drains a slightly reduced amount. If it's been less than 5 seconds since your last recovery, the penalty is negated.)
• Gate meter now charges significantly slower. The slower your character is, the faster they recharge gate meter.
• Gates are now dropped farther apart at the start of the race. Gate spacing becomes tighter as the race continues, reaching its "old" values after roughly a minute and a half.

This round of gameplay changes is focused on making early fights and overtakes more meaningful, reducing "double attack" situations where players could be put into difficult positions despite winning an item interaction, further reducing the power of smuggled speed items, and giving players some room to breathe during early laps—chaos is fun, but constant chaos can sometimes be exhausting in long play sessions.

You'll still see 6-wide finishes and endings made of concentrated madness, but the race builds to those moments instead of tenderizing your brain for 3 minutes, and pulling ahead early will give you some extra leeway when the pack comes calling later.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where players would receive SPB-refund sneakers when the SPB left their box through unusual means, like taking explosion hits.
• Fixed an issue regarding HUD rendering during Battle mode.
• Fixed an issue where the gate meter could sometimes appear during Battle mode, despite gates (intentionally) not spawning.
• Removed some largely-useless prints associated with Juicebox cvar setup.

Not Fixes

• Hyudoro Misfire's forced sneaker boost is at standard speed, not Firmsneaker speed. This was unintentional, and it took me a while to notice it: I'm keeping it because it makes misfires easier to control and less frustrating in non-shortcut situations.

This has been cooking for a bit. If you like Juicebox, the things you like should still be here, just in a less brain-melting capacity. If you found Juicebox frustrating before, it'd be cool if you gave this version a try, since I think it plays in a more stable way among strong players. And if you still don't like Juicebox, take what you want, put it somewhere else, and have fun, LMAO.

Quick set of fixes for votable-gametype servers or servers that only use Juicebox for fastrespawn. 24/7 Juicebox servers do not need to update, though you might want to if you're really particular.

Features

• Added some extra help text in the server console when Juicebox is setting up or reverting cvars. This system is kind of a hack and there's no way around it, so the least I can do is explain myself, LOL.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where players could activate invisible Quick Recoveries after getting hit when Juicebox was off and fastrespawn was on. Whoops. Thanks to Patafoin and Diggle.
• Fixed a cosmetic issue where clients would flood their consoles with with "Only the server can change [insert variable]" when joining or Juicebox was toggled. This didn't affect server or client stability, but justifiably confused some people.

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A little bit of housekeeping. No giant changes, just things that make Juicebox feel a little cozier.

Gameplay Changes

• You can no longer "lap" the gate line; when you advance a lap, gates dropped on the previous lap become invisible, and you'll no longer interact with them. This should reduce confusion and visual clutter, while also handling rare cases on high-lapcount courses where players could take two sets of gates.

Fixes

• The fastrespawn cvar now sets the correct respawndelay at the beginning of every round. Previously, there were a lot of ways to get these two cvars out of sync unintentionally, and the result is kinda loud and obnoxious in addition to not working correctly. This shouldn't happen anymore.
• During Battle Mode, race-specific features (including gate spawning, OOPS) are disabled. I forgot Battle existed again, xd. You'll still be able to tech, and you'll still quickly respawn, but eggbox timers will not restore after death, since dying in Battle Mode already subtracts a bumper.

Hey, made it this far and nothing's explicitly lit on fire yet. Neat. Anyway, here's a bunch of fixes and features.

Gameplay Changes

• Haste is no longer less effective for characters with higher weight. OOPS. This was never intended, but snuck in from an old version of KartMP: the fix should substantially help out characters in the lower-left quadrant, generally considered the weakest stat combination in Juicebox.
• Rocket Sneakers now drain much slower when deployed (same as vanilla) and consume less time when activated (slightly more than vanilla). However, deploying them no longer resets gate power. This is a buff.
• Eggbox timers are no longer preserved after respawning if you died while spinning out. This should reduce punishment after unusual loss-of-control combo hits.

Features

• Perfectly timed Technical Recoveries now have a special "sparkle" effect and sound. This should help players get used to the ideal timing easier—remember, the earlier you tech, the quicker your spinout ends.
• When Quick Recovery is available, you'll see twinkling stars around your character as a reminder.

Fixes

• Fixed an exploit that allowed miniturbo duration to be incorrectly extended in unusual circumstances.
• Fixed an exploit that caused eggbox timers to fail to restore after respawning with certain timings.
• Fixed an issue that caused players to hear the "boost" sound twice when Drop Dashing if they were spun out when dying.
• Fixed an issue that caused the item HUD to display incorrectly after firing the SPB while standing on an item capsule.
• Fixed visual interop with Angular's "Egg Panic" and other eggbox-modifying mods—when eggbox timers are out of the vanilla game's range, Juicebox will back off and let other mods draw the eggbox numbers. This was tested with Juicebox loaded before Egg Panic and hasn't been rigorously checked in all mod environments, your mileage may vary.

A note on Rocket Sneakers, since they've been the most contentious part of the mod; I think they were fine in smaller games, but they were probably less powerful than intended in large games, since you're still vulnerable to attack and have limited opportunities to slip away from the chaos.

Since you can't use them to fight, I tuned them up a little to make them clear winners in the speed department, then reverted the decay changes, since taking hits with a ticking timer is pretty frustrating. It should be similarly difficult to take multiple spaced cuts with a single item, since you no can no longer use full-strength gateboosts, but you should gain more ground more consistently otherwise.

This update includes some small but impactful changes to recovery mechanics, adds some extra features for servers that frequently change gametype, and squashes a few bugs that are dumber than any of the ones I fixed last update.

Gameplay Changes

• While holding BRAKE, ACCEL inputs no longer count as tech attempts. This allows players in extended wipeout to use ACCEL+BRAKE "rubberburn turning" to adjust their angle without having a tech rejected. This should help recovery in unusual circumstances where you wipe out facing a wall.
• Quick Recovery ("pity techs") can now be performed up to 3 seconds after leaving a loss-of-control state, activating as soon as ACCEL is down and BRAKE isn't. (Previously, your only chance to Quick Recover was immediately after leaving loss-of-control.) This is intended to mitigate some of the awkwardness of getting squished—players would often lift ACCEL before realizing that their hit was not actually techable, and miss their chance to Quick Recover—but should also make awkward recoveries involving reversing out of offroad less terrible.

Features

• Added the jb_reset command for hosts. This clears your saved cvar preferences, then reruns setup just to be safe. If you change a large amount of cvars while Juicebox is on and want them to stay that way (for instance, during delayed config execution), you can use this before toggling Juicebox off.
• Added the jb_restorecvars cvar for hosts, On by default. When Off, Juicebox will not try to "fix" cvar changes it makes, letting you use your own config snippets or companion scripts to handle gametype changes. You will be warned every round when this is on.
• Minor performance improvements.

Fixes

• Fixed end-of-race tips not appearing after the first one.
• "Fixed" a "bug" that sometimes "caused" the Technical Recovery visual cue to behave strangely on FOFs (software renderer only). I refuse to take responsibility for why this happens.
• """Fixed""" a """bug""" that sometimes """caused""" the Technical Recovery visual cue to disappear on mobjscaled maps in certain camera positions (OpenGL only). I think I have a nosebleed.

Bugfix and QoL/accessibility update. No gameplay changes (yet).

Features

• Added jb_reducemotion, a local cvar which disables gate screenshake when On. Thanks to GameKyuubi for the feedback.
• Juicebox now generates a config in luafiles/juicebox.cfg, and will load it if it's present—like other addons, this can be used to automatically set local preferences when joining servers.
• Added a postrace tip to remind players of the new config system.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing the "X" indicator for a mistimed Technical Recovery to GEEZ OKAY I GET IT
• Fixed a really weird and esoteric issue where a player could potentially sync out on purpose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Fixed an issue causing cosmetic errors when spectating dead players.
• Fixed an issue causing cosmetic errors when players disconnected under certain Technical Recovery conditions.
• Fixed a cosmetic issue involving an internal testing flag.
• When Juicebox is enabled, The "Additive Miniturbos" feature of Jug's Speed Utilities is temporarily disabled for compatibility reasons.

This is a bugfix release with no gameplay changes. Thanks to everyone participating in day 1 netgames, and special thanks to all hosts giving this thing a try.

• Fixed a possible syncfail when a player finished their first round after joining mid-race
• Fixed an error when a player simultaneously disconnected and mistimed a Technical Recovery
• Fixed an error when trying to play certain sounds while a client reported 0 local players (?!)