[Open Assets] Explosive Speed (Custom Gamemode) - Boost to Win! For a Price...

[EXALT]

Spend time to boost whenever you want!
Don't run out of time or you'll explode!
Complete laps and hit foes to gain more time.
Be the last kart standing to win!

There is a built-in tutorial for new players if you want to jump right in, but details on the mechanics can be found below.
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Spending and Gaining Time

Remaining Time: Run out of time and you'll explode. The amount of time you start a race with changes depending on the number of racers.
Additional starting time is also given for sectional tracks to compensate for the lack of lap time gain.

Recent Changes: Displays the three most recent changes to your timer.

Boost Cost: Amount of of time that will be spent when performing a boost by double tapping up or pressing custom 1 (see Player Commands).
The cost will increase with each use, but resets each lap. "X" indicates you do not have enough time remaining to perform a boost.

Spent Time Recovery: Completing a lap/section will refund a portion of the time a player spent during that lap/section. The percentage you recover depends on your placement in the race.
Better placements recover more time (First place even recovers 100% of what they spent).

Lap Time Gain: Completing a lap on a looping track will grant extra time depending of the length of the track.
Sectional tracks do not grant this extra time. Instead you start with more initial time.

Placement Bonus Time: Completing a lap will add a few bonus seconds based on your placement. It may not seem like much, but every second counts. There is no bonus given on sectional tracks.


Stealing Time

Hitting opponents with items will remove time from their timer and add it to your own. More powerful items steal larger amounts of time.
Bumping slower opponents will steal a small amount of time, but if you boost into another racer you will steal a large amount of time from them.


Final Gambit / Final Hit

When you explode from running out of time, you can cheat your way back into the race by hitting someone with the explosion.
Anyone caught in this final gambit will have ALL of their time stolen and given to the player who exploded.
However, players who are running out of time will have a warning indicator shown to the other players making this maneuver difficult to pull off.
Knocking out another racer by stealing their final seconds will grant a brief period of invincibility and make you immune to your victim's explosion.


Bonus Mode - Orbinaut Onslaught

Spoiler

Can only be activated by server.
XSpeed_mode orbi

Replaces boost with orbinauts that cannot be held and can only be fired forward.
There is a short period at the start of the race where orbinauts cannot be fired to give everyone a chance to spread out.

XSpeed_mode both

Racers have both boosts and orbinauts available to them and can swap between them whenever by inputting up down up or custom 2 (see Player Commands).
Each items' cost scales separately so choose your weapons wisely.

Player Commands

Spoiler

XSpeed_sfx on/off (enables/disables countdown music for this player)
XSpeed_tutorial on/off (enables/disables in-game tutorial for this player)

XSpeed_inputs double/customs (input style for this player)

Style: Boost, Tutorial, Swap (both mode only)​

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double: up up, down down, up down up​

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customs: cust 1, cust 3, cust 2​

Server Options

Spoiler

XSpeed_enabled on/off (turn the entire mod on or off)
XSpeed_defaultTutorial on/off (determines if new joins to the server will have the tutorial on)

XSpeed_mode boost/orbi/both (which gamemode is being played)
XSpeed_moretime 20 (additional starting time for all races, 0-999)

XSpeed_defaultInputs double/customs (which input style new joins to the server will be assigned, default value is customs)

Tips and Tricks

Spoiler

First place recovers all of the time they spent on boosts when completing a lap. If you are confident you will finish a lap in first, keep boosting at the end to extend your lead.
Items that can hit multiple opponents are powerful since you will steal time from all racers they hit.
Sitting back and spamming items may seem like a viable strategy, but falling too far behind in the race will result in an automatic DQ.
On sectional tracks the main goal is to reach the finish first rather than outlive your rivals, so boost like crazy!
Mashing boost will result in boosts overlapping and wasting resources. Use the in-game speedometer to find the right rhythm to maximize your speed for the time you spend.
To quickly swap to customs input style hold all three custom buttons during the race starting countdown.
To quickly get rid of the tutorial using customs input style hold custom 2.

Known Bugs / Issues

Spoiler

-Occasional audio bugs occur with countdown music
-Some lap completion behaviors do not perform well on tracks without robust check-pointing
-Orbinaut Onslaught is less tested than boost mode and may have unknown bugs
-This mod is incompatible with battle mode
-This mod does not support splitscreen play

Changelog

Spoiler

v1.0
-Initial release

v1.1
-Fixed bug with squishing an opponent with grow/shrink items not stealing time.
-Fixed bug with player commands handling unexpected inputs.
-Fixed bug with HUD elements being incorrectly shown to dead players.
-Added very short cooldown to using boosts to prevent accidental double boosts.
-Reworked tutorial options to have a player command and a server default. Tutorial is also now disabled after going through it once. It can be re-enabled with XSpeed_tutorial on.
-Default value for XSpeed_defaultinputs is now customs. This is the recommended input style and double tap is only intended for players who can't/won't use custom buttons.

Special thanks to Callmore for letting me use code from hpmod in this.

Supporters / Co-Authors:

• Angular
• Callmore
• Menacing Marshmallow
• TyroneSama

 

[D00D64]

Welcome to releases!

 

[JugadorXEI]

My thoughts on this gamemode after some netplay testing:

Had my most fun out of the gamemode by setting the xspeed_mode to orbis and letting it rip by throwing Orbis at Mach 3 speeds. It's both terrifying and hilarious. I also like the mindgames that this mode provides by having the ability to trap deep into shortcuts using a banana and a boost.

You might want to create a player-facing command or console variable that disables the tutorial completely. I keep enabling it accidentally all the time if I use the "double" inputs style.

xspeed_inputs also throws an error if it's used with no arguments, which you might want to fix.

You might also want to give a one second cooldown to boosting, to prevent mis-inputting boosts/orbis, I've seen that being a common complaint in netgame chats.

As for balance concerns, I feel like the gamemode's mechanics seem better suited for v2 Kart, where everyone is designed to be close together. But in v1, people can get separated really quickly, so it is actually perfectly possible for 1st to lose by running out of time while someone in 4th can win by nailing 3 good orbis and bumping into players, something that seems better suited for Battle, but not the Race gametype (although if you make this compatible with Battle, that'd be a huge boon and a really good concept!). SSF (a friend I was playing this with) actually suggested an amazing idea to fix this: instead of time, you have "fuel" (which can still effectively work like time), and you win by reaching the farthest point possible in the map, based on lap/checkpoints/distance to the next checkpoint in case of ties. I feel this ties perfectly with the idea of the gamemode without crossing into Elimination/HPMod territory, by rewarding careful resource management and map knowledge.

Final Gambit as a mechanic is kind of a point of contemption because it's perfectly possible for losing players to grief by driving backwards to hit 1st (or anyone else) and get 120 seconds, while 1st just dies and doesn't get to play anymore. It should trade away a fraction of the time, or 20 seconds, whichever is more, but not all of it! Likewise, players might still be compelled to drive backwards because reaching laps eventually doesn't give much time, and hitting players is worth a lot more. These are considerations you might want to balance around so players race instead of grief each other.

Oh, and if you could convar many, many of the values used for decreasing and increasing time for custom balance, that would be really, really swell.

There's a lot more to say but I think those are my biggest gripes with this gamemode, I think there is a lot of potential and a lot of fun to be had with it, and I hope that this v1 release is just the start. Keep up the good work!

 

[EXALT]

Thanks for the feedback!

That fuel/distance mechanic is a good idea and I'll probably implement it or some other mechanic to reward players more for being in better placements.

I knew Final Gambit would be disliked by some players since it is a very strong comeback mechanic and I may nerf it if gameplay becomes overcentralized around it. The idea was to create a tense kill or be killed scenario regardless of how much time you have remaining.

The intended way to counter a player using Final Gambit in the way you described is to boost at them. Hit them and you get invincibility for KOing them. Miss and you'll likely be out of the explosion's range. If a player has a warning indicator, a boost bump will always steal enough time to finish them off.

 

[Lightsideluc]

I like the look of this. I only played a very old version of the mode so I can't comment on that. I will say the need to change to custom mode to use custom inputs seems unnecessary; many game modes have customs enabled without issue, and use a screen that has to be dismissed via custom inputs to dissuade players who haven't set theirs yet (and if they haven't they're probably not ready for such a high-stakes mode as this anyways). By extension, having to switch between shoes and orbis seems very unnecessary; why not just have custom 1 for shoes and custom 3 for orbis?


I agree with Jugador that the final explosion stealing all time is a bit much. I'd say they should split time between each other at most. To prevent reverse racing to troll, I'd also suggest having a kill switch where if you're lapped, you blow up. This would be disabled on, say, any track with six or more laps, simply because they're short enough to feasibly be lapped on while not actually being *that* far behind, and are relatively uncommon.

 

[EXALT]

Updated to v1.1: Bug fixes and quality of life improvements