TheArmyGuy's Jail Escape~Because actual roleplaying rarely happens and looks handicappedIt's back after a couple of months of downtime. Well, it's more like me being too busy with school and work to host it. Let us start with a small description.
Description:I started work on this jail around and about one year ago, finished it to a playable extent and had a decent playerbase. Over the last few months I have lifted the jail up to current quality standards, while not trying to affect gameplay in a negative sense. In my own experience, I managed to do so quite well. I have hosted this new version once, last monday, and it got around 28 players before deflating due to bedtime. Many bugs, especially the v20 -> v21 transfer, had been noted, and have since been fixed. I feel like the jail is totally ready for an official host, with every last button idiot-proofed.
Images:Since I've hosted this before, you might recognize these images. I have also made a gallery thread around the time I previously hosted, but I feel like it's more suited to post some updated pictures instead of linking to the old thread. The server uses a mashtogether of Trueno's old colorset and Squideey's 'squid' colorset, both available on RTB. All images can be right clicked and opened in a new tab for the full resolution.
|Main cell block | A cell | Some piping certain cells have access to (more on that later)
|A bird's eye view of the jail and yard | Basic guard spawn | Prisoner dining facility
|Prisoner hygene facility | Prisoner car workshop | Prisoner wood workshop
|The library | Medical facility | Sports facility
Gameplay features:A jail escape shouldn't be without it's features, obviously. This jail escape follows the general line of most jail escapes (mostly mislabeled 'RP') in that there's a team of prisoners, whose job it is to escape the prison; and a team of guards that's supposed to stop this from happening. Guards may only attack prisoners if they misbehave, or are using weapons. Asking for a weapon drop first is encouraged though. Both teams only have one life per player, and each round lasts either 10 minutes, in which case the guards win, or shorter if the prisoners manage to escape or kill all guards (if anyone knows a way to stop the prisoners from winning if all guards are dead, so only if they escape, that'd be great. I'm not an idiot so I won't give you admin for it, but a permanent spot on the credit board will hopefully do).
Here are some of the rooms and features the prison boasts:
-Prisoners/guards balancing:- For every guard, there are 2 prisoners. In addition, there is a maximum cap set on the guards team of 9 guards.
-Item crafting:- Prisoners can grab various materials around the prison, such as bottles, a piece of paper, and gasoline. Three guesses what this makes.
-Key randomisation- What has always bothered me about jail roleplays is that once you know the location of a key, you're set. So
I Sleven came up with a great little idea. There are 32 'keypoints' hidden all over the map. On the beginning of each round, 4 randomisation banks (a 1x8f firing a radio wave at 8 1x1f's below itself) choose 4 locations to actually put a key on. This feature makes for more than 65 000 possible key combinations, so a key loadout is very unlikely to be the same as another round. That is unless I manage to host this server for 27 000+ hours. Bottom line is: variation
-Default-ish weapons- There are a few things I can't stand in jail roleplays. One of them being dead ringers, invisibility watches, tanks, handcannons, T+T guns (it's not bad, just unfitting)... So I came up with a weapon list that's great in my eyes. The list is as follows: Gun, Sniper Rifle (Pandan), Assault Rifle, Combat Rifle, Shotgun (Ephialtes), SWAT vest, chemical grenade (+gasmask), medkit, pill, and if that isn't default enough for you, it even used the 'key yellow' instead of dumbells'. One small thing, I did use Tier Tactical's melee weapons, such as the baton and crowbar. Don't worry though, I changed the damage they deal, so most melee weapons are a 5 or 6 hit kill instead of a 2 hit kill. This has proven to only work if you're with 2 or more prisoners versus 1 guard, especially if said guard is wearing a swat vest. About those swat vests, there are just 2 available every round. Hope the itemset pleases you as much as it pleases me c:
-An emergency armory- If the prisoners should start their escape attempt, the door will take 15 seconds to open. The second they try to escape, a 'bonus armory' opens in the guard's base, with access to 2 riot shields, more chemical grenades than your average 7 year old can count, gas masks and combat rifles. The only issue with this is that going from the yard to the armory and then back to the yard takes slightly over 20 seconds. The prisoners still have to drive a car around some roadblocks after getting out of the yard though. Killing the prisoners with your standard weapons and hoping for the best, or wasting some time and get good guns, it's your call.
-Legacy doors- I spent the better part of my afternoon replacing every single JVS event with the legacy door support. This should affect gameplay too much, but it decreases ghosting time dramatically, and removes a plethora of bugs related to the onMinigameReset event. All in all you should have a more stable gaming environement with these simplified events.
-An item wiper- No jail is complete without a magical device that fondles you intimately in your pockets and scoops any of your illegal loot out. The item wiper is pretty much just a surefire way to get rid of a prisoner's items, should you as a guard suspect them of having a shotgun, or a 6 foot long sniper rifle hidden inside their star fish. If successful, it should plop a nice confirmation message into the chat for everyone to see ho good of a guard you've been, and how violated you made a prisoner feel. Good for you!
-Books- The library boasts some of the finest literature in all of Blockland. Most is written by Momentum and myself, but Sleven made up a couple of books too. Some examples include 'Kama Poohtra - Winnie the Pooh love positions for maximum pleasure' and 'Rape mod - 1001 reasons I am not isntalling it'. Also, there's totally not a secret in the library atall. I mean, that'd be so cliché, right? pfft, yeah, better not look there. Wink wink. No seriously, don't. Or do. Your call.
-Sports activities- More as a detail than a feature, both the basketball court in the yard and the football (soccer) field/basketball court in the gym are operational and ready to be played. Both sports games work on an 'orange versus blue' AKA prisoners versus guards basis.
-A solitary confinement room- More commonly referred to as the 'imbecile guard trapper', this thing can only be opened from the outside with a key. This is never really used by anyone during the previous hosts, so I'll mention it here. There's nothing more annoying than being stuck inside a padded room for an unspecified amount of time. So, guards, if a prisoner nicked your sammich, nothing stops you from hooking him in the gabber, and throwing them into solitary confinement.
-The most annoying vent system in the world- Don't you love yourself a good vent system to hide in and use as transport? Too bad air ducts aren't made to be navigated by humans, but air. And the former seems to get lost quite a lot. I mean seriously, I even get lost in those ducts. And I built them. Let this be a discouragement to entering those things. Also, going inside a vent is, you guessed it, illegal! However, guards can't enter the vents. To do so they'd have to demolsih a vent grate. And, be honest, what guard would destroy the prison he's working in? Off to the warden's office with those who would. However, to combat the prisoners camping in the vents, I added a small locked hatch in the guard room that grants access to the vents. Don't be an idiot though, the guard's base is full of weapons, so close that hatch behind your ass. The vent grates use VCE to be destroyed. Every vent is a group of bricks that, in total, requires 40 clicks. This can be on any part of the vent. Thus, breaking a vent takes quite a while, so teamwork is encouraged (2 prisoners break the vent twice as fast!) to avoid having a guard see your escape attempt, and thus to avoid having yo' ass capped.
-Certain escapable cells:- 90% of all cells being escapable is ridiculous. Therefor only 50% is directly escapable. 'Oh no!' I hear you think, 'what a terrible mechanic!'. Well the thing is, there are 8 cells, of which 4 are escapable. But, in the 4 cells that aren't escapable there are 3 prisoner spawn bricks. In the escapable ones just 1 per cell.
Things that are not in this jail and never will be:- A 'yellowzone'. I saw someone try to use an area in the prison as a 'yellowzone' before, basically forcing the prisoners to get in there and do what he says. Literally. Like, 'Simon says jump', and if the prisoners didn't jump, he shot them. If you do this I will ban you. Into oblivion. You're here to play, not to try and give your 12-year-old self a power rush over some people over the internet.
- The rape mod. No. Mention it and I'll personally give you a real life demonstration. The mod kills people. It's a fun shenanigan, but only for a minute or 5. Until everyone died due to an STD.
- A different escape method. I'm sorry, I know a jail escape that doesn't follow the general line would be a lot more interesting, but I simply don't have the time or willpower to overhaul the jail yet again to adapt to a new game idea. Nor do I have the scripting knowledge of the mods I would have to make.
- Votekick. The last thing I need is your super 1337 tr0ll group votekicking a bunch of innocent players that are trying to have fun. The server will be administrated a full 24/7. As a result it will not be dedicated.
- Admin applications. If I want you to be an admin, you are one by now. If you aren't, tough luck. I will not grant you supreme power of my server for just getting to knowyou in a single gamemode. This is of course with the exception of friends I have overlooked since I reset my server data, thus wiping all admins.
- Ridiculous stuff like Tezuni's server has. I am not adding a tanks versus dinosaurs minigame. I am not adding a button that transforms you into a cow. I am not adding a 'bladder challenge'. I am not adding the option to run around naked in the server.
- I am not making the prisoners white, nor am I making the guards black. FACT: 58% of the American prison population is not caucasian. This is not out of racism, but out of realism. I've been getting a lot of stuff about this, but what I don't get is why nobody bats an eye if I make all of the prisoners white. Only if they're black it's bad. Sheesh people, learn how to not be affected by campaigns trying to give an overdose of rights to immigrants. Getting on the same level is fine, surpassing it is not. If slayer had a function to let the player choose hand and head color, I would enable it. It doesn't. End of story.
Rules:There's just the one rule. Do not freekill. I will describe this very extensively, so nobody can talk their way around it. Freekilling is a guard killing a prisoner without that prisoner behaving badly, being in posession of weaponry or being in a restricted area. It is impossible for a prisoner to freekill a guard. Illegal areas include the air ducts, and any area behind a yellow/black striped line. For the record, that means the side of the line you did not spawn on. If you fail to comply, you will be banned for 30 minutes. If you fail to comply 3 times, you will be permanently banned. Don't think you can come in the server and 'wreck some havoc' by killing a few people and getting banned. If you freekill someone I will simply use the /resurrect [playername] command to bring them back into the game. You are not affecting long term gameplay. Freekilling does not give you the power to ruins omebody else's game enjoyment.
Server status:
Credit goes to Kalphiter for fixing this image up. I'm starting with a fresh, empty banlist for all to enjoy.
Opening hours:The jail should open somewhere around 10pm GMT+1 and will close around 3am GMT+1.
That translates to 4pm EDT (the time in new York) to 9pm.
News:I like to constantly update this section with fixes and upgrades.
16 aug '13 - Co-host Cancel [19516] has departed on a 12-day vacation
16 aug '13 - I am curently trying to figure out a 10-minute day/night cycle, so it's easier to escape at night. Blockland 7-light cap makes this hard. Any suggestions are much appreciated.
Administration team:
TheArmyGuy
Cancel
Timezbrick
Sleven
Renousim
Fawkes
Notice how this doesn't include a single name with numbers in it!
Suggestions:Any suggestions about how I can improve the build, or the experience, please do tell me. Proper credit will be given. Take into account that any huge changes suggested are unlikely to be passed. Improving also doesn't mean making it easier for the team you like to play on the most. Since the guards are weighted 1:2 to the prisoners, the prisoners will be the most played and populated team. Therefor it's harder to manage.
Final wordThere's one thing I want to get out there. One major thing that will impact all gameplay. There is, in no form, way, time or method anything atall, from the tiniest knife to the biggest of cannons, hidden, stashed or chached in the wastebin inside the dining room. Not ever. There has never been anything, there will never be anything. Stop spamclicking it. If people keep doing this, I'm making all of the bricks the trashcan is made out of onActivate>Player>Kill. Thanks c:
You may rate the build anywhere from 1 to 10 out of 10 as if it were a gallery thread if you feel compelled to do so. Any constructive criticism is greatly admired. Blatant flaming will be ignored. If the jail doesn't have thing X, but jail Y does, don't expect me to add it if it's a rhinosaurus rex lazergunmounted aircraft carrier dropship minigame.
Tl;dr Go read it, I spent an hour making this thread.
Poll