Add CVar to allow the enabling of always run in singleplayer

[dobosken]

Resolves #278. Tested in singleplayer, and made sure it doesn't affect the game during multiplayer.

[DanielGibson]

I haven't tested this (and, like in your other PR don't have much time for it right now), but is this really enough? Wouldn't you also have to disable slowing down because you ran out of stamina? Or am I just missing something?

[dobosken]

No, that's intentional. in_alwaysRun (and thus the new counterpart in_alwaysRunSP) only dictates that the functionality of the sprint key is reversed (walk becomes run and vice versa). If players want to actually run forever, they can set pm_stamina to 0.

Confusing yes, but it adheres to id Software's CVar naming scheme.

The only behaviour I currently have my doubts about, is that stamina does not regenerate once the bar has run out and the player reverts to a walking pace again. It will only regenerate if the player holds the sprint key and initiates walking manually.

We can't have it regain stamina, 'cause that would just immediately initiate sprinting again, thus depleting the little stamina that was regenerated, causing some weird oscillating behaviour between sprinting and walking.

An alternative would be to follow a sort of modern game design trend, wherein stamina does regenerate, but sprinting is disabled until it is partially filled again (20%? 30%? 40%?). As there is no precedent for this from id Software in vanilla Doom 3, we would have to define such behaviour ourselves.

Personally I am not comfortable with that, and prefer the current behaviour, as awkward as it may be.

[DanielGibson]

Hmm but isn't always run kinda pointless if you can only run for a few seconds and then have to press the "run" key to walk so you can run again?

OTOH, maybe it's enough to document (maybe also in the CVars description) that one probably wants to set pm_stamina to 0 if using this..

[dobosken]

You're right, pm_stamina 0 is a great counterpart to this new CVar and pretty much essential.

I think external documentation (websites, changelogs, forums etc.) will suffice. in_alwaysRunSP is an entirely new CVar not documented anywhere else yet, so it'll have to be written down somewhere anyway. Might as well add the pm_stamina 0 tidbit with it.

Perhaps a dhewm3-exclusive CVars section for the website? I'm not sure how many there are right now, but assuming my other pull request is merged, that'll make at least 2 😛

[ghost]

Could there be a way to inverse the run and walk speeds themselves in a CVar without modding the player.def file?

It's been so long since I used the default walk speed in Doom 3 that I forgot stamina was an issue!

[DanielGibson]

I tested this a bit and came to the conclusion that this really should set pm_stamina to 0 and make sure it doesn't get overriden - neither by idTarget_EnableStamina, nor by idPlayer::Restore(), nor in idPlayer::Init() where all the "pm_*" spawnflags are set as cvars. Setting pm_stamina 0 once would be ok, but it seems to get reset frequently when playing (on every level load at least?) and that's just annoying.

[dobosken]

Ah, I didn't know pm_stamina resets. I tested it with a modified player.def, which survives the map transitions. My apologies for not being more thorough.

Yeah, that does hamper out-of-the-box usability quite a bit.

I can make it bypass pm_stamina and just outright disable stamina drain from the run routine if in_alwaysRunSP is set to 1? Doing this kills player autonomy and prevents them from adjusting/balancing stamina values with alwaysRun enabled entirely (they might want alwaysRun gameplay with stamina management, just tweaked from the default game), but it's a bit wacky in how it behaves anyway due to the whole doesn't regen unless the player manually initiates a walk again thing.

Any other options would be too "dirty" I think :/

[DanielGibson]

My apologies for not being more thorough.

No worries, that's why I test :)

Doing this kills player autonomy and prevents them from adjusting/balancing stamina values with alwaysRun enabled entirely (they might want alwaysRun gameplay with stamina management, just tweaked from the default game), but it's a bit wacky in how it behaves anyway due to the whole doesn't regen unless the player manually initiates a walk again thing.

I don't think there's much value in using always run when you run out of stamina all the time, so I think it's ok to either bypass pm_stamina or set it to 0 automatically (and make sure it doesn't get reset as long as in_alwaysRun is set to 1) - at least I think that's less surprising to the player (and more useful) than the alternative.

Bypassing pm_stamina might have the advantage that the stamina bar in the HUD doesn't get into hell-mode (constant scrolling animation) which might be distracting? But IDK if that's really an issue.

I don't care much either way about bypassing vs setting to 0, so I'll leave that up to you.

One minor nitpick: Would be helpful to mention the cvar name in the commit message (ideally in the commit message's title) so one can quickly look it up without going through the code changes :) (Yes, I'll also try to remember to document the dhewm3-specific cvars for endusers somewhere)

Thanks for working on this!

[DanielGibson]

I just had another idea regarding running: What about having a "toggle run" action instead? So if you bind it, and press that button, you'll run until you press it again - that would be useful both with stamina enabled and disabled.

Would be nice to have a CVar to disable stamina (that's more persistent than pm_stamina) in addition, though.

[paulwratt]

this seems like the most practical way to achieve "always run" in single player. if there is an action AND CVar, then a server can also control it (if wanted).