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Author Topic: Why I prefer 0.8.1  (Read 45894 times)
Neon_Knight
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« Reply #25 on: July 31, 2013, 07:56:12 AM »

If you get stuck somewhere in or out of the map, reconnect. If you're falling and you don't want to wait to die, too bad.
If players get stuck where they shouldn't (deco or something stopping players to reach the deathpits/void, for example) then that's an issue and should be reported. Also, you're not considering people who doesn't play online for different reasons. Not everyone wants to play OA online.

And campers can be horrible especially in floater maps with the overpowered railgun. The worst example of camping I've seen is dm game on oa_ctf4ish, there will be 1 railgun camper on each side fragging everybody who spawns at THE ONLY SPAWNPOINT in the center of the map. Camping is not fun casual play that the majority of players enjoy.
Well, that's an issue... which never was reported because oa_ctf4ish is mainly a CTF map. And we had tons of time before 0.8.8 to receive issue reports. It's incredible how we receive reports AFTER the releases instead of before.
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« Reply #26 on: July 31, 2013, 08:11:41 AM »

I think we have talked about it earlier. The range was reduced to 1/4 then Team Arena was released. The change affected both the vq3 and TA. This happened before the source was freed (1.32b). The source that was freed had no mention that the range have been different in an earlier point release.
I had heard that Railgun has got a shorter range than machinegun, but I had no idea that in origin its range was longer, then TA made it shorter and that change was than "backported" to baseoa by idSoftware at some point (and hence, also to OA).
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« Reply #27 on: August 01, 2013, 05:47:31 AM »

I'm not a fan of the railgun, it doesn't suit my style of play as well as the explosives do but even still, i think that the railgun should have virtually unlimited range. That said, I hate being railed the instant I spawn (in oa_spirit3 in particular there are no spawn points safe from camper nests). Having 125hp to start usually works so it doesn't bother me. I guess it just depends on the map and players who play them. Anything can be subject to abuse and I don't think it's worthwhile to bother the devs with this sort of thing. Same goes for the ongoing hatred of killbinding. These aren't legitimate issues with the game, just the players who misuse them.
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #28 on: August 01, 2013, 06:16:00 AM »

I disagree. The problem with the Q3 weapons aren't really the weapons per se (they're OK as they are), but their abuseness (?). It's the core gameplay, the map gameplay should act in such way that they limit the overpowerness of the weapon. Hell, with the right placement there's even no need to limit the weapons themselves as the map itself already limits them. It's one of the rules of good map design: the "Risk vs. Reward" concept. Dangerous or overpowered weapons should be in dangerous places.
« Last Edit: August 01, 2013, 06:18:13 AM by Neon_Knight » Logged


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Gig
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« Reply #29 on: August 01, 2013, 06:23:29 AM »

I hate being railed the instant I spawn (in oa_spirit3 in particular there are no spawn points safe from camper nests).
Just for completeness, a server admin may rise g_spawnprotect value from its default 500 ms, to give longer DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Spawn_protection]spawn protection.

Of course, this does not mean that placing all spawnpoints in the middle of a square with two railgun spawns at its borders is a good idea...
« Last Edit: August 01, 2013, 06:43:04 AM by Gig » Logged

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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #30 on: August 01, 2013, 06:24:39 AM »

Oh, yeah, spawnpoints shouldn't be too exposed as well.
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« Reply #31 on: August 02, 2013, 04:47:40 PM »

There are many things players can do to annoy me but I don't blame the weapons and don't see any real problems with the rail at all. I've debated with others in private about my perception of the rockets being slower in a subtle way than they are in the q3 demos ive seen floating around youtube. Every time I made the point I was told by mod authors that the speed value for the rockets is identical to the q3 value and my opinion was dismissed outright. I just feel like there's something missing from their physics. It almost seems like there's aquatic drag on them, or some aspect of their acceleration was missing. I'd like to experiment with this to find the truth of it sometime but it probably belongs in another thread. Having learned rockets with no q3 experience i enjoy them just fine as they are, and changing it now may be a bad idea anyway.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. A long time ago I used the OATMEAL modding toolkit to bump up the rocket speed and acceleration and it was a blast.
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #32 on: August 02, 2013, 05:08:27 PM »

Well, OA aims to change nothing from Q3's core gameplay. So if anything worked in Q3, expect the same functionality in OA.

Still, Youtube isn't a good way of judging a game's mechanics. You could also play the original Q3 (retail, 1.32c, ioquake3) to check for yourself regarding OA.
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« Reply #33 on: August 02, 2013, 05:22:43 PM »

That's part of the experiment I've been wanting to do for some time. Once I get a test outside of observations of demos, if I still think there's an issue I'll post about it.
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RMF
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« Reply #34 on: August 14, 2013, 12:26:03 PM »

Just for completeness, a server admin may rise g_spawnprotect value from its default 500 ms, to give longer DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Spawn_protection]spawn protection.
Oh for christ's sake, spawnprotect is hugely annoying as it is. In instantgib ctf (especially 1v1) I've had numerous times where I hit someone, but he just got pushed back and then killed me instead. Fair? Well yeah spawnprotect might be something to prevent accidental killing, but the current implementation is a gameplay changer for people with working reflexes that are already aiming at a potential spawn point. I've even had times where I reflex-killed someone while not already aiming at the spawnpoint, so it's really a limit on what you can do instead of a protection from... what anyway? Accidentally getting killed, is that it?

To this somebody always says "but yeah during spawnprotect they also can't shoot so it's fair" well no they can kill me after I shot them because I waste 1.5s reloading while they can shoot me after 100ms or something.

Also like someone remarked above, server admins are generally evil. However s/he failed to notice that most admins are also lazy as fuck and that you can not expect them to configure things like the spawnprotect delay (or physics, or videoflags, or anything else beyond the server name and map cycle). The default settings should be the correct ones. I mean seriously, do you feel like spending multiple days reading through and testing every single option? Especially now that, like neon_knight said, you have way more options as an admin? Because that's how long it takes if you haven't developed and betatested the features. Not everyone has or wants to spend time on this. And from my personal experience, software developers (like the oa devs) are much more patient with reading and testing documentation than sysadmins are anyway. Many of them (again, in my personal experience) are just lazy.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. A long time ago I used the OATMEAL modding toolkit to bump up the rocket speed and acceleration and it was a blast.
OATMEAL's server-side only mod was really great fun to play around with. Felt like turning a racing game into grand theft auto vice city Tongue. I contacted the creator later because the site was down, but he only had a server+client version of the mod (not server-only anymore). I still have that last version around somewhere if you want to check it out. Includes source code too I think.

making a CVAR may be legit, as long as it would follow Q3 original behavior by default.
One of the annoying things in Aftershock is that you have 7 lg damage and 80 rg damage, while in OA it's still 8 and 100. I'm used to either one or the other, but switching between the two makes me pick the wrong weapons all the time.
I'd be ok with making the rg damage optional 95-99 instead of 100, just to disable these (nowadays much easier than in the original q3 days) one-shot kills on full health. But beyond that, I'm not sure changing it is a great idea under any circumstance when sv_cheat is 0 because some servers will have different gameplay than others.

The real problem with the Railgun is on the maps.
So true. I don't know if you made it or not, but that's why I don't like the new version of oasago2: the railgun is placed somewhere so that everyone uses it, but besides the 25 hp spawn bonus there is only one yellow armor on the map to protect you from an entire enemy team of railers. That makes the entire map broken. The platform camping issue was less bad because it was simply prohibited in league games.

Also about that platform in the new oasago2: what do you get when you spawn there? You can almost always better kill yourself, the only exception being when the person that stole your flag happens to have low hp and you think you can kill him with machinegun or well-placed plasma spam. The other weapon on the platform is sg, which is not going to get you very far either... Meanwhile enemies that are running around do have a railgun to kill you from a distance (or lightning when you get closer, though still not close enough to do significant damage with any of the weapons you can get on the platform), and you end up getting killed anyway.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2013, 12:58:49 PM by RMF » Logged
Neon_Knight
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« Reply #35 on: August 14, 2013, 01:46:27 PM »

I've kept the structure of oasago2 as much as possible, so there's no new platforms. And yeah, I've tried to respect the weapon placement as well, except for that one change nothing else was changed.

And... we had time to test that stuff before and get feedback from it. Hell, we even had a plethora of 0.8.8 test releases And guess what? Feedback always comes after the releases have been released.

Only recently (this year, to be exact) I've learnt that instead of "the community", I should have listened to what the big guys who make a living from creating levels have to say. =)
« Last Edit: August 14, 2013, 01:55:05 PM by Neon_Knight » Logged


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« Reply #36 on: August 14, 2013, 02:06:49 PM »

[..] And guess what? Feedback always comes after the releases have been released.
Some things simply go unnoticed until you've tested them in production for a while.
In the other news, why not take RMF's criticism as a plain bug report for improvement in the next (test) release? The tone and attitude in that post of yours dont't help anyone.
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #37 on: August 14, 2013, 02:16:51 PM »

Well, yeah, I might have been a bit rude, but I'm not the only one feeling mad because we're getting slammed because OA isn't a 100% perfect product.

In the time between 0.8.1 and 0.8.5 we had 18 months, one and a half year, for reception of bug reports and everything. From 0.8.5 to 0.8.8 we had two full years, and it was a final version. Isn't that enough time for testing?

We are now focusing everything on OA3, because the 0.x branch is now considered done, and we're recreating from scratch almost everything regarding the game's assets.
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« Reply #38 on: August 14, 2013, 02:44:03 PM »

I just had a nifty idea. RMF is right about server admins being too lazy to read a giant config file or they could just be ignorant of what all the cvars do. Maybe adding a server launcher in the game's main menu with [?] buttons nearby the values with brief descriptions on the functions of each cvar. Map list generation would also be really nice too.
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #39 on: August 14, 2013, 02:51:11 PM »

We are on our way for doing that. The functionality is there (IICR servers have that feature since 0.8.5), but maintaining the current 0.X GUI is difficult because it's hard-coded, so we're moving on to the TA menu system, which is more flexible and allows us to integrate newer commands easily.
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« Reply #40 on: August 14, 2013, 03:08:55 PM »

Maybe adding a server launcher in the game's main menu with [?] buttons nearby the values with brief descriptions on the functions of each cvar. Map list generation would also be really nice too.
Please note that dedicated servers often have no graphics card, they're being run from a terminal.
A map rotation or config creation tool would be great, I'm thinking of a GUI to write plain .cfg files. This'd have to be part of the regular game download, though, and should not require additional dependencies like Java etc.
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« Reply #41 on: August 14, 2013, 03:14:27 PM »

You could generate the config file from the copy you run at home and upload it right over.
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RMF
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« Reply #42 on: August 14, 2013, 03:50:33 PM »

I've kept the structure of oasago2 as much as possible, so there's no new platforms.
Yes, I meant the two that were also there in the previous version.

Well, yeah, I might have been a bit rude, but I'm not the only one feeling mad because we're getting slammed because OA isn't a 100% perfect product.
No offense taken anyway, and I don't think my post was too polite either. Things in the game irritate me and that's what I express. I'm not saying OpenArena in general isn't great - in fact I've been around here for how long now, four or five years? And all this time I've been playing openarena at least once a month, at peak at least once a day, and I still like it. Every game has things that annoy me, and I will always mention them to developers when I think it's any use. If it's no use and things never change, I'll stop playing the game. That's not the case (black in names in 088 for example), so that's great Wink

Quote
In the time between 0.8.1 and 0.8.5 we had 18 months, one and a half year, for reception of bug reports and everything. From 0.8.5 to 0.8.8 we had two full years, and it was a final version. Isn't that enough time for testing?
I have to admit that it is partially my own fault if there are things in openarena that I don't like. But most complaints are from players that never tested things, and most players aren't aware that there is anything to test.

I was about to suggest hosting a server with the latest and greatest beta, but then I remembered something, checked, and yup there seems to be one running already... I don't think even 1% of the players knows about this. Hosting regular (once a month? Every other month?) evenings where people can join and try out new things (could be new maps, could be some new cvar, could be a model) might be a way to actively involve players in the development and get direct feedback.

RMF is right about server admins being too lazy to read a giant config file or they could just be ignorant of what all the cvars do. Maybe adding a server launcher in the game's main menu with [?] buttons nearby the values with brief descriptions on the functions of each cvar.
I was actually more thinking of questions that you can answer to generate a config -- but even then I don't think most admins would bother answering hundreds ifnot thousands of questions. I'm going to keep saying that the defaults should contain the correct values.

Map list generation would also be really nice too.
A map rotation or config creation tool would be great
Hmm, didn't this exist? By thedimi or something?

Edit: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=2956.0
Edit2: Mirror of tool http://lucb1e.com/oa/maprotgen.php
« Last Edit: August 14, 2013, 04:10:43 PM by RMF » Logged
grey matter
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« Reply #43 on: August 17, 2013, 07:37:17 AM »

Map list generation would also be really nice too.
A map rotation or config creation tool would be great
Hmm, didn't this exist? By thedimi or something?

Edit: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=2956.0
Edit2: Mirror of tool http://lucb1e.com/oa/maprotgen.php
This is getting somewhat off-topic, but the immediate issues I see with that script are;
  • not hosted on the official website
  • requires hoster to run PHP, while it could be implemented clientside using JavaScript and the resulting html+js even works offline
  • requires the user to know the exact map .bsp filenames
  • blank lines (e.g. at the end of a copied list from some file) produce non-working script lines
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Neon_Knight
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« Reply #44 on: September 22, 2014, 09:38:21 AM »

Discussion comes from this topic.

OA3 aims to tie consistency in art style, higher overall quality, faster run. OA3 will be the "real" OpenArena, one day. But someone may still like to play with some maps or characters that OA3 will wipe out from existence, by now and then. Wanting some retro-gaming sometimes does not mean making new games is useless.
Retrogamers want to play older versions of OA maps inside newer versions? There's a thread for those requests.
Retrogamers want to play older versions of OA itself? Then they should search them and download them. OA3 is about going forward, not backwards for nostalgic reasons.

I know there are still players playing 0.8.1 and complaining about some of its defects which have been fixed in later versions, but they don't want to upgrade anyway for some reason. Only those few who (absurdly) complain about it do disturb... other players who like 0.8.1 at their home, do not disturb. "Hard" people will ever exist, and some will continue to use OA 0.x years after OA3 will be released (tons of third-party repositories will continue to show 0.8.x for who knows how long). We cannot completely avoid those "hard" people, but there are other people, more intelligent, who may like some retrogaming by now and then, without complaining about an unsupported game.
So far, all the arguments against 0.8.8 and pro-older versions I saw and read were pretty weak.
« Last Edit: September 22, 2014, 09:41:51 AM by Neon_Knight » Logged


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