Despite some lag and hit reg issues, the game is finally playable. Some of the gameplay issues are finally coming out, like how boring late game is due to missing onos/siege/jp/etc. Its exciting to see ns2 finally approaching beta status.
<!--quoteo(post=1845697:date=May 12 2011, 04:23 PM:name=peregrinus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (peregrinus @ May 12 2011, 04:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1845697"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Game was quite smooth even playing on a server on other side of the world
My major complaints are:
- really hard to kill marines as a skulk <b>Flat out bug, this will be fixed in time.</b> - the new evolve system SUCKS and doesnt make sense to me why would a crag be needed to evolve to gorge? it doesnt seem logical and badly effects gameplay. Aliens r supposed to be versatile and adaptable, its no fun playing them if ur stuck as a skulk which cant even kill marines. <b>So its ok for aliens to have all their forms available instantly, but marines have to tech up for new weapons?</b> - marine shotgun is so powerful how can aliens stand a chance against it without things like cloaking and good hit detection <b>With skill, use the environment and your abilities (i.e dont tank as a skulk) and remember that will even out when the hit-detection is fixed.</b> - flamer is still really lame going through walls and doors catch on fire forever. <b>Thats because its placeholder code, later it will behave like fire should instead of the current megasword.</b> - marines bunny hopping looks ridiculous <b>...wtf?</b> - marine weapons are not much fun <b>Could you elaborate? I find them to be a blast! (pun intended)</b> - infestation doesnt feel alive its more like static puke. <b>Soo.. you completely missed that its placeholder stuff, just to get the mechanics going?</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
seems like a lot of the performance problems are server based imo. I'll be on a server getting ~50 ping, over 50 fps(I have a nice comp) and everything will be smooth. Then I'll go to a different server, same ping, ~50 ping, but only about 20 fps, and totally choppy gameplay completely unplayable.
I tried a go at this build... seemed smoother, but what the heck ... I run around as a skulk going chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp on the marines, and eventually they drop...meanwhile its oi shotgun hey boom x1 dead skulk.
Thats annoying...especially when you do a perfect ambush, land least 2 bites on thier arse and ...you still lose to a single shotgun blast.
... then the game refuses to respawn me, and show a black screen with the build number and F1 keys and I can hear the coms of my now ex team mates battling on in my absence.
Shotgun is way too effective now, its the new Flamer ... and Skulks may as well apply for the drifters job for all thier combat ability these days. Skulk is a big juicy target and a minimal threat... easy points, and a frustrating experience for the alien player.
It seems UWE brought out the elephant gun, before adding the elephants so the gun is used to blow away the mice instead.
Halve the shotgun damage. Currently it fires 10 pellets, each doing 20 damage. In comparison, a rifle bullet does 10 damage. ???
I've done a more detailed argument on this, but basically, the shotgun is an easy-mode weapon - it has a very high (utterly unrealistic) spread, so that there's a higher likelihood of hitting a target with at least a few pellets; but to account for this, the damage per pellet is very high. The shotgun is designed for missing.
If they halved the shotgun damage to 10 per pellet, you could still one-shot a skulk, but it would require you to hit 9 out of your 10 pellets. Considerably more difficult. Drastically decrease the spread as well, so that it actually requires aim to hit something.
Commenting here from NS2HD spectating video and i have to say, My game doesnt look anywhere near as nice as that. What gives? im running on highest settings.
Oh and as commenting on the match, looks like usual marines raping with shotguns, GL and flamers.
That, and adding post-processing motion-blur to smooth out the stuttering\jerkyness. Hope it won't become a habit or those videos aren't going to be indicative of anything anymore.
<!--quoteo(post=1846255:date=May 14 2011, 08:14 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ May 14 2011, 08:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846255"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That, and adding post-processing motion-blur to smooth out the stuttering\jerkyness. Hope it won't become a habit or those videos aren't going to be indicative of anything anymore.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I dont think it will, i see it as some weekend fluff and i hope thats NS2HD's view on it too.
Tho atm NS2 is killing me, life as a skulk is more uphill than ever seeing as everybody runs around with shotguns after the first few minutes, oneshotting over and over while the skulks cant even land a bite if they're lucky/sneaky enough to get up to melee range..
Please dear god of videogaming adjust the damage output of the shotgun, atleast make skulks able to withstand one blast from that evil gun.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited May 2011
<!--quoteo(post=1846220:date=May 14 2011, 01:53 PM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ May 14 2011, 01:53 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846220"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think I recall him saying that FRAPS smoothes the frames or something.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm fairly certain Fraps does no such thing, I've seen stutters in the 2 vids I made ;) Now it could be that the stutter on my pc was a bit higher back then (lower specs), perhaps too high for Fraps to do this "magic"
Could it be that frame blending set his video footage (default setting is on), when it should be off using progressive video footage. Tell me it is not so Hugh, tell me. Can't really see the frames blending effect in his vids though, but it could be one of the causes for the smoothness.
the thing which annoys me currently is the fact that as soon as particles start to show (ie: pulling the trigger, building, reparing nodes etc...) the FPS goes to something like 10-15FPS. Even on the low spec mostly dev textured sample map we have, where it drops down from ~65FPS
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1846462:date=May 15 2011, 08:22 PM:name=Kouji_San)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kouji_San @ May 15 2011, 08:22 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846462"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm fairly certain Fraps does no such thing, I've seen stutters in the 2 vids I made ;) Now it could be that the stutter on my pc was a bit higher back then (lower specs), perhaps too high for Fraps to do this "magic"
Could it be that frame blending set his video footage (default setting is on), when it should be off using progressive video footage. Tell me it is not so Hugh, tell me. Can't really see the frames blending effect in his vids though, but it could be one of the causes for the smoothness.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My guess is that fraps isn't catching as much of the lag coming from low server rates. Since fraps works at a fixed framerate (30 fps by default IIRC), I'm assuming its sampling frames at a rate slower than NS2HD's hardware max, so its 'missing' some of the stutter/rubberbanding lag that occurs when the server starts to strain.
Also, I suspect he's mostly taking footage from the least laggy matches/parts of matches he's played. As long as the server rate stays consistently above 10, the server-side lag isn't that bad.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Hmm, that actually makes sense and would indeed explain why the stutter was more visible on my two vids (builds 159 and 160)with a frame rate of 20-30 recorded, while in game (realtime) with a lower FPS the stutter was less noticeable then being able to run at a higher FPS
Can UWE take out the stupid animation with the shotgun when you don't have fire until few time.. because when this animation play and that you need to shoot you don't even see what is in front of you..
I've never seen, even in real life, a marine that play with his gun when in operation.. sometimes (lots ?) you loose time for doing annoying thing.
<!--quoteo(post=1846505:date=May 16 2011, 05:31 PM:name=Paul-Hewson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Paul-Hewson @ May 16 2011, 05:31 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846505"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Can UWE take out the stupid animation with the shotgun when you don't have fire until few time.. because when this animation play and that you need to shoot you don't even see what is in front of you..
I've never seen, even in real life, a marine that play with his gun when in operation.. sometimes (lots ?) you loose time for doing annoying thing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This has always bothered me slightly, the weird animation where a marine will bounce the shotgun in his hands, blocking half the screen for no particular reason :P I think it was toned down slightly in a recent build, but thats just guessing. Its still annoying
<!--quoteo(post=1846148:date=May 14 2011, 02:49 AM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ May 14 2011, 02:49 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846148"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Halve the shotgun damage. Currently it fires 10 pellets, each doing 20 damage. In comparison, a rifle bullet does 10 damage. ???
I've done a more detailed argument on this, but basically, the shotgun is an easy-mode weapon - it has a very high (utterly unrealistic) spread, so that there's a higher likelihood of hitting a target with at least a few pellets; but to account for this, the damage per pellet is very high. The shotgun is designed for missing.
If they halved the shotgun damage to 10 per pellet, you could still one-shot a skulk, but it would require you to hit 9 out of your 10 pellets. Considerably more difficult. Drastically decrease the spread as well, so that it actually requires aim to hit something.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think the biggest issue right now with this is none of the weapons use their originally indicated/intended damage types. Almost everything deals Normal damage, so for all intents and purposes we don't have damage types. Damage is a very large part of balance, so it makes perfect sense why nothing is balanced right now.
Do we know if the other damage types work currently? It seems like it'd be easy enough to just change the enum if they did, so I'm guessing they don't.
<!--quoteo(post=1846509:date=May 16 2011, 04:24 PM:name=mokkat)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mokkat @ May 16 2011, 04:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846509"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This has always bothered me slightly, the weird animation where a marine will bounce the shotgun in his hands, blocking half the screen for no particular reason :P I think it was toned down slightly in a recent build, but thats just guessing. Its still annoying<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Those more extreme "fidget" animations are meant to only be playing when you are idling. As in, not moving. The problem is that we haven't had the specific move animations we've made programmed into the game, so essentially when you are moving its only playing the regular idle, so it also throws the fidgets in there. If you are standing still not moving for a while, those fidgets are not an issue, its when you are moving and trying to shoot/see where you are going/etc. that its a problem.
Adding the move animations is one of the tasks that is being worked on at the moment, so that should fix this issue.
QuovatisTeam InversionJoin Date: 2010-01-26Member: 70321Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Glad I'm not the only one that was annoyed with the shotgun idle animation while simply running around. Good to hear that will be fixed soon. I know I've died a few times because of it. It flips it up right when the skulk come into view and I can't see to aim.
<!--quoteo(post=1846530:date=May 17 2011, 02:03 AM:name=KuBaN)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (KuBaN @ May 17 2011, 02:03 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846530"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think the biggest issue right now with this is none of the weapons use their originally indicated/intended damage types. Almost everything deals Normal damage, so for all intents and purposes we don't have damage types. Damage is a very large part of balance, so it makes perfect sense why nothing is balanced right now.
Do we know if the other damage types work currently? It seems like it'd be easy enough to just change the enum if they did, so I'm guessing they don't.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> In terms of skulk armour, damage types are negligible. The skulk has 70 health and 10 armour. This means that he either has: 80 (heavy), 90 (normal) or 110 (light) effective hitpoints. Even if the shotgun only did light damage instead of normal, the current shotgun would still be able to (easily) one-shot a skulk. The current shotgun is broken <b>regardless</b> of <i>indirect</i> future intentions. And if you do change these indirect aspects, you break the balance with the other weapons. The shotgun itself should change.
<!--quoteo(post=1846623:date=May 17 2011, 12:19 AM:name=Koruyo)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Koruyo @ May 17 2011, 12:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846623"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hope overall animations get a bit more love (thirdperson), there are a lot choppy things going on. :) (transitions between animations mainly)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah, we know about all the snapping and rough transitions. We'll definitely be doing a pass on the 3rd person animations to clean them up, add some missing ones, and polish some of the ones that aren't as good.
<!--quoteo(post=1846606:date=May 17 2011, 01:29 AM:name=Squeal_Like_A_Pig)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Squeal_Like_A_Pig @ May 17 2011, 01:29 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1846606"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Those more extreme "fidget" animations are meant to only be playing when you are idling.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1847036:date=May 18 2011, 08:49 AM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ May 18 2011, 08:49 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1847036"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In terms of skulk armour, damage types are negligible. The skulk has 70 health and 10 armour. This means that he either has: 80 (heavy), 90 (normal) or 110 (light) effective hitpoints. Even if the shotgun only did light damage instead of normal, the current shotgun would still be able to (easily) one-shot a skulk. The current shotgun is broken <b>regardless</b> of <i>indirect</i> future intentions. And if you do change these indirect aspects, you break the balance with the other weapons. The shotgun itself should change.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> True, but the "effective HP" a skulk has is dependent on the damage type's effectiveness vs. Armor, which can (and should) also be tweaked. The balance between the other weapons is tenuous as it is. Everything is inter-dependent, so changing one variable will screw with everything, but if the frame-work is imbalanced, all the individual weapon tweaking in the world isn't going to fix it.
I would also like to see some small welder thing that comes up when you hold E on a building. It won't be a proper weapon, just something that looks cool first person and third person.
Welding a building with a gun doesn't make that much sense (You see the gun in third person)
I don't think the framework is broken at all, though. The shotgun is. Yes, they could go with more variety than simply Normal damagetype, but the basics are sound.
<!--quoteo(post=1847294:date=May 19 2011, 08:23 AM:name=Harimau)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Harimau @ May 19 2011, 08:23 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1847294"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't think the framework is broken at all, though. The shotgun is. Yes, they could go with more variety than simply Normal damagetype, but the basics are sound.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> By broken I mean incomplete. And it is incomplete, as the damage types Charlie detailed in a post are not implemented. Unless they just decided to scrap most of the damage types and the inherent strategic value in favor of making this a very linear deathmatch game.
Comments
Command Facilities (T2) have 250 Max Energy
Command Centers (T3) have 200 Max Energy
My major complaints are:
- really hard to kill marines as a skulk
<b>Flat out bug, this will be fixed in time.</b>
- the new evolve system SUCKS and doesnt make sense to me why would a crag be needed to evolve to gorge? it doesnt seem logical and badly effects gameplay. Aliens r supposed to be versatile and adaptable, its no fun playing them if ur stuck as a skulk which cant even kill marines.
<b>So its ok for aliens to have all their forms available instantly, but marines have to tech up for new weapons?</b>
- marine shotgun is so powerful how can aliens stand a chance against it without things like cloaking and good hit detection
<b>With skill, use the environment and your abilities (i.e dont tank as a skulk) and remember that will even out when the hit-detection is fixed.</b>
- flamer is still really lame going through walls and doors catch on fire forever.
<b>Thats because its placeholder code, later it will behave like fire should instead of the current megasword.</b>
- marines bunny hopping looks ridiculous
<b>...wtf?</b>
- marine weapons are not much fun
<b>Could you elaborate? I find them to be a blast! (pun intended)</b>
- infestation doesnt feel alive its more like static puke.
<b>Soo.. you completely missed that its placeholder stuff, just to get the mechanics going?</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Look up ^
Thats annoying...especially when you do a perfect ambush, land least 2 bites on thier arse and ...you still lose to a single shotgun blast.
... then the game refuses to respawn me, and show a black screen with the build number and F1 keys and I can hear the coms of my now ex team mates battling on in my absence.
Shotgun is way too effective now, its the new Flamer ... and Skulks may as well apply for the drifters job for all thier combat ability these days.
Skulk is a big juicy target and a minimal threat... easy points, and a frustrating experience for the alien player.
It seems UWE brought out the elephant gun, before adding the elephants so the gun is used to blow away the mice instead.
Currently it fires 10 pellets, each doing 20 damage.
In comparison, a rifle bullet does 10 damage.
???
I've done a more detailed argument on this, but basically, the shotgun is an easy-mode weapon - it has a very high (utterly unrealistic) spread, so that there's a higher likelihood of hitting a target with at least a few pellets; but to account for this, the damage per pellet is very high. The shotgun is designed for missing.
If they halved the shotgun damage to 10 per pellet, you could still one-shot a skulk, but it would require you to hit 9 out of your 10 pellets. Considerably more difficult. Drastically decrease the spread as well, so that it actually requires aim to hit something.
Oh and as commenting on the match, looks like usual marines raping with shotguns, GL and flamers.
I dont think it will, i see it as some weekend fluff and i hope thats NS2HD's view on it too.
Tho atm NS2 is killing me, life as a skulk is more uphill than ever seeing as everybody runs around with shotguns after the first few minutes, oneshotting over and over while the skulks cant even land a bite if they're lucky/sneaky enough to get up to melee range..
Please dear god of videogaming adjust the damage output of the shotgun, atleast make skulks able to withstand one blast from that evil gun.
I'm fairly certain Fraps does no such thing, I've seen stutters in the 2 vids I made ;) Now it could be that the stutter on my pc was a bit higher back then (lower specs), perhaps too high for Fraps to do this "magic"
Could it be that frame blending set his video footage (default setting is on), when it should be off using progressive video footage. Tell me it is not so Hugh, tell me. Can't really see the frames blending effect in his vids though, but it could be one of the causes for the smoothness.
the thing which annoys me currently is the fact that as soon as particles start to show (ie: pulling the trigger, building, reparing nodes etc...) the FPS goes to something like 10-15FPS. Even on the low spec mostly dev textured sample map we have, where it drops down from ~65FPS
Could it be that frame blending set his video footage (default setting is on), when it should be off using progressive video footage. Tell me it is not so Hugh, tell me. Can't really see the frames blending effect in his vids though, but it could be one of the causes for the smoothness.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My guess is that fraps isn't catching as much of the lag coming from low server rates. Since fraps works at a fixed framerate (30 fps by default IIRC), I'm assuming its sampling frames at a rate slower than NS2HD's hardware max, so its 'missing' some of the stutter/rubberbanding lag that occurs when the server starts to strain.
Also, I suspect he's mostly taking footage from the least laggy matches/parts of matches he's played. As long as the server rate stays consistently above 10, the server-side lag isn't that bad.
I've never seen, even in real life, a marine that play with his gun when in operation.. sometimes (lots ?) you loose time for doing annoying thing.
I've never seen, even in real life, a marine that play with his gun when in operation.. sometimes (lots ?) you loose time for doing annoying thing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This has always bothered me slightly, the weird animation where a marine will bounce the shotgun in his hands, blocking half the screen for no particular reason :P
I think it was toned down slightly in a recent build, but thats just guessing. Its still annoying
Currently it fires 10 pellets, each doing 20 damage.
In comparison, a rifle bullet does 10 damage.
???
I've done a more detailed argument on this, but basically, the shotgun is an easy-mode weapon - it has a very high (utterly unrealistic) spread, so that there's a higher likelihood of hitting a target with at least a few pellets; but to account for this, the damage per pellet is very high. The shotgun is designed for missing.
If they halved the shotgun damage to 10 per pellet, you could still one-shot a skulk, but it would require you to hit 9 out of your 10 pellets. Considerably more difficult. Drastically decrease the spread as well, so that it actually requires aim to hit something.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think the biggest issue right now with this is none of the weapons use their originally indicated/intended damage types. Almost everything deals Normal damage, so for all intents and purposes we don't have damage types. Damage is a very large part of balance, so it makes perfect sense why nothing is balanced right now.
Do we know if the other damage types work currently? It seems like it'd be easy enough to just change the enum if they did, so I'm guessing they don't.
I think it was toned down slightly in a recent build, but thats just guessing. Its still annoying<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Those more extreme "fidget" animations are meant to only be playing when you are idling. As in, not moving. The problem is that we haven't had the specific move animations we've made programmed into the game, so essentially when you are moving its only playing the regular idle, so it also throws the fidgets in there. If you are standing still not moving for a while, those fidgets are not an issue, its when you are moving and trying to shoot/see where you are going/etc. that its a problem.
Adding the move animations is one of the tasks that is being worked on at the moment, so that should fix this issue.
--Cory
Do we know if the other damage types work currently? It seems like it'd be easy enough to just change the enum if they did, so I'm guessing they don't.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In terms of skulk armour, damage types are negligible. The skulk has 70 health and 10 armour. This means that he either has: 80 (heavy), 90 (normal) or 110 (light) effective hitpoints. Even if the shotgun only did light damage instead of normal, the current shotgun would still be able to (easily) one-shot a skulk. The current shotgun is broken <b>regardless</b> of <i>indirect</i> future intentions. And if you do change these indirect aspects, you break the balance with the other weapons. The shotgun itself should change.
Yeah, we know about all the snapping and rough transitions. We'll definitely be doing a pass on the 3rd person animations to clean them up, add some missing ones, and polish some of the ones that aren't as good.
--Cory
Oh, cool, that takes care of that "issue" :)
True, but the "effective HP" a skulk has is dependent on the damage type's effectiveness vs. Armor, which can (and should) also be tweaked. The balance between the other weapons is tenuous as it is. Everything is inter-dependent, so changing one variable will screw with everything, but if the frame-work is imbalanced, all the individual weapon tweaking in the world isn't going to fix it.
Welding a building with a gun doesn't make that much sense (You see the gun in third person)
By broken I mean incomplete. And it is incomplete, as the damage types Charlie detailed in a post are not implemented. Unless they just decided to scrap most of the damage types and the inherent strategic value in favor of making this a very linear deathmatch game.