Demigan

I have long said that the flame-tank used to have a special secondary fire. This secondary fire fired with only the left barrel of the tank, dealing the full 100% damage from that barrel. This used to be very handy for killing slim tanks (the Med from the front or back for instance) or when attacking infantry you could use the extra punch. What you do with this info is your choice. I always liked this option as it made the flame tank much more useful against tanks and infantry instead of just a building killer With thanks to Ban4life to helping with making and editing. Edit: updated the video

Raptor assault rifle: bullet weapon. It fires a physical bullet that travels through the world until it hits something, then location of hit and damage are calculated Ramjet rifle: Hitscan weapon. Upon firing the damage is immediately done to the point where the reticule is aiming (and any subsequent hits on people and surfaces). There is no bullet that travels around. The 'bullet' is only a tracer that is draw instantly to show the line where damage is done.

Well, it also gives the advantage to hit people easier with HITSCAN weapons. It was one of the reasons why I could own just about anyone in the first few minutes of the game: anyone using 3rd person would have a larger area where they aimed directly at me, which meant they weren't leading and would miss due to the slow bullet velocity.

Oh thanks for that info, I already have the vanilla Renegade version installed here to prove (and fail) that C4 had a delay between detonation and throwing (there was no delay).

In case of Free-Aim, the advantage of the bigger surface area could quite possibly be negated by movement speed and trying to get behind your enemy (which you don't know as the other player). In long range there is an advantage, same as close range. I haven't tested it out but it could very well be so small to be negligible, just like the offset of your camera compared to your gun in first person gives a negligible shadow. In case of 3rd person aiming, I think you also agree that it gives an advantage. I haven't seen any real arguments for or against it from your side. If everything you say about free-aim is true, both that the shooting through walls thing and the fact that the advantage is just as big a disadvantage, then I have no qualms adding it in. I do have my doubts.

I really like Errors way. The current design looks good and perhaps has a more practical layout than I want to admit, but it's too small. Usage of colors as suggested could help a bunch in determining what's what, as well as increasing it's size. You now have several different options for weapons on your character, from changing standard side-arm/C4 to buying extra features such as MG turrets, airstrikes or even superweapon beacons to changing your character loadout altogether. It's not instantly obvious what replaces things and what are additions to your inventory regardless of what character you are. Get larger icons and color code them, add in the description 'Replaces X' or 'addition' or 'changes primary weapons'. Then the current look is perfect already.

You say that if the character wasn't there you would still be aiming at the same spot. This isn't true. If that character wasn't there, your aim snaps to the exact spot you are aiming at, since you aren't aiming at the spot behind that person you aren't hitting that spot. You are saying, the surface area of the TARGET never varies. This is correct. No matter what you do, the bullet still has to hit the same small person. However, the actual surface area on your SCREEN that allows you to hit him is bigger. Even in simple 3rd person, you now can aim straight at him, or straight through him. The area straight through him is additional area you can hit him at. Just go into the game (will show this in the video as well) and aim next to someone in 3rd person/free aim while he is walking towards you at some point through your line of fire. Watch what your character is doing... Let's see what happens if he comes from the left, you are free-aiming, in first person, to the right. First, that person will enter your direct line of fire. You aren't aiming at them, your weaponwill just hit them if you fire since you are aiming at the wall behind him. Then they will come to stand in direct line of your reticule, and suddenly you character moves! He stops aiming at the wall, and starts aiming at the character instead since your reticule is aimed at him. So there are 2 places on the screen (2 surface area's) where you can hit him. The target remains the same size, but due to the automatic change in position of the character to aim at your enemy once the reticule is on him, you now have 2 surface area's where you can effectively hit him. Again, I'll show this with stills and tekst in a video later. Edit: Please understand that your video showcases the 3rd person problems mostly. To showcase that free-aim does nothing to your aim you should have used 1rst person view.

HaTe, I actually see support in my/ban4life's explanation in your video. I have agreed with Ban4life to create a video showcasing what we mean. We can shoot the video hopefully this evening, expect it done this weekend with a good explanation. I think until then there is nothing really to talk about. We have both supplied (almost) all the evidence we can think off, and haven't swayed each others view. I hope the video can prove it, if not then we will stay at odds. Yours sincerely, Demigan.

Please check the following 3 pictures: Legend: the circle is the player, the triangle is the camera, the bar is the gun. Blue lines represent the area the weapon can fire at to hit the enemy red lines represent the area of wall you can fire at that still counts as a hit for your weapon green lines represent the total area you can fire at to hit the other person. Note that the actual representative area is actually a bit smaller, as you cannot see everything that your weapon can hit. and here is the kicker. The pictures are a bit misleading: if you look solely at the green area they represent on the wall it's way, way bigger. The actual area you can hit is the surface area of your enemy, combined with the entire visible 'shadow' of your weapon on the wall and floor behind him. As you can see, the more you offset your camera the larger the area you can hit him with. The third picture shows something very important: At some point you have effectively doubled your hit-area, as you can hit your enemy's full body... but also the full 'shadow' that his weapon projects. The closer your enemy is, the larger this area becomes. The last situation in picture 3 shows this best: anywhere you shoot in the green area, you hit your enemy. What's more, this doesn't just increase the area you can fire in the horizontal plane, but also vertically. If you offset your camera very high and very far to the side you can double your 'hit area'... from long ranges. The closer you are, the larger the 'shadow' your enemy leaves on the wall behind him, the larger the area you can aim for and still hit. This gets pretty weird, actually. It's not just on the wall behind him, but also on the ground... so anywhere his foot would leave a shadow on the ground, you can hit him there if you can see that shadow and aim for it. The bullet will have to pass through your enemy. Just look at picture 6.1, it illustrates it perfectly: you can either fire straight at your enemy... or fire at the wall behind him, creating a massive area you can hit him

If I remember correctly the download numbers for Black Dawn were heavily skewed towards much more downloads from Asia. So lets pray they setup their own servers. They probably will. But from what I heard there were several mirrors specifically for the US and EU, and a few mirrors made by and for Asia. They are likely to host their own servers, but it still means that the US and EU actual download numbers are probably higher then the 65.000 downloads on the site, which contain a few double-downloads but most will be legitimate.

I share Ban4life's fear. The only good recorded numbers were from one page alone, not counting several mirrors set up by others. If we just assume it's 65.000 legitimate non-double downloads, so the other mirrors just fill in the mistakes that might occur during a download. We still have 65.000 people willing to play the game spread out over the day. Let's assume it's as positive as possible, and you spread it over America, Europe and Asia evenly, taking a unified 'rush hour' for each. This would result in 21,667 players during rush hour, Let's assume further, not all will be playing during rush hour, this rush hour is spread out over a larger area of the day since we are talking of 3 very large and distinct continents. So let's just say it's 1/3 of the players per continent that downloaded the game that play during the rush hour. The other 2/3rds per continent play on different hours of the day and don't come to the peak of rush hour. This means that we still have, on 3 seperate occasions of one day NOT counting the 2/3rds of the other continents that has a few players playing then, you have 7222 players online during Rush hour in one continent alone. This means we need at least 112+ servers with the maximum 64 player limit to accomodate them all during Rush hour. Just as a reminder: I have made estimates that I tried to put severely on the safe side. I discounted all the downloads on mirrors and I divided this by 1/3rd (spread it out over continents) and said only 1/3rd of THAT number was actually playing at the busiest time, discounting anyone playing during the day on another continent, which also increases in the weekends... Yours sincerely, Demigan.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they really thought it was a groundbreaking difference in ordinary multiplayer. Developers that think a 'groundbreaking change' is actually just being able to choose your weapons before respawning is pathetic. I think it is mostly the big companies that throw a monkey wrench in the machine of developers. Developers have so many great ideas, so many whacked up, groundbreaking changes in their heads. But only someone who gets a renown status can actually bring a good, game-concept altering idea through the careful inspections of the big industry. The industry wants to make money, how do you know for certain that you earn money? do what has earned you money before. The Modern warfare and Medal of Honour and more such franchises have barely changed the core of the gameplay, over the years, instead just adding weapons, vehicles and graphics to keep everyone happy, add blockbuster-type hypes and trailers and you got yourself a triple A, although stale, game. It is good that crowdfunding got off to a good start, all games that the industry didn't want to fund or even hear about ends up there, I see games that ask for 'only' 900.000 and end up with more then 2,5 million of crowdfunded money for the sole idea, imagine how much a fully fledged game would raise if it is sold afterwards. This hopefully shows big game companies that there SHOULD be room for new concepts and idea's. Oh, and by the way, I don't mind going off-topic, I'm bored out of my mind so I need something to blather on about Yours sincerely, Demigan.

http://www.gametrailers.com/full-episodes/09mltb/bonus-round-behind-the-design--multiplayer-redefined- Anyone recognize the dumbed down system they are offering in this video? Besides it being a dumbed down system they have in the crysis games, it is also an incredibly dumbed down system of the good old, 10+ year old renegade system. Oh, did I mention that they thought that giving each weapon a value would be 'too complicated and too hard to balance'? So these smart developers decide to make it easier AND easily balanced by giving everything the same value: 1. That's easy to balance! This only shows how dumb most of gamers actually are. Yours sincerely, Demigan.

I always thought that the ion/nuke cannon took exactly 1 minute to go off... @Woandre If people are choosing to save their skin, so be it. But I think that this will actually have players stay longer to disarm then in the original renegade. When those ion beams are obscuring your sight and the thing is about to go off, that's a very clear warning to bail. If the timer reaches 0 and you still have time to run, people, especially noobs, will stick around too long, thinking they still HAVE the time to run. This will add new getaway tactics, people stationing an occupied APC nearby to help people get away from the blast in time. It is an advantage that people can actually get away from a nuke/ion blast through those tactics. But as you stated, the lack of use of PT terminals through walls will counteract that, and you will be able to kill more people as they can't refill through walls either. As for the A10 strike/combat cargoplane, I would stress the fact that being the engineer to tanks has always been one of the worst tasks, with lots of danger and little payback in both points and variation of actions. Adding something that damages in a large area to stop camping is good on paper, but if you instantly kill/heavily damage all repair guys with it, there will be little incentive at all remaining to do it, and people will be left repairing their tanks themselves. I would suggest that both airstrikes will fire explosive shells/rockets vs all tanks in the area. This leaves the engineer crew alive, although they could get damaged by the blast radius if they stick too close to the tanks. But they won't be damaged by a standard AOE whenever an airstrike is launched. Your sincerely, Demigan.

I remember that thread. Wasn't the idea that if you managed to track someone with your cursor for a few seconds, he get's marked on the radar for everyone to see? If AI could mark you by having you in their line of sight for a few seconds, it would keep clutter away. I don't know what The Team thought of it, but I think it would be nice. Yours sincerely, Demigan.

The trees remind me a lot about the old Renegade, although spicing it up with the trees and scrub you already have might make it look more lifelike. All the AI has to be able to do, besides using the weapons and vehicles, is teamwork. They need to be able to work together, create a team with a sniper, repairguy and anti-tank, preferably in larger groups, and go out in the field. Other things, like the all-treasured tank+repaircrew should be in game, as well as APC rushes. But the main goal I would go for with AI, is simply them being capable of taking and holding the field through teamwork. Or be on the defencive. If both AI's are capable of that as a standard tactic, then human players can guide them through the hard parts of actually rushing a base, covering a human player or infiltration. If you leave the descision of attacking/APC rushing a base up to the AI, it will fail 99% of the time. Even with human players who have an advantage it's hard enough. Also, I hope that with AI doing teamwork, players will be more inclined to teamwork as well instead of lonewolfing. The AI won’t even have to be on godlike to stand a chance against top players, in groups they can at the very least damage them, so that top players have to go back eventually. I also think that it is important for AI to be able of auto-messaging. Say they are in a base, they will always say they see an enemy, and what building is closest to themselves (or, if you can, which building the enemy is closest to). Out on the field, they should occasionally say something if they see an enemy that isn’t being engaged/only they see them. This keeps human players more aware of what is going on in the field. Additional things, like AI saying things of which area they have captured or lost in the field would be nice. Yours sincerely, Demgian.

I'm thinking of reïnstalling Renegade on this old laptop, feel free to join the good ol' Renegade any time you want. This mod will get there, it just takes time.

I think many people are doing things a bit like me: I used to check this site every day, multiple times, as there isn't anything new to report for some time, I check it occasionally when I feel like it, when they finally release some content (and they have had more awesome updates then 'meh' one's), I'll check it again every day for discussions and nerdgasms. People haven't forgotten about this mod, if it fails, it will fail, and the site will go down. Then people will know. As long as this site is up, I have my hopes. Yours sincerely, Demigan.

The original maps aren't remade because they are too small scale and simple for that Totem Arts has planned. Will some of these maps return but on a far larger and recreated scale? Also, will Totem Arts keep in mind that one of the charms that Renegade had, might have been the straightforward maps with simple layout? Your sincerely, Demigan.

Carnaval! your headache finally going down and your ears not ringing to some polonaise?

How about adding a penalty for dieing by suicide or the timer, so that people won't just run into the farthest reaches of their base and camp their until they win? The penalty should be bigger then the amount of points you get when you just capture the ball and kill no-one. If you get killed by someone else, you get no penalty. Yours sincerely, Demigan

Vipeax has done a lot of hard work on the AI (more then a thousand lines!), yet, AI are a tough and complicated thing, needing many more to be very competent. The thing is, now everybody seems to be bitching about the AI, that he has done so much hard work to build. Apparently, it isn't the best AI, but do we really need one in the MP? If you want to have criticism on the AI, do so constructively. The reactions of Vipeax show that it's not fun to have hours of work dumbed down to 'it sucks', even though it isn't a main feature of the game. It is very discouraging to continue working so many hours when people don't even think to appreciate what they got, and simply expect triple A standards when it's released. If you expect a team like Totem Arts to continue their pretty damn well good work so far, give criticism, not flames! As I said before, I think it should be considered a bèta, with all the bèta problems. We seem to have covered the AI part well enough, so I suggest to let it lie, the AI is a last resort to fill up empty spots in a team, not a necessity. Yours sincerely, Demigan.

I thought that Black Dawn was supposed to be something like a beta for the game, which showed off many of the game's qualities. Since it is some kind of beta, you have to expect errors and a sup-par game. I would say that any criticism, if supplied well, could result in better performance for the actual full-fledged multiplayer. You can now play around with the game's functions, work out how the weapons work. You could also view it as a safe practise zone for new players, who can see how the weapons and game work before they jump in the multiplayer. although I haven't downloaded anything since my computer would then just give up and cry in a corner, I do think aircraft killer makes a point. Although a ton of download links and mirrors were provided, if the download has to suffer from the amount of downloads then something is wrong. On the other hand, this is still a free game, where the servers providing the download should provide it for (almost) free. During the download process, I saw the team add more and more mirrors the moment people started complaining about the low download speeds. Considering that, they did a good job, not a tremendous one, but good enough. Yours sincerely, Demigan.

Don't count on it, Black Dawn 'only' supplied the props for the game, including characters and tanks. Now they are in front of the daunting task of creating large, balanced maps that will be playable with any number of players. The fact that the AI isn't very good does bring up a point: if they aren't smart in the single player, where all they have to do is engage the player and HIS AI, then how is it supposed to be better in the multiplayer when the AI is filling in for missing players? I hope that the AI will be updated before that, so that it is not only capable of doing tasks like buying tanks and upgrading it's character, but also capable of defending itself. From my point of view it's almost impossible to create an AI capable of all the tasks in renegade, all UT games had an AI capable of handling all the weapons and avoiding gunfire, which was it's only task but took hundreds of hours of the developers time. Imagine a game where the AI has to keep track of bullet travel, distance and speed of enemies, incoming fire, it's own speed and movement, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Add in the economy system and the capability to select the right type of character or tank for the job (so he doesn't buy a sniper when a flame rush is incomming). Actually, I could provide some of the physics calculations for the bullet travel and speed etc, I have to do that in college anyways. But I have no idea how those are normally used in the game. Yours sincerely, Demigan.