Ex-Renegaders' Thoughts

[HaTe]

So over the past five days I have been getting in contact with players from the original Renegade, in an attempt to both persuade them to give Ren X a try and to get their thoughts on the game. It turns out that almost all of them have given it a try at some point, but just did not stay for various different reasons. The players that I asked were some of the better Renegade players (cw.cc players, "pro" snipers, top of the ladder pub players, etc.). Some played years and years ago, and some played until the very end.

A lot of the people played in the older beta versions and their prime complaints were about glitches, imbalances, or things that don't even exist anymore (cheats, crashes, and OP units existed for a while back in the day). I have excluded those thoughts and am just putting the one's that are still relevant. Here is what the most common reasons are for them deciding to not stay with Renegade X:

1. Vehicle physics. Delayed turning, collisions that seem to ignore momentum, turrets not behaving with elevation how they should, etc. This was the number one complaint by quite a bit.

2. Lack of competitive play(ers). Not enough players to have anything like cw.cc work out, which is in part because of the other thoughts listed.

3. User Interface. Main complaint seemed to be that it lacked organization when in-game. They all liked the original Renegade UI better (Tab to expand scoreboard, Tab again to expand further for K/D; J for Team Info, K for overall game info, etc.).

4. Maps. There were only a couple of people that disliked the map setups as a whole, but the majority just didn't like specific things about them. #1 map complaint was the small tunnel ceilings that made the third person camera behave poorly. #2 was the random spots that would cause a player to get stuck or unable to move. #3 was the soft boundaries (which are less than they used to be, though). #4 was all of the elevation changes that caused the vehicle physics to really "suck."

5. The "skill factor" seemed small. Too much relying on spray-and-pray, and too little reward for simply being more skilled (i.e. Headshot multiplier too small and too much lock-ons).

6. 40 player limit per server. I doubt this is changeable now, as it wasn't in the past, but several of the "pro pub players" that I talked to preferred a 50 player limit.

There were several others that are rather irrelevant because they can't really be edited all that much too (FPS and free-aim, for instance).

Take it as you will. I'm just passing along the information because my main goal in Renegade X has always been to try to make it successful in the competitive scene.

[Idiotas]

So in other words.. everything different from the old ren is bad and they dislike it.

[RypeL]

Lets just start a tournament already to get some competion options going.... i´ll probably just start a thread about that soon and we´ll see how that goes.

What is the "turrets not behaving with elevation how they should" supposed to mean ?

[XD_ERROR_XD]

Lets just start a tournament already to get some competion options going.... i´ll probably just start a thread about that soon and we´ll see how that goes.

What is the "turrets not behaving with elevation how they should" supposed to mean ?

Tanks (i can only confirm this for 1st person but may also count in 3rd person), actually shoot higher and lower than they visually show to you. Whereas a gun would point, let's say 30° upwards if you wanted to aim more than 30° upwards, you saw the shell going up to 35° upwards. same for downwards.

I've also done my research about this. But off course, i have less contacts than HaTe has, and managed to get less feedback. My feedback also sounded more like senseless bashing to me, but i'll filter out the useful information.

one of the biggest complaints i heard was the fact that some of the features they disliked in the original, did not get fixed in RenX at all. Mainly, the fact that infantry had no inertia at all and could bunny hop too easily.

What you have right now is infantry with barely any inertia, but can actually run faster with using sprint, which they don't even think is a sprint at all with the amount of time you can use it.

another complaint was the fact that vehicles, just like HaTe mentioned, did not feel very natural. Tanks feel like they only have half the weight they should have and have a suspension of the old MRLS. they are so bumpy and too easily lifted into the air. I guess this is an UDK issue, but many people are not going to like this. Vehicle combat just cannot be taken as serious with these kind of physics.

another thing worth mentioning is that some infantry, with their new suits, could be nearly called invisible with their black clothing, or just barely reflect light at all. They should be made brighter when light is reflected off them.

I don't think i need to say anything else, as HaTe did it pretty well here. But i honestly do want free-aim back, it has so much more use than to just snipe with it :'(

EDIT: I forgot to mention, but the biggest complaint i recieved about the game was not the game itself, but the development of it. They felt left out because no feedback was asked at all from them. Back in the Phase I days, Beta testers were picked by the amount of commitment they showed. For some reason they picked me, too bad i didn't have a PC back then that could run this game

But, not all of these people were as experienced in the original as the other, and if Anyone could join in the Phase II days, even the less experienced ones, the devs still had to get their feedback from them. It may have been partly their fault because they did not apply at all and stuff like that, but they were already content with the game they had, which was the original. So some people weren't happy with RenX simply because of the fact that it drew people away from the original.

[boxes]

I'm still wondering what tank play would be like if all vehicles had the same weight treatment as the GDI APC.

[RypeL]

EDIT: I forgot to mention, but the biggest complaint i recieved about the game was not the game itself, but the development of it. They felt left out because no feedback was asked at all from them. Back in the Phase I days, Beta testers were picked by the amount of commitment they showed. For some reason they picked me, too bad i didn't have a PC back then that could run this game

I remember that i picked you because you posted random stuff that seemed to make sense and cause you treated the game fairly. NOONE of that other old time ren boys that you are talking about actually posted much constructive feedback. We were pretty much left alone by most old ren guys or they just wanted to bash the game. I dont particularly remember old time ren players helping at all with Ren-X. Of course there are excpetions like HaTe, Whiskey and yourself, but imho there were few like few of these amd moone really wanted to join the dev team to help getting this started. The core dev team old ren players pretty much remained the same through all those years, the other guys that came in were mostly non ren players like young art students. If you are saying we didnt treat old ren players seriously i can for sure tell you that they didnt treat us seriously aswell and certainly for the most part wanted to stay in their game instead of helping out with this one. ... if someone treats this post offensive pls remember that im a) drunk right now and that b) its just my subjective random oppinion

Regarding tank turrets on elevations i think that i might now what you are talking about and that its even fixable. will look into it.

[djlaptop]

RypeL, nothing you said comes off as offensive.

As an old-time Renegader and someone who was quite active in developing add-ons for Renegade (WOLSpy, RenGuard, RenStat, FDSWeb), I can honestly say I had no idea that Renegade X existed until shortly before it was released. Had I known I would certainly have offered my services.

Since RX has come out, I can, from the bottom of my heart, say that it has become my favorite game OF ALL TIME. This is pretty much the only game I play now. I'm probably an extreme example, but I feel it's a worthy iteration of the original Renegade.

While ex-Renegaders certainly are entitled to an opinion, as is everyone else, they need to understand that this is NOT a re-creation of Renegade, this is a new evolution. Even though most of the units and buildings are based on Renegade, this is a different game with different strategies, strengths and weaknesses. It's obvious that Totem Arts isn't trying to redo what Westwood did with modern graphics, it's goal is to revive and build upon a genre of gameplay that nobody else has done since.

Yes, map bugs like getting stuck are annoying, but those exist in any beta and will be ironed out in due time. Tank and projectile physics are bound to feel different since the physics are not rendered by the W3D engine. I agree that the handling can be improved on some vehicles (Nod APC drives like a potato), but you get used to the vehicle handling soon.

As for little reward for skill, well, this is a complex topic because you have to strike a balance between skilled & experienced players vs newbies, and this is where I actually think Westwood's biggest failure with Ren was. The original Renegade was TOO punishing to new players, and that's largely why it never took off the way it should have. The gameplay is EXTREMELY complex, and experienced and intermediate players are not very friendly to new players who are, for example, mining.

HaTe, these are all valid criticisms of the game, many of which I agree with. But I feel like some of the points are coming from the perspective of players expecting a straight port of Renegade, which we all know this isn't. But thank you for collecting and compiling the criticism. I'm hopeful that this thread inspires others to voice their concerns as well so the devs can have the feedback they need to make this great game even better.

[RoundShades]

Some of it, is expecting too much to remain similar. Some of it Ren-X has nothing to gain. "Oh sure, let's increase the headshot multiplier, remove all recoil from the game, and increase health so if someone can't aim for the head then they can't beat someone at 25 hp. Oh, also, let's give snipers instakill back and very quick RoF again." That sort of stuff limited old Ren to literally 4 roles: Smash junk with a tank, repair a tank, snipe, and try to juke enemy awareness to houdini your arse into a building and magic that shit insta-dead. If you were using any other class, you were poor broke and desperate, or you were wrong.

Other stuff, like the turret not reliably putting that shell into the center of the given reticle, and tanks colliding with walls and other tanks and coming off the ground 6 feet like they were bouncy castles in a tornado, are valid points, but can't reduce how serious the game is by that much. I wouldn't mind them being looked into myself however.

Another example of "is bad", is player limits. No matter how they were juggled, they were bad. The only, ONLY, way they would be good, is if you had maps that Renegade-X doesn't even have to play them in. Eyes_Flying and New_Goldrush still aren't massive and multiple-choice enough to accomodate that many players without being a massive stalemate, destroying the performance of the game, and leading to no strategy as any direction of attack leads you into what seems like 4 guys you have to somehow survive a fight with just to get to take a casual glance at an enemy structure. Old Ren was also pretty crummy with 124 players imho, but it even worked better than RenX, only because speeds were lower, so enemies covered half the area in the same timeframe.

Sprint, is iffy. If it were slightly faster and ran out slightly sooner, I could see it. However, it isn't supposed to be a super-speed-boost you use to bail out of fights. It is supposed to be a mild speed increase to get through or from enemies faster than they can you if their sprint was already used recently. If it were faster, it would in fact make getting into structures, through enemy territory, or out of battle, a little easier, but if it were too fast it would basically be a pocket-escape move like any MOBA gives glass cannon characters. Probably not well suited for this game, but I wouldn't be against trying it.

[Redline]

Speaking to the complex gameplay I think there is more we can do in terms of user interface and showing new players common strategies.

I'd be happy to make pictograms and other icons for the UI. Like silo icon, harvester status, small vehicle icons that appear from spotting, maybe an enlargeable minimap. I think renx can draw upon lessons from bf4 and tf2 to help new players learn strategies.

Icons above players heads that are calling for reps or different icons on the minimap for tanks calling for reps. I know some of this stuff might exist in a form of the commander mod.

Let's embrace new players. At its core renx will always make me remember the original.

TLDR

Haters gonna hate. The gaming world and "beta/early access" scene is filled with haters.

[HaTe]

I agree with much of what has been said so far in this topic. First of all, Rype is pretty much spot on with how he characterized the interactions between renegade "elites," and Renegade X. With the exception of me, Whiskey, goztow, and a couple others, there wasn't really any voice coming from the original Renegade "competitive players" (clanwar or community war championship caliber players) that was shining a positive light on to Renegade X. Everyone didn't want to like it, it seemed. So as soon as they spotted things they didn't agree with, they would go crazy with bashing the game. Call it commitment to the original if you want, but truthfully it was just ignorance and an unwilllingness to move out of their comfort zone and try something new within the same concept.

Error explained the turret elevation issue pretty well. Basically, as the vehicle moves up and down elevations, the reticle (and possibly turret - hard to tell) doesn't adjust quite right with it, and so it looks like the turret is shooting entirely where you are not aiming. In Renegade the "dot" inside the reticle solved this, because while you could aim with the reticle, it was the actual dot that showed where the turret was aiming at any given moment. Though I think the issue may be a bit deeper than that too, but that would at least make it much better.

I also agree with the skill thing to an extent. A lot of it was just Renegade players not being happy with the availability of noob owning that they were used to. However, I also do see their point every time a spray and pray weapon easily melts me down (i would say that I am well above average at aiming, yet this happens all the time still). I do also agree with the complexity of the game statement that was made. In Renegade they literally had a "multiplayer practice" mode that went through the basics. A tutorial mode like that would be great upon completion of the installation, considering that Ren X is even more complicated in most ways.

I do not think that these are the only players we should cater to by any means, but I do think that they are a good audience to take very seriously, considering that ren x uses the same game mode and concepts as Renegade, and these were competitive players within that game. I think it's important to find a "middle-ground," but there are also certain things that need to be addressed in order for a competitive scene to really even ever hit-off (vehicle physics being the number one).

[RypeL]

RenX had the Dot at one point but it didnt work properly and used too much performance. I did spend the day making on a new implementation of it. So the Dot should return soonish.

[HaTe]

RenX had the Dot at one point but it didnt work properly and used too much performance. I did spend the day making on a new implementation of it. So the Dot should return soonish.

Awesome. Thank you

[yosh56]

But not this patch.

[Demigan]

Some of it, is expecting too much to remain similar. Some of it Ren-X has nothing to gain. "Oh sure, let's increase the headshot multiplier, remove all recoil from the game, and increase health so if someone can't aim for the head then they can't beat someone at 25 hp. Oh, also, let's give snipers instakill back and very quick RoF again." That sort of stuff limited old Ren to literally 4 roles: Smash junk with a tank, repair a tank, snipe, and try to juke enemy awareness to houdini your arse into a building and magic that shit insta-dead. If you were using any other class, you were poor broke and desperate, or you were wrong.

You are mostly right about the 4 roles, but I started exploiting a weakness of many players: 3rd person mode.

3rd person mode creates a larger area where you can hit players, because you can aim right at them or in their "shadow" where your bullets will pass through the target to get to where you are aiming. This is wonderful for any hitscan weapons... but not for bullet-travel weapons.

Now I realized this early-on, and thought it was a cheating method so I didn't use it, only realizing later how much it was abused in the game. I then also realized why I won almost every single early-stage combat: Players also used 3rd person mode while using normal infantry, meaning that their increased aim right at the body messed up their leading causing them to miss more. I started abusing this by using Patch's mostly, since people don't expect any bullet weapon to be powerful they were super surprised when someone, IE me, could hit them a lot, especially a sniper.

More on topic. I think that Renegade-x has ripened very well overall. all classes have their advantages and disadvantages rather than just a few classes being useful in the game's meta, the same for vehicles. Weapons and abilities are unique and useful.

What I think is my only real gripe about now is infantry movement. I am trying to shoot at some blurs at the other end of a corner somewhere, or at some ADAD spamming guy out in the open. It doesn't seem like infantry moves smoothly, and firing at them is less aiming and more firing at the center of their movement pattern, which is completely different from the original Ren or any other FPS (PS2 and UT atm) I play. Especially UT is an incredibly fast-paced game with similar speed levels I think, yet I don't have any sort of trouble aiming at targets there, or recognizing what weapons they are holding. Strangely enough in Renegade-X I do have trouble seeing what class I'm up against, and even keeping track of them as they move.

I think the game would benefit a bunch from having a slight infantry momentum, not much, just a tiny bit. This smoothens the game experience as infantry a lot for me, and I think for others as well.

[yosh56]

3rd person mode.

3rd person mode creates a larger area where you can hit players, because you can aim right at them or in their "shadow" where your bullets will pass through the target to get to where you are aiming.

You might want to double check yourself on that one. I think what you're talking about has nothing to do with 3rd-person, and is a 'glitch' (that's a glitch) that was associated with using a certain collision system that is no longer in order since like 2 patches ago. Basically... shooting over someone's shoulder no longer counts as you hitting, and you no longer shoot behind somebody that is sprinting to head-shot them.

[HaTe]

The game did have the momentum thing for a patch or 2 back in the day, but it favored snipers too much. Now that snipers are nerfed by a lot, it wouldn't be terrible to relook into (as long as that was the only real issue with it?).

Anyone else get confused as to why infantry sprint up slopes faster than a flat ground (i.e. Field tunnels)? At least it certainly appears that way

[Handepsilon]

Anyone else get confused as to why infantry sprint up slopes faster than a flat ground (i.e. Field tunnels)? At least it certainly appears that way

I think the 'fast' feel is the Z (height) travel. You see, the player movement in stock Unreal Tournament only takes note on the X and Y axis, which is their movement on a flat surface. The height of their position adjusts at with the height of the floor they're on.

So players look like they move fast in slope when actually it's because they normally move slow yet their height position changes faster than their movement speed.

Let's put it this way. Let's say that the player has the speed of 1 unit per second. It takes him 4 seconds to move 4 units.

[Henk]

Edit: I had just typed out about the same thing but Hande explains it better with images. I doubt it can be fixed in a proper way, seems like an engine quirk.

[HaTe]

I do seem to remember an older version making the infantry sprint go up slopes incredibly slow, though? Was that just some sort of glitch, then?

P.S: Thanks for drawing it out, but I understood after your first line of explanation lol

And it's Pythagorean, for the record

Couldn't you assign a volume to slopes to determine speeds, or is that not possible in UE3?

Edit: I suppose that would get complicated, since movement has to be calculated from all angles if that were the case, so nevermind.

[kenz3001]

could use a gravity or phyisics volume but mehhhhd

[Henk]

If that works that would mean we'd have to do that for every slope, and maybe even determine the angle ourselves and change values in the volume accordingly. And put different volumes down if the angle changes, so, what Kenz said.

[HaTe]

There's only a few slopes that really highlight the issue anyway. Field tunnels being probably the most noticeable. Small issue anyway.

Is there any plan to work further on the vehicle physics? I understand that it isn't easy, but I just feel like the gameplay is so smooth now that it really does deserve vehicle play that at least doesn't feel like matchbox cars ramming into each other

[cncforever]

...Since RX has come out, I can, from the bottom of my heart, say that it has become my favorite game OF ALL TIME. This is pretty much the only game I play now. I'm probably an extreme example..

I'm exactly the same! I have hundreds of Steam titles, some of the latest titles and more but all I ever play is Renegade X. There is nothing quite like it and there has never been another game that has made me lose interest in all others.

Hmm, now I'm wondering how this would be to play on the Occulus Rift.

[RypeL]

About vehicles: the steering lag comes from ping and that comes from vehicle inputs beeing processed on the server. For us to be able to change that we would need a full UE 3 license as, cause of the complexity of it, most vehicle code is done outside of unreal script and we can only modify the unreal script with the UDK license. So improving that is pretty much out of the picture.

The other thing I'm guessing you mean is how vehicles make contact with each other and that it's too bumpy ? It might help if we describe exactly what we don't like about that so that atleast we would know what to plan against, trying to figure out our options. Never think though that we didn't have modified UDKs vehicle physics yet though. Remember them beeing able to flip other vehicles arround and to push them anywhere ? A lot of work has been put in already to counter stuff like that. But the remaining challenge seems to be to make vehicle stick more to the ground without making their suspension feel too stiff and unrealistic. Like if we just increase vehicle mass some of they drive totally awkward. But we could maybe do more tricky stuff again like adding a counter force when vehicles collide.

[Alaa]

1. Vehicle physics. Delayed turning, collisions that seem to ignore momentum, turrets not behaving with elevation how they should, etc. This was the number one complaint by quite a bit.

2. Lack of competitive play(ers). Not enough players to have anything like cw.cc work out, which is in part because of the other thoughts listed.

Sprint, is iffy. If it were slightly faster and ran out slightly sooner, I could see it. However, it isn't supposed to be a super-speed-boost you use to bail out of fights. It is supposed to be a mild speed increase to get through or from enemies faster than they can you if their sprint was already used recently. If it were faster, it would in fact make getting into structures, through enemy territory, or out of battle, a little easier, but if it were too fast it would basically be a pocket-escape move like any MOBA gives glass cannon characters. Probably not well suited for this game, but I wouldn't be against trying it.

I totally agree with the points in the quote, but keep in fact that #2 can't be easily fixed, due to the amounts of players that actually play. Okay. It might be true that the player base might be about 150 a day. but it isn't that easy to advertise such a game, keep in fact that most players that play this game are ex-renegaders, and that is why we play this game, because we know the game's mechanics and know what is going on with the game and how to fix such issues, but if you try to advertise the game to other people, they would see it as another weird ass FPS remake of an old game (I'm not saying it is, but that is what other people would say based on the friends that I had tried to get to play this game). Of course, we should try to get more players, I'm not saying we shouldn't, but we need a way to advertise the game as a good game to actually keep the players playing, and get more players to play the game. I am very thankful for the developers that are actually putting in a lot of effort into this game, and I appreciate all of your hard-work. My point is, we, the community, as a whole, view Renegade-X as an amazing game because of the nostalgic feelings that we get from playing a game we have all played in the past, Renegade, and that is why we keep trying to stay playing this game and trying to make it better, but the people who haven't played it, first, they do not know all of the mechanics of the game, even after several hours of playing, they will not get the hang of playing the game, which will cause them to discontinue playing the game, I could suggest one thing, for example, we could make a small video, an advertisement video, on YouTube, to attempt to get more players to play it, while introducing the game mechanics within the video, to help out the new players to understand the game.

I would also suggest, like the 3rd point given, to attempt to reduce the effects of Sprint because it is easily being used to run away from a gunfight. enough of this rant lmao. kthxbye.

[XD_ERROR_XD]

About vehicles: the steering lag comes from ping and that comes from vehicle inputs beeing processed on the server. For us to be able to change that we would need a full UE 3 license as, cause of the complexity of it, most vehicle code is done outside of unreal script and we can only modify the unreal script with the UDK license. So improving that is pretty much out of the picture.

The other thing I'm guessing you mean is how vehicles make contact with each other and that it's too bumpy ? It might help if we describe exactly what we don't like about that so that atleast we would know what to plan against, trying to figure out our options. Never think though that we didn't have modified UDKs vehicle physics yet though. Remember them beeing able to flip other vehicles arround and to push them anywhere ? A lot of work has been put in already to counter stuff like that. But the remaining challenge seems to be to make vehicle stick more to the ground without making their suspension feel too stiff and unrealistic. Like if we just increase vehicle mass some of they drive totally awkward. But we could maybe do more tricky stuff again like adding a counter force when vehicles collide.

I've actually found out some pretty interesting details about the original game's vehicle suspensions just yesterday. Expect a video from me in a week or less.

[HaTe]

@ rype, the vehicle collisions with just about any object just seem silly. It makes it appear as if the mass of the object is about a quarter of what it should be, considering the armor. A tank flying into the air because it hit a tree stump looks and feels silly, and it makes gameplay hard to control as well. The vehicle delay lag seems to be an unfortunate consquence rather than a desired effect, which stinks, but is understandable. I'm plenty grateful for all of the work done on this area, but I just wanted to voice the concerns/complaints of many who otherwise would have remained silent.

@jobless, that is something that I intended to begin working on when I got the time actually. I would love an in-game tutorial mode, but I suppose a video could help too.

@error, f8 edit_vehicle could help you with that, just in case you didn't know

[RypeL]

Goat simulator made a whole game arround UE3s weird physics.

[Handepsilon]

If anyone still got UT3, we can probably use their physics setup as a reference, modifying it a bit and stuff.

Unless they've changed how the physics work since UDK? I kinda doubt it

...noooo not the Goat simulator

[RypeL]

Hm ? It is based on UDK/UT3s and UT3 should have the same problems. But there nobody is so "serious" about it.

[yosh56]

Hm ? It is based on UDK/UT3s and UT3 should have the same problems. But there nobody is so "serious" about it.

UE3 in general is known to have physics issues with vehicles. Mass Effect is built on UE3...........look at the MAKO....... LOOK AT IT!

[Alaa]

@jobless, that is something that I intended to begin working on when I got the time actually. I would love an in-game tutorial mode, but I suppose a video could help too.

We could work on it together I suppose, just hit me up if you need any help with it.

[indios85]

*deleted post*

he just went on "but the vehicles....". guess what: we know! And multiple dev awnsers about it are in this thread.

If you have nothing additional and constructive to say then dont post, else your just wasting our time. We are not here to repeast ourselfs over and over and so far this thread was constructive and worthy of our time. I prefer it to stay like that. Yes this forum is moderated and I have a limit of tolerance. Sincerly rypel

[Ap2000]

That sort of stuff limited old Ren to literally 4 roles: Smash junk with a tank, repair a tank, snipe, and try to juke enemy awareness to houdini your arse into a building and magic that shit insta-dead. If you were using any other class, you were poor broke and desperate, or you were wrong.

I'm not sure if I'd call it this rough, but I played on servers that kicked (or at least limited) snipers for a reason.

[RoundShades]

That sort of stuff limited old Ren to literally 4 roles: Smash junk with a tank, repair a tank, snipe, and try to juke enemy awareness to houdini your arse into a building and magic that shit insta-dead. If you were using any other class, you were poor broke and desperate, or you were wrong.

I'm not sure if I'd call it this rough, but I played on servers that kicked (or at least limited) snipers for a reason.

Even if it were limited to "pilot a tank, repair a tank, and constant semi-successful infiltration", it was literally the same class doing all 3. The sniper was just a bitch if you were that class, it killed everything outside of a tank. Even then, some maps were alright, like Field, even in this case. Just get 2 artillery to form a wedge, and you had total cover from sniper fire as well as most tank fire.

It was very monotone. Current Ren-X is fairly exciting about what masses of junk you can throw at what. Rush with officers to pillage a structure, a-ok. Field control with gunners, patch, or lcg, happens. McFarland, Patch, and SBH harassing snipers, no longer a suicide mission.