hey!!! i've been meaning to do this for a while but i just wanted to make a really big post with all my feedback compliments suggestions and praise ok here we go im not sure how im going to format this. warning: this is gonna be long. explicit note: i understand that everything is wip/subject to change, i'm not all sure what's on the timeline or being worked on and not expecting you to drop everything you're doing and appeal to my demands or anything like that, a lot of this is gonna be opinionated!! ps: this forums bbcode implementation doesn't support resizing of images????? so sorry about the large pictures
graphics
so first off lemme just state this game is PRETTY AS HELL oh my god, and it also runs pretty good (especially if you compile it in release mode <.< >.>)
huge album of screenshots i took.
like wow, you guys are definitely have the nicest lookest foss game out there. the models are nice, especially the human weapons, i especially love the mass driver. the maps are AWESOME. the motion blur effect is subtle and really nice, it makes the game feel really smooth, i love the heat haze effect from the fire, though i'm not a huge fan of the fire particles themselves, they look really flat and papery, it would be cool to have a more dramatic, taller, roaring flame effect. i love the textures in all the new maps, it would be cool to have more dynamic effects in the maps though.
im not a huge fan of the human models, they kind of look out of place and really flat, i don't dig the whole "latex" suit look. their walk/run animations also look a bit, "floaty?" it's a bit hard to take it serious when a human is trying to dodge/dance alien attacks from an alien perspective as it looks pretty goofy. the light armour/medium armor also look incredibly flat, i'd prefer something more similar to how the humans in tremulous got progressively more bulky with that style of shoulder pads. (like i said, my opinion).
also, this may just be me, but i'm not quite sure what it is, but the models, while they look awesome, they don't "contrast" against the map very well, i'm not sure if it's the texture, lighting, animations, all of the above, or what but they look a bit out of place on the maps and "pop out" in the wrong way, almost as if they're not saturated enough, though it's gotten a bit better as the alphas progressed.
player shadows are really pretty, and the dynamic lights from things like rifle muzzle, flame thrower, and other guns are really cool. the shadows from map geometry and entities itself seems a bit lack luster, not terrible, and i'm not worried about that too much, however it would be cool to have some more fancy lighting effects, for example, ioq3's gl2 renderer produces some really pretty sunshadows on the map:
one thing that would be really cool to have in my opinion is also volumetric lighting (sun/god rays), especially in maps with those pretty skylights.
other than that, is buildable shadows, i'm pretty sure you guys are aware of this already, but they're pretty broken, and also quite performance heavy. (examples in album towards the end)
a lot of particles also need work, especially the explosion particles, like i said with the flamer particles, they look flat and papery. with that said, the luci projectile particle, THAT IS AWESOME, kudos to whoever did that one, though the impact particle effects on that definitely needs some work, i don't get the smokey explosion look, it should be more of a radiant energy discharge type thing to better match imo.
lastly, fov adjustments and alien arms/claws. i was playing around with the tyrant and fov, and at this fov with the claws bearly at the side of the screen looked really awesome, especially the way they swayed when you walked, it would be cool if the other aliens could be like this as well, (the only other one i was able to kind of do this with was mara, and it was as if the arms were rotated to the left too much and i could only get the right arm in my view.
gameplay
i really like the direction the gameplay of unvanquished is heading, it's really refreshing and a lot more fun than the old tremulous gameplay. balance of most things, the damage of aliens and human weapons, human stamina, etc, it feels really nice. though the only knitpack i have about that kind of balance is the mantis, i really disagree with removing the grab from the tremulous basi, the main problems with the basi was getting in range in order to grab a human, finishing the human, and then also escaping before other humans come. without it, the mantis just feels like a smaller version of goon that can wall walk. i mean, it's still okay without the grab, but i really think it's counterproductive to add a gap closer without the grab. also dretches should be able to bite structures, or turrets atleast.
the main problems
i've played quite a few of the dev games, and currently, it seems that bases, instead of being "spread out", slowly built and branched out from the main base, which is kind of boring and drags games out. i'm not opposed to the idea of long games, but long games where there's lots of different things going on are best, as opposed to current strategy of:
build main base -> walk to next place closest to main base that gives a good percentage of momentum generation (which isn't that far from the main base) -> repeat
this strategy also seems to work a lot better for humans, rocket pods are strong as hell, making it a lot harder for aliens to siege them. not so much damage, but the shear range these things have as well, you can effectively secure an entire hallway with a few of them.
with that said, there should be more options to take in game as to base building. in my opinion, bases should be relatively small, spread out, and more bases for the purpose of making opposition and rushing easier rather than defensive map mining compulsion, should be used.
i feel the reason for this "turtling" strategy is that the current gameplay punishes you too much if you lose one of your forward bases, as that bp that took so long to generate to make that base, can be lost within a fraction of the time it took to generate it, which creates this cycle of we must take it slow and steady, cover all areas and attempt to make the base "impenetrable", aka turtling.
so, an improvement might be, quickly build a main base while setting up a sieging base near one of the entrances of the enemies base -> power struggle comprised of the rotation of bases around a map, where it's not a big deal if you lose one forward base, because you can recover quick enough provided your team reacts quick enough. this is similar to how other rts games are played, biggest example being starcraft 2.
how to achieve this, well my suggestion would be: increase the rate of bp generation from mining, but also increase the range you have to be away from drills/leeches in order to have an effective generation percent.
perhaps increase the limit of power eggs/repeaters can provide in one area, and increase the bp cost of repeaters, perhaps exponentially similar to the way you can't build drills next to each other (example, one repeater in an area is 6bp, another one in that same area is 10bp).
on the topic of building, it feels rather unrewarding when you compare it to killwhoring. i know a lot of people already prefer it to being on the frontlines and rushing, but i feel that besides praise from team mates and a victory, you don't get much out of it. i have a few suggestions, but for now i'll share my favorite one: close the gap between builder and a regular attacking player. GASP, BLASPHEMY, WE HAVE TWO CLASSES FOR A REASON!!! i don't really expect this to get a lot of support, but i shall put my reasoning behind it.
ok, so in most rts games, it is a sole job of a single player to both build/upgrade their base and command their attack units in battle and juggling this at the same time. trem isn't an rts, and a single player isn't controlling everything so the same doesn't necessarily have to apply (in fact, it really can't apply) but my idea is similar to how the game sanctum operates. make the ckit a 3rd weapon for a human along with possibly lowering the amount of time of build timer for balance, and for aliens, wellllll....erm, this is gonna be easy to say, but um,
you would have to dissolve the granger as a playable alien. basically, the granger would be kind of like a bot, each player on the team gets a personal team grangar that is spawned from a egg/overmind/new structure that can supercede what the hovel was/swarm of little baby grangers that follow a player around and basically "builds" something that other player aliens command. i'm not sure difficult this would be to implement, or if there's a better way to achieve this, but that is the gists of my idea.
an obvious problem of this, and one thing i don't think is desirable is forcing those who would much rather "just" build into an attacking role. to counter this, if one wants to specialize into building, allow them to buy upgrade for their ckit/swarm of baby grangers!! this does sound kind of idiotic as i type this out but let me explain moreso!! builders could get upgrades that allow them to build two structures (have more grangers), quicker repairing, etc, and basically turn them their main role into a builder with a side role of a attacker, and allow the opposite to happen. this would basically allow more flexibilty in game, as you can switch from building to attacking, or attacking to building on the fly, speeding up the gameplay a bit and making things more interesting, also making forward bases easier to make.
misc suggestions and questions
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not sure if this is already implemented, but a devolve command in devmap along with being able to sell/buy weaopns without needing to be at the armoury would be nice.
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i want to play around with the hud, just wanna double check if i have the right idea
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take the .rml files in ui/ and make a .pk3dir in my homepath, launch unv using +fs_extrapaks "name of pk3dir", and set rocket_hudFiles accordingly?
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these forums need work >.>
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a stats system similar to xonstats would be cool
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pretty sure this is a known issue as well but i'll just put it in here for the heck of it, but my graphics card supports GL_arb_texture_gather according to glxinfo | grep gl_arb_texture_gather but unvanquished doesn't detect it when compiling the ssao shaders,
lastly
anyways, sorry about how long this was, i feel like i still forgot some stuff but i'll add anything i feel is important to say later.
i just wanna say you guys are doing an AWESOME job with this, i can't believe it's been 42 and a half months since the first alpha dropped, and you've come so far since then!!!! keep up the awesome work and i look forward to seeing unvanquished continue to progress!!