Please don't die

[illwieckz]

I don't know from where comes the idea about current work being all about engine code.

These are quick statistics about commits since last release (only merged things):

Code: Select all

UnvanquishedAssets:              225
Unvanquished:                    171 (contains Dæmon changes before 2017-02-05 and some asset change until 2017-02-11)
unvanquished-mapeditor-support:  36
Daemon:                          26
Updater:                         13

These are more statistics about commits I made myself for Unvanquished (includes not yet merged stuff and work branches):

Code: Select all

UnvanquishedAssets:              318
Urcheon:                         188
unvanquished-mapeditor-support:  36
Wiki:                            33
NetRadiant:                      29
GtkRadiant:                      13
Daemon:                          6
Unvanquished:                    6
Sloth:                           2


You know, there is not yet any map editor with Unvanquished support merged in master, there was no asset repositories (there was only the pk3s, not very friendly to contribute and update). You can't work on a game if you haven't tool to make it and haven't places to store what you made. It's like writing a novel without pen and paper, saying “please focus on scenario” can't help until you get pen and paper to write down the scenario.

And well, since we talk about code, part of it is about writing code needed to make the game, some of it is to enhance the game (like the bot management that was added recently, something any decent game must have), so, not really about polishing l33t code.

[illwieckz]

And if you play on servers, you will already get some backported changes autodownloaded (like bots being able to unstuck them from crates and bots leaving team when you join) and test some map preview like freeway or update like forlorn. Also some mappers published some nice contrib maps like hangar28, usstremor, stalkyard, ctcs and fortification, all of them currently playable on servers. So, yes, alpha 0.50.0 is one year old but meh, it just means it was a pretty stable release, there was no urge to publish something since some fixes and updates can be distributed by servers directly.

[lamefun]

I don't think that the developers only work on the code, I was simply refuting ViruS's point. Also, the developers definitely have some "pen and paper", since they've added many gameplay features (eg. new stage system, new buildables, human parkour), however, the grave problems (floor headbite, human camping, lack of a cooperative server, snowball effect, inability to defend while building) remain ignored.

Without the knowledge of the floor headbite you can't play aliens at all, you just die all the time.

With human camping, games become stalemates and players get annoyed and quit.

Without a server where humans fight against bots, you can't have fun playing alone (bots don't build and play badly, so you can easily defeat them), you can't have fun playing with much stronger or weaker teams. Note that Unvanquished had more players while the training server was online.

The snowball effect means that the stronger team gets more upgrades and gets even stronger while the weaker team gets nothing. There's little point to this, since a stronger team would win anyway.

Without being able to defend while building, it's not fun to play 1vs1 games. A game should be fun to play with just a few players or else it won't get off the ground. You can't build a skyscraper without a foundation.

Yes, there are of course successfull team-only games, but they are PROprietary have ★DRM★, so they start large-scale advertisement campaigns at the time of launch to bring in many players quicky and then use the ELO system for match-making, and thanks to the amount of players, there are always players online in every ELO group.

[poVoq]

At least there seems to be some progress on the Xonotic port to the Daemon engine:
https://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=7465