my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post any feedback you have about the game here.
Post Reply
User avatar
krtv`
Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:55 pm UTC

my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by krtv` »

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.

Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

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:

Image

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.
Image

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

  • 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.

  • i want to play around with the hud, just wanna double check if i have the right idea

  • 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?

  • these forums need work >.>

  • a stats system similar to xonstats would be cool

  • 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!!

User avatar
gavlig
Animator
Posts: 518
Joined: Wed Mar 14, 2012 1:20 pm UTC

Re: my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by gavlig »

Hey! Didn't read the whole "gameplay" part(im not taking part in that area of development), but thank you for you appreciative feedback! :D Hope after a few dozens of alphas you'll see unva become even better! :) Cheers!

User avatar
Comet_
Mantis
Posts: 92
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2014 1:52 pm UTC

Re: my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by Comet_ »

Love that people are giving feedback. I just want to respond to a few things to agree/disagree/answer.

krtv` wrote:

so first off lemme just state this game is PRETTY AS HELL oh my god, and it also runs pretty good

Here here :beer: :thumbup:

krtv` wrote:

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 agree here. More/longer particles would fix however it would hinder performance so I don't really feel this is too high priority.

krtv` wrote:

their [human models] 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.

I feel like this is straight out of Quake as Quake had very similar movement. Perhaps we can ignore it and call it an homage to our roots :tongue: :tongue: In all seriousness, I don't really see what you're describing. Sorry :frown:

krtv` wrote:

it [Lucifer cannon particle effect] should be more of a radiant energy discharge type thing to better match imo.

I know the Luci is still under construction and it's likely to change but this is a great point and should definitely be in the front of the designer's mind when changing the effect in any way.

Also, as a note, Im choosing not to talk about your gameplay comments as many people have many different ideas and directions they want the gameplay and I don't feel that I am qualified to talk too much about it.

krtv` wrote:

[] these forums need work >.>
[*] a stats system similar to xonstats would be cool

Forums need work. And that's been talked about many times. Also, the stats system idea has been tossed around for a long time since the creation of the project (Us 1.2 GPP players are used to having stats because we had something called tremstats for the main US1 server). I don't think the dev team is going to get away with no type of stat tracking system. :tongue:

Lastly I would like to thank you for putting in the time and effort to try and give your two cents. You bring up many good points I would never have thought of. So kudos to you, sir.

User avatar
kharnov
Granger
Posts: 1851
Joined: Tue Mar 06, 2012 10:54 pm UTC
Clan: GT
Location: New York City

Re: my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by kharnov »

I pretty much addressed all your concerns on IRC, but to summarize, it was basically a mix of agreeing and/or saying something was being worked on.

As for the forums, we'll be re-theming it soon-ish with site assets. I've already gotten rid of the confusing mess of sub-forums.

Stats will likely come from either Xonotic's system, or from New Edge if they help port it over.

User avatar
Tom
Dragoon
Posts: 253
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:34 pm UTC
Location: France

Re: my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by Tom »

Hello krtv`, welcome! :beer:
Thank you for your feedback, I agree on many points, except the part with the Granger robots.

krtv` wrote:

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.

Yes it's a problem, but gameplay changes are difficult to make, it takes time and requires many played games.

See ya on Sunday. :wink:

User avatar
krtv`
Posts: 15
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:55 pm UTC

Re: my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by krtv` »

Tom wrote:

Yes it's a problem, but gameplay changes are difficult to make, it takes time and requires many played games.

yeah balance definitely won't come in one night, :tongue: and gameplay changes probably aren't that high of a priority atm, just thought i'd add to the growing pot of ideas!!

Comet_ wrote:
krtv` wrote:

their [human models] 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.

I feel like this is straight out of Quake as Quake had very similar movement. Perhaps we can ignore it and call it an homage to our roots :tongue: :tongue: In all seriousness, I don't really see what you're describing. Sorry :frown:

it's kind of hard to explain, perhaps i'll try uploading a video, but the walk animations don't mesh up well with the actual speed of the human, as well as look very "plastic", like a running action figure. but like kharnov said, he's addressed most of my concerns, the humans will be getting new models/animations in the future!!!

conversation on irc with kharnov, pretty much all of my concerns are already being planned or worked on! :smile:

Code: Select all

17:47  <kharnov> "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"
17:47  <kharnov> we're aware of this, particle effects are something that will be touched soon-ish
17:47  <kharnov> "im not a huge fan of the human models, they kind of look out of place and really flat"
17:48  <kharnov> the one you see right now is a placeholder
17:48  <kharnov> he's being replaced by three new models
17:48  <kharnov> a new male human, a female human, and a battlesuit
17:48  <kharnov> as for the animations, obviously the new guy will be animated better
17:48  <kharnov> "the models, while they look awesome, they don't "contrast" against the map very well"
17:48  <kharnov> i agree, shiny on shiny is hard to aim at
17:49  <kharnov> regarding shadows: wait for when we implement better shadows/lighting
17:49  <kharnov> it's not easy to do but it will be done, and we'll have a better time doing it once xonotic is on board and we can work on the map editor together
17:50  <kharnov> since a lot of this has to do with the map editor and some entity nonsense
17:50  <krtv`> o/ yay map editor
17:50  <kharnov> "one thing that would be really cool to have in my opinion is also volumetric lighting"
17:50  <kharnov> yes, planned
17:50  <kharnov> fov adjustments -> ping `Ishq repeatedly about this
17:50  <kharnov> definitely doable
17:51  <`Ishq> You can do them yourself and if we like them, we can include your contributions
17:51  <`Ishq> especially since you seem adept and messing with settings and playing around
17:51  <kharnov> sure, that too
17:51  <kharnov> submit a pull request or whatever
17:51  <`Ishq> Those are the best communitiy members :D
17:52  <`Ishq> *community
17:52  <krtv`> lool yay :D 
17:52  <kharnov> "a stats system similar to xonstats would be cool"
17:52  <kharnov> we're looking into using the stats system fr17:47  <kharnov> "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"
17:47  <kharnov> we're aware of this, particle effects are something that will be touched soon-ish
17:47  <kharnov> "im not a huge fan of the human models, they kind of look out of place and really flat"
17:48  <kharnov> the one you see right now is a placeholder
17:48  <kharnov> he's being replaced by three new models
17:48  <kharnov> a new male human, a female human, and a battlesuit
17:48  <kharnov> as for the animations, obviously the new guy will be animated better
17:48  <kharnov> "the models, while they look awesome, they don't "contrast" against the map very well"
17:48  <kharnov> i agree, shiny on shiny is hard to aim at
17:49  <kharnov> regarding shadows: wait for when we implement better shadows/lighting
17:49  <kharnov> it's not easy to do but it will be done, and we'll have a better time doing it once xonotic is on board and we can work on the map editor together
17:50  <kharnov> since a lot of this has to do with the map editor and some entity nonsense
17:50  <krtv`> o/ yay map editor
17:50  <kharnov> "one thing that would be really cool to have in my opinion is also volumetric lighting"
17:50  <kharnov> yes, planned
17:50  <kharnov> fov adjustments -> ping `Ishq repeatedly about this
17:50  <kharnov> definitely doable
17:51  <`Ishq> You can do them yourself and if we like them, we can include your contributions
17:51  <`Ishq> especially since you seem adept and messing with settings and playing around
17:51  <kharnov> sure, that too
17:51  <kharnov> submit a pull request or whatever
17:51  <`Ishq> Those are the best communitiy members :D
17:52  <`Ishq> *community
17:52  <krtv`> lool yay :D 
17:52  <kharnov> "a stats system similar to xonstats would be cool"
17:52  <kharnov> we're looking into using the stats system fr17:47  <kharnov> "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"
17:47  <kharnov> we're aware of this, particle effects are something that will be touched soon-ish
17:47  <kharnov> "im not a huge fan of the human models, they kind of look out of place and really flat"
17:48  <kharnov> the one you see right now is a placeholder
17:48  <kharnov> he's being replaced by three new models
17:48  <kharnov> a new male human, a female human, and a battlesuit
17:48  <kharnov> as for the animations, obviously the new guy will be animated better
17:48  <kharnov> "the models, while they look awesome, they don't "contrast" against the map very well"
17:48  <kharnov> i agree, shiny on shiny is hard to aim at
17:49  <kharnov> regarding shadows: wait for when we implement better shadows/lighting
17:49  <kharnov> it's not easy to do but it will be done, and we'll have a better time doing it once xonotic is on board and we can work on the map editor together
17:50  <kharnov> since a lot of this has to do with the map editor and some entity nonsense
17:50  <krtv`> o/ yay map editor
17:50  <kharnov> "one thing that would be really cool to have in my opinion is also volumetric lighting"
17:50  <kharnov> yes, planned
17:50  <kharnov> fov adjustments -> ping `Ishq repeatedly about this
17:50  <kharnov> definitely doable
17:51  <`Ishq> You can do them yourself and if we like them, we can include your contributions
17:51  <`Ishq> especially since you seem adept and messing with settings and playing around
17:51  <kharnov> sure, that too
17:51  <kharnov> submit a pull request or whatever
17:51  <`Ishq> Those are the best communitiy members :D
17:52  <`Ishq> *community
17:52  <krtv`> lool yay :D 
17:52  <kharnov> "a stats system similar to xonstats would be cool"
17:52  <kharnov> we're looking into using the stats system from new edge down the line
User avatar
Viech
Project Head
Posts: 2139
Joined: Fri Aug 03, 2012 11:50 pm UTC
Location: Berlin

Re: my feedback, review, suggestions and feature requests.

Post by Viech »

Hey krtv, I find it awesome that you put so much effort into giving feedback. I love reading walls of texts with detailed reasoning. However, I think you tried to put too much in a single thread, to the point where it gets hard to discuss anything of it. Maybe you should split it into different threads, so that developers know what's relevant to their field of development and distinct discussions don't bury each other. :wink:

Responsible for: Arch Linux package & torrent distribution, Parpax (map), Chameleon (map texture editor), Sloth (material file generator), gameplay design & programming, artistic direction

Post Reply