Small ideas & miscellaneous suggestions!

[justanothernoob]

Here's what I was thinking when I want to remake Tremulous (Thanks to the dev I don't need to do that)
I don't know it all these have been posted (I am more worried that I will forget the idea while I am checking), but here are my ideas and some response to some threads read before:

A remake of HUD The HUD definitely needs some improvement. (I will upload my idea when I have more free time). Meanwhile I think the HUD in Crysis 3 or Iron Man are truly great. Try designing it as a HUD overlapping the sight in a curved screen in a helmet or armoured suit,e.g.battlesuits.

Laser like beams for MD That make it looks more lethal. When fired, a narrow beam is shot and fades within a sec. Thats simply feels cool.

Regenerating energy weapons Energy weapons should get regenerating ammo over time. It should help solving the luci ammo problem in larger maps. The process will be slow and only take place when the reactor is not down. BTW remove the clip system on MD and Pulse Rufle. Energy is not supposed to be contained in "clips". This may be replaced hy some battery system. It keeps recharging whether the ammo is fully used or not. And no reloads is needed :)

Advanced Radar for Battlesuit It deserves a radar. I am suggesting to replace the radar with a something like wallhacking. It will show hiding aliens in very short distance, and to compensate that, the wielder will have no global radar like the one in helmet.

No minimap I can't explain it well but the minimap is not really useful in such a fast-paced game. You won't have time to check that. Its good when you have no radar in stage 1 because you need to rely on groups. Then the radar from s2 is enough to replace the minimap. If you are not familiar with the map, then just have a look with the "Ghost mode" mentioned before by someone.

A remap of ATCS This is my favourite map. You dont get lost and it focus on skills rather than map knowledge. Also smaller maps loads faster. :)
My idea of this is not a change of routes, but textures and some minor details. I am not modeller but I can help on the aesthetics. Try looking at the walls of Portal 2 (not Portal), they are strikingingly simple and beautiful.

Responses to other ideas:

bsuit stomping Thats exciting. Imagine you can kill a ****ing dretch by jumping on it and squash it.

Demo/Tutorial That should have been made long time ago. I only know how to repair a structure (not rebuilding) 2 months after I accidentally heard some sounds when I right-clicked facing a structure. That hurts.

Brightness thing and flashlight I think that generally maps are too dark. I need to max gamma to make it playable. However, taking into consideration that someone may have really bright screens, maps should be make a bit dark and give players the option to make it brighter. And since I can tweak the gammato ’hack’ the game, no flashlights is needed. AFAIK, flashlight is resource-demanding (My CS1.6 hangs when I turned flashlight on) and plain useless. It makes gameplay more complicated.

Dretch nets No offense, but that sucks. I like to see when the map is clean.

Hoping to see constructive replys :)

PS: I was automatically logouted when I was typing all this. Make the timer longer, thanks.

[justanothernoob]

I like to add a few more points:

Self-explode! Humans and aliens can self-explode. For humans, it is available for bsuits only. It can be activated by typing the suicide command (Is it /kill?). Then a 5 sec timer is up and then the bsuit explodes, killing the player and doing some aoe damage. I haven't thought how strong it is, but is should be below a nade but still capable of killing acid tubes.
For aliens, when they die they become a walking bomb for 2 secs. It can still move in the 2 sec and then explodes, dealing damage proportional to class. (Larger aliens more damage) This idea is inspired by Kog'Maw in the League of Legends.
Sorry I can't find a video clear enough, so maybe someone please record that and post here thank you.

Change to booster IMO the new booster dont provide temp poison, but something like adrenaline(increased movement speed and hp regeneration). The poison can be moved to Advanced classes. (adv lisk,mara,goon,etc.)

BTW this is the first draft of my HUD. Hope it helps! (Inspired by ICS)

The attachment hud.jpg is no longer available

[Comet]

Yes, a "hunter vision" would be nice for the aliens, and maybe humans with a helmet, instead of having to deal with old-fashioned radar blips.

Much better idea. Night vision is doesn't work as long as there's a gamma slider people will crank it all the way up to make any sort of night vision mechanic (flashlight, headlamp, nightvision, etc...) null. However giving either side, humans or aliens, the ability to see through walls with specific items or evolution or ability would make it very easy for people to actually use wall hacks and get away with it. Also, simply, anticipating an alien attack is much less fearsome than one coming out of no where. Both teams' radars do a fine job of giving hints to enemy locations without giving too much of an advantage.

I believe an incentive program should be in place. It's probably come up before, but maybe a ranking system that actually displays the rank ingame or is more obvious to the more casual player base; the people that don't want to go to some stats website just to see their K/D. It's commonplace in games now that incentive programs and diversifying gameplay are the way to maintain a large playerbase. I believe Unvanquished has that diversifying effect, but there's no incentive. If I win a long and tough game I want to be enticed by my new achievement or a new decal for a weapon or helmet so that I can show off that I got over 1000 points in a single game.

That's really my only suggestion, the game is looking awesome so far! Props thumbs up

[justanothernoob]

However giving either side, humans or aliens, the ability to see through walls with specific items or evolution or ability would make it very easy for people to actually use wall hacks and get away with it. Also, simply, anticipating an alien attack is much less fearsome than one coming out of no where. Both teams' radars do a fine job of giving hints to enemy locations without giving too much of an advantage.

After some thought, I partially agree with you. Wallhacking radars do spoil the surprise, but IMO knowing someone is there don’t gurantee a kill. And illegal wallhacking can be found by knowing what he was wielding at the time.

I believe an incentive program should be in place. It's probably come up before, but maybe a ranking system that actually displays the rank ingame or is more obvious to the more casual player base; the people that don't want to go to some stats website just to see their K/D. It's commonplace in games now that incentive programs and diversifying gameplay are the way to maintain a large playerbase. I believe Unvanquished has that diversifying effect, but there's no incentive. If I win a long and tough game I want to be enticed by my new achievement or a new decal for a weapon or helmet so that I can show off that I got over 1000 points in a single game.

In the days of Tremulous, I remembered that a server (Z?) has a achievement system, though only accessible online in the website. Showing those in game would be great. But how? Every server may have different achievements and many mods. Thats hard to manage. Checking stats website isn’t bad at all! If you are casual, you won’t bother ckecking. If you are serious, you will find yourself always checking and analysing stats. Therefore detail stats need not be shown, only the overall KDA and the rank is needed.

[Viech]

You've already got tons of darkness in the game. See: thunder. Jesus Christ that map is dark in some places.

That's not a feature of the game. Feel free to take screenshots of dark spots on the latest thunder version and post them in the map's feedback thread. Getting the brightness right is relatively hard as there are too many side effects to it, such as gamma settings, the backend that is used for setting gamma (I think this is not unified among operating systems), the time of day where you map/play, the position of your screen in your room, the backlight of the screen, its panel type, etc.

[seana11]

These screenshots were taken with default brightness on linux. Black is the most predominant color in all of them, with little to no contrast in much of the picture. I don't think anyone has ever complained about maps being to bright in unvanquished, so please, make it brighter.

[arf]

Dretch punt for the bots?
Summary of the last 2 matches:

Goddamnit

[INDENT]

I have escaped!

[/INDENT]

[Elmo]

No minimap I can't explain it well but the minimap is not really useful in such a fast-paced game. You won't have time to check that. Its good when you have no radar in stage 1 because you need to rely on groups. Then the radar from s2 is enough to replace the minimap. If you are not familiar with the map, then just have a look with the "Ghost mode" mentioned before by someone.

I second that, for the reason that it ruins hide and seek, a tremulous passtime

[Elmo]

A few of my ideas I've had recently, some have heard me talk about them on IRC, but I kinda wanna see how everybody feels about them.

So:

-Making human weapons drop after death, for other players to pick up. This would not work with a teamkill.
Along those lines, ammo, and unused medkits from fallen soldiers would be cool to be able to pick up, if possible of course.

-Turrets that can be placed on the ceiling. For the reason that turrets above aliens are useless. And it seems like a reasonable addition considering the flying alien class.

-Telenode, is also a Teleporter. or add one. Teleporting between nodes, or have a buildable exit portal. So the humans can go from base to base easier, making base moves fast and less risky.

[Viech]

-Making human weapons drop after death, for other players to pick up. This would not work with a teamkill.
Along those lines, ammo, and unused medkits from fallen soldiers would be cool to be able to pick up, if possible of course.

Doing this for the human team alone would jeopardize resource balance and even if we allow aliens to pick up evos from their falllen teammates we would still make the fund system so complex that it's once again impossible to use it for balancing decisions. (Currently 1 evo is worth exactly 100 credits since all limits and reward calculations are equal.)

-Turrets that can be placed on the ceiling. For the reason that turrets above aliens are useless. And it seems like a reasonable addition considering the flying alien class.

I like the idea but some alien classes would currently have issues with this. Mara can't reach it if there's no close wall, Tyrant can't reach it at all.

-Telenode, is also a Teleporter. or add one. Teleporting between nodes, or have a buildable exit portal. So the humans can go from base to base easier, making base moves fast and less risky.

I like the idea but this needs a rich map to work properly. Eventually I want the (mini) map to give a real tactical overview over the battlefield, with friendly players and bases on it. You could then choose a node to spawn at and also teleport between nodes. This would make the node equally useful to eggs since you could use them to bring armed teammates close to the enemy base. I'd love to work on this but the minimap needs a rewrite first, pre-generated minimaps have no future since they are a PITA to maintain (or even create) for complicated multi-layer maps.