Rock, Paper, Shotgun

11/06/2009 at 09:10 Anton says:

Hopefully this demo will help me understand whether I am in the narrow target audience or not.

11/06/2009 at 09:55 Alex says:

It’s pleasing to know that Derek Smart is still out there making games. I might not ever buy them, I’ve somehow developed a fondness for him through all the abuse that gets hurled when he gets into arguments. Plus, that Desktop Commander video will never get old.

11/06/2009 at 11:24 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:

I tried the marine mission…I ran, spotted an enemy, killed him, another appeared, I got killed and it crashed…hooray, seems like a good old 3000ad game :D

11/06/2009 at 11:36 Markoff Chaney says:

Downloading now. Thanks for the peek, Dr. Smart!

11/06/2009 at 12:58 mandrill says:

oh dear, not very accessible is it. I jumped into a plane and the controls were all over the place, I’ll have to plug my joystick in and try it again. Not tried the ground pounder yet, will do that later.

This could be an interesting game if it doesn’t alienate alot of people in the first five seconds. Then again, he’s always said that it is not his aim to make successful games.

Not a good start.

11/06/2009 at 13:51 Jim says:

Jim, you are wrong on the Judge Dredd game – that would be Rebellion, who own 2000AD (the comic publisher who created Dredd). 3000AD is the company run by Smart.

That’s it, I stand corrected. But my opinions still stand on this, I coult myself lucky I missed out on a beta key.

11/06/2009 at 14:47 dsmart says:

[You'll have to be nicer than that here, Derek - our readers are largely expressing honest commentary based upon their experience of the game rather than simply taking a pop at you. We want civil and constructive discourse from both sides. Rest assured we have been deleting and will continue to delete the genuinely nasty reader comments, of course. Thanks, RPS]

11/06/2009 at 15:02 dsmart says:

The dev log is automatically exported and uploaded when it changes. Here is the latest version from which the demo was built.

Our Mantis dB is empty.

Unlike others, we don’t hide our bugs and hope that nobody notices. If its there – and it can be reproduced – we investigate and fixed.

If you find a bug that can be reproduced, report it and we’ll fix it. Thats what we do. It is part of our history. We support our games. Always have. Always will. And the thousands of people who buy and play them, keep doing so because of our commitment to our games and the people who LIKE and PLAY them.

11/06/2009 at 15:12 dsmart says:

Sorry Derek. Although I’ve never particularly enjoyed your games, I haven’t found reason to bash them, either.

However, your statement that “There are NO crashes in the game. Not one. In fact, there aren’t any bugs left in our tracking dB. So whatever that was about, check your system” is particularly arrogant. I can only hope that it was in jest.

Arrogant? Maybe. But so what? I can be as arrogant as I want to be but at the end of the day I stand by my statements. If I know – for a fact – that there are no bugs in the game, then I have the right to say so.

Why should I accept the postings of some seemingly anonymous non-entity on a board? Can you vet that person? Vouch for them? Do YOU have access to their machine? So what? Its better to take the word of some Internut at face value while lambasting the developers?

No, it wasn’t a jest. I was serious because those are the facts.

We’ve had people ignoring the DirectX 9 update requested by the installer, pressing “NO”, then come tell us that the game won’t run. We check their system? And of course the last time they updated DirectX, Clinton was president.

I never underestimate the power of gamers to royally fuck up otherwise simple things. So if its not in my game – and I can’t reproduce it – chances are, its your fault. Prove me otherwise, and I’ll fix it and move on with my life.

Here is another fine example. Scroll down to the bottom and read the comments.

This is what the GUI looks like when you start the demo.

Yet, somehow, 47 people managed to ignore it, create a new user. Then post stuff like this when the server authentication denies access to the game.

11/06/2009 at 15:13 Jim says:

Oh, I didn’t know the developer was going to read this, sorry. ^_^

Well ok, lets look at my comments and see how I feel after some more time with the game, I know saying the logo was a sign of bad things to come is like judging the proverbial book, but it really would have been better had it just been just a quick fade in to ’3000AD’ with a black background and white text. it may not seem important but used properly it can really set the mood of a game before it even starts up.

Anyway, that’s not the point of the demo and I only said it was a bad sign, nothing to get worried about just yet. Having played it a bit longer I see when you die that’s it, scenario over. But that doesn’t explain the lack of a retry button, why take me back to the main menu where I have to select the scenario all over again? Especially with no tutorial i’m gonna come in to this not knowing what to do and it will take a few times to get me sorted.

I have played two demos today, this one and Overlord 2. The second had a nice little tutorial (no framerate issues, must be made for POS PC’s despite looking beautiful) to get you started. I have to say it’s great to release a demo and I wish more devs did it, but some light help would be welcome.

I understand it’s not a copy of Planetside, BF2142 etc, mean the graphical quality and how it runs on my PC can be compared. Large spaces, vehicles. We’ll put the performance down to my crap PC is 10,000 people really do say it runs fine, I planned on upgrading soon anyhow.

I don’t need to read the manual, i’ve played plenty of these games before to know how to play them pretty much off the bat. The main menu thing did throw me i’ll admit, I was bemused at the non-restart situation. But I rammed the jeep in to a wall for a reason, to test what the game would do, I wasn’t expecting perfect damage modelling or physics but it actually threw be back several hundred yards. Through the air.

Lets talk about what I do like, every game has its silver lining. The buildings cruble (with some imagination) when they’re hit, always nice to see that. The mission to survive until your evac gets to you is a nice idea.

Oh i’m really trying.

I understand it caters to a specific base, but the thing is I usually love this type of game. A big map with vehicles, that is my kind of game. I think comparing your game to others out there is perfectly reasonable if you’re going to be asking for a similar amount of money to play it. I will always look up to people who develop games, working on mods for most of my life I can only imagine how hard it is to build and engine from scratch, let alone the light map/model/texture editing I do.

So yeah, I appreciate your work and maybe there’s something I just don’t get, but I guess the demo doesn’t show off the features of the game very well. I’m guessing massive multiplayer sprawling battles are where the fun lies, not the scenarios.

11/06/2009 at 15:21 dsmart says:

OK, lets try that again then with different wording…

I tried the marine mission…I ran, spotted an enemy, killed
him, another appeared, I got killed and it crashed…hooray, seems like a
good old 3000ad game :D

There are NO crashes in the game. Not one. In fact, there aren’t any
bugs left in our tracking dB. So whatever that was about, check your
system.

Also, all enemies come from somewhere other than thin air. So another
didn’t just “appear”. He may have only just appeared to you, but since
they intercept in groups and pairs, you probably noticed the other guy
first.

When you die a scoresheet comes up and says ‘Press ESC’ to
exit, you think it means the screen, but no, it means go back to the
main menu, with no way back in to the game.

Wrong. You are taken to the main menu. From there you can either quit
the game or start a new one. Try actually reading the menu options next
time.

I wasn’t expecting much when I saw the terribly designed
3000AD logo flying through space in a very badly animated fashion, I
seem to remember they made that Judge Dredd game, unless i’m totally
wrong on that.

Oh yah, lets comment on the company logo which has been around for God
knows how long. At least we know where you’re coming from.

Maybe the game is too ambitious, although the same thing has
been done before and much better (Battlefield 2042, Tribes 2,
Planetside).

Wrong. Again. The only thing that it has in common with those games, are
fps and vehicles. Anyone who has played those games – and AAW – knows
that. You obviously don’t. Especially given that something as simple as
navigating the main menu trips you.

The graphics aren’t great at all, and there is barely any
optimisation, my quad core machine has trouble running it at medium,
when it runs much graphically higher quality games
smoothly.

Wrong again. The game is highly optimized and does in fact take
advantage of multiple cores. We had a 10K+ test through IGN and the
public – not one person complained about the performance. Not one. In
fact, those threads are still available on our website for all to see.

And there is no such thing as “running at medium”. This is not Crysis
where you press a button and it does the settings for you. You have to
tweak each individual setting to suit your purposes. On my quad core
righ, I can run at 1920×1080 (in fact most of the screens are taken at
this res) with everything on Ultra or High and experience nary a
stutter.

Not all quad core machines are built the same. Try optimizing yours.

When in a jeep I couldn’t seem to look around,

Yes you can.

the physics of everything are straight from the
90’s.

Not sure what you were expecting there. But considering that physics
even pre-dates mankind, I’m at a total loss on that one.

oh dear, not very accessible is it. I jumped into a plane
and the controls were all over the place, I’ll have to plug my joystick
in and try it again. Not tried the ground pounder yet, will do that
later.

Can you expand on that? What does “all over the place” mean? How hard is
WSAD? Seriously?

And yes, as I’ve said time and time again, if you’re going to be flying,
you need a joystick or another controller. The flight dynamics were not
designed for WSAD – which is what is used for games in which their
ground and aerial dynamics are based on crappy fps movement. Ours isn’t.
All the dynamics (fps, vehicle, naval, aerial) are unique. So while you
can use WSAD for vehicles, first person etc – don’t expect the same
experience in a fighter. Get a joystick. Or an analog or XB360
controller.

Plus, the game’s controls are so simplistic, my Granny understands them.
Not to mention that, right there on the main menu – you can go in and
change ALL of them if you want.

The game is not for everyone. If you don’t like the demo, you won’t like
the full game. So, uninstall it, and move on to the next cookier cutter
flavor of the day.

Like all our games, it caters to a specific hard core high-end audience,
so it may not appeal to everyone. But that was never our goal. Our goal
wasn’t to develop yet another cookie fps game that others keep
regurgitating. We wanted to go beyond that and come up with something
unique and which stands apart from the others.

Naturally, given the size, scope and ambition, we had to make various
levels of compromises in order to make it playable on the target
systems. So you won’t see any trees. But hey, you have a bunch of other
things to stare at and in the largest game world in any fps game to
date. Yes, we checked – it is the largest fps game world ever created.
Even so, the game worlds in our previous space games are in magnitudes
of hundreds times larger. So we have a lot of experience with that.

Its not for everyone. If you don’t like it, then its not for you. And
comparing an indie developed game to a multi-zillion production from the
likes of EA, is silly.

11/06/2009 at 15:23 Adam says:

So how big is the game world? Is there just one map?

11/06/2009 at 15:29 dsmart says:

@ Jim

Well thats a much better – and more objective post. Thanks for that.

Anyway, that’s not the point of the demo and I only said it was a bad sign, nothing to get worried about just yet. Having played it a bit longer I see when you die that’s it, scenario over. But that doesn’t explain the lack of a retry button, why take me back to the main menu where I have to select the scenario all over again? Especially with no tutorial i’m gonna come in to this not knowing what to do and it will take a few times to get me sorted.

The “no retry” was design decision. In much the same way that there is no save anywhere in most games, but you have it ours – which also does not use a checkpoint save system.

The decision was because given the size of the game world, it takes a long time to re-initialize and reload. In fact, if you wanted a retry, just run the game, and a few mins in, save it. Now when you die, you can resume right there without having to start from scratch. The save/restore is very seamless and transparent. Please try it and tell me if that solves your problem.

There is a tutorial for the game and the demo. If you look in “Start/programs/3000ad/All Aspect Warfare Demo” you will see the link to the PDF file, manual, game keys etc.

I don’t need to read the manual, i’ve played plenty of these games before to know how to play them pretty much off the bat.

uhm yes, you do need to read it. In fact, if you had read it, the main menu issue would have been clear because its right there on page 3.

But I rammed the jeep in to a wall for a reason, to test what the game would do, I wasn’t expecting perfect damage modelling or physics but it actually threw be back several hundred yards. Through the air.

Yes, it was designed to do that. And the distance depends on your speed at impact.

So yeah, I appreciate your work and maybe there’s something I just don’t get, but I guess the demo doesn’t show off the features of the game very well. I’m guessing massive multiplayer sprawling battles are where the fun lies, not the scenarios.

Its there. Just not in the demo. If you read the manual – the full game manual is in there – you will see the potential.

It puts Planetside in the shade. It takes some getting used to. Like all games.

11/06/2009 at 15:46 teo says:

If you can’t let the game speak for itself and need to defend it in damn comment section then I think you took a wrong turn somewhere. Guess what, all those people you’re replying to, their experiences of the game are valid. If people think the controls are clunky you can’t say that they aren’t clunky.

Most people who try the game will never read your comments anyway so perhaps you should make sure that the game can stand on its own without all your explaining.

11/06/2009 at 16:03 dsmart says:

@ RPS

Derek – we’re quite sure the non-spiteful majority of our readership are genuinely interested to hear your thoughts on AAW so please keep on commenting, but both sides need to resist the urge to fight.

Very well then.

Then don’t do that. Here’s what Microsoft’s guidelines say about installing your game:

If all developers followed Microsoft’s guidelines, we’d all be in trouble.

Fact is, I opted not to do that in the installer because there is no guaranteed way to discover which DirectX runtime is installed.

I use NSIS as my installer. Not the bloated crap that is Installshield/MSI. Below is the section in the installer script

Function .onInstSuccess
MessageBox MB_YESNO “Install (Internet connection required) DirectX 9.0c (March 2009) Runtime? If not, the game may fail to run!” IDNO NoRunProgram
Exec $INSTDIRdxwebsetup.exe
NoRunProgram:
FunctionEnd

The user gets to press Y or N. It tells you what bad things will happen. You’d think that people will just press Y and if they have the latest, nothing happens when the DirectX installer runs. But instead, they click N. And boom.

Sure I could do a silent install and remove control from the user entirely. I just haven’t gotten around to make a final decision on that yet.

Thats not all. The game requires a card with Shader Model 3. Every card from 2007 has this. But because of how nVidia and ATI keep gimping their cards, we’ve found that some high end cards from back then, arent even SM3 supported. So people don’t read the game’s requirements. Then try to play it.

11/06/2009 at 16:16 MessyPenguin says:

Runtime error this application has requested for the program to be closed in a unusual way
Please contact applications support team

So i am

Any ideas?

11/06/2009 at 16:21 dsmart says:

@ MessyPenguin

What are you system specs?

I have only seen that error in the following circumstances

1. Card is not SM3 compliant

2. Latest DirectX 9 runtime not installed

3. You are running a 64-Bit app and the Byteshield DRM cannot initialize due to permissions on the system.

Our online KB has a list of solutions.

Let me know how it goes.

Also, be sure to install IE8. Some people needed to do that in order for Byteshield to init and work correctly.

11/06/2009 at 16:28 Xhumar says:

RPS: quit deleting my posts. I think Sir Smart needs to see for himself that his game has issues. I may sound provocative, but these are opinions of my own experiences, ones that I’d like to share.

11/06/2009 at 16:34 Xhumar says:

And you can highlight those issues without insulting the man, man.

True, I got a bit carried away, but one can’t help pointing it out when said opposite party keeps refusing to admit it.

(if anyone wants to ask what I’m referring to, it’s the music. My personal opinion is that it’s subpar)

11/06/2009 at 16:41 MessyPenguin says:

Cheers for the reply
I have installed Direct X the one that came with the demo said did not need to be updated.

I have Internet Explorer 8 (Don’t use it though ugh)
And I’m running 32 bit it is however Windows 7 may this be the problem?

Oh yeah and Geforce 8800 GTS which I’m sure has SM3 with latest drivers everything else is fine apart from Channel 4 On Demand but that’s another story

11/06/2009 at 16:53 Jim says:

I’m running with Win7 RC 1 and having no crashes, well one so far but I put that down to the OS. Anyone up for some multiplayer? I’m playing now.

11/06/2009 at 16:56 Tei says:

s/beta/demo/g; sorry.

11/06/2009 at 17:01 dsmart says:

btw, we even had CO-OP in the demo but removed it at the last minute because we – and the testers – felt that we gave away a very major and important draw for the game.

In fact, one of the scenarios in the demo is based on the MP game of co-op in which you guys have to get off the base.

One of the things we are not even touting because it has been in all our games, are the destructible environments. If you can see it, you can blow it up. Last night we were playtesting co-op in the full game. I ran into a building. The NPC gunship flying overhead and looking for us, subsequently levelled it. With me in it. :D Flushed us out, where the marines on the outside happily picked us off one by one. Good times.

11/06/2009 at 17:04 Reverend Speed says:

Some bugs I’ve encountered.

http://img32.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=aaw04.png

I keep trying to like this game and it keeps crashing on me. But I’m up for finding an online game.

11/06/2009 at 17:11 MessyPenguin says:

Ok got past error after installing all the checklist :(
now this
Game terminated due to FATAL error:
Invalid game file detected, please reinstall.
‘./MEDIA/MODELS/TEX/MARINE_INFANTRY_1_SPECULAR.DDS’

im going to reinstall and try again

11/06/2009 at 17:20 Adam says:

“Thats not all. The game requires a card with Shader Model 3. Every card from 2007 has this. But because of how nVidia and ATI keep gimping their cards, we’ve found that some high end cards from back then, arent even SM3 supported. So people don’t read the game’s requirements. Then try to play it.”

Every ATI x1000 and above, and 6000 series onwards nVidia card is 100% SM3.0 compatible. If you are talking about the ATI xX00 series of cards these were never claimed to be SM3.0 compatible, and anyway these were released in 2005.

11/06/2009 at 17:23 Reverend Speed says:

There’s a two player game going on now with two very confused and irritated players and a host of try-and-quitters.

11/06/2009 at 17:37 Reverend Speed says:

Still there. Current consensus is that this game is not fun.

11/06/2009 at 17:39 dsmart says:

I just joined and left three servers just fine.

Was just on 208.167.240.125 as seen from the in-game server browser.

11/06/2009 at 17:43 Reverend Speed says:

A delightful experience. A chap called Urinator and I spent 20 minutes trying to find each other. We succeeded eventually, I jumped into his vehicle as a gunner and the server disconnected.

This is not a good demo experience.

11/06/2009 at 17:45 Jim says:

That’s so strange, me and urinator did the exact same thing, we found each other then at that exact moment the server disconnected (what? the server left the game?).

11/06/2009 at 17:52 Reverend Speed says:

@ dSmart

Re. Crash, Yup.

Re. Audio, will do.

dSmart, regards confusing players in the demo and requiring ‘em to read the tutorials… I appreciate you including them in the game, though perhaps you could throw up a little in-game text occasionally suggesting people look at ‘em.

Regarding the format they’re in, well, this IS 2009. Perhaps you could create a more guided experience for a new player, suggest some options, some goals? L4D has a wonderful system for guiding a newbie – I highly encourage you to look at it.

I applaud the ambitions of the game, but I’m just afraid it’ll suffer from the same fate of Quake Wars, another game of huge variety with an impenetrable opening.

If you could limit the player’s choices upon beginning the game (with the option of skipping this limited experience) it might help.

Anyhow. Joining the server oh look it’s crashed. Er. Hang on, let’s try that again.

Joining 208.167.234.2:2302…

11/06/2009 at 17:57 Reverend Speed says:

Any chance you’d find us and give us a tutorial, Mr. Smart?

11/06/2009 at 18:17 Desktop Commander says:

I’m curious why the game has such high system requirements for such spartan visuals.

11/06/2009 at 18:30 Serondal says:

Because the visuals are far from Spartan, the planet itself may be Spartan but the visuals are stunning the view range is insane ect. Games like this an Arm 2 require good hardware because of the view distance and detail in the characters ect I believe. It just isn’t the same as rendering a small area of a map at a time, these games render as far as the eye can see in all directions.

11/06/2009 at 18:51 Jim says:

Yeah he’s flying me around in a gun ship. We’ve suggested some changes that would make the demo a bit friendlier, so we’ll see if an update comes out ^_^

11/06/2009 at 19:01 Serondal says:

The beta for the game ate my computer alive, I may try the demo to see if there has been any optmizations but I seriously doubt my computer will be capalbe of handling it.

11/06/2009 at 19:16 JonFitt says:

I’m really looking forward to trying this this evening.

So I should be able to report back tomorrow with constructive and civil comments :)

11/06/2009 at 19:23 Serondal says:

@Desktop commander

I’ve not actaully played the game so I can’t really comment on what is actually in it or how it looks. However DSmart has had a policy of not adding pretty stuff where it doesn’t belong just to make the game look prettier. There are miles of flat terrian because the planet IS miles of flat terrian with little or nothing on it. This does come into play however when you consider the fact that you can snipe and fire weapons over this distance as well and see enemy basese from this distance and engage enemies at this distance. Aparently the game also looks fantastic from inside fighters ect, but I don’t know. The screen shots I’ve seen make the characters in the game look on-par with Halo 3.

11/06/2009 at 20:04 Desktop Commander says:

@Serondal

Ah! The glory of sci-fi: the ability to travel to worlds without plant life. Moreso the skill of Derek Smart- to bring together adventure-game logic and action game rendering.

11/06/2009 at 20:08 Paul Moloney says:

“There are miles of flat terrian because the planet IS miles of flat terrian”

That’s handy.

P.

11/06/2009 at 20:12 Serondal says:

I’m just saying Paul Moloney you wouldn’t complain about a game set in salt lake city for having miles of flat terrian and sparse tree cover.

11/06/2009 at 20:21 mandrill says:

I see that the tail end of my previous comment was misplaced and based on an erroneous assumption. My hat is off twice to you Mr Smart, my apologies.

11/06/2009 at 21:06 Desktop Commander says:

You keep fluxuating between the idea that it’s due to the sci-fi locale and the idea that it is due to technical restrictions. I am attempting to discover the more root cause.

11/06/2009 at 21:27 Tei says:

Ok, theres something like a station to buy things, but I don’t have XP. I have managed to die shotting to a car (it seems the explosion radius is huge). And respawn in a area with lots of different flyiing ships. I don’t care what other people think about the models, but are better than these from Anarchy Online. I have enter a vehicle, and I was able to raise it with the key F, then changing the camera with the F keys the game has crashed. I am surprised F1 (external camera) work for first person mode (making the game a TPS shotter). The female voice is called “mother” in the files of the game, haha :-)

11/06/2009 at 21:43 jalf says:

@Serondal: Even barren wastelands are not *entirely* devoid of features though. Saying “it is how he wanted it to be” is kinda missing the point. Most people would, if given the choice, prefer nice visuals over boring visuals. Given the option, then, a nice-looking barren wasteland would be preferred over a dull-looking barren wasteland, and a non-barren non-wasteland might be better still.

While Derek Smart may disagree with me on this, I’m going to make the claim anyway: It is not that he specifically set out to make a world consisting of basically a flat plane of a single repeating brownishgrey texture. But rather that he was willing to settle for that, in order to focus on other parts of the game instead. It’s not “how Smart wanted it to be”, but “what Smart was willing to settle for, because he deemed working on the rest of the game to be a more productive use of his time”.

Which of course is a fair enough decision. But it also means that we can still say it looks like crap if we think it looks like crap. It is not a beautiful game, and if potential customers think that this is a problem and it detracts significantly from the game as a whole, it is a valid complaint.

11/06/2009 at 22:06 pirate0r says:

I’d really like to edit that post of mine now… I messed up the quote tags.

The salt lake quip was aimed at Serondal

11/06/2009 at 22:14 Howard says:

That’s “3.0″ gig – stupid dissapearding edit function….

11/06/2009 at 22:22 dsmart says:

OK, second build is done and only a few more items to go.

New entries are in 1.18.16.01 and 1.18.16.02 sections. What we’re working on is at the top. The current demo version you guys are playing is 1.18.16.

11/06/2009 at 22:29 Reverend Speed says:

That’s a heckuva lotta changes made. Great progress, looking forward to the demo. I don’t for a second imagine you’ve sanded all the corners, but that covers a lot of our problems in the early playtest.

People who work that fast are just sickening. =)

11/06/2009 at 22:34 dsmart says:

Well, since its just us two (Sergio and I), we don’t “develop by committee”. If it needs to get done, we just do it.

We have a LOT riding on this game and since most of these issues are just minor things that gnaw at you, the changes are not that major. Especially since the code base is set and nothing major is going on atm.

Anyone who knows me (e.g. Serondal) knows that this is how we do things with our games. Which is why we have such a loyal following and have been able to stay in business for that reason alone.

We LOVE what we do. Sure we’re not going to always get it right or appeal to everyone, but at the end of the day, we do what we can as best we can and within our abilities and budget.

You try throwing $3m of YOUR OWN MONEY at something. See how well you sleep at night.

11/06/2009 at 22:39 Serondal says:

Those damn Gammulans, I’m sure before hand it had cities and farms, they just didn’t survive the testing ;P -shakes his fist- Even if it didn’t have that stuff before we’ll say it did just to make them look bad.

11/06/2009 at 22:44 Testicular Torsion says:

The massive military base seems rather sparse, sterile and empty (as in no cover at all); there is nothing on the base (aside from AA emplacements) that is of human size or scale.

No kidding. There aren’t even any Coke machines in ‘em…

11/06/2009 at 23:39 pirate0r says:

I had another play with the instant action, i’m seeing the same bug that adam was seeing in this pic

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/6103/aaw02.png

It looks like its trying swim butterfly stroke…

11/06/2009 at 23:57 dsmart says:

Anyway, 1.18.16.03 is in regression. Only two more items to go.

12/06/2009 at 00:23 pirate0r says:

Well I have played the demo and I’m not trying to mess with you. Here’s the pics I just took:

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/5708/aaw01.jpg
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/4177/aaw02.jpg
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/3079/aaw03.jpg
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/9412/aaw04.jpg

12/06/2009 at 01:08 Paul Moloney says:

Tried the demo; the first thing I’ve noticed is that with the mouse I’m using (Logitech MX518), even with Mouse Sensitivity at 0, it’s still way too twitchy. Is there any way to tone that down a bit, Derek?

P.

12/06/2009 at 02:02 James Brophy says:

Just catching up on this now… Bloody hell a def that TALKS to the players, this is amazing to me.

I gotta give this game a go.

12/06/2009 at 02:46 Andy`` says:

I played a little bit. I’m tired and it’s hard to grasp concepts while tired, but the demo confused me. So I’d like to share my tired, exhausted thoughts in the hope that someone can help explain them – and in the hope at least a little bit of this is useful. All I knew about the game beforehand is:
- It’s a game.
- It’s a game by a Mr. Derek Smart, who I know little about.
- People keep complaining about something being flat in comments threads on RPS.
- The Battlecruiser demo also confused me, way back when. I was also tired.
- Tired demoage is a bad habit of mine. It will never go away.

Now what I know?:

It didn’t seem amazingly accessible. I couldn’t see the main menu options at first because, as I read from left to right and top to bottom and given all my previous experiences with interfaces and interface design (no, I’m not a professional nor claiming it, I just know a few things), the bottom right hand corner of the screen was the last place I expected the menu to be, and the colour of the text seemed to hide it further. Somewhat due to having seen too many splash screens lately in PC games, I initially thought the main menu was a splash screen and when I tried to go through it by clicking furiously and couldn’t, I felt lost and stuck and abandoned like a wild fox in a traffic jam. Help.

Once I got into the game, I realised there was no tutorial (not that I expected one, given previous Battlecruiser experiences), so I checked the controls in the options: something wasn’t clear in there because it took me a few trips in and out of there to grasp some of the basic concepts (take off, how to get out of a vehicle, how to crouch and go prone). This may be purely the tired mind slowing me down, though I would like to add that some of the keyboard mappings seemed oddly placed.

The desert (aircraft scenario) is slightly flatter than expected. Flat ground around you is fine but there’s not much detail in the horizon – there’s no world beyond the desert -, and what detail is there is quite smooth. And you don’t get to see it much because you’re high up in the air. The whole thing ends up feeling…maybe, unnatural. I’m not sure that’s the right word though.

The other desert (ground scenario) isn’t really flat. But I only fully understand this because, trying to follow objectives I didn’t fully understand and trying to avoid constantly dying, I got in a vehicle and drove south until my vehicle broke down while jumping over a hill or bump or something. Then I got out and turned around, and was surrounded by some quite pretty terrain that was previously very, very far away. Which is a shame – why so far away? Why not set [presumably epic battle] on more varied terrain.

Something about constantly dying. I did alot of that, for various reasons: I’ll begin with AI. Both ground and air AI seems to have impossibly good aim that seems to be directed at the player alot of the time. The ground AI appeared in front of me from nowhere a few times, and would either shoot very accurately from very far away or not realise I was there at a closer distance until I shot it. The air AI could fire what seemed like perfectly accurate rockets (I was moving, so they missed, because I didn’t want to die) from way outside visual range, and missles don’t seem to run out of fuel, ever. Maybe they do and I just died first. This could all be a big illusion, of course.

Some of the ground AI also seemed to be shooting through walls (or around corners?) in a few spots but its hard to tell, there seem to be alot of them around. But why I’m mostly dying? I’m rubbish at shooting stuff in your game, Derek, I’m sorry. Flying with the keyboard is a hard thing to do in lots of games, but keyboard + mouse controls might have helped, though they’re more difficult to implement and still hard to get feeling right. The ground stuff, it felt like I wasn’t getting any feedback from the game when firing the weapon other than “you’ve fired your gun” and the occasional “target died” if they’re close enough to see clearly. I think its something to do with the shooting being over very long ranges and being a little blind-firish. I was also slightly perplexed by all the scopes on the weapons that I cant use, and being able to zoom in a little with my pistol but not my MG-with-a-scope-attached.

What I saw of the orders system seemed alright, but I didn’t see much since I was experimenting with it while in the infantry scenario, and I was getting shot at alot. Orders menus disabling movement and aiming = not ideal if you need to give orders while under fire. Probably not a big issue in the grand scope of the game though, I’d hope anyway.

Which I also don’t get – after playing I went to the AAW website and saw something about it being an open world, but the demo doesn’t seem very representative of that. I didn’t try multiplayer, but in both IA scenarios you’re limited by how far you can go – I even hit an invisible wall in my plane while being told to turn around or I’d die, Battlefield-style. While I’ve never been sure how best you can demonstrate large games properly, I’m sure there’s a better way to do it than this, especially if it’s someone like me who’s unlikely to try out MP without having gotten used to the SP game first.

It seemed to have an odd charm though, and a potential that either isn’t revealed in the demo or I completely missed in my tired wanderings around in the game. Texturing was nice. Little confused about the polycount and other rendering things in comparison to the system specs (specs seem too high), but given that I probably only saw a small percentage of the game in the demo, it might make sense. Audio seemed fine, given the visuals. HUD was nice enough in infantry view, bit in your face in aircraft view, and a little confusing in vehicle view. It does seem to be trying to take on too many things, and yet if it didn’t do infantry AND vehicle AND air stuff all together, it probably wouldn’t make sense, right?

But there’s still one thing I don’t know yet, based on my brief and tired messing about with the demo, and thank you to whoever explains this for me.

What is this game trying to do?

12/06/2009 at 02:56 dsmart says:

Once I got into the game, I realised there was no tutorial (not that I expected one, given previous Battlecruiser experiences), so I checked the controls in the options: something wasn’t clear in there because it took me a few trips in and out of there to grasp some of the basic concepts (take off, how to get out of a vehicle, how to crouch and go prone). This may be purely the tired mind slowing me down, though I would like to add that some of the keyboard mappings seemed oddly placed.

There is a manual, a tutorial, a keyboard sheet. All in PDF format which you can print. And also accessible from within the game using ALT+D.

The installer even creates shortcuts to the PDF files for you. And you missed them? Seriously?

12/06/2009 at 03:10 Andy`` says:

Re, PDFs: Yeah I missed them. I don’t really use my Start Menu anymore: Windows 7, search bar gets used a bunch and I forget about most of the start menu, and the game created a shortcut on the desktop – so the existence of PDF links just flew by me, and the ALT+D thing I would have easily missed in my random trips in and out of the keyboard bindings, since it wasn’t something I was looking for.

Plus I always like to see how a game teaches you to play from within it. Reading manuals tends to be something not many people do now unless they’re stuck, and while alot of the time it just leads to lazy design (trying to cope with the lowest common denominator), sometimes it can lead to interesting tutorial methods instead.

I’ll have a look at the docs another time when I’m not half asleep :)

12/06/2009 at 09:20 Daniel Rivas says:

R.A.N.D.O.M. weapon. Really? Well, okay.

My main problem with this demo was that it took me around 10 minutes (and several crashes) before I worked out how to draw my weapon. Perhaps this means I am simply not hardcore enough? Also, the manual refers to being able to aim down the sights with the right mouse button? This does not appear to work on my machine.

In any case, I was interested in this title, but I’m not now, mostly due to personal issues with the interface, and aforementioned crashes. Actually, that’s not fair. If those things were fixed, I’m not sure I’d like it. Perhaps it’s just not my kind of game after all.

I found particularly annoying the lack of an option to retry a mission after dying in the first 30 seconds. I realise you “made a design decision” not to have autosaves, but perhaps just one, on loading the level?

12/06/2009 at 12:23 Davee says:

Well, this is probably nothing I will buy. It didn’t run well on my mid-spec PC (with Windows XP as OS), and I found the gameplay to be somewhat flawed and confusing. Especially since it didn’t have a taditional step-by-step in-game tutorial as games like this could really use (and many lack). You basicly have to expect the general player to be pretty dumb for him/her not to miss things. Be over-obvious really. I also found a few bugs and had a few crashes during my playthrough. On the bright side, one of those bugs were pretty funny – I was flying a transport-aircraft and was blown up by a missle. What happens? After a few seconds my body spawns at the spot where the obliterated aircraft was, lying down. It start to fall and when it hits the ground I hear a rather loud “Oof!”. All during the stats-page.

While I can see this beeing something a few hardcore players can enjoy, I would be suprised if it would become a hit – atleast in this state.

But it’s fun to see a dev talking to us, more of this please, RPS ;)

And I’m saying this as a fan of soldier-sims, Planetside and the BF-games among others.

12/06/2009 at 12:42 James Brophy says:

@dsmart
I do recognize that all craft have multiple seats, but I was in the driver seat of an enimy car and I did have access to my on foot weapons menu, my machine gun was cliping through the dash board.
Your hardline stance on not beliving people are encountering bugs clearly comes from a lot of in informed comment in the past. I’ll try and repeat it and get you a screen shot.
I was in the drivers

12/06/2009 at 12:48 Howard says:

@dsmart
Any chance you could elucidate a little more for me regarding my issue? Would love to give this another try.

Also what about performance? It does seem very poor on even powerful rigs – comments? Suggestions?

12/06/2009 at 13:22 Daniel Rivas says:

@dsmart:

“Jeez dude, press the weapon key. It is standard on all fps games. 1,2,3 etc”

I’m sad to say this did not cross my mind until I looked it up in the manual after the aforementioned 10 minutes. I actually tend to associate the mouse wheel more with switching weapons. Also, not starting with a weapon held out threw me somewhat, I assumed it was a strange bug, and my gun model just wasn’t being drawn.

I think my lack of hardcoreyness has just been confirmed.

On a sidenote, does seem to be crashing rather a lot. I’m passing no judgement, but I don’t think my setup is particularly esoteric?

12/06/2009 at 14:04 Daniel Rivas says:

@dsmart

“mentioned that they couldn’t get “Aim Down Sight” to work.”

That was me again. I specifically tried it with the main assault rifle, so I don’t know what’s going on there.

Anyway, I’m running it at 1280×1024, at the default settings.

Specs:

GFX Card: Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
Memory: 2GB DIMM DDR2
OS: Windows XP Professional (SP3)

My drivers are up to date. Thoughts?

12/06/2009 at 14:12 dsmart says:

Your forgot to mention your audio i.e. is it on-board or add-in (e.g. Audigy etc)

Anyway, what resolution are you running the game at?

Before you even go in and tweak anything, delete the game_config.ini file located in the game folder. Then start the game and new one with default settings will be created.

Now go to config and turn off music, then set audio hardware to 0 (this will force software audio instead of hardware).

Run the game again at the defaults and see what happens.

Here is a trick to get sandbox mode working. Go to the multiplayer screen and setup a LAN multiplayer game. Then join that same session right there in the interface.

You will then be on the server all by yourself. Anything you can do in single player, you can do in multiplayer, so this sandbox mode allows you to check out various things.

Let me know how it goes so that I can figure out whats going on and try to get up going.

If all else fails – and if I have time – its time to remote debug it and see where/why its crashing. Don’t fret. I’ve done this many times before (with our testers) when researching bugs we cannot reproduce on our own. They simply open a firewall port, I send them a small app (which Visual Studio uses to connect to the remote session) for them to run as well as a new game exe with debug information. I then connect to that machine remotely, fire up the game and trace through it until the crash or bug condition occurs. You can watch. :) Then I trap it locally and see whats going on. If its on my end, I fix it. If its on Sergio’s end, I open up a Mantis report and alert him to it.

12/06/2009 at 14:32 Daniel Rivas says:

“Your call. I don’t care what choice you make.”

Drama!

12/06/2009 at 16:26 Reverend Speed says:

@JBrophy

Actually, I’d like reverse CTF! One bomb on the map, bring it to your enemies barracks. =)

@dsmart

1. Cars need automatic handbrakes when you get out of ‘em. Got to dropship rendevous, stopped car on incline, checked map to see dropship location, exited to find car rolling away downhill.

Either automatic handbrakes or automatic Benny Hill music. Your choice.

2. Regards putting links to the manual etc in the start menu and including a short-cut in game, no, that’s not good enough to guarantee you’ll draw people’s attention. Put a link in your main menu.

3. Can players record demos in order to facilitate bug reporting? Seems like a good idea.

4. Do you intend to allow players / modders to alter and / or remake your bases, add detailed ground geometry (smaller buildings, walls, etc)?

5. To further promote understanding among the peoples of mankind, the following two pics may demonstrate the issues some have with the supposed flatness of the terrain in AAW. Doesn’t really bother me (as I haven’t really played the game yet and haven’t encountered the gameplay implications of flat areas of terrain), but it might be a good example for anybody who wishes to continue the converesation. Pay particular attention to the foreground terrain in the second shot.

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/09-05-25/pic016.PNG

http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/action_games/enemy_territory:_quake_wars/desert_fly

One of these things is not like the other. Remember, scale of the overall world is not the issue here.

6. The following requests for information would be useful for me (and possibly others) in determining whether to continue giving you feedback on your game – we’ll all be on the same page.

* Interested to know your definitions of ‘consolified’ and ‘run of the mill cookie-cutter’ (examples would be appreciated).

* Would you accept the argument that a game should demonstrate worth before expecting investment of time and effort (eg., reading an eight page tutorial and a four page command sheet) from the player? If so, what level of worth would you consider appropriate?

* Would you not like your game to be an indie blockbuster?

No wiggle room, no talk about compromises here, no references to your team size, this is just about whether you would like your game to be popular with a very wide group of players – say the amount of people who enjoyed World of Goo?

Or would you rather just recoup your initial investment?

7. Again, making people refer to your manuals when they hit a problem in-game is symptomatic of unacceptable poor modern game design. You are asking us to buy the Trabant of user interfaces, Mr. Smart, in an era of ubiquitous Bugatti Veyrons.

Some of us have sympathy for the Trabant, but we’re fucking WEIRD, Mr. Smart. Such an interest borders on the perverse, not ‘niche’.

“Whats the problem exactly? Of course everyone is going to get confused playing a game the first time. Thats what a tutorial and manual are for. They are meant to be read.”

Last decade, maybe. Nowadays we’re looking for a little less work in our play. That doesn’t mean that we’ve become lazier, necessarily. It just means that design standards have risen. Again, Quake Wars is NOT a prefect example, but it’s well worth examining for systems that educate players and for efficiency in control design. Obviously, a better one is TF2, but that’s far less wide-ranging than your project.

The potential AAW is awesome, but it’s currently covered in dust, UI crud and two decades of niche flight sim assumptions. For the product to shine, it needs more polish.

…is wot I think.

12/06/2009 at 16:46 Howard says:

@Reverend Speed
Excellent post.

I’ve just been playing through the IA map again. This time no crashes (I think that was just a driver FU: it happens) but god on a bike this is clunky. Touting the scale of the game as a caveat for its shortcomings can be valid but, as you say Reverend, scale is nothing without content. Right now these EPIC SIZE!! maps are utterly bereft of…well bloody anything O_o
Should you find yourself without ship the sheer effort of slogging about the place is incredible, even over “short” distances. I cannot imagine how long it would take to run between bases.
Moreover this huge scale with minimum content just makes the game seem weird, as does the massively sparse layout of the bases. No human would EVER lay out a military base like that. You have things located close by for ease of use and defence, not scattered over a couple of square kilometres.

On a performance note: I turned all the details down to high and the AA to 2x and the ANI to normal. I still max out at 22 FPS and now the game looks decidedly scrappy. Building flicker and pop at any distance and the utter lack of detail on the floor makes judging distance nigh impossible. Serious optimisation is needed with the renderer.

Last point – there are a few more…errr… (what will not start a row?)…unforseen behaviours?
-When I get near to (i.e. touching) small objects (such as what I believe are resupply points?) they turn bright, bright white and lose all texturing.
-I have also observed that when a flying vehicle goes behind a building I can still clearly see it but it too is rendered in bright white (deliberate?)
-Other people mentioned mouse sensitivity as a problem – For me its not the sensitivity but the mouse lag. This may be a symptom of the poor FPS but right now there is a clear delay between me moving the mouse and anything responding.

There is a definite something here – I am reminiscing about Tribes 1 and Battlezone – and I would like to get into it but the game is not exactly forthcoming with the love, you know?

12/06/2009 at 17:42 Davee says:

Damn you RPS for shutting off editing! I had to go away a while after and didn’t return until now… My comment has long since passed, but what I meant with “And I’m saying this as a fan of soldier-sims, Planetside and the BF-games among others.” wasn’t that BF or Planetside were soldier-sims (as dsmart so kindly points out heh) but that I am a fan of soldier-sims (ArmA, Red Orchestra – wich is a semi-soldier-sim in a way – plus others) -and- BF and Planetside.
I felt that this game was a little too off from my taste (plus the bugs and crashes I encountered) and that’s why I don’t feel like I want to invest more time learning it. Atleast that’s what I think. But who knows, this may turn out awesome to me in a few years!

12/06/2009 at 18:00 dsmart says:

ack!! no edit button is just making things nuts around here. Why was it removed?

Anyway, revised links:

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/005.png

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/001.png

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/002.png

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/026.png

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/09-05-13/pic028.PNG

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/09-05-13/pic025.PNG

12/06/2009 at 19:40 Tei says:

These images are awesome Derek. You will see less if your game looked more like that. Whatever the reason, the demo don’t generate these screenshots. The demos has nice buildings, and a example of what the final game include, but nothing as pretty these screenshots. Not that I know…

12/06/2009 at 20:51 dsmart says:

@ James

I had to use the shoulder buttons to tun my car while driving,

LT/RT are thrust. You can’t do any turns without having thrust. So you move LSTICK forward while pressing LT (thrust forward). The LB/RB are yaw controls and so those will take effect in vehicles.

Anyway we’ve revised that handling now as well so that the LSTICK is used instead.

I have to use a keyboard modifier (ctrl+use) to exit a car,

Yes. Not gonna change it because the E key does about five different things. And making E exit, will cause problems with docking and suicide. Making E exist also makes it error prone because it is easier to accidentally press E than it is to press CTRL+E. How you would like to eject in mid-air because you pressed E by mistake?

selecting weapons on the joypad is somewhat of a lottery of holding the button down and watching it spin round the menu till you let go and hopefully get what you wanted and the flight joystick is inverted in all directions on the 360 joypad.

It is a toggle. Just like the menu says. So don’t “hold it down”. Just tap it once.

However, those level shots do look very cool. I have no issue with the flatness of the demo level. I mean you gotta hold something back for later to make people buy the game, right?

Thats EXACTLY how the game looks and even better now since those shots were taken.

And the issue with the demo has nothing to do with holding back tbh. Its just that Alpha is the base the Terrans took over. It just happens to be in that region. So it was also used for the demo.

@Tei

These images are awesome Derek. You will see less if your game looked more like that. Whatever the reason, the demo don’t generate these screenshots. The demos has nice buildings, and a example of what the final game include, but nothing as pretty these screenshots. Not that I know…

The demo looks just like that. If you go to those areas.

The game has acurate time of day, weather patterns, atmospheric light scattering etc. In fact, in the course of an hour, you can probably experience all of them – as the guys I was with on the server yesterday can attest to. I even got them all into a gunship and took them on a tour to view the scenery. While we were being shot at by forces from below. It was fun. At least for me.

@ jonfitt

What’s going on with the ground behind the fighter?

Spherical texture mapping anomalies that can’t be fixed with current rendering technologies. You see them on canyon walls only because of the direction that the texture has to be rendered in. This was due to the textures being generated in the program that Patrick used and our rendering engine had to compensate. Texture mapping a flat surface is easier than something like a canyon wall in which the texture has to go in a different direction. I’m sure you don’t want the techie explanation, so thats as simple as I can explain it.

12/06/2009 at 22:21 dsmart says:

@ James

I went looking for some of this lovely scenery in the instant action option and got shot down. I tried to join an empty server and all I got was a server disconnected message.

Add the /use_god cheat mode and you won’t die.

Also the quickest way to do that is to use a DJP to go from one base to the next. You can do it either in fp mode or in a vehicle (but not a fighter or gunship). So you could DJP from MZD01 (the desert area) to MZM01 (moderate) and go from there.

Any chance you could add a toggle to swap Yaw and roll on the controller? It might help unify all the craft. and soften the “Learn flight sim” factor in the controls.

What do you mean? What are you trying to swap? Anyway, this is what the new revision is like.

[BEFORE]

- LSTICK : F/B to throttle (W/S)
- LSTICK : L/R to roll
- LT/RT : up/down in VTOL (F/Z)
- LB/RB : L/R to turn/yaw (A/D)

12/06/2009 at 22:32 dsmart says:

New build should be up later tonight or early tomorrow.

Here’s whats new since the demo version 1.18.15

12/06/2009 at 23:13 James Brophy says:

Can we get a toggle to swap…

AIRCRAFT

- LSTICK : F/B to throttle (W/S)
- LSTICK : L/R to roll <= this
- LT/RT : up/down in VTOL (F/Z)
- LB/RB : L/R to turn/yaw (A/D) <= and this

So that turning can be universally the same from the controller.

While I'm here may I also suggest…

VEHICLE:

- LSTICK : F/B to throttle (W/S)
- LSTICK : L/R to turn (A/D)
- LT/RT : increase throttle \ Break
- LB/RB : no effect

13/06/2009 at 00:10 Paul Moloney says:

“I’ve spent probably thousands of hours playing fps’s now, and Shift is run, and Ctrl is duck. I’m too stuck in my ways now to change. ”

I’ll add a me-too to that; I really think it would add to the game being more intuitive.

P.

13/06/2009 at 00:25 James Brophy says:

cool, I look forward to the new version.

em, while we have you here; I gotta ask about the battle cruiser 300 advert with Jo Guest. Who’s idea was that and how did it come about?

From my perspective, in an age of adverts that made massively unrealistic promises when it came to graphics, it was a stroke of genius to do something simply shocking to make people aware of the name.

13/06/2009 at 02:02 dsmart says:

OK demo v1.18.17 is currently being uploaded to our server so mirrors can grab and host it.

I’m not gonna host it because my bandwidth already spiked this month. So am going to send an email to my mirrors guys. Hopefully they will start hosting it very soon.

The patch weighs in at 65MB.

This will be the only update for the demo. If you are going to get the game, then wait for the final version due out……soon. I think.

13/06/2009 at 04:01 dsmart says:

WorthPlaying mirror

13/06/2009 at 07:26 Serondal says:

I want to see this ad now! Found Jo Guest on the Youtube but no 3000ad ad

13/06/2009 at 12:55 dsmart says:

Yah, that was all Take Two marketing’s idea. I had nothing to do with it. In fact, the first time I saw it was when I got the sell sheet. Imagine my horror and surprise. But back then I was a Green game dev n00b with no power to fight (though I eventually did and nailed them – twice) “the man”, so it stayed.

What most people don’t know is that despite all the bad press, the game did do very – very – well. Especially when I released my version shortly after Take2 shipped the buggy BETA version to meet their Christmas deadline. My game was one of the games that took Take 2 – as we now know it – public. Yes, little known fact. Search for battlecruiser in the original SEC filing and see for yourself. Then do the math.

13/06/2009 at 13:01 Paul Moloney says:

Derek Smart is one degree of separation from Jo Guest?

I doff my hat.

Some more detail on the ad from a Jo Guest fan who has obviously studied this in, ahem, detail:

“In 1996, Jo did a photoshoot for a company that was promoting the “Battlecruiser 3000AD” game for the PC. Only one (black-and-white) photo from that shoot was used: it showed Jo wearing a black leather bra, panties and thigh-length boots – she was perched on a stool with the game itself held in front of her on the stool. The photo appeared in that form (with only the name of the game repeated plus the name of the distributor) in several PC magazines, including the November 1996 issue of PC Gamer.

However, that was not the only version of the advert. For the more “laddish” magazines (e.g. PC Zone) one or two alterations were made. For a start, the caption “She really wants it” was added, and in this version of the photo it looked like she wasn’t wearing any panties (the game box obviously obscured the interesting area). Having examined both adverts carefully I’ve come to the conclusion that the panties were airbrushed out of the PC Zone version, and NOT digitally inserted on the PC Gamer version. But I could be wrong…”

P.

13/06/2009 at 13:42 Reverend Speed says:

Took a quick go a few minutes ago…

Finally managed to get to a canyon with water. Prettyish. Not spectacular. Jumped in for a dip.

http://img208.imageshack.us/i/aaw05.png/

My arms are apparently hinged to my ears.

Also, to my mind ‘mouselook’ is not ‘mouseSTEER’. I never asked for mouse steering in vehicles. I wanted to be able to look with the mouse (like one of the car passengers) independantly of steering with the keys.

You would benefit HUGELY in creating an FPS by labeling a few weekend’s RESEARCH and playing HL2 and TF2 and taking many, many notes on the UI.

You’d both gain a thorough knowledge of modern gaming convention and access to the common concepts and terms most FPS gamers use when discussing FPS titles.

Like MOUSELOOK while DRIVING.

Will say more later after weekend, only had a few seconds.

By the way, did you get my bug report & suggestions by e-mail a few days ago? Received no confirmation.

Are we going to try this again, RPS?

13/06/2009 at 14:55 cowthief skank says:

Not sure this is really my type of game, will probably give it a go as I love the idea but I am just too lazy to give this the attention it deserves.

However, I wanted to echo the comments regarding Mr Smart’s activity here. Stuff like that needs commending as too few people do it.

13/06/2009 at 16:06 dsmart says:

Demo build 1.18.18 is up.

Changelog:

http://downloads.3000ad.com/aaw_dev_changelog.txt

13/06/2009 at 17:17 dsmart says:

@ James

In the instant action, Not able to find the new controll toggles in the menus, still driving with the shoulder buttons. However I did manage to fly a craft and Kill something finally! then i accedentally activated mouse flight while looking for night vision and promptly ploughed into the ground…

The new controller options were not in the 1.18.17 version. You did read the version control notes, right? They are in the just now released 1.18.18 version.

Is there any point in continuing to play once you have to start walking from the desert?

*sigh*

Dude, press CTRL+Y and you will teleport to the nearest base.

13/06/2009 at 18:52 Serondal says:

Okay after playing around with the demo for a while I have to say I am amazed man! You’ve taken all our advice about what we thought was wrong with FPS mode and made it more or less perfect man! Love the air distortion effect when weapons fire. All the vehicles look amazing, the buildings amazing everything is mind blowing.

I think you’d have to have played UC and BC:M ect to tell just how much of a leap in technology this game really is.

13/06/2009 at 20:22 Serondal says:

SAme here Jon

13/06/2009 at 21:10 Howard says:

@dsmart
Finally got time to install the update. Superb work mate. The FPS is drastically improved as is the rendering in general. Had a run around a quick scrap with some random bloke who turned up: was most fun. Most importantly though: JETPACKS! This sells me on any game =)

However… many, many new bugs – sorry:
-The server browser always shows no players in any servers even when there are.
-XBOX 360 control pad is crazy. When usin it the system CONTINUALLY (like every 10 seconds) kept recalibrating it so that I would be left stranded in mid air doing loop the loops or heading for the ground at huge speed
-If you die, you get respawned in the middle of nowhere, so far out teh game thinks you are not on the map anymore – had to quit and reconnect each and every time.
-Quit a view issues with death in general, particularly if you die from crashing a vehicle. I flew a plane into a building, exploded and died but then the camera just zoomed out and remained there; no respawn timer nothing and my jetpack still worked even though I was VERY dead.
-Not a bug but would it be possible to let us redifine what axis does what ont eh 360 pad? Having steer and acc/brake on the same axis is useless as it means you can only do one or the other. Steering/rolling should be on left stick and thrust/brake should be on the triggers really for it to be workable

Other than these though, all of which are obviously fixable, the game is now looking VERY good indeed. My only last complaint is possibly when you play in the dark (in the game, not in RL =) ). It is bloody hard to judge where the ground is. I get the feeling there may be a readout that tells me altitude but I have yet to find it though…

14/06/2009 at 07:19 Howard says:

@dsmart
Okay scratch the problem with the 360 controller recallibrating all the time. That was a confusion caused by an unclear menu option.
There is however another issue with vehicles. If you crash a vehicle into the ground about a third of the time the game has a fit.
Crashed one of the very fast interceptor type birds into the landing pad at base and it took no damage. From the cockpit it looked as if it was stuck in the floor and indeed none of the controls work. Ejecting from the ship I could see that it was in fact hovering about 10 metres ABOVE he ground and after a few seconds it suddenly shot into air at greater speed before lazily drifting to the floor. Even though I hit the ground at full speed neither the ship or I took any damage

14/06/2009 at 12:43 dsmart says:

We found the respawn issue. It was related to a suggestion we implemented in 1.18.16 a few days ago in which all players of the same race would spawn from the same base so that players were together. Its fixed now.

Demo v1.18.19 is up. Just download and install.

Build 1.18.19

The version control file shows whats new since the original 1.18.15 release

14/06/2009 at 14:06 dsmart says:

@ Jonfitt

There doesn’t appear to be any bots. Whenever I die I appear in a field miles from home and the warping it does nothing. :(

There weren’t any bots enabled in those builds. I have now added bots to two or the three official servers. You will see [BOTS] in the server name.

@ Reverend

Also, to my mind ‘mouselook’ is not ‘mouseSTEER’. I never asked for mouse steering in vehicles. I wanted to be able to look with the mouse (like one of the car passengers) independantly of steering with the keys.

Sorry if it wasn’t done exactly to your desires, but the fact is, what was implemented is perfectly adequate I think. You are an extension of the vehicle so if you look left, you can drive in that direction.

You would benefit HUGELY in creating an FPS by labeling a few weekend’s RESEARCH and playing HL2 and TF2 and taking many, many notes on the UI.

Stop being condescending please. Frankly your posts are beginning to annoy me.

The UI is fine. We’re not changing it. If you don’t want to get used to it and the fact that this not like any other game, please stop playing and go back to TF, HL2 or whatever tickles your fancy. This game is ours. It is unique to what we set out to do. You don’t have to like it and we most certainly didn’t set out to please everyone.

There was a month long public BETA. You had a chance to be a part of the game’s direction. You opted to sit it out. Now that we’re close to release and tying up loose ends you think we’re going to make drastic changes to suit your playing style and desires? Seriously?

@ Howard

-The server browser always shows no players in any servers even when there are.

You need to refresh it manually before joining so that you get the latest listing.

-XBOX 360 control pad is crazy. When usin it the system CONTINUALLY (like every 10 seconds) kept recalibrating it so that I would be left stranded in mid air doing loop the loops or heading for the ground at huge speed

Seems fine here.

-If you die, you get respawned in the middle of nowhere, so far out teh game thinks you are not on the map anymore – had to quit and reconnect each and every time.

Yeah we fixed that.

-Quit a view issues with death in general, particularly if you die from crashing a vehicle. I flew a plane into a building, exploded and died but then the camera just zoomed out and remained there; no respawn timer nothing and my jetpack still worked even though I was VERY dead.

This was in multiplayer, yes? Did you try it in single player? If it was in multiplayer, then maybe the server packet got lost or something. Will investigate though.

-Not a bug but would it be possible to let us redifine what axis does what ont eh 360 pad?

Probably not.

Having steer and acc/brake on the same axis is useless as it means you can only do one or the other.

It is not useless. It was done to make it easier – especially given the limited number of buttons on the controller.

Steering/rolling should be on left stick and thrust/brake should be on the triggers really for it to be workable

Yah, thats how it was previously if you recall. If we put the throttle back on the triggers, that means you would have to use the F/Z keys for VTOL up/down since there would be no available controller buttons to put those on. I wanted all vehicle/craft/fps controls to be on the controller without having to use the keyboard if the controller is your choice.

Anyway, it was done this way in order to avoid confusion and for movement to be similar to the fps and aircraft movement without confusing the player.

I’ll see if we can come up with controller presets e.g. Ace Combat 6 has two, novice and normal (more control).

My only last complaint is possibly when you play in the dark (in the game, not in RL =) ). It is bloody hard to judge where the ground is. I get the feeling there may be a readout that tells me altitude but I have yet to find it though…

manual p16-17. There’s even a picture! :) Your altitude is next to the VTOL/FTOL text to the left section of the HUD.

14/06/2009 at 17:27 James Brophy says:

“-XBOX 360 control pad is crazy. When usin it the system CONTINUALLY (like every 10 seconds) kept recalibrating it so that I would be left stranded in mid air doing loop the loops or heading for the ground at huge speed”

“Seems fine here.”

Apparently if you hit the left shoulder button (not the trigger) then you recalibrate the center of the left stick.

This can result in some odd course changes when flying. espically if you try to roll while turning. because when you hit the left shoulder button and your stick is leaning any direction then you can recalibrate the center to the edge of the stick.

I am getting concerned that this is starting to be frustrating for you to read. Please under stand I don’t mean to offend. I only bring my problems up because these are things I perceive to be missing or lack reasonable options.

I would have loved to have been part of the open beta but this rps article is the first I’ve heard of this game.

14/06/2009 at 19:21 dsmart says:

@ James

However, pitch control has now shifted to the RIGHT STICK

!

Was always that way. The RSTICK controls your view – just like in fp mode. However, this is being changed in the upcoming update as in:

LSTICK – roll or yaw depending on config setting, pitch up/down
LT/BTN7 – throttle up (W)
RT/BTN8 – throttle down (S)

Apparently if you hit the left shoulder button (not the trigger) then you recalibrate the center of the left stick.

During calibration (CTRL+ALT+J) you shouldn’t touch ANY buttons. In fact, you should leave the controller alone!

Also, make sure you check Control Panel and ensure that your controller is fine there as well.

I am getting concerned that this is starting to be frustrating for you to read. Please under stand I don’t mean to offend. I only bring my problems up because these are things I perceive to be missing or lack reasonable options.

I have NO problems with your posts, bug reports etc. I only commented on Rev’s tone because…well, read his posts.

We didnt’ start this game yesterday. It has been two years in the making. Our first dedicated fps game. So it has been a little bit of a learning experience but we’re doing our best. Its not like I’m going to release the game tomorrow and then patch it later. I could, but I don’t have to because we still have a bit of time. The [reasonable] issues you guys have reported – even asking us to revise things which WERE NOT BUGS – have been done. And we’re still working on things so that those (like you) who are INTERESTED in the game, can have the best experience possible and within the limits of the game.

We could’ve been like those other guys and leave the game at 1.18.15, sign off on it as Gold next week as planned and then everything else that came after would be in a patch. But why do that when we can take a few days to polish and tweak further – things that make all the difference?

I would have loved to have been part of the open beta but this rps article is the first I’ve heard of this game.

Well you can still get in and work with us on the issues you are having. We ALWAYS welcome fresh eyes because even those we have a slate of official testers, those used to the game take things for granted. As is evident in the 1.18.15 as released in the demo.

Also, most in the public IGN beta just wanted to play the game. We got a few reports here and there, but not as much as we expected. But that was probably because the game was so far along.

Anyone (e.g. you, Howard, Rev etc) with a genuine interest in the game and who wants to join in these final stage of tweaking and such, should go to our forum area and register. Then search for the Supreme Cmdr user and send me a PM telling me who you are. I’ll then give you access to Area 51 where you can join in the fray.

I had a rather Sisyphian experience of constantly spawning in the wrong base. I had 16 seconds of invincibility before people started shooting at me but the teleport takes 30 seconds. getting to the nearest car took a little over 20 seconds and once I did get there I got to drive with a heady excitement of “Woo I’m alive!” a little before being destroyed by a local missile.

Are you sure you spawned in the wrong base or were you playing and then jumped to a hostile base? I ask because if you end up in a hostile base on a server that has bots activated, you’re going to die. A lot.

Flight controls are still split across the pad. tried ejecting from a plane and landed on the ground. that was fun. teleported back but found that while I could get into planes I wasn’t able to make any of them take off, so got in a truck instead.

If you are using the xbox controller, the LT allows you to take off in VTOL mode. Unless you lift off, you can’t fly anything. All crafts have VTOL capability.

Only now did it occur to me that the server seemed to be lacking bots.

If the server has bots, this will be displayed in the server description. Of the three servers, only two have bots.

14/06/2009 at 19:46 dsmart says:

@ Howard

Good catch that! The A/P needs to be reset to avoid player confusion I think.

When you register, be sure to send me PM on the board letting me know who you are (from your RPS handle).

Once you get access you can download the full game and uninstall the demo. Will send you instructions.

14/06/2009 at 20:05 dsmart says:

Howard, you’re in. Go to the board and check your PM!

15/06/2009 at 21:39 Reverend Speed says:

Hi there. After a fun weekend, thought I’d drop in the response I’ve been dying to make. Apologies in advance for shitty formatting. Here we go…

Press 0 to kill engines. And do try not to park on inclines.

Would still like to get autobrake. Occasionally people are firing missiles at me as I get out of my car and I’m easily distracted.

No. Use Fraps

Fair enough. Just a thought.

Probably. Depends on how well the game does as that will determine if I should throw additional resources at prepping the materials for the public.

I take the point that it makes more sense for you to see what the take up is before cleaning up and releasing tools. Would be nice to hive off bases to modders, though. S’all good.

Unfair comparison. They put the base on a flat plane nestled between mountains. Well, we have those too. Except that this base (one of ten) happens to be in a DESERT and a predominantly flat part of the map.

So I took a teleporter tour of the game, few pictures here http://img196.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=aaw19.png Went to the most mountainous bases I could find – happy to take suggestions on other ones to visit. Without exception, terrain within the base is exceptionally, remarkably flat. The areas surrounding the bases (within walking distance) are exceptionally, remarkably flat. Took a gunship out to one end of a desert mountain base plateau, set a waypoint on the other side – R10.00 in distance, according to the waypointing system. Flew across it at ground level, fairly slowly.

Very, very flat.

Took a trip out to one of the canyons (starting to get to know the bases fairly well at this point, I should mention) in order to document varied terrain from an infantry level. (First four images – http://img29.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=d01m.png ) From the air it looks pleasantly detailed, but on foot there’s a great deal of seemingly low-resolution, stretched textures and jagged / flat poly work.

Also included some caps taken from Quake Wars (I’d use other games, but it’s probably the only large-scale FPS game I have. Well, Flashpoint 1. And Tribes 2. But it’s the only one I have installed) so that you may have the option of comparing infantry and air terrain shots (obviously, disregard foliage). These pics were taken to attempt to provide a closer point of comparison with the images you linked to -

http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/thumbs/005.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/thumbs/001.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/thumbs/002.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/08-11-06/thumbs/026.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/09-05-13/pic028.PNG
http://www.3000ad.com/aaw/media/shots/09-05-13/thumbs/pic025.jpg

Shots also include three of the virtual cockpit in QW for a later discussion we’re probably not going to have. =)

Hopefully everybody’s now on the same page re Desk Top commanders comments,
Desktop Commander:

: I’m curious why the game has such high system requirements for such spartan visuals.

: I don’t know of a place on earth, in metre-scale, that’s as devoid of detail as the AAW planet. Say what you will about system specs and I will point you again to ArmA – another multifaceted large-scale combat game with similar or lower requirements that somehow managed a few little details.

With regards to:

dsmart:

: 400 sq. km of map to explore and people are nitpicking about one small 20km area.

That’s a most valid point. I’m trying not to make any value judgements about this myself, I’m just trying to illustrate and make clear other people’s points on scale v. content. As I said,

Regards the Crysis comparisons, of course, the key point is the amount of content per square inch it delivers. Sheer scale is not everything.

Honestly, considering the size of team and the overall size of the environment I don’t really have any problems – I think that in this respect AAW is an inspiring achievement. But that’s probably unwanted input also. =) I’ll shut up on this.

A game that has been developed for the console target but ported to the PC. Or developed as multi-platform but with console as the target audience. MANY games fall under this category.

That’s groovy – was just curious to know if you operated under the belief that because a console is the primary target that a game would necessarily be less complicated or complete as a product made for the PC.

Cookie-cutter fps: All first person shooters which are like the one before it.

So Halo (interesting game, didn’t especially like it) isn’t a cookie-cutter fps but Halo 2 is, despite the emphasis on storyline and multiple protagonists? That makes a fair amount of sense to me.

We can’t all make games for the same people.

But you can’t quantify worth without a level of commitment and thus investment (time, money, whatnot)

So you wouldn’t accept the argument that a game should demonstrate worth (a couple of simple, rewarding actions in the first 20 seconds, say) before expecting investment of time and effort from the player?

My goal is always to make a game that I want to play and which a bunch of others find worth in buying and playing. And if that bunch is large enough to justify the development, then its already a blockbuster for me because then I get to make more games.

That’s interesting – and a pretty damn cool way to live. Not sure I’d agree with your definition of ‘blockbuster’, but may you always be satisfied with your own standards. =)

Rubbish. Manuals are written for a reason. If you choose not to read them, thats you problem not mine. Heck, even the dishwasher comes with a manual.

I’d argue that a dishwasher isn’t a different game from 2009 and thus is an unfair comparison. Perhaps it would be fairer to compare it to a more complex board game like Arkham Horror… and in that case, it’s almost always more fun to learn from an experienced player. Putting the onus on regular players to explain the game to new players is viable, but it does tend to gamble on aquiring a population of patient, friendly, regular players. I’d imagine that a modern in-game tutorial would give a more certain result… But granted, that’s a guess from a non-developer.

…is wot I think. =)

And you are entitled to those opinions. I, like many, don’t share that opinion, but that doesn’t make it any less important to you.

…is wot u think. =)

Add /use_godmode to the shortcut and you won’t die in single player.

Perhaps add some difficulty levels?

Jonfitt said,

I had real trouble entering and exiting vehicles. It seemed I had to hunt around trying to get the little icons to appear to click on, and if I go too close to a vehicle I would be killed by touching it even though it was stationary. This happened a lot.

I really like the interface, though it’s a little fiddly when you’re in a rush. Could you make the icons or their area of effect a little larger, perhaps? Another alternative is that you could ‘use’ the vehicle, then select the seat from a menu like the one for the weapon supplies? It’s not as clever, but at least you’d know what to hit when panicked. =)

dsmart said,

The demo looks just like that. If you go to those areas.

Jonfitt said,

Also, I understand I don’t get to make any decisions, but if the desert is just one part of the map and is the most dull, why not situate the demo in a forest near a river?
I’ve only seen desert so far in this demo and the videos.

This makes a lot of sense, even for a post-gold version of the demo. Keep in mind the amount of comments that have been made about the variety in terrain (and the time you’ve had to tell people about godmode and teleportation – why not blow away those comments in one stroke by changing the demo starting base? Expose those features! =)

I don’t really play that many flight simulators so I’m going to take a pass on commenting on the vehicle controls for the most part (though they seem a bit odd – isn’t the convention for joypads to use the left stick for forward, back and strafing, then binding the other to x and y rotation SHUTTING UP, SHUTTING UP, WON’T THINK ABOUT THIS).

Yes. Not gonna change it because the E key does about five different things. And making E exit, will cause problems with docking and suicide. Making E exist also makes it error prone because it is easier to accidentally press E than it is to press CTRL+E. How you would like to eject in mid-air because you pressed E by mistake?

W/regard ejecting from vehicles, QW bound a key exclusively to entering and exiting vehicles. Cluttered up the keyboard slightly, but prevented accidental ejects while remaining a single button press.

Oh god, one more. Would you consider making the weapon-select button on the joypad allow the player to select weapons by immediately pressing one of the directions on the d-pad after hitting the button (“SELECT WEAPON”)? Just a thought – two presses on a pad might be faster and more certain than trying to check a toggle while in combat.

I even got them all into a gunship and took them on a tour to view the scenery. While we were being shot at by forces from below. It was fun. At least for me.

I’ll second that, great fun was had. Another RPS session? Please?

Serondal said,

I’ve played FPS games since you couldn’t even duck, or look up or down at all for that matter matty.

Duuude! =) Eye of the Beholder II for me! Always nice to meet another grandpa gamer. =)

Serondal also said,

the way ducking/prone ect works in this game is nothing new. This is how it works in Rainbow Six type games, OPflash ect because it allows you to change your position with great detail and is pretty common way for keys to be set up.

No problem with these features – and I change my key config in everything I play anyhow. =P Still using the config I set up in Duke3D! Oh, ‘space’ is jump (hate that) – but can reconfig. My problem is with some more obscure decisions – not making third person a toggle, making ctrl-e eject as the default across all vehicles – areas where there are well established conventions. Ideally players shouldn’t have to relearn basic stuff – they should be able to spend their time in areas where AAW is unique, clever and new! =)

Then Serondal said,

You guys can attack a base with some gunships and fighters ect, I can attack it with a warmonger battle cruiser for sub-orbital levels HAH :P

You desk jockeys have no idea what it’s like on the ground. *spits* Old command, just like the new command. =)

dsmart said,

When swimming in real life, don’t you see your arms in front of you when you do that stroke?

Yikes! Not like that! http://img208.imageshack.us/i/aaw05.png/ As an enthusiastic swimmer I can fairly confidently say that I’ve never put my arms in that position if I’m trying for breast stroke on the surface (and I can’t really imagine doing that underwater either). Check this out and see how often she raises her hands above her eyeline http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/other_sports/swimming/4225756.stm

Sorry if it wasn’t done exactly to your desires, but the fact is, what was implemented is perfectly adequate I think. You are an extension of the vehicle so if you look left, you can drive in that direction.

Sorry, I’m obviously not explaining myself adequately. My concern here is that I appear to be locked into looking forward in first person – and due to the way the monitor fails to reproduce my peripheral vision, it’s like I’ve been strapped into the drivers seat of a car, had my forehead strapped to the headrest, been fitted with blinkers and told to drive.
My situational awareness of my local terrain is uncomfortably, nay, dangerously limited.
Add to this a car that turns left when I want to look left and we’ve a recipe for disaster, at high OR low speeds. =) Essentially, a car’s turning circle is far wider than the turning circle provided by my neck, real or virtual.

I love how I can look independently of the car’s direction as a passenger, but if there’s a technical problem with this for the driver, perhaps you could implement it for third person? Keys steer, mouse rotates camera in x and y? Players who want a greater situational awareness could pop into third person, move the camera around and either steer there or switch back to cockpit view.

I should point out that your map screen almost allows this already, as it’s currently intercepting increase and decrease throttle commands (from the keyboard and joypad, at least) and I can easily zoom in and swing the camera around. The feature’s already there, then – it would only have to be made official.

Or so I would imagine. =)

Stop being condescending please. Frankly your posts are beginning to annoy me.

Yeah, sorry, read over the TF2 and HL2 comments and they were a bit snotty. I’d like to apologise for that – I was under some pressure when I wrote ‘em, but please understand that they were written with the best interests of the game at heart.

I’m reminded of one of your comments during the RPS test run… “This IS my first FPS”. I’m just worried that without enough of a shared language with other FPS/Simulator hybrids you might not actually get as many people to try your game as you deserve because they’ll be frustrated by the lack of so many conventions they’ve come to expect and rely upon.

Not intending to be condescending, just trying to speak honestly and helpfully to the issues as I see ‘em.

this not like any other game

I’d say it’s VERY like a great deal of other games, just not enough like ‘em where it counts for new players.

There was a month long public BETA. You had a chance to be a part of the game’s direction. You opted to sit it out.

This is true. I did see the beta. I did sit it out – the game didn’t seem especially appealing to me. I installed the demo on a whim and to my surprise found that I liked the technology and the direction the game suggested it would take.

I had problems with the UI and provided feedback.

Now that we’re close to release and tying up loose ends you think we’re going to make drastic changes to suit your playing style and desires?

No, you think I’m trying to fit the game to my own styles and desires. That’s not how I see it… but I DO see a parting of the ways coming up fast. =) Fair enough.

Howard said,

The server browser always shows no players in any servers even when there are.

Just out of curiosity, how many servers are there overall?

Random issues I came across while attempting to play and taking pictures…

1)Map intercepts forwards and backwards commands

2)I’m using the 360 pad with standard MS drivers in the .19 version of AAW, keep having to recalibrate the joypad

3)In the map font, a ‘D’ can often look like an ’0′, readability issue.

4)Consider biasing server ‘time’ to daylight. It’s easier for newbies to navigate and it makes a night-time server an exciting difficult spike.

5)Really like the solar farm assets, they catch your eye in the distance, look excellent.

6)Running into one of the launchpad ramps in a CAB seems to give less lift (forwards or backwards) than running into one of the side walls – I stop dead.

7)I jumped out of a buggy (with the engine switched off) and watched it pass right through another parked vehicle. Game crashed shortly after this, so I can’t give you coords or a picture.

8)Jumped out of a HAV van at full throttle (making the joypad vibrate). While I was out and the van was a long distance away, the pad continued to vibrate. It only stopped when I entered a plane.

We didnt’ start this game yesterday. It has been two years in the making. Our first dedicated fps game. So it has been a little bit of a learning experience but we’re doing our best. Its not like I’m going to release the game tomorrow and then patch it later. I could, but I don’t have to because we still have a bit of time. The [reasonable] issues you guys have reported – even asking us to revise things which WERE NOT BUGS – have been done. And we’re still working on things so that those (like you) who are INTERESTED in the game, can have the best experience possible and within the limits of the game.

We could’ve been like those other guys and leave the game at 1.18.15, sign off on it as Gold next week as planned and then everything else that came after would be in a patch. But why do that when we can take a few days to polish and tweak further – things that make all the difference?

You guys really are fucking champions. You’ve done an amazing job. I wish you the very best.

AAW! SELL, MOTHERFUCKER, SELL!

PS: More RPS reader sessions would be great.

15/06/2009 at 21:46 Serondal says:

My God Reverened Speed ! You should register at 3000AD and start your own thread over there ;P

15/06/2009 at 22:48 dsmart says:

Rev!! my gawd man, I actually HAD to read all that.

Anyway, I’m not going to quote everything, but it is all noted. Some comment about issues that stand out

Could you make the icons or their area of effect a little larger, perhaps? Another alternative is that you could ‘use’ the vehicle, then select the seat from a menu like the one for the weapon supplies? It’s not as clever, but at least you’d know what to hit when panicked. =)

I thought of that before but the reason I was done the way it currently is was due to conflict resolution. If player A entered an asset and got the menu, then player B entered almost at the same time, if player B was quicker in selecting the driver/pilot before player A, then the menu visible to player A is now aged and not current. So what you’d find it player B has now taken off. Where is player A? Still standing on the runway staring at a menu.

Maybe we’ll come up with a better method in a future patch.

Perhaps add some difficulty levels?

Unfortunately due to the way the AI works, thats not feasible within the current framework. The AI engine is very sophisticated and not something I want to mess with.

Sorry, I’m obviously not explaining myself adequately. My concern here is that I appear to be locked into looking forward in first person – and due to the way the monitor fails to reproduce my peripheral vision, it’s like I’ve been strapped into the drivers seat of a car, had my forehead strapped to the headrest, been fitted with blinkers and told to drive.
My situational awareness of my local terrain is uncomfortably, nay, dangerously limited.
Add to this a car that turns left when I want to look left and we’ve a recipe for disaster, at high OR low speeds. =) Essentially, a car’s turning circle is far wider than the turning circle provided by my neck, real or virtual.

You can use the F7 (third person view) and achieve the same results.

The issue with doing mouselook is that then you cannot use the mouse for menu items. Thats why there is a Y key toggle for even the mouse steer.

Slaving the mouse to the vehicle’s view also requires a bunch of camera related changes that aren’t worth it.

Would still like to get autobrake. Occasionally people are firing missiles at me as I get out of my car and I’m easily distracted.

No can do. If you exit a vehicle that is still moving, it will move until it comes to a stop. If you don’t want that, use the 0 key to kill the throttle before you exit. Same thing.

I’ll second that, great fun was had. Another RPS session? Please?

Sure. Lets setup a date/time and do it. I think Alec was also interested I believe.

Anyway, first mirror for the new demo build is up

http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=78952

15/06/2009 at 23:04 dsmart says:

If your stick has a wonky throttle, go the the game options and disable it. Then the game will ignore it and use W/S

15/06/2009 at 23:34 dsmart says:

The servers take some time to come up, but I just checked and they’re all up now.

16/06/2009 at 05:56 Polysynchronicity says:

Regarding the issue with ending up in the wrong seat while boarding a vehicle – why not handle it like Red Orchestra does? Boarding the vehicle puts you in the first available seat, from which you can then switch into the other ones.

Example: in a T-34 in Red Orchestra, you can run up to the vehicle and press “Z” (use) from any point on the vehicle. If the vehicle is empty you will end up as the driver. If that seat is full you will be the gunner/commander. If both those seats are full, then you will be in the MG position.

You can switch from any seat into any other (empty) seat by pressing 1, 2 or 3 (although you may already be using those keys – I haven’t played the demo yet due to problems with my PC not booting)

16/06/2009 at 10:54 Reverend Speed says:

@Poly,

Was thinking this, but in Quake Wars (don’t know how it is in RO) you always have a parachute that can open and start braking incredibly quickly.

In AAW, given the scale, should you find yourself a passenger in a flying craft the odds are you’ll find yourself very high and miles outta the range of another vehicle VERY quickly.

If you have no jetpack your only hope is either suicide or, if you survive the drop, a 30 second wait for a teleporter back home.

All very frustrating.

So I can see why you’d want to avoid automatic passenger-making on the runway.

Without changing how the teleport timer operates and/or making vehicles much easier to get to, I’m not sure how to fix this.

16/06/2009 at 13:25 dsmart says:

@ Alistair

My crash at login was reolved by one of two things – updating Java or running as Admin. (Vista 32)

Both of which are already mentioned earlier in the thread and referenced in the Knowledgebase ;)

Glad you got it going. Don’t forgot to patch to the latest version.

16/06/2009 at 13:58 Reverend Speed says:

FORMATTING SUCCESS!

And in case you missed this in the previous post:

NEW DAVID BRABEN ELITE GAME FOR PC!

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2009/06/16/elite-iv-confirmed-for-ps3/

Woo!

16/06/2009 at 14:36 Major Disaster says:

What a shame the other thread had to be locked, thought this was an excellent “story” to read so lets hope it doesnt get spoilt.

I for one will now try trying the Demo tonight, will make a change from Left4Dead, where I suspect the Valve Devs could do with a bit more community interaction the mo…….

Perhaps RPS could get them to comment :-)

17/06/2009 at 11:42 Yes/No says:

Here’s a rundown of my demo playthrough.

Choose marine mission, walk forwards, see car, get in car, get shot by sentrygun. Die instantly.

Respawn, walk forwards, don’t get in car, get shot at, locate elite guard 500 somethings away, shoot at him, miss, get shot, die.

This was the most recent play through but it basically sums up my experience. It’s kinda of like playing some kind of demonic, poorly created romhack of Operation Flashpoint, I guess.

The main difficulties are that there’s absolutely no cover unless you rush to barracks and the AI is feeling sporting enough not to shoot you, the fact that the AI never seems to miss and can spot me from miles away, including from behind walls and also that the enemy apparently have access to metric fuckton of heavy ordance which basically means if I don’t get shot by the enemy, I’ll get shot by a missile from some tank 800 miles away.

And don’t get me started on the VTOL missions. And the crashes and bugs (I count the AI seeing through walls as a bug, as well as the view shaking from crashing a plane even after I start a new game).

However, I didn’t mind the controls (GASP) although I think this is because my years of not having PC capable of running anything other than DOS games and Roguelikes have conditioned me to check the commands before playing. Although I must admit Roguelike controls tend to make more sense.

So no, not sold me.

Also on a petty note, the voiceovers are annoying. Listening to “WARNING HOSTILE LAUNCH DETECTED” over and over again really starts to grate on my nerves after a while.

20/06/2009 at 00:39 dsmart says:

Final Build v1.18.23 for the demo is now up.

20/06/2009 at 11:52 dsmart says:

No, that program ended awhile back.

The full game and demo use the same engine, so they work the same way.

04/08/2009 at 11:58 S. from Q. says:

Why a game so ugly surpasses crysis and farcry2 in terms of sys reqs i will never understand

05/08/2009 at 13:39 TheScenery says:

There’s plenty of cover actually. Just don’t stand out in the open admiring the scenery.

Luckily you addressed that problem for everyone by not having scenery and using graphics from xwing vs. tie fighter

10/08/2009 at 05:04 ashamefulposter says:

hey derek

your game

it is terrible

18/08/2009 at 14:03 chelmsley says:

Well after reading the comments and the angry frustrated indignant responses from DSmart i dont know if i want to waste the time even bootlegging this game.

23/08/2009 at 16:51 Davros says:

Are you sure about your claim that its the biggest fps map ?
iirc project igi had an infinate terrain engine

24/08/2009 at 17:58 dave says:

The full version is stuck on the loading screen………… Please email me at data662@comcast.net if there is a solution.

03/09/2009 at 00:49 Serondal says:

I think many would agree with you that Battlecruiser is better than Spore (That says more about Spore than Battlecruiser though hehe) Still I dunno if this is the best place to post this. you may try the 3000AD.com Forum Dsmart checks that forum pretty much every day and will respond to you if he feels like it (And normlly he seems to)