Q&A 4 - 2.1, HW Guy, Pon Pon Pata Pon!

[Iggy]

Welcome to Week 4 of community Q&A! We love listening to your questions and we'd love to see more - send 'em our way in this thread:

http://www.fortress-forever.com/foru...ad.php?t=16481

Now onto Q&A 4...

Question 1 ([AE] 82694):

What plan does the Dev team have for FF after the 2.1 release?

1) Will you be concentrating on models.

2) More maps with all the new mappers the Dev team has.

3) What your plans for FF in general are.

Answer 1 (-pF-)

1) There will be changes to the models. From what it looks like right now, there will be tweaks in size and proportion to help distinguish classes. Also, we will probably switch to a new skeleton to facilitate the addition of new animations. Finally, we'd like to retexture some, if not all of the models. So texture artists with prior experience in texturing characters, please apply (like, now)!

2) There's a few really good brand new maps being made up by beta testers and devs alike. When 2.1 comes out, you'll enjoy them for sure!

3) We plan to keep refining the game and make it as fun and balanced as possible. We'd also like to add features to help new players understand the Fortress genre better.



Question 2 (cfive):
Why don't you just make hardcap a serverside thing so people can choose?

Answer 2 (Nezumi):
Since this question has been asked and answered many times in the past, I'll answer again now: different bhop mechanics in different servers would divide the community, and segregate people to their own prefered play style, which we don't want. We want everyone to learn to play together. It's okay for maps to have different and interesting playstyles, but the basic look and feel of the game should stay roughly the same no matter what you're playing.



Question 3 (cfive):
I want to help FF gain popularity, is there anyway I could join the PR team?

Answer 3 (Implode, Iggy):
We do not have any specific plans for community involvement ready at this time, but they are being worked on. When we have something we need you guys to do we'll let you know about it! However, please feel free to continue to invite new potential players to the mod. Basically, tell your friends, and try to get them interested. Hopefully they will like it, and do the same.



Question 4 (reaper1):
What changes, if any, have been made to the Heavy Weapons Guy?

Answer 4 (Ihmhi):
I'm just going to paraphrase the general reaction of the beta testers for this question: "Holy shit, the HW Guy destroys now!"He's not overpowered, but he's not a pansy anymore.



Question 5 (reaper1):
Have any core changes to the mod been made that have had an effect on the frames per second for clients?

Answer 5 (-insert any mapper here-):
As for maps, any FF mapper can tell you this: framerates are a result of map optimization. That said, Elmo- has busted his butt improving the FPS for Monkey. Waterpolo no longer drives your FPS into the ground. Most other dev maps are getting little FPS improvements here and there.

And as for code, we haven't focused very much on optimizations, but rather fixes, tweaks, and additions. We're going to wait to do a lot of code optimizations until the Orange Box is our code base, simply so we don't have to do a lot of Orange Box merging once again and so we don't spend a lot of time fixing what Orange Box might have already fixed.



B-B-Bonus Content:
This week, we have an interview with one of the devs. Ihmhi asked Pon (one of our Lua guys) some questions about Lua and his experiences with FF in general. If he can wrangle the devs into a corner for a few minutes in the future, we hope for this to be a regular feature until we run out of devs.

So with that, here's the interview!


Ihmhi: We'll start with an easy question: describe your position on the Dev Team.

Pon.id: Well, my position is that of an Lua scripter. Generally, our mappers come to me, ask if 'such and such' a feature can be done with Lua, and if it can, can I get to work on it. If it can't, I tell them to bug the programmers until it can

Ihmhi: How did you manage to join the dev team? Did you apply, or did someone invite you?

Pon.id: I was invitied by squeek., who seemed to notice the work I was trying to do to help community mappers with their Lua, I guess.


Ihmhi: A lot of people, including myself, view Lua as this sort of mystical language invented by insane people. Could you give us a little insight into how Lua works with FF maps and why it's such a powerful tool for us?

Pon.id: Well, insane is a bit strong... close, but a bit strong The main reason it's so useful and is a powerful tool, in my opinion, is the control over damn near everything it gives you. You can use it to dictate how most everything in FF should work if you want, from map entities to the damage dealt by each weapon. Alongside that, you can customise the feedback your map gives the player via the HUD. Most importantly though, you can use it to build pretty much any gamemode you can think of. Technically you could have a Fortess Forever map that plays like Counterstrike, for example.


Ihmhi: Is there anything you can't conceivably do with Lua in FF?

Pon.id: Hmm, well, yes, I guess there will be. Most everything has limits. But, given that FF is in active development, anything that can't be done, and is needed, can be added. For example, for one map, it was nessecary that the player's health be drained, which currently wasn't possible. So, someone set the AddHealth function to accept negative values, and that was it, job done. So, I guess that, conceivably, I can't think of anything that can't at the very least be added if needed.


Ihmhi: So if FF's lua functionality can't do something, the other devs can code it in for you?

Pon.id: Yeah, pretty much. It's also something I should learn to do myself as well, I guess.


Ihmhi: One of my personal peeves with Lua (and coding in general) is uncommented code. Pretty much all of the core lua files and nearly every single released map's Lua is uncommented. Will there ever be an effort to get the Lua code commented so it's easier for people new to Lua to get a handle on it?

Pon.id: Hopefully. It would would be useful to a lot of mappers, I think.


Ihmhi: What was the hardest bit of Lua coding that you've had to do recently?

Pon.id: Probably for a map called Impact which is currently in development. Without wanting to give too much away, the main problem was to have a system in place that allowed for multiple flags to be in play at any one time, without spawning a new one every time one was needed and being a massive resource drain. And that also switched teams each round.


Ihmhi: Last question (and make it quick as I have to leave for work now). Did you ever regret mercilessly beating on chickens in a Legend of Zelda game?

Pon.id: Never.

Ihmhi: Thanks a bunch!

[Agent Buckshot Moose]

Lolformatting.

[Iggy]

I just C&P'd cuz nobody else would.

[Firefox11]

Yay!

Sticky plz?

[Iggy]

Thanks PF!

[Circuitous]

Iggy you gotta let me know when you're posting this shit so I can do the news.

Seriously.

[Me!]

Originally Posted by Iggy

Ihmhi: Last question (and make it quick as I have to leave for work now). Did you ever regret mercilessly beating on chickens in a Legend of Zelda game?

Pon.id: Never.

Something is wrong with him!

[Agent Buckshot Moose]

Originally Posted by Iggy

I just C&P'd cuz nobody else would.

Quote and copy the message text ftw.
^_________________________________________________ _____________^

Edit: how dare they break my smiley

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by Circuitous

Iggy you gotta let me know when you're posting this shit so I can do the news.

Seriously.

PM sent

[Circuitous]

Pfft I already posted it as news right after I posted that message why you gotta be PMing me.

[Pon]

Originally Posted by Me!

Something is wrong with him!

The chickens deserved it. They stole my soul, you know?

I regret nothing.

[chilledsanity]

I'm curious, are different sized players something people are really looking for? Creating different skeletons for the different models is a hell of a lot of work and it seems kind of unnecessary to me. I imagine people would rather see the devs spend their energy in other areas.

As far as I know, TF2 is one of the few multiplayer games I can think of that has varying shapes and sizes. Quake 3 must have too, but it also had a cyborgs and giant walking eyeball. TF2 changed the skeleton sizes to compliment their cartoony theme. FF already has some of the most visible uniforms I've seen in a game, is changing skeleton sizes really a change that warrants hundreds of hours of work?

[Crazycarl]

The models need to be re-rigged anyway. It's the standard Valve skeleton we'll be moving to, that will give us access to a lot of animations that come with the SDK.

Last I heard, pf was experimenting with just directly scaling the models up or down a little to create a size difference. Hopefully the animations can be scaled accordingly.

I reckon reskinning could create a lot of the contrast we need. That's something we need more manpower to do.

[chilledsanity]

Oh okay, I didn't realize the FF models weren't on the standard Valve skeleton. I think it would make sense to move them to that, just not a different skeleton for each class.

As for contrast, I think FF already stands out fine. I mean compare it to CS:S, DoD, ET, ETQW, Insurgency, etc. and the models are all very visible. You'd have to look at something like UT2004 before you get characters that are more distinctive (and they wear top hats and egyptian clothing).

[Circuitous]

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

I'm curious, are different sized players something people are really looking for? Creating different skeletons for the different models is a hell of a lot of work and it seems kind of unnecessary to me. I imagine people would rather see the devs spend their energy in other areas.

As far as I know, TF2 is one of the few multiplayer games I can think of that has varying shapes and sizes. Quake 3 must have too, but it also had a cyborgs and giant walking eyeball. TF2 changed the skeleton sizes to compliment their cartoony theme. FF already has some of the most visible uniforms I've seen in a game, is changing skeleton sizes really a change that warrants hundreds of hours of work?

First off, this isn't a waste of dev time if it's pF's primary job. That's what he's doing - that's his task.

Second off, when you've seen the difference.. it's really nice. It distinguishes the characters better not just in a visibility sense, but in a theme sense. Currently, if you cycle through characters on the select screen, you'll notice they're all exactly the same size. Look at the legs, they don't change at all. We wanna change that.

In the process of rerigging them to change their size, we're also making ourselves able to do new animations and fix current ones. The current rig just isn't cutting it anymore, so this is basically just opening new doors for us while making a very nice improvement.

So yeah, I wouldn't consider this a waste of time at all.

[pF]

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

Oh okay, I didn't realize the FF models weren't on the standard Valve skeleton. I think it would make sense to move them to that, just not a different skeleton for each class.

As for contrast, I think FF already stands out fine. I mean compare it to CS:S, DoD, ET, ETQW, Insurgency, etc. and the models are all very visible. You'd have to look at something like UT2004 before you get characters that are more distinctive (and they wear top hats and egyptian clothing).

There's a tool to map animations to skeletons of varying sizes.. still getting that to work right now though. Also, we might try the new phong rim lighting on the models. We'll see. But definitely not in 2.1.. (something else might be though )

[Hammock]

Does changing the model's size change their hitbox?

Like making them a bit bigger will make them easier to hit? or making them smaller harder to hit?

If making them smaller doesn't make them harder to hit, then will we see more explosions in empty air next to them, say where our rocket has hit its hit box but not the model?

[pF]

The smaller we make the models, the larger we'll make the hitboxes. Just because.

[Firefox11]

Lol I hope not =D

[Me!]

Originally Posted by Pon

The chickens deserved it. They stole my soul, you know?

I regret nothing.

And its fun
Until they attack you

Then it fun dodging them