Small Design Improvements

[Hedge-o-Matic]

Here are some thoughts about small things Epic could do to make the experience of playing 2k7 more pleasant.

This thread is not about weapons balance, map design, or gameplay issues, including gametype objections or ideas! It is dedicated to smaller, asthetic changes to make the game better regardless of what your UT preferences are.

Here are some of my ideas:
1.) Loading screens: I've heard that these will be a thing of the past, but, if not, how about a pre-recorded walkthrough of the map, while we wait, rather than a static image?

2.) Audio fades and persistance: Don't have the music cut in and out. When a map begins, fade in the music. When it ends, fade the music out, rather than clipping it. Also, with menus, let the music fade in and out.

3.) Localized voices: When a player or bot speaks, have the voice come from the location of their actual mesh, as well as over the radio. That way, you could hear opposing team chatter, if you were close enough. Characters within 512 units should only have their voices from their locations, and not over the radio.

4.) Interactive tutorials, ala UT99. We've all seen the people who apparently don't know what they're doing. Put some effort into training levels. Tutorials could exist for every gametype, as well as basic skills such as weapon use and movement.

5.) A far more flexible HUD. Every element should be independantly moveable, sizable, alpha-shiftable, and removable. A skinnable HUD interface would be nice, too, allowing elements to be altered or added. Only Epic HUD elements would be considered "official" for tournament use, of course.

What other game-immersion changes can you think of?

[Gregori]

Here are some thoughts about small things Epic could do to make the experience of playing 2k7 more pleasant.

This thread is not about weapons balance, map design, or gameplay issues, including gametype objections or ideas! It is dedicated to smaller, asthetic changes to make the game better regardless of what your UT preferences are.

Here are some of my ideas:
1.) Loading screens: I've heard that these will be a thing of the past, but, if not, how about a pre-recorded walkthrough of the map, while we wait, rather than a static image?

2.) Audio fades and persistance: Don't have the music cut in and out. When a map begins, fade in the music. When it ends, fade the music out, rather than clipping it. Also, with menus, let the music fade in and out.

3.) Localized voices: When a player or bot speaks, have the voice come from the location of their actual mesh, as well as over the radio. That way, you could hear opposing team chatter, if you were close enough. Characters within 512 units should only have their voices from their locations, and not over the radio.

4.) Interactive tutorials, ala UT99. We've all seen the people who apparently don't know what they're doing. Put some effort into training levels. Tutorials could exist for every gametype, as well as basic skills such as weapon use and movement.

5.) A far more flexible HUD. Every element should be independantly moveable, sizable, alpha-shiftable, and removable. A skinnable HUD interface would be nice, too, allowing elements to be altered or added. Only Epic HUD elements would be considered "official" for tournament use, of course.

What other game-immersion changes can you think of?

Coudn't agree more with all of that, An Updated more flexible version of Uwindows would be helpful!

[»madMar†y»]

What other game-immersion changes can you think of?

I think there already was a thread like this a while back, but something I would like:

Maybe this is already possible, but if not then it would be nice to ignore specific players from sending taunts. On many matches I've seen some players (who probably made a bind for some of the taunts) who just keep spamming those taunts the whole match.

[Sinister]

It will be nice, when in team modes, each player have his own mark. Visible trough map. You know that way where your temas are and whre your mates die. Its makes cooperative playing easyer.

[Gregori]

4-8 team colours, It would keep the visuals varied.

I've Blue and Red burned into my retinas after UT2kx/UC2

[The_Deacon]

I think 4 team colours plus 'uncoloured', as it was in UT would be fine, as long as there's the possibility to code for more teams (easily) in unrealscript. Also, as long as the 'uncoloured' skins are sensibly visible.

I'm still not sure exactly what the deal will be with (or without) loading screens, because while loading screens between consecutive games on a sever may be gone, what about the first map you load? Personally, I'm happy enough with static loading screens, but I think an indicator of loading progress would be a nice addition. So many other games have had this in the past, it'd be nice to know how much has been loaded.

Music fading is a sensible idea, and, when not using default map music, the music shouldn't stop and restart the same track when switching levels.

Localized voices I'm not too sure about how worthwhile they are. I don't think you should be able to hear the enemy chatter at all.

Tutorials, yes please. What might be cool for example, is say a weapon training tutorial, where there are different rooms for each weapon where you can practice using the weapons against practice targets, with point scoring for accuracy etc etc etc, and a teleporter in each room that's scripted to take you to a small-ish practice arena with a couple of bots, with the arena set to only have the weapon of the room that you teleported from. Also, one seperate teleporter to take you to the practice arena with all weapons.

A more flexible HUD would be a nice touch. Also, customisable scoreboards for each gametype, so you can show efficiency, gametype specific stats etc, if you want to of course

That's what I think anyway

[Xyx]

Cool thread.

1.) Loading screens: I've heard that these will be a thing of the past, but, if not, how about a pre-recorded walkthrough of the map, while we wait, rather than a static image?

They'd be a thing of the past because the game loads the next map in the background. That means you shouldn't have to wait (which is the reason the loading screens are to disappear to begin with).

3.) Localized voices: When a player or bot speaks, have the voice come from the location of their actual mesh, as well as over the radio. That way, you could hear opposing team chatter, if you were close enough.

Hearing enemy chatter would motivate players to switch to external comm systems such as TeamSpeak. Hardly desirable.

4.) Interactive tutorials, ala UT99. We've all seen the people who apparently don't know what they're doing. Put some effort into training levels. Tutorials could exist for every gametype, as well as basic skills such as weapon use and movement.

Absolutely! Especially weapon use and movement are great suggestions. UC2 had a reasonably OK tutorial that at least explained walldodging.

There ought to be tutorials not only on the basics of the basics, but also on weapon binding (the default 1 through 0 sucks), common tactics, walldodging, powerup timing... Everything you need to know to no longer be a newbie should be explained in the manual or a tutorial.

What other game-immersion changes can you think of?

A small selection of mutators that mimic the strong points of other FPS games:

• Reloading weapons.
• Iron sight zooming.
• Movement dependant accuracy.
• Sprinting and going prone.
• Realistic movement speed and gravity.
• No health, just increasing redness at the edge of your vision that passes after a while.

[Gregori]

A small selection of mutators that mimic the strong points of other FPS games:

• Reloading weapons.
• Iron sight zooming.
• Movement dependant accuracy.
• Sprinting and going prone.
• Realistic movement speed and gravity.
• No health, just increasing redness at the edge of your vision that passes after a while.

No way, that **** belongs in a Tactical shooter/WW2 game. Ironsights will look silly in UT, 300 years in the future.

[Gregori]

I don't think you should have to complete a tutorial at all, just dip in and out of a set of tutorial maps where can progressively learn what you want, whether that be vehicles, a gametype, jumps and dodges, weapons, add some bots, some moving target practice ala star wars would be cool.

There would be a tutor kinda like morpheus in the matrix, that would guide you and compete against you constantly upping the level as you get better, but you'd never actually have finish it as such. Its non linear. go at your own pace!

[Hedge-o-Matic]

I agree that the tutorial shouldn't be mandatory, but I think it may be possible to make the tutorial cool enough to want to actually run through it. If the instructor were optional (a hologram the player would need to activate with a trigger, for instance), then the player could just not use the instructor to walk them through, but just walk over to the practice areas.

But, really, it's insane that such movement basics as wall dodging were never explained. Along with coy "discover them for yourself" nonsense (like when they mentioned Adrenaline in the rule booklet), these sorts of omissions are extremely bad for new players. A good tutorial system would go a long way toward fixing this.

[MonsOlympus]

Cool ideas, I especially like the one about custom HUD's something like Unreal 1 how you could move it around would be handy without having to spend ages moving stuff around the screen. Along with scaling, opacity and colour that should be sweet.

With team colouring theres a material called a constant colour, if an alpha/mask or something was used it should be possible to choose any rgb colour as a team colour. Im not fussed about this really but it would make a nice change from the 2-4 stock ones, it might raise a few more issues than its worth. The time it would take to do something like this is minimal compared to having a high res version of each, also the space the textures would take would be halved or even more for characters.

[Taleweaver]

* a clear distinction between ambient and non-ambient sounds. In UT2004, certain sounds (like the assault alarm sounds, or some of the lifts) were considered ambient where they were actually gameplay related, and quite some atmospheric sounds were still hearable with ambient sounds off
* an option to set the ambient sound from within the game itself (no more ini hacking than absolutely necessary)
* an ingame way to change vehicle crosshairs, similar to changing weapon crosshairs
* the option to get online should be unlocked by either:
A. playing through the singleplayer campaign (no matter what difficulty)
B. watching all the included tutorials
C. playing a practice session on each of the included gametypes
D. opening user.ini and changing bAllowOnline to true (something that can be hidden in the included game manual)

Before you complain about the last option, think about the consequences: if you even vaguely have a clue about what you're doing, you'll be able to get online in no time. It will certainly ensure that you know basic things like how the game is played or how to enter vehicles, which, in turn, lowers the chance of being yelled off the first pub you join.

It will be nice, when in team modes, each player have his own mark. Visible trough map. You know that way where your temas are and whre your mates die. Its makes cooperative playing easyer.

I somewhat second this idea. About a month ago, I suggested the following to someone who asked for ideas for a mutator (alas, it never got coded ):

Every time a team mate uses teamsay or gives a warning that is only visible for his/her own team, his/her location is 'highlighted' on your HUD for a second. With highlighted, I mean an X or a dot on the position that shines through walls, just like the objectives in assault (preferably, it has the same small numbers to indicate the distance).
The reason is that it's often very time-consuming to read messages like "flag carrier is here (red flak side)". It always takes some time to remember where that particular position is before I can even start to think whether I can get there in time. Also note that bots don't care if the mapper didn't use named zones, so messages like "I need backup (unknown)" also appear far too often.

[Xyx]

No way, that **** belongs in a Tactical shooter/WW2 game. Ironsights will look silly in UT, 300 years in the future.

No more silly than Big Head Low Grav Quad Jump Zark, the exact opposite, which is why I suggest it as a mutator.

I don't think you should have to complete a tutorial at all, just dip in and out of a set of tutorial maps where can progressively learn what you want

If a tutorial is really good, you won't even realize it's a tutorial.

* the option to get online should be unlocked by either:
A. playing through the singleplayer campaign (no matter what difficulty)
B. watching all the included tutorials
C. playing a practice session on each of the included gametypes
D. opening user.ini and changing bAllowOnline to true (something that can be hidden in the included game manual)

Heh, good one!

To add to option A...

The final battle should be similar to the rest of the matches, not suddenly 10000000000 times harder.

[iLL]

I like all of your suggestions.

The tutorial I mentioned in other threads and should be a must to help new players and wouldn't take much to implement.

The voice radius was also a point you made that I had not thought of that especially sounded appealing.

No sprinting or prone please.Prone is for war shooters imo and encourages sniping and camping.You should be sprinting all the time(people are shooting at you)with the option to walk or crouch ONLY like we have now.

[Taleweaver]

Here's something extra that caused me some grieve a couple times, but nothing to actually complain about:
* the option to vote for "I don't care what map we play next"

Yes, sometimes I just don't have an opinion on what map is voted in. If I don't vote, ppl start complaining everyone should vote so the next map will start 10 seconds faster than otherwise. However, if I do vote for a map nobody else voted for (thus throwing away my vote), I often get more complaints about the map being bad (even though that was actually the entire point) or some clowns follow my lead. I even accidentally started a 16-player DM-trainingday session this way.

Also: the many small changes that ONS-plus add/change to onslaught

[Xyx]

No sprinting or prone please.

I understand you object to such features in default gameplay... but not even as a mutator?

You should be sprinting all the time(people are shooting at you)

You're running all the time. Sprinting is pushing yourself to the absolute limit to go even faster, which you cannot sustain for long, possibly at the cost of accuracy or even being able to fire at all.

[Boksha]

What I'd like to see is a working demo playback engine.
I had a little run in with the current engine, and it just locks up completely when I play at any speed faster than the default.

[Xyx]

How 'bout we shelve that under "EPICPLZFIX" rather than "improvements"?

[Scylla]

Here are some of my ideas:
1.) Loading screens: I've heard that these will be a thing of the past, but, if not, how about a pre-recorded walkthrough of the map, while we wait, rather than a static image?

Yes. Make the people with slow computers take even longer to load and hold up the people with average-good (for the time) computers.

[Sinister]

*Every time a team mate uses teamsay or gives a warning that is only visible for his/her own team, his/her location is 'highlighted' on your HUD for a second. With highlighted, I mean an X or a dot on the position that shines through walls, just like the objectives in assault (preferably, it has the same small numbers to indicate the distance).

And what if you dont looking the right direction where the player whose spaking to you is? You can miss the highlited point. My way is better I think. You can taste it in FEAR Combat. It doesent show distance. Also if you lern maps you dont even need more info (whitch you cant catch anyway).You simply know exctly where your mates are from that mark.

[Zynith]

Sime minor things I've allways wanted...

what I allways like about certain games like Doom3 or HL2 is the way the weapons get a little delay when you move them around, add's a nice touch I think.
Also a little viewing bob would be nice, Doom3 has it, you don't really notice it untill you look for it.
Just small things that make running around feel more natural.

Allong with the option to disable them offcourse (just like weapon bobbing), there'll allways be players who are against it cause it hampers their aim with half a pixel, and there are the people who get motion sickness easily in FPS's.

[fuegerstef]

what I allways like about certain games like Doom3 or HL2 is the way the weapons get a little delay when you move them around, add's a nice touch I think.

I think it works better in SP than in a fast paced MP like UT.
But if it is an option it will be disabled anyways, so it is OK to add it when optional.

[JaFO]

Essential things ?
- good tutorials on all the basics and as many 'advanced' issues that can possibly be done. It definitely should be as interactive and as 'sexy & cool' to play as possible (the latter would attract players that consider themselves 'too cool for school' so to speak).

- easy distribution of custom-content. Especially for skins and models it is vital that artists can avoid anything that smells like writing code/gibberish (such as the .upl-files and push-scripts that are required for skins/models in UT2kx) ...

- some form of 'situational awareness indicator'
America's Army has it in its latest release, Troopersawn of Destiny had it, etc.
Because having to read text and then trying to remember where "flak room south" is from your location is ridiculous to say the least (and that's on maps where mappers actually cared to add details like this).

- better commands for team-tactics ...
It practically is impossible to command your team of bots since you're forced to tell every single one of them what they should do and where they ought to do it. I'm sure that a control-system as in Ubisofts' Brothers in Arms uses would be a bit overkill, but even BF2's context-sensitive menu made more sense.

- context-sensitive voice-commands please ...
I don't want to search an entire tree just to yell 'Sniper!' or 'Enemy flagcarrier sighted'. I just want the option to yell whatever is appropiate for whatever is under my crosshair

- allow for as many teams possible (ie : don't restrict gametypes to 2 teams by default and then force mod-teams to hack the game in order to enable gametypes with 3 or more teams).

- in team-based gametypes there shouldn't be any non-teamcoloured skins/models(period)
Allowing this only forces the use of stupid stuff like those gigantic and hideous headlights in UT2k3 ...

- the game should allow the player to pick a model/skin for both free-for-all and Team-based gametypes (ie : one for teamgames, one for DM).
It would be even better if we could set a separate model/skin for each team, because some skins/models might look 'better' for the red team and some look better in 'blue'.

[MonsOlympus]

Actually I thought of one! A way to change the map, bots, etc easily when playing instant action. Ofcoarse you can forfeit but being able to change it for the next map would be cool. Being able to setup a basic custom ladder type thingo would make a nice touch, like saying this map, this mut, these bots for a few matches ahead. Even a randomised mutator option for instant action and servers would be sweet, letting servers adjust the mutator list would be a must though.

Well thats about it for now hehe

[Taleweaver]

And what if you dont looking the right direction where the player whose spaking to you is? You can miss the highlited point. My way is better I think. You can taste it in FEAR Combat. It doesent show distance. Also if you lern maps you dont even need more info (whitch you cant catch anyway).You simply know exctly where your mates are from that mark.

Well, you'll be able to tell the person is behind you. Besides: the average order that matters takes 2 to 3 seconds, which is time enough to turn around and see which direction it's coming from.

Having all the players visible the entire time seems a bit overkill, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible if you open up the scoreboard.

It's certainly true that having this option (either your implementation or mine) will make mapping a bit easier, as maps should no longer include zone names in them! It's a win-win situation, really: faster mapping and more intuitive navigation.

[Xyx]

There was a voice command thread for UT2004 that contained some excellent suggestions. I can reproduce a few:

• "someone" meaning whichever bot is closest.
• "take point" to cover a flag carrier from more than just the rear.
• "node X" where X is a number, as in "attack node 1".
• "link me"

[Hedge-o-Matic]

Yeah, I suggested the "Link Me!" order in 2k3, but Epic, surprisingly, didn't listen...

Those other orders are great. In fact, I think a bot command-issuing overhaul would be nice.

[MonsOlympus]

A command for kicking bots out of the driver or gunners seats would be nice, dunno if that was mentioned. I found thats what kinda ruined some of the gametypes offline for me is the lack of commands for BR, ONS etc

[Xyx]

I love being able to voice-command bots. That's a really unique thing among games I've played. It's just a shame that it's so poorly supported, while it shouldn't even be all that time-consuming to code more support for it. We're talking pretty small XML files and a couple extra script hooks.

For example, if I want just one bot to get in the passenger seat, I have to choose between these three horrible alternatives:

The time-consuming:

1. Find a bot in my general area.
2. Figure out that bot's name.
3. Open the score list and look up that bot's callsign.
4. Tell the bot to cover me.

The overkill:

1. Tell all bots to cover me, wasting whatever semblance of strategy they were executing.
2. When a bot gets in, tell all bots to search and destroy.
3. Hope my passenger doesn't hop back out right away.

The highly impractical:

1. Tell Beta to cover me.
2. Wait while Beta makes it to my position.
3. Hope that Beta didn't happen to be busy somewhere on the other side of the map.

Instead of a simple:

1. "someone get in"