Blood Frontier Alpha 2 by Acord and Quin RELEASED

by Acord on 07/26/2008 09:47, 100 messages, last message: 12/09/2008 13:36, 56454 views, last view: 05/18/2024 20:37

It's been over a year coming, but we've finally released Alpha 2 of Blood Frontier. If you feel like shooting the hell out of strangers and some fairly good AI that plays online, drop on by and download it:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=198419

This release feels really good - way more solid. The graphics are a huge improvement, and I've replaced almost everything in the whole project at least once, maybe more. The gameplay is super solid, you can add bots in to play online. The models are *almost* professional quality. I'm getting there, dammit. There are now a lot more modes, including mutators a la unreal. If you like CTF, try mayhem - it swaps the team spawns and results in some fairly maniacal firefights.

The online AI is the beginning of implementing monsters as well - once completed, this sucker will be multi-player online co-op against hordes of the undead. Due to the fact that it utilizes an altered P2P system, the more people you have online, the more bots you can add without lag - at least until your processor gets hot.

Very, very graphics intensive. Everything has normal mapping, parallax mapping, specularity mapping etc.

That is something that'll need to wait until Alpha 3 though(hopefully NOT another year-long wait). For now, I'm taking a much deserved break from my PC for awhile.

One nice thing: Now we have the ability to release the occasional patch, instead of needing a full release.

Control cheat sheet:

wasd - movement keys
space - jump and double/trick jump
q - switch to grenades
e - pick up weapon on ground - replaces current gun, a la Halo
r - reload. The shotgun and sniper rifle must be loaded one round at a time.
left mouse button - shoot or throw grenade. The longer you hold it down, the farther the grenades go.
right mouse button - alt fire. Right now, the only weapon with an alt fire is the rifle, which uses the scope.

9 - switch from first person to third person view and back. Whatever your preference.

tab - view the scoreboard

esc - bring up the teeming multitude of menus

Lemme hear your comments. Keep in mind it is still unfinished.

Big thanks to Eihrul for the huge amount of help(seriously, he got bugged a *lot*, and this release would be nowhere near as good without his help), Verbalshadow for the excellent interface graphics, Hirato for his endless scripting and menu tweaking, Pundit for the sound help, our hosts, and all the people who dropped by and gave feedback/criticism/entertainment.

Super special thanks to Quin for possessing the amazing capability of putting up with a zillion tweaks and changes and experiments, as well as my screwed up sense of humor. There would be no Blood Frontier without you.

If I missed anybody, I blame it on a severe and prolonged lack of sleep, and apologize from the bottom of my heart.

AND DON'T FORGET TO OPEN THE CORRECT PORTS.

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#1: YAY

by dsfhjksdconorfhjkds on 07/26/2008 09:51

First! :D

Yay, downloading right now!

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#2: ..

by Acord on 07/26/2008 09:59

Also remember - the code is open source. The media is *not*. I want Blood Frontier to maintain it's uniqueness for a while yet, and there is a good amount of stuff that was not created by either me nor Quin.

With this release, I'll be moving on to creating Mission/online co-op content, so any talented mappers are more than welcome, and anything especially good will be included in future patches/distros :)

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#3: ..

by Acord on 07/26/2008 10:00

And we need someone dedicated to work on documentation in the worst possible way, since we're all phenomenally lazy when it comes to that :)

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#4: ..

by MovingTarget on 07/26/2008 13:26

Hmmm, sounds rather impressive. Downloading as I write.

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#5: ..

by Julius on 07/26/2008 14:12

Yay! Oh and that co-op multiplayers p2p thing sounds rather interesting ;)

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#6: LOok!

by geartrooper2 on 07/26/2008 19:36

Holy ... You guys did an amazing job. From the maps to the ai and everything inbetween. The mars mood prevails through all aspects. Its quite amazing. I'm proud of your guys accomplishment.

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#7: ..

by SheeEttin on 07/26/2008 19:59

Looks good so far... Played a few rounds with some bots.
I have a few complaints/points of confusion, though:
First off--you can only carry one weapon other than your pistol? What's up with that?
There's the reloading speed, too... It takes a very long time to get the rifle or shotgun up to a usable ammo state... Which then gets used up pretty quickly. In my mind, it'd be better to have slightly longer between-shot times in exchange for shotgun magazines. (They do exist, mainly for automatic shotguns.) Same for the rifle.
Oh, and the hudguns seem to be waaaay up on the side of the screen... What's wrong with down in the corner?

Gonna take some getting used to after Sauer, but I think it'll be pretty exciting once it hits 1.0. :)

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#8: w00t

by {Qs}Homicidal on 07/26/2008 20:54

GREAT WORK I had high expectations for this MOD and you guys came though a few littel issues tho

1. the gl reset don't work on my system it just crashs to the desktop and says failed to relod core texuters ( bad path in the cfg I suspect)

2. Ir also fails to keep any options set via the GUI I had to edit the bat file and add -rconfig.cfg next to
-rinit.cfg

2. also the gun position feels kind of off ( its to high in the screen for my tastes lookes like he is holding it way out there and off to the right I think a choice of left or right handed models would be goof for the next version ) also are you planing to add more animations for reloading and shooting in the next version they look kind of static ()like with the shotgun when he reloads there is no shell getting pushed into the chamber just his thumb()

AND THANKYOU FOR LEAVEING FIRST PERSON MODE IN ^_^

one more bugg
open the bind menu and scroll the mouse it makes it crash to the desktop on my system

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

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#9: ..

by scanf on 07/26/2008 21:27

Wow. Excellent job. It's a great game. Keep up this project! I'll be letting all my SB friends know about the release.

Here's a few comments/suggestions.

- The rifle sight is really hard to control. It feels unrealistic. But thanks for putting that in. I've always wanted that feature.

- Jumping also seems unrealistic. It's like I float it the air. Maybe it's meant to be like that.

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#10: ..

by Acord on 07/26/2008 21:49

Some other stuff:

picking up a weapon (e) replaces the current wepon, so if you want to replace the pistol, swap to it and pick up another gun :)

The gravity is set per map, so some maps have lower gravity than others. There is also double jumping, which is dependent on which direction you are pressing. If you're not pressing a direction, it's straight up,

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#11: ..

by Quin on 07/26/2008 22:27

Thanks for the great response guys. I know it kinda took us a long time, but we both tend to have this perfectionist type quality. So much great work has been done by all, and I'm really proud of this release.

I think I have to correct acord for a moment with his comment on p2p with the bots. Yes we've gotten bots working online using a client side architecture. There is a server side variable (among others) that controls how the server 'balances' the player count using bots. If the number of players is below this amount the server will spawn enough to fill the empty spaces and assign each bot to a client, this is then balanced across the clients evenly. Those server vars are:

(teamdamage, 0, 1, 1);

(timelimit, 0, 10, INT_MAX-1);
(ctflimit, 0, 10, INT_MAX-1);
(stflimit, 0, 1, 1);

(spawngun, 0, GUN_PISTOL, GUN_MAX-1);
(instaspawngun, 0, GUN_RIFLE, GUN_MAX-1);

(botbalance, 0, 6, MAXCLIENTS-1);
(botratio, 0, 2, 100);
(botminskill, 0, 30, 100);
(botmaxskill, 0, 80, 100);

If the settings bother you, please feel free to play with these vars and give me your ideas on what would be better defaults:

(thirdpersondist, -100, 1, 100);
(thirdpersonshift, -100, 4, 100);
(thirdpersonangle, 0, 40, 360);

(firstpersondist, -100, 50, 100);
(firstpersonshift, -100, 25, 100);
(firstpersonsway, 0, 100, INT_MAX-1);
(firstpersontranslucent, 0, 0, 1);

(zoomtype, 0, 0, 1);
(zoomfov, 1, 20, 150);
(zoomtime, 1, 300, 10000);
(zoommousetype, 0, 2, 2);
(zoomdeadzone, 0, 25, 100);
(zoompanspeed, 1, 10, INT_MAX-1);

As you may notice, the first person models are not your traditional hudguns, they are 'avatars' of sorts, which are done using special player models consisting only of arms. Each of the weapons do have their own animations, but at the moment we're just syncing the default one to each of the guns. But hey, that's a pretty good effort in itself I think :)

Now about the weapon delays and stuff, my eye kinda twitches just reading the comments there, but that is only because I have just spent an entire day between eihrul and acord arguing about he balancing. Anyway, give it a bit of a go, especially against some real people, the action can get quite frantic considering how much you're impeded - it's just not Sauerbraten speed which I personally like.

Lastly, yes you're a bit floaty! You are on a planet where the gravity is lower in those maps (set /gravity in editmode on your maps to change it). I've added the double jump "impulse" to help you get around - I say impulse because if you are actively moving in a direction you will push forward through the air in the direction you are pointing, or if you are not moving, directly up like a double jump. Use it in conjunction with running and weapon kickbacks to move faster and higher! :P

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#12: ..

by {Qs}Homicidal on 07/26/2008 22:45

Yea I don't mind the staticness of them at all I am just happy we have first person mode atm :D

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#13: Re: ..

by Julius on 07/26/2008 22:55, refers to #11

[quote]As you may notice, the first person models are not your traditional hudguns, they are 'avatars' of sorts, which are done using special player models consisting only of arms. Each of the weapons do have their own animations, but at the moment we're just syncing the default one to each of the guns. But hey, that's a pretty good effort in itself I think :)[/quote]

Could you plz explain why you couldn't use normal hud guns?

Just curious ;)

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#14: ..

by Finale on 07/27/2008 01:49

Nice release ^^, love the bots (especially 20 of them in instagib). Homicidal does have a point of having to edit the bat file to save changes though. As for the vars, I find it hard to snipe without zoomtype 1 and zoommousetype 0, but that's personal preference ;)

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#15: ..

by Acord on 07/27/2008 02:18

Normal hudguns require separate models AND separate animations. With these, eventually the model anims and the hudgun anims will be one and the same, leading to a more cohesive level of detail in the anims.

I Considered just cutting the head off, but the body really gets in the way :)

Finale - how well does that run, and what are your system specs? Quin and I are on old PCs, so my frame rate drops to 20 - 30 with that many bots, and I suspect quin's get quite choppy as well.

Yes, we're well aware of the sniping limitations, but it's still an alpha - wait for the eventual patches :)

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#16: Re: ..

by Finale on 07/27/2008 03:52, refers to #15

it runs absolutely horrid, but its pretty decent with 8 bots on a x1300 Mobility Radeon, 1.8 dual core (only uses one core?) and 1G ram.

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#17: ..

by JadeMatrix on 07/27/2008 04:49

Sounds awesome. Anyone up for a Mac port? I know I can't do it... yet, at least.

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#18: ..

by Acord on 07/27/2008 07:19

I may get the guy who did the last one to do this one on a hackintosh, but a lot of people were pretty unhappy with having to manually set it up to run, so I'd rather find another solution.

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#19: ..

by Smiff3 on 07/28/2008 03:38

oh wow.. this reminds me of when i first played ActionQuake - and that's a GOOD thing. great work. haven't had time to play for long yet but first impressions are this could be the best new game i've seen in ages!

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#20: cool

by Aardappel_ on 07/28/2008 09:22

I like the gameplay, the simplicity of it is a nice "compromise" between more traditional DM and instagib. The auto regen, and infinite ammo all fits nicely.

The one weapon thing brings some fun tactics into the fights... something I attempted in sauer's "tactics" mode similarly. Is it implemented such that since weapons don't ever "dissapear", that if a level designer only puts 1 of some weapon in a level, that only 1 player can ever carry one? if so, that is extra cool.

Powerups in the same veign could be cool, i.e. ones the player keeps until he drops em or dies. They'd have to be rather mild powerups (i.e. 20-50% extra damage or health or so), because otherwise their permanent nature would be too overpowering.

Visually, its a refreshing change. However, I feel it can be improved. Y'all should tweak the scale & bias parameters for the parallax, maybe even on a per texture basis, as some textures have an odd depth effect (look at ridges from multiple angles to see what I mean). This may be caused by depth maps with inconsistent scale, etc.

Also, often the actual design of the textures is rather inconsistent, which hurts the overal look of the game. I mean in the sense of the style of the texture features. This is probably the hardest to fix at this point, just saying this for future reference.

Not so sure about the jumping physics, but being able to jump further suits the levels I suppose.

The bullets coming from the barrel is desirable, but for the shotgun looks just plain odd.

I found the 3rd person perspective rather disorienting (since it off-center), so I switched it off immediately.

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