[Fizzil]

I think smoke grenades in UT can be improved a lot.
When they are thrown they take way too long to reach full density and when they do the smoke is patchy and constantly moving.
If smoke grenades were improved more players would choose them instead of just picking HE grenades.
Also maybe by right-clicking you would throw the grenade further?

Examples
CS:GO Smoke in action

CS:GO



Urban Terror


Thanks for reading!

This post has been edited by Fizzil: 23 December 2015 - 04:39 AM

[Dark-knight]

So your problem is that the smoke is to realistic?

This post has been edited by Dark-knight: 26 December 2015 - 07:25 AM

[Fizzil]

I don't think they are too realistic, if they were real smoke grenades they would look like This, which is obviously not going to work for any game.

The problem I have with the smoke grenades in UT are they don't do their job effectively because as mentioned above,

Quote

When they are thrown they take way too long to reach full density and when they do the smoke is patchy and constantly moving.

Smoke grenades are to used to:

• Provide cover for your team.
  
• Make a good distraction if not used for covering purposes.
  
• Capable of confusing the enemy.
  
• Enemies may not want to venture through the smoke.

And with the current state of smoke grenades in UT they are simply not good enough to do these things effectively.

[SilverFoxZ]

I agree completly (since i made the very same suggestion for HD i think :p). Smoke nades need to become full intensity almost instantly after it hits the ground. To balance that the smoke itself would disappear quicker than now too.

[Twofortheseven]

The level of intensity that the grenades gets to in a certain amount of time could be improved slightly. However, I think the change in timing would be so minor it would be useless since you wouldn't recognize any difference.However, I completely disagree that the smoke grenades look to realistic.(Though they don't look non-realistic either) In fact, though this isn't a priority I would like to see way more awesome smoke in urban terror hd. Make it more like in real life. I could also argue that the smoke grenades last for too long and the density is quite high. Usually, when you are in a smoke, you can still see somewhat through it. I think their are pros and cons that go with UT's smoke grenades.
(Sorry if words are written incorrectly, I wrote this on iOS.)

This post has been edited by Twofortheseven: 02 January 2016 - 08:53 PM

[FS Zenity]

To be honest, smoke grenades are so difficult to balance and make useful in a freestyle shooter like Urban Terror, making them look realistic would rank very last on my list of priorities.

[Ikslorin]

Having them being realistic is the least the problem, actually the opposite. It's the fact that they are patchy and inconsistent. The smokeparticles disapear in one direction before the same spot is covered again.

The purpose of the smoke in other games, but also in UrT with its current implementation is to block certain passages, thereby changing the environment and either claiming or keeping mapcontrol.

I think I've only ever seen good use of smokes twice in UrT. At high levels of CTF on algiers the balcony north of the blue flag is smoked off and occasionaly also other places. Also lately I've seen red side on Dust2 throwing a smoke at the B Double Doors to postponing a retake from the remaining blue players.

What's common to both these spots are, that they only cover very narrow passages (the door on the balcony is really small and the gap in the double doors too). This is currently because the smoke is only consistent so close to the particlesource.

But Zenity is still completely right, except in very niche cases they don't fit the style of UrT.

Possible things to do with the smoke in no particular order.

• Fix the smoke to be usable with its current intend (big blockoff). This will inevitably be a buff to the smoke. I see two ways to do it.
  
  • Only by changing the variables of the particlegeneration. Making the particles spawn faster and the source rotate faster. Also if the alpha of the particles over their lifetime could be changed from linear to exponential, that would really help.
    
  • The smoke could also spawn a grey mesh of a specific size or if you want to be really fancy you spawn the particles with no speed in a grid.
  
  
• Do some of the above, but make the actual size of the smoke smaller.
  
  • This is mainly to nerf the smoke without actually having it impact the current niche usage. Currently it's only used in situations, where the gap is smaller than a person is wide, so if you make it a bit higher than a person, then you can still use it as it is currently, but on the other hand you can easier play around it in non-currently used situations (jumping over it without being blinded etc.).
  
  
• Completely redesign the purpose of the smoke.
  
  • The current intended gameplay mechanic of the smoke is to block off areas and passages. Are there anything that is less restrictive to movement, that it could do?
  
  
• neglect/remove the smoke, and bring back flash grenades.
  
  • Flashes can be used offensively, but also defensively in very much similar ways as they're used currently, but they last for a much shorter time. They also have built in skill of twitching you view away from the flash, making them more fastpaced, skillful and twitchy.

This post has been edited by Ikslorin: 03 January 2016 - 11:05 AM

[FS Zenity]

I'm thinking one particular problem with smoke grenades is that if we make them too strong, you can permanently seal of areas of the map which just isn't fun. This is not a problem in round based modes since you'll run out of smoke eventually, but this makes it hard to balance for both types of gameplay.

One solution would be to have smokes only in round based modes (or make them stronger), but that creates an inconsistency which may or may not be justified.

Flash grenades should indeed come back IMO if we find a way to implement them in a good way, also smoke and flash aren't the only possible choices for tactical grenades. There are a few interesting options which could be more appropriate for the game than smoke, and we still have a lot of time to think about that while we focus on lethal weapons first. :)

[Twofortheseven]

It would be cool if we could throw weapons other than grenades or flash bangs at people. Such as, a glass bottle that would be in the environment. Things you could pickup in a map, maybe??

This post has been edited by Twofortheseven: 03 January 2016 - 05:52 PM

[SilverFoxZ]

Smoke nades need to be fast, since UrT is a fast game.

How i would like to see them used: Being able to cover your retreat after taking the enemy flag in CTF and being able to use it as cover for defusing/planting bombs. Not so much blocking of parts of the map.

As i said i think this would be a good way to implement them, by reaching full intensity and size instantly after hitting the ground but also dissapearing within seconds (the exact time would have to get tweaked by testing).

Maybe this would even make Tac googles finaly useful. Smoke off a passage -> quickly activate tacs and be able to take down anyone opposite of that. At the moment this isnt possible except when using it to camp and being defensive, smoke as it is can not be used offensivly. This has to change in my opinion.