[rYuuJiN]

The blue-grey color on the map really gives that old Urban Terror feel. Reminds me of ut_ricochet, ut_uptown and ut4_turnpike itself. A dark contrast versus lampposts. A certain ambiance that makes the game unique and loved. Impressive work on the office details, the inside of a building actually looks more than just a giant storage place like in 4.2. The garage door button is nicely made. Opening doors or pressing buttons is something that was missed out on the populair 4.x maps, hope to see more of that. The trees, boxes and forklifttruck look well detailed.
The size of the map looks just right for team survivor. A bit small to medium size, forcing the players to make a fast decision when spawning or else they can be suprised by a fast rush or grenade. Maps should force players to make a fast decision, defending a certain spot and holding it, or push out / suprise opponent with a rush. Having a smaller map also makes the grenades more valuable and hopefully more populair than in 4.2.

Movement of the player seems slower. The increased speed of strafe jumping and introducement of the powerslide in 4.x made the game fast, real fast. Fast movement is fun if you like to frag around with an automatic gun but it ruined the gameplay for snipers and tactical shooters/naders. I'm glad to see a slower movement in the video because it gives me the hope that the sr8 will be more effective and used again on most maps. In competitive gameplay the sr8 had dissapeard on Turnpike.. and sadly even on most Casa games. The fast movement also made it easier to evade grenades. Last but not least, fast movement made it dangerous to medic up a player, after being hit down to low-medium health, the time that the opponent followed up with a strafe/powerslide was too short. Medicing became a very risky play on 4.2, but a teamplay element like this should be promoted.
Powerslide is a cool tool, but it also makes strafejumping and timing less important. Before the introduction of powerslide it was a sport for most players to maximize their strafe and work on the timing to go around corners or trough hallways/doors with a jump. In the current 4.2 every jump mistake or last bit of stamina is saved by a simple powerslide, hold down crouch and slip off you go! On the video the powerslide seems shorter and by that, a better balanced tool for Urban Terror. Powerslide should be used as a fast trick to slide up a box or go up the stairs. I hope you realize that slowering the movement gives the game more variaty in gameplay and balances out the current items and weapons. When I see this video of Urt HD, I see an end of the 4.x era where helmet-kevlar-laser dominated the game, jump and spray. This video shows a return of the good old grenades, snipers and tactical shooters.

Keep it Urban Terror.. I think the game lost most of her charmes over the 4.x versions. I have a feeling that UrtHD will be more balanced in movement, aim-spray and strategies.

[FS Zenity]

Thanks for the feedback and the nice words ryuujin, but I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. Movement is not slower, it may look like it because I'm not moving very fast in the video and perhaps because of the FOV.

Powersliding has indeed made the game a whole lot faster again and devalued certain tactics, but all in all I believe that Urban Terror works best at high octane speeds. Despite the crazy speeds you can attain, movement in general is still more tactical than in most shooters due to the low base speed and inertia (not to mention stamina), which means that you have to be very deliberate in your actions.

I do agree that the SR8 or sniping in general needs some love, but instead of making it harder to dodge bullets I would prefer to make it easier for snipers to keep up with the fast pace of the game (e.g. quickscoping, less or no movement penalties).

Same for medics, instead of making it harder to take advantage of careless medics (no risk, no fun!), I would rather explore making healing in general more powerful, e.g. by allowing full heals to 100%. You still die from a single bullet to the head after all, so it would be very hard to make healing OP...

[rYuuJiN]

Not my first choice of balancing the game out, but I do like to hear that you guys are aware of the current imbalanced meta: helmet/kevlar/helmet/laser/automatic. Removing the SR8 move penalty and boosting medkit might do the trick and hopefully indeed balance the movement, aim-spray, items, weapons and strategies.

As a suggestion, I hope Frozen Sand will consider the following questions regarding UrtHD:

• Is it worth picking up a SR8?
  
• Are grenades valuable compared to other items?
  
• What is the efficiency of aiming on the helmet compared to the chest?
  
• Is it worth medicing an ally in most situations?
  
• What is the intent of powerslide? (To go far distances like a strafejump or short leap like in Quake4?)
  
• What is the value of sound in the game? What is the profit of hearing an opponent sneaking upon you?
  
• Does the strafespeed add up with the map size?

many love <3

[FS Zenity]

As far as weapons and items are concerned, I expect that everything will be looked at closely and we will certainly not end up with the exact same setup as 4.3.

My thoughts on the other questions:

4. Healing is a bit of a gimmick as it is, but as long as you see people take the risk to heal each other in competitive games, it's clearly worth it. That said, I see no problem with making it stronger as I mentioned above, and it would be nice to reward it to some extend.

5. It allows you to maintain your momentum and thus provides a distinct advantage to the aggressors. Due to Urban Terror's comparatively extremely high inertia (ADADing during a fight is almost pointless), it used to favour the defender way too much before powersliding. Also, it's cool.

6. You just can't stand still in this game because due to 5, the aggressor generally has the advantage. That is a good thing, because otherwise the optimal strategy would be to stay put and listen for footsteps (and this used to be the case in the dark ages of Team Survivor). That said, gathering clues about your opponent's whereabouts via listening to footsteps and other noises is still absolutely essential. You just have to combine it with a high amount of mobility and aggression. There is nothing more effective than getting the jump on an unexpecting opponent.

7. I think so, yes.

[KroniK]

rYuuJiN,

I think you have some very valid points. However, in regards to attempting to slow down the game, there ends up being a major conflict with a very large group of players - the jumpers. The jumping community was one of the larger communities here on UrT and I would hate to see that go. While slowing down the movement and possibly nerfing the powerslide might provide some distinct power balance improvements in some areas of competitive play, it would completely destroy the jumping community. The one thing that the jumping community relies on is that the physics and code behind how the player moves and crouch slides is never ever touched by the devs. Otherwise 80% of all the maps which were made are no longer relevant with the new physics.

I am all for tweaking the new physics slightly and allowing for some new stuff when it comes to movement. However I would urge the devs to think carefully (and I know they do) about how a simple physics tweak could invalidate hundreds of hours that people put into making custom jump maps.

It is a given that new features and new changes will come to the physics, and that there will be times when the devs will probably decide that it is worth making that change. However it is not a change that can be made lightly, as even the smallest tweaks can break tons of existing work.

This post has been edited by KroniK: 23 January 2016 - 03:25 AM

[FS Zenity]

Urban Terror physics certainly have proven themselves over the years, so there is no need to mess with it needlessly.

But of course there will be subtle differences in HD due to the completely new engine, so most jump maps will have to be updated anyway and this is as good a time as any to make changes to the movement system.

Also, Urban Terror movement hasn't changed in years because development has slowed down a lot. While it was in more active development, it actually changed quite frequently which was essential to keeping the game fresh and relevant. I don't expect any major upsets like the change from Beta 1.x to Beta 2.0 (I wonder how many here still remember what the original Urban Terror used to be like), but things will certainly become a bit rougher on the jump community in the coming years. We will keep it in mind of course and support jumpers as much as possible. I expect that jump/parkour will become a much more integral part of HD than it ever was.

[FS BladeKiller]

Just remember that it was the community who requested the movement penalty on the SR8 and the unzoom when hit was also an idea from the community but i think it was more fun in 3.7 before the MP. Good players could do fancy jump shots with it but this did make it a bit overpowered which is why the MP was requested.

I remember that big change from 1.27 to 2.0. I played 1.27 extensively with my clan.

[FS Frankie V]

KroniK, on 23 January 2016 - 03:24 AM, said:

I am all for tweaking the new physics slightly and allowing for some new stuff when it comes to movement. However I would urge the devs to think carefully (and I know they do) about how a simple physics tweak could invalidate hundreds of hours that people put into making custom jump maps.

Leason learned from the past we did manage to bonk the physics "slightly" that more or less broke evey jump map made and took a few weeks to get it back to square one.

I don't see the need in UrT HD though to maintain a "constant" as far as physics goes as through the use of physics based materials and once applied to a surface material so it would become a case of the map maker dialing in the physics behavour rather than tuning the map to fit with a fixed and hard coded physics value.

This would be a win win all around as new movment designs could be added with little or no impact as to ready made maps as the surface behavour is defined by the map maker and not a hard coded value.

[FS Zenity]

Frankie V, on 23 January 2016 - 11:57 PM, said:

Leason learned from the past we did manage to bonk the physics "slightly" that more or less broke evey jump map made and took a few weeks to get it back to square one.

I don't see the need in UrT HD though to maintain a "constant" as far as physics goes as through the use of physics based materials and once applied to a surface material so it would become a case of the map maker dialing in the physics behavour rather than tuning the map to fit with a fixed and hard coded physics value.

This would be a win win all around as new movment designs could be added with little or no impact as to ready made maps as the surface behavour is defined by the map maker and not a hard coded value.

It's not so simple, but one thing I plan to do is make it so that you can't wall run on slick surfaces. This will give map makers a very easy way to disable wall running where it would get in the way of old school jumps. Of course the areas where you can't wall run should be made very clear by the mapper, otherwise this would be very confusing.

[TehReaper]

Things are looking very promising! Turnpike looks mostly awesome too but please please please don't make it so dark. Turnpike is one of the best maps in the game IMO, and a map that is geared towards strong gunners. Taking that map and making it so dark completely kills the beauty of it though. The last thing you want in a FPS, especially on a map that's really meant for gunning, is to make it dark and hard to see things.

This post has been edited by TehReaper: 25 January 2016 - 01:18 AM