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OhJay's blog


OJ sitting in a chair - Alpha update 1

posted Saturday, 15 February 2020 by OhJay

Hey everyone!



Welcome to the new edition of 'OJ sitting in a chair'! Apologies once again for the lack of a quality heading but the creative titles department hasn't shown their faces since the last time so I'm really just winging it at this point with the title creation...

Anyway, it's been a minute since I have written a blog, and I know I promised to be more regular with them, but between riding kangaroos whilst smoking cigars and fighting the losing battle of trying to retain my sanity there isn't much time left in the day so do forgive me.

In saying that, I thought it about time I put pen to paper (or in this case fingers to keys) and give you guys a little update on how we're going with the alpha. Everyone has been waiting patiently and not harassing us about release dates and what-not so I figure you've earned it. I apologise in advance though because it's going to get a little bit lengthy...

Let's start with the alpha survey. We had about 470 submissions, to begin with, and have whittled that number down to about 100 potential testers. Over the next few months we'll pick people from this selected group and gradually add them to our team of testers as we need them. Everyone who participated will receive an email telling them if they're on the shortlist or not. Just to be clear, being in this selection doesn't mean you'll get to play the game right now, but there's a good chance we'll eventually invite almost everybody on the list to the private alpha.

I thought it'd be polite for us to contact the people that don't go through to be an alpha tester as well - this way nobody is left wondering. So now I have the important job of emailing this good looking group of (500) people sometime in the very near future.

When you hear from us and have any questions, comments, or to comment on my general good looks, we'd love to hear from you. On the bright side for those that didn't make it through, at least you got a super cool email from your favourite game devs. Because we are...right? Right. ;)

What we were looking for is people with a certain set of PC specs/os's, ideally with QA experience - or are known to be helpful in a testing/QA environment, have the time to spare, and have team compatibility. Now I know all our active players are probably thinking they would be a great tester because they have played the game for so long and know it back to front. I would have agreed with you once upon a time, but not so much now.

After seeing how they test I now realize we don't need the best or most active players to achieve what we need; we need very technical and methodical people with as much experience in QA as possible because it's far from just jumping in for a quick game and noting any bugs you come across.

I know being an alpha tester is a bit special and everyone wants to see the game but I think for most people it'd be quite tedious and not that much fun. So for the majority of you that haven't been chosen - don't sweat it cause you're not missing out on much. When the majority of major bugs have been fixed and the game is running smoothly, THAT'S when you want to get in on the action - like beta testing for instance.

Also just so you know, thanks to everyone's hard work we are now up to our 4th major update since the addition of the alpha testers! Give yourselves a pat on the back guys.

Next up, let's talk Battle of the Artists competition. We have received a bunch of artwork from you guys and we love them all! JohnnyEnglish has been busy placing them all around the maps and they are looking simply fantastic. Please keep them coming! We were going to wait until the game is released and our artists can find out for themselves if and where their artwork is, and we still will, but to give you a little motivation and to show it's happening we recently released a picture of JE doing some interior decorating in a certain map you all know. Look below for those that missed it.

Remember, to submit any artwork you can post it on Facebook (either to the Urban Terror page or your own - but be sure to set it to public), Twitter, our Discord, our forum, or email it to me (Ohjay@urbanterror.info). Wherever you post it remember to please use the hashtag #battleoftheurtartists so we can find them.

Last on the list is our donation drive. It's been a few months since we have put the call out so what better time than now for those that can dig deep and help support the project. Every little bit helps and with donations of 20€ or more you get official donor status on our website and discord. To donate click here!

As a little surprise, I have managed to steal some quotes directly from our testers and out of the grasp of the non-disclosure agreement (I'm so fired), so I can bring you the very first impressions of Urban Terror 5.

Enjoy.

First impressions of Urban Terror 5

"The first things I noticed are the similarities in movements between 4.x and 5.x. The controls are highly intuitive to the Q3 era."

"As far as the way it feels, it's very similar to my familiar and loved urt. It's close enough that I feel like I can get used to it as a game. I'm a person who does NOT like change, and I think I can deal with it. Very similar."

"I wasn't too put off by the movement going from 4.x to 5.x, it was quick to pick up and at times even had more ease performing some jumps in resurgence than 4. All this despite having 1/4 the framerate I can have in 4.x."

"The first impression is amazing. It just feels like, ye, that's it.. that's UrT 4, but 5."
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Regarding movement

"The movement and jumping mechanics seem to be quite the same as in urt4"

"Is pretty smooth, but still feels different. I think this mostly comes down to the performance difference of a flat 126 fps in 4.3 vs whatever tick rate 5 runs at."

"The movements are very similar to version 4.x. My feelings are good in that way."

"The controls are highly intuitive to the Q3 era, but I definitely feel as though there is a lack of stamina or speed, I feel heavier."
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Regarding player models and animation

"I think dead bodies reacting to physics (when shooting them, walking into them) isn't needed."

"Overall good job, although I don't think I'm a fair judge given my shit sub-par framerate."

"The animations are fine. I'm aware that they're not finished. So far the only animation I've seen that fails is when the player bounces off a wall and feels like he's doing a forward turn. I've used all 8 models and I like them."
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Regarding gameplay and performance

"In 4.x, there is some kind of adjustments being made to compensate for ping.
As the shots are what-you-see is what-you-hit, but with a delay of ping before the damage is scored it has a different feeling."


"It has some noticeable performance issues. Other players models tremble a bit when moving and a 5v5 game is actually laggy, with players teleporting sometimes."

"UrT 4.x runs smoothly for me. UrT 5 when I'm 1v1 or alone it does as well. But combining 3v3 up to 5v5 + my slow IO + server ping / WIP issues ... I lag a lot"
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Regarding the maps and appearance

"It's absolutely beautiful. Physically, the textures, the graphics, even with everything turned way down low, it's really lovely to look at."

"Good job at replicating the layout/scale/feel of 4.x maps in the new engine. I feel like the increased fidelity achievable for assets (textures/foliage) makes them compete more with the character models for players' attention. This was less prevalent in popular 4.x maps."

"Still lots of errors in the maps themselves, broken doors, things we should be able to climb that we can't, and things we should not be able to climb that we can. Missing foot sounds...all of that fluff."
comments: Feel free to discuss this on our forums

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