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Evarena Demo

Gilbert
polycounter lvl 18
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Gilbert polycounter lvl 18
Hi everyone,

I just want to let you know that after several months of work, the Evarena Demo is finally available! You may download it from the official Evarena Website:

www.planetunreal.com/evarena


So please go to our site and get that download counter running!

Every comments and feedbacks are welcome, just write me an email to alcor@planetunreal.com

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  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Man, I was already wondering when you guys are going to release something. Less out of anticipation and more because of the media blowout you did a few months ago.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Didn't download it yet (I will later though), but jugding from the screenshots, it looks really nice except for one thing:

    The buildings are waaay too big compared to the EVAs, which makes the EVAs look tiny in those maps frown.gif
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Overall the game doesn't give the feeling that you're piloting a huge mech, it looks more like you're a soldier in a theme park.

    Do the weapons have to look like that? They look uninteresting right now, downright boring. No interesting silhouette, no fine details, etc. The Positron Rifle really stands out between all those generic weapons (though it could use a more interesting effect). Oh, and why are homing missiles more damaging than dumbfire ones?

    Minor bug: When you die the mode display isn't reset, i.e. you are in standard mode but the HUD shows Slow or Race mode.
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    Overall the game doesn't give the feeling that you're piloting a huge mech, it looks more like you're a soldier in a theme park.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    That's what I feared from the point I first heared about this mod frown.gif But getting a feeling of weight and size is quite hard to do I guess.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Loud footsteps, inertia and a heavily swaying view would emphasize that you're piloting a mech and not walking around yourself. Don't fret, Jupiter Effect (the only other mech mod for UT2003 I'm aware of) doesn't give the "huge mech" feel either.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    hey it's really good that you guys got this mod out!!

    (I agree with other thoughts here, the mechs are grossly undersized compared to the films / tv series. Why not just simply shrink the maps down?)
  • flaagan
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    flaagan polycounter lvl 18
    i laughed so hard when you guys announced this a short bit back, cause someone i knew (and hated) was trying to get people i knew (and liked) to drop what they were doing and join his grandiose plan for a hl2 eva game. i linked him your project and that idea just kinda disappeared into the wind laugh.gif

    oh yah, looks killer, cant wait to have a bit of time to play it!
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Ah, another nitpick: Combat is a bit too fast-paced for the supposed depth in there, stuff like armor is completely ignored when you're busy placing missile after missile into your opponent.

    Also, does projectile direction or impact point matter for the deflector? I've had it enabled and was killed by a missile that hit me in the shoulder (the point of impact was just slightly outside of my view, the missile came straight from the front). Might want to change the behaviour, after all you're immobile and unable to attack while the shield is up so it should not be that easy to circumvent.

    Do deflected projectiles even do damage? I've deflected back quite a few sniper rounds and stuff, they clearly went through my opponent (who fired them) and did no damage (might check the projectile behaviour, I'm not sure they scan for collision with their owner). That doesn't seem to be meant that way considering the manual talks about kills with defleced projectiles.

    Another error with the game/manual is that you spawn with 100 Synchro, not 80 and that damage does not increase it.

    How about some death effect for the Evas? Looks rather uninteresting to have such a huge mech just fall over when it is destroyed (or deactivated). Perhaps make them self-destruct a few seconds after they go down?

    BTW, doesn't that dummy plug look kinda... suspicious? I mean, if it's a plug, what does it plug into? And why do I think there are images on the web exploring exactly that idea?
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    Well... I downloaded the demo, BUT could not play it frown.gif

    WHERE IS THE LINUX VERSION ?????? mad.gif
  • KDR_11k
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    http://icculus.org/lgfaq/#howdoiinstallut2k4mods

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Ahh thanks, I will give that a try... I always thought those umods file didn't work under Linux
  • Gilbert
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    Gilbert polycounter lvl 18
    Hey thank you all for replying with all those great comments, I really like good feedbacks like this, it really helps to make a better game.


    KDR: yes we are very proud of our demo although it's obviously not all perfect!

    JKMakowka: It's true the buildings are quite large. Tokyo in the demo is something like the 10th version of the map I created in order to find the "perfect" balance between having enough space to move around, having a large city and keeping some good performance.

    Feeling of height: I modelized quite a lot of decoration for the city, little houses, lamp posts, little cars, etc. All to give that wanted feelling of altitude, but a few month ago the performance in Tokyo droped by half since I had busted the limits of my 128mb video card! And not just that, the number of triangles aswell as the all important "Mask tests" were too high for the game to handle. So what I did is that I resized the buildings textures from 1024x1024 to 512x512 and stopped adding details like crazy! I also decided not to place any decoration except the boardwalks, it was heavy enough already, too bad for the feeling of height frown.gif

    If we could look down and see our feet it would give a better feeling of height, but it's just impossible in Unreal. Also, several people had the idea to make the Evas actually vehicles that you can climb in/out, but that's simply not our game concept.


    Feeling of weight: What usually give a feeling of weight is slow motion. But the Evas are not slow in the series, they are almost incontralably fast! The sound of footsteps is really one of the things I intend to do. But we couldn't by the time we were working on the sounds since it was winter here and there was snow everywhere. But I'm kinda affraid that it could get on my nerves to hear some crazy explosion like eva footsteps sounds all the time during a game.


    hawken : Yes sometimes we are offscale but it's intentional. Like in the Magi level for example, we are human sized. In the Pacific Fleet level aswell, the aircraft carrier whould be about 4 times smaller if we were to be true to the series, but there wouldn't be much space left to fight if we did so.

    I know I seem to act like a devil soaked in holy water but I'm keeping good notes about all you guys comments.

    flaagan: Indeed, it's one thing to proclaim ourselves "leader" of a project and beleive we have the greatest idea, while it's something else to get a project through and avoid all the pitfalls. I'm really proud that almost 1000 people downloaded the demo yet, but I'm also aware that there is still many problems I have to go through, like not being sued by ADV smile.gif


    KDR:
    >>Combat is a bit too fast-paced
    I'm not forcing you to set Speed mode, it's your choice smile.gif (point noted though)

    >>does projectile direction or impact point matter for the deflector?
    The shield will completely absorb all damage comming from the front aproximately a 90degree arc. But yes sometimes you die although you're shielding, often by the splash damage of a rocket or shiper shot, especially when aimed at the feet so you should try crouching.

    >>stuff like armor is completely ignored when you're busy placing missile
    Yes it's true that when the crazy eva don't stop jumping around you don't really take the time to analyse which pad he losts and where to attack. All I wanted with this system is to keep players from dying by the first shot they receive Which is what I dislike the most in UT, dying by the first shot you received after you walked 5 minutes to get near the battle.

    >>Do deflected projectiles even do damage?
    You are absolutely right, there is a major bug with the reflected projectile wich I'm unable to solve. What happen is that when a bullet is tested as being reflected, this bullet is destroyed and a new bullet is spawned in the direction the player who is shielding looks at. That behaviour is taken from the Impact Hammer. But for a quite obscure reason, the new bullet does indeed go straight through the players. If you reflect the shots from a machine gun at the ground in front of the opponent, and the bullet will bounce back at his face and hurt him, also if you reflect a sniper shot at the feet of the opponent, then the slash damage will hurt him aswell. But like you found out the bullet itself if not do damage and I must find a way to fix that.

    >>How about some death effect for the Evas?
    Earlier in developement I hacked the gib function and made it so when you gib, it's every single part of the eva goes into the air (2 feet, 2 calf, 2 thigh, 2 upper arm, 2 lower arm, hand, head, chest and shoulder pads of you've got some), it's really cool to see and funny. But later in developement when I hacked the TakeDamage function to analyse the direction of the shot vs do you have pads vs are you shielding, etc. The great gib function is not called anymore, even when piercing someone with the Lance, which it always did before. Also, the red flash indicating where you've been hit on the screen doesn't show anymore since I hacked TakeDamage.

    >>BTW, doesn't that dummy plug look kinda... suspicious?
    Hehehe, very funny smile.gif I had some "movie psychology" courses during my degree and I swear that I did my best to remove all phallus like objects from the game smile.gif Evangelion is indeed a story about sex but Evarena is a More Funny / Less Violent project. (isn't it?)


    So KDR please don't hold back your comments, it helps me a lot.


    For those who have tried the game, I just want to let you know that since I didn't hacked the bots AI yet, the game is not so spectacular when playing against bots. But if you can try it over a Lan or the Internet, against real people who understand the Speed/Shield functions, then the game is really much more fun!
  • JKMakowka
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    JKMakowka polycounter lvl 18
    A .zip file for the linux users would be nice, since the installation instructions posted above, somehow doesn't seem to work correctly on my Linux box frown.gif
    Even better would be a Loki installer of course wink.gif
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Fast paced means in this context that you die from two-three hits. Sure, that's more than standard UT but still way too fast. Mech combat in Battletech is rather slow paced because very few weapons can even destroy one armor section in one blast. You have enough time to follow a tactic and get an advantage in position, etc and even plan what parts of the enemy you intend to blow away.

    If your modified TakeDamage just checked all the factors and applied any damage by calling super.TakeDamage that should still call the gib function, right? Or you could make it call the gib function directly?Some damage indicator would be nice, if not a flash at least some impact sound.

    The deflected bullet problem really sounds like the bullet is still owned by the original attacker and doesn't do any collision tests until it believes it can collide with its owner (after ricochetting off a wall, for example). After all, the bullet shouldn't collide with you when you fire it and under normal conditions it won't be able to hit you, either. Should try making the owner of the bullet the player who deflected it if you haven't done that already.

    BTW, is the positron rifle supposed to do headshots?
  • Gilbert
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    Gilbert polycounter lvl 18
    I have updated the download section of the Evarena website with a zipped version of the mod.

    Kdr: Yes the rifle can do headshots, but since the lightning is less powerful than the ordinary UT lightning gun, it takes several shots to kill the opponent. A few month ago when you did a headshot the character's head was detaching from the body, but for the same reason that the gib function is not called anymore, so does the headshot function.

    I'll do my best to fix all those problems in the upcomming version of the demo.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    Hm, you're right, that bullet problem is confusing. Though is it just me or does the rocket lack any deflector code?

    I'd try to fix those myself but overwriting the EvaWeap and EvaEngine packages with new ones saved out by UED results in human players spawning without battery charge and no weapons except the UT sniper rifle spawning... WTF?
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