G
Guest
Guest
Hi, my name is Karl Burdack. I'm lead programmer for the FOT Team. I'm posting to this board mainly because it seems the most hostile toward the demo, but also because the interplay boards dont work for me.
While I am not the game designer, I do have a deep knowledge of what is going on under-the-hood in FOT, and I would like to give some responses to criticism raised:
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here is the official Micro Forte or Interplay line. What I say today could easily be wrong tomorrow. It is all my opinions, and humble at that
.
However you may quote me if you wish.
-----------------
1) CTB: Agility and its effect Action Points regeneration.
I can tell you for sure that it does. Though it is subtle. If my memory is correct, in the demo any character will regenerate 100% action points over a 10 second period. That means a 10AP character will gain 10AP over 10 seconds. A 5AP character will gain 5AP over 10 seconds.
In effect, a character with 10AP will on average fire twice as much as a 5AP character.
These figures are the result of playtesting to find what played "real time", but was slow enough to make decisions.
I have no doubt these figures will change by the final demo. In fact they already have.
If any gamers out there can test this I would be very pleased to hear the results. It is always possible there is a bug in the regeneration code that we did not find.
--------------
2) Suggestions that CTB is an improper name for what is essentially a real time mode.
Whats in a name?.. When we originally put CTB in the E3 demo, we had a different name for it that I cannot even remember (I think we called it "Continuous Action Points" Mode). I am fairly sure that "Continuous Turn Based" was coined by Interplay's Marketing dept.
What I am trying to say is that the name is partially a marketing decision, much as box art, or magazine ads are. We certainly would not have called it "Real Time" mode, because that is not what we intend it to be.
Does the name of the mode effect how you play the game?
----------------
3) Agility and its effect on how far/fast a character can move.
This is a genuine concern. For those that are unaware, let me explain it:
In TB someone with 10AP (agility=10) will move 10 units, however someone with 5AP (agility=1) will move only 5 units in the same time (turn). So effectively the higher agility character will move twice as *fast*.
In CTB as it stands, movement only prevents regeneration of AP. There is no difference in move speed. This is a serious difference that we are concerned with fixing.
What we intend to do, and most likely you will see in the multiplayer demo, is that characters with low AG will actually *move* slower, both in animation speed, and distance moved per second.
-------------------
4) Turn Based and the missing AP cost for moving.
In hindsight I wished we had fixed this for the demo. The main reason for this lacking is that in the weeks leading up to the demo, we had no time to alter the path finding code to support showing this value in real time.
Anyone who has worked on a generic path finding algorithm in a 3D space on a potentially unlimited size map would understand the scale of the problem.
But we *definitely* will put the AP cost back in. It is essential to playing in Turn Based.
---------------------
5) Suggestions that the graphics are too "clean".
Well, although I am not an artist, I do play a lot of games. I am continually amazed by the cool graphics our artists come up with for tiles.
In all honesty comparing with other games I have played, My opinion is that FOT looks very post apocalyptic. And I gather most people agree that the step to 32-bit color with anti-aliasing has been worth the time we spent on it.
---------------------
6) Red outlines around enemies.
No, this was not another so called anti-turnbased conspiracy. Our engine does not support outlining of character graphics ("sprites"), this is a direct result of having anti-aliased sprites.
This is a geniune concern however because sometimes it is difficult to see where an enemy is (or that they are an enemy). We are looking into ways to fix this, and I hope we have a satisfactory solution for the multiplayer demo.
---------------------
7) AI in turn based
In many ways this is a subjective thing, what one player might find an enjoyable AI to play against, another player might decide was "dumb".
I should make a few points:
- The AI is fairly old in the tactics demo. We froze that particular code in the demo much earlier because of its complexity. Hopefully some of the problems will be solved by the newer changes we have made.
- The AI of the entire map does not attack you the instant you attack just one of them. There are many reasons for this, the main one being that it would not be fun. Some middle ground has to be reached, where the response seems realistic, but also allows for the most enjoyable and tactical experience.
- Some people described a situation (especially in TB) where they would attack an AI, and it would do nothing. We are still working on and QA Testing this, obiously with the goal of fixing any remaining problems.
------------------------
8) Some people cannot figure out how to do a targetted shot.
- Make sure you have the targetted shot icon turned on. Its in the bottom right of the weapon button, just left click it once.
- When you click on an enemy to attack it, a manual targetted shot window appears, where you can select from all the classic locations Fallout offered.
- The last location you attacked will also be used by the sentry modes.
--------------------
9) End combat problems.
Well, we will continue to fix bugs relating to this up till the final release probably. This is a bug that the original Fallouts were never able to fix completely either, and is a source of annoyance.
--------------------
10) Comparisons with Commandos.
Well here I can only offer personal opinion, which is that I think of Commandos to be more of a puzzle solving game than a tactical combat game. But I suppose it all comes down to definitions.
---------------------
11) Its too easy. OR, "I can play the whole 1st mission with Strom only".
What can I say? Some people can finish the first level of Quake 1 in under 30 seconds. Some can't even finish it.
This is why games implement difficulty settings. If you are really good at tactics, try a harder difficulty setting. If you find it too hard, switch to easy. We have tried to make the "normal" setting ideal for the average gamer, which is a hard thing to decide.
Basically we have a tug-of-war between our QA telling us its too easy, and our producers/director telling us its too hard.
Also these 2 missions were designed as though they were the first 2 missions of the game. Thus they would be the easiest missions in the game.
If someone can finish mission 2 with just Strom, in insane difficulty, please give me a walkthrough of how you did it
------------------
12) Some people want to be able to rotate their characters to face a certain direction.
Why? In tactics it does not matter what direction your guys face, they shoot the same and see the same things in *all* directions. We intentionally did not want the player to have to concern themselves with this. I've got a feeling that we will probably be forced to put something in to allow rotation of youre characters. But i'm just interested in hearing why people want to be able to do it?
------------------
13) The missions are too linear.
This is definitely true for mission 1. This was intentional because we wanted the newbie player to be able to figure out what to do. While I cannot give exact information on the other levels in the game, I do know they have more non-linearity than the missions in the demo.
-----------
In conclusion (if you've even read this far), we appreciate all feedback, and we will strive to fix major flaws in gameplay that arise. That was our intention from the beginning with this demo.
I hope our customers can appreciate the amount of effort we are putting into listening to our fans.
And I'm sure Chris is doing a good job of responding on the official board, that I wish I could get access to
If you have any questions just respond to my post I suppose.
Cheers,
Karl Burdack
Lead Programmer
Micro Forte, Canberra.
While I am not the game designer, I do have a deep knowledge of what is going on under-the-hood in FOT, and I would like to give some responses to criticism raised:
DISCLAIMER: Nothing here is the official Micro Forte or Interplay line. What I say today could easily be wrong tomorrow. It is all my opinions, and humble at that
.However you may quote me if you wish.
-----------------
1) CTB: Agility and its effect Action Points regeneration.
I can tell you for sure that it does. Though it is subtle. If my memory is correct, in the demo any character will regenerate 100% action points over a 10 second period. That means a 10AP character will gain 10AP over 10 seconds. A 5AP character will gain 5AP over 10 seconds.
In effect, a character with 10AP will on average fire twice as much as a 5AP character.
These figures are the result of playtesting to find what played "real time", but was slow enough to make decisions.
I have no doubt these figures will change by the final demo. In fact they already have.
If any gamers out there can test this I would be very pleased to hear the results. It is always possible there is a bug in the regeneration code that we did not find.
--------------
2) Suggestions that CTB is an improper name for what is essentially a real time mode.
Whats in a name?.. When we originally put CTB in the E3 demo, we had a different name for it that I cannot even remember (I think we called it "Continuous Action Points" Mode). I am fairly sure that "Continuous Turn Based" was coined by Interplay's Marketing dept.
What I am trying to say is that the name is partially a marketing decision, much as box art, or magazine ads are. We certainly would not have called it "Real Time" mode, because that is not what we intend it to be.
Does the name of the mode effect how you play the game?
----------------
3) Agility and its effect on how far/fast a character can move.
This is a genuine concern. For those that are unaware, let me explain it:
In TB someone with 10AP (agility=10) will move 10 units, however someone with 5AP (agility=1) will move only 5 units in the same time (turn). So effectively the higher agility character will move twice as *fast*.
In CTB as it stands, movement only prevents regeneration of AP. There is no difference in move speed. This is a serious difference that we are concerned with fixing.
What we intend to do, and most likely you will see in the multiplayer demo, is that characters with low AG will actually *move* slower, both in animation speed, and distance moved per second.
-------------------
4) Turn Based and the missing AP cost for moving.
In hindsight I wished we had fixed this for the demo. The main reason for this lacking is that in the weeks leading up to the demo, we had no time to alter the path finding code to support showing this value in real time.
Anyone who has worked on a generic path finding algorithm in a 3D space on a potentially unlimited size map would understand the scale of the problem.
But we *definitely* will put the AP cost back in. It is essential to playing in Turn Based.
---------------------
5) Suggestions that the graphics are too "clean".
Well, although I am not an artist, I do play a lot of games. I am continually amazed by the cool graphics our artists come up with for tiles.
In all honesty comparing with other games I have played, My opinion is that FOT looks very post apocalyptic. And I gather most people agree that the step to 32-bit color with anti-aliasing has been worth the time we spent on it.
---------------------
6) Red outlines around enemies.
No, this was not another so called anti-turnbased conspiracy. Our engine does not support outlining of character graphics ("sprites"), this is a direct result of having anti-aliased sprites.
This is a geniune concern however because sometimes it is difficult to see where an enemy is (or that they are an enemy). We are looking into ways to fix this, and I hope we have a satisfactory solution for the multiplayer demo.
---------------------
7) AI in turn based
In many ways this is a subjective thing, what one player might find an enjoyable AI to play against, another player might decide was "dumb".
I should make a few points:
- The AI is fairly old in the tactics demo. We froze that particular code in the demo much earlier because of its complexity. Hopefully some of the problems will be solved by the newer changes we have made.
- The AI of the entire map does not attack you the instant you attack just one of them. There are many reasons for this, the main one being that it would not be fun. Some middle ground has to be reached, where the response seems realistic, but also allows for the most enjoyable and tactical experience.
- Some people described a situation (especially in TB) where they would attack an AI, and it would do nothing. We are still working on and QA Testing this, obiously with the goal of fixing any remaining problems.
------------------------
8) Some people cannot figure out how to do a targetted shot.
- Make sure you have the targetted shot icon turned on. Its in the bottom right of the weapon button, just left click it once.
- When you click on an enemy to attack it, a manual targetted shot window appears, where you can select from all the classic locations Fallout offered.
- The last location you attacked will also be used by the sentry modes.
--------------------
9) End combat problems.
Well, we will continue to fix bugs relating to this up till the final release probably. This is a bug that the original Fallouts were never able to fix completely either, and is a source of annoyance.
--------------------
10) Comparisons with Commandos.
Well here I can only offer personal opinion, which is that I think of Commandos to be more of a puzzle solving game than a tactical combat game. But I suppose it all comes down to definitions
.---------------------
11) Its too easy. OR, "I can play the whole 1st mission with Strom only".
What can I say? Some people can finish the first level of Quake 1 in under 30 seconds. Some can't even finish it.
This is why games implement difficulty settings. If you are really good at tactics, try a harder difficulty setting. If you find it too hard, switch to easy. We have tried to make the "normal" setting ideal for the average gamer, which is a hard thing to decide.
Basically we have a tug-of-war between our QA telling us its too easy, and our producers/director telling us its too hard.
Also these 2 missions were designed as though they were the first 2 missions of the game. Thus they would be the easiest missions in the game.
If someone can finish mission 2 with just Strom, in insane difficulty, please give me a walkthrough of how you did it
------------------
12) Some people want to be able to rotate their characters to face a certain direction.
Why? In tactics it does not matter what direction your guys face, they shoot the same and see the same things in *all* directions. We intentionally did not want the player to have to concern themselves with this. I've got a feeling that we will probably be forced to put something in to allow rotation of youre characters. But i'm just interested in hearing why people want to be able to do it?
------------------
13) The missions are too linear.
This is definitely true for mission 1. This was intentional because we wanted the newbie player to be able to figure out what to do. While I cannot give exact information on the other levels in the game, I do know they have more non-linearity than the missions in the demo.
-----------
In conclusion (if you've even read this far), we appreciate all feedback, and we will strive to fix major flaws in gameplay that arise. That was our intention from the beginning with this demo.
I hope our customers can appreciate the amount of effort we are putting into listening to our fans.
And I'm sure Chris is doing a good job of responding on the official board, that I wish I could get access to
If you have any questions just respond to my post I suppose.
Cheers,
Karl Burdack
Lead Programmer
Micro Forte, Canberra.
