Good news, isn't that like the third project in the category fast paced FPS on PC?

Maybe :P
Deft grinders, Project Free Fall... maybe something more.

But I like that somebody is trying to do something. For me, dunno why it looks more promising than others.

Heard also that there probably will be matchmaking. Also with focus for MP, but depends of budget maybe will appear some defrag maps. Heard something about 20$ and no for microtransactions.

I guess some cpma lovers are developing it.

btw. "new engine" sounds impressive.

First donations:
"Thanks to Memphis ( http://youtu.be/kmIbKmeO748 ) for being the first to donate to the Reflex project!"

"Thanks to povohat for the donation and a huge thanks to Apheleon and @gosurelease who are tied first for 'most cash thrown at us'.
The response to Reflex has been amazing so far. It seems we're not alone in thinking a new twitch FPS is massively overdue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtvol8SvM5Y "

Thanks for the mention! We'll be doing some proper news posts on ESR when we have more to show but things are progressing nicely.

So, we are waiting :)

probably will donate something... for christmas, lol :P

Next news before or after 2014?

We should be releasing at least one more piece of concept art this year -- we're expecting the final version back from the artist any day now.

Hopefully we'll get to show some more this year. I should probably start doing up a YouTube channel.

its done with UE3 right?

no they use a new engine developed for this game

Nope. We didn't really feel like paying a six digit licensing fee just to fix the laggy input.

UE3 is free unless you earn £££££

I think the emphasis is on the laggy input part in this case.

UDK is free up to a certain point but UDK isn't the whole engine, just the game code.

UE3 is the whole engine and is a very, very long way from free.

UE3 sucks

is this the result of pmx completely evaporating?

pmx was like severity. I'd be surprised if someone worked on it for more than 5 minutes.

wrong

Actually, PMX got quite a bit of work put in to it. Off the top of my head, I could think of 100+ hours of development. Unfortunately, it just needed a huge amount of work to complete and some of the development team simply didn't have the free time.

We have very similar goals to PMX and two of the Reflex developers contributed to PMX so.. yes?

Can you tell us who the other person is other than yourself?

Ben Darling / Electro is doing all of our 3D art.

del

You can expect it to be of the same (or higher) quality but at this stage, we're not planning on using any of those models.

i want a gooey model!!

We definitely have to make sure Gooey makes an appearance somewhere.

yes is indeed the answer then. good luck sirs

what is pmx?

A standalone CPMA with custom assets (so not depending on Q3 pak0.pk3), so it could be free. Never happened, buried in development hell.

a real pity :-(

Looks promising, reminds a hell lot of what reborn would been.

Where did you look at it?

Concept wise that is.

Where did you look at concept?
All I see is basic description that doesn't tell anything about the game.

"A competitive first person shooter that combines modern tech with the speed and precision of 90s shooters. With new engine." Sounds exactly what reborn would been, doesn't it? + robot theme models is more or less spot on too.

every game sets out to be good...

There's concept art on our Facebook page.

So roughly said its just like CPMA standalone on a new engine..

Roughly said? Yeah, that would probably be fair.

We do have a lot of plans that are different from CPMA but we're keeping quiet about them until they've been properly playtested/confirmed.

no warsow dash or tribes slide plox :P

Okay then, just for you ;)

Please don't add a bunch of gimmicks like warsow or q4, or design the game so people win 50-0 in 10 minute games, it will just be predictably doa with fewer players than cpm. The models also look like generic blocky ut or warhammar 40k guys, not very compelling.

With that said, good luck.

- Don't plan to add gimmicks. Every design decision will be properly reasoned and argued and if it's not good for the game, it gets cut.

- Winning 50-0 is just a side effect of a fast game with a high skill ceiling. We are taking steps to make sure that players get matched up with people close to their skill though, which should significantly reduce those kinds of games. It's always more intense when it's close and we want that to happen more often.

- The character we've shown publicly is just the enemymodel. There's another character concept being finalized at the moment, then we'll release the art.

Bunch of gimmicks in Q4? like what. I can name some very good things from Q4, like crouch sliding and being able to fire projectiles through teleporters. I hope you don't class them as gimmicks.

give us a translocator

i hope it doesnt turn out like another xonotic, warsow etc...

warsow and xonotic are using old quake engine.

this will be new engine, so could be fresh.

not true, the engines are heavily modified. new netcode, better gfx yadda yadda

better gfx of warsow is arguable ;P

disagree

me too ;d

better gfx

no

Wsw looks heaps better than QL/CPMA.

A graphic style that is not for everyone? Sure. But hey, QL/CPMA don't even support glossmaps.

I personally think that our gameplay is feeling tighter and our art is looking better than both those games but I'm massively biased.

We've had good feedback from a couple of people who have run around in an early build (memphis, mew and a couple of others).

you gotta have sick graphics son and BLOOD and guts spraying everywhere for these tween faggots to take you seriously.

I'd like these features:

+ Ability to shield for .1 second your whole body (this is so you can TIME and block a rail shot if you are mad baller, if the game has rail)

+ability to shoot a rocket at a rocket and have them cancel each other out, imagine a kid going for an air rocket and you air his own rocket then rape his face falling down onto him

+shock combo could be nice (rip that shit from ut)

+ lg for lg battles, love it in quakelive

+shock combo could be nice (rip that shit from ut)

put that to small aerowalk-style cpm maps, welcome to 150-0 matches

+ability to shoot your rail into someone trying to shoot the plasma ball at you, making it backfire onto them

yo u got some really good ideas. shit like this needs to be in some fps games. change up the genre

If I were in the video game business I'd have been a millionaire already.

I'm an idea man, I got tons of ideas but no way to realize them. :(

You should talk to Jamerio about getting into the video game industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CudKJRMpfnQ#t=50s

or nexuiz

Nexuiz changed name to Xonotic, didn't it?

I mean the cryengine version.

mite b cool

giving more information about this instead of making the same posts in different social media sites would be nice

Thanks for the mention! We'll be doing some proper news posts on ESR when we have more to show but things are progressing nicely.

Will be great to get new information. But pretty like this "tease". And they doing quite good job, imo.

imo, better to tease and show nothing than show ugly shit to the public. Even this concept art. looks cool and hyping people because its just pretty.

imo Bulletstorm had good marketing about new and more skilled game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbTtsezso4Q
Duty Calls thing was hilarious :P

It would be nice to be able to.

Come to #reflex on Quakenet and I'll slip you an early build and answer any questions I can.

Wait, are you saying I can get in on this thing early on?

Yes I think he did.

Only if you're ahxnxa / some other very good player. But we want to get players running around in game as soon as possible.

You don't want a mediocre player's opinion? ~8]

I can form my own mediocre player opinion for now ;)

I think you may be a little too biased to form the mediocre's opinion ;)

Anyway, I think it's important to get some outsider's opinion from all skill levels, unless you're aiming at the elite only. Good luck with the project :)

We'll be expanding our testing later on, to include players of varying levels of mediocrity. For now though, we're sticking with people who will notice tiny problems with movement and input.

And thanks for the support!

Will there be air control ?

ddk cited me as one of the best french players so I guess i'm entitled to testing aren't I ?
jk
not really tho

There already is air control =)

OH GOD WHY

will it be possible to disable it ? vql / cpm style

air control is great feature!

and im noob.

Why? Because its the kind of game we want to make. It makes for more diverse, interesting gameplay. People do incredible things with CPMA movement and I see no reason to take that away.

Nope, won't be any turning it off. VQL is entirely idsoft's domain. If you want a new game along those lines, you'll have to talk to them.

We are planning to be much better at actually teaching the movement to new players though. Throwing them in to a duel and assuming they'll learn by osmosis doesn't seem to work very well.

You're the captain of your own boat man

In my opinion, AC is something only die-hards can play as it takes hours & hours to master and until you do, you're left facepalming all the time at your own inability

Still impatient to see it

Just add insta weapon switch and players will swarm over it.

:D

Please do consider my talents when you do search for mediocre players to test!

tests only on australian servers?

soo... 200 ms + for me? :D

I'll set up some servers in US/EU for testing.

what if a person is a long term cpm fan and player and eagerly awaiting reflex???

I guess, you can donate 100$ and ask about access :P

If thats how the kickstarters gonna work then sure!

can I get an early build?

Ahxnxa very good? What, at team killimg and trolling?1? 1!

Those are important things to playtest.

I TAKE EVERYTHING I EVER SAID BACK

I think it's important to get feedback from low skill people as early as possible in the development process.

Hey wait a minute, I'm a low skill player *fingers crossed*

im quake noob :P
but also there are ultra noobs like CoD/BF players ;P

I think such game need NEW maps at start, and maybe later release some remakes of old maps. unfortunately.

But more experienced players will destroy everybody on remake of aerowalk ;p

Open Source?

Closed source.

Mods are looking unlikely at the moment -- we'd have to rewrite most of the game to allow them =/

Maps (and etc.) though will have a lot of support from us, immediately. We already have a few people playing with the mapping tools and that's where a lot of our recent development has been.

That's already planned.

maybe you could look into allowing scripts and models to be implemented alongside into a mapfile, sorta like custom maps for counter strike and warcraft, and adjusting server hosting software for it (think zombie mod or star wars mod for cs), this could make some serious outlet for gameplay ideas from modders

I hope there's at least one designer (not artist/graphical dude/etc, but designer, who can give unquestionable orders to programmers) in the team. Otherwise it will be same fail as Warsow and others.

My core role on the team is the designer. I'm not going to go ordering around people with 10 years experience making games professionally but I'm ultimately setting the direction for most of the project.

Good to see quite nice interest in new game. Gives a hope that some day good and fresh game will happen.

Now, all donate for food for devs, lol ;d

glad ppl started to notice that we need a new, decent fps game...
just waiting for someone to do it the right way

I got sick of waiting.

what were you waiting for? like half year ago there was nothing in making actually

Actually, I'd already written up a lot of the design documents more than half a year ago.

I was just waiting for an artist and programmer to come along and join me. Also, it helps to now be in a situation where I can handle the debt development will put me in.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHHA srsly?

HAHAHHAHAHA BUT NO, SRSLY?


HAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA PLEASE ESR UR KILLIN ME

i think u are right. they are focusing too much on the elites and by the sound of it will not offer casuals much reason to play. too bad, guess reborn is still the only other option. What do you think of deft grinders?

what the fuck is it?

What will the business model be? Traditional buy 2 play? Free to play with skins? Or subscription model? Please be free to play with skins. No arena shooter has tried that model yet. Maybe it will work.

Buy once, play forever.

F2P with skins would be interesting (and obviously that kind of thing works for TF2) but we're a small indie team -- that's not really an experiment we can afford to do.

i'd say don't bother with free to play. it's being killed by money grabbing, dlc and microtransactions pumping morons in the game industry at the moment and very, very expensive. good call

microtransactions are what has worked for every game really well so far, much more success than there could be with 'buy once' model. 'Buy once + have microtransactions' is fine aswell though(as in CS:GO for example). However simple 'buy once and have no additional content' is not gonna work nowadays if they really want a long-lasting and growing project. Although subscriptions would be even worse for such a narrow audience project.

at least we know this game will fail, no matter if its finished or not.

Who said there will be no additional content? We'll keep supporting and adding to Reflex for as long as it has players.

you cant constantly add content with a 'buy once' model, there's not a single example of long-lasting game like that

Well, QW/Q3 seem pretty long lasting to me, holding a playerbase for 10 years, thanks largely to additional content from the community.

do you wanna make a popular game or another niche game like q3/qw with <100ppl communities? Holding a playerbase of 100 uberaddicted players aint that hard lol
Moreover q3 is still being alive only due to going opensource 8 years ago, and CPM is basically a completely different game to what q3 was.

we arent talking about present

It will be a niche game. Basically, it's a new version of CPMA.

Haven't really put much thought it to that yet -- the CDN is a good call. We'll need something in place before we start releasing alpha/beta builds to supporters.

We're also aiming for Steam distribution which might solve that problem for us.

imo a game cant be 'competitive only' . unfortunately it need casuals too. ;p

thats exactly the perfect example of bad thinking :D

casual users are the fuel for competitive gameplay. noobs will buy skins, company will make monies and use % of the monies in official tournaments. to witch noobs will jerk off, and buy more skins.

a bit true... proved by dota or csgo.

but a bit hard to do for arena shooter imo.

i will say it last times:

models skins, guns skins, guns effects and even fucking snowy dm6. all this shit in one MEGA PACK for just 5 dollars. Get your pink lg beam now!

with ability to force enemy models skins who will care about these skins?

noobs.

just look at csgo example, even weapon skins are enough for 150k$ tournaments suddenly becoming profitable.
as for quake-skyle games:
- rail/lg/plasma colors
- sound effects/announcer packs(Cooller saying Excellent/Impressive/HUMILIATION/etc = $$$$$$$$$$$) available to you and those who spec you
- huds(not a huge deal)
- avatars/logos/badges(every game has some social customization nowadays). could be visible on scoreboard/profile/on enemy screen when you kill someone/etc
- weapon skins(not as huge deal as enemy model) which work really well in csgo, might only make is visible from 1st person POV for player and specs or whatever

actually as for player skins I really liked Shootmania/Reborn idea of having ONE model and optimizing hitbox/netcode for that model :/
might also have some small spot for logo on the model, that's not really a huge deal

"actually as for player skins I really liked Shootmania/Reborn idea of having ONE model and optimizing hitbox/netcode for that model :/"
I on other hand like the fact, that Quake has multiple skins to choose. Do you want to be a slipgate explorer, marine from Mars mission, faceless uber-soldier, cig-smoking veteran or whatever.
Also the custom skins might work with forcing model. Just show them on the scoreboard/afer the game and on user's profile.

I will bet you one year of Pro that you have, at some point or another, changed your Rail color. Why would LG be any different?

The rest of the stuff, I agree with. However, we see LG, nades, rockets and rails all the time. People change their rails all the time. Or, at least, set it to something that they like and leave it. I don't see any difference between Rail color and LG/plasma color.

The rest, as I said, I agree with you about.

Edit: Just wanted to add that the 'bet' was meant as a figure of speech and not literally, of course. Not like either of us could prove if you did change its color or not! =) But, since we can change rail/nade color, I wouldn't mind new plasma and lg. :D

nah, they casuals. they just want to shoot things

Yea, only graphics. For eg. there is probably no any improve for AI since... wolfenstein 3d? lol ;d

AI in singleplayer games was replaced by scripted in game movies :P

I disagree on textures. Sure, geometry may be a bit basic, but light-load bumpmapping and good, high quality textures would improve first impressions significantly. It does not need to be Star Citizen, but if the game looks absolutely amazing out of the box, and has the options to be downgraded later, then it caters to both crowds. Look at Q4- it had great graphics on max, back in 2005, but it still allowed for picmip10 and vertex light.

yep, that's right just look how much $$$ LoL made, but still game has to have something to attract them in a first place, for quake-ish fps this could be maybe matchmaking sorta like in CSGO fashion, where you can just join in a que and if you are ranked enough your experience wont differ much from playing gathers or mix games on 1.6 in the old days

i hope there will be only one gameplay\physics (not like in cpma: vq3 and cpm)

There will.

This is a brilliant scheme to make everyone play more promode. I know I will try it when able. Good luck, Reflex.

It will give players a decent head start. Let me know if you need any help getting set up, CPMA is not the most user friendly piece of software ever created.

I meant I will try Reflex. It will take something new with a potential future to play CPM mechanics again.

"With new engine."

bye bye strafe jumping cy@!

Don't be sure about this :p

No, it doesn't mean anything.

We've already got strafe jumping in. In fact, no one who has tried the early builds has mentioned strafe jumping feeling any different from Q3.

The engine has nothing to do with the game physics...

Engine is optimized for low latency in mind? So input feels almost instant like in Rage or CoD4. Ignoring driver settings is also good so new players cant screw themselves with high pre-render frames.

What kind of netcode will it have? Low tickrate huge pings + ton of interpolation with annoying lagcompensation like source engine?
Or something that feels real time with client side reg?
I hope players have small bounding collision cylinders instead of huge boxes?

Engine is optimized for low latency in mind?

Of course. It's been written that way from the very first line of code -- that's why we're using our own engine and not someone else's.

What kind of netcode will it have? Low tickrate huge pings + ton of interpolation with annoying lagcompensation like source engine?

Not that, but exactly what is still uncertain. We're pretty happy with how the current netcode is feeling, but it's still a little bit experimental so we won't be going in to specifics just yet.

I hope players have small bounding collision cylinders instead of huge boxes?

If you mean hitboxes (used to figure out if a weapon hit a player) then we're using capsule shaped hitboxes -- the hostile character has been designed to fit nicely in to that shape.

If you mean collision box (used to figure out of a players face hit a wall) then we're still using boxes (for now). We'll probably revisit it later, since it causes problems with things like plasma climbing, but for now there are a lot of bigger things to be working on.

Good to hear. I'll just leave some suggestions:

By default best graphical settings for enemy/surroundings visibility. Mouse settings and aim tutorial/guide. Good gradual tutorials for movement, weapons, tactics and modes.
No option for vsync and ignoring driver prerender setting will help new players play better, for ex. L4D2 made all new players suck hard with vsync on as default setting.

"We're pretty happy" can turn out in some pissing off server side reg only "waste 1000 hours getting used to predicting where to shoot dodging enemy and still hit not as good" netcode.
Most players will get annoyed and frustrated very fast with such netcode.
UE3 game RO2 with its no lagcompensation+client side reg feels real time, if server is good it never gets annoying and frustrating.
And no twitching/teleporting to few server positions back when you die, you should always die on client side.

Players vs player collisions get extremely annoying with big quake/source engine boxes, at high movement speeds even with 43 ping in QL I hit another guys collision box from 3m. In source engine it just lags and predicts around the model and you can even pass thru it. Most importantly it screws point blank aim very hard.
If its completely not possible to make it small cylinder/sphere because of plasma climbing, then maybe it can be done only for player vs player collisions.

By default best graphical settings for enemy/surroundings visibility.

All of the art is being designed so that you don't need a bunch of obscure cvars set to actually see other players (although if it's not enough for some players, we still have plans for a high contrast mode that can be enabled with a single setting).

We're also trying to avoid "use this config to win" cvars. Ideally, your configuration shouldn't matter at all, as long as you're comfortable with it. After all, its supposed to be a comparison of player skill, not cvar knowledge.

Clients should never be trusted, and client side hit detection is fake.
If you have over 100 ping you should just switch to a closer server. What makes you think you're entitled to hit at such high pings? Less than 50 is good, 50-100 playable, rest is bound to be shit, it's the laws of physics. In cpma you can play quite competitively 100 ms vs. 50. It's not ideal but it works.

All important decisions server side. This definitely includes hit detection and should also include visibility checks to a certain degree.

Big plus to you guys for using your own engine <3

Will it happened?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Or maybe?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

What if it will?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathing

GGs

imo Quake will be dead sooner or later, so imo its worth to support other projects. Or just deal with it, quit and forget about fast paced fps games.

It was meant to be dead in 2002-2003. So I would say it's live after life. Can it be dead again?

zombie? ;p

Nope, it's like Highlander, the immortal, just needs to cut other's heads then it never dies.

How do you kill that which has no life?

It certainly doesnt bleed so we cant kill it.

The enemy model is fantastic

Thanks!

no xerp pls

If you just upload a video of you jumping around even if there are crappy assets at the moment, people will shit brix.

True, I remember when I saw first video of Warsoup, everyone went nuts.

Ye, actually waiting for it before donation. Atleast to be sure that the project isn't just another pmx or deft grinders or even reborn (sry for blasphemy ;)) really starving for some project with a plan to actually finish it

That's something we're hoping to do before christmas. A few people have already seen videos of it in action (or have jumped around in an early build).

The crappy assets is spot on right now though -- all the art we have in game is just placeholder.

Great can't wait! I only say that because you are rolling your own engine, so I'm skeptical (but hopeful!) of the player movement/physics.

I'll admit, I was kind of scared of the new engine for exactly that reason but I'm not even slightly worried about it anymore.

I have some ideas.

No hitscan weapons! (Lg alternative would be like a pg with faster rate of fire but lowrr dps)
Include UI to change all possible cvars
Create a means for players to easily create modes/rulesets... possibly even the mechanics of movement\weapons\armors\etc (let the crowd maximize the gameplay potential)

No hitscan weapons

Why not?

I think most half decent players can use hitscan fairly well with low ping and a decent mouse. With the better technology, game devs need to think about how they can push the skill levels higher.

I think there's potential for way more clever, skillful, and entertaining usage of non-hitscan weapons considering the average net and hardware quality out there is continuing (and will continue) to rise into the future.

Grenade launcher only then! :D

Game devs need to think about how they can push the skill levels higher [...] I think there's potential for way more clever, skillful, and entertaining usage of non-hitscan weapons

We are and there is.

I'm guessing we will have less hitscan weapons than Q3 but we still need to playtest the ideas and see what works best.

I would like to see something like "mortar" - mix of grenade- and rocket launcher. Ballistic projectile, maybe with fuse activated after some time and after bouncing (so if you shoot at close distance, it will bounce and explode on next contact, but if you shoot far, it will explode on first hit).

Xonotic has exactly THAT weapon. The mortar there is an amazing midair weapon (seriously, getting midairs with the mortar is easier than some splash damage with the rox. So satisfying.), fires at a slight arc, and either explodes on first contact, or 0.5 sec after first bounce on alt-fire.

Q4 had a weaponset more focused at projectiles than Q3. There were the NG, HB, RL, GL and Napalm.

Personally, I liked that approach very much, but I did find the NG rather reduntant, using it only for denial spamming of corridors and doorways, and I'd much rather go for HB practically all of the time. It was just too similar to the HB, but the massive bump in DPS was not worth the slow projectile travel and rate of fire. Like Pawulon said, a ballistic arc weapon, like a mortar, would be a better bet.

The Wsw plasma is an interesting projectile weapon, as it's quite similar to the Q3 variant, however, is not only actually usable, but a great midair and mid-range weapon. I prefer it even to the Q4 HB. Check it out if you haven't yet.

I disagree with the no hitscan weapons. I think the weapon set should be a tweaked ql/cpm weapon set, maybe possibly building off some UT inspiration.

GT = any sort of close range weapon, this works well
MG = exchange for q2 popgun or something useless
SG = flak cannon?? Only useful close range and can spam and bounce off walls
GL = same
RL = same
LG = the fast plasma idea is not a bad idea, at the same time you can "lag" lg more, to add the desired effect
RG = exchange for shock rifle?

Plasma then becomes redundent, you get mostly not hitscan weapons, and you get the 2 best weapons from UT.

i think the current cpm system is pretty damn good, bar the 1250ms rail reload, i just don't think that these weapons were designed for hitting such high acc's that came with updated technology (connections and hardware got so good that 35lg became the norm rather than the 25lg from half a decade+ ago). in any case, i still think they should remain the same. up to the devs though

With the increased accuracies have come tuned gameplay, people might get accs like that in team modes, but accs in duel have remained pretty much the same. Even though people aim better, people have better positional skills too now.

I don't think people should be punished for aiming well.

It's not really about punishing people for aiming well -- better aim will always be rewarding simply because it ups your damage output. There would have to be some pretty radical (and completely stupid) design to create a FPS where an good aim was just as effective as a mediocre aim.

It's about balancing aim, movement and strategy. No matter how how good your movement, timing, positioning and control is, if you go up against someone with 100% accuracy, you're going to lose.

That's a pretty extreme example but it's not hard to imagine someone hitting 100% rail. It is hard to imagine someone hitting 100% rockets.

And it's not just that rockets are harder to aim, it's that they're projectiles -- with good movement and awareness, they can be dodged. Even against an extremely strong aim, this gives you a way to start negating one skill by using others.

And that makes combat far more interesting than "who has the best aim".

That's right.

I propose an experiment to check how important and effective single weapon is. Let's take two players with difference of about 300 ELO. That's a lot at least in QL and it means that the better player is going to win like 5 out of 6 maps (this may be wrong but you have the idea).

Now let's ban single weapon for better player so he can't use it (while worse player can) and see how win/lose ratio changes. This way we can identify most crucial weapon which I expect in QL is LG and probably RL for CPM.

it is rl for ql

Yes, I hit crazy rail and lg, but my rockets are weak. When I go up against people with strong rockets I struggle.

I agree mostly with what you are saying, but I would still avoid what qw is (one gun dominating). I'm mostly a q3 dueler with some cpm, qw and ql experience. The faster rockets work in cpm, purely because of the faster movement, but I'm still not sure if the faster rockets in ql work. I would say that is has balanced the game... but possibly we shouldn't have lowered the rail damage.

One thing I want to say with regards to cpm, is that movement takes precedence or in equal to position, and I think position should take precedence, which the movement is more like in qw.

I agree mostly with what you are saying, but I would still avoid what qw is (one gun dominating).

We don't plan to let that happen. If a single gun dominates all others, we'll be nerfing that gun.

One thing I want to say with regards to cpm, is that movement takes precedence or in equal to position, and I think position should take precedence, which the movement is more like in qw.

I don't necessarily agree (maybe with them being equal?) but there's a couple of changes we're looking at making that might change the way you feel about that.

We'll see what happens when we're playtesting.

It was hard to explain what I meant there, basically a player in cpm that finds himself out of position due to a careless mistake, can get out easier than in qw, although the movement is similar.

But yeah, CPM is a good base, once you have that going you can tweak.

I think position in CPM matters more than you give it credit for. The ability to hear your opponent better increases your map awareness and therefore there's a good degree of positioning around that sound even when you can't see the enemy. However, the occfactor also generates a lot of potential for mind games by intentionally making more sounds more important in the meta game.

When thinking about accuracy, it's good to not just think about overall accuracy, but the accuracy per encounter.

You've been smashed around aero by qhat's railgun. It's not uncommon for him to hit 60% with it.

Which doesn't sound that bad.. it's only 3/5 rails -- except that's not how aim actually works. He might hit 5 in a row before he misses one, and that can be pretty brutal since, if he has line of sight, there's not much you can do about it.

Other weapons have other considerations.

If you're taking direct rockets to the face, one after the other, you should probably work on your positioning and dodging.

If you get a stream of 40-50% LG, it's probably because you ran straight in to the beam, which was stupid and you deserve to be dead.

Really, the stats at the end of the game only tell half the story.

The most important thing is the damage you deal. If you are able to find more opportunities to fire your guns, even with lower acc, but hitting more bullets makes advantage. If you try to hit some random shots or exit rails or spamming LG around the corners you lower your acc badly, but it can profit in the match score.

No hitscan weapons!

If there's fast movement with air control like CPM then LG/RG will be harder to hit than in QL anyway.

Include UI to change all possible cvars

This is really needed in games like Quake. QL finally got it, but of course like everything else it was too late. Noobs need to be able to fully customize every little thing too, without learning all the cvars.

Create a means for players to easily create modes/rulesets

Like edawn?

Interesting, inclined to play ...
but let's see when there is something playable available

will the kickstarter happen this year? or are you waiting for more content?

Won't be happening this year. With what we have at the moment, a kickstarter would only be interesting to a tiny fraction of our potential players.

please look into skins. no other arena game has done this. consider it.

buy 2 play with skins
free 2 play with skins. idk lol

but the underlying problem which highlander pointed out is, why would anyone buy a skin if there are options to force enemy models? well why dont we just take that option out.

instead have all the character models similar in dimensions. and to get rid of any visual advantages with certain skins, have every character model outlined similar to csgo models during spec mode (with the exception of seeing them through walls lol)


this way players can still have different character models but not have a visual advantage.

then you can have weapon skins with different weapon effects. you can add different in game voice announcer packs.

im not saying any of this will work. these are just some ideas/thoughts i have

Make keel/bright and tankjr/bright models only avail as a microtransaction, and watch the money/rage appear :P

and make the only enemy model that ships with the game orbb

kill me, i will pay as much as you want for other skin but... everything... but not orb model!!11!1 agh!

We're kind of trying to avoid shamelessly screwing our players out of all their money ;)

Not at all. In fact, if we ever have any form of "pay to win", I encourage you to track me down and punch me in the face.

Glad to hear it :-]

Forwarding the ports will probably be the most difficult part of running a server (even a dedicated one) but realistically, most home connections are not suitable to host a fast FPS.

Could you tell me how you will deal with servers?

rent a server? or what?

The dedicated server binaries will be freely available to anyone who wants to run a server.

Leaked super-secret development art.

You're hired!

need microtransaction shoes...just avoid polish servers

Newborn are you still on gamesurge IRC? #4SG or another chan?

I'd love to sign myself up to do some testing :)

"If you're an IRC user, we've now got an official channel: #reflex on QuakeNet"
here ya go!

Come to #reflex or #promode.au on QuakeNet. I'm not very active on 4SG as we have (and I'll put this as diplomatically as possible) differing views on gameplay ;)

Nobody asked about that yet. What is your target hardware requirement? You don't have to be really specific. Will we need 2x Titan? Will an old intel gpu do?

You won't need 2x Titans, but you'll need something better than an old intel gpu.

I found in some twitter conversations that Reflex has some kind of STRAFE, already.

also.
"Interesting to hear about high level players liking the game though. Definitely a good sign."

Strafe is confirmed :P

What kind of hitscan detection and hitboxes are you planing to implement in this game?

Our hitboxes are capsule shaped. If you look carefully at the hostile concept, you'll see he's been designed around that shape.

While cpm movement is awesome, its takes a lot of work to master. I dunno, if its too much of an effort to play after a long day of work I'd rather stick to QL so I have a bit more relaxed and forgiving movement and just have fun fraging people.

I find cpm movement way more forgiving than ql.

Strangely, I agree. It's counterintuitive, but it's far easier, in my eyes, to maintain good fluidity of movement with an aircontrol ruleset. I suppose that's purely because of less focus on proper correction upon landing and actually needing to get the initial angles right before leaving the ground.

Don't care, still it has amazing feeling and best fragmovies of all quake games :P

I'm not slamming cpm/qw type movement. I favour it.

You're right. VQ3/QL generally favors getting things exactly right or being punished. If you misjudge a jump, there's usually no saving it. If you pull out the wrong weapon, you'll often be dead before you can switch to the right one.

CPMA is more forgiving about these things, provided you have the reactions to pull it off. You can often correct your jumps in mid air and instant switch makes a bad weapon choice nearly meaningless.

With Reflex, we're looking to find the balance between both of those. Precision should be rewarded, mistakes should be punished but there should always be room for recovery with fast enough reflexes and keen enough awareness.

you should just let us bunny hop for speed like in PK instead of CPM...its a lot easier for noobs to pick up...just keep hitting jump key

then double tap left/right for dodge jump

Well, removing jump entirely and aiming for them would make it even easier for noobs but it's not going to make it a better game.

PK movement makes a better game than CPM movement. easier to do but same end result

Well, "easier to do but same result" doesn't really mean better either since as soon as you make something easier, you're lowering the risk and leaving the reward unchanged.

That's fine if something was too difficult for the reward but if you remove too much risk you get a flat, dull game.

its a small but significant change in making it easier for people to change from UT, QL, BF4, COD...everyone can pick up the movement easily when its based on quick jump key presses.

strafe jumping just means a portion of QL will move (although we already have PQL now) but its unlikely to attract people from UT/BF/COD who didnt make the move to QL because they will get sick quickly of people who've played the same physics for 15 years running twice as fast as them.

bunny hopping is a good middle ground between COD/BF/CS crawling and Quake strafing.

you cant make a game dull with such a move when the speed of the game remains the same

i love cs:s jump servers with autohop on. such speed.

not played

I don't get it., I learned bhop/strafe jumping in a matter of minutes or hours. It's not hard, especially if reflex is gonna feature some tutorials like say a view of the player moving his mouse and pressing his keys while the game shows the response to that or something like that.

It is hard for a lot of gamers. Just because you did does not mean it is easy.

Something that I like is autohop in wsw. If you use it, you can't more as well as a player that can move using jump but does not use it - it makes it easy to start and bridges the gap to being able to move semi-properly for 90% of players.

It gives a situation where everyone can move okishly rather than the alternative where players struggle to simply move around the map.

And if you don't use autohop you can move better/do stairs better.

Dunno, the technique can be explained like this:

1. move forward and start jumping.
2. now jump so you never spend time on the floor either by releasing and holding your jump in the air before you land or timing it well on landing
3. now instead of pressing just forward, alternate left and right strafe every other jump, while keeping forward pressed
4. now on every jump veer the mouse smoothly just a little to the side you're strafing and notice you get a little more speed each time
5. to move around corners, release forward key and only press the strafe to the direction you want to move towards while also moving your mouse to that direction

Show video, learn in 5 minutes

The hardest part for me was to get the rhythm down.

Problems arise if people don't want to read or spend any time learning. The concept is not tricky imo, or then I'm iq 200 superman (I doubt).


edit: you could visualize this from the top down by adding the vector components as some kind of arrows, and how strafe jumping is just an intentionally bugged vector addition.

Yes, and every trick and element of movement, be it air control, wallhugging, strafe jumping, etc, should be included in a tutorial mode of some kind. Preferably so that you can see what an experienced player does on his mouse and keyboard first and you could then try it yourself on practise levels of increasing difficulty.

It's strange how the gaming community has changed.

I think I remember at some point, id software wanted to remove strafe jumping from Q3 and there was a huge outcry. There were no arguments for its removal in the name of noob-friendlyness.

I don't know the sales figures for Q3, but I'd be surprised if it was under a quarter million. Those kind of sales would keep our teams wages paid for over 20 years.

Do people actually consider Quake 3 to have been unsuccessful? And because it was too hard? Because it had strafe jumping? Or is this a mentality we only apply to games now?

At some point, none of us had been exposed to bunny hopping, double jumping or strafe jumping... yet here we are.

Anyway, ill considered, sleep deprived musings aside:

Someone who has never played a multiplayer FPS has probably never heard of the concept, and therefore, will be at a huge disadvantage to other players who are more adept at it.

That's the way games of skill work -- the less experienced and talented players lose, usually by a margin directly related to the gap in skill.

All we have to do is make sure they have heard of it (and have had a low pressure chance to practice it) by the time they go online.

After that, it's up to them.

Don't worry, there will be plenty of stuff to do in game that is far less demanding on players -- but it's flawed to bring the skill ceiling of the entire game down just to accommodate them.

In fact, having a quick look over the list of proposed game modes, there is probably something here for everyone's tastes -- from mindless fragging, to movement, to high level competitive modes.

you've probably got everything covered and thought of everything more than once, since it's your job and you're spending more time on the project than any of the forum posters here.

i'm also really inclined to trust your design decisions, you being involved with cpm for a long time.

however, in this comment tree i am replying to right now, the underlying themes seems to be "getting new players in"/"easy to learn,difficult to master"/"making the game appealing to beginners" and the likes.

these, what might be considered design flaws, always quickly come up, when talking about arena type shooters, and why quakelive or cpm have such a small player base:
the games are simply too hard.

imo, - and this has probably been covered alot, but discussions about getting players into a game always seem to ignore this - the games arent too hard.

infact, you get better at the games REALLY REALLY fast. but thats not something people are used to who come from other games or fps. and generally, all non-arena fps are this way: you always have the small chance to get a kill.

in quake/cpm/ut: if you play the game regularly for even one week(lets say duel), and then convince your friends to play against you, you will absolutely destroy them. they have no chance, because one week makes such a huge difference.
the same situation in counter-strike might not make the one-week-advantage so apparent.

i wonder what would happen if the game were advertised in a way that clearly said, "if you start playing this game, you will lose... probably hard, and alot".

i mean, the past few years have shown, that clearly people dont get frustrated with hard games. sc2 is hard, dota2 is hard.
the same principles apply there. one-week sc2 over your friends, and you will destroy them in 1v1. dota2 has the advantage that after the first week of playing, you can explain your friends seemingly everything, even tho you basically know nothing. and besides that, you're playing with them.

my overall point beeing: i fear of games getting dumbed down :D

ok, that is all, /imo

Well, I hope I've thought of everything but it's always worth reading threads like this, just in case I haven't. It's also a good feeling to see these kinds of comments and think "The community agrees that this is a problem and I already have a solution I feel confident in".

I'm actually pretty excited about the designs I've got for these issues but as usual, they're secret for now or they'll end up in someone else's game before they end up in ours.

Anyway, there won't be any dumbing down of the game, because the logic behind it is flawed. In reality, any game is only as difficult as your opponent.

there is nothing hard about quake.

grab a gun laying on the ground and shoot up enemies. quake being hard is not the problem. It's actually very fun to play at skill levels where people have no idea what strafe jumping is and all that stuff.

I have played quake2/3/ut99 for many years with my classmates without knowing jack shit about all the advanced movement and in depth config adjustments.

How many noobs do you think play quake?

where did i say that quake was too hard?

quakelive or cpm have such a small player base:
the games are simply too hard.

right there.

wow. not only took the quote out of context, but didnt even bother to quote the whole sentence...

plz read the sentence again, and then quote the following paragraph aswell.

yawn nope, it's not out of context and your whole post was along those lines.

last reply from me.

the sentence you quoted, i was saying that the games being to hard is what always comes up in discussions on the topic.

in the following sentence, i say that "imo, the games aren't too hard".

pointless argueing with you tho. learn to quote

alright, it was poor quoting on my behalf but I have a problem with your post in general.

I feel you could only market a game with: "if you start playing this game, you will lose... probably hard, and alot" for hard single player games. For multiplayer it is like saying "there are no players of entry skill level and if you want to play our game you would have to dump in a lot of time and effort to find a suitable match". That surely is broken concept where a game has only skilled players and is inaccessible to newbies.

In your example of sc2, once you beat the campaign or the computer on a scenario game you are ready to take on bronze players who care not much for competition and play very casually and you could play a level game with them. I agree if you put in one week of sc2 with proper practice and you will bash those same players that have played for many months and you will face silver league scrubs.

You should always be able to find players of your skill level and never have to prepare to lose a lot. If the game has no more entry level players then it will stop attracting more players no matter how you market it.

Difficult to master is a good thing. It gives players a way to improve and things to achieve. It helps to create distinction among players, with the higher skill being the best blend of movement, aim and strategy.

If you dumb down movement, that just becomes aim and strategy. If you remove items, that becomes mostly aim. If you throw some randomness in to the weapons, that becomes CoD =P

I know where you're coming from though and I believe the problem isn't necessarily with the gameplay, but the scene. New players coming in to CPMA are usually confronted with players who have mastered the movement and it is a long path to that point.

But getting the basics down shouldn't take an experienced FPS player more than a night. With proper matchmaking, those new players will be pitched against players with a similar level of skill. Even if they are slightly better, it's an easily achievable goal to catch up.

This should massively reduce the instant burnout that comes with jumping on a server and thinking "I need to be that good to even play. That will take years. This game sucks".

I hear you. I don't have a problem with mastering the skill. The problem for me is that it takes an incredible amount of work in terms of concentration to keep the flow and speed up. Personally I can live with this for dueling, but it becomes exhausting and going 'fuck it' and play something less demanding instead after a while.

As for the skill gap, personally I don't care too much about it. But for new players and even old vq3 players just wanting a fun CA match you have people going at 200mph around the maps and others struggling to make a decent run from a to b without jumping into a wall. With vq3 this gap is less apparent because of the reasons you mentioned.

So my fear is that you will end up with a community the size of cpm. But if having a popular game is not your objective then there is no need to compromise. Otherwise I hope the planned game modes will accommodate the now casual players like myself.

The problem for me is that it takes an incredible amount of work in terms of concentration to keep the flow and speed up.

Hm? I don't need to think at all to move at decent speed. Obviously I'll go much faster than newbies and a lot slower than good players, but I also aim much better than newbies and much worse than good players. It's just a matter of practice and if the game has decent matchmaking, people won't have to take on someone with years and years of practice their first game.

I've heard the "Oh if you make it too much like CPMA (or any other game) then you'll only have a community that size" argument a few times now, but I struggle to believe it.

CPMA is a mod for a 10 year old game. There hasn't been anything particularly newsworthy about CPMA -- or any Quake -- for 7 years.

Most teenagers have probably never played Quake and if they have, it was probably Q4, which I don't think anyone would argue was the strongest in the series.

Quake-like games have been abandoned by players because they've been abandoned by the developers and abandoned by the press.

Reflex is a new IP, targeting a niche that has been abandoned, developed as a commercial project, with modern tech, art and features. It's being developed independently. Because of this, across the broader gaming sites, we'll probably see more coverage in a month than Quake has seen in years.

Even if we did absolutely nothing to retain the new players, we'd have to gain some fans who had simply never been exposed to gameplay like that before and fell in love.

Fortunately, we are doing things to make those players stick around.

Anyway, that big 3AM rant aside -- we're not really aiming to make some CoD killer that allows us to roll around in piles of cash until the day we drop dead.

We're targeting a niche -- one that has been neglected for too long. One that, as gamers, we're a part of. We're okay with doing that.

Well you have had input now from a few cpm players now and they seem to love it, which makes it hard for me to believe it will not just be some of the cpm community end up playing it. Reason being is because they love the hardcore nature of cpm type games which all have small communities.

Casuals should like it too since they are the ones ending up as the vast majority of the community and fans of the pro players. Its the casuals that carry a game. Just look at painkiller and q4, it was only the pro's that played it. Remember the old saying: "all 17 members of the painkiller community".

I am just playing devils advocate and fully support what you guys are doing. You sure are targeting the toughest audience and I hope your prediction that new players will be drawn to classic deathmatch arena shooter and they will pursue to get good at the game.

Just don't forget about us noobs and casuals that want a new arena shooter too! And it won't do anyone any good if we where to abandon the game after two weeks because we can't frag anyone or people like me will find it too hardcore and intensive for casual play.

Again I'm not expecting that you haven't heard these argument before, but perhaps there is some merit too them? Still hope that I am wrong. And yes I should actually just reserve judgement until I play/see it. Which Ill do from now :)

So gl&hf, can't wait to see the updates!

Just don't forget about us noobs and casuals that want a new arena shooter too!

We won't -- some quite large chunks of development (and unfortunately much of what we're keeping quiet about) is being aimed at noobs and casuals. We want there to be much more to do in-game than "jump on a server to play 1v1 against the best player on it".

I've also got a small group of playtesters lined up who have never played a Quake game at all. I'll be watching these ultra-noobs every move to make sure there is a fun, interesting progression from that level of noobness to "competent in a duel".

You sure are targeting the toughest audience

That's one of the reasons we've been avoiding any real announcement on ESR just yet ;). This is the meeting place for that tough crowd and we wanted a little more to show before we approached them.

After all, if you only look at what we've shown publicly, we're 90% talk. I'm a cynical gamer too, so I'd certainly want to see more before endorsing a new game.

Fortunately, we're pretty close to having a little more art to show and some (ugly, minimal) gameplay we can put in a video to prove the project actually exists.

I just hope you always keep in mind that competitive features and gameplay designed with competition in mind does not take anything away from casuals playing it. Clear hud, graphics where visibility is a factor, balanced weapons, etc only HELP. Skill should also be rewarded and the more "dynamic range", if you will, there is to the game the better.

I'm just worried that because there's more than 1 element to get good at, all but the hardcore start whining and demanding dumbing down, or just ignore games like this (and cpm). Dunno. Ramble ramble.

Of course. We're still ultimately designing for high end play, we're just also adding options for less intensive play and features to help casual players get familiar with the game.

Just to be clear: We will not be dumbing down gameplay, at all, for any players, for any reason.

If a player has the skill to dominate another player by 50 frags then that is the skill difference. We're not going to make that kind of margin impossible just because someone might get their feelings hurt.

We're simply going to give casual players the knowledge and matchmaking they need to avoid those kinds of games.

If that happens then our matchmaking is broken and will be fixed ;)

\o/ newborn

\o/ drex

You're actually (I think) still responsible for my favorite GTV quote. During the finals of an Australian competition, someone asked what the winner was playing for and the response was "A PACK OF DURRIES".

Not only did this demonstrate a masterful grasp of Aussie slang, but a deep understanding of our very culture ;)

haha i dated an aussie girl for a few years so ye a picked a few things up :)

I think there's a problem with both the gameplay of Quake and the Quake related programs themselves. Before I explain, let's kick this post into story-time: I was a Halo player. I had no idea Quake was a video-game, and the only reason I stumbled across it was because I was specifically looking for a Halo-esque game to replace Halo (because Halo was on the road to becoming Call of Duty in space at this time, and I don't enjoy that sort of game-play).

So I started playing Quake Live in 2011—with a ball mouse and a CRT set to 60Hz. I didn't know about strafe-jumping, I didn't know items spawned at regular intervals after picking them up, and I didn't even know the LG was range-limited; I was trying to shaft people from across the map! I had no idea what I was doing, and I probably went for months without a win, but I continued to play. I was amazed by the things other players could do, and I wanted to be able to do that too. I wanted to be able to do better things.

Old players point at Quake's declining popularity and claim that "Quake's too hard for this generation of FPS players. They get destroyed in one match and never return!" This is largely nonsense, because new players are "destroyed" in any game they begin playing. No game would be popular if new players didn't mind a stomping. We can see though, that popular games do exist! What's more, popular games are incredibly challenging.

Quake Live's not challenging though, it's unfair. Unfair is how new players see it, and it is, don't even attempt to deny it. Firstly there's custom configurations, which new players don't even know exist. When I was shown a .cfg I found its contents extremely daunting—I had to learn a new language just to play this game at an optimal state, I thought. Lower the subdivisions and now more shots seem possible! Turn head-bobbing and recoil off and aiming is easier! Time-nudge helps tremendously of course, and being able to force teammates' models to something other than Keel is a godsend. When I made my first .cfg I was paranoid—do I have all the options set to optimal? Is there an option I don't know about? What are the other players using? I still have a little bit of this paranoia, and I think everyone in the Quake community does too. This isn't beneficial to the game, it's detrimental to its growth. If you tell a new player "before you begin playing you have to learn about configurations, then configure your own game, and then learn how to play the game" most players will say "screw it, I'm going back to whatever it was that I was playing".

It's even worse in older games like QW—the crosshair isn't even aligned properly, you have to do it manually, but before you can do that you have to learn how to do that! Then I discover no one idles on the servers, they're idling in something called IRC. I don't know what that is, but if I want to play I have to learn about it. I never did, thus I don't play QW or even CPMA (because all the cvars are apparently different from QL). I'm interested in these games, but I don't really want to read technical-manuals for hours before even feeling remotely comfortable in-game. No one does. The old players have grown up with this, it's been a gradual shift, and so they don't notice it as a barrier, but that's exactly what it is. A barrier that prevents all but the most motivated players from ever actually learning how to play.

Let's suppose a motivated player did get through all this gunk to be on a level playing field with the already established player-base. Now he has to learn how to actually play the game, through trial-and-error, because the game teaches nothing. If he's lucky he'll pick up a mentor, but that's extremely unlikely, because the community doesn't seem capable of being nice to one another yet alone teach! Some players even think it's impossible to teach, so they won't help, but that's yet more nonsense. There's standard openings in each map, and from there the game evolves logically. I mean, are you really going to go up the jump-pad and grab YA and PG after spawning at LG on ZTN? Or are you really going to charge your opponent when you're out of control with one YA when he's stacked? New players do (I did), because they don't know how to play. I can think of so many HUD features that could teach players how to play duel whilst they play! There's this notation that it can't be taught, so it's not, and players in 2013 have to start from square-one, which resides in 1999. Reflex should have a training mode, not tutorials, a training mode with special features designed to teach players what to do in certain situations.

All these players that could be playing Quake aren't playing because it's so hard to get into, and then harder to understand what you should be doing in-game. Let me reiterate that: the challenge of Quake isn't the problem. The problem is that starting Quake and knowing what to do is a challenge. This simply should not be. I'm even amazed old Quake 3 players do not understand the basics of duel.

Duel itself is another problem because it's not that deep. There is only one viable strategy, and how well a player executes it is wrongly perceived as different strategies. If you're making a new duel game I'd like it to have more depth than what current Quake Live does, which is basically none (I don't know much about CPMA, so no comment). And if you want lots of new players, as in this generation, you're going to have to jump another big hurdle: duelling in first-person shooters is seen as a joke by the majority, because all the popular first-person shooters are designed as team-games.

Players like challenges when they can understand them.

Your input is very interesting, my main argument with it would be that in QL most settings are easily changeable through the menu settings and even with default settings (minus keys and mouse sens) most good players would be able to play at 90% of their skill level with no problem, purely because quake is about items and position, over aim (well if you can't aim okish, which is fine on default settings)

Setting new players up with crummy configurations sets them off on the wrong foot from the start, because the established players have optimized configurations—and that makes it just that much harder for them. Sure, good players can play good regardless of .cfg, but that's not the point.

New players aren't likely to even tinker with the options unless they're having frame-rate problems, so they'll be at this disadvantage till someone shows them how Quake Live should be configured.

They're easily changeable via the menu, because it's expected of players to change them. If I'm told I'd have a better experience if I changed settings from the default I'd ask why are they then the default? Seems like nonsense to me.

Duel itself is another problem because it's not that deep. There is only one viable strategy, and how well a player executes it is wrongly perceived as different strategies.

Shaking my head.

In disagreement or... ?

I actually just skimmed over what he wrote there, but yeah totally wrong. Obviously not a dueler.

I wonder what cypher, rapha and co. have been doing the last 10 years...

Executing!

He's right though - there is little to no strategic depth. The only winning strategy is to cycle items. There is plenty of tactical variance in how you achieve or execute it, but everyone is still more or less trying to do the same thing.

Shaking my head.

Ok then - explain to me the multiple strategies I need to be on the look out for.

There are plenty of tips out there you can research to help you improve in duel, since cycling items as your only strategy won't even help you past mediocrity.

Nice dodge!

What I was looking for was concrete strategic differences - in Starcraft the obvious example is fast expand vs proxy rush. You simply don't get this diversity and depth of approaches before the game has even started. The optimum strategy is always to control items, with some difference in tactics (ie, being more +back/+forward).

First, don't compare FPS to RTS. Second, learn to play Quake and you will learn the various strategies it requires to play at a decent level. If you want to cling to an ignorant opinion, it's your own fault.

L2p and an ad hominem; nice one! I missed the part where you illustrated the strategic diversity of quake 1v1 though... Btw - I've played quake games (1v1 exclusively) for nearly 10 years - though I've moved onto different games now - every quake like is essentially the same and it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

Your flawed arguments don't interest me, which is why I don't explain pages upon pages of diversity in the strategies employed in duel. By the way, every RTS is essentially the same and it doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.

I have a feeling you confound tactics (short term, specific aim), of which there are many options and can largely be analogized as execution and strategy, which involves long term goals. Quake, by design, has only 1 optimum strategy - to control items and deny them from your opponent, thus being able to win any head to head confrontation, assuming you don't fail in your execution and tactics - which is where the diversity and options are in quake.

And no, rts's have changed quite significantly, compare wc2 to wc3 for instance, scbw to sc2. With fast paced fps however, not a huge amount has changed from quake1 to quake3 (and all the derivatives) and now reflex is basicly just a cpm clone...

Tactics are part of strategy.You are entitled to believe what you want.

"Strategy"

a plan...

It's thought on the fly. Strategy plays a very minor role in Quake 1v1.

Played Quake for 10 years as a dueller exclusively and you're still a nobody? Definitely lacking in depth.

Comon, is it really necessary to get so defensive over a bit of gameplay analysis... Quake has a very simple design, is it really that controversial that it has limitations? I know Quakers like to puff up the game's (and by proxy, it's players) credentials but while quake excels in some areas, it's quite weak in others - and that's fine because that way, it's strengths are very strong and you dont dilute the game - there are many examples of games that try to be too much and suffer for it.

All the best games have a simple design. That's what makes them great. It's the depth and skill ceiling that makes a game even better and a game worthy of being an eSport. The simple concept of Starcraft is to produce more resources than your enemy and defeat them. Just because you brought out "strategy" lingo, doesn't make the basic design premise of Starcraft any more advanced.

Quake doesn't have "strategies", or fun little descriptions for silly ideas, because the game is done on the fly based on the current situation. Aside from the initial spawn and grab of the main powerups, anything after that is decided and adapted within milliseconds. The depth comes from this split second necessity.

What I said was meant to be a diss, yes, but it also proves something, doesn't it? If the game was so simple and lacks the depth you claim it does, why is Quake so difficult to master? Why do people get scared of Quake? Why is Quake easily, and with good reason, hailed as the best competitive FPS game ever? Clearly, it isn't because it has no depth. No, it's because the premise and game design is simple, as you said, but also has an unrivalled skill ceiling filled with complex gameplay mechanics that are required to be done within less than a second. There is no other game that requires that level of quick thinking, and especially, foresight.

Starcraft's depth comes from it's choices, where Quake may not have as many choices (comparing the two is idiotic but for the sake of argument, I'll acquiesce), it makes up for requiring the user to be skilled in other areas. A Quake player needs to have an amazing understanding of movement mechanics, a Starcraft player does not. A Quake player needs to have an amazing conception of time, a Starcraft player does not. A Quake player needs to have an amazing ability to aim and hit shots that are pixel sized, a Starcraft player does not. There are others but again, comparing the two is dumb in the first place.

But anyways, long story short, if you've been duelling for 10 years in Quake and are still an absolute nobody, this has nothing to do with being hostile, this has to do with you being an absolute git and not realizing that the depth of Quake is why you will always be a nobody.

tl;dr thelawenforcer is bad at Quake because he's too ignorant to realize depth is why he sucks at it. Comparing SC to Quake is retarded and people who do that are retarded. I love Quake.

I never said arena 1v1 had no depth, nice strawman though. In fact, I've said all along that there is lots of tactical depth. I was simply defending op's statement, for which he got jumped upon by indignant Quakers. Your post essentially agrees with his and my statements, yet you still feel the need to attack me.

Btw, when I say quake games, I mean all of them and their derivatives, not just ql/vq3- in fact most of my time was spent playing warsow, and while I was never the absolute best, I was able to compete at the top of the scene when I had more time and motivation to play.

My rts:fps comparison was to illustrate a point, rather than a hard comparison..... Also, macro is just one strategy(and not necessarily the best one) , not the aim of the game... Which is entirely the point I was trying to make.

I am totally and utterly not agreeing with you as I feel, and reiterated in my statement, that Quake has a huge amount of strategic depth. However, it isn't as evident in slower paced RTS games due to the split second nature of Quake. Also, I wasn't talking about just QL/VQ3, because any experience in Quake games results in a lot of the same mechanical skill required for all of them and their derivatives. But lets be honest, who gives a flying fuck about their derivatives. Warsow? Really? I'm not going to say Warsow is some talentless, skill-deprived, cesspool of Quake rejects but comon... being at the top of Warsow is like saying you beat your friends at Street Fighter when you got together one weekend. The pool is small and nobody gives a fuck.

Your "point" is not magically made when comparing two totally and extremely incomparable types of games. Using an idiotic argument to prove something doesn't just prove it because you reached for it and are struggling to somehow connect the dots for us Quake peasants.

>I never said arena 1v1 had no depth

Then there was this post.

>He's right though - there is little to no strategic depth. The only winning strategy is to cycle items. There is plenty of tactical variance in how you achieve or execute it, but everyone is still more or less trying to do the same thing.

Also, I'm not ENGRISH LERNED enough to throw out awesome retorts like NICE STRAWMAN, and GG AD HOMINEM, cause frankly, I don't give a shit.

I've said all along that there is lots of tactical depth...But... Strategy /= tactics. That is what I've been saying all along. If you can't understand that, then yes, I guess you do need to brush up on your English.

It really depends on where you draw the line between tactics and strategy. For instance, personally I'd consider something like "I know my lg is strong and my opponent's lg isn't, so I'm going to try to mainly take lg v lg fights" strategy and then the ways you achieve that tactics and your decisions, aim and dodging within the fights execution. You seem to disagree and consider the first part tactics and the other parts execution. Even then -- using my definitions -- you could argue the strategy in Quake dueling isn't all that deep, but definitely deeper than cycle items = win game.

Sure you can come up with many 'strategies' except the fact that cycling items is the only viable one unless your opponent is like a league lower.

I mean, yeah players incorporate traps / positioning / preferences into their styles but it's never the dominant factor. I don't think it works like this: ''ok, I'll give up the red for a great position which will give me an advantage''. It almost always turns out that yeah you can get some extra damage but it isn't enough.
I can think of players like killsen who sometimes tried to base their game on superior aiming/positioning but in the end it didn't work out too good for them.

I think the weapons are too weak for that kind of variations in gameplay.
In the end it's not gamebreaking.

You're right about some things.

Fortunately, I've already got 10+ pages of design documents aiming to fix exactly these problems.

Unfortunately, all of it is secret for now so there's not much I can say besides "I agree and we intend to fix it".

Also, this might seem a little shameless but: If you want to see these issues addressed, when our Kickstarter launches, dig deep and tell absolutely everyone you know about the project.

The truth is, there's a lot of development work involved in fixing this and the less money we have, the more we'll have to cut from it to get the game out the door.

But if someone gave me a million dollars right now, we would have a sub-team dedicated entirely to working on these problems.

Well when it's cleared in my account, we'll all quit our day jobs and start pawing through portfolios to double our team size.

aren't playing because it's so hard to get into

exactly the reason I will never play a MOBA.

So many WTF statements. I don't know if it's bad sentence phrasing, or just being stupid.

"What's more, popular games are incredibly challenging."

No, they're not (generally).

"This is largely nonsense, because new players are "destroyed" in any game they begin playing."

No, because COD.

"Quake Live's not challenging though"

.... right.

"Let's suppose a motivated player did get through all this gunk to be on a level playing field with the already established player-base."

There is more video tutorials, guides, helpful players, websites, forums and in-game customizations than there ever was in quake3 days. New players I see in servers can rocket jump, switch weapons fairly well and generally have a good go at it.

When I first starting playing Q3 in 2000 there was hardly any of that stuff. I didn't learn to rocket jump until months later, and I remained a noob for some years (partly because I was like ... 11 years old or something when I started). The point still remains though - it's far easier to get into quake these days.

"because the game teaches nothing."

QL practice levels - strafe jumping, rocket jumping. Very helpful manual and forums. That statement is also so wrong for one big reason: the game itself shouldn't 'teach' you how to play. You need to do that on your own. I've seen brand new QL-only players pick up dueling and get to Division 1 level in under a year. On their own.

"Duel itself is another problem because it's not that deep."

Do I need to say anything about that?

This whole post reeks of what's wrong with the masses of gamers today.

I do appreciate you posting your thoughts, however for me it only confirms my point of view on popular gaming.

I agree to zlr on most of his points, but still appreciate your interesting view on shooters.

do I have all the options set to optimal?

There is only one viable strategy

The interesting thing about the Quake series is how diverse are the ways to play it.

If you really tried to learn what settings do other players use, you would find that the configurations of top tier players are extremely different. Sometimes it's hard to believe the game uses the same engine when you see someone else's graphics and it's often impossible to play (and even to move around the map) on someone else's controls and HUD.

There's also no single winning strategy. The playing styles in QL (and previously in VQ3) differ significantly. The styles in CPM can be completely different.

Thus, while you can still be a copycat, to learn to play Quake you have to learn all the possibilities and to design your own set of settings and your own strategy. Even the items you take on each map are not set in stone (especially in CPM). So, you need patience.

can't wait to see in game video ;<

You should donate on www.reflexfps.net then. All those people have. Otherwise, hopefully I'll get a chance to put out a video before Christmas.

It's not going to be much to look at but at this stage I think people just want to know that it actually exists.

will consider that :)

I gathered some informations about Reflex from thread, twitter, facebook etc, so currently _probably_ things:

- new engine from scratch
- closed source
- competitive
- air control confirmed (already in game)
- strafe jumps confirmed (already in game)
- fast
- optimized
- combines modern tech with the speed and precision of 90s shooters
- smooth, fluid, high fps etc etc.
- only one gameplay physics
- cpma & QL best things combined/balanced
- business model: buy and play forever
- kickstarter / steam greenlight will happen
- matchmaking
- gamemodes: competitive modes (1v1, TDM, CTF, DOM) but also casual modes like midair etc.
- game from cpma lovers
- concept art / video with movement this year
- AUS/EU/US servers for testing
- hitboxes are capsule shaped. If you look carefully at the hostile concept, you'll see he's been designed around that shape.
- optimized for low latency too
- The dedicated server binaries will be freely available to anyone who wants to run a server
- plenty of stuff to do in game ;d
- #reflex or #promode.au on QuakeNet
- zhu enemy model

seems legit.

You forgot hats (including weapon hats and hat hats).

What about jimmy hats?

in game trading cards! imagine this, pro players cards! everybody will buy cooller portrait and emblem for rocket launcher ;]]]

you really should consider adding weapon/character skins to the game's business model later on. it seems like such a superficial thing that nobody would care about, but the fact of the matter is that weapon skins in cs:go are what injected new life into the presumed dead cs franchise.

cs:go's key microtransactions are literally what funded the $250,000 prize pool of dreamhack winter, making it the biggest and most watched cs tournament of all time. so there's an example of the casual base of the game immensely helping the developement of the competitive scene.

just something to keep in mind. for now, finish the actual game first. =)

game from cpma designers, i think it is

hmm... maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge_ProMode_Arena

Concept:
Richard "Hoony" Sandlant

Gameplay design leads:
Andrew "revelation" Wise
Richard "Swelt" Jacques
Adam "ix" Sibson

Programming – CPMA lead:
Kevin "arQon" Blenkinsopp

Programming – CPM:
Jens "Khaile" Bergensten
Bartlomiej "HighlandeR" Rychtarski
Andrew "D!ABLO" Ryder

Art / modeling lead:
Christopher "4nT1" Combe

"highlander" loled

I was part of the CPMA development team for 8 years or so. I'm in the credits as "Operations and Support". I ended up doing more than that, but that was my role when we last updated the credits ;)

Also, those Wikipedia credits are pretty out of date also. I'm not actually sure if anyone below arQon has a single line of code in the current CPMA.

Myself and our artist (Electro) were also both involved in the PMX project (him more than I).

Sure is.

Also me at 7:45 and 9:40 showing my distaste for anyone touching my Quads. And at 11:30 and 12:52 demonstrating that once upon a time, I could actually aim and avoid taking every rocket to the face.

Thanks for the link, I'd forgotten all about that movie. I hope when people are playing Reflex I have enough free time to get good again.

Even if I'm not, you can brag to all your friends that you completely shut down one of the developers in their own game.

Fun fact: jens, one of the early cpm programmers, is now lead on MInecraft.

Thanks for caring about the community Newborn. It is appreciated big time!!! I wish you and the project well and can't wait to see/read/hear more. I will idle the IRC channel and support the project any way I can, I even plan to donate when my money isn't so tight. Thanks for all the updates and keep up the good work.

Newborn > 2GD :P

Newborn is 2gd reborn?

just moved the words around a bit nothing to explain

<stillborn joke goes here>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yUZJZC2V40

\m/

AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAA

I was kind of wondering which joke would get made first, Stillborn or Gag Reflex.

no doubt that leech will try & weasel his way in near kickstarter time to steal credit + ££

Well I've been a part of the community for a long time so I'm just trying to treat them as I wanted to be treated. As much as I can at least -- there's certain things that are just not ready to be shown or talked about, as much as we'd love to.

I will warn you that I'll probably get a bit quieter at times. There's game development to do, answering all these questions is a huge time sink and if I don't get more than 4 hours sleep soon, I won't live long enough to see the game released ;)

ID developers are not free to say anything they want, that's not a surprise I think

This is true -- I'm allowed to say "fuck" without worrying about my job.

I'm also not under any kind of NDA. In fact, neither is anyone involved. We're just asking people nicely not to leak things which seems to be working surprisingly well so far. We'll release it as soon as it's ready anyway.

You are such a cunt :D
Impressive \o/
Go play Quake 3 on LAN with mods and custom maps.

He tells you to go back to Quake 3, you said you will, then say for him to not follow to ruin your NEW game?

Someone's not so good with time.

Also, there's a huge difference between how much information id software, which is owned by Zenimax, can say about things compared to a small indie project that isn't limited by such things.

The comparison and call out is retarded.

Comparing id from 20 years ago and now...

Keep going. Eventually, everyone on ESR will know you're an idiot.

lol jk, we all know already.

SyncError is idling in our channel and he's welcome there. Without id Software and Quake, this little scene of ours never would have existed. We've also got contributors to Reborn and Xonotic watching us.

He's also welcome to report back to his Zenimax overlords. We're not really concerned with competitors "stealing" our ideas since that should ultimately be good for the entire scene. The only catch (and the reason we're staying quiet about some things, especially new things) is that we'd rather see our ideas in our game first, not someone else's.

Well said!

Keeping Syncerror in your channel is a mistake. It's not him you should be concerned about, but his friends who are there taking notes for him. You should make that channel private till gameday.

Keeping everything secret doesn't sound like as much fun. Besides, if idsoft needs to spy on indie studios and steal their ideas to make a good game, we have an ever growing group of people to laugh at them for it.

Edit: I said hello to them in the IRC channel. They didn't respond.

hahah - you think I have friends. hahahahaha

"Those guys are not my friends, they are my intern slaves -- Peasant 1 and Peasant 2"

;)

We have some plans for detecting and punishing cheaters, but they're still unconfirmed and therefore secret.

Should do it like Max Payne, don't ban the cheaters but just force them to play other cheaters.

That's like...



HELL ON EARTH ONLINE!
Perfect master plan!

So in fact you plan to "steal" QL's userbase? As even if you manage to convince everyone in cpma/xonotic/warsow to switch to your game, you'd end up with less than 100 active players. GL with that, honestly.

What makes you think that the only players we could possibly have are the ones from those games?

There's more gamers today than there ever has been. Just because a few games based on 10 year old tech failed to grab them, doesn't mean it's impossible to.

What makes you think that the only players we could possibly have are the ones from those games?

Sadly that kind of hardcore arena fps has a very limited fanbase nowadays, which is basically spread over those four games. If you want to reach a broader playerbase, you'll have to sacrifice certain hardcore aspects of your game. Shootmania is a "good" example of that.

Read the whole thread, he answered to that kind of question already, you can also use key words and "ctrl + f" to quickly check if some aspects have been discussed already.