Quake3World

http://forums.ravensoft.com/ib/ikonboar ... 10;t=34047

wtf?

Wondered why i was so good with rail suddenly..

Then again, ive noticed with the LG that the hitboxes are a bit fuxored.. :-|

I'm fairly decent witha Q3 rail and I noticed that I was getting unusually high accuracy too, I thought it was probably the hitboxes. It'll probably be fixed along with a shitload of other things in the first patch if there's enough uproar about it.

lg seems to be a bit off indeed

[edit] didnt know about player id btw. pretty cool

Yeah, I can lob rails from across the map and nail people without even zooming.

Interesting. Altering the size of the hitbox will have a knock-on effect on all other weapons too. Machinegun spread would have to be tightened, for one. Hyperblaster becomes much less effective, too.

DooMer wrote:Yeah, I can lob rails from across the map and nail people without even zooming.

ive tried zooming a total of 3 times. it annoyed the fuck outta me so i never zoom

hardly ever zoomed in q3 either for that matter. but thats beside the point

The railgun is just fucked. sigh. I wish it'd never been introduced at 100 damage, but people are used to the insanity now. The damage was compounded when id choose to add health and armor bleed.

Frantic 12+ player ctf matches on pubs are impossible, you get railed by three people just trying to cross the middle, and god forbid they have multiple defenders in the flag room.

I actually spent a lot of time playing a Q3 mod that had a 'rail' that did '45' damage (the health total was higher, so it did 'more' damage, but the actual percentage of total health dropped was 45 at normal levels). No one noticed or complained. And I still hated it

There's just something wrong with a weapon that can inflict lethal damage at all ranges. I see people using it over the shotgun at close range. I see some people who don't even bother switching when you get close. Why should they? One hit either kills or cripples. It's wayyy harder to score a 100 damage hit with either the rl or the shotgun, and neither of those weapons can deal that much damage across the entire map, off bounce pads, down long hallways, etc. The rapidfire weapons have it even worse - they take time to deal their damage, and they rarely deal more than a fraction of their potential damage.

But anyway. Railgun rants aside, I agree, changing the hitbox to a 'matching' size would have an effect on the other weapons. However, most of the other weapons are better at medium or close range, where its arguably easier to score hits anyway. The hitbox issue for the rail is particularly pressing because of the twin factors of low armor totals and low combined health/armor due to bleeding from above 100. EASY crippling shots is just sick, and 40%+ accuracy from 3-4 people on both teams creates a very, very un-fun environment to play in.

...i don't get it. seems exactly the same as q3 to me. only now instead of choosing the tiny skeleton, or the giant tankjr, you only get to pick visor/sarge. but the box didn't change in q3 depending on who you picked. you can shoot big open spaces around the skellie and still hit him, too.

Looks fairly standard

akiraZ wrote:...i don't get it. seems exactly the same as q3 to me. only now instead of choosing the tiny skeleton, or the giant tankjr, you only get to pick visor/sarge. but the box didn't change in q3 depending on who you picked. you can shoot big open spaces around the skellie and still hit him, too.

It's bigger. I would estimate by 33%

you sure that what's happening is the scan box for the player's name is larger then q3 and not the hitbox itself .

those pics may be deceiving you ..i would like to see a pic of him railing from that location.

We’re touching on many issues in this thread and I’d like to air out my opinion on some of them. CTF has taken many steps backwards over the years and the crux of the problem is no grapple. If you could actually maneuver around the map (ala grapple), the rail wouldn’t be as big of a problem as it has become. Take the map Speed Trap for example. There’s a wide-open middle with many opportunities to get hit before you even step foot into the enemy base. Once you finally get in, you have to traverse a very long way to get the flag where you’re a sitting duck all the while. Suppose you get lucky and even kill one or two enemies and grab the flag – they’re just going to respawn in base, grab a rail, and finish you off.

I’ve been playing several organized CTF scrimmages lately, and CTF feels so much like team DM. Over half the game is myself versus an opponent while we strafe randomly back and forth in the middle waiting to see who gets their first one or two rail shots in.

I have many demos from Q2CTF where I couldn’t care less about DMing with the opponent because I was worried about getting and capping the flag. It wasn’t uncommon for me not to so much as fire a shot from flag room to flag room – the objective was to cap the flag. Now, I have to deal with DM or I’ll be lucky to walk into the enemy base with 10 health otherwise.

It’s so sad that CTF has been reduced to Team DM like it has. I remember one scrimmage recently where the other team hadn’t even grabbed our flag once by the halfway point in the match. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just forgot to. QWCTF and Q2CTF was so much fun with a wide range of different teams and clans of varying skill levels. Now, there are only a handful of teams it seems who are all ridiculously good because they’ve mastered the fine art of team DM and pushed out any prospective new players or talent.

As far as the hitbox goes, I’m not as concerned about it. Many of the player models are so thin anyway, it stands to reason that the hitbox will appear bigger than it actually is. I briefly hopped on a Q3A server having played much Q4 and I thought I was railing better in Q3A, so who knows? Railing wasn’t a problem in Quake 2 CTF because there was a grapple to get around and also because the most of the maps weren’t catered to the rail as they are now.

I don't agree that the grapple solves rail problems. If anything, it amplifies them - what weapon are you going to hit a grapple monkey? Rockets? Shotgun? the rapid fire weapons (roofles)

Nope, the rail. Again.

That said, I do agree that the grapple is just plain more fun than without. I was shocked and dismayed when it wasn't in Q3ctf. I pretty much stopped playing it (and after playing Q2ctf ah... heavily. I played with Reactive in Q2ctf for years)

I think the bigger issue is the health + armor bleed, and the relatively limited armor presence on the maps. More armor/stronger armor and no bleed would help a lot.

Also, the maps play MUCH better with less people. 8 is optimal. 10 is ok. Beyond that and it just gets stupid. Throw in the rail and forget it. Its a slaughterfest. That's a problem with server admins. Most servers still have that shit ass Xaero ctf map in rotation :/

Another thing, because there is no grapple, the CTF maps are SMALL. There are ZERO epic flag runs. You get in, you pray you don't get railed, you run out, seconds later you score, or you huddle on your side of the map praying someone doesn't find you and slaughter your (at best) 130/130ish self. Usually more like 98/17 from stupid falling damage :P

Dunno. Once the SDK is released, I can put my money where my mouth is. I've got most of the changelist drafted for the first mod release, just trying to hash over some points.

Haven't decided what to do about runes/techs yet, and haven't decided about mainhand or offhand grapple.

You bring up some good points - I agree that health and armor is scarce and I'm also sick of falling 2 ft to lose 5 or 10 health. But using Q2CTF as a point of reference, the rail was never as big of an issue then as it is now because with the grapple, more emphasis was put on pursuit, instead of DM or camping the middle. Map design is a huge factor, too, and fewer maps are designed to encourage pursuit, rather camping and railing.

I'm just really disillusioned right now. I do love playing Quake 4 and really loved playing Quake 3 when it was out, but the number of people playing it isn't where I'd like it to be and the fun factor behind CTF isn't as high as it used to be. I have my doubts about the mod community saving the day, too. Using Quake 3 as an example, Threewave put out a high quality mod with grapple, superb maps, runes, and the like, probably even better than the original QWCTF and Q2CTF but no one ever played it. So, sure, a good mod will probably come out for Quake 4, but will it have an audience? Will Quake 4 as a whole even have an audience?

I just hate CounterStrike and equivalent games because they're dumbed down so much, yet I'm getting frustrated with the Quake scene because it's the other extreme - too competitive and scarce.

What mod are you working on?

clkou wrote:Will Quake 4 as a whole even have an audience?

Barely does now.. hope it picks up soon or ill be forced to uninstall.. at least with Q3 we had bots..

My definition of an epic flag run includes battling through enemies on the way back to your base. The extra enemies and need for battling other players makes it more strategic IMO. This did make it difficult in vq3's CTF, but it was still possible and challenging.

I believe the runes that came with TeamArena were specifically suited to combat those problems. If you have guard or scout and you're a good player, you have a good chance of capping when there are 12-16 people on map, if the map is suited to that many players. The doubler and ammo regen balance the offensive powerups, making any situation possible.

It sounds to me like you prefer easy captures if you can move quickly (may be misunderstanding you), but that doesn't make a very fun game of CTF in my opinion.

It is a combination of factors, for sure. I'm aiming to address as many of them as I possibly can in the mod.

Threewave was too little too late

And Capturestrike made me want to kill myself... shudder

I do agree with you in terms of the scenes. I can't stand realistic or modern style shooters, period, but I have problems with 2k4 (the community there, while decent sized, is insanely fragmented, and seriously competitive 2k4 has other issues that I don't enjoy)

On the flip side, the Q3 (and q4?) community is small, almost to the point of incestous behavior and idiocy.

Plus the average level of skill is dangerously high - this is very threatening to newbies. Imagine Joe Dood who picks up Q4 and gets online to play a match. The way the game is now, he's going to be destroyed beyond belief.

Ironic, considering that the stupid health bleed etc stuff was introduced to make it more 'friendly' to play

As far as the numbers go... I wouldn't put too much stock into it. Ignoring all the bullshit issues, at its core, Q4 is basically just Q3 with heftier system requirements. This is a pretty sad step forward (particularly since they didn't improve on all of the OTHER issues that they could have touched instead of core gameplay - if you've ever used Halo 2 matchmaking, the Q4 ingame browser is an even worse slap in the face), but that core gameplay appeals to a lot of people.

My only question mark is the SDK. How does the source look, how easily can it be modded, what can be done, what sort of restrictions are there, and how willing is the community to adopt something.

As for the mod, its going to be a Q4ctf mod. I'm wavering on touching stuff that may affect tdm or 1v1s (or ffa I suppose), since I care less about those modes.

I still have some question marks about features. I'm not really thinking in terms of that nebulous concept of 'game balance', but more about how I want to skew the game. There are certain things that seriously competitive players just hate (and some that I agree with them on), and conversely, there are certain features that ARE blatantly newbie unfriendly - and those are bad for getting and holding new blood.

Something that's just flat out fun to play on a pub or in a clan match with some good friends - whether the players are great or terrible is what I'm looking for.

And what comes first is changing all the shit that pisses me off every time I get on a Q4 ctf server right now. Then steps after that towards making it 'better' (which means something different to everyone).

I can't see people having a huge outcry if I buff armor and increase general survivability, but I can see a much greater response if I removed the railgun :P One step at a time.

A lot of this shit isn't rocket science either (oh the double puns), just simple game rule tweaks. I've got a running changelog already, need the code to do anything with it though.

I do need to spend some time tracking down mappers. I honestly think the new Q4ctf (and new dm) maps are actually quite good - but they simply aren't sized right for grapple enabled ctf, or itemized correctly for changes to the armor system.

There must be some disillusioned Doom 3 multiplayer mappers I can pilfer from

As for the hitbox, he is using the skinniest model there to show how big it is. I'd like to see how large the box is on a normal marine model.

The rail does seem very easy to hit in Q4 though, even when you can't see well.

I know a decent mapper who is making Q4CTF maps as we speak. I can point him to this thread.

What are the issues with Unreal? I've thought about playing it because the community seems reasonably sized with the talent reasonably spread out, but the big deal breaker for me is there's too many weapons in general, especially when coupled with alternate fire, and I hate OnSlaught, which is apparently the most popular mod.

this thread wuz about hitboxes and turned into a gigantic clusterfuck...

clkou wrote:I know a decent mapper who is making Q4CTF maps as we speak. I can point him to this thread.

What are the issues with Unreal? I've thought about playing it because the community seems reasonably sized with the talent reasonably spread out, but the big deal breaker for me is there's too many weapons in general, especially when coupled with alternate fire, and I hate OnSlaught, which is apparently the most popular mod.

UT talk doesn't happen here. It inevitably ends in a flame war.

R00k wrote:As for the hitbox, he is using the skinniest model there to show how big it is. I'd like to see how large the box is on a normal marine model.

The rail does seem very easy to hit in Q4 though, even when you can't see well.

Heh
http://photobucket.com/albums/a137/majorruth/

It's not the model, its the hitbox

re: 2k4, the asmd is more abusive than the rail could ever be. the combo, which, much like the rail, is something that is 'balanced' by being 'hard' to do, is NOT hard to for good players to do, and kills instantly, regardless of total armor. tanked up 200/200? goodnight. and of course, they have their own rail (in either sniper or lightning rifle variants), with bonus headshots for added ridiculous damage, though amusingly, the 'rail' in there is overshadowed by other instadeath weaponry.

armor is limited on the maps, weapons are EXTREMELY lethal. just about every weapon (even the crappy ones like the biorifle) can kill either in one hit, or very rapidly (minigun). stuff like multirockets just causes real fast kills

dodging is another issue - I love that they tried to add more movement options and evasive options, but because there are no restrictions on dodging/double jumping whatsoever, you MUST double jump/dodge everywhere to keep up speed (much like strafe jumping). unlike strafe jumping however, hours of double-tap-dodge-jump becomes physically uncomfortable :P not to mention that people zip around the map at insane speeds (I mean _insane_ speeds), and most obstacles are meaningless, combat has a frantic uncontrolled feel to it, even worse than say, lmctf with good players using the offhand grapple - remember, those weapons are leeeethal

2k4 is pretty fun to screw around with on pubs, but there the problem is with the mutators. something that should have been awesome, turned into a foul tool of evil for servers to easily run instagib-lowgrav-sniperwars-quadjump-bobsmagicmutator, and oh do they ever

Victrix wrote:Heh
http://photobucket.com/albums/a137/majorruth/

It's not the model, its the hitbox

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know.

Aww, for a second I thought that despite the poor fps, connection, control, and long months of inactivity I had retained my skills. Now I see its just been made easier.