Soldat imaginated reincarnation

[Izzy Rose (PL)]

Frustration of standing in one place and fixing things in stupid circle...
I moved this post to separate topic, because I thinkt it is really important think to talk about and shouldn't be ignored by devs and betatesters.

Somehow I agree with other users. I'm not whining, but as some other players, I play this game since early versions. I can count at least 9 years with Soldat for sure.
I work as game developer and I'm a player - so, as others, I know, what are trends and new features in current games.

As darDar said - Soldat is very old and needs some refreshing, but personally I think that it isn't most important. I think that this game really needs some bold changes and additions in game mechanics. Not only trend-following changes in gui layouts. It needs something big like my idea about clans (I don't mean that it's the one and only way, it's just my suggestion, but similar ideas should be welcome too).


Soldat has one HUGE virtue - it is simple, you just click and play. And you can stop it in every moment. Not like for e.g. MMOs, where you must be in game on time not to miss some events. It is... somehow casual, but it is advantage of our favourite game, isn't it?
However, it is also flaw and cause of decreasing number of active players - it doesn't glue player to monitor. When you feel tired you say "ok, enough" and quit the game. There's no things of type "ok, I'm tired, but I'll..." - I don't know... - "...but I'll kick to X value in stats and yet then I'll quit the game".

Soldat should be game, where you got your amount of fun with firing awesome guns, where you got something interesing to do, some achievements, competitions, community integration events, but all these things shouldn't eliminate this virtue of ability of playing this game as a casual player, who start the match, kill some other players, commit suicide and quit the game, because he can.

Devs, think about it! In my humble opinion you should fix big bugs, leave the minor ones for a while and make more courageous steps in improvments of gameplay.

Consider this option.

[L[0ne]R]

It's a bit funny how back when EnEsCe was around everyone was going "More fixes! Less features!", and now it's the other way around.

I kind of agree that the focus should be shifted back towards features, and bugfixing left until later unless it's something gamebreaking. However also keep in mind that the devs ARE also working towards v1.7, which is a major update in terms of improving Soldat engine and upgrading some libraries it uses (Soldat still relies on DirectX 8 for example). This should allow for further major changes, but right now I'm not sure if there's a point of adding something that may completely break later.

When v1.7 is finally out (which I hope won't take too long) - then hopefully features will get more attention.

Personally, I don't think gameplay itself needs much change. Maybe some new moves (like this one) and little things like achievements and challenges. But a bigger step forward would be expanding map and Scriptcore functionality. Scriptcore already allows for things like Magic Mod, Hexer, Last Stand, MultiMode and many other modes to exist which completely change the gameplay. Expanding map functionality could include parallax backgrounds, moving polygons and sceneries, interactive objects and event triggers on the maps. Tie all those things together with the Scriptcore - and you could get really incredible maps and modes that completely change the gameplay and look fresh.
Steam integration should also restore some of the game's popularity and bring more modders and mappers into the community, not to mention things like Steam Achievements and Workshop.

But as I've said, v1.7 has to come first before any of that happens.

[Izzy Rose (PL)]

I really appreciate this answer.

Why we are so impatiented? Because for last 3 years it was looking following: we fix one thing, it broke next, we fixed this new one, there appears even next. Like fight with hydra. During this battle there's discussion: "omg, ruger is so OP, it should have -3 to power and +1ms to reload time!".
It was all the life of this game, if it goes about developing it.

So... if it can be truth, what you say, there is two ways - presented by me, and presented by you. I know, that my plan will be not realised by developers, so only I can be hoping, that after releasing 1.7 all modders and players will be able to come back with their ideas and suggestions. And then, 1.7.1 or 1.7.2 will have new graphics, interface mechanics, ingame features and all this awesome stuff you are talking about.

I really hope. This is the one and only game, to which I came back so many times after breakes.

[Shoozza]

The fact that each version introduces new bugs speaks for how problematic the code is. Ideally we should have refactored the whole code already.
I agree that the whole bugfix after bugfix cycle is not really helpful.

Keep in mind that most of the devs are not active and some of the devs left over the years.
We do what we can but issues with each version and low activity slows us down.
If you want to help us with the game you can join the dev team.

Concerning Soldat 1.7: If it works out like expected it would remove a lot of clutter in the code base while adding some new stuff.

[Izzy Rose (PL)]

If you want to help us with the game you can join the dev team.

I would like, but I know basis of c/c++ only Rather than procedures designer, or even better - 2d artist (i'm game 2d/3d artist freelancer, so...).

[smiluu]

Sorry Izzy, you don't strike me as a person who understands game development and project management. Obvious textbook stuff aside, one common obstacle for developers/artists that do unpaid hobby work is a simple subconscious laziness. Using Shoozza as a theoretical example, reason why there's so many small fixes and nothing huge might be because he's too lazy to touch some of the bigger and tedious tasks that are always pressured forward by the community, but somehow he's still upright enough to keep himself busy with simple cleanup work/easy tasks aka. "small fixes". Progress like this can go on for long periods of time, progress might sometimes not go on at all even, you know you have to do it but just can't and sometimes even completely forgetting that all of this is supposed to happen voluntarily. While it might not be spot on in Shoozza's case, everyone who works on something gets lazy eventually and this is why games are meant to be done with teams, any kind of genuine help really helps. Tossing out "procedures", ideas and explanations about them is not helping and not being part of the team, it's merely reminding of already possibly established concepts. After couple years of stumbling across some things and attitudes people express in this forum, how mistakes and coding efforts are being ridiculed and yelled at, I'm amazed to see any of the developers being still around.

Bottom line is, if you really think you can help with speeding up the development, stop talking about it and do it.

[jrgp]

Obvious textbook stuff aside, one common obstacle for developers/artists that do unpaid hobby work is a simple subconscious laziness.

Using Shoozza as a theoretical example, reason why there's so many small fixes and nothing huge might be because he's too lazy to touch some of the bigger and tedious tasks that are always pressured forward by the community, but somehow he's still upright enough to keep himself busy with simple cleanup work/easy tasks aka. "small fixes".

Not specifically applying this to Shoozza, but the points made here are probably more true than they appear to be at first glance, with regards to any project.

[Izzy Rose (PL)]

Tossing out "procedures", ideas and explanations about them is not helping and not being part of the team, it's merely reminding of already possibly established concepts. After couple years of stumbling across some things and attitudes people express in this forum, how mistakes and coding efforts are being ridiculed and yelled at, I'm amazed to see any of the developers being still around.

As i said, i'd really like to join dev team and not to talk 'bout issues, but the team need delphi programmer, whom i am not.

[Name]

I generally don't think XP is a good thing in games. Unless it's a pure RPG adventure game like Zelda or something I expect to be able just to join a server and have a good game right away, with everybody having an equal opportunity and the access to same arsenals. Only skill and tactics should matter in the long run.

[Ussocom]

Honestly I feel like most releases have been 'too safe' so change is a thing of rarity.

That being said I think that soldats mechanics/ movement is what sets this game apart from others- nade boosting, spas boosting little things that really open up different play styles as well.

The Graphics IMO I think could use some changing.  We can see by just a simple mod people have released how good/different soldat can look and even feel.  Also Remaking textures of some maps making them a bit more pretty could help.  I know a lot of us oldies don't really care about how things look, but you have to think Soldats graphics haven't changed in how many years?  Lets bring it up to speed .  Increased customization of how a player looks would be pretty cool as well.

[Name]

When it comes to how the game looks I think much has to do with map design. The default maps were traditionally quite ugly and there are a lot of remakes and custom maps which look much better. Although with that said I still think how the map actually plays is more important than the looks, but it doesn't have to be either or. It's not hard to make overlapping polygons etc without making it look super obvious and some creations are way beyond such basic issues.
I think Soldat devs should've been much quicker to include visually upgraded versions of existing maps in the default reportoir. That's the kind of changes which could actually have been improvements rather than pure destruction.