Soldat 1.6.0 Release Candidate

[Poop]

At the very least I think the weapon balance will need completely changing as the current one was created with the 'old' 4:3 view distance in mind, and with an increase in view distance like this various weapons will suddenly have a huge advantage/disadvantage over other weapons.

As a side note, change viet back you twats.

The mappack is made by the beta testing team, Not the developers. I think the mappack can still be modified if the developers allow this. Shoozza, is this still possible or is the mappack frozen at this point?

[zakath]

At the very least I think the weapon balance will need completely changing as the current one was created with the 'old' 4:3 view distance in mind, and with an increase in view distance like this various weapons will suddenly have a huge advantage/disadvantage over other weapons.

As a side note, change viet back you twats.

The mappack is made by the beta testing team, Not the developers. I think the mappack can still be modified if the developers allow this. Shoozza, is this still possible or is the mappack frozen at this point?

mappack is frozen

[12th_account]

I always liked Altitude's approach to widescreen support. This way it wouldn't matter if Soldat decided to force a 4:3 or 16:9 ratio, just add black bars on the sides for any other screen ratio.

[Bistoufly]

Bumping Soldat to 800x600 is a completely different issue because it involves redrawing graphics in higher resolution.

To clarify. I mean bumping the field of view. Not the graphics.
(In the same manner as in the rc, but not only horizontally)

[Poop]

Ginn, 16:9 is "cool" and I dont mind people being able to use it. HOWEVER, it should be an option in the server settings if possible, so if people don't want to allow it on their servers (Due to all the issues already mentioned), then they have the option to do that.

Honestly, with the fact that this is an advantage to widescreen monitors (I know a normal monitor can also use it, however it makes the height smaller which is not fun to play with), and the fact that this could potentially mess up the weapon balance, I think people should have the option to disable it on a server basis if possible. I have trouble seeing this being allowed in leagues and not causing a problem.

this is just conservatism, the weapon balance won't be completely broken, just because you can see further doesn't mean you can shoot trough polygons.
Readjusting the damage reduction after a specific range will pretty much fix it.
Also... if you have a 4:3 screen, it's probably 5-10 years old... it's a good time to buy a new one.

Well, "buy a better comp/monitor/whatever" isn't really a valid argument, since a lot of people started playing Soldat for that exact reason - they can't get better hardware.

Overall though I agree - a different aspect ratio won't break the game. IMHO on the contrary, it might be a nice improvement. I understand that black bars aren't "fun", but think about what people with widescreen displays have to deal with. And since widescreens are becoming more popular, leaving them out completely just because some people have 4:3 monitors isn't fair either. And like ginn said - "...Otherwise you'll find yourself whining about almost all of the newer games."

Make it a server option so the people who want it (YOU) can use it, and the people who don't want it (ME and potentially all leagues) are not forced to use it.

Leagues complain about practically everything that gets changed. Soldat is first of all - a game. It was made so that gamers of all kinds can have fun, run around and shoot stuff. Leagues are just one of the many kinds of players and aren't that important to demand the game to be custom-built just for them. There are things you'll just have to get used to, it's not that hard.

Also, server option won't work out of the box since Soldat only switches resolution when you start it up, and not on server join. Fixing that simply isn't worth the effort. Not to mention that it would be annoying to have different servers allow different screen ratios.

It it is alot of effort to make it a server option, than keep it 4:3, simply for the fact that the weapon balance and all maps are made for 4:3 and not 16:9.

[ginn]

So I found 2 bugs

1.

1.4.0 (29.04.2007)
- Modified bullets (except Barret, M79, LAW, Knife) lose 50% of power after screen distance and another 50% after 2 screens

That screen distance is now based on 16:9 ratio, when it should be a lot shorter. I suggest you to speak with some the balance team to appropriately set this value, maybe something like 50% reduction after 45 soldat meters, and another 50% after the next 45 soldat meters.
I think this is very key to keep a properly balanced wm now when we can see farther.

2.
You can't zoom upwards with barrett anymore, you must first pull it to the side of the screen or at least almost all the way to a corner.

[Ichiro]

Bugs:

1. If you use 1280x800 with Fullscreen it shows the bars properly. However if using 100% resize mode, the game get's stretched vertically to cover the blanks where black bars should be. (That was a workaround for fullscreen vsync in 1.5, while still being able to use 640x480 on the whole screen). But now it can't be applied to widescreen resolutions.

More of a side note: Fullscreen mode forces vsync. Had to force it off in my gfx settings (It's been set to 'use the 3D application setting'). So an inside option for that would be nice. Since unchecking 'Vertical Sync' doesn't really mean it's forced off.

Oh and one more thing, about the 4:3 vs 16:9 thing. You're forgetting that for 4:3 users, in order to get the widescreen feeling, the game screen has to be shrinked vertically. I know some players like to play 640x480 windowed on monitor's 1024x768 resolution. Well I don't, I like to have my whole 1280x1024 filled up with soldat screen, so i don't have to push my head against the monitor, to see if the guy is fapping or shooting at me. So i've been using resize mode, but now thanks to the addition of widescreen, in order to not give my opponents a handicap, I'll have to play with shrinked soldat, sure ill get to see abit further away, but after playing on basically a fullscreen (one way or another) for lots of years, it's really an issue if everything is a lil bit smaller.

[moep]

Awesome job! Thanks for fixing bugs instead of adding useless features. <3

[Ichiro]

Seems that you still can't unprone while stabbing / shooting with minigun (holding the mouse button).

[CheeSeMan.]

great job on bug fixing... but like many i do not really think changing the ratio of the game without looking at the maps/weapon mod is a very good idea :s

[Monsteri]

ö ä and å don't work anymore, and the new font is ugly.

[Phobos]

When I try to run RC1 on Windows 2000 I get "I/O error 105" on startup and after that a lot of things are messed up. I can join in server and play, but in game I cannot see text in the teams select menu or in weapon select menu. Also when I try to start my own game, the maps select and bot select lists are both empty.

[croat1gamer]

Check the txt folder, it might be borked.

[nosejj]

By the way if I copy the complete "Soldat.INI' file from 1.5.0 to 1.6.0. will it work properly? or there were some changes in this file?

[ginn]

by the way: binding mouse buttons doesn't work properly... I binded flag throwing to mouse button 4,  but when I restart soldat it doesn't work anymore

http://www.sctfl.net/forums/index.php?topic=33674.msg155103#msg155103

[Furai]

Minor bug here - in lower right corner there's frag count - sometimes it misses "+" when you have more kill than your opponent. Have no way to reproduce though. Occurred many times.

[soulblade]

At the very least I think the weapon balance will need completely changing as the current one was created with the 'old' 4:3 view distance in mind, and with an increase in view distance like this various weapons will suddenly have a huge advantage/disadvantage over other weapons.

As a side note, change viet back you twats.

The mappack is made by the beta testing team, Not the developers. I think the mappack can still be modified if the developers allow this. Shoozza, is this still possible or is the mappack frozen at this point?

mappack is frozen

I really don't get what is so hard in deleting 1 map and copy pasting the other.
Bring back Viet!

[Finvagarty]

I agree with Poop and, as a server operator, I would disable this for my servers. Whatever you guys say it IS unfair for people with older screens. Soldat is a game made, how many, 10 years ago ? Game and maps are made for 4:3.

I just want to say I agree since this is really obvious in my mind aswell. The maps, the weapons, the game is designed in a way and if you drastically change one part of the package you have to adjust everything else aswell including remaking all the maps which obviously isn't the way. (@I'm also strongly against the remaking of already Popular and Balanced maps like viet and snakebite, it simply makes no sense, at all.) The best solution is to make it an option, so that nobody loses and nobody gains an advantage over another, or if that's not possible stick to the older one. Also if there's one game where you should think about the audience with older hardware, that would be Soldat, but instead of thinking that as a burden, think it as a resource. 

[ExHunter]

Please correct me if I'm wrong: but aren't widescreens supposed to stretch only what you can see without widescreens and not to give more "view"?

[Mittsu]

BUGS NOTICED

at a Realistic & Survival server (some probably reproducable in any gamemodes)

1. Death score bug

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/853/screenshot11081401640x4.png/

When you're f.e. Alpha, then go Spec, then back Alpha, your death count reduces by 1. Doing this while having 0 deaths makes the count go over 6000

2. Bouncy Polygons don't make players bounce anymore

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/6/screenshot11081403640x4.png/

Tested only on one map though

3. Following a teammate while being dead yourself still allows you to see an enemy behind your teammates back

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/821/screenshot11081402640x4.png/

according to this:
"Modified Dead/Spectator players in Realistic mode can only see enemies the player they are following can see"

the enemy should not be visible. It works well with walls, dead player can't see enemies behind any walls or pieces of map, but they can still see behind teammates back which has to be fixed.

4. Changing or restarting maps other than default ones (didn't test defaults, but i saw no complaints) gets you to the lobby and back to the server (even if you have the maps already) making players see unneccesery disco of jumping windows.



Not a bug, but i have to note that this change:
"Modified Spectators can only use Team Chat in Survival Mode while a round is active. Only applies to Spectator team"

will probably be not welcome by ANYONE. This is no solution to anything and will only be annoying at most times. No one requested such feature, Enesce (i suppose he's the one doing the anti-spy features) went a little too far with this one. Each of the other features are awesome and i'm looking forward to be using them, but i think this particular one should be removed and most likely this would be backed up by most of survival mode games.


great work by the way!