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Separate toggles for Realistic Mode & misc
Soldat Forums - Soldat Talk - Game Improvements / Suggestions
le-mec
December 26, 2005, 11:39 pm
I don't like how Realistic Mode turns falling damage, weapon recoil, self-bink, field-of-vision and less health all on or all off at the same time.

I think there should be separate toggle-checkboxes for each mode, since I like to play with everything except falling damage, and other people might just want to play with self-bink and weapon recoil.

In addition, I think that a weapon's "bink" attribute should only affect self-bink, and that bink should be applied to victims using an algorithm that takes the damage and multiplies it by the speed of the projectile. Two server bink-multiplier variables could be used to tune the amount of self-bink and victim-bink applied when firing or getting hit by weapons.

I noticed also that movement-induced-shooting-inaccuracy(MISI) seems to rely mostly on the speed of the shooter. Instead, I suggest making it so that shooting inaccuracy should be based not only on the speed of travel, but whether or not the shooter is airborne or on the ground, standing, crouched or prone. MISI should also not go away the instant a player lands in a crouch. It should start at a high amount, and rapidly decrease off with time as a player sits still and "finds his gunsights". Every time you jump, land, take steps, drop into a crouch, assume the prone position or get up, MISI should be bumped up a bit and taper off with time.

Naturally, MISI would be affected by the Movement Bink attribute of the weapon itself, so shortranged weapons like pistols, shotguns or submachineguns would provide better accuracy when running and flying and doing various acrobatics, while assault rifles and sniper rifles or heavy weaponry would require a user to crouch, lie prone or sit still to use them effectively.

Handling things this way would deal with the problem of "running & gunning" barretteers, and the heavy firepower of the LAW, Chaingun and MiniMe would be balanced with the immobility and risk that comes with using them properly. In addition, making server variables for things like MISI and separate "realistic mode" toggles would put the control into the server admins hands and keep the whining away from the Soldat developers.

In fact, when it comes to ALL weapons, violent acceleration of the mouse in different directions(to aim at fast-moving and dodging targets) should also contribute to MISI increases. If you hold your cursor steady in one spot and move the mouse gradually, then MISI-penalties would be incurred in low amounts. If you move your mouse in a constant direction at a constant speed(to track a target flying in a straight trajectory or a falling target), then that too should not incur high MISI-penalties. If, however, you are tracking a person who is running down a hill, bouncing off the ground and being thrown into the air by nearby explosions, then your MISI penalties would be very high unless you predicted where he was going to land and put your cursor there and waited for your player to "settle down and take aim".



One last idea... Since powerups seem to be able to be shot, why not make grenade (and cluster-grenade) boxes that takes enough abuse explode and release their contents, or make a flameGod bonus explode in a cloud of fire that burns everyone nearby, or destroy health packs, predator bonuses, berzerker bonuses and armor bonuses?

This would induce some interesting gameplay where you could deny an enemy who's about to grab an item by shooting it, or make people who stand in fields of grenade boxes very wary about where they're standing. You might even have a whole new generation of snipers who train their gunsights on grenade boxes waiting for people to pick them up... but just to be safe, include a separate server-side checkbox/toggle for this one.


I also noticed that bots can invariably see my player from two screens away. They're also not very intelligent in that the moment I go round a corner, they forget all about me. Bots should each keep track of the last known position of the enemy they were attacking and home in on that to see if I'm still in the neighbourhood, rather than running off on their merry way. In addition, if I go over a screen-length away, then instead of them unerringly firing at me, they should spray the last place they think I was, also taking into account the direction and speed I was travelling. This could also be used when attacking bots while cloaked. If I was cloaked, then instead of a bot "forgetting" a few seconds that I just attacked him and vanished, it would be very cool to see him spraying the last place he thought I was, and if I was moving, to track that last known position while adding my last known velocity to it.