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yurch

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May 21, 2001
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Death Touch said:
Yurch, I believe you feel that the UT engine is not suitable for realism. This what I thought you implied.
No. First off, I use "UT" to describe the 1999 Unreal tournament engine this mod is currently based on. I do not extend any misgivings towards this engine to later Unreal engines.

My comments are directed more towards those who seem to think that our poor playercount is somehow a fault of something inf has or hasn't done. I find it annoying to see a wishlist of more realistic elements to include whenever it is brought up that "inf is dying".

I contend that it is a lack of visual immersion brought on by our very dated UT engine. Advertisement, in a sense. It's an unfortunate fact, and there isn't a good answer to this problem. You either start anew on an engine, be it UT2k4, HL2, BF2, Crytech, UT2k7, ect and lose years of implemented "technical detail", or you keep your base and try to attract players somehow.
 

keihaswarrior

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geogob said:
less typing and more playing INF.
LOL
nod.gif



I am afraid Insurgency will be about as realistic as Red Orchestra or worse... CS with Ironsights. bleh I *hope I am wrong.
 

Death Touch

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Thanks fro the quick reply, Yurch. It is certainly appreciated. I haven't played INF for some time now. Having been exposed to more modern games like the ones described, I find it more difficult to come back to INF.
I DO feel however, that any drop off of player count is certaily NOT do to something the Dev team did not do. I believe the current lower participation is more due to the limited graphics and somewhat different feel than many Tactical FPS gamers are used to plus that like any game, INF has been out a long , long time. Players tend to move on, it is a natural cycle. If INFUT99 will not be heavily supported, then IMHO the team (as they have done, or tried to, rather) should move on to a new engine, IMHO, I believe that engine is UT2004.
While I do not think the essentials of INF should be changed, I do strongly support the mobilizing of the team into going to the UT2004 game engine.
While you did not completely answer my questions, (that's fine, no problemo),
I do believe that:
1. Better graphics and equivalent gameplay are there for the taking in UT2004. Also as mentioned the overabundance of resources for UT2004 modding.
2. Many more gamers have 2004 vs. UT99. More numbers, more potential for player base increasing. Ladies and gentlemen, I am well aware that the chief aim is NOT technically to attract more players. However you may feel, an active community is usually more desirable, and currently INF does not appear to show promise in new interest and new player participation. I believe many ppl do not even know about INF. Good gameplay with good graphics and features will attract many players, noobs or not. Primarily Tactical FPS gamers will be attracted to this version, this is not a bad thing.
A new INF for UT2004 is IMO an adequate replacement for UT99 INF2.9 that can support many of these essentials that the vast majority of mods do not even acknowledge.
In other words, INF for UT2004 will have it's own playing field with no competition.

Because I do want to support the team, want to state that there IS a future for a NEW Infiltration hat IMHO is much more accessible, and want to stress that all is not lost, I will continue to support the team in it's decisions.

I have said my peace, any further clarifications and discussion IMHO will only help all involved to an exciting future for Infiltration.

Thanks for not flaming.

Thanks for your replies and sincere attitudes, folks.

Let us, hopefully, discuss this a little more indepth and see if UT2004 is viable, which I think it is. I see no reason for Infiltration to not be among these other mods.
 
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Apr 21, 2003
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I think it is out of question, that S-Studios pulled the best out of UT. Someone should show some other mods that did this.


@yurch:
Dunno, you probably think I want realsim that is about crawling at the ground and pushing x keys at the same time.

Generally I speak about simple things real life offers.
Look other games that are played much (AA:O, BF2, ...), they all have the shouldered position and the sights are only aimed when you actually need it. Strangely that matches real life... and nothing else I want.
The only thing is, all those games leak is a more realistic ballistic and bullet spread system, which exactly INF has.
Imagine a merge of those features into one? Hell when AA:O would have this features, do you think less people would play it? Actully the opposite would be the case, because realism freaks liek me would paly it more often.

And the furhter development if the collision system, with the inclusion of lowready, where you literally could feel the weapon contol by a single key tap would rather attrackt.

Do you know why all those less realistic games are palyed? Because players have few alternatives (and sorry but INF is not the best alternative). Create a very realistic, but at the same time comfortable and solid game and you will have your 'community'.


And Raven Shield is somewhat popular and it has an injury system that requires often one shot to kill. A second shot would make your very combat ineffecient.
Even if RvS's injury system is not that flexible it still kills arcade (in that way) and RvS is still popular.


As said you see the gaming trends that are just because other possibilites are unknown, and you can forget official developers on that point.
Only because something happens, it doesn't mean it would still happen under all circumstances.


@Death Touch:
I agree on UT2004. AA:O was visually allways the perfect INF to me.
 
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Apr 2, 2001
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Starting for UT04 now and you will end up in the same trap INF2.9 did:

Majority will have moved to newer games by the time a full release is available...

And in case you didn't know: Sentry did put effort into UT2004 behind the scenes but since it wasn't capable of their vision of INF+vehiles, they kept searching for alternatives...

---

On advertising: This is way too late to attract big amounts of players - and it was done:

Members linked reviews in game mags, Cleeus wrote a nice review at 3dcenter.de and myself send a review with a beg to have a look at INF to all german gaming mags... (problem UT is censored, so they weren't allowed to do so) (http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=164616&page=2)

It is already diffcult to get a hold on a UT installation - let allone to motivate people to have a look at a 2 year old mod (final release) on a 6 year old engine...
 

Logan6

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Dec 23, 2003
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I like what I see in BF2, it just needs a LOT of work. The worst part of it is the FOG. My god, the desert levels look like in your in the middle of a viscous sand storm. Forget long range sniping. I saw one pic where a player was shooting an enemy in front of a building. The building looked like it was about 20 to 25 feet away. Even though the building was small and did not take up the whole horizon, you could not see beyond the building! The building was misty enough, but behind it it looked like a combination sandstorm/fog bank completely non visible.

Is it possible to tweak the distance/fog level? Or is it locked in the engine.

My computer can nowhere near play this game but it looks like it has a lot of possibilities.
 

yurch

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Logan6 said:
I saw one pic where a player was shooting an enemy in front of a building. The building looked like it was about 20 to 25 feet away. Even though the building was small and did not take up the whole horizon, you could not see beyond the building! The building was misty enough, but behind it it looked like a combination sandstorm/fog bank completely non visible.
So you saw one picture and decided you knew exactly what the entire game was like... Brilliant!

Like ususal, you're wrong. They tend to fog the city maps for the sake of performance. (ironic, since you complain about not being able to run the game) There's a few maps where you can see players further than you can plausably hit.

Add another notch to your already legendary powers of overassumption.
 

Death Touch

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Dec 7, 2003
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Nukeproof said:
Starting for UT04 now and you will end up in the same trap INF2.9 did:

Majority will have moved to newer games by the time a full release is available...

And in case you didn't know: Sentry did put effort into UT2004 behind the scenes but since it wasn't capable of their vision of INF+vehiles, they kept searching for alternatives...

---

On advertising: This is way too late to attract big amounts of players - and it was done:

Members linked reviews in game mags, Cleeus wrote a nice review at 3dcenter.de and myself send a review with a beg to have a look at INF to all german gaming mags... (problem UT is censored, so they weren't allowed to do so) (http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=164616&page=2)

It is already diffcult to get a hold on a UT installation - let allone to motivate people to have a look at a 2 year old mod (final release) on a 6 year old engine...


I don't believe Sentry will end up in a trap. If it's good, ppl will wait. IMHO ppl will be more likely to get a free good looking and good playing mod for UT2004 than UT99. I also don't see a reason why because they (allegedly) cannot have vehicles in the mod, UT2004 is completely unviable and useless. I can't disagree more. (vehicles are already in UT2004, physics are there already, not sure what more they want here)
While it may take a while, I see no reason not to do it. Unless there are drastic, unworkable issues that challenge the INF team.
If SS would decide to do a more infantry SpecOp type of game, I'm sure they are capable of doing it, and the engine is capable of providing a vehicle (no pun intended) for them. If SAS, Strike Force, and Jungle Warfare can be created, then IMHO there is NO reason Infiltration (or a scaled down version, such as, say, an Infiltration Expansion Pack, not necessarily a full blown Sequel) can exist as well. Remember that the initial work was going to be a realsitic shooter, NOT a new INF.
I feel UT2004 is better than UT99, and better than a half finished HL2 DM something, and better than nothing.

The real question is: does SS want to do it?
The support is already there. In fact, I believe it will actually attract more players who hunger for a classy, Tactical SpecOps shooter.

What's the word, guys?
 
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Crowze

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You've got your issues mixed up there. Sentry decided not to use UT2004 because it didn't really offer that much more than old UT (I personally disagree, I know it doesn't offer as much as newer engines but it certainly is better). They decided to scale down the HL2 project because it couldn't handle the map sizes needed for good vehicle combat.
 
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Death Touch said:
The real question is: does SS want to do it?

Go to News and figure yourself.

AFAIK UT2004 is limited to 'world coordinates' for all vehicles which doesn't permit realistic behavior. Furthermore UT2004 is more limited in terms of moddability than UT99: Performance critical parts have been moved into the native engine and it doesn't have level of detail to reduce graphicload - only fog...

Sentry obviously didn't want to re-release current INF on a newer engine but go some steps further... to bad it's not gonna happen any time soon - if ever :(
 

Beppo

Infiltration Lead-Programmer
Jul 29, 1999
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Crowze said:
You've got your issues mixed up there. Sentry decided not to use UT2004 because it didn't really offer that much more than old UT (I personally disagree, I know it doesn't offer as much as newer engines but it certainly is better). They decided to scale down the HL2 project because it couldn't handle the map sizes needed for good vehicle combat.
UT2k4 had and still has some serious 'hard-coded' parts within that modders were and still are not able to change.
One simple example is the MaxStepHeight that is hardcoded within 2k4 (it wasn't in UT'99 and will not in 2k7 if I remember the devs reply on the mailing lists correctly). This way you were unable to change the actual stepheight a player was able to get over by simply moving towards the structure in front of him. Means, you are able to step over small walls and stuff alike that are way bigger/higher than what a typical human would be able to 'step' on (and no matter in what kind of stance you are... you would be able to 'step up' on the same wall while lying prone, crouching or standing).
Another example were the physics... we got some stuff implemented but had to stop further development on the choppers cause 'realistic' flight movements weren't possible at all due to ie. their up/down movement sticking to the worlds z-axis instead of the z-axis of the chopper. Another example were tracked vehicles that we got implemented 'realistically' to a 90-95 percentage. The standard 2k4 tracked vehicle (tank) is a hovercraft and so not following terrain with its 'wheels' and tracks. Our model was following the terrain perfectly cause we used the wheeled physics model and tuned it as much as possible to even allow the tracked vehicle to rotate on spot, what a standard wheeled vehicle is not able to do in 2k4 due to some hard-coded parts that always let the wheels force move forward instead of the direction the wheel is actually turning to. That way we needed to apply force vectors to the chassis directly. But this means that these force vectors have to work 'against' the forces and mass of the tracked vehicle itself while standing on the ground. And so, you need to always check how much of the tracked vehicle is actually touching the ground to lower the size of the force vectors accordingly. Else your tracked vehicle would spin in the air once ie the left side of the tracks drives over a hole in the ground or over a bump and so isn't touching anything and so isn't responding against the force applied. We got it to look 'ok' in most situations, but not perfectly. One or two simple changes within the c codes that we modders cannot access would have changed this, but I don't know if this ever happened or not.
Another thing was 'how weapons work' within 2k4. Totally different compared to UT'99 and again, a bunch of hard-coded things. So our 'style' of getting tons of different animations per weapon within the game that do change ie. due to the amount of ammo left within a magazine or if or if not a round is still in that chamber, got busted. And the new style on how to do it wasn't that flexible to allow us such kind of thing 'easily'. I guess it would have been possible one way or another, but the effort would have been huge and the frustration curve at that time was high enough already.

Oh, and UT2k4 offered a LOT more than UT'99 for sure... but as said, the limitations due to some little hard-coded things were the reason to stop development on it.

Anyway, we had a blast developing on UT2k4, but we also had tons of frustration comming up due to some hard-coded things. And cause we all knew these frustrations enough due to reaching the limits of the UT'99 engine we stepped back from 2k4 at that time.
Maybe not a wise decision if you look at everything now, but at that time the team agreed on it. And to move to 2k4 now isn't an option anymore, cause the engine will soon be 'old' too. So, it would be a bit of a waste of time to start something on it.
2k7 ... much hope is lying in it, tho ;)
 
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zeep

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So there is some useable content for ut2k4 already? Why not, while waiting for the big fish, make inf 2k4 a pet product? Maybe in a few months we can have plain infantry TDM (or Dtas) for 2k4.

Maybe a combined effort with some talented community members. Who knows it may spark some ideas to workaround bugs you've encountered earlier.

I'm just hoping. 2k7 is very faw away still. Now i'm sure you're all working towards it, but untill it's out there is room to play with 2k4..
 

Logan6

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Dec 23, 2003
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@Yurch.

Sigh, bad day? Not everyones rich enough to own a computer that can play the likes of BF2, so we have to go on video and pics.

@Everyone else.

So I take it from the post that a mapper or a player can limit the fog in BF2?
 

Death Touch

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Thank you very much, Beppo. I truly appreciatye your detailed and sincere reply. Thanks for taking the time out for such a well thought out post.

I must admit that I am disappointed in the outcome, however, I do stand by and respect you and the team's decisions on this.

The only thing that I can now agree on is the possibility of a "pet Project" type Mod. Something that would be fun, yet still have certain realistic details.
Perhaps if you can limit your horizons just a little and work on something that you left off from?
New characters, new weapons, iron sights, realistic camos and loadouts,nice maps, and Classes would be IMHO ideal. Don't really need much more. Not overly complicated, but not untenable or as frustrating.
I DO understand of course the time availability of your team members, not all will have the time or desire to work on this. I fully understand.
One thing that I must emphasize is the I do not believe that ppl will simply not even look at the project simply because it is on UT2004. If anything, IMHO I believe that UT2004 is still alive and active, and still somewhat fresh in gamer's minds. Moreso than UT99.
Again, I state, it does not have to be INFILTRATION. It does have to be somewhat realistic in it's depiction of the units, weapons, loadouts, some animations, movement speed and agility, Classes, and sounds. But then again, this is about HOW MUCH, not that it'snot worth it. IMHO, I believe it is.
Granted, I still believe the community will be happy with a fun mod (look at Tango Down and YARM, SS can definitely do much better, thos Mutes are just fun project of one guy, SS are more than that) they can go to other than INF which for many has lost it's sizzle.
I am hopeful with the fact that UT2007 has gotten you and the team's attention. This is good news. Hopefully something can be done more to your liking and ours as well.
But, this is a long way off. And an INF Mod release for UT2007 could realistically be available several years AFTER the initial release. By then, who even knows if members will still even be there?

Anyway, thanks for your reply. I await more info on you and the team's future plans.
 
Apr 21, 2003
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S-Studios are probably only interested in a military setting with large battlefields and so on.

I would really wish (always did) a Rogue Spear replacement in a military setting.
Means it is a CQB SF/CT unit (somewhat of Delta Force, or the CQB Nevy Seals, and similar 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

All the modern toys (like the FN SCAR) would be used, but no grenade launchers, rocket launchers and machine guns.
Sniper and frag grenades are used.

The emphasis would be on tactical engaging, with a possibility af a squad leader who give orders.

A fun TDM like rogue spear is a must sort of too.

Maps would be logically not so huge.

Realism features, like lowready, highready, binocular reflex aim, freeaim, gunsmoke, movement (slow walk, fast walk, run, maybe sprint) are must.


Yo, that would be my game.
 
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