Well, seeing as this is my first post on these forums I guess I might as well start by saying the entire dev team for DA2 should give themselves one big pat on the back. I'm sure if this was ready for the MSU in a more complete form you guys definetly would have won! But when it's all said and done, the Red Orchestra dev team beat you guys to the punch.
I found this mod to be very slick and very easy to get into. From the simple menu interface and the slick battle maps playing in the background instead of having a static screen has shown me you guys/girls take pride in your work before I even started the game. Getting into the menus, setting my options and starting an "offline" game took me all of 2 minutes and the mod itself loads up very quickly. That right there deserves and A+.
When I started my first game I figured I'd go simple and play as a defender in "Triumph 5". The thing that got to me was I didn't see any "Press Fire To Start" onscreen so I thought my videocard was glitching with 2d in the mod. No worries, after about 2 minutes I came to the conclusion that I should just press the "fire" button. After the match started, figuring out what to do, where to defend and what class I should use for a given situation came natural even though I had never gotten the pleasure of playing the first "Defence Alliance" mod for UT99. Choosing between classes was simple and slick, figuring out how the mechanic worked took all of like 5 seconds and each class had his own feel which is especially needed in a class based game.
The Graphics themselves are also very slick from the custom models and effects to the overall aura of the game. It all fits together, all though I will mention that having futuristic looking soldiers in Jungle environments looks a little out of place. The gloss on the armor plates to the detailed scratched and battleworn look on the soldiers is topnotch and proves the Unreal Warfare engine still has some kick left in it. Especially for the file size of your mod, you guys were able to pack so much into so little it boggles my mind.
Weapons themselves also look very good although it's a little hard to distinguish the two shotguns from each other as the mechanics shotgun uses a magazine while the medics auto shotgun uses a standard slot fed mechanizm. I believe it should be the otherway around as the Autoshotty would more benefit in real life with a magazine system than would a normal finger fed slot system that the manual pump shotty would benifit from more.
Also another thing I found wierd was that the tracers coming from the Anti Armor class' SMG is off center. It comes out from the center of the screen instead of being oriented from the muzzle of the weapon itself. I will take a screenshot and edit this post later to show you.
Other than that, the guns look chunky and mean which brings me to another point. Chunky, mean looking weapons should produce Chunky, gross looking deaths. Aside from the explosives, of which wonderfully gib and dismember people in a glorious fasion, non of the weapons feel the way they sound. Ever hear the old saying
"His bark is worse than his bite"
That phrase applies here. Go play the "Ballistics" mod for a little bit and you'll see how awesome the after affects of killing someone with a shotgun at close range can be. I want to see more blowback from getting shot and more force from thrown bodies when suffering the effects of a rocket to the chest or a face full of buckshot. Aside from this minor complaint, and the fact that you should make the screen for the rocket launcher a bit bigger, the weapons are completely badass.
OMFG I HAVE TEH TURRETS SYNDROME!!!! Turrets seem to play a more integral part of this game than does actual combat mano e mano. I find myself switching from "Long Range" to "Mechanic" far too often so that I my build a couple turrets and or repair other turrets to keep the attackers at bay. I actually prefer the Chaos UT Turret system in the fact that the turret has multiple weapons, a decent lifespan, is more susceptable to explosives than normal firearms and isn't overpowering like the Auto Targeting Crusher and DFA Turrets. Not that they're bad at all, watching a Crusher Turret catch some poor fool dead in the face brings some great moments of "OMFG THAT WAS FING KRAZY!!" but watching the turrets annihilate the opposition to the point everyone just says F' it and goes lemmings on the damn thing to destroy it kinda takes the fun out of actual soldier to soldier combat.
My thoughts on the Turret System
-The Build Times are proportionate to the power each Type of Turret has so thats fine.
-Turrets should have a limited amount of ammo that can be restocked by either the Mechanic or the Machine Gunner. Give them enough ammo to last awhile, but not enough to make them godly killing machines.
-The Auto Tracking for the Turrets is way to fast. Either slow it down a notch or make the turrets AI tracking level proportionate to the level of difficulty the maps being played in.
-Depending on the map size and amount of players, Class types should be limited ( a la Red Orchestra) to prevent "Turret Spamming" by mass amounts of mechanics. I remember playing in Black Gold and had 3 other mechanics on my team, we all just littered the choke point with turrets galore, the attackers never stood a chance.
-Turret Control should also be extended to the "Infantry" class only for the fact that during some point in the match you may not even have a machine gunner on your team or in the game period and you desperately need to take control of one of your turrets to more effectively control the crowd coming to crash your party
Now on to the glitches I've noticed. I've only seen/ three glitches/problems so far in game which is pretty impressive considering some mods release with TONS of glitches.
Turret Hopping - Turret Hopping happens when a fine strapping young lad decides to walk/jump into an unfinished (still transparent Turret) and gets launched into the air sometimes causing an untimely death for those in bad health most likely due to getting shot at and not getting treated by a medic.
Weapon not firing - as the mechanic I went to go repair a turrent while in the middle of reloading. After I was done with the turret I tried firing my weapon and then tried to reload it again. To no avail I got blasted away cause my weapon jammed due to a glitch. Tried dying. No worky. Tried changing classes. Still no worky. I had to reload the map to get my weapon working again. It's only happened once so I'll just shrug it off, but it's definetly something that should be looked at.
Fall Damage - OMFG WHY IS IT THAT I FALL LIKE 5 FEET AND TAKE 20% DAMAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fall damage is totally out of proportion in this mod. Please decrease the amount of fall damage, not to the point that it's "UNREAL", but so I dont have to lose 60% of my life after jumping down a flight of stairs. I found that I've died more from falling than I have from my enemies which is a really bad sign lol. I have to stop drinking.
As for the General Performance of the mod. It runs better than UT2004 does on my PC actually lol.
Rez: 1280x960
Settings: Ultra High
Anti Aliasing: 4x
Anisotrophic Filtering: 16x
FrameRate According to Fraps: 54fps with AA / 82fps without AA
You can see my system in my sig. As you can see, you've obviously done a great job in optimizing the game and making sure it ran very well without compromising the Graphical Integrity.
Awesome Job Guys! I can't wait until your future releases (of which can you give us a general estimation of your next DA 2 release)!!!
-LUCIAN04
I found this mod to be very slick and very easy to get into. From the simple menu interface and the slick battle maps playing in the background instead of having a static screen has shown me you guys/girls take pride in your work before I even started the game. Getting into the menus, setting my options and starting an "offline" game took me all of 2 minutes and the mod itself loads up very quickly. That right there deserves and A+.
When I started my first game I figured I'd go simple and play as a defender in "Triumph 5". The thing that got to me was I didn't see any "Press Fire To Start" onscreen so I thought my videocard was glitching with 2d in the mod. No worries, after about 2 minutes I came to the conclusion that I should just press the "fire" button. After the match started, figuring out what to do, where to defend and what class I should use for a given situation came natural even though I had never gotten the pleasure of playing the first "Defence Alliance" mod for UT99. Choosing between classes was simple and slick, figuring out how the mechanic worked took all of like 5 seconds and each class had his own feel which is especially needed in a class based game.
The Graphics themselves are also very slick from the custom models and effects to the overall aura of the game. It all fits together, all though I will mention that having futuristic looking soldiers in Jungle environments looks a little out of place. The gloss on the armor plates to the detailed scratched and battleworn look on the soldiers is topnotch and proves the Unreal Warfare engine still has some kick left in it. Especially for the file size of your mod, you guys were able to pack so much into so little it boggles my mind.
Weapons themselves also look very good although it's a little hard to distinguish the two shotguns from each other as the mechanics shotgun uses a magazine while the medics auto shotgun uses a standard slot fed mechanizm. I believe it should be the otherway around as the Autoshotty would more benefit in real life with a magazine system than would a normal finger fed slot system that the manual pump shotty would benifit from more.
Also another thing I found wierd was that the tracers coming from the Anti Armor class' SMG is off center. It comes out from the center of the screen instead of being oriented from the muzzle of the weapon itself. I will take a screenshot and edit this post later to show you.
Other than that, the guns look chunky and mean which brings me to another point. Chunky, mean looking weapons should produce Chunky, gross looking deaths. Aside from the explosives, of which wonderfully gib and dismember people in a glorious fasion, non of the weapons feel the way they sound. Ever hear the old saying
"His bark is worse than his bite"
That phrase applies here. Go play the "Ballistics" mod for a little bit and you'll see how awesome the after affects of killing someone with a shotgun at close range can be. I want to see more blowback from getting shot and more force from thrown bodies when suffering the effects of a rocket to the chest or a face full of buckshot. Aside from this minor complaint, and the fact that you should make the screen for the rocket launcher a bit bigger, the weapons are completely badass.
OMFG I HAVE TEH TURRETS SYNDROME!!!! Turrets seem to play a more integral part of this game than does actual combat mano e mano. I find myself switching from "Long Range" to "Mechanic" far too often so that I my build a couple turrets and or repair other turrets to keep the attackers at bay. I actually prefer the Chaos UT Turret system in the fact that the turret has multiple weapons, a decent lifespan, is more susceptable to explosives than normal firearms and isn't overpowering like the Auto Targeting Crusher and DFA Turrets. Not that they're bad at all, watching a Crusher Turret catch some poor fool dead in the face brings some great moments of "OMFG THAT WAS FING KRAZY!!" but watching the turrets annihilate the opposition to the point everyone just says F' it and goes lemmings on the damn thing to destroy it kinda takes the fun out of actual soldier to soldier combat.
My thoughts on the Turret System
-The Build Times are proportionate to the power each Type of Turret has so thats fine.
-Turrets should have a limited amount of ammo that can be restocked by either the Mechanic or the Machine Gunner. Give them enough ammo to last awhile, but not enough to make them godly killing machines.
-The Auto Tracking for the Turrets is way to fast. Either slow it down a notch or make the turrets AI tracking level proportionate to the level of difficulty the maps being played in.
-Depending on the map size and amount of players, Class types should be limited ( a la Red Orchestra) to prevent "Turret Spamming" by mass amounts of mechanics. I remember playing in Black Gold and had 3 other mechanics on my team, we all just littered the choke point with turrets galore, the attackers never stood a chance.
-Turret Control should also be extended to the "Infantry" class only for the fact that during some point in the match you may not even have a machine gunner on your team or in the game period and you desperately need to take control of one of your turrets to more effectively control the crowd coming to crash your party
Now on to the glitches I've noticed. I've only seen/ three glitches/problems so far in game which is pretty impressive considering some mods release with TONS of glitches.
Turret Hopping - Turret Hopping happens when a fine strapping young lad decides to walk/jump into an unfinished (still transparent Turret) and gets launched into the air sometimes causing an untimely death for those in bad health most likely due to getting shot at and not getting treated by a medic.
Weapon not firing - as the mechanic I went to go repair a turrent while in the middle of reloading. After I was done with the turret I tried firing my weapon and then tried to reload it again. To no avail I got blasted away cause my weapon jammed due to a glitch. Tried dying. No worky. Tried changing classes. Still no worky. I had to reload the map to get my weapon working again. It's only happened once so I'll just shrug it off, but it's definetly something that should be looked at.
Fall Damage - OMFG WHY IS IT THAT I FALL LIKE 5 FEET AND TAKE 20% DAMAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fall damage is totally out of proportion in this mod. Please decrease the amount of fall damage, not to the point that it's "UNREAL", but so I dont have to lose 60% of my life after jumping down a flight of stairs. I found that I've died more from falling than I have from my enemies which is a really bad sign lol. I have to stop drinking.
As for the General Performance of the mod. It runs better than UT2004 does on my PC actually lol.
Rez: 1280x960
Settings: Ultra High
Anti Aliasing: 4x
Anisotrophic Filtering: 16x
FrameRate According to Fraps: 54fps with AA / 82fps without AA
You can see my system in my sig. As you can see, you've obviously done a great job in optimizing the game and making sure it ran very well without compromising the Graphical Integrity.
Awesome Job Guys! I can't wait until your future releases (of which can you give us a general estimation of your next DA 2 release)!!!
-LUCIAN04
