Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad releasedate

[zeep]

I've been playing the beta and though the game certainly has improved over RO1 with things such as bullet penetration, less mad crazy smg recoil and great sound, it took an arcade route with movement speed. These guys run way too fast all the time.

People on the forum are complaining that the weapon zoom is unrealistic but i find it's good. I was never a good pixel hunter and this imo is the best way to simulate real life focus. The other thing people are yelling about is the lack of weapon sway. The weapon sway in RO1 was this atrocious random swaying of the weapon model in first person view that had absolutely nothing to do with where the weapon was aiming at. The aiming was another random factor. Especially the smg's were a disaster.

And 'balance'.. By God can't people just leave this horrible word 'balance' in the pits of hell to be burned again and again? People asking for balance are basically asking "please nerf some stuff in-game that is totally insignificant to some but gamebreaking to others".

I find RO2 fun to play but i must agree with some other posters, i don't see a modern weapon mod like Inf happening. I'm also going to stop pursueing the next inf. I'm going to play RO2 until i get sick of it and go from there.

BF3.
I seriously fear BF3 is going to have all that BC2 crap where you are shooting someone in the back of his head, he turns around and spraykills you. I swear that game is an insult to intelligence.


Modding Crysis or using UDK is probably the best Inf option for a determined dev team. I would be willing to pay a 3rd party for models etc. Good idea Mercie. But like Psych says, it would need a good team with someone as Beppo at the helm.

 

[krisredbeard]

Well, there is always that guy doing that tactical game for UDK... namely, me.
Still working on it... slowly.

Here is some of the code in action, using default UDK models.

[M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYV0hQxqShw[/M]

Includes:

• true first person view
• simple weapon collision
• iron sight / ADS system
• item pickup via key
• sprinting
• walking
• misc bugs

You can see in the other vids that I've done freeaim, head tracking, prone, cover etc.
I would like to make a commercial product eventually... but that is a ways off.

Guess I should start a 'who is serious about this' thread and go from there.

 

[Matiwas]

Someone! Help this guy out!
Man... I wish I had bought UT3 when it was on sale at steam a while ago..
Are you using anything else from UT3 than the models? Does one need anything else than UDK(free?) to help you?

 

[krisredbeard]

Aside from some useful skill, no.
What you see there is all default UDK assets.
Only the code and animation manipulation (UE3's animation tree) is mine.
Waiting on an admin to sign off on a post in the development section of this forum.
Can discuss stuff in there...

 

[zeep]

Looks interesting. It's also nice to know somebody is doing a tectical mod on UDK.

What is your end goal if i may ask? Something along the lines of Inf? Modern arms? Future arms?
Also, what kind of level of realism are you after?

 

[krisredbeard]

The end goal is a decent thinking mans FPS. More freedom, more player choice and make those choices count as much or more then the ability to spray-and-pray. Create a nice, base game - let the community run servers how they want (casual t-shirt and jean deathmatch, full operator vs rebel scenarios etc).

Aiming for a fairly high level of realism in regards to player choice and freedom.
Ballistics, yes.
Damage, not so much.
Need to find a happy medium for those...

To give you an example, I recently updated reload info.
Isn't final, but you should see what I mean about player choice.

Reloading
Reloading will be done via a dedicated 'reload' button.
It will be up to the player to decide when - empty or not - and how - keep or discard - to reload.

While most of what is discussed here is based on weapons fed from an external magazine, the basics will apply to all weapons, regardless of type.

Empty or Not
A player can reload when the weapon is empty or still has one or more rounds ready to fire.
An empty reload will be slightly slower, since a new round will need to be chambered into the weapon.

Keep or discard
Discarding the magazine is faster, but you lose any unused rounds and may make more noise as the old magazine hits things.
Keeping the magazine is slower, but you keep all unused rounds and make less noise.

To discard the magazine, the player just taps reload.
To keep the magazine, the player needs to press and hold the reload until the old magazine is pocketed.

Two weapon usage
If using a weapon in each hand, a tap or hold will reload the main hand, a double tap or a tap then hold will reload the offhand.
Well, that is theory anyway - will need testing.

Stages
Reloading will be divided up into stages to allow reloads to be paused or interrupted. These stages will vary based on weapon type, but would typically include eject, remove, insert & chamber. Each completed stage is skipped if and when the reload is resumed.
ie. If the magazine has been ejected, the reload would resume at the insert stage.

Interrupting a reload
To pause or stop reloading, a player need only perform any non-reload action.

Attacking with weapon
If chambered and outside melee range, the weapon will be fired.
If not chambered or inside melee range, the player will perform a melee attack with the weapon.

Attacking with other hand
If outside of melee range, the player will take out last used and/or available one handed weapon and fire it.
If not, the player will try to punch or otherwise engage the target with that hand.

Kicking
If inside melee range of a target, hitting jump will make the player attack with a simple kick, perhaps in the hope of gaining some distance.

Resuming a reload
If the player starts to reload a weapon that they previously interrupted, the reload will continue from where it left off.

Other

"Active reload system"
Thinking about using an active reload style system where the player can choose to skip reload stages or use alternate animations based on when/how they use the reload key. Most choices should have a decent positive affect and a slight negative one to help balance them out.
To prevent button mashing, hitting the key at the wrong time would result in a purely negative result.

Eject stage: Wrist flick
Just before the eject stage ends, a quick tap causes a flick of the wrist, throwing the magazine out faster and lining it up for a quicker insert stage. While faster, the flick means a slight canter to the gun, making any immediate shots taken less accurate.
A mistimed tap results in a stick magazine that needs to be removed by the offhand.

Insert stage : Slide release
Just after the insert stage ends, a quick tap causes makes the player use the slide release instead of wracking the weapon to chamber a new round. While faster, it may cause the some types of weapons to be slightly off canter making any immediate shots taken less accurate.
A mistimed tap results in the slide being released before the magazine was properly seated, requiring a the magazine to be tapped and the slide wracked anyway.

Chamber stage: Double feed / partial feed
A mistimed tap or mashing results in a double feed or a new round not being chambered correctly. Requires the player to perform a clearance the reinsert and chamber a new round.

References

• Loading from empty
• Tactical Load

 

[andy_kosela]

Anyone else has been playing the beta?

After a long break from PC FPS (~6 years), I bought RO2 hoping that it would be anywhere close to what INF was. It's disappointing for now even without the game-breaking bugs.

Yes, I agree, but I had this feeling it will be dissapointing, plus it's not even modern warfare so it's definetly not my cup of tea.

The only title I'm waiting for right now is Battlefield 3 -- yes I know it will be very arcade, but i just hope there will be some 'hard core' mode without HUD and more realistic wound system. The graphics alone is making it worth to check it.

Now imagine INF mechanics with Battlefield 3 graphics -- that would be awesome. Maybe a community will start reverse engineering some parts of it, so they will be changable, as there are no official plans for mod tools.

 

[andy_kosela]

The other thing people are yelling about is the lack of weapon sway.

Did I read this right? There is no weapon sway (aim sway) in RO2? Wow -- that is one of the most important features to me. To this day only VBS2 and to some degree INF is simulating this correctly.

Honestly i think RO2 is aiming towards Battlefield crowd with this one -- they are definetly not trying to create a realistic simulator.

krisredbeard --> Not to scare you off, but IMHO you have a VERY long way to go. There are hundreds of abandoned, unfinished projects made on UDK or Source that more or less were trying to accomplish the same goals as you. Making a total conversion mod is really a lot of work. That's why we can only have an utmost respect for Beppo and Sentry Studios for pulling such large project succesfully.

As I see it right now the mod and indie game development community is becoming smaller each year. There is generally a high level of entry nowadays to start modding on UDK or CryEngine 3. Unreal 1 or Quake 1 were definetly much simpler -- now you really need the whole dedicated team of professionals to really pull such project.

Besides TrueCombat: CQB (and that's basically one dev only now) I don't hear about other realistic mods in production now. It could be years before we see something on CryEngine 3 -- all we see is some simple hacks, not mods on crydev.

If only Battlefield 3 would allow modding it could be the good place to start -- motion captured models, maps, animations, etc. would be already there...

So for the time being maybe the best would be to start improving INF, because we already have a good base to start working with...

 

[b-boy_fuj]

Did I read this right? There is no weapon sway (aim sway) in RO2? Wow -- that is one of the most important features to me. To this day only VBS2 and to some degree INF is simulating this correctly.

Honestly i think RO2 is aiming towards Battlefield crowd with this one -- they are definetly not trying to create a realistic simulator.

There is weapon sway, but its reduced compared to RO1 which was overdone and annoying.

As for the game itself, its awesome, innovative, smooth, feature-rich but the times have changed. To hear word BF3 on INF forum is a good sign of how everyone is migrating towards console cross-platform market.

People are blaming the devs saying how the game have changed, but the real truth is that people have changed. Even before in RO forums I have seen numerous occasions of BF2 and COD casual chit chat, even before RO2 released.

 

[zeep]

I feel the weapon sway is enough. The weapon sway in RO1 was silly anyway. A sway animation where the bullets never went in the direction the barrel was pointing at.

There is enough accuracy now for the SMG classes to make all the RO1, COD and BF boys cry throughout the forum. Accuracy which i've grown used to in INF and consider normal. These kids are crying for less SMG classes and nerfed accuracy. All the while asking for realism.

The zoom is also fine with me. It seems only logical that i can use my monitor as an extension to see in the distance what i would see in real life. Since my monitor can only show about 30% of what i would see if i was actually standing there zoom is the best remedy. In both Inf and RO i always had to press my face against the screen to hunt for pixels.

 

[DeMachina]

Most asking for less SMG/AR care because of historical realism. Apparently there were less of them in Stalingrad. And I guess they enjoy the game more without them.

As for the sway, someone is making a mutator to alter it (more sway with low stamina while prone).

In real life you have to line up the front of the gun with rear. Angular sway. To my knowledge angular sway has never been implemented in a game but it would bee awesome if it was in this game.

Im skeptical this is creatable with a mutator

Didn't 2.9 and/or RA do this?

 

[zeep]

Most asking for less SMG/AR care because of historical realism. Apparently there were less of them in Stalingrad. And I guess they enjoy the game more without them.

As for the sway, someone is making a mutator to alter it (more sway with low stamina while prone).
Didn't 2.9 and/or RA do this?

Most of those people base that fact solely on the Enemy at the Gates movie. Or some movie like that. Anyway, i saw a dev state that there were enough smg's for the russians in that time.

I personally don't care. I don't like bolt rifles so i am happy to choose an automatic weapon most of the time.

Sway mutator. As if sway is the end all. They should make a mutator to slow those soldiers down.

RAv2 indeed, we could use Yurch here on RO2.

 

[tomcat ha]

actually the ppsh is not as accurate as it in real life in ro. They nerfed the best weapon the russians had. The russians should have an smg advantage while the germans should have an mg advantage.

 

[Gnam]

Regarding the concept of making a new INF-ish mod on a new platform under a small, dedicated team, I think everyone has to decide on their priorities in the game's focus and scope.

As has already been stated, making a total conversion and overhauling every asset of the game takes a TON of work which is unrealistic for a small dev team to take on. Furthermore, you have to wonder what the actual gameplay advantages of such a conversion would be. I would assume based on our common experience with Infiltration, what we are most interested in is simply realistic FPS combat with rifles and submachineguns. Well, guess what - any realistic game regardless of whether it takes place in WWII, Vietnam, or today, will entail realistic FPS combat with rifles and submachineguns. What's the difference really? The main difference is just the proliferation of the assault rifle.

For this reason I think it's worth considering the concept of developing a realistic FPS game based on a fictional alternate history scenario. Take JinRoh as an example - in this alternate history, Germany won the war, and the story focuses on conflict between a strike force armed with Stg44's, MG42's, and MP40's vs. an insurgent force armed with a mishmash of whatever 40's and 50's era weapons they can get their hands on. As long as the insurgent force has access to an AK, M2 carbine, or other early intermediate-cartidge weapon, you've essentially got yourself a scenario where realistic combat with assault weapons can occur and yet you don't need to model an entire new arsenal of weapons and maps to accomplish it.

It's just an idea, but you guys should ask yourselves just what the difference in gameplay would be vs modeling a standard arsenal of modern weapons from scratch. As much enthusiasm as we've all got for modern weapons, when it comes down to implementing them in-game, the benefit of including your standard selection 50 different 5.56mm rifles, a couple 7.62 NATO, and a couple russian rifles, is all mostly cosmetic.

Think about it. For the purposes of a game, virtually the only practical difference between any realistically-implemented 5.56 or 5.45 weapon is the length, and thus weapon collision factor.

- 5.56 and 5.45mm weapons all have almost identical recoil. IRL 7.62 NATO and 7.62x39mm rifles have much different recoil, but 99% of FPS don't bother to reflect this (Infiltration didn't either).

- There is relatively little factual data available about the terminal ballistics differences between various weapons and their ammo. At best we have wound profile diagrams which represent performance at a single distance, despite the fact that we know in real life, a few yard's difference in shot distance can mean that a certain bullet does FAR LESS or FAR MORE damage than another.

- Even despite the factual data that does exist, there isn't a single game out there that takes these factors into account in their damage model. It's always just a matter of "this bullet is bigger and higher velocity, so it does X hitpoints of damage which diminishes over distance".

- There is very little data regarding exactly how a bullet's terminal performance is affected by various types of body armor, which further complicates any attempts at accurate damage modeling and increases the number of factors which must be left up to arcadey approximations based on assumptions and guesses.

- Today virtually any accessory can be mounted to any weapon with the right mount, so we all know that restricting attachments so that each weapon has its own set of add-ons isn't really realistic.

In the end, the benefit of including a huge arsenal of modern weapons is mostly cosmetic. For gameplay purposes, as long as the game includes 1 or 2 realistically implemented and properly functioning weapons in each category, it doesn't really matter whether the game takes place in 40's, 60's, today, or the future.

In fact, I suggest that the best possible realistic infantry shooter would take place in a fictional world representing fictional conflicts and fictional weaponry which just happens to function similarly to real world weapons. In real life, teams aren't balanced - there is almost always one side which has inferior numbers or inferior equipment. In real life, a rifle which has more recoil and smaller magazines which is harder to use doesn't always have a balancing factor to reward you for using it. Basically there are 3 ways to make a realistic shooter:

1) Represent real conflicts, places, and weapons, but suffer the consequences when real life isn't conducive to good gameplay (i.e. one side is always at a disadvantage, some weapons are useless, the rest are all identical besides cosmetic differences)

2) Represent real conflicts, places, and weapons, but bend the truth when real life isn't conducive to good gameplay (i.e. every army in the world can afford level IV body armor, all 7.62 rifles perform as if loaded with non-milspec fragmenting or expanding ammo)

3) Represent fictional conflicts, places, and weapons which perform realistically but are also conducive to good gameplay. If your game takes place on planet Arteh in the year 8472, and you've got a small caliber assault rifle with light recoil and moderate damage, and there's also a larger caliber battle rifle with heavier recoil and heavier damage, no one can say that either weapon's implementation is unrealistic, and yet, both have their respective uses, the game still revolves around realistic mechanics and rewards realistic tactics, and no assets of the game need to be a mere cosmetic repaint of another which consume development time while offering nothing new to gameplay. Additionally, the community doesn't need to be torn up by debates over real life minutiae for which there is limited factual information to solve the debate, and/or can't possibly be implemented into the game with constructive or positive practical results.

 

[tomcat ha]

ro2 community seems fairly dead though, dunno if i would like to make a mod for it. Ive personally stopped playing ro2 because of boring maps.

 

[EGM<NL>E]

tomcat dude

support north korea lol
you just made it on the CIA shitlist

 

[Coop-Stogie]

no wonder why RO2 is dead. If you are just a casual player who plays 1-2 times a week, you stand no chance against those 24/7 nutters who have unlocked every hero class and raised every weapon skills to max.