Developer Journal: Dospac
Posted 2 decades ago Gameplay Design
Okay, time for more answers to your questions.
First up, FootLong asks, "Have the Soldier or Medic gained any sort of new abilities/weapons? Specifics will definitely be a bonus!"
FootLong, our changes to the Soldier and Medic in Fortress Forever are mostly small tweaks. While neither class gains or loses any significant abilities, medics should be able to use the super nail gun much more effectively in combat vs other players than they could in TFC due to tweaks in the nail projectile's mechanics. Specifically, the hitbox for the nails will be slightly larger, making the weapon easier to use vs moving targets. The netcode in TFC also made projectile paths display incorrectly to the player, depending on the players' latency. Fixing this will also improve super nail gun (and all other the projectile based weapons') usability in Fortress Forever.
Small tweaks have also been made to how infections spread among players. Our respawn entity that prevents things like grenades from exploding and buildable objects being constructed will also prevent infections from being spread while in the area. Infection on other players will also be visible to teamates, not just audible.
Soldier will feel very similar to TFC, with the only proposed change pending testing is to slightly increase rocket speed. The player hitbox to rocket projectile size ratio will also be somewhere between TFC and Q3, so rocket airshots will be a bit easier to accomplish.
We've been very adamant about keeping things like rocket jumping and rocket skimming intact from TFC. Overall we feel TFC's soldier and medic were very well developed. As the 2 most played classes from organized TFC, we've very much kept to the formula with these two.
Aftershock asked if wall strafing be included. YES. Moving faster without making noise, at least with footsteps off, is good. Yet another way no footsteps add to strategy.. I'm still trying to convince the EU team members. Heh heh.
Frostbyte wonders if bhop will be in FF like it is in TFC, and if it is worth learning right now. Another YES. Learn to air control, how you jump is secondary. Air control is perhaps the deepest and most enjoyable skill in the Quake and HL games.
To wrap this up, a few from Circuitous. Regarding medic calls, we hope to make them more context sensitive at the very least. There will only be one set of calls for all the classes, at least initially. This is an area that could see additional features and a better implementation in an update post-release, however.
Spies will change disguises without much jazz, at least initially. We're not putting art and coding resources into fancying up the peripheral features until the main elements are up to our standards. Things like the conc effect, weapon effects, etc will all look cool and be playable first. Other elements will likely wait until after our first public release.
On the gameplay front, Spy will be much more effective. Greatly improved stealth capabilities will be most noticable for those farmiliar with the spy. Players will also be able to choose what weapon they appear to be carrying when disguised, from the selection of weapons belonging to the disguised class. Additionally, spies will have a method of approximating the speed of the class they are disguised as without the need for scripting. This won't be an exact speed match for all classes, the idea is to add a little more depth to spy recognition. Disguising as the heavy classes is a bit silly if you move at spy speed all the time.
And lastly, the Civ had better be Mulchman. I will fight this to the bitter end! Actually, I've been as vocal as I can about making the workload easier for us by using content from HL2 and other various available sources. Apparantly our custom skeleton makes using Breen a bit tricky though. MULCH IT IS!!
Keep the questions coming! If I didn't answer one you asked here, there is always hope in a future update. There were some questions not quite ready for a proper answer yet. And as always we love to hear the community's thoughts on everything we're doing for you. Thread here for questionage:
http://forums.fortress-forever.com/viewtopic.php?t=124
View all developer journals First up, FootLong asks, "Have the Soldier or Medic gained any sort of new abilities/weapons? Specifics will definitely be a bonus!"
FootLong, our changes to the Soldier and Medic in Fortress Forever are mostly small tweaks. While neither class gains or loses any significant abilities, medics should be able to use the super nail gun much more effectively in combat vs other players than they could in TFC due to tweaks in the nail projectile's mechanics. Specifically, the hitbox for the nails will be slightly larger, making the weapon easier to use vs moving targets. The netcode in TFC also made projectile paths display incorrectly to the player, depending on the players' latency. Fixing this will also improve super nail gun (and all other the projectile based weapons') usability in Fortress Forever.
Small tweaks have also been made to how infections spread among players. Our respawn entity that prevents things like grenades from exploding and buildable objects being constructed will also prevent infections from being spread while in the area. Infection on other players will also be visible to teamates, not just audible.
Soldier will feel very similar to TFC, with the only proposed change pending testing is to slightly increase rocket speed. The player hitbox to rocket projectile size ratio will also be somewhere between TFC and Q3, so rocket airshots will be a bit easier to accomplish.
We've been very adamant about keeping things like rocket jumping and rocket skimming intact from TFC. Overall we feel TFC's soldier and medic were very well developed. As the 2 most played classes from organized TFC, we've very much kept to the formula with these two.
Aftershock asked if wall strafing be included. YES. Moving faster without making noise, at least with footsteps off, is good. Yet another way no footsteps add to strategy.. I'm still trying to convince the EU team members. Heh heh.
Frostbyte wonders if bhop will be in FF like it is in TFC, and if it is worth learning right now. Another YES. Learn to air control, how you jump is secondary. Air control is perhaps the deepest and most enjoyable skill in the Quake and HL games.
To wrap this up, a few from Circuitous. Regarding medic calls, we hope to make them more context sensitive at the very least. There will only be one set of calls for all the classes, at least initially. This is an area that could see additional features and a better implementation in an update post-release, however.
Spies will change disguises without much jazz, at least initially. We're not putting art and coding resources into fancying up the peripheral features until the main elements are up to our standards. Things like the conc effect, weapon effects, etc will all look cool and be playable first. Other elements will likely wait until after our first public release.
On the gameplay front, Spy will be much more effective. Greatly improved stealth capabilities will be most noticable for those farmiliar with the spy. Players will also be able to choose what weapon they appear to be carrying when disguised, from the selection of weapons belonging to the disguised class. Additionally, spies will have a method of approximating the speed of the class they are disguised as without the need for scripting. This won't be an exact speed match for all classes, the idea is to add a little more depth to spy recognition. Disguising as the heavy classes is a bit silly if you move at spy speed all the time.
And lastly, the Civ had better be Mulchman. I will fight this to the bitter end! Actually, I've been as vocal as I can about making the workload easier for us by using content from HL2 and other various available sources. Apparantly our custom skeleton makes using Breen a bit tricky though. MULCH IT IS!!
Keep the questions coming! If I didn't answer one you asked here, there is always hope in a future update. There were some questions not quite ready for a proper answer yet. And as always we love to hear the community's thoughts on everything we're doing for you. Thread here for questionage:
http://forums.fortress-forever.com/viewtopic.php?t=124