In an earlier announcement we've promised that the decisions of Team Xonotic will be more transparent towards the community, namely releasing the results of our decision making system aka Xonvote in a public RSS feed.
I'm happy to announce that zykure has assembled said RSS feed:
You can also click on the polls to reveal a full summary about the votes given and comments of each team member who participated in that poll.
You can also find a full list about closed, passed, failed, tied and even vetoed polls, and the actual list of Team Xonotic members.
I'd also like to point out we'll release this information soon to a broader public too in the form of an official blog post about current development (aka. WoX-BloX #5!!!), I just wanted to release this information asap, because the blogpost is currently very WIP (but I want it to write till the end of November).
I truly hope with these polls and the results going public, you'll see and understand more about the inner workings of Team Xonotic, our motivs that drive our decisions, and by in that the end, the you'll get a more broader view on the things behind the courtain.
Thank you very much for zykure again for his awesome work, and for your attention too!
First of all, in the name of Team Xonotic, I would like reassure everybody:
XONOTIC IS NOT DEAD.
THE DEVELOPMENT DID NOT STOP.
It's uncommon for a game developer team to stand before their playerbase and be honest and transparent, but the nature of Xonotic and our longtime mutual respect and good relationship with the community (it's almost the same, afterall) allows us to do this, and in some cases, forces too.
The structure of Team Xonotic aka the devs
In the past couple of weeks we noticed some negative tension building up in the community towards the developer team, and to be fully honest, there were some problems in the organisation of Team Xonotic too. For an open project like Xonotic, one could say this is inevitable; everybody would like to shape the game to his or her own taste, contributing either with ideas or deeds of different skill levels on their own respective fields. Unfortunately, this might lead into some disagreement now and then, and in some cases, antagonism and heated discussions. However, we can all agree on one thing: we'd just like to make the game better, to be the most possible enjoyable for the casual and the more competitive players too. Sometimes however this might force us to significantly change some aspects of the game, and by that in the end, make some decisions that might proove to be not so popular. These decisions are not made by one person, but as a team. Let me explain how it works.
The structure of the developer team is divided into two groups: the core and the extended team.
Members of the current core team are: divVerent, Antibody, merlijn, Morphed, Samual, -z-, CuBe0wL, Mirio
The extended team consists of long time contributors who are also generally trusted by the community:
Now, let me tell you about how decision making works: the team has an invite-only IRC channel, which has a bot coded by zykure, that allows every team member to start polls about topics that might cause some controversy. A poll runs for 2 weeks - during this time, every team member can vote either yes, no, or they can abstain. Any core team member has veto rights too, that stops the poll in question. The stopped poll can be challenged by another core team member by reopening it and also escalating it into a core team only poll. There is no supreme power over either the core team or the extended team by anybody. There's an agreement in the team that everybody has to accept the results of Xonvote, like it or not.
We'll provide more details on voting rules and such later, as I think this is just slightly offtopic here.
Who to blame?
For being accountable on the Team's decisions, we've decided to publish the results and all details of ended polls with names, decisions and comments. This way you'll all know all the details behind a decision, and also the names who you should blame in case it's not for your liking. I hope in the end you'll realise those decisions were not made by an all above supreme dictator alone, but the simple majority of different minds in Team Xonotic.
Note: there might be some polls, that'll still be invisible like release date discussions and other such private matters.
I cannot post a link where to find this information, simply because it's still under construction by zykure, but it's just minor technical problem. It'll most likely be a public RSS feed. When the feed or the equivalent is done, I'll update this post here (and maybe I'll publish news about it too).
Now that you've carefully read through this huge wall of text, I hope I could answer your told and untold questions, and release some of the pressure.
To sum it up:
- All decisions on minor and major changes are made as a TEAM, not by individuals
- The outcome of polls have to be accepted
- Team Xonotic will be 100% transparent about these decisions
- XONOTIC IS NOT DEAD
- THE DEVELOPMENT DID NOT STOP
Welcome back to the (probably) final part of my Newbie Corner. This time, as announced in my last post, I will turn to tweaking the game appearance in order to optimize perception. The concept is easy and straight-forward: the better you can see and hear other players and their actions, the better you can react to them.
Even though some settings are available via menu, we'll change most settings via console, so before I go into details let's have a quick look at how this awesome tool works. You can open the console by pressing <Shift> <ESC>. Now you have a command prompt where you can issue commands to query and change settings. If you already know how a command you are going to type is called, you can just type the first few letters and hit <TAB>. This will automatically complete the command. If the letters match several possible commands, it will auto-complete to the extent all potential completions match and show you all potential completions. For example, typing "cross" in console and hitting <TAB> will auto-complete to "crosshair" and show the commands like "crosshair", "crosshair_alpha",... If you try this you will notice the console will show you not only the possible command completions, but also more info to each possible completion: what is its current (local!) setting, what is its default setting (in square brackets) and a short description what the command does.
In most cases you won't know the exact command to type, and this is where a special command will help you: "apropos". If you, for example, want to know how to do change screen resolution, you can just type "apropos resolution" into console, and the console will spit out all commands with description that have the string "resolution" in their name or in their description.
Now that we know the basics about how to tweak the game, let's get going!
First of all be warned that if you follow this tutorial and implement all changes I suggest here your game will look pug-ugly to say the best. I myself usually play with more or less regular settings because I like to experience the great work developers, modelers and mappers have done to create decent graphics. But if you intend to play competitively, it will be to your advantage to lower the complexity of what is displayed in order to be able to fully focus on the information that is relevant for your gameplay.
The first thing to do is to disable the damage blur. Getting hit is already bad enough, you won't want to punish yourself with temporary blindness additionally. This is so crucial that I even disabled this "feature" in the left screenshot above in the "Visuals" caption, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to see a thing there. If you haven't done so already, disable this by doing
Code:
hud_damage_blur 0
While we're at it, we can also reduce the damage flash when getting hit:
Code:
hud_damage 0.4
It obviously is crucial to see what is happening around you. To increase the area that you can see, adjust the field of view to your liking. While the default value is at 90, I personally play with a field of view of 120, and find this a quite usable setting. Remember though, that changing the field of view has an impact on your ability to aim, very similar to changing settings of your mouse sensitivity. The higher the field of view, the harder it can be to aim. I have a lousy aim anyway, so I can play with fov 120 alright. You can change the field of view in the menu or via console by:
Code:
fov 120 (adjust to your liking)
Most player models are really hard to spot, as they are optimized to look good and, to some extent, realistic. This means their textures are subject to the usual rendering procedures which calculate how much light from the surroundings will be reflected by the player models. Consequently, most models are hard to see in dark corners, and don't have a strong contrast to the background in general. There is one model though that uses "fullbright" textures, which are always displayed at full brightness, and this is the "Mega Erebus". Now there is a way to make every other player be displayed to you as "Mega Erebus" even if they selected a different model, and you can do that by selecting it for your own player and forcing your own model on everyone. This can be done via menu, but here's the console command:
Code:
cl_forceplayermodels 1
Be warned though that the sounds other players make still remain the same, so don't be shocked if a Mega Erebus is commenting to you in a Pinky Pie voice on servers that have ponies enabled. If you dislike other people using colors that may blend too well into the map, you can also select a particularly bright color for yourself and force it onto everyone as well:
Code:
cl_forceplayercolors 1
These settings obviously have the disadvantage that you become extremely visible to everyone else, too - but it would be rather unfair if you could make everyone extremely visible while staying a grey mouse, wouldn't it?
I personally strongly dislike blood splatter and gibs flying around as a matter of taste, but disabling all the gory mess also has visual advantages beyond personal preference. The more unnecessary detail gets rendered, the harder it is to filter out the information that is actually relevant. Therefore, turning off gibs is a good way to get rid of a whole bunch of effects that only get in your way if you want to keep an overview in the heat of a fight:
Code:
cl_gentle_gibs 1 (note that you may need to restart Xonotic or reconnect for this change to take effect)
But not only gibs can obscure things, also particle effects of explosions, coronas and bloom can impact on visibility:
Code:
cl_particles_alpha 0.2 (feel free to experiment with values between 0 and 1)
cl_particles_sparks 0
cl_particles_blood 0
r_coronas 0
r_bloom 0
Now the game still looks somewhat ok-ish. Time to change this! Let's get rid of all those details in textures that generate contrasts where it isn't needed:
Code:
gl_picmip_world 10
gl_texturecompression 1 (if you like, or need faster loading)
What, still looks the same? Well, then do
Code:
vid_restart
and enjoy
Some people even like to replace the beautiful pickup models by twodimensional, bright sprites. I personally don't see a visibility benefit, but the bright symbols could be considered as easier to spot. To enable "simple items", do:
Code:
cl_simple_items 1
You will have to reconnect to the server (or, if you test it in a local game, type "restart" in console). Note that this change only works on servers that allow this setting to be used.
The next thing is to set an always visible crosshair. Though I personally like the per-weapon crosshairs, they unfortunately are not very bright. With them, I often had the problem of identifying where that crosshair actually is in the middle of a battle. Even though I probably ended up landing quite some hits this way due to my particularly fuzzy aim which seldomly places the crosshair on the target, I decided to make the crosshair really visible, now that I deliberately chose to use the darn thing. You can very comfortably configure the crosshair via the menu or just copy my settings:
Code:
crosshair 27 (this is really all about personal preference)
crosshair_alpha 1
crosshair_effect_scalefade 0
crosshair_effect_time 0
crosshair_enabled 2
crosshair_dot 1
crosshair_dot_color 0.24 1 0.13 (this too is all about personal preference)
crosshair_per_weapon 0
crosshair_color_per_weapon 1 (if you like to know the weapon per crosshair color)
crosshair_ring 0 (this removes the nex ring, keep it if you like to see it)
crosshair_ring_reload 1 (mg reload ring might be useful)
crosshair_ring_reload_size 1 (adjust to your liking, default is too big imho)
crosshair_size 0.28 (adjust to your liking)
If you have already set up weapon binds following my previous tutorials and are really confident about them, you might even choose to remove the rendered first person weapon model so it doesn't block your view:
Code:
r_drawviewmodel 0
Now you'll only know what weapon you hold by remembering the bind you pressed last and by the color of the crosshair. But if you managed to get the weapon binds into your cerebellum, this is manageable - decide for yourself if you're ready for this.
When using the zoom to improve sight in a fast paced game like Xonotic, you won't want the view to be impaired by some mask around the crosshair that generates the impression you look through some binoculars or something:
Code:
cl_reticle 0
Also, who wants to waste time for the transition between zoom and non-zoom?
Code:
cl_zoomspeed -1
Bobbing effects are generally only for conveying a "realistic feel" but don't serve a purpose that's important for the gameplay. Quite to the contrary, they make your view less steady. So you might want to switch off all sorts of bobbings:
Code:
cl_bobfall 0
cl_bobmodel 0
cl_bobup 0
If you like to keep an eye on the action (and on who takes which items) when you get fragged, you can disable automatically showing the scoreboard when dead with:
Code:
cl_deathscoreboard 0
Apart from all the visual stuff, you can of course also improve perception by adjusting the audio settings. While there is quite some remarkably good music in Xonotic, in-game music can distract you and predominate pickup or movement sounds that you might want to hear. The same goes for ambient sounds. Whereas these greatly add to the atmosphere of the game, they can prevent you from predicting where an opponent will come from, what the player's approximate health status is and what is being picked up. So if you can do without the atmosphere, you might want to turn those off via the menu.
That's it for now again, thanks for reading and stay tuned, as the next project I'll be working on is to rework the existing parts of the Newbie Corner into a comprehensive Newbie Manual in order to keep the information up to date.
We're very happy to announce our next official release of Xonotic! Xonotic version 0.7 is a massive step forward for the project. We've changed our team structure to bring in new development talent, and the result is a better platform on which to work. We've also been pushing hard development-wise since the last release, refining the game into something that we can all love. We have a staggering amount of changes since 0.6 aimed at both casual and competitive gamers. We're very proud of what we've achieved in collaboration with our active, diverse community. We hope you enjoy it too!
While you're downloading the game, check out some of the highlights of this release...
Massive updates to game modes
Xonotic 0.7 features updates to the classic game modes that define the game, including a complete rewrite of Capture The Flag. New gameplay elements such as flag-passing and stalemates have been introduced along with new visual effects and game notification messages. Other game modes such as Clan Arena, Arena, Last Man Standing, Onslaught, Assault, Freezetag, Nexball, and Domination have also received updates for bugs, minor features, and relocations to the mutator system.
Animation blending
Our last release ushered in a new wave of possibilities with client-side rendering of players which allowed us to implement full animation blending to playermodel rendering, among other unique features. Because of this we can now play two separate animations on a player at the same time. This means we can show a specific walking direction on the legs and play an attacking animation on the torso simultaneously. This implementation also lets us bend the playermodel skeleton based on the direction they are looking, which provides a seamless appearence of where other players are aiming.
More competitive features
This release also includes many new competitive-oriented features. The long-anticipated arrival of simple items provides 2D rendering of sprites for item pickups instead of models, allowing items to be identifiable from a much further distance. Super spectating is also available, which allows for a wider array of options for video recordings and broadcasters with options such as follow powerup and follow killer. New and improved spawn rules better fit competitive gameplay in duels or team matches alike.
Mapping updates
Once again we have rolled out a fair portion of mapping updates to the game, including 4 new maps: Abyss: A large indoor CTF map by kuniuthefrogg designed for public and competitive gameplay. Fuse: A stunning new duel map by cityy which captures the aspects of Xonotic movement and game design perfectly. SilentSiege: A medium size duel map made by Justin with stormkeep-like gameplay. Oilrig: A revived map from the older origins of our project, providing great visuals and deathmatch gameplay that will really shine through with the older members of our community. Additionally we have paid a lot of attention to the existing maps again, and updated them with new features and gameplay improvements along the way.
Better handling of in-game messages
The in-game message system has been completely re-written for this release. It provides an entirely new set of abilities for centerprints, console messages, and hud notifications. The system gives players the flexibility to customize and control all of the game messages as well as the ability to add full translation support. The notification system also integrates with many of the other game mode updates.
All new compiler
We have migrated to an all new QuakeC compiler, gmqcc. The work of graphitemaster and Blub\0, gmqcc generates faster, more optimized program files when compared to its predecessor. It gives game code developers new features and tools that will be of tremendous value to the game in the future.
In Closing
Xonotic 0.7 is the product of strong collaboration between our developers and the rest of our vibrant, diverse community. We're excited to look at this release as nothing other than a giant step forward for the project. If you like what you see, please share it with your friends! For your support and feedback, we thank you. See you out there on the servers - happy fragging!
P.S. We've finally decided upon a new release schedule, so expect to see more frequent, consistent release patterns from us in the future!
I've recently updated the main xonotic.org theme. It's not really a redesign, but rather a re-implementation of what I'd done with the site about 8 months back. The newer version has a couple of things going for it:
- It is based on the excellent roots theme, which itself is based on HTML5 Boilerplate and Twitter Bootstrap. This means that I can leverage the eyes and testing of many more people than just me when introducing new features.
- It is more mobile friendly than what I did before. If you visit the site on your smartphone you'll notice the menu navigation is drastically different (in a good way).
- The background image has been optimized.
- I extended the theme's CSS in a way that makes it much easier for me to upgrade Bootstrap in the future. This is a big thing for me.
- The menu is now location-aware. If you're on the same domain (e.g. not going to stats.xonotic.org), you'll see the menu update itself to highlight where you are.
- The menu now supports dropdowns. We don't use them currently, but we can if we need to in the future.
- Comment styles are available. This is another thing we don't use (we send folks to the forums to discuss), but it is good to have.
- Updating the text boxes, images, and download links on the main page is much easier with Advanced Custom Fields support.
All in all I'm pretty happy with how it has turned out, but I would like for you all to be on the lookout for any issues. You can also post suggestions (even for new content or copy changes) here and I'll consider them. If you're extra eager, you can even submit a pull request to me on my github repo for the theme. Hooray open source, right?!?
Hey guys, so as i'm sure you've figured out from the title... Today is the third anniversary of the announcement of the Xonotic project!
Anyway, i'm fairly busy and can't spend too much time writing this, but I just want to bring you guys a quick update of what has been going on with development in the past 2 months or so... (note: list items still in development or pending review are marked with asterisks)
New notification system (Rewrite of all centerprints, console messages, and hud notification networking)-- Specifically allows for translations for all game messages, and it allows users to customize what notifications they want to see (and which options they want enabled for them), as well as bringing hundreds of new updated messages and features
Client-side animation decision (Moves handling of playermodel animations to the client, saving resources on the server and allowing many more features such as animation blending and better aiming animations)
New compiler (GMQCC-- A better, re-written from the ground up, QC compiler... Gives us many new and very useful features.)
*Re-write or migration of Clan Arena, Arena, LMS, Onslaught, Assault, Freezetag, and other game modes to the mutator system... as well as a new fundamental system for managing round based game modes.
Many fixes involving spawning and zoom animations, as well as a new tracing method for the death camera and fixing of 2D animations for player death/damage
*Migration of MinstaGib to a mutator
*Crylink secondary and force calculation improvements
*All-new announcer and player voice sounds
*Global map repository (bringing all mapping resources and hosting services directly to the official website, so that there is a centralized place for everyone to go concerning mapping.)
New maps (Abyss, *Spiderctf, *Fuse, *Opium), as well as updates to existing maps (Runningman, *Stormkeep)
Welcome back to the 5th episode of my Newbie Corner! Now that we’ve been examining movement and weapons, the air for new newbie stuff is starting to get thinner and thinner, but there’s still enough material left to be covered by one or two newbie corners, so let’s get started! In this part I’ll be providing some general gameplay hints that hopefully will make your life as a newbie out there on the servers easier – and longer
First of all, Xonotic encourages the usage of weapon combos. How so? Well, if you shoot, you will have to wait a short while (the refire time) until that weapon is able to shoot again, unless you’re holding a constant or rapid fire weapon (currently only hagar and mg). The refire time is rather short so it doesn’t feel like limiting you much if you’re not aware of the concept of weapon combos. But if you switch your weapon immediately after you shoot, you can land a second shot with the second weapon faster than you would be able to with a second shot of the first weapon, as the refire time is longer than the weapon switch delay. This way you are able to deal more damage per second by combining different weapons. Additionally, combining weapons also enables you to combine the specific benefits of two weapons, like slowing down a fast target with crylink in order to be able to easier finish it off with an instahit gun such as nex.
This leads to the problem that it’s terrible difficult for any orthopedic healthy and sane person to do weapon combos efficiently and reliably with the default keyboard layout or (omg!) the mouse wheel. Fortunately, Xonotic allows you to re-configure the entire keyboard bindings very easily (settings window → input tab). I consider direct weapon binds per weapon the easiest way to access any weapon immediately, and would strongly recommend to place the relevant binds around your movement keys or on extra mouse buttons your desktop rodent may have. You will have to find a solution that feels comfortable for you, which might require some experimenting. I for example moved my movement keys from wasd to esdf in order to have more keys available around my movement keys for weapon binds. But that’s just an example, you’ll have to find out what works best for you.
Don’t worry, impacts on your playing skills that result from redesigning your keyboard layout will, once you found a comfortable setup, be temporary only and the change WILL pay off in the longrun. Being able to pick the right weapon for the job instantly by means of a finger reflex is a great advantage in a FPS that is as fast paced as Xonotic.
Another thing you should be aware of is that splash damage travels through walls. Knowledge of this fact can come in very handy at various situations. Especially if you know or suspect someone to be on a higher level above you and the ceiling is thin, you can just try a lucky mortar or rocket shot at the ceiling. The hit indicator sound (that little beep) will tell you if your guess was right. If you’re very confident about the location of your opponent, you can even unleash an electro combo (see Part 4: electro) at the ceiling, which works surprisingly well and does a great amount of splash damage, but takes a bit more time to do.
Using splash damage that travels through walls is a very useful and secure technique, as the opponent will obviously not able to fire back at the same time.
This is something which is almost too obvious to be included here, but I’ve seen so many new players running right past health and armor pickups without taking them. In Xonotic, your starting health of 100 can be brought below zero very quickly. It takes any experienced player two shots to accomplish this, which typically are a two weapon combo so this goes REALLY fast. If ONE player can finish you off that fast, imagine how long your life lasts in a typical EIGHT player deathmatch. This is why it is absolutely crucial to pick up any health and armor you might find on your way, unless of course this puts you in a dangerous position that outweighs the advantages of a health/armor boost. A mega armor or mega health gives you additional 100 health or armor points respectively, which obviously equals the amount of damage you can take with your starting health – you could consider a mega armor or mega health an extra life. Megas respawn within 30 seconds of being taken.
However, note that if you are above 100 health/armor, both health and armor will start to rot down to 100 a short while after you picked up your last health or armor respectively. The higher above 100 you are, the faster the rot goes. On the other hand if you are below 100 health, your health will start to regenerate a short while after you took damage for the last time. Again, the lower your health is, the faster it regenerates. This means if you get out of a battle with really low health and there is no health pickup anywhere near, it can be a good idea to retreat to a place out of action until you managed to regenerate a bit. Armor obviously does not regenerate.
The fewer players you have in a match, the more important it gets to listen to the sounds they make. Each armor or health pickup size has its own distinctive pickup sound. Pickup sounds are louder and therefore easier to notice even at some distance than footsteps. If you know where which pickups are on the map you’re playing, you’ll be very often able to know where other players are before seeing them just by listening to the pickup sounds they make.
Also note that the sound a player makes when getting hit varies depending on how low that player’s health is. When you hit a player and you hear the characteristic “very low health groan” (most newbies know that sound primarily from their own player model… ), you’ll know that you’ll only need to deal a few damage points to finish that player off, so you can go for fast high spread (mg, shotgun) or fast splash damage weapons (crylink). Listening is a very important part of duel gameplay.
These are the general gameplay hints I was able to think of. I hope they’ll help you live longer on public servers! Have fun and good luck, see you on the servers and stay tuned for the next issue, which will cover configuration tweaks for assisting you to concentrate on the important parts of the gameplay.
Community member Hero, of the Profound Velocity clan, has released a new video detailing exactly how to strafe-jump. Learn to master this technique and you'll be flying around maps before you know it. Enjoy the video, and thank you Hero for making it!
Join Hero and other members of his clan in the #profoundvelocity channel on Quakenet's IRC network.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present you a new Xonotic fragmovie by [0]Trev&Nacho!
The movie is 5:46 long, and features some pretty awesome and mindblowing frags by Trev, who's from the Australian community of Xonotic.
If you'd like to drop him a line or two, head on to our official forum, and let him know how awesome he is!