We're very happy to release the first in our series of video weapon tutorials! This week we'll learn how to make good use of the shotgun and its melee capability:
As always, join us on the forums or on IRC (#xonotic on Quakenet) for more information. Happy fragging!
The summer is upon us, and it is time for some fun. Join us in a friendly competition of skill in our first-ever last man standing, melee-only tournament! You can find all of the details, including potential dates, here. Don't forget to bring your trouts!
Those of you wanting to stay current with the latest Xonotic builds now have a new option – an automatic update script for downloading autobuilds! Released just yesterday by divVerent, this script uses rsync to download only the files you need to keep current. This will save you (and the project, of course) a bunch of bandwidth.
To run the script, extract the zip file linked above to a folder of your choosing, then run the file appropriate to your environment (update-xonotic.sh for Linux and Mac, update-xonotic.bat for Windows) to start the update process. If you do not currently have a Xonotic build installed to that directory one will be downloaded. If you have a preexisting Xonotic build installed there it will be updated to the most recent daily build of the master branch.
Take note that this script is intended for players – developers and testers will most likely want to stay with the git version and its corresponding “all” script.
Hey guys, so I know this response is rather a bit delayed but we've been a bit busy actually. Lots of things to update you on, so lets just jump into it.
Note: Can a mod move this to the news section please? I am unable to post there directly at the moment.
Introduction
For those of you who don't know, a few of us devs hosted an unofficial testing event called XWIT (Xonotic Weekend In Testing) designed with the goal of getting feedback from the community and determining the future of the balance direction in Xonotic once and for all. You can find more information about XWIT here: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=1750
Anyway, XWIT was quite a good success at what we needed it to do. It was a glimpse into what needs done with the game direction, and we're definitely glad to get the feedback from that. Because of the event and other proceeding feedback we got, we have worked quite hard on improving some things with the balance and such. I'll go into detail below in the thread, but mostly lets just talk about the survey I promised in the XWIT announcement.
Today we've unleashed the survey for the XWIT event, so team Xonotic can finally make the decision about which direction to go with weapons and such in a way which has the most amount of people happy and having fun. What I need YOU to do, is give your opinion on the issues we stated in the survey, and let us know what we should do with such weapons like the laser, shotgun, nexgun charge, etc. By giving your feedback, you guys essentially help decide what will happen with those issues.
SURVEY LINK IS HERE:http://www.xonotic.org/survey/ - I encourage you to read the rest of this forum post as well though so you can see insight onto what we've been doing.
Your feedback
A lot of feedback came from primarily just a few things... Though, mostly people complained about the balance switching every match, but we had to do this to keep it fair and true to one of the purposes of the event. Regardless, obviously that will never happen again in the future-- it was only temporary and I thank those who stuck it through and continued even though you may have been frustrated by it.
Further things which I got feedback on for balancing issues especially was: The laser generally was too weak in some cases, the shotgun melee was too slow/difficult to use most of the time or to some they missed the old shotgun burst on secondary. Specifically with my balance: The electro energy orbs were a bit too difficult to place due to their high speed, and the machine gun was a bit overpowered. Also there was A LOT of feedback about the physics, but i'll explain this later in the post.
I believe we came up with a fix/compromise for ALL of those things which is what i've been working on for the past week or so, though I still need more input. After the results of the survey are in, i'll give detailed information on the changes I made to those weapons.
Also: I know there are a few more people I need to reply to (like c.brutail) -- don't worry, i'll get to you ^_^
Physics
Out of all the heated debate and such over IRC and the forums and in game, we came up with a compromise for the physics. EVERYONE wanted something more complex and skillful to be in the physics, as Xonotic physics previously lacked strafe acceleration. Well, we have news.
Strafe acceleration is back. Only this time it's quite a bit more precise, and allows for sharper turning. Think of Nexuiz physics mixed with Quake Live physics, that's rather what it feels like.
We had to make some engine changes for this though, actually. Basically, the implementation we did was a "limited" strafe acceleration -- so there is a limit to how good of acceleration you could do. HOWEVER, before you get upset -- You almost humanly cannot hit that limit. The limit is merely there to prevent things like strafebots and such. This limit WILL NOT affect normal players in any way, basically. It only makes it so that "literally perfect" strafing doesn't have a major advantage over "good" strafing.
Conclusion
Now, the physics and potentially new balance direction are obviously going to need some more testing and perhaps some tweaking, but the general direction of this game is looking very good now. Speaking of more testing... Due to the usefulness of the XWIT event, a lot of people are suggesting that we make this some kind of reoccurring event which happens e.g. twice a month or such. Now, i'm not sure if I can keep up with organizing that, but that's definitely an idea i'm going to consider. Either way, we DEFINITELY have another event planned for our next official release.
Anyway two other things: We are still working on creating a new weapon for the lightning gun, it's in the works at the moment. Please be patient, it probably won't make it into the next stable release but I assure you it will be here as soon as we can get the base of the design working perfectly.
Also: We're still working on the results for the last "community survey" -- it turns out that since it was so huge, the database itself is VERY difficult to extract information from. Antibody and [-z-] are working on getting useful information out of it now, so don't worry. Of course we're sorry about the extreme delay of those results, but our web administrators have been understandably busy with their own jobs.
Anyway, I would just like to thank you all for participating and contributing feedback.. and also just to remind you to try and keep your feedback as constructive as possible -- THAT is when we listen the hardest and make changes.
C.Brutail, one of the official developers in the Xonotic community, released a video today. The video chronicles his journey in converting an existing Nexuiz map to a Xonotic one. You can see how his attention to detail and knack for adding gameplay elements resulted in a new style of map. Check it out!
Today, something rather special is happening. We are releasing an unofficial development build of Xonotic primarily for balance testing and as a special event to renew interest in the game.
There have been a lot of improvements since our last release, and we strived to listen to your suggestions and input for the directions we should take on the game. Most importantly we are attempting to make the actual configuration of weapons and physics something enjoyable by as many people as possible, from newcomers to experienced players.
Since this is only a development release, we can't guarantee stability or that it is bug free. Although we took about a week off from potentially unstable commits, dedicating ourselves to fixing bugs, there is still a chance a bug could sneak in. If you find one, please report it here.
Balance Testing
What we essentially want you to focus on are two weapon balance configurations, that are defined on the files balanceSamual.cfg and balanceXonotic.cfg.
Right now, balanceXonotic.cfg (previously maintained by developer FruitieX and more recently shell clan with other collaboration) remains default until we come up with a decision. The current standing proposal balanceSamual.cfg (maintained by developer Samual with collaboration of other developers and players) will be reviewed along side it. If one balance isn't specifically preferred over another or there is some lingering issue, then a compromise will be made to work around it.
You can switch between the balance configurations on local servers using temporary keybinds created for this release: F7 for Samuals balance, and F8 for FruitieXs balance. For multiplayer you will have to search around for a server with the proper configuration you want.
Other weapon upgrades/removals are pending until after the balance is chosen. Other things simply aren't finished yet and would be too buggy for this release, for example the lightning gun is being recoded into a new separate weapon (potentially called the Arc Cannon) which will definitely be there in a later release. This means that for now the lightning gun is absent from balanceSamual.cfg as it does something else with the electro, but it will be included in the future.
Weekend In Testing
The second part to this release however is the announcement of an upcoming event for testing... *drum roll*: Xonotic Weekend In Testing (hereby known as XWIT) will take place between Friday April 29th and Sunday May 1st where the goal is to gather as many people as possible who can play on new servers with updated clients. We intentionally chose a date 2 weeks away so that people can have time to download the development release, and so that players have the ability to plan it out and make time to play.
By all means we want you to play before (and after) the event as well, just make sure you can get as many people together as possible on the weekend.
Another useful thing about this event is that we are going to use it to test the backend of our statistics system and actually generate a good amount of data for it.
Servers
We will already have quite a few official servers, both EU and NA, setup and ready to go. Some will be private and competitive, but most will be public spreading across multiple game modes. These official ones are mainly going to be hosted by Samual, divVerent, and Antibody with the support of edong23 and merlijn. Note: These servers can't be expected to be 100% set up until the XWIT event, it generally will take time so be patient.
We encourage Nexuiz server owners to get involved here as well and direct traffic from their Nexuiz servers just to give Xonotic a shot. Several have already agreed to this (such as HOCTF: The largest public American CTF server in Nexuiz - or DCC: A European based community) Before and during the XWIT event, they will be directing people to download Xonotic from here. Who knows about afterwards, but it is possible some other servers (DCC for example already wants to do this) will stick with only Xonotic and never go back to Nexuiz.
If you want to host a server, please keep in mind the whole purpose is to focus upon the balance configs, so if you are playing with other physics or such modifications then please do it with a private server. We don't want to confuse players who are looking for a chance to try the current default settings and the newer proposed settings. There is a config provided (annoy_balance.cfg) which allows you to notify the player which balance is being used by sending them an info message - It can also switch between the balance at every single end of a match to keep testing time fair between the two... That CAN be disabled however to dedicate the server just to one balance by a simple modification to the file. If you wish to do balance testing, we strongly recommend you use this script so people know exactly which config they're using.
Outcome of the event
Shortly after XWIT, we will create a public balance survey where you can give feedback about the two balances and other such stuff which were tested. We want to finally settle the balance debate once and for all. With this survey we will decide upon the direction of balance in Xonotic, and stick with it. Once we have finished with that and other such decisions, we generally plan on creating a full beta release in the near future. ;-)
Basically this development release will be the single pivoting point on moving forward with Xonotic, it will give us the information we need to progress and continue producing on something you all have been wanting.
Downloads
The packages linked below contain binaries (32 and 64 bits) for Windows, Linux, and OS X. You are free to mirror these and your link will be added to the list of mirrors.
Note: We changed how the textures are stored since the preview, so even though we added more art content the file size is actually much smaller. "
Along with the development release we created an unofficial map pack which would allow for easy addition of maps to your server/client It would also help with getting feedback for these maps and potentially getting them to be official Xonotic maps. Quite a few of the maps are still work in progress, so again feedback is welcomed.
Be sure to check the new series of player interviews by Antibody, where you can hear players talk about the game while watching their actual gameplay! Thus far we've spoken with several experienced community members who have been playing for years. We discuss many subjects - current development, strategy, favorite moments, advice for new players, and much more. Check out all of the interviews in the series and stay tuned to the forums or IRC (#xonotic on Quakenet) for more!
Current default balance itches allot of ppl, including many of the core devs the wrong way. The maintainer (FruitieX) tells us he has no time to maintain it anymore.
All this amount to it being necessary, in my and many other dev's view, to revamp the game balance and have ppl maintaining it who will actually maintain it.
Me and Samual are currently working together to find a acceptable compromise between all the ideas and wills buzzing around this hot potato. This will take time and effort to get right, I will post updates when they are available.
Since this got known in various forum threads and irc channels many have raised their voice in favor of FruitieX (current) balancing too. I understand your anxiety that it may throw off what you learnt so far and or/what you helped develop (hello pickup players ;-).
As for the first part, this cant be helped in a pre-release game. things may and will change allot before Xonotic 1.0 see the light of day. As for the second part the new balance will be a continuation of what we currently have in many areas. Only drastic changes will be where Samual and I feel the current system is unacceptable.
If you have constructive criticism or ideas, feel free to let me know (and if you just want to balance spam™, do not waste your time, ill delete any such posts from this thread.)
Finally I would ask you to be patient and at least wait for the new balance proposal to be planned, implemented and tested before you start telling the world how wrong it is.
It's been one month tomorrow since the release of Xonotic 0.1preview. This should be enough time for us to gain some valuable feedback about this early release. Whether you're a developer, a player or just someone interested in Xonotic. Please take the time to fill out this survey to help us learn more about our community and the wants/needs, likes/dislikes of our user-base.
Spread the word, the more results we get, the more we can fine tune the next few releases to meet expectations of a wider audience. Also, if you're not yet following our facebook page, then do so for super special, top secret alerts and news, not even follows of the Xonotic's twitter get.
By the way, your results will be more valuable to us if you have played Xonotic. If you haven't played it yet, we urge you to download Xonotic first.
![[Image: 1ypxj6pce58teuvm6dq.png]](http://pics.nexuizninjaz.com/images/1ypxj6pce58teuvm6dq.png)
