Vehicles.. wtf?!

Troy, I'm quite sure that you're wrong in your first statement. AFAIK the vehicle server was switched off a while before the release of 0.6, the DCC servers switched from Nexuiz to Xonotic with the release of 0.6.

Anyway I can see that vehicle CTF is *very* popular with a lot of (mostly successful) "vcall extendmatchtime" happening. (Yes, and I love it too. )

I agree that in the long run there probably should be dedicated vehicle servers, but currently neither the player base nor the number of existing vehicle maps allows this. Once both are growing we'll hopefully get a more diverse server landscape.

My fault, I assumed DCC existed already at the time, must have been some other standard-xonotic server instead then. I stand corrected , my point still holds though.


@ Meeper. That was primarily to address transportation issue, any maps can be a campy hell (that 2 castles or space elevator, or broken worlds, all quite popular maps), and in some cases the gameplay is also quite slow (castles especially).

And I agree that unsealed seems to play best from the "game speed" perspective, and, I recon, primarily due to the large flagbases and open flag stands.

Anyhow, IMHO it would benefit xonotic greatly if people did come up with an acceptable vehicle/map balance that would be a fair compromise between our COD lovers, and e+ Quake 3 lovers (I am the latter actually). Currently afaik there is no other vehicle OSS FPS out there, and, if marketed well, they could be a good way to promote the game.


Also, 3d person view for vehicles? yack >.>

I do like vehicles much but I do not play vehicle maps because I don't like the gameplay. Turrets are deadly and there's lots of them, half of the game you just camp and pick turrets. UT made this better in that you needed player to use them. Some map I can't remember which also has infinite ammo. And there is not enough weapons in maps because they are only in bases or in one place somewhere.
What I don't like about it that it feels like you are required to play in a certain way and thats exactly the opposite of xonotic.

Only game which had vehicle CTF was UT3 and that wasn't great also, what I enjoyed was onslaught/warfare.

I do like vehicles much but I do not play vehicle maps because I don't like the gameplay. Turrets are deadly and there's lots of them, half of the game you just camp and pick turrets. UT made this better in that you needed player to use them.

I agree, the turrets are a huge pain. I'm curious about how the vctf maps would play without them.

Only game which had vehicle CTF was UT3 and that wasn't great also, what I enjoyed was onslaught/warfare.

oh jesus no. I know some people liked those modes, but they always seemed like a huge gimmick to me. UT3 VCTF was a very nice design and use of vehicles. It was very cool that the flag carrier couldnt drive vehicles, so you had to use the hoverboard and have someone tow. This added a lot of intensity to it, as well as balance.

yes that's true, right now its take the flag and run away with speeder. how about speeder race game mode?

here's my view on vehicles: vehicles are very fun at times, vehicles should still stay in a game like Xonotic when the map makers know what they are doing with the maps that include vehicles. you can make a fast paced vehicular map if you want, as well as make the vehicles not so OP. Xonotic is an open source game, if you don't like something about it, change it. it's all right there. if you don't know what you're doing, figure it out. i had to learn QC on my own, and i made some rather interesting weapons before my computer was stollen almost 2 years ago. it is possible to learn something you are passionate about.
now, i'm not going to be bashing on your bashing this whole post. ll that i'm really trying to say is: if it's broke, fix it. either way, i hope to see this amazing game continue to get better.

i had to learn QC on my own, and i made some rather interesting weapons before my computer was stollen almost 2 years ago.

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On a serious note: xonotic is quite a big project and trying to discuss and share tasks certainly is more effective than everyone working on his own, trying to fix what he thinks is broken. I mean if you ask a mapper to fix a map and he tells you to learn mapping yourself.. that would suck, wouldn't it?

It's not vehicles' fault, that maps are poorly designed.

I just quit Sandstorm - we had flying machine above our respawn dropping cluster bombs constantly. Zero fun, only frustration. Not to mention, that whole map is about controlling mountain. With whole respect to someone's work, this map can only make ppl more hostile against vctf maps.

I don't think that those maps are poorly designed.

It is more than necessary to create such huge maps to make the racer vehicle somehow useful.
There are many useful weapons to take airplane vehicle down.

But I can understand your frustration. When someone starts to camp at the top of the mountain and you cannot reach him anyhow. If a tank appears all of the sudden in your base and you have no possibility to defend yourself not to mention your flag. Indeed this may be a huge game design flaw.

Unfortunately I fear the main factor is not because of poorly designed maps, rather more because of vehicles and their behaviour/functionality itself.

Also some people believe vehicle destroying the fast shooting quake-like gameplay.

Personally I do understand quake fans, but I also like vehicles and the idea behind.
You should also consider vehicles are in the middle of development. For example developers starting to work on vehicles again. When you compare dcc server with current vehicle ctf development server you will see a lot of positive changes on vehicles and turrents.

@Frostwyrm
Running with flag away with racer can be very annoying, but you also saw me at space-evelator doing the same thing without vehicles ^^

Nope, it's a maps' fault. I have no idea how to create maps for vctf. But from what I have read about level design for Bomb/Defuse maps, and so forth - there is deep philosophy and skill in creating layout for maps for multiplayer FPS games.

Unsealed it's much better then Sandstorm and it's more than textures that cause this. I belive there is still a lot for Xonotic mappers to learn in VCTF - It's a matter of time, when flawless maps will be created.

But don't blame vehicles.

Nope, it's a maps' fault.

There are several components, which make a map good. You cant say its only the maps fault. There is always a clash between the mappers intention and the reality how people play a map. There is always a randomness factor. You can eliminate these randomness by massive clipping, but then it wont be fun. Finding the optimal balance is a hard task.

The largest problem imho is with weapon-designTM. I think there should be a vehicle specific gun like ut2k4 has, the AVRIL (anti vehicle rocket launcher). The seeker could be a perfect gun for this, only doing considerable damage against vehicles. This alone would help the "vehicles are imba" problem.

Just a side note: there are two problems here:
- is vctf fun/well balanced, etc ?
- is it a good idea to mix ctf and vctf ?

There is always a clash between the mappers intention and the reality how people play a map.

No. Mapper's job is to give ppl fun. PERIOD. If players are not satisfied, then it means mapper failed.

There is always a clash between the mappers intention and the reality how people play a map.

No. Mapper's job is to give ppl fun. PERIOD. If players are not satisfied, then it means mapper failed.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's what cortez666 meant.

I could be wrong, but I don't think that's what cortez666 meant.

Well, ofc - I just try to keep discussion on track :-)

Hi there.

All I can say is great job on everything. I dropped out most of my gaming at the time Xonotic was starting (Summer 2010) and rediscovered the game a few months ago. Studies didn't leave room for much gaming and felt guilty spending time on it. I played much more Nexuiz than Xonotic ('08-'10).

As of vehicles, did a couple vCTF games lately and I was quite pleased. I do like both the intensive arena classic style and the slower vehicle gameplay. Sure there are bugs, inbalances, et al... but it's fun.

ONS has been a quite overlooked game mode, at least in my experience on public servers. The last time I played ONS Multiplayer was on Nexuiz (2.4.2 - 2.5 perhaps) on a small server. I remember a small L shaped ONS map that was quite good, but ONS-Reborn was too huge for the time (never played on it).
Vehicles and ONS seems to be a good working pair. vCTF gets campy and the nodes on ONS calls for more forward movement. As of Assault, I've never played that gamemode, pity.

Well, pretty much as I said before. Vehicle CTF server is now the most popular server atm. At least during the last few days that I was on.

And what did you try to say with that?

CoD MW3 is played a lot. Does that make it a good game?

Edit: Xonotic is not being played lot, is it now a bad game?

I think vehicles is quite good, all it needs is better balance, better looking maps and models, that would make it a quite awesome IMO!