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Poll: What are your feelings on the "Blaster" weapon concept? Note: Please don't vote until you have actually experimented with the weapon quite a bit.
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I like it and I think it is a fair replacement for current Shotgun and Laser.
32.50%
13 32.50%
I think it is acceptable, and I could learn to get used to it... But I don't necessarily prefer it to Shotgun and Laser.
40.00%
16 40.00%
I don't like it, and I find the concept to be unacceptable. (Clarify in forum post for what reasons specifically!)
27.50%
11 27.50%
Total 40 vote(s) 100%
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Spawn Weapon Concept: "Blaster"

#26
I'm confused about who you are replying to Halogene as the "less/no juggling" is from my post but you seem to refer to machines post?

#27
Oh I was probably just mis-expressing myself. I was referring to your "hitscan juggling is stupid" and interpreting it on the way. Anyway, I think currently the hit-scan juggling is too easy and fear it will be nerfed to death due to that. Therefore I'd like to keep the working laser primary as it is.

Though laser padding indeed is easier with Samual's new concept, but that's another story.
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#28
ok ..........................

I tested it for a little bit (NA server seems to be down btw) ... didn't have anybody to test it on ....

I like the push range idea ... hitscan could be an issue ...
keeping mele Big Grin

however losing the longrange push is not going to be a good thing ...

in the end I feel like loosing both weapons would be a bad thing .... mainly because xonotic is the only game I know that starts you with 2 spawn weapons ... and both of them are good ... (stuff like cod obviously dont count cause they only let you have 2 )

it was one of the things that makes xonotic/nexuiz special ...

anyways ...

I like how you made sure to explain things well ... and had test servers and stuff ...

and tbh ... the concept is very good ....

:: hutty pushes the middle vote button thing ::

#29
I dont understand why melee and shotgun have to be two separate things.

Wouldn't making the shotgun do the same damage as melee at point-blank range accomplish exactly the same thing now that there's infinite ammo?
>_<
and then we could have regular laser as primary?

#30
(08-20-2012, 09:53 PM)s1lencer Wrote: I dont understand why melee and shotgun have to be two separate things.

Wouldn't making the shotgun do the same damage as melee at point-blank range accomplish exactly the same thing now that there's infinite ammo?
>_<
and then we could have regular laser as primary?

Melee does have very specific timing compared to other attacks, though. If you merge both attacks, you can hardly balance them against eachother.

#31
I don't think visuals are relevant now, as it's test and they can be improved before it's seen in the main game.

Mechanics are by far more important thing.

#32
After testing it a tad longer I think the main problem is that keeping the old laser juggling behavior in combination with hitscan will make using the "SG"-part of the weapon too easy (imagine a SG with splash damage + big hit radius + juggling). On the other hand, if you make aiming hard (=not every shot is a hit) then laser juggling will get very hard too. You will either get a gun that is abused a lot by decent aimers or make laser jugglers unhappy (and break a bit of gameplay!).

Well and till I get an explanation on how melee can be fixed with the current antilag system I wont understand why this isn't even being discussed. I mean I can't be the only one who notices that you can slap / get slapped from 2-3 meters away, depending on your and your opponent's ping. Tell me how this does comply with the quality standards for an aimed-at 1.0 version.

#33
Good point, about the antilag issue with melee.
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#34
I really like the general concept of this.

The only real problem for me also is that the hitscan pushing now seems OP. It's just too easy to use it. That is the only thing that needs some real changes.

But I certainly like the way this is going, good job!

#35
Can you make it without hitscan? Like a fast projectile, that would solve it.

#36
After testing the blaster, I must say its a nice concept and I always liked the idea of one spawn weapon however i have to add that laser and its function is the reason it makes xonotic more unique as many have already mentioned. I also agree that the hitscan ability of primary blaster will make juggling much easier and it will be abused by many because of it and also the fact that we lose the long range ability of the current laser which was very useful against campers and in space maps in general.

Now my suggestion which i see could make the blaster more balanced is:

Primary: current laser primary ( as many have mentioned already)

Secondary: the cone shaped concept of the current blaster with no push

melee: Is an auto melee that is activated when the enemy is in very close proximity of the player and to swing we have to press the secondary fire. An example would be: You are shooting the secondary cone shaped blaster as you run toward the enemy but when u get very close and u hit secondary fire it swings the weapon for a melee attack instead of the cone shaped blaster (maybe this way we can get rid of the antilag problem too)

The auto melee as an idea has been implemented by the game warsow in their spawn weapon Gunblade.

I push the middle vote button Smile
[Image: 1328.png]

#37
(08-22-2012, 01:53 AM)0siris Wrote: Now my suggestion which i see could make the blaster more balanced is:

Primary: current laser primary ( as many have mentioned already)

Secondary: the cone shaped concept of the current blaster with no push

melee: Is an auto melee that is activated when the enemy is in very close proximity of the player and to swing we have to press the secondary fire. An example would be: You are shooting the secondary cone shaped blaster as you run toward the enemy but when u get very close and u hit secondary fire it swings the weapon for a melee attack instead of the cone shaped blaster (maybe this way we can get rid of the antilag problem too)

+1

#38
(08-22-2012, 01:53 AM)0siris Wrote: After testing the blaster, I must say its a nice concept and I always liked the idea of one spawn weapon however i have to add that laser and its function is the reason it makes xonotic more unique as many have already mentioned. I also agree that the hitscan ability of primary blaster will make juggling much easier and it will be abused by many because of it and also the fact that we lose the long range ability of the current laser which was very useful against campers and in space maps in general.

Now my suggestion which i see could make the blaster more balanced is:

Primary: current laser primary ( as many have mentioned already)

Secondary: the cone shaped concept of the current blaster with no push

melee: Is an auto melee that is activated when the enemy is in very close proximity of the player and to swing we have to press the secondary fire. An example would be: You are shooting the secondary cone shaped blaster as you run toward the enemy but when u get very close and u hit secondary fire it swings the weapon for a melee attack instead of the cone shaped blaster (maybe this way we can get rid of the antilag problem too)

The auto melee as an idea has been implemented by the game warsow in their spawn weapon Gunblade.

I push the middle vote button Smile

I've had the secondary and primary idea in my head for a little, but I figured no one would agree with it

Apparently I'm wrong, so I support this idea.

#39
(08-22-2012, 09:40 PM)Galtath Wrote:
(08-22-2012, 01:53 AM)0siris Wrote: After testing the blaster, I must say its a nice concept and I always liked the idea of one spawn weapon however i have to add that laser and its function is the reason it makes xonotic more unique as many have already mentioned. I also agree that the hitscan ability of primary blaster will make juggling much easier and it will be abused by many because of it and also the fact that we lose the long range ability of the current laser which was very useful against campers and in space maps in general.

Now my suggestion which i see could make the blaster more balanced is:

Primary: current laser primary ( as many have mentioned already)

Secondary: the cone shaped concept of the current blaster with no push

melee: Is an auto melee that is activated when the enemy is in very close proximity of the player and to swing we have to press the secondary fire. An example would be: You are shooting the secondary cone shaped blaster as you run toward the enemy but when u get very close and u hit secondary fire it swings the weapon for a melee attack instead of the cone shaped blaster (maybe this way we can get rid of the antilag problem too)

The auto melee as an idea has been implemented by the game warsow in their spawn weapon Gunblade.

I push the middle vote button Smile

I've had the secondary and primary idea in my head for a little, but I figured no one would agree with it

Apparently I'm wrong, so I support this idea.

I suggested almost the same, just with nexuiz-like tripple fire instead of a single shot on secondary.
So yea, +1 from me too for anything that goes into that direction.

#40
0siris idea, however i would say that meele function should be triggered by secondary rather then primary so that your trusty movement tool is always there. i can imagine quite a few frustrated flag-runners if they suddenly stop to fishslap since someone happened to slip in when they are abt to laser away, for example.

frostwyrm333's ide of a fast projectile rather then hitscan also makes good sense (and is not mutually exclusive)

So third option for me since it needs lot of changes to the concept to work IMO.

#41
I like the concept of a single spawnweapon that unifies the laser and the shotgun but I don't think it will ever work in a satisfying way if it gets merged into a single firemode. Your poll doesn't offer this option so I have to pick #3, although that one sounds more negative than I actually am about your work.

#42
I honestly cannot see us ever having both the blast attack AND the old laser primary attack, sorry. Problem is, they're very dissimilar, and don't logically make sense how the gun can have both at the same time. Additionally, that means melee has to be put onto a backburner of sorts and made into a tertiary mode, which is even more complexity and confusion (i.e. A player who is unfamiliar with the weapon may ask: why does it do melee instead of radial attack SOME TIMES but not other times?) It is generally quite confusing for the fire mode to switch, let alone automatically based on proximity to another player. Another problem with the other suggestion of "making it a projectile" is that it's not quite possible by that description, or I should rather say it's an incredibly bad implementation... there is another alternative which i'll discuss later however.

About people wanting to keep long range pushing by the way.... I disagree, i'm sorry but it's just too much for the spawn weapons to have like that... It's a requirement which is over demanding, and makes the weapon have too much power in yet another situation. Lets not forget that there are countless REAL weapons you can pick up which can also do long range attacks, even with high speed. See for example the Electro primary projectile, that attack moves fairly quickly and can push people in quite a similar way to previous Laser functionality. There are literally at least 6 other ways you can hurt and/or push someone by long distance, and I don't think it's necessary to have that on the spawn weapon(s). Additionally, the only way we could have long distance pushing on the spawn weapon is by either: A: Having both the old and new fire modes, which I basically reject because it is too complicated... or B: (and i've heard this concept before elsewhere) shooting an attack which expands, and then shrinks again. My problem with this one, is that it makes no fucking sense whatsoever haha... Why would a radial energy burst shot outwards/expanding suddenly decide to contract in mid air? It would be equivalent to bullets curving/converging onto eachother after spreading. It makes no sense, and there is no way we can demonstrate this to players in first person as their perspective hides too much, so it would be incredibly ambiguous and hard to notice/understand for players unfamiliar to the concept of the weapon.

I would like to point out at this moment that the hitscan juggling is actually quite easy to balance, I can even make it INCREDIBLY dependent on aim, quite similar to old laser juggling abilities. Essentially, I can make it so that the force is minuscule for hits outside of 20% accuracy (0% being absolute center, 100% being absolute edge of the attack) whereas damage follows a normal linear trend... this way it's exactly like a shotgun blast UNLESS you hit with very high accuracy into the center.

If that still isn't good enough, then the only concept of which I can entertain at this point would be making the blast attack in a way which is not entirely hitscan. There is no way to have a good implementation of a "projectile" which expands and moves fast like that, that's just silly... so the alternative is to make a tracing method which works like a wave. What I can do, is calculate the attack in multiple sections which appear after different intervals of time.... Essentially, it would progress forward nearly instantly, but over distance there would in fact be a delay of hitting objects. There are quite a few downsides to this though..... for one, it's very difficult to antilag properly, and it would be quite noticeable with higher ping. Additionally, this makes the "finisher" aspect of the weapon (taken from shotgun) a lot weaker, as you then can't really easily use it to finish someone at mid-to-long range, it would be quite tricky at best... which is not something you want from a finisher fire mode. Also, I STILL have to balance it in nearly the same way as the hitscan attack (i.e. higher accuracy for juggling), and the general tracing method and effects of the attack will be far more challenging to implement and "make pretty" (respectively).


P.S.: Don't worry about antilag with the melee, that's pretty easily fixed. Our tracing methods are designed to account for inaccuracies and latency, we've just never had a really proper implementation of the melee swinging... even last time when I did it, I did it wrong and supplied the wrong entity for antilag iirc.


P.P.S.: I'm quite confident merging it into a single fire mode can work well if given a chance to be properly balanced, I think many of you are taking the aspect of the weapon currently being unbalanced far more critically than you should, again-- the concept itself is quite simple, so balancing is very easy to adjust.

P.P.P.S.: Oh yeah, and we can do whatever we want to the Shotgun after this btw.... Essentially the old weapons will go into a sort of mutator which separates the core and non-core weapons.... but in the non-core weapon set, we can basically be unrestricted with the weapon behaviors. So, yes, I could easily bring back the triple-burst-secondary for shotgun as a non-core weapon.

#43
Quote:(and i've heard this concept before elsewhere) shooting an attack which expands, and then shrinks again. My problem with this one, is that it makes no fucking sense whatsoever haha... Why would a radial energy burst shot outwards/expanding suddenly decide to contract in mid air? It would be equivalent to bullets curving/converging onto eachother after spreading.

and that ... is ... the ... CRYLINK

>.<


...

how about primary blaster ... shoots a laser bullet ... and ... does mele ... kinda like swinging it launches out a laser energy projectile very fast from the spike on the end ...

#44
that's an... interesting idea, not sure I grasp it fully though since you didn't describe it particularly well:

Shockwave on primary, melee/laser firing on secondary? I get the idea of the melee swing ending with a laser projectile being fired, I guess?

Though if that's the case, I still am really against having both Laser AND shockwave functionality... plus, why the hell would a laser projectile fire out of the end of a swing?...

#45
(08-23-2012, 01:32 PM)Samual Wrote: Though if that's the case, I still am really against having both Laser AND shockwave functionality... plus, why the hell would a laser projectile fire out of the end of a swing?...

A part of the gun has to rotate in order to (re?)charge the laser primary during/after firing, contact with this fast spinning component can cause serious tissue damage.

-

You're placing a bit to much emphasis on logic with the whole "we can't have projectile and hitscan in the same weapon" bit. It would be easy to make an effect that looks like it makes sense. (remember the old old old crylink firing effect with the lines?) There's no reason that a weapon can't use one energy source for two different low-power attacks. The point of the blaster is to be the gun with it's own built in reactor.

It seems like a lot of people still want the current laser projectile as an available fire mode for the starter (most people are voting for 2 or 3). I think that one of the reasons for this is that because it's a slow-moving projectile it's very skill receptive. It also allows you to disorient your enemy if you have just spawned so you can run away.

#46
It's not about the weapon being projectile AND bitscan, it's basically these 4 problems (sorted by importance in my opinion):
  1. It's too complicated. Three types of attacks? And one of them is added on top of another? It's ambiguous and strange, too much going on at once.
  2. Developing this is actually a lot more work than you're giving-- For example, something like "a part of the gun has to rotate" requires basically a whole new model, which we have no modelers who actually would do this. (It's a strange concept anyway, but you're just giving an example.. to be fair, there are other less weird concepts which could theoretically work, but still have the same fundamental problem of requiring artists that are nonexistent.) It still would never look quite right either, simply because a projectile is so different from a blast, the effects would never quite make perfect sense for the attacks to be on the same weapon.
  3. The Laser projectile is basically totally redundant with the Blast for juggling, only other than for long range... Actually, the blast has more features than the laser projectile, like directional control of the push by skilled aiming. You can push players to the left by aiming to the right, etc.
  4. It's too much power for one weapon, the weapon shouldn't be able to span ALL ranges... Long range, mid range, AND short range.

It's not quite right to say "most people are voting for 2 or 3" btw, 2 is essentially indifference. It doesn't say "I prefer Laser projectile," it says the concept is acceptable but I don't really care either way, they're both good options. Also, my shockwave attack quite easily takes that exact role, there is no point in having both.

#47
Honestly, as one of the first people to test this, it was quite fun; however, after reading through several people's complaints and/or praises it has become apparent that like all things new, this new weapon is going to take a while to get used to. Personally, I like it, yet on a larger scale it takes away one of the things that separates skill from luck - combos. One of the best things about a game with such a diverse amount of weapons is the ability to combine them for maximum damage, and with this new combination of laser and shotgun the first and simplest weapon combination is taken away: juggling your opponent with the laser and quickly switching to the shotgun to damage them up close while they are disoriented. This was a rather fun, and efficient, practice used widely among many players I'm sure, but the lack of juggling and the lost necessity of weapon switching taken away by this one weapon seems a rather large detriment to the game. In my opinion, this is a rather unnecessary change to a game that should hold its weapon diversity.

To end on a high note though, if I may suggest something for the alternate fire (currently the melee) - to make it more of an energy blade that swings around the player, a pulse even, that repels any nearby enemies in a short radius of the player and by doing so inflicting damage relative to how close the enemy is to the player.

-CMSgt_Bacon (member of [e] clan)

#48
Explanation of previous idea ....

The player swings their gun ... in doing so launches a projectile at incredibly fast speeds (laser is the fastest projectile atm ... right? ... besides hlac)

[proper_ grammar]

So, assuming we add a spike on the end of blaster model.
As the player does stuff the spike gains energy (rather quickly) and red player's-color energy stuff starts glowing around it.

Then when the player does the primary attack.
They swing the gun and launch the energy off of the spike.
The swinging spike also melees anyone near by.

[/proper_grammar]
...

I understand why you say that may be too complicated for one weapon ...
thats why they were two weapons >.< ...

...

Keep in mine that one of the good things people say about xonotic is that the spawn weapon(s) are actually useful ...
Its also why camping has not really been much of an issue. Cause in xonotic ... you cant camp (for long ... or if the map was terribly designed ...) ...

#49
(08-23-2012, 09:17 PM)hutty Wrote: Explanation of previous idea ....

The player swings their gun ... in doing so launches a projectile at incredibly fast speeds (laser is the fastest projectile atm ... right? ... besides hlac)

[proper_ grammar]

So, assuming we add a spike on the end of blaster model.
As the player does stuff the spike gains energy (rather quickly) and red player's-color energy stuff starts glowing around it.

Then when the player does the primary attack.
They swing the gun and launch the energy off of the spike.
The swinging spike also melees anyone near by.

[/proper_grammar]
...

I understand why you say that may be too complicated for one weapon ...
thats why they were two weapons >.< ...

...

Keep in mine that one of the good things people say about xonotic is that the spawn weapon(s) are actually useful ...
Its also why camping has not really been much of an issue. Cause in xonotic ... you cant camp (for long ... or if the map was terribly designed ...) ...
It occurred to me, even if we were to do it that way, there is still a large issue regarding that idea.... Thing is, melee swinging takes time-- we can't have the melee swinging be instantaneous, it would ALWAYS be delayed or else it would be too powerful.... That means laser jumping/projectile would be delayed firing as well unless we came up with some way to know when a player is firing before they even click the mouse button. ;-)

To clarify, i'm saying YOUR concept is too complicated... mine is fairly simple, though i'm excluding the long range functionality of the weapon. I don't think the long range functionality is necessary, and that's why I make that compromise.

And I agree, they should be kept useful... I don't think it has too much to do with camping though, the fast paced nature of the game movement and general play styles forces people to move... You can't kill a moving target while standing still, essentially.


@Bacon: Took me a while to understand what you were saying properly, but-- now I can see where you're coming from honestly, however I don't think such a combo between those two specific weapons is justification to keep both weapons and their associated problems (see OP)... but, in this case of the combo, primary still has nearly the same affect to cover the functionality of both old weapons. You could still do the same attack... just juggle them upwards by aiming below them, then aim directly at them... that'll do LITERALLY almost exactly the same thing, and it would require more skill to do than with laser/shotgun combo.

#50
(08-23-2012, 11:20 PM)Samual Wrote: I don't think the long range functionality is necessary, and that's why I make that compromise.

What compromise? It's a fully short-range weapon.



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