Xonotic 0.8.2 Release Overview

Now that the release business has died down a little, I took some time yesterday evening to compile a video showing off a good number of new features! Enjoy.

I'm going to disagree with your opinion about the models being "worse".  They feel more like weapons, less like toys, and have very nice animations. The weapons now have a more consistent style.  You don't like the style, that's valid, but they are good quality, I'd say better quality than the previous. Thanks for submitting a bug report.

As much as I like the looks on the new models (devastator, mortar & hagar), it would be nice to have some low poly LoD versions of them in the future, because I get severe FPS drops from 150 to 50 when there's as little as two or three of them in same frame. As you might imagine in DM/CTF and even occasionally duel. Simple items doesn't really solve it, because you still see other players carry them.

I've noticed A LOT of performance improvements in places I've previously had issues in and the audio issues I've previously experienced are gone now. The new defaults seem to be a lot more sane this time around and I love the new models. Cosmetically I'd say that the only bad looking model in the game now is the crylink (looks low poly, though cool otherwise) and there are certain weapons that do clash a little with the overall look of the game (shotgun and electro in particular). I think the next major thing that this game needs is to have the machine gun switched out with a lightning gun and to have all of the ammo in the game re-allocated so that it is split evenly among the weapons. Content wise it was nice to see some more maps added as well as a couple of new tunes (about friggin time on that, given the amount of music available we really shouldn't be seeing tracks recycle the way they currently are). If the team REALLY wanted to go all out, it would be cool to see some more terrain maps with vehicles and jetpacks that would promote a more Tribes-style CTF game as this game and it's predecessor have done that style of play very well in the rare instances that it has been tried. After all of those suggestions it may be a good idea to simply scrub the bots as a loss if no one can get them competent and figure out another way to get players ready to duke it out online. I can see this being one hell of a title come the tenth anniversary of it being initiated (which is sooner than you think... this kicked off in march of 2010, we're in 2017 now), will probably be the best multiplayer shooter by then.

The amount of soundtracks Xonotic already has easily rivals commercial games like Quake and Unreal, but it's always been kind of a low priority because a large majority of players turn the music off. The music style is also kind of inconsistent, so there's naturally gonna be only few tracks that people find fitting. It might paradoxically actually help, if the soundtracks sounded very similar to one another. Could be unsatisfying from artists' point of view, but this way there'd be more options and you would still expect them to fit the same mood.

After all of those suggestions it may be a good idea to simply scrub the bots as a loss if no one can get them competent and figure out another way to get players ready to duke it out online.

I would just like to point out that some of the bot improvements were driven by folks with lousy internet connections.

And some people like me play with bots 90% of the time because no one else is playing.

I also see you on IRC, you could ask if anyone wants to play. If I'm around, the chances are usually "yes"

After all of those suggestions it may be a good idea to simply scrub the bots as a loss if no one can get them competent and figure out another way to get players ready to duke it out online.

I would just like to point out that some of the bot improvements were driven by folks with lousy internet connections.

Sad but true. On a more positive note I didn't initially notice the improvements because my stupid ass just jumped straight into the campaign instead of manually setting up a match with the difficulty cranked. While they aint perfect, I noticed a lot less weird behavior and they are fighting a bit harder, closer to what I would expect from the ones in Quake III Arena (though still not quite there). What will REALLY make them ready in my honest opinion is whenever they're able to determine whether or not a situation is good for performing weapon combos as well as performing some more advanced movements (bunnyhopping, wall jumps, rocket jumps, etc.). That will be a freakishly hard challenge to do, but if it happened I wouldn't feel underwhelmed getting some offline practice in. The ONLY other game I played where the bots have been able to move like actual players was Unreal Tournament 99 (they couldn't even do it again in most of the sequals, closes they got was in Championship 2), and it's movement mechanics were a lot more grounded so it really will be challenging for someone to pull that off. Interestingly the bots act pretty convincing most of the time in the new map Erbium.

nice