Home News Here comes Alpha 12!

Here comes Alpha 12!

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Written by kharnov

Today, let's go over what we expect to include in our twelfth alpha release, out on Sunday, February 3rd.

Over this month, we've been focusing heavily on code work while giving out assignments to current and new artists. For the most part, this release will be heavy on engine adjustments, while in later months you can expect to see quite a few art updates. In terms of engine-side graphical improvements, we have some new work by gimhael, who fixed our bloom implementation last release. Besides fixing the lighting on the new creep texture, he has also fixed rim lighting and has now added a new effect, motion blur. Rim lighting is essentially a different sort of lighting that brings out added detail, and we have it working off ambient lighting. As for motion blur, it functions very much like you'd imagine, blurring most of the screen when you move fast enough. This can be triggered by falling down a steep vertical drop, pouncing as a dragoon, or even dodging as a human. In the above shot, bloom, rim lighting, and motion blur are all enabled. It's kind of hard to show off in a screenshot well, but you'll be able to see it in-game.

Another major feature has been added by Fuma, who has at last committed his overhaul of the bot code. Unlike the old system, which was rigid and produced strange behaviors, the new one is much more flexible, and functions off behavior trees. In general, the bots are much more competent than they used to be, but the most exciting implication of using behavior trees is that it should now be fairly easy to script your own bot behavior. This could be useful for server owners that want their bots to behave in various ways, or even for a potential tutorial mode. Each individual bot can be given its own specific behavior tree if desired, which could prove amusing when observing bots fighting each other. Sooner or later, we'll get right to documenting how you can write a behavior tree and what sorts of actions are available.

Although it isn't part of the core gameplay yet, since it's still very much in an early testing phase, you'll be able to playtest our resources system, coded by `Ishq. We'll have a server up for you to experiment with it, and we'll possibly stick the new bots on it too. Considering that it's a very major shift in the fundamental gameplay of Unvanquished, we're very much eager to hear your feedback on it. Rather than focusing on balance at the moment, we're trying to get the implementation right, and we're still exploring new features to add to it. If all goes well, then we'll expand further on new avenues of design in the future. There's still a lot to do, and plenty more that we're discussing amongst ourselves.

We've made a lot of other fixes and small changes, too. As mentioned last week, there are the alterations to flamethrower and shotgun behaviors, to better fit their effects. The team overlay will show credits and evolution points that your teammates have, which should help with organizing rushes. We've also done some more code cleanup as well, and you can follow the progress of these changes in greater detail on our Git repository. Lastly, danmal has been doing more work with fixing the installer, and I'll give more details on his fixes next week on release day. In general, you can expect less annoying behavior than in the past.

See you next week, when we make our release.

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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- ViruS
Monday, 28 January 2013 03:41
Woot! Motion blur!

Btw, is the blur dependant on fps?
Quote:
He has also adjusted the shotgun's spread, so that instead of firing in a square, it instead fires in a circular pattern
Does this mean also the chaingun, rifle and other weapon spreads are circular now? (they were)
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- KenuR
Monday, 28 January 2013 09:55
Is it possible to turn the motion blur off?
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- StalKermit
Monday, 28 January 2013 11:35
Has anyone ever left motion blur on in games where it's possible to choose?
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- ViruS
Monday, 28 January 2013 13:50
Most likely toggle-able by cvar i'll assume. There should be an intensity setting as well, or maybe combine the two: r_motionblur [0-9]
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- seana11
Monday, 28 January 2013 14:54
I'm really excited about the new bot stuff. It should make screwing with them much easier :).
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- danmal
Monday, 28 January 2013 14:59
KenuR wrote:
Is it possible to turn the motion blur off?

Yep, you can also set the intensity.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- DwarfVader
Monday, 28 January 2013 15:44
Hi all,

Nice to see work is going on....

btw. you remember http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69238784/humanStage.webm ?

You are absolutly ALLOWED to use/implement/extend whatever existing code i wrote and/or the idea of polishing the ingame announcement system like I did in the past. I absolutly don't claim any credits or something else about that idea/code snippets I came up with/send to your devs.

So just in case you are looking for a new field of work to be done or you are short of available graphic artists(workpower) at the moment and looking for something witch will bring noticable results and fresh content to the screen ( with relativly low work effort )...I strongly encourage you to work on it.

>Maybee better than mention older work implementations of previous alpha releases, because you haven't much to write about?


greetings
DwarfVader
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- kharnov
Monday, 28 January 2013 16:12
Yes, you can toggle motion blur on and off. By default it will be off, just like the other graphics options. You can also adjust the intensity of the effect.

Also, none of what I've written about is from earlier releases, DwarfVader. This is all the work we've done this month. You can track our progress on our Git repository. My actual release post will be more verbose than this one.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- WhiteTech
Monday, 28 January 2013 20:31
I find this one particularly exciting. I feel like this release and next is really pushing Unvanquished to being it's own game!

As for the no balancing until the resource changes is a good idea. That in itself can throw off the balance changes.

Hows the installer working for this release? In past it was bugged, and it also downloaded all the maps all over again, taking forever.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- icaro440
Monday, 28 January 2013 22:47
WhiteTech wrote:
I find this one particularly exciting. I feel like this release and next is really pushing Unvanquished to being it's own game!

As for the no balancing until the resource changes is a good idea. That in itself can throw off the balance changes.

Hows the installer working for this release? In past it was bugged, and it also downloaded all the maps all over again, taking forever.

TORRENT: why dont try to distribute the next release via torrent (also via torrent)? we have nothing to lose, I know several players who have not tried Unvanquished just because they can not download it, now I'm on irc and see 40 people connected (not counting all the people that follow this project), what do you think? are not 40+ ppl enough to try this?.

some famous torrent sites:

http://thepiratebay.se/

http://isohunt.com/

http://rarbg.com/
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- WhiteTech
Monday, 28 January 2013 22:53
icaro440 wrote:
TORRENT: why dont try to distribute the next release via torrent (also via torrent)? we have nothing to lose, I know several players who have not tried Unvanquished just because they can not download it, now I'm on irc and see 40 people connected (not counting all the people that follow this project), what do you think? are not 40+ ppl enough to try this?.

some famous torrent sites:

http://thepiratebay.se/

http://isohunt.com/

http://rarbg.com/


Torrents aren't great, an installer has the power to install the game in the correct place, and properly. Some better installers check to see what is there, and download only what it needs to. Hence my hoping this will work like that for maps.

I think a long time down the road we might want to look in to a launcher client. Something capable of auto-updating much like most modern games have
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- seana11
Monday, 28 January 2013 23:53
Torrents are nice. If you have enough people seeding, they can *substantially* speed up the download. It shouldn't be to hard to make a nice big installer with everything in it and just have people torrent that.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- icaro440
Monday, 28 January 2013 23:56
WhiteTech wrote:
Torrents aren't great, an installer has the power to install the game in the correct place, and properly. Some better installers check to see what is there, and download only what it needs to. Hence my hoping this will work like that for maps.

I think a long time down the road we might want to look in to a launcher client. Something capable of auto-updating much like most modern games have

I'm not suggesting to use "only" torrent to distribute the game, I'm suggesting to use torrent, besides the traditional system.

This is a real conversation:

Icaro: Hey xxx!
xxx: Hey man, how you doing?
Icaro: Lest play Unvanquished, the new alpha has been released.
xxx: Ok ill download it later.
Icaro: Ok, i go to play, see you!

FEW DAYS LATER....

Icaro: Sup man
xxx: Sup.
Icaro: Ready to play?
xxx: no, i tried to install this shit, but everytime i try to download it, the installer hangs....ahhhh fuck this! ill wait for the beta version

THE END.

ALTERNATE ENDING
xxx: no, i tried to install this shit, but everytime i try to download it, the installer hags....but right now I'm downloading the game via torrent. This will take a few days, but it does not matter because i leave the torrent client running in the background (you know, downloading hard porn movies, music, etc etc.) when the download is complete, i will uncompress the file, and the game will work perfectly, because all the necessary files are in the zip file.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- danmal
Tuesday, 29 January 2013 03:39
WhiteTech wrote:
Hows the installer working for this release? In past it was bugged, and it also downloaded all the maps all over again, taking forever.

Installer has a lot of bug fixes. I haven't added a check for the maps but I will before alpha 12.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- ViruS
Tuesday, 29 January 2013 09:00
Lol nice story icaro..

We could have the files seperate of course in the torrent instead of a plain zip, (so we can choose to ignore maps, duuuuuuh!) and put a "README.txt" file in there so people actually know what to do. Most people read readmes, and well, the other people, if they blame us, we can laugh at them for not noticing the readme.

Also, i rather kat.ph than any of those torrent sites, although pirate bay is o.k. It was on the news long time ago that pirate bay was tracking its clients for counting piracy or something as requested by law, meh. I'm aussie, american law doesnt extend here. Copying + pasting unvanquished isn't piracy as well, as long as the end user doesn't have to pay money. Afterall, trem/unv is such a portable game in the past I used to get a USB to school with trem, copy it (temp) to the school network, get everyone to play etc. etc.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- seana11
Tuesday, 29 January 2013 20:40
ViruS wrote:
Lol nice story icaro..

We could have the files seperate of course in the torrent instead of a plain zip, (so we can choose to ignore maps, duuuuuuh!) and put a "README.txt" file in there so people actually know what to do. Most people read readmes, and well, the other people, if they blame us, we can laugh at them for not noticing the readme.

Also, i rather kat.ph than any of those torrent sites, although pirate bay is o.k. It was on the news long time ago that pirate bay was tracking its clients for counting piracy or something as requested by law, meh. I'm aussie, american law doesnt extend here. Copying + pasting unvanquished isn't piracy as well, as long as the end user doesn't have to pay money. Afterall, trem/unv is such a portable game in the past I used to get a USB to school with trem, copy it (temp) to the school network, get everyone to play etc. etc.

You can sell Unv, because it's gpl'd. It may be a bad thing to do, but it's still legal. For example, you could distribute it on CD and charge for the cost of the CD.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- seana11
Tuesday, 29 January 2013 20:40
ViruS wrote:
Lol nice story icaro..

We could have the files seperate of course in the torrent instead of a plain zip, (so we can choose to ignore maps, duuuuuuh!) and put a "README.txt" file in there so people actually know what to do. Most people read readmes, and well, the other people, if they blame us, we can laugh at them for not noticing the readme.

Also, i rather kat.ph than any of those torrent sites, although pirate bay is o.k. It was on the news long time ago that pirate bay was tracking its clients for counting piracy or something as requested by law, meh. I'm aussie, american law doesnt extend here. Copying + pasting unvanquished isn't piracy as well, as long as the end user doesn't have to pay money. Afterall, trem/unv is such a portable game in the past I used to get a USB to school with trem, copy it (temp) to the school network, get everyone to play etc. etc.

You can sell Unv, because it's gpl'd. It may be a bad thing to do, but it's still legal. For example, you could distribute it on CD and charge for the cost of the CD.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- kharnov
Tuesday, 29 January 2013 22:26
Except that some of our assets have the non-commercial clause on them.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- WhiteTech
Wednesday, 30 January 2013 03:37
danmal wrote:
Installer has a lot of bug fixes. I haven't added a check for the maps but I will before alpha 12.

Ah that's very exciting.

EDIT: Why don't you have a check for anything it doesn't need to download? IE: something like an updater. Just downloads the key updated files. Of course I have to idea what that would involve, Im guess quite the amount of coding just for itself.



and Icaro.... I think it only looks like it gets hung up. It looks like that for me, but in reality it's downloading maps. Usually takes an hour or so, depending on how ridiculous my ISP wants to be. But maybe instead of torrent, just a straight ZIP version from the site is what you're thinking more of.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- ViruS
Wednesday, 30 January 2013 05:56
seana11 wrote:
You can sell Unv, because it's gpl'd. It may be a bad thing to do, but it's still legal. For example, you could distribute it on CD and charge for the cost of the CD.
Considering our game currently needs a lot of updates, CDs are more useless than ever. Not to mention they only store a few MB.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- danmal
Wednesday, 30 January 2013 10:07
WhiteTech wrote:
Ah that's very exciting.

EDIT: Why don't you have a check for anything it doesn't need to download? IE: something like an updater. Just downloads the key updated files. Of course I have to idea what that would involve, Im guess quite the amount of coding just for itself.

Yes, that's what the installer currently does. The problem is that maps are downloaded to fs_homepath/main when downloaded from a game server while the installer puts them in fs_basepath/main. The installer only ever checks fs_basepath but it's easy enough to make it check fs_homepath as well.
WhiteTech wrote:
Ah that's very exciting.
and Icaro.... I think it only looks like it gets hung up. It looks like that for me, but in reality it's downloading maps. Usually takes an hour or so, depending on how ridiculous my ISP wants to be.

That's because a blank progress window obscures the download window. This issue has also been fixed. Slow downloads are generally due to a SourceForge mirror being crap. It's not an easy problem to fix on our end.
WhiteTech wrote:
But maybe instead of torrent, just a straight ZIP version from the site is what you're thinking more of.

No one on the dev team has the bandwidth to upload a couple of gigs every month. That's the main reason why we haven't made a zip file available for download. We'll probably do it when we hit beta and updates aren't quite so often.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- banksy
Wednesday, 30 January 2013 11:53
The limbs of the aliens should also be effected by blur. As it looks like the field of view is the only area effected by the blur. Whereas the alien should also have some blur. Imagine yourself moving your arm slightly fast in front of yourself. It you seen as if there was a blur. This should be included in the game to add some more realism. Otherwise great job on the project so far. Its coming along really nicely and its great to see improved bots :)
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- seana11
Thursday, 31 January 2013 20:16
ViruS wrote:
Considering our game currently needs a lot of updates, CDs are more useless than ever. Not to mention they only store a few MB.

I am aware; it was only for the sake of example.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- ViruS
Friday, 01 February 2013 09:05
banksy wrote:
The limbs of the aliens should also be effected by blur.
It may be taken at the point where the arms are in their most 'stationary' part of their animation.
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- banksy
Friday, 01 February 2013 13:57
Ah I see. I guess when I see it in action I can get a better feel for it. Its hard to tell by an image
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Re: Here comes Alpha 12! -- Unregistered (guest)
Saturday, 02 February 2013 23:17
How is the blur implemented? Do you have to know anything about OpenGL or game engines? Just asking same I came across a recent enticing paper on plausible motion blur for realtime usage that seemed simple enough.
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