Q&A #26 – “Which features would you as a gamer like to see incorporated into the next Sauerbraten Release?”

As the Sauerbraten SVN repo is quite active these days, one might suspect that the next release is near. Sauerworld took the chance to ask the community about what they would like to see implemented into the next release. For me personally such features would include a comed style fragmessage, fully customizeable team and enemy skins or adding the damage dealt to the network packages. But to my suprise, the answers you gave were very different but interesting! So here is what you answerd to

Which non-standard features would you as a gamer like to see incorporated into the next Sauerbraten Release?

Frosty: the community has done a good job already making clientmods and servermods with new features so maybe just add that stuff, and what about a sauer launcher so we can get updates whenever they are ready rather than once every three years. im fine with the gameplay/engine as it is, rather focus on useful features and game tweaks rather than jetpacks and rainbow.

Hades: I would only like to see weapon changes really:
Rockets – Requires accuracy, so reduce the damage spread? radius? whatever you call it
Mg – give it a pattern that you have to master, rather than it being random luck spray (not like ac where they just look at the skybox)
Nades – Justice nades were better
Rest of the weapons are fine
I dont usually play ffa/ctf but maybe when someone dies it will drop the weapon they had out and you’re able to pickup with whatever ammo they had left in it

pisto: I believe the sauerbraten people should move to octaforge and start requesting features there

Agalloch: I’d like to see more settings that are already known from other clients. Like changing skins colors, more customizable hud. Putting it simply, everything that other clients already feature. If this all would be like “all in one” package, it would be great. Especially if we could call it “standard client”. But i have one more nonstandard feature which is alredy known anyway. Its IRC built in client. I tried it in the past in client of gear4. Was a great thingy.
oh also some kind of “Global messages” that can be sent from some masterserver, like add, info, Ads or info about tournys so pubs can see it too and join.

degrave: In the next release i would like to see:
1. Support of online coop campaings, it can give new life to the sauer (for example, because of good modding capabilities and support for coop mode people still playing Doom 2)
2. Support of downloading a maps with textures from a server (as i know it is laready implemented)
3. Fixed physics for proper support of a race mode or defrag mode (if someone don’t know what is defrag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd9i9ls7u7U), for now race mode is defacto second by popularity mode
Actualy that features is not really something nonstandard but i would like to see it in sauer

GustavoLapasta: The nonstandard feature I would like to see in Sauerbraten is simple: Tesseract.
Yeah, it’s kind of a stretch calling it “non standard feature”, but let me explain it a little bit: we are in the era of fancy video games with crazy graphic effects and stuff, and that’s what the new users want. Of course, we all know that the hardcore players will disable all the distracting graphics, but I want the community to grow with new players everyday and Sauerbraten gameplay is awesome, but it’s not enough to attract new players, just because of its aged graphics engine. In my opinion Tesseract is a totally underestimated gem, just download the latest nightly and try it. It’s astonishing. Yes, the gameplay is somewhat different, maps are missing, and so on. But it’s the next generation of our beloved game, you’ll feel right at home. And for the hardcore players, don’t worry, “texreduce 12” works on Tesseract, too ;)

swattlellama: The most important feature I can think of would be some package control system. Eihrul could frequently update Sauer with little fixes and additional maps and then we could all instantly play new maps (modes even!) instead of waiting at least three years for a new release.
I liked the comed weapon colors a lot too and would like to see this feature as a default.
Built-in duel modes / Clanwar modes with overtime enabled could be nice.
instead of making it server-side
And then when our nice servers and their admins go missing, we have to make other servers with that feature

obst: yes, I would love to have a proper map download system. sauer has this great ingame editor but distributing custom maps is still a pain.

Fatality: Well, I’d obviously like to see new quality maps (emphasis on quality), but also some maps to be removed. I think there are too many maps that just aren’t even touched and that everyone can agree are bad. I also think the ability to send and get maps from the server in modes other than coop would be awesome. from a mapper’s viewpoint, things like shape-able materials would be great but not entirely necessary, and for some way for the game to recognize if a player is using anything other than the default configuration for a map the same way as if you had a modified map. I also heard an idea somewhere about collateral damage from rifles (hit two enemies with one shot) which would be cool but again not necessary. I’m not really too picky in this topic, I really think Sauer’s redeeming quality is the game mechanics which are already in place now.

hamon: First of all i can nearly bet money that noone of this features will added in the next release(s), but i think they will do Sauerbraten more attractive: – Auto-Mapdownload Why? In alot of games i can see this kind of feature. It’s much easier for all player to get new maps which are not released in the game release. It would give more maps a chance to get popular. And in Tournaments the mappackages would be unnecessary.

Bourbon: I think it would be cool if the masterserver would have centralized accounts, so that you can use one login for all servers, similar to steam. An automated map download system would also be a nice addition, so that new maps can be played without running into trouble, because everyone has a different version. Furthermore, it would be cool if the coloured weapon shots from ComEd would be a standard feagure or maybe even different shot/weapon designs to choose from.


 

What are your favourite ideas and what would you like to see added to the official Sauerbraten? Leave us a comment!


 

35 Comments

  1. Timakrov_Gunn

    Not trying to steal ideas from other games, but anyone recall how Quake 3 Arena’s multiplayer servers works? How the servers required particular non-changed files that the server-side deems necessary to enter? A feature like that could be a good start for a bit more fair play on certain competitive games and such.
    Auto-map/content downloading sounds ideal, too.

    As for performance, not sure what else could be done aside from changes to network packages for better stability.

    And as for the other stuff like graphics, customized teams/enemies and weapon colors is tempting. Changes to the hud would be very nice, too. Something like SauerEnhanced’s HUD. I would say that the game could at least have one more official playermodel to give the game a bit more freshness to it, but that’s just a wish that would most probably not happen any time soon.

    Reply
    1. star

      i remember, quake 3 was checking the .pk3 files, which included the gamedata and more precisely the maps. Sauerbraten does the same, too for maps, but not for their configs or the mapmodels, which might be a wise thing to do.
      Besides that, i don’t think that modified skins for weapons or playerskins should be checked. There is still a certain level of customisation that should be preserved, in order to fit the individual player’s needs.
      And yes, a customizeable HUD is long overdue, if you ask me!

      Reply
  2. vanquish

    hades knows nothing about how spread works in AC confirmed

    nice article tho, the sauer launcher idea sounds great and i doubt it’d be too hard to implement. i’d also like to have the mg tweaked (lower spread/lower dmg or increased recoil), but people seem to be pretty divided regarding re-balancing the weapons, so idk.

    Reply
      1. notas

        new nades could be tweaked IMO, they’re OP atm as a spam weapon, yet its hard to block pathways with them because they bounce around too much. But they’ve definitely seen more use since the update from old nades, so the buff has definitely been worthwhile. I would split the difference on the splash radius but make them stickier/less bouncy

      2. star

        My most frags are based on chainsaw and nades (not spamming nades though, but the skilled ‘i shoot behind you so you forget about it and then it bites your ass – nades’).

    1. hadis

      2 things, 1. any idiot can play ac and use those terrible excuses for weapons and do just fine. 2. pls re-read and understand what i said before some bullshit “hades knows nothing blablabla” comment

      Reply
      1. vanquish

        “doing fine” in a game like AC doesn’t mean you know anything about it. it’s one of the lowest skilled games i’ve ever tried, and there have been many. there are probably only 5-6 people who truly ever mastered spread control in AC. without sounding egotistical, i was one of them, so don’t argue with me (and i/none of the others play anymore either).

        you’re fully qualified to speak about w/e you want when it comes to sauer, i certainly didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. it’s just hilarious to me to see you talk about a game i spent 4 years of my life playing as if you understand it to any noteworthy degree. the “hades knows nothing” comment was directed solely at your knowledge (or lack thereof) of how spread works in AC, as i said in my original sentence, and had nothing to do with what you wrote in your interview about sauer.

      2. hadis

        Once again, re-read what i said. I can say whatever the hell i want, if you don’t like it, ignore it and don’t respond.

        “mastering spray control” anyone who dedicates 4 years to a game that hasn’t changed it, should know and have mastered the spray control anyway.

        Since no one can comment about shitty ac, then how about you keep your 2 cents away from anything sauer related, since you don’t play it.

        ttg

      3. vanquish

        no, i’d prefer to call you out on your bullshit because, irrespective of my personal like/dislike for you, your comment was actually misinformative.

        i don’t play any game atm, i lost a lot of motivation and more importantly i don’t have the time. however i still follow the games i spent a lot of time playing, i even watched you crying about “nice lag” (which was your own) and other people’s map picks in the most recent sauer ictf tournament (idk the names of them anymore). i never said anywhere that nobody can comment about AC (haven’t played it in a year so feel free to call it whatever you want btw), just that you shouldn’t comment about something you have literally no clue about. it makes you seem stupid, but then again that’s your style.

      4. hadis

        Get flamed

        Nice lag? show me. Complaining about a map pick? which? show me.

        My style is stupid? Doesn’t even make sense. You don’t even know me – https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CWBEPdnUsAASTjf.jpg

        And in case you didn’t see it before, I comment about anything I want, say anything I want, do whatever I want. If you don’t like it, drink bleach kid

      5. vanquish

        don’t have screenshots, you complained on turbulence vs rC and i can’t remember the map you complained about, i think it was facecapture tho.

        i don’t know what you think you look like, but your last paragraph makes you look like an autistic toddler demanding attention. if you think you can “do whatever you want” with impunity, you are literally either a child or a fucking psychopath. either way, if you don’t realise how ridiculous you sound, better open your eyes because it’s legitimately cringeworthy, like something from an 80s cop movie.

        i can’t believe you’re so mad simply because i insulted your (lack of) intelligence. congratulations on “playing yourself” and showing the whole world i was right through your subsequent responses :D

      6. hadis

        Autistic toddler? Child or psychopath? Now that doesn’t make sense at all. You should probably come up with something new, you’re autistic flame was just as weak as a yo mama joke.

        The thing about my last paragraph is that its actually true. Everything you say is complete b.s. Always smth along the lines of “im right, im smart, im dabest” blablabla.

        Im not mad at all, and showing the world you were right? wtf are you even talking about? Literally your remarks have been shots toward me, and that makes it right? Just…. No

      7. vanquish

        my initial remark wasn’t a “shot”, i was calling you out on something you said that was incorrect. admittedly, i could’ve done it in a less abrasive way, but you were the one who started actively flaming. if you find me saying you’re wrong to be insulting then i don’t think that’s really my problem lol.

        i don’t comment on things unless i’m pretty sure i’m right, that’s probably why i give off such an impression. and i think i’m smarter than a lot of people on the internet, but i don’t recall openly bragging about it to anybody (unless you count this sentence).

        however i never claimed to be “the best”. when i played sauer i was pretty good, but for example i was never able to beat acuerta in effic at his peak even once; neither was i able to beat a lot of players in insta/ffa and i have absolutely no problem admitting that. i still remember saiga sp4nking me 160-110 or something similarly embarrassing back when i was in MyS (anyone know if saiga still plays btw?). i would argue that i was good enough at the game to be able to talk about it relatively well, although i wouldn’t claim to be an expert, and definitely not “the best”.

        and i’ll repeat myself for clarification: if you think you can do whatever you want or say whatever you want with impunity (a lack of consequences), that is psychotic. and even by that flawed logic, if you’re free to do whatever you want, others are free to call you out on whatever they want.

        i’m done with this argument. if you’re not “mad” as you say, i don’t suppose i’ll see any more replies from you on this thread.

      8. swatllama

        I don’t think psychopath means what you think it does.

        Yo momma(‘s puC) jokes are amazing.

        Saiga doesn’t play.

        Let’s see how thin we can get this comment column pplz!

  3. @_@

    Well all upper comments are bullshit ;D
    I mean there are plenty of semi-dead games in OSS world like RedEclipse, Warsow 2.0, AssaultCube, Xonotic and so on (I believe I forgotten to mention few titles here but sorry for my temporary memory loss ;D) and there is already implemented features that people requested here and above, but no one seems to be playing these games write now and even sauerbraten itself has no major community around but has a lot of whining people like those making posts about switching to Tesseract or OctaForge forked engines. I have no need of engine updates just because most maps are already beautiful so the picking great maps queue is a mostly server side master problem and must be fixed on servers owners side and not by game developer. Simple there is nothing to fix in these terms. I think Eihrul knows better what he and his co-maintainer could bring in new release. But still the hype is great and I personally intrigued by what sweet things to come later on these year.

    Reply
    1. star

      oh eternalcrybaby
      nice try, but due to your sucky english, nobody understands your point here.
      I know you’d like to spark a feud once again, but let me tell you:
      ‘all upper words are bullshit’

      Reply
  4. notas

    guys, SPAWN SYSTEM, wth. You should not spawn right on top of your opponent in any duel mode, giving a free kill. You shouldn’t spawn right next to a powerup that your opponent just defended, turning FFA into a luck fest. A simple spawn system where you spawn randomly from among the 50% of spawns furthest away from your enemies position would remove most spawnluck.

    Secondly, HB needs to change. Anyone who disagrees, watch the demo of me vs swatllama in sauerleague final on Tumwalk. I got every single HB on mostly random BS fights, which left him with no chance. Or remember the tiebreaker map in the grandfinal of Conman vs Majikal on tartech, way back in the day. HB ends games at the 5 minute mark and ruins potential for comebacks.

    I will say this effect can be mitigated somewhat by HB placement like on metl2, where there are two HBs spaced such that you can usually get one, and neither player will get a permanent impenetrable stack unless the other player really screws up. So mappers, either leave the HB out or do something like this.

    Reply
    1. swatllama

      I lost on tumwalk cause you outplayed me, not because of spawn luck.
      But yes, I saw ya’ll testing your spawn thing, and that was much nicer.

      A nice change to the healthboost could be to increase health by 5 (so it only starts to make a significant difference around the 7 minute mark, and if that happens it in combination with improved spawns proves that the guy with more healthboosts probably outplayed the other guy) or to change it to a +x health for the duration of your life.

      I would not like to see many more maps with two health boosts. Once a healthboost is delayed, many players have difficulty keeping track of which one will spawn first, which makes it even more frustrating for new players to get into ffa.

      Reply
  5. Boomerang!

    Lots of great suggestions! Here’s mine:
    Sauerbraten is a fast paced game and yet not everything is finely tuned to make it smooth. Many players will sacrifice graphics over frame rate even though the game graphics requirements become less and less of an issue as modern computers are being used. I think it is time to tackle the networking side of the game.

    The minimum packet jump is 30ms!!! That means no matter how many fps your fancy computer has you only get a maximum of 33 frames per second of actually gameplay data (the network packets).
    If I recall correctly a couple of mods have decreased the minimum packet jump but this only works with some modded servers (remod I think) and only with the clients that have the mods too.
    I think the packet jump should be decreased to at least 16-17ms (that would match a 60 fps setup) and ideally would be completely dynamic taking into account bandwidth limits.
    I think this is something very simple to implement that will change the gameplay for the better. And the increase in bandwidth (around twice as much) would probably not matter since Sauerbraten takes so little bandwidth in the first place.

    Do you remember when you were spectating someone and they were shooting next to the enemy and still killing them? It’s probably because you were missing the packet that could have shown you that that kill was in fact legit.
    Even without taking into account spectating, maybe we’ll see more fluid movements and make having your frag stolen from you less likely (your crosshair lights up to tell you it was a frag but then the server says someone else did the frag).

    Reply
    1. star

      you are quite right, but i wonder what effects this will have on players with high pings, like from the us or australia. sadly most servers are still located in europe. i think this has to be tested.
      furthermore, it’s sauerbraten’s design to extrapolate the values from the network side and calculate hits on the clients computer, rather on the server side, like games such as quakelive does. this makes me suspect that it doesn’t really matter how often your gamedata gets refreshed. after all, this is what makes it possible that europeans can even play versus the rest of the world. if pings would really matter that much (like for example in quake), we would lose even more players.
      I think however, that the network protocolls can get an upgrade not only on the edit side, like i mentioned at the beginning of the post.

      as for the graphics, i personally never gave a fuck about them, as i want to play a game and not dig into a second reality. high quality graphics are cool for rollplaying games like elderscrolls, but not for games which are based on dexterity.

      Reply
      1. Boomerang!

        You’re right the hits are calculated on the clients computer and it even goes further: Sauerbraten and most first person shooters will predict what each player is doing in between network frame. This prediction is always done naively so basically every player keeps on doing whatever they were doing in the previous network frame (this mainly applies to movements). This is a fine behavior if the network rate is high enough. Sauerbraten’s rate is definitely high enough (otherwise we wouldn’t be playing) but it can be improved.
        Since sauer’s gameplay is as much fragging as it is moving around dodging bullets it makes sense to make the movements of the players as accurate as possible. I think it is not fair if having a high packet jump (low network rate) makes it easier to predict where a player is going to be when you shoot (it is easier to predict because as I said movements are naively interpolated from one network frame/packet to the next).
        Having never really tried a lower packet jump myself I’m only speculating on the effects of this change and might be wrong as to the extent of improvement.

        About what you were saying for the higher pings. This should be a separate issue if the client/server bandwidth is high enough. Ping being the latency it shouldn’t affect how much data you can cram into the network (that is true for UDP only which is what the data packets are sent through I believe, not TCP – if you want the specifics) :)

      2. vanquish

        agreed about the graphics. most people use texreduce once they find out it exists, and even then it’s not like sauer’s particularly ugly on high video settings either. i think it’s a pretty good engine.

      3. swatllama

        Other than motion blur and sometimes glare, I play on max settings :D.

        One advantage of getting better graphics is that we may attract some NEW PLAYERS who’ll try out the game instead of thinking “Damn, this looks like it’s from 2005 [which it is, whaddya know!], I’m gonna go jack off to some shitty fps streamer girl while she sucks a dick!” The lighting system is great, but when most of our textures are as ugly as metl3, there’s room for improvement.

      4. vanquish

        yeah you’re right about the textures actually. do you play with waterreflect/refract on too? that shit kills my fps like crazy @_@

  6. Someone

    1. I would like to see automatic match search just like in CS:GO. You should be able to select an option between 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 matches and of course game modes. So that would make newbies play more effic matches, not just insta.

    2. To sort it out, I would also like to see some global ranking system if possible.

    Basically everything else is just up to eihrul, but those features are really needed to keep sauerbraten more active and competitive. :)

    Reply
    1. star

      I think it’s much too late… we can barely manage to get a decent mix game running at times.
      having a matchmaking system would be wasted code if there are no players to match against… nobody wants to sit in limbo for 1 !s ( yes i’m using !s as a measure of time here, opponents of puC!s]quad know what i mean ;)

      Reply
  7. 'eS|Adelaide

    I think the game balance could use some fixing.
    Remove pistol spread please. Now the pistol is slightly-random usually-overpowered since health bubble is only 25.
    Chainsaw ‘reload’ should be faster and should have a longer range. The range is so short you cant hit someone if you are standing on their head.
    The shotgun spreads too much, is too random and slow to reload. A shot at the same distance and position can do 70 or 150 damage depending how lucky you are. The reload is really painful and breaks the pace of the game.
    The MG is fine I think, I recently found a trick to improve accuracy at long range ^^
    Rockets fine.
    The rifle is way to slow to reload and its less useful in ffa now we have blue armor. I would like a combo system like Nexuiz :)
    The armors give too much I think, it’s not balancing the game to have one yellow which gives 200. I would like more and smaller armors (like a 100 and 50, or even 50 and 25). Also this would make the timing more difficult which is fun ^^
    If we lower the armor hp it would be good for players to spawn with 100 hp in pickup modes again. This makes the rifle more useful.
    I think the long weapon reloads are the biggest issue. If you look at a game like QW their game is much faster, not only cause you can move faster but because they dont’ have to wait 1.5 seconds for a weapon to reload.
    Just my random ideas :P

    Reply
    1. 'eS|Adelaide

      Oh forgot the nades. They need to be faster like QW or Painkiller. Now they are going way too slow and cartoonish like they are lazy.
      Also I really dont’ like the new sounds, except the shotgun, they feel really cheap and plastic.
      The explosion particles also are too silly, they are like a bubble.

      Reply

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