Community Input

[forwardslashN]

You've seen me working on guns, adding miscellaneous features, and other assorted nonsense. I'm getting ready to finish up guns for good and probably not touch them outside of touch ups or small revisions. That means I will be able to work on something else. I'm just curious to know what the community wants the most. Here are some options:

Reduce lag via optimizations related to weeds and stuff. This will have noticeable improvement on performance, especially later in the round. Probably two weeks, just to get everything in order.
Get map rotation to work properly. Our game modes are tied into the map itself, so this will allow people to vote on the map for next round. No clue on this one. Could be a few days, could be a few weeks.
Create a brand spanking new map. I'm also a very proficient mapper, and we're only rotating two maps at the moment. A week for a basic map. More for something fancier.
Go over melee weapons and give them the gun treatment. Effects, animations, interesting RNG, and so on. Melee won't be entirely different, but it will be more involved as a set up for future projects. This could take a few weeks.
Go over some of the sprites, specifically xenos, and rework them to an extent. I am also a very proficient spriter (I made the CM logo on the forums), so this is also possible. Probably a week or two.

Something else? Let me know. Other feedback is also welcome.

[Sarah_U.]

Optimization is always welcome, especially if it implies re-working explosions to minimize the proc load

[crono23]

I'd say go for the optimization first (who doesn't like that), then start working on either melee weapons or new xeno sprites.

[KingKire]

Me personally, its a toss up between optimizing weeds and going over the alien sprites a wee bit.

Im not sure how heavy weeds impact the server, but considering that they do cover several hundred tiles and exist almost as a permanent tile overlay, im thinking its a decent amount. Cutting down lag always makes the game a crisper worker, and makes playing the server feel good for the long term.

On the other hand, seeing a little bit more polish on the aliens would be wonderful. Giving them a little bit more animations or personality or such would definitely boost the games identity.

I guess i would swing my vote towards weed optimization scince that helps everyone equally feel good. Im thinking optimizing the engine would free the server up to add more new things to lag it down with hehe.

[Renomaki]

I most certainly hope that certain spec weapons (mainly the smart-gun) get some tweaks so that I won't feel bad for wanting to use it, and that the Sadar isn't the only good weapon for a spec to use.

Other than that, I'd love some new maps to explore one of these days. We got a jungle map, a snow map.. We totally need a desert map, or maybe even a more average, foresty map of flowing rivers, beautiful trees and whatever else goes in a forest. Get a map for every biome, pretty much.

[Toroic]

There are a number of factors we can use to evaluate priority, and this is what I think will be best.

1) Get map rotation to work properly

I think this is by far the best thing to prioritize, and will probably work best as a vote durIng the last minute after the round ends for the next map. The majority always wanting the current map should be fine, even HG and WO as long as marines don't band together to make xenos miserable with endless HG and WO. Seems like a small-medium size project with moderate returns, and will save admin time/effort and reduce community whining.

2) Optimizations

How smooth/pretty a server is becomes a major factor in how it is seen by new players, and lag here can get somewhat bad in long games and far from the last hard reset. I expect this to be a medium-large project with large and noticeable return on the time invested.

3) Melee weapon update

The gun changes and recent hit/dodge visuals are amazing, and I'd love to see something similar for melee. However, balancing everything, reworking mechanics, and adding visual cues is a huge project. Great returns but I think you could probably get 1 and 2 done in the time it takes to overhaul melee, which is currently not broken.

4) New map

Another large project, but LV is the best map, with most people generally agreeing ice colony isn't as good. Our current weekly rotation is a good balance of not getting stale and not being overly confusing for new players. Large time investment, moderate returns.

5) Xeno sprites

I think Xeno sprites look pretty good already, and a simple visual change so soon after the new sprites doesn't seem like the best use of your time. I'd expect this to take a moderate to huge amount of time with a small to moderate return on time invested.

[forwardslashN]

For reference, I'm going to throw up some time estimates. These are not hard numbers, just a ballpark.

[Warnipple]

Go over melee weapons. I need a proper Viking axe or something.

[ShortTemperedLeprechaun]

I'd say work on maps and map rotation, and then weapon adjustments for melee. Hell, even game modes would be welcome, but besides that, I dunno. Just map rotation and or maps themselfs would be nice, so the community doesn't get stuck ont he same old same old too often.

[DeadLantern]

As for maps, please create a ruined ship infested by Xenos. It doesn't have to be lore tied, just maybe a W-Y research ship all fucked up and all. Maybe some space parts where the marines have to equip some special gear, dunno. Just a ship would be fine.

[completelynewguy]

In my opinion, priorities should be:

1) Lag optimization
2) Working map rotation
3) One-level Sulaco
4) New map
5) Work over melee weapons, and possibly melee combat in general
6) Xeno sprites

[Feweh]

Map and map rotation.

Youve done a few optimization tweaks recently.

[nodnodnod]

Optimization is vital.

While you're at it, weeds need to constantly regenerate if the node isn't destroyed - and a check should be added to prevent nodes from being spammed to fix this long-existing 'feature'.

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

I would like to see you make a new map N. I'm sure you need a breather from the endless optimizations

As always, I'm with you every step of the way

[Fritigern]

I'd like to see issues with the winter map addressed before we put it into rotation or move onto something else entirely. It's a high concept map with amazing potential, but it's undesirable to play right now for many reasons.

Too much wasted space with little or no reason to explore or branch out for aliens or marines. The alien spaceship is useless, far away, and serves as just another ladder to camp for losing aliens that try to hide a failing hive there. The underground armoury, while neat, is pointless. If marines have made it that far into the hive and can go off laptop hunting to open the door then they've already won, and most of the time aliens have already gone through the vents and destroyed the weapons already. A fundamentally flawed layout in terms of access to the surface and underground, where it's in both sides' interests to never attack but instead to try and bait the other side into attacking their respective strongholds. The need for thermal clothing is an interesting mechanic but vastly underutilized and in actual gameplay almost completely irrelevant.

My suggestions would be to just cut the fat in general; rethink the map layout and how you want aliens and marines to control different sectors (more even split between surface and underground control instead of both being relegated to one or the other); add in more interesting side objectives (Make it so you need to repair the radio mast again, that was fun but seemingly removed for some reason?), add something of value to the massive chain of storage pods with nothing but useless junk in them, give the alien ship a purpose that both aliens and marines can fight over (Alien cryo tank that becomes active after power is restored, spawns a random T3 alien if allowed to finish, something like that); Really beef up the harsh weather system. Marines should not be 100% comfortable out in the snow in their full gear, it removes the point of even having cold weather. Add snow storms that drop the temperature further and reduce visibility. Fuck, maybe completely change the map and the game mode entirely, go 100% full on The Thing paranoia mode, make it a non-xeno map and have marines dealing with shapeshifters. Not shitty SS13 ones, but horrific John Carpenter shit.

Anyways that's my map fix pitch. Regardless of what is done to actually fix the map, I think a lot of people would agree with the basic sentiment that it needs work in general. If that's not something that can be done anytime soon, then just work on whatever you feel like working on, because the server in general is pretty stable right now and nothing in particular is crying out for attention.

[ZDashe]

For me it's in this order:
1. Optimization
2. Map rotation
3. Finish research update (This should give researchers something proper to do other than chem-nades)
4. Shiva Ice colony Map balancing
5. Finish reworking existing maps (Like Prison)
6. Combat (Melee etc.)
7. New maps/sprites/others.

I personally value quality over quantity or aesthetics, so I'd rather we have a few things done great instead of going overly ambitious and overworking yourselves.

[TR-BlackDragon]

I'm down for either map rotation or new map.

[Neray]

Optimization and map rotation. Sprites and melee weapons sure sounds tasty as well as a new map, but those 2 are way more important imo. Plus, we still have tons of mapping bugs with ice, so I suggest fixing em first and then move on a next project.