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1) Will we still see tides and ripples on the water? Will ripples be cosmetic or affect visiblility and skipping disks? | |
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Heh. No tides. Ripples yes. Skipping disks *might* happen. No guarantees. We're spending most of our time simulating water physics, weapon effect changes, and splash stuff. | |
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2) Recent screenshots show very clear water. Will players be able to see outside the water from inside it? Will the visibility decrease with depth? | |
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Yes and yes. | |
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3) If smooth zooming will be included, will the scroll wheel on a mouse work with it? | |
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Good idea. Not sure though. | |
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4) Will ground vehicles be shielded, or only t-grav vehicles? | |
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Ground vehicles will have heavier shields than air vehicles. | |
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5) Will the targeting laser act much like Tribes 1's? Will it be as visible to enemy players? | |
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Yes and yes. | |
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6) Will "glass" or see-through sections be included in base walls? | |
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Not currently. No reason we couldn't do it that way...we just didn't. | |
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7) Can players sport more than one tribe tag? For instance, be a member of clan XYZ, and be a member of the DTM teamplay guild? | |
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No. You can only be in one tribe at a time. Of course (and I am *not* recommending this) you could buy more than one account... | |
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8) We've heard that falls will deal much more damage... Will there be any way to jump out of a T-grav transport short of actually landing? Maybe a counter-grav chute or something? | |
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Falling damage is still being adjusted and will be similar to Tribes 1. | |
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9) Will players receive less damage falling into water vs. falling onto the ground? | |
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Yes. | |
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10) Earlier, we heard that the hooks were being built in for remote control of ground vehicles. Will this extend to air vehicles as well? Will we see this feature in base (for guiding an empty vehicle back to base, for instance)? | |
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No remote control vehicles are currently planned. | |
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11) Will a cloaked person be visible to his own team? | |
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Nope. | |
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12) Is there anything we, as a community (or as individuals), can do for the dev team? We'd be glad to help in any way we can :) (More beverages, snack food, grass-roots advertising, more thank-you notes, anything else you can think of?) | |
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Lol. Nah. The beer that's been being sent is already slowing us down enough. *grins* Thanks for the offer though. | |
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People from Dynamix are bragging about the completely new graphics engine in Tribes 2 that adds so much more to the game's pivotal background settings --- the wide-open spaces. It does so by dishing massive mountain peaks, treacherous canyons, deep water, and realistic weather effects (including wind, rain, snow, fog and even lighting strikes) in all their 3D goodness | |
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What type of economics system will be in place to keep the focus of the game from becoming only about having these powerful vehicles? | |
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Dave: It's all a big balance game once we hit Alpha. For instance…aerial vehicles can be shot down with guided rockets once lock-on has been achieved. Of course, that makes vehicles fairly easy to kill, so we have to develop a flare system that allows the vehicle to fool the rockets and avoid certain destruction. And we added a tailgunner position to assist in keeping those pesky scouts off a bomber or transport's tail. Vehicles will definitely be suplementary to suits. The vehicles have more armor and more firepower, but they are FAR less maneuverable and can be destroyed by well coordinated jumpjetting fireteams. All-in-all, it shouldn't be a big issue for us to balance. | |
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GameSlice: One of the neat features Tribes 2 will have is a translation module for different languages. So, for example, if Bill in Kentucky sends a communication that he is guarding the base, Zdravko over in the Ukraine will be able to read the message in his native tongue. Can you tell us more about your efforts to make Tribes 2 borderless? | |
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Dave: Well…we probably won't ship with Ukrainian translations, but the major languages that we'll have localized will be available like this. | |
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The idea with the story web is that each person may take different paths through the story and take away different impressions of the characters, thus making it a unique experience for each person. | |
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After several hours of resizing the small res. armours on Tribes2.com, cleaning up the resized images, saving, updating and making them look reasonably nice finally, FINALLY I've completed the Tribes 2 Armor page on the Junkyard (with the ones that have been released)! All armours that have been released are posted up thumb-nailed and you have 1028*960, 800*747 and 640*598 res. images to chose from. I hope you enjoy them as much as I spent slaving over them! | |
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- The Junkyard, http://www.maddogstudios.com/junkyard | |
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Glad y'all like it. Ask questions if you have them. | |
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There are obvious errors in the video (no textures on the disc launcher, etc.) and the game looks way better now than it did when the AVI was made. We'll get a better one made soon. | |
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-- Dave. | |
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A few random answers: | |
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Current min spec is still changing. When we were getting ready for E3 we had some major frame rate issues. We benchmarked the code and we found 5-6 major places we could easily improve the code. That hasn't happened yet. I'll be able to tell min spec more easily after that. Marketing is saying min spec of PII 300 right now...BUT...that's a number made up out of thin air so take it with a grain of salt. | |
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The "pipe with the green light" you mentioned above is the new blaster. We all think it needs some work still. | |
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Expect to see more game-specific info on the HUD (as an option). We need to make the game types more intuitive and fun so that people don't just play CTF all the time. (I mean...if we're gonna take the time to make different game types, we should make them easy to play...right?) | |
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Scourge mentioned that the weapons didn't seem to do much damage in the video. heh. That was due to a bug at the time where direct impacts didn't do any damage...only splash damage hurt anyone. That was fixed before E3 though (as anyone that was there can attest to). | |
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And to those of you concerned about SpecFX...don't be. There will probably be many changes before release. That's one area where featuritis is actually permitted... | |
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-- Dave. | |
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Yes...we know approximately when Beta should occur. No...we're not announcing it because we might be wrong. When we get to Alpha we will announce Beta plans. | |
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We're talking about having two HUD colors to alternate between so that you can change to an appropriate color between worlds. The two colors so far seem to be a Teal/Blue and an Orange. The orange works well on ice missions and lush worlds, while the teal seems to work well elsewhere. | |
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Yes. HUDs should be customizable. We'll probably put a lot of information on the screen by default and then let you turn stuff off if you don't want it. That way everyone gets access to it initially and can "turn down the volume" on info if they feel they don't need it. | |
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"Spinning the scouts" is currently accomplished by whipping the mouse around at the same time that you hit reverse thrust. Then, once you achieve your desired new direction, hit jet assist to power back up to speed. | |
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That, plus the ability to loop and fly inverted are my favorite new moves when flying scouts. | |
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Joystick control will be possible. I like the idea about using keys to intentionally roll left/right. We'll see. Currently, the only way to fly inverted is to pull off a loop and end up upside down. Very fun, but not always convenient. | |
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*imagines a heavy transport rolling left so all the heavies in the seats can deliver an efficient broadside at a target* | |
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Heh. I like it. | |
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Answering a slew of questions in no particular order: | |
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1) Flight modelling will NOT be realistic. We're going for fun flight models. Not Jane's Guide to Tribes. Sorry, man...but we'll be doing something more arcady than you sound like you want. Don't worry though...it will be light years beyond T1. | |
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2) There will be flight instrumentation. Probably on a translucent screen of some sort that is part of the dash. Not sure which items yet, but airspeed, vehicle damage, and altimeter are likely. | |
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3) A *****in' Betty voice would be cool. See what we can do. | |
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4) Ammo on vehicles is planned. Probably can reload on the vehicle pad also. | |
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5) N,E,W,S is here to stay friends. Get used to it. | |
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6) Tribes got seatbelts. Heh. No falling out of inverted turbogravs unless you jump. | |
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7) No idea which video card is best. We currently use GeForces. The GeForce 2's were great at the show. I'm sure the Voodoo 5 will rock too. | |
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8) We'll be doing new movies soon. We're doing a dogfight tonight with dual-mounted chainguns on scouts. Six of us all at once. Should be fun. | |
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9) Mouse sensitivity will be scalable. | |
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10) Hercs are old tech by today's standards. heh. Okay, okay...no real rationalizations...but don't look for Hercs in Tribes anytime soon. | |
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11) Observer mode and league broadcasts will (hopefully) be getting massive upgrades. No details will be released on this until very late in the game because I want us to surprise some competitors (RHIL!). | |
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12) Freelook is a separate control and easily used while flying. | |
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13) Strafe keys can't be used for roll because some vehicles (like the Scout) can actually drift left/right while hovering. (Currently, anyway...) | |
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-- Dave. | |
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I'm trying to get them to release it now. The problem is actually kind of funny....Marketing suddenly realized that our game was good because of the E3 reaction and they want to make a kickass video now to replace the one we had. Heh. I'm trying to get them to release this one and then release another (better) one later. | |
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We'll see... | |
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-- Dave. | |
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A few things I wanted to say about the show: | |
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1) Tribes 2 had a much better reception than I could possibly have hoped for. The show ROCKED for us. We always had a huge crowd at the booth, we were giving interviews constantly, and people peppered us with questions...even when we weren't at the booth. | |
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2) Tribes 2 rocked at the booth for several reasons...but the biggest reason was the fan support. I just can't believe how many of you showed up in person to see Tribes 2. You all own totally. It was hysterical answering questions time and again, and finally asking "what is your screen name?" to then find out it was Rasta, Teflatron, etc. The S3 stickers, the time I looked up at the screen and thought "how did Player 3's name get changed to 'LockeSucksAss'?", the look in folks' eyes when I would introduce Mark Frohnmayer as 'Got Milk?', and all the awesome questions and suggestions y'all gave during the show. | |
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You folks made the show one of the best I've been to (and I've been in the industry eleven years now). The Dev team thanks you and I thank you. You rock. | |
