Alien Arena 2011 Update Brings Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Alien Arena 2011 Update Brings Improvements

John Diamond has announced a new release of Alien Arena, the alien-themed open-source first person shooter built off the id Tech 2 game engine...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTIwMw

[Irritant]

Here is our latest game media as well:





video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNvep_oWFbs

[smani]

@Irritant
I was wondering, in versions before ODE/rag-doll integration, there used to be those cool effects of aliens blowing up when hit by rockets, chaingun bursts etc, even if you hit them after they were already dead. From what I can see now there is only a blowup effect when you hit an alive opponent directly with a rocket. Are there any plans to reintroduce the previous behavior? In my opinion it was much cooler than the dolls getting flipped around
Thanks for the awesome game!

[macemoneta]

Easy

I like the graphics, and the game play seems interesting in videos. My problem is that I usually last about 10 seconds before I'm killed - even on the easiest level, and that makes it not fun. It's hard to learn game play when you have to do it in boring, repetitive, 10 second snatches. It'd be great if at some point the devs made an entry-level play mode. Maybe enable god-mode in it so that people could learn to enjoy the game before giving up in frustration.

[crazycheese]

I like the graphics, and the game play seems interesting in videos. My problem is that I usually last about 10 seconds before I'm killed - even on the easiest level, and that makes it not fun. It's hard to learn game play when you have to do it in boring, repetitive, 10 second snatches. It'd be great if at some point the devs made an entry-level play mode. Maybe enable god-mode in it so that people could learn to enjoy the game before giving up in frustration.

Its good idea. Think of what Quake Live once implemented - based on local performance and hit/miss ration calculate a rank and "lock"(or softlock, or option) the player within rank.

Barely any game offers this by the way. You are on your own as raw meat or you disconnect and find relatively easy server. Or... the newbies kick pro player claimin he cheats(but real skilled players actually leave on their own to not spoil others game and at same time seek real competition).

[Irritant]

I like the graphics, and the game play seems interesting in videos. My problem is that I usually last about 10 seconds before I'm killed - even on the easiest level, and that makes it not fun. It's hard to learn game play when you have to do it in boring, repetitive, 10 second snatches. It'd be great if at some point the devs made an entry-level play mode. Maybe enable god-mode in it so that people could learn to enjoy the game before giving up in frustration.

Actually you can do this if you play offline against bots, type set cheats 1 in the console, then set godmode 1 after that.

Basically this is a raw online deathmatch game, so there's not a lot of ways to make it easy for people to jump in other than practicing against the bots. There is a "matchmaker" in the server browser that also shows the skill level of the players in the server, similar to Quake Live.

[Irritant]

@Irritant
I was wondering, in versions before ODE/rag-doll integration, there used to be those cool effects of aliens blowing up when hit by rockets, chaingun bursts etc, even if you hit them after they were already dead. From what I can see now there is only a blowup effect when you hit an alive opponent directly with a rocket. Are there any plans to reintroduce the previous behavior? In my opinion it was much cooler than the dolls getting flipped around
Thanks for the awesome game!

Yeah, the ability to gib dead bodies is gone, due to the ragdolls being a client side effect(the overhead of being server side would be astronomical). The reason is because the server really has no idea where a ragdoll is(and it can vary from client to client of course since it's clientside). The problem with still being able to gib dead bodies would be that you'd have gibs exploding out of nowhere, since the server has no idea where a ragdoll has gone.

This behavior might be reintroduced however, as a pure client side effect(much like bullet shells, etc).

[SciFiDude79]

Alien Arena Rules!

I love this game. I started playing it about this time last year and it's amazing how much it's grown since then. The development team really does a great job on it. I'll definitely have to check out that latest version.

Those screenshots are beautiful, BTW.

[PsynoKhi0]

Hopefully I'll be able to do this game justice soon, my current computer is just too slow for anything beyond low/med settings. Still looking good all things considered, and cool maps.

[SciFiDude79]

I'm about to download the update, it's already available in the PlayDeb repository (I'm running Mint 10 64-bit.) I can't wait.