Change of MG and SG to ballistic mode

[GreEn`mArine]

Thanks for adding an option to make MG, SG (and CR) bullets antilagged again. Also thanks to Komier who just explained the "smoke before tracer" problem, I guess he means a similar effect to what you see in UT99 for example for the shock rifle. The splash of it comes first, then comes a slow beam

Anyways, my biggest concern really is the missing antilag problem with these 3 weapons. From another perspective (if I wasn't a developer) the game changed in a way that you suddenly have to lead your aim for these weapons for which you didn't have to lead your aim before. I guess this is rather a step back than forward. Sure, I can also understand div0's motive to make it "look right", so that impact smoke comes after the tracer reached it target (so you avoid the silly effect we used to have before), but this is basically the only valid argument for me to disable hitscan (EDIT: and thus antilag as well) for these two weapons.

About all other arguments similar to "MG secondary too strong" etc are not valid for me:
- When deciding the make CR bullets antilagged as well, the mentioned MG secondary fire accuracy advantage compared to the CR is gone

- as antilag makes the weapons easier to use, of course, the damage and/or rounds per seconds values need be lowered, as well as the spread needs to be raised, probably even quite a bit. I am not interested in throwing off weapon balance either by making the bullet weapons antilagged by default but not changing the dmg/spread values back to a sane default

- I now understand why I always thought the CR was so crappy ... it wasn't antilagged in the first place - it would have made sense to me to antilag it as well. Sorry, I can understand your argument why CR or other weapons should have projectiles, for the looks, more realism(?), and being able to give them higher damage at the cost of harder usage, but still, making the weapon harder to use is not fair to the players

I'm strongly suggesting to create a poll soon where players can decide here whether they prefer the weapons to be antilagged or not (means: whether g_antilag_bullets gets default 1 or not). Of course, if that was the case, all bullet weapons should get a rebalance. Maybe we should wait a few more days so that the players can get used to their poor performance they now have on SVN servers other than your own with MG and SG and get a little heated up (they will, hehe) so that the poll goes even more in the direction I am proposing...

[Alien]

I think terms antilag and autoscan became confused in this thread. CR was never autoscan, MG and SG were. Now they are not. It does not affect SG cause it's even more useless at far range than at close, but affects MG, where you need to lead the target to compensate for ballistic bullets.

[divVerent]

No, the terms are not confused. g_antilag_bullets enables BOTH antilag and hitscan for bullets. But leads to weapon balance of the MG being way off, and removes the tracer effects (as they look stupid then).

[esteel]

Well the tracer might look stupid when its hitscan but people are used to it (from older Nexuiz versions and other games like UT) and without them its really hard to see who is shooting at you. And i think this fact alone warrents to keep the tracer in the hitscan case.

[tZork]

Right now I cant use the mg or the shotty (close range or not) maybe ill learn, but I doubt it. Also I think its screwed up reasoning that these guns have to change because of the camper gun which haven't even been in any official release yet (and its function is somewhat questionable for normal game play imo). it like saying rl has to track the target because the tag does.

For the visual part, one can use instant and accurate smoke trails instead of those silly half invisible little tracer models.

I don't think making a gun harder to use by adding the random network latency of the client to it is the right way to balance things.

Now I'm NOT saying "OMG BRING HITSCAN BACK!!!1one", but I want a solid replacement for it in terms of function. I'm not sure how this can be done yet, but I'm sure there a way. So maybe we can talk ideas on how to unlag weapons at large instead of squabbling over it?

Also, you cant simply compare leading bullets to the other weapons because they all have splash and radius.

[divVerent]

It is not random network latency.

As for unlagging projectiles like bullets - any ideas HOW that could work?

And I still don't get how this even AFFECTS the shotgun at all. It has a wide spread, after all.

Smoke trails would be cool indeed, but how to do that? The problem is that the path of a bullet is a curve (thanks to gravity). Only slightly bent downwards, so maybe straight lines or like 8 segments wouldn't even look that bad.

Anyway, I have no time for this. Anyone who thinks he's found a SOLUTION is free to submit it. Not that this will happen anytime soon.

And no, no forum polls for this. They don't work anyway, see the CTF case.

[esteel]

I also did not notice a change to the shotgun, after all its effective range is rather small so the need to lead is much less. The camping rifle was 'always hard to use' and i have not yet had a change to test todays balancing changes to the machinegun..

When I shoot the machine gun or the shotgun, I see the impact on the wall when the tracer just starts to leave the gun. At longer range, this would look pretty funny when you see a splash on a wall then watch your bullet fly through the air. I am guessing that this is what they are talking about when they say that the smoke appears before the tracer.

That is the bad visual effect we are talking about when using hitscan and tracers! The damage and the impact decal is drawn the moment you press fire (or rather then the info that you pressed the button reaches the server) while the tracer needs some time to travel and be visible. This also made a few people try to hit with the tracers.. which will just not work

This was changed in the development version by turning the shots into 'real' bullets which take time to travel so the visuals are just right.. are affected by gravity
AND due to their nature can not be antilagged. Which is what this whole thread is about.

People seem to have a hard time to hit with those NOT antilagged bullets.. However the machinegun settings were changed today to compensate for this by increasing the damage. And also people need to get used to this..

BTW has anyone here an idea how ETQW uses antilag? I think it also uses 'real' bullets but also sports antilag. But i'm not totally sure there.

[GreEn`mArine]

And no, no forum polls for this. They don't work anyway, see the CTF case.

yay democracy (translates to one man show)!!
EDIT:well, I don't want to sound too aggressive here. All I'm saying is that you, div0, had the feature enabled on your servers for some time and since no1 complained you concluded that the general public likes (or doesn't have objections to) that change. Now I don't know what kind of clients play on your server. If it's mainly the "i like to play computer games" people, they probably won't have complained because they don't hit a tree in the woods anyway. But I'm not here to make blunt statements, but mainly want to figure out that the decision to convert SG and MG into a non-hitscan/non-antilagged weapon (I've talked about the reasons why imo this is not neccessary already) should not remain to be done just because of a one month period of random players on your server. I know that polls can be somewhat tricky and not working, but the general idea is, imo, that when enough respected community members reflect their objections to this change here, a reconsideration should be done.

@esteel: sure, doing such changes and ignoring any input of the community will make the community get used to as they have no other choice.

However, I'll test the new balance settings that were mentioned to compensate the uselessness. And I'll test again how it "does not affect the shotgun" in my usual testcase. I'm quite sure it DOES affect it, but anyway.

[divVerent]

I know that polls can be somewhat tricky and not working, but the general idea is, imo, that when enough respected community members reflect their objections to this change here, a reconsideration should be done.

We have seen how that works with the CTF scoring case.

And again - you had the CHANCE to try it out before. If you missed it, it's your own fault and nobody else's. It is a well known fact that changes are often done on my servers before they become default, so they can be tried out. That's the main reason why I am running this server, after all. If you miss your chance of giving feedback at an APPROPRIATE time, and then complain later, it's your very own problem.

[esteel]

Were is that part about input being ignored? A f*cking stormfront of complains being ignored for the sake of ones state of mind.. yeah i can see that.

Lets face the fact, this change was active on the MAIN development server of almost a month, noone complained, now that this change got into svn and is also on my server people complain? Well that should have been enough time to talk about this change in a kind way.

Besides, as good as svn is, i think we have too many SVN server that do NOT give feedback to the developers... which result in stuff like this. For example i have never seen the admin of the ToT server anywere in contact with developers.. The svn buld scripts in the forum were MOSTLY intended for people to test the client! How are the devs supposed to find out what people like and what not with out such active feedback?

And even more, people are working on solving this issue right now... again, were is that ignoring part? I really think some people (including developers) should try a mind-check.. The way this went off was just totally wrong.. You can't expect a change in half a day.. but you can expect people to get angry with the way i heared demands and shittalk regarding this ballistic change like on irc... even more so if the change was tested and has good reasons like improved visuals and being more cheat prone. And weapon stats were collected before this change made it into svn which revealed no big changes.

But some people act like the deverlopers want to screw this game up on purpose.... Oh come on, really, whats wrong with you guys? Though we are close the the code freeze Nexuiz is still in development and we have better things to do then get into a bad mood or talk down on anyone. Everyone wants the next release to be big and good and get people to play with joy. Try to show some of that joy even if you want to criticise stuff!