Comments - Vaarscha

"People shelling out more for a vid card then for the CPU"

I think both can't be really compared 1:1 as the video card has, for example, lot's of memory on the card etc. However, there's something behind it... in most of today's games, the bottleneck is the video card and not the CPU. There is a reason for this: When you design a game, you want it to be able to run on a lot of PCs, also older ones. You usually have a lot of options for the graphics, so if you have a bad video card, you can tune your settings. But if you have an outdated CPU, there are usually not much, if any, options.
Means the workload of the GPU can be adjusted whereas a CPU always gets the same work to do, whether it's a top-notch or a rather old one. The top CPU's have a lot of power left that could be used for physics. The problem is that physics were not an option. Now they are, means the whole thing gets more scaleable towards the CPU, which is imo a step forward (both for users of older and highend systems).

Well, I don't believe PhysX card will be a hit because they have nearly no use in multiplayer games. It'd be cool if you could destroy something and it burst in hundreds of pieces that you can use again. But all these pieces would need bandwith to be synchronized between clients... which is not really available. Means PhysX cards will only be useful for effects that are not relevant to the gameplay (ragdolls, small stuff, particles etc). Which doesn't make it interesting for me to buy.

PR/Manager
...

Managing a team is something completely different from handling PR, plus managing is a far more important job. If you screw up PR, less people will play your mod. If you screw up managing your team, there will be no mod.

Developer.valvesoftware.com

Hope you find this helpful.

Nice work so far! I really hope for you that you find a coder, looks like it could become a great mod.

You shouldn't be so shy, btw. Many mods claimed they are total conversions, and they used lot's of HL2 stuff - you used nothing, as far as I can see. Well, I can hear the buggy sounds :P but that's about it.

Apart from some obvious bugs and things missing, I'd like to give mention this:

* the speed should be increased a lot, at least 2x as fast!
* the vehicle physics should become way more arcadish!
-> this should help the gameplay to become like the ones from great arcade racers. If you change the vehicle physics so that a crash between two opponents doesn't have big influences (no skidding) then the track is big enough, however right now, I agree with ChromeAngel, you'll have a hard time passing someone in multiplayer without touching him. Which is fine as long as this doesn't lead to big crashes...

* the "jumps"... shouldn't have an invisble brush below them! rather build them correctly so that if you drive fast enough, you can easily get over them.

Good work, I sure hope there will be more to see in the future!

sci-fi contains the word "fiction". Of course you can make fiction _feel_ real or unreal, yet it is not realistic until you know what the future is like...

In HEAT you will be able to take more than one bullet in certain bodyparts. In computer games, we often don't assume that the character of the player is dead but rather that he isn't able to fight anymore because of his wounds. If he can't walk or hold his gun anymore, then there's no point in letting the player "play" on.
And of course we've been putting some thoughts into armour as well: Some bullets are able to pierce body armour, some are not. However a non-piercing bullet does still apply a force onto a body, this is simulated by decreasing the stamina of the player.

thanks for your support :)

We're working hard, though we're only a small team.

Shouldn't it say

"The more I make comics,
the longer it takes."

;) Nice work, keep it up!

interested. as always when it comes to realism :)

The developers in the industry cannot afford to risk experimentation in game play and design, so modders are the only hope of driving the industry forward

Contradiction in terms...

Once a mod dev will be modding to get money, he doesn't want to experiment too much.
If he even can't afford to loose money (e.g. if he has rented a plane to do photographs, sound recordings etc) he will stop experiments alltogether.

Even though I don't think the planes are a good example at all, let's stick to it: Are there any creative, new ideas you can buy? Or are these just some planes that are liked by a reasonable amount of people who are dreaming of flying them?
There is no real change made. In fact, those "new" planes for the ms flight simulator are not too different from "new" cs clones for half life.

Well, in fact money could help mod teams in some parts, not to give them a living but to give them access to the tools. A lot of this is already done via the SDKs, but also with free modelling packages. I'd agree that in some areas like sound recording, only very few people have access to good microphones etc, however this is a rather unique example.
If you can play game XYZ, you can most likely use the tools to build content for it. Furthermore many people own DigiCam's, so new textures on photobase aren't a big problem. All the other tools should be made free to use for mod dev's! That's what I am asking for, nothing more.

What I, as a mod dev want to invest is my time, my passion, etc. What I do not want to invest is money.
What I want to get from my mods is fun creating and playing. I'm not doing it to earn a living.

I like the minigun! Nice sur-real touch...

More of this stuff could make your mod into something special! I don't think anyone has done stuff like this before.

Is your mod free to download for anyone?

Does that mean I can just take the contents of it, label it another way and then let people download for free (as my work)?

"you bash mods before it comes out,"
I did not.

" do you even do how the game works?"
no.

" do you, so shut you mouth"
please watch your manners.

" and when it comes out then have your say"
I might do that. I have never "bashed" a mod and I will always give a mod some positive critics, no matter how much I dislike it, because there's a lot of work behind creating a mod. BUT there isn't a lot of work when you just "steal" models etc from other people.

Would you agree if someone took your levels/models/etc and put it into his mod and wouldn't say a word that he had not created it?
I doubt you'll think that's cool.

So, if someone knows who created the bmw, we should contact and inform him/her.

This is what you call PR?

How is anyone supposed to know that this model is a placeholder? Or that it isn't made by the team? You did not even post a note somewhere (at that point it might become dicussable).

Thanks :)

The crane and the junkpress are my first (map-)models with such a size and polycount, still in the learning process of modeling and skinning. glad you like it ;)

Agreed, the movie is a masterpiece :)

But the HEAT mod is indeed not related to it.

yes, that's basicly it. But it can be several models, actually.
I guess that lots of engines who are supposed to draw larger areas include the possibility of LODs these days...

@so_wot: there is a topic about movement speeds in our forums, check it out: Heatmod.com
Well, nothing is set in stone yet, but it's going to be slower than hl2 Wink

@Alone in the Dark: Yep, it will not be that easy. Kinda like in real life ;)

@Fishbulb: Lot's of Happy Dunno the exact number, Ecks could tell you this... Anyway, we're going to have LOD models for our world models (those you see in other ppl carry or in the map), this is the high-end view model (the one you see in first person). With LOD models we can optimize the performance pretty well imo.

it's 26th, not 28th!

Oh well, this is a sci fi mod, never mind :P

2 polls before we had this big Steam discussion... and now it's not in this list?!?

I usually buy at amazon. No more shops (at least not for planned purchases of new games) for me. None close to my home + games are sometimes sold out and it's a waste of time then...

What I like about online purchased games is that I don't have to put a DVD / CD into my drive every time I want to play the game and I also can loose / break the DVD / CD or my drive could be broken etc...

On the other hand, as already mentioned, good manuals (GTA:SA was very cool) and posters are nice.

Hello Poll!

I don't see the poll you are talking about, neither to my right nor to my left.

Anyway, I'm sure the general public will vote for HEAT! :P

no, there was only a "heat of battle" mod for Call of Duty, no HEAT ;)

thanks for the comments :)

We'd love to release a video, but unfortunalety we don't have any skinned weapons yet... and we don't want to show off unfinished stuff. Basicly any help, if professional, is wanted!

Anyway, it works like this: You can move your weapon by some degrees to the right or left, up or down - just like your arms would move the gun in real life. But after a certain point, you will start moving your body as well, and this is when you move your view/screen.
For example, if you are laying down surpress fire into a room, you are probably not going to move your body but only the gun, but when you are turning directions, you'll first move the gun a bit and then the body as well. You'll get used to it pretty fast.
For accurate shots you want to use Iron Sight or a scope anyway...

The whole thing isn't finished yet, the coders are working on improvements like collision detection for the weapons (guns sticking through doors will be history and other cool stuff is going to work as well). But, as I said, it's beeing worked on and it's not officially confirmed yet so *psssst* ;)

keep up the good work!

Reminds me of GTA:Vice City... had some awesome colors like these :)

The player will be able to bandage his own wounds.

HEAT does have no classes, we are not trying to recreate a military set-up where medics etc do make sense...

I edited the picture, it fits the requirements now, could you please authorize it now?

(well, most mods seem to post thumbs with 200x### but nevermind...)

Yes, I ignored your comments on realistic games.
It is your taste, how can I argue with that? I'm not a mother trying to tell its child that spinach tastes great... However, when the child wants to tell the mother that spinach is unhealthy, it is wrong, and that is what you have basically done when you told me HEAT is a CS Clone.

You may want to open a big and long discussion about the difference of a realistic game and a simulation, but I will not participate it in the comments of the HEAT mod, because it is not the place it belongs.
You can open a topic in the moddb.com forums ('cosmos' should be the right place, i guess) and I'm sure we can have a long and interisting discussion.

Thank you for taking some time to write this comment, even though I wonder why you put no time into reading our information! You don't even have to visit our website which contains even more infos, but the texts supplied here should give you the idea why HEAT is not a CS clone, anyway, for you I'm going to do a short-short version of what is planned:

-no crosshairs
-Iron Sights
-2 firing positions (hip / IronSight) that influence accuracy (which is also done by crouching / walking etc)
-advanced movement system with:
*stamina
*leaning
*freeclimb
-no nametags for recognition of teammate/enemy

...and so on.

Because our mod is, as you might have realized, not finished, I did not claim that we are the _most realistic_ modification. I don't know what for mods will be around when HEAT will be released(and you don't know how HEAT will turn out), so I don't think that this is a discussion based on any facts. Anyway, I'm sure that HEAT will turn out more realistic then a lot of other modifications and games, CS included.