October 15th Road to the Future news

Here we are in the middle of Fall and the middle of October as well. That's right, it is time for the mid month Road to the Future!

Recently, we received a couple developer applications. This means you may see a new face or two on the dev team eventually.

Updates from the Team

There was a great response last time we did this, so Eric and I decided to do it again. We went around to the other members of the team and asked what they have been working on. Here are the replies:

Eero

Let me tell you, that new website Eero is working on is really something you should look forward to!

Lebson

I admit it is not very exciting, but at least he is getting work done.

Josh and Stefan

Here is part one of the plan mentioned in the October 1st update. Instead of getting work updates from these two, we managed to get a dual interview with them.
Now you get a chance to hear the guys at the top answer some of the "big" questions.

Right click and Save as:

Interview Wav File
Interview mp3 File

Now for the RTTF Q and A's

1. Is artillery going to be implemented into the game?
The idea of Artillery or Mortar support is still being balled around, so long story short: maybe.

2. Shouldn't the buildings have the swastika flag, not the Nazi flag?
The current flag is the Iron cross, which is not a symbol of the Nazi party, but a symbol of the German Army. We'd prefer to stay politically neutral and not use the swastika in the mod. If you want it changed, there are plenty of re-texures you can find on the forums.

3. The reloading of certain weapons like the sub machineguns seem a bit
slow. Are there plans to change the reloading times of any weapons?
There is really no good way of incorporating all the little things that factor into reloading a gun. Things such as your stamina, mental awareness, motor skills and other things the weapon wielder would normally be focused on (like avoiding immanent death) would normally affect the reload speed of an individual. There's no way that's feasible for us to create to factor in all these things, so we have to create a reasonably realistic reload time that an average person could do under the conditions. Don't forget that a part of the reload time includes the time it takes for the character to take a magazine out of it's pouch.

Reloading is a consequence to unloading all your ammmunition on a single target, if you are pacing yourself and your ammo and picking a good time to reload, a slower paced reload time shouldn't be a problem.

4. Did you already start working on the "Fallschirmjäger" playermodels?

Fallschirmjäger player models are planned at some point, but not for the first Orange Box release.

5. Will there be a voice command system in the next release?

Not for the first Orange Box release.

However, we have made a few innovative changes to the current voice communication, such as 3D audio and audio occlusion. Rather than the basic VOIP effect, voice communication acts more as a sound emitted from the person. Voice will fade at a distance and can be muffled by surfaces between the player and the audio source. IE: If an enemy is talking in another room in the same house as you, you should be able to tell where it's coming from just by the direction and
volume of the sound.

If you have any questions that you would like featured in the next RTTF, PM the Public Relations department (Hunnicutt or Murphy) and we will do our best to get them answered. That is all we have to show you for this mid-month RTTF, stick around for the next update on November 1st!