Ricochet: Source a1.1 Release news

After 6 weeks of hard work, I am proud to announce the release of Ricochet: Source a1.1. It was a learning experience for most of us, and the team is satisfied with the result.

We picked the mod off the ground and it has gathered a lot of attention. We even managed to get Lozh back around to chip in, which is great. The current build was put out to fix many bugs in the first release, offer new maps, and have fully skinned models.

If any of you played the original release, you would know of the numerous bugs. For starters, pushing any key besides W, A, S, D, Mouse1, and Mouse2 would crash the game. While fixing it, I decided to leave this bug bound to a key of choice, name Rage Quit, but I decided to remove that. Many exploits in gameplay were fixed by using trigger_push brushes, and expanding the jump triggers so that players could no longer hang out on deflectors or pyramids. The fullbright issue has also been fixed. Many bugs are still out there, and those will be fixed in future releases.

The original release offered very few maps. I mean, playing the same map is only fun for a while. We decided to release with 5 maps. The maps are rc_deathmatch, rc_deathmatch 2, rc_deathmatch3, rc_deathmatch4, and rc_flip_deathmatch. These maps are of various sizes, and can accommodate up to 16 players.

I also decided to include the .vmfs for the 5 maps released so if any mappers want to begin mapping, they can understand how the entities work. Inside the mapsrc folder is a text document that should help you set up our gameconfig inside the sourcesdk bin.

Lastly, the map models have been completed. You might have noticed that the originals had some funny rainbow colors. Well that's because the skin was just the UV map. I have completed all the skins for these models with quality in mind. The pyramids, power up, and deflectors all have some nice features. For starters, the normal maps were all baked from high poly models, adding insane detail to them. Ambient Occlusion maps were added to the diffuse maps, and a specular reflection was added to all of them. It creates a very nice effect, and you can see the normals at work. The deflector model is also new.

So, a lot has been done, and the mod is now in a decent playing state. Obviously, a lot is still at work. Some map models are going to be redone (bricks, teleporters) to be included in future maps introducing new gamemodes. The code will be re-worked to fully overide most of the HL2DM stuff in the GUI, and also finish support for the new gamemodes. Oh, and the Slowdown and Freeze powerups will also be added. Player models will be built from scratch, and animated from scratch using markerless motion capture. New disc models will be created, and even view models so you can see the disc being thrown in first person. New skyboxes will be made to add some variety to the maps. I would say by the spring we will have our last alpha release when all content is finished, and move onto beta.

I would like to thank everyone who worked on the mod from the start, and the new team who has made this possible. I would also like to thank the community for supporting us this whole time. Please download the newest version, delete the older version before installing this one, and spread the word around. Servers should be up soon. Have fun out in the abyss!