It was absolutely dreadful. Out of everything on test that I dislike on the test server, the radar changes were the worst. I have yet to play with the new version, but I can’t see it being particularly improved unless enemies that are visible from your teammates’ perspectives are visible on your own radar as well as theirs.
How would you add a meaningful stealth element without affecting the game as a whole?
Look at some of the things people have tried in Tremulous. Invisible Basilisks and cloaks (TremX) were extremely frustrating and were almost universally hated. Even the Wraith that I designed with the specific goal of not being annoying got a lot of shit from players.
That feature is now implemented on test7341 
.
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noone claimed that this is wanted or even possible. it is understood that Tremulous can’t be fixed by minor, „local” tweaks, and this follows from the fact that Tremulous (1.1 or GPP) gameplay is shit as a whole.
invisible basilisks on Amsterdam Unlimited1 were a fun addition.
on Amsterdam Unlimited, i also implemented various game modes that drastically changed gameplay, and they were fucking epic.
- domination;
- buildar, having liquid war-style dynamics:
- turrets and acid tubes attack enemy buildables,
- buildables can be placed rapidly,
- buildpoints r hardly limited;
- rush vs defence, having a theme of training attacking and defending, with no snowball dynamics:2
- one team has a full-fledged, large, redundant, pre-built base,
- new buildables can’t be placed,
- equipment/evolution is free,
- the other team does not rely on a base,
- technically, the other base is pre-built and is invincible;3
- tag (well, not so epic):
- exactly one player, the tagger („it”), takes the class of a „large” alien (eg. dragoon),
- other players take the „small” class (eg. basilisk),
- the tagger can damage the others, and the others can only damage the tagger,
- pre-existing medistations provide invulnerability („housing”) for the others;
- if the tagger kills another other player, he/she becomes the tagger,
- objective-based mod on Snow Valley.
1 an advanced basilisk can become invisible for 4 seconds every minute — this is probably different from TremX.
2 gameplay based on pure action.
3 so therefore there is no win/loss outcome. instead, the success/failure is fuzzily rated by the time it takes to finish the defending side (ofc there’s also the whoreboard).
/thread
I’ve never played Amsterdam Unlimited so I can’t say anything on that topic. Perhaps we need a general “how to unfuck Tremulous” thread.
The problem is that now you can’t really trust your radar. Cause this means your radar can change without you and the enemy moving, but another player. It feels weird and as your radar changes all the time, if there’s some players next to you or if you pass some edge, you can’t really make use of it.
Nerfing radar range instead of adding those weird and counter-intuitive features would be the best thing to do imo.
This feature could even lead to an entirely unique gamemode. The recent implementation of shuffles suggestion makes it reasonable to play with in standard gameplay.
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I am thinking perhaps it would be interesting to add a “ring” around the radar that would appear if an enemy is in range but neither in line of sight of you nor a teammate. This way you can be notified of a nearby enemy, but not know for sure which direction the enemy is coming from.
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what shit technology would be this ?
“Enemy life form detected”
???
it is like that unexplained technology in various scifi movies/shows that can detect the existence of a type of life form. Maybe they are detected via sent. The point is to indicate that a kind of life form is nearby without giving away said life form’s exact location.
how does it work ? isn’t there an obvious possibility to extend it to allow humans to see everything around them, even through walls ? i mean, this technology sounds like a motion sensor that has a function to ignore the direction and distance, to avoid incapacitating the human brain with a data storm consisting of 1 fucking coordinate per detected entity.
scent propagates slowly, and has a lasting effect. scent also gives away (a dilated) direction and distance.
what shit technology would be this ?
Well, that’s simple. A radar uses a ping-pong technique to detect stuff. So it sends packets and by calculating the time it takes to come back and by what angle it comes back, it calculates position.
It’s obvious to me you know that but Sparky’s point only is shitty if you take it as a radar, while it actually is a detector (if you put this in reality) : it only takes the pong without sending ping, so it cannot really determine where does the info comes without being precise, whereas radar uses a specific kind of waves that are meant to nearly not be avoidable or derivated.
This idea isn’t so bad, but I would like that someone takes a view at my earlier post. It has been totally avoided and I would like to know if someone cares a shit about that. Everyone trashed the new radar system without explaining (“Congratulations, U succesfully removed the entire purpose of a COCKFUCKING radar!” - A random rookie).
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Another thing that needs to be taken into account is that not all aspects of the game play needs to be explained by real world technology, but what is most important is that the aspects of the game play positively contribute towards the game play.
Reducing the radar range is the easiest kind of change to implement (it involves litterally just changing a single value for humans and a single value for aliens), and can always be tried. But before we look into that, I would like to see how these other ideas for the radar/sense/detectors workout in more decent sized matches (and how they work out along side some related upcoming new features, like waypoints).
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yes, it’s just that all aspects of the game should be explained in a non-stupid way. for counterexample:
Q: why can’t the spitfire zap grounded targets ?
A: because without a ground, electric charge has nowhere to freely go, so it generally doesn’t pass through those targets.
Q: why can tesla generators and marauders zap any (including non-grounded) targets ?
A: 
Q: why can spitfires fly fast and glide ?
A: acceleration is a natural capability of wings. due to Newtonian physics, a spitfire in motion stays in motion.
Q: why can’t jettards fly jet-fast ?
A:
Q: why don’t humans use mystic weapons/tools such as body capturing (soul-phase) attacks and kamehameha waves ?
A: because humans r from the real world, and only understand and employ technology that can be reasonably conjectured to exist in the real-world.
Q: why do humans use mystic technology that can detect nearby life ? r they on a --research expedition to create a map of-- mission to find and destroy all other life in the galaxy ? also, wtf is the definition of life ?
A:
not necessarily.
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