Reflex Roundup is a summary of Reflex related news that is released at the beginning of every month. The series covers happenings in the competitive community, the latest development updates, and finally looks showcases some of the best community created content.
Before we begin the latest edition of Reflex Roundup, a big Happy Birthday to Reflex, which is now one year's old in the public domain. If were to compare that latest version of the game, to what was released this time last year, a whole heck-of-a-lot has changed. The netcode is now one of the best in any FPS game, the level editor has become robust and powerful, the engine has seen numerous improvements and upgrades, the art direction has solidified into a visual treat, there are game modes for all sorts of players, the LUA based user interface system has allowed for fully customizable HUDs, there are HUNDREDS of user made maps, and it just keeps on rolling. A big thank you, and congratulations to the guys at TurboPixel Studios who dare do something the big developers won't, and the indie can't do. We look forward to where this game will next year. THANK YOU! Make sure you buy your friends a copy of Reflex to celebrate.
The league just keeping on chugging, with only two teams eliminated due to inactivity, and most teams having played at least four matches. Currently sitting at the top of the table with a perfect 5-0 record is Cofe and Bear ( Danskq and DraQu). On their heels are just lol ( fht and def), and FIKA ( thehankster and wiry) both of which tout 5-1 records. Be sure to check-out the full standings.
Upcoming Tournaments
Overdrive Duel Cup
As was announced last week F14m3z will be hosting a special invite tournament featuring some of Europe's best players to showcase the latest iteration of his map Overdrive. So far confirmed players include the current European #1 memphis, his close rivals gaiia, and HAL_9000, as well as newcomers such as Kyto, and Tr1pwire. The tournament is scheduled to take place on Saturday November 28, 2015 at 17:00 UTC
This event is still a work in progress but the guys over at r/ArenaFPS, and BOXR are working in collaboration to host a CTF show match this Saturday November 7, 2015 with games anticipated to started at 17:00 UTC. Watch this space, as a complete announcement will be made in the next couple of days.
Reflex Development Update
Reflex Alpha 0.37.x -- The CTF Patch
Quite obviously the biggest news this Roundup, heck ANY Roundup, was the much anticipated release of 0.37 patch which included the Capture The Flag game mode. I think it's fair to say quite a large number of people were really waiting for this patch to sink some serious hours into the game. It came, and it was what we expected it. Fun. Frantic. Fucking HOLYSHIT. Along with CTF, the engine received a lot of attention with some fancy new upgrades which for allowed much better performance across the board. TurboPixel Studios put together a spiffy video showing off all the new features:
Movement Changes
I'm sure by now, you've either come across someone complaining about the new movement in the most recent patch, or some thread deal with the same issues. On this matter newborn offered the following re-assurance:
So I don't know if there was any chat about it in discord after I went to sleep, but I did a pick-up last night to test a bunch of different movement balances and here are the results.
Players were not told what the movement balancing was until after they'd played a match, so that they weren't just giving feedback based on the one they thought they were supposed to like best. Anyway, people don't actually like straight CPMA movement as much as they think they do. Admittedly, it's not a perfect match but people were instantly dubious of the feel after playing with it, saying that it felt heavy and slow. Post-game feedback was almost entirely negative.
Next up was v37 movement. Some people liked it, even mentioning it felt "kind of like v36". Someone said it was actually too fast. Everyone noticed the gravity change and after the CPMA set some people mentioned that it now felt a bit too fast/slippery. One person liked the straight CPMA better. Generally the feedback was the mix of like/dislike we've already seen from the actual v37 release.
After that we tried v36. Some people instantly liked it better, some people instantly disliked it. They definitely said it felt weird and since I've spent a month+ with v37 movement, I know those feels. Someone mentioned it was weird to have that much air control. The most popular feedback was probably "it feels better to play with but worse to play against" -- partly the speed, partly the gravity being heavier again.
Then we tried v36 movement with v37 gravity and feedback went exactly as expected. "floaty as fuck", "way too floaty", "too easy to gain speed" etc. This is exactly why v37 wasn't just a gravity change.
Then we tried v36 with v37 air control and that was hated too. It's definitely the part of v37 that people don't like but as the last test showed, without some air control changes, the gravity change just doesn't work at all. Mostly it seems like people who dislike the gravity actually dislike the slight change in bunny-hop timing.
Then we played a tweaked version of v37 gravity/air control and that was generally agreed to be the best balance of everything. It felt a little less floaty, but not as heavy as the old gravity. Some people thought it felt a little fast, although it was actually pretty much just v36 speeds. Unfortunately, these tweaked values are in a sort of anti-sweet spot. There's a certain balance to all of these movement variables which does weird things -- having a bunny acceleration value of 70 might feel good, but at 65 you feel either a weird, slowing pull (part of what people didn't like about v37, though it can be much worse), OR you feel the opposite of it, which is a weird acceleration when you don't expect it, but then you change another movement value and all of a sudden 65 feels good again.
So ultimately, despite all the "omg wtf worse game designer ever noobporn" sentiment going around, everything went exactly as expected. The gravity is an improvement but requires other movement to be tweaked. Keeping exactly v36 or exactly v37 is not the answer, the answer is probably continuing to tweak the v37 values, which is exactly what the plan always was before people lost their minds and tried to push for a revert.
Stick on that topic, there will be an update on the movement next week! Hopefully it appeases some of the the people unhappy with the latest movement system.
Another change in the latest update was the the player models are now bigger, this change confused some people as they weren't exactly sure why that was the case. Again newborn came around to explain:
Alright, so there's a few reasons. First of all, the player scale and the world scale were very poorly matched. Players tended to look about 5ft tall when standing in the environment. This impacts the percieved speed of characters, like you said -- a half sized character at 320ups would look stupidly fast, a double sized character would look slower. This has a non-trivial impact on how well we can do animations. Same goes with jump -- maps are built for certain jump heights, and those heights were 75% of the players height or something.
Another part of it is to do with the range that players feel comfortable aiming at. The smaller an enemy gets on the screen, the more likely a player is to move closer before firing (and I'm not talking about properly long range, cross map shots here). There was a lot of close range combat going on that came out really cessy, partly because at more medium ranges, people didn't feel their target was big enough so moved closer. So, bigger models pushes the "comfortably large to aim at" out further.
Finally, we always intended to implement capsule hitboxes as they're a far more accurate representation of the player. If we did this without increasing the player size, the surface area of other players would have been noticably smallers (25% front on, more from weird angles). With the player size being bumped, there's about the same amount to aim at, just minus all the weird angle cases.
Community Content
#reflexpickup.us
A shameless plug, no ways around it. I would recommend that any player that is looking for fun, organized team-games to come by, and play at #reflexpickup.us. You'll get to play organized games with experienced players that will show you the ropes, you'll be on voice-comms with your team-mates so you can effectively co-ordinate with each other, and most importantly, trolls will be kicked, and banned. The servers are currently located and NYC, and are set to invisible so that players won't join, and leave randomly throughout a game. It's a pretty good time for activity, and there are pickups every night.
Mapping Competition
If you read PlusForward, then you'd already know that tehace is hosting a mapping competition. With an assortment of entries already submitted, and deadline of November 30, 2015 fast approaching, put your creative helmets on and get mapping. Head on over to the official thread to enter.
Some of the recent entries
Spider Crossings
There was just no way, NO WAY, I could have published this Roundup without giving a special mention to Spider Crossings. Without cutting any corners, MAD_JIHAD's port is completely authentic, and gives Reflex the best map from the Quake CTF map respiratory. Get the map from ReflexFiles.
The beloved Spider Crossings finds its way into Reflex.
KovaaK Team Info Widget
With all the talk of CTF, I thought it'd be timely to make people aware of KovaaK's TeamInfo widget, which provides critical information about your team-mates, including their health, armor, weapon, ammo, flag, and power-up status. Get the full UI package, which also includes this helpful little widget.
Until next time folks. Happy Birthday, and happy capping!
Reflex, which is now one year's old in the public domain. If were to compare that latest version of the game, to what was released this time last year, a whole heck-of-a-lot has changed. The netcode is now one of the best in any FPS game, the level editor has become robust and powerful, the engine has seen numerous improvements and upgrades, the art direction has solidified into a visual treat, there are game modes for all sorts of players, the LUA based user interface system has allowed for fully customizable HUDs, there are HUNDREDS of user made maps, and it just keeps on rolling. A big thank you, and congratulations to the guys at TurboPixel Studios who dare do something the big developers won't, and the indie can't do. We look forward to where this game will next year. THANK YOU! Make sure you buy your friends a copy of Reflex to celebrate.
Some of the recent entries
