Constructive criticism

[762WorldOrder 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I know, but it' still not the same like a real feature for the commander that allows to tell the gunner where to point the turret at. <span id='postcolor'>

But why would you want to use the commander's seat at all?  Do you actually want the AI to drive??  

I have used every armored vehicle in the game effectively with the above technique.  Just because there's a commander's seat doesn't mean you have to use it.  I find the AI driving to be so atrociously bad it gets you killed before you can even do anything in a real battle.  2 crew members should be all you ever need.  There is no way to control exactly where the gunner points the turret (unless you have him target houses or something in the direction you want to aim), but this is the next best thing, and for all practical purposes is just as effective.

btw, have you tried telling your gunner to look at 3 o'clock, or whatever direction you want him to face?  I've never tried it, but I'm at work and can't test it.  Might be worth a shot.    

[cargo 0]

Also:

A) Picked up a strela in one mission (where you blow the bridge) and there is no PAA file for the ammo (bad path?).

B) Clipping. On the rooftop of the office/town hall in the capital, you can inadvertently walk THROUGH the wrought iron railings, resulting in a nasty fall to your death.. shades of tomb raider I love the balconies for popping up and sniping, but its impossible to get close to them and aim lower, the ledge always blocks the shot.. did i shrink in height or something?

C) for window frames, fences, railings etc, whenever you switch to iron or scoped sight views, there is an offset resulting in the "railing" moving to block what you were aiming at.. after shuffling sideways to get a view, switching to "V" is not in parity! Sorry grammar yoda degeneration, this bug was in the original game. Dont blame refraction, there is no glass in the windows!

I love the island at the bottom where you can ford the water as in the ctf, and thanks for putting 2 decent runways on the map, even if one is a tiny islet.

Anyone worked out how to get that fire effect (as in one cutscene) for the burning vehicles?

[nyles 11]

This is no excuse 762WorldOrder. Sure you can do well with ignoring the tank commander slot, but why has it been implemented then anyways? In my philosophy, the simple fact that this crew position has been implemented in the game is reason enough for me to ask for making it have a purpose. I know that the driving AI currently is not really as skillful as it should be to fullfill its role on its own but that is something that must not stay like this. Some improvements to pathfinding AI, some radio usage improvements including com priority (yellow vehicle chat should have priority to other radio coms, making a halt order or target order be executed instantly by the crew without having to wait for some "where are you?" mssgs for example), the above mentioned improvements for command and control by the tank commander and maybe even earlier mentioned point 18 which dealt with a reworked seat management (which in the case of tanks would discourage players from using such powerful units on their own or with minimal crew only by not allowing a quick change from driver to gunner without disembarking in the case of the m1a2 abrams for example), could do already.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">btw, have you tried telling your gunner to look at 3 o'clock, or whatever direction you want him to face? I've never tried it, but I'm at work and can't test it. Might be worth a shot.

<span id='postcolor'>

Yes, I tried it, but it didn't work. The only thing I was able to do was to tell the driver to turn the whole vehicle to a specific postion via the command menu, but even this only worked when i disembared before.

[Ruud van Nistelrooy 0]

I think the tracer fire is great, i don't think there is too much. For me itsw an invaluable help, and it also looks cool at night having shilkas trying to wax you.

27. Last night i played on that destroy the bridge mission and there was this enemy squad crawling across it, abut strangly some crawled right off it and died. Similarily, the bmp drove right off it and had to swim its way to its large bucket of rpg hurt. I feared this would happen to my squad (not one of them had been killed btw ) and so i had to do all the blowing up myself The bridge seems a bit dodgy

[Nikolai 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Nyles @ July 10 2002,21:32)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Sure you can do well with ignoring the tank commander slot, but why has it been implemented then anyways? In my philosophy, the simple fact that this crew position has been implemented in the game is reason enough for me to ask for making it have a purpose.<span id='postcolor'>

Because of the rader only the commander has..

[Paratrooper 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">A) Picked up a strela in one mission (where you blow the bridge) and there is no PAA file for the ammo (bad path?).<span id='postcolor'> I noticed this, definatley something to be fixed in a patch.

[Ruud van Nistelrooy 0]

I was gonna put this into the V-80 thread that denoir closed for some stupid, pointless reason, but i put it in here cos by the time i'd finished it i couldn't post it and i wanted to share it with everyone

Am i the only one who thinks the V-80 is the don?

On the blow up the gunships mission i nicked the V-80 and as soon as i was airborne i had 5, yes 5 shilkas all firing nasty little capsules of deth in my direction. Not only did i take out all of these shilkas, but i got hit several times and my armor was still in the green. After that, thanks to the big payload, i took out shedloads of other tanks (T-80's in a single kill) i just hovered there, turned round and fired at them half expecting them not to hit due to obstructions. I hit all of them, not one miss and i didn't even have visuals on them, i took them all out from one position. Then after that i ordered my men back to insertion zone and provided some close air support, taking out an enemy squad blocking their way very easily. By the time i landed the thing, i felt sad wooping out my rpg, i actually hesitated, wondering whether or not i should destroy a thing that has brought me so much joy and pleasure, and has given the ultimate power of life and death etc. I eventually did destroy it, but i was in no way wanting to.

Needlesstosay, i love the V-80, although my love is based on one, fantastic experiance with it.

[nyles 11]

28. tanks again: On tanks where the gunner is able to turn out, AI gunners will still be able to rotate the turret and engage targets. I think they should turn in for that like humans. On the other side I would like to see the gunner be able to rotate the turret on most tanks even when the driver is turned out. Tanks like the m1a1 abrams could still rotate the turret as the hatch is not blocking anything. However, the m2a2 bradley should still NOT be able to rotate the turret because of the huge driver hatch. Like usual one should always look on these things in a logical way to decide what is possible and what not.

29. Comms: Improve the radio system by implementing a more efficient usage. Examples are a shorter calling of the squad members like: "all except 2 and 3, move to blablabla". There should also be some sort of hierarchy within the radio to allow quicker response for the immediate surrounding. Starting from the bottom and then going upwards seem the most logical way, thus group commands like attack orders, movement orders or smimilar should have prority to generel announcements.

1. crew commands, yellow

V

V

2. squad commands, green

V

v

3. side commands, light blue

All other channels like direct speaking and generel messages are of no importance as there are no radio transmissions made with them.

However even within squads - or lets say on the same communication channel - there should be some sort of priority for orders unlike sightings of enemies or general statements like injuries, fuel status or else.

30. The vulcan behaves kinda strange while being in water unlike the the other M133 based vehicles. Its mass point seems completly off center so that the vehicle is turned more into the water (tilted) on one side causing a weird look. should be fixed for eyecandy purposes.

[Aaron Kane 0]

31: Unrealistic damage values for AT6 and Hellfire, coupled with innacuracy makes both of them somewhat poor anti-armor weapons.

[bangcraher 0]

-- lights

- We can see it's improved, but it needs to be a little more smoother.

- You can see directly the init field of an object when passing with the mouse on it, without double clicking, another good thing!

- I was a little bit decieved about the police lights (the blue ones) from the police jeep. These in the front seems even not to work and one above has no force. I think that must first give two different options in the action menu: one is to activate the normal lights and the other one to activate the police lights with the siren, the last function I think must be accessible at every time of the day. The blue light that it produces now is enough for the day, but in night I would like to see a blue tint in the near environment, blue reflections on the houses, ...

- We can still see sourcelights trough vehicles and terrain.

- Unhappily the lights in the houses don't light up (although there are lamps). I think it must be set as an option (that it not light up every night.

-- mission editor

- Very good work done there, for the moment I have nothing to say on that. I love this new function to enable texture view, now we can for example exactly place our planes.

- But I would actually to see another function: a sort of "autopopulator". I don't ask a very complicated one, just a simply with an option to say how many houses to populate (density) and an another to set how many vehicles (proportional). The autopopulator will attribute a men and perhaps a wife or just a woman to houses randomly (I think the maximum of people must be set to three times the amount of houses (the light houses, hangars, industries, ... excepted naturally)). The autopopulator will also assign randomly vehicles to houses (that are habitated) (the maximum total amount should be set at one per man). four more options: an option must set the tendency of the population to travel (with their vehicle for example or by bus).

Another must give you the possibility to activate the bus (that makes tours) or deactivate. An option must give you the possibility to deactivate some houses and roads (the autopopulator won't then attribute a man to this specific house or if it it is for a road poeple won't travel on this road) by entering the id number (if we want to deactivate a whole road we should be able to do this only by deactivating the first id numbers after the two crossroads or more).The last ones must give you the possibility to let or not use the airport (if they travel or not by plane). People will only move around, take their vehicle, the bus (going to other towns and villages) and they will sleep (if there is a bed in the house).

You don't have to pay so much attention to the "autopopulator", because I think I have been a little too far (excuse me).

-- Island Nogova

- What a beautiful Island, with great diversity (desert, mountains, rivers, lakes, towns, industries, villages, ...). The reflection of the sun on the wather is great improvement and very beautiful. Just two words about it: there are perhpaps too much cliffs, but it don't bother. There are no sidewalks in the town, quite unrealistic (you have your road, then the gras and then your house (that even for a capital ?). Hem, actually a third word: the bridge which exist in different parts are not perfectly adjustated.

-- campaign

- Very good work and very exciting as usual(although there are a few little bugs). The scripts are excellent, camera placing too in the cutscenes, with some original placings.

- Rather a personnal meaning, I didn't like so much the end of the campaign, certainly that our friend Viktor could escape (there were some bushes and after it a little crater, if he didn't stop to run and hid himself, I'm sure he would still be alive and the tanks and infantry would pass without seeing anybody). I take the planes out with a rpg launcher (in the cinematic it seems I have destroyed him with satchel charges, not so right) on the hill, I had only 20 meters to run to be totally invisible on the top of the hill, I wish I could play this cinematic as a mission. It's like you have played the campaign for nothing.

-- motorcycle

- I love this new one. Full of realism. A moment I had tought of being able to fire with a pisol from the motorcycle on the back seat (it's realistic, no ?).

-- open and close doors

- The barn can't be opened and closed, so you can't hide yourself waiting with a jeep or an other vehicle while you let pass a patrol of tanks or something like that.

- Unhappily too, you can't open and close the hangars at the airport. First, the position of the doors don't give you the possibility to pass trough with a plane. If it was possible it would be perfect, but it would be more better if you can close and open the hangar's doors so that you can hide your plane and make it also more realistic.

What I actually want is that you can open and close every door from houses in which you can get in.

-- objects over missions

- This is a very interresting option, certainly for me, because I'm always sparing my ammunition how much I can (even before this function was added (a reflex)). I'm asking why I wasn't be able to take everything from mission to mission. For example: In the mission where you have to take tanks I thought to take at the same time the ammo truck and the repair truck. I got every weapon and magazine which was in the ammo truck, but I had no more the repair truck.

-- miscellaneous

- It's unhappy there are no information about the addons like in the original game (about the weapons and items), there is not at every time a personnalised picture (the pistol magazines are all the same, the laser designator has the picture of the carl gustav, ...) too.

- I have to congratulate about the statusbar of your squad. It changes finally in real-time. If you take the law launcher of somebody of your squad you will get a picture of a soldier with a law launcher and the other will get a picture of a normal soldier. Very good work, now I don't have to remember at all who has what.

- Repeated messages like "2: injured" should be disabled by an radio message (not automatic, otherwise we probably won't realize somebody is injured). When you have so much of this messages you know it occupies the radio for nothing and can be deadly in some situations (when you can't use the radio for a few seconds.

- An antenna on a hill near Dolina I think can't be climbed up and down (only a minor bug).

-- in general

- Great work bis, although a few things, I find it marvellous.

[BoonieRat 0]

I've got a bug with the single~mission 'Rats Nest'. I can't target the enemy Helos' no target box comes up. also the 30mm cannon never hits when I do get the 'lock on' 'star' shaped symbol come up. sometimes the tracer from the 30mm cannon is going off at a 45degree angle from where the crosshair 'dot' is pointing!.

Also I have trouble trying to select Binoculars'(using the key. not menu) when I have an RPG in hand. it always says 'Weapon Binoculars' but I still have the RPG in hand. press it again and it switches to AK74!. press it a third time and it finaly goes to binoculars!.

Still an exelent game though ...

[euly 0]

I would have thought someone would have noted this as it's been in all of the other versions, but if you are injured & you heal or you're out of ammo and you rearm. Your picture in the squad icons does not go back to normal, you stay in red unlike the other soldier's pictures which change back once they are healed or rearmed.

[Ex-RoNiN 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Ruud van Nistelrooy @ July 12 2002,16:15)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I was gonna put this into the V-80 thread that denoir closed for some stupid, pointless reason, but i put it in here cos by the time i'd finished it i couldn't post it and i wanted to share it with everyone<span id='postcolor'>

If a mod closes a thread, then there is a very good reason for it.

I think you should know by now that it is against forum rules to publicly question the decision of a moderator; if there's an issue about a mod's decision, then this has to be resolved via PM, by either PM'ing the mod in question or PM'ing Placebo.

Public attacks on mods will not be tolerated.

Consider yourself warned.

[pearce 0]

Ok the new island and new features were great, but (not wanting to be overly controversial) i thought the new campaign wasn't very good. Even in veteran mode it wasn't very difficult, i only lost 11 men overall. The last two missions 'Trap' and 'Firefight' were especially disappointing, Petrovich seemed to have been hardly defended, a couple of 50cal machine guns and a few tanks? it hardly gave the impression of a heavily fortified soviet stronghold and 'Firefight' was over too quickly, 3 RPG's rapidly fired from behind a sand dune and it was all over. Also the blurb on the back of the box gave the impression of a guerrilla war with men and matierial in desperately short supply, that was hardly the case. In reality the type of missions carried out were virtually identical to those found in 1985 and Red Hammer. I guess i was hoping for a little variation.

ok, rant over.

[NightEye 0]

About the tanks : there is still what I think is a bug (it was also in CWC & Red Hammer):

When you are the tank commander, you target the ennemies for your tank squad, saying "T80 there, T72 there, AT Soldier other there", etc...

But while your saying all this, you CANNOT say to your gunner "FIRE" !

Which means that even if you have targeted an ennemy tank or RPG Soldier, that stupid gunner will NOT fire until you order it !

And of course, in the mean time, you have eaten 1, 2 or even 3 rockets ! This bug makes me mad !!!

[nyles 11]

Exactly NightEye, that's related to point 29.

If it would be possible to interrupt your own radio commands this won't be any problem, however this then should mean that your orders are only executed if you have casted your order to the end. Otherwise, the interruption of any order of yours by simply placing another order is way too efficient. It neither should be the way that you must not end your order for it to take effect but nor should it take ages for some orders to block your comm channels even if a more important thing has to be transmitted. Hope you got what I tried to point out.  

[NightEye 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Nyles @ July 16 2002,18:40)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Hope you got what I tried to point out.  

<span id='postcolor'>

Absolutely not !

Well, in fact yes, I think I understand, but as long as this problem is in Flashpoint since the very beginning, I have little hope that it will ever be solved.

(English is not my native language, so make it simple)

[Hit_Sqd_Maximus 0]

32. There are periscopes like in the ZSU driver and BMP passengers, but there are NO working mirrors on the trucks and cars.

[Mister Frag 0]

I'd also like to see the following problem fixed: orders by an AI commander can kick you out of a vehicle.

For example, in one of the new CTF MP missions, let the AI be the commanding officer. Jump into a vehicle such as an M-60 tank as the driver, and move it into a good firing position. Bring up the Action menu, and select "Switch to gunner". Almost immediately, you will be given orders to disembark, and you can't even ignore it -- you'll find yourself getting kicked out of the vehicle, where you are exposed to small arms fire. The next order from the AI officer will be "Gunner, get in vehicle."

[Guest]

33. AI infantry has severe problems crossing (and moving on in general) the bridge.

[ale2999 0]

has it being saved that the clients pc dont save the mp's maps anymore? According to me thats the worst and annoying bug.

[jawk2 1]

*just done some test with the V80*

The AP ammo? well i tried to take out a T80 (and after i tested for a T72 nearly same)with the AP it take me the full ammunition.

After that i pick up a AH1 and i really see the differences....

Well did someone unpack the config file, i really want to know what is the problem about that.

**note: a thing i see on the V80 is his maneuvrability and his instability.... it's like piloting a Hind in straight line, and a CH47 in turn really annoying if u pilot with the joystick***

[JonasBane 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Hit_Sqd_Maximus @ July 16 2002,22:42)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">32. There are periscopes like in the ZSU driver and BMP passengers, but there are NO working mirrors on the trucks and cars.<span id='postcolor'>

To make the periscope effect, the interior texture for the BMP and ZSU is left empty where you see the exterior. This way the game engine just draws the outside first, then draws the interior of the vehicle on top of it. Think of it as taking a piece of paper and cutting a hole in the middle. You could color the paper to look like the inside of a tank and the impression would be that you're looking out of a tank.

Reflections, atleast realtime, are very intensive operations to perform. Basically, you would have to draw the entire game world twice. Once from the original perspective and once from the mirror's perspective. Adding additional mirrors only adds additional passes the game engine needs to make. With a typical BSP based engine (Quake is a good example) you can get away with this because you're really only drawing one room and any room you can see from that point every frame. With flashpoint, its harder to "cheat" as it becomes very difficult to determine what you need to draw to make the scene. Even if you're looking at a building wall and it fills your entire view, the game still has to draw that building's interior, the other side, and the 900m of terrain behind it. Not an easy task. =)

Jonas Bane

There's Love Inside

[JonasBane 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (NightEye @ July 16 2002,16:13)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">About the tanks : there is still what I think is a bug (it was also in CWC & Red Hammer):

When you are the tank commander, you target the ennemies for your tank squad, saying "T80 there, T72 there, AT Soldier other there", etc...

But while your saying all this, you CANNOT say to your gunner "FIRE" !

Which means that even if you have targeted an ennemy tank or RPG Soldier, that stupid gunner will NOT fire until you order it !

And of course, in the mean time, you have eaten 1, 2 or even 3 rockets ! This bug makes me mad !!!<span id='postcolor'>

Can you solve this by using the manual fire function? You would still have to right click to target things, but once you give the order to fire the gunner should let loose a round.

Only downside is that the gunner may not be ready to shoot when you click. So you can't string together a series of commands as effectively. And with the machine gun, he'll only shoot one burst every click. This could make mopping up infantry squads a little more frustrating.

Jonas Bane

There's Love Inside

[nyles 11]

34. This is my personal view on how I would like to see the damage system in flashpoint. I'm trying to not use precise damage values but more roughly the shots needed on certain locations to kill. In my opinion, a headshot should always be fatal, no matter what weapon used. I'm excluding other hit locations than chest and legs here, because I'm not familiar with how many different locations there are in total. Its pretty obvious though, that a hit to arm should not take minimal damage only, because of them blocking the chest very often and thus creating the illusion of players surviving tons of chest shots. If possible to check wether a strong bullet would hit multiple locations (i.e. arm+chest), this should be implemented, might be complicated though or even already in the game, dunno.

Furthermore, I'm limiting this to infantry weapons and co-axial mgs only. I will not mention different types of the same weapon in the 'weapons' section, as I assume it's pretty obvious that an ak74 should do the same damage like an ak74su, that an ak47 should do the same like an ak47cz and that an m16 should do the same like a xms.

Anyways, here is the list, note that it is mainly to show which weapons should belong into the same damage category and not differ in-game:

(calibre / chest / legs / weapons)

.50cal + 12.7x109 / 1 / 1-2 / m2, m2east, m2 co-axial + nsv co-axial

7.62x51 + 7.62x54 / 1 / 2-3 / g3, fal, m60, m21, m240 co-axial + svd, pk

7.62x39 / 1-2 / 2-3 / ak47

5.56x45 / 1-3 / 2-3 / m16, steyr aug, g36

5.45x39 / 2-3 / 2-3 / ak74

7,62x25 + .45 / 2-3 / 2-4 / tt33 + (none yet)

9x19 + 7.65x17/ 2-4 / 2-4 / mp5, bizon, cz75, 92fs, glock17 + skorpion  

There are some other nice ideas, which i want to adress together with this list: Yesterday, I had a nice experience when i rammed a vehicle. The ai driver, disembarked the moment I did so, but he was faster and shot me in the legs. I was forced prone and shot him in the chest, killing him, with my trusty beretta. The experience of the auto prone was great and added a lot of atmosphere. My idea about this is that there should be a 70% chance for any hit and not only certain leg hits to knock you off your feet. Unlike some leg shots which won't let you stand up again, you are free to do so with those regular hits though. It just should knock you off your feet. Maybe some modifiers on how high the chance is, could be given according to the type of weapon. A 9mm pistol for example would be less likely to knock you off compared to a chest shot with a m16. Furthermore any hit, should cause a little red flickering on the screen. Very often you fall on the floor face down, only to realize a second or two later that you were shot due to the lack of hit effects. Those suggested new hit effects, combined with the above mentioned chance for any hit to knock you off your feet, would be very nice additions.

Now some comments on the weapon list on top, especially in terms of balance. As stated above the exact values for the damage were avoided and instead only displayed with the average amount of hits to certain locations that will kill you. The Russian weapons might seem a little underpowered, compared to other weapons, but in reality they were a tad less effective due to calibre size. However, I still chose hit counts that are very close to each other and only noticeable that you will sometimes need one hit more with the russian weapons. Most of the time, the needed count will be the same though. To compare this, at least in terms of the standard weapons m16 and ak74, the ak offers full auto mode for human players, which should already even things out. However, AI does not benefit from this, what I would like to change. At close ranges, AI should more likely use full auto or longer random burts with aks. This alone would balance things out already.

Comments on these ideas are welcome like always, even though I have to agree that opinions on the exact realisation could vary slightly.