Some may have noticed I started browsing the forums a lot a while ago, but I haven't made yet a real public post talking about myself.
I'm the new assistant programmer that joined the Sourceforts team. My previous work was with Unknown Worlds Entertainment, and worked, mainly, with website and database programming, some tweaks in their servers and in integration between the game and the website.
Please, don't ask anything about Natural Selection here. I don't have much to tell you about it, and everything I know about it is under NDA.
My task in Sourceforts Team is to aid in coding, both in bugfixing and adding new features. Today, we will take a look on how the the smoke grenade was developed and improved over time. Please note this is a Work in Progress, and many things are subject to change.
The first grenade was kinda odd... It had the same smoke trail like the rocket launcher. But the smoke area was too small for a real smoke grenade
Also, it didn't have any kind of detection from a darken to a light place... the difference was kinda minor.
Also, a bug identified a lot later, the grenade shell wasn't being removed after the smoke faded away...
... and worse, if you shot it, it would explode...
That was the very first smoke grenade for Scout class... It was pretty rough, but is was a quick prototype, and that was promising
I hope you have liked this first post... On the next post: Time to adjust it!
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-Zoc
Never let the children compete with adults. When the child eventually loses, they will play pranks as much as he/she can against the adult.
Last edited by Zoc; 12-19-2007 at 03:52 AM.
Reason: Minor update.
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Before you ask why he's banned. Simply, he requested to be. He personally found that he visited this site too much, for no reason. Lack of self control I guess, but there you go. Ask him if you want on his Steam. -Black™
imo the grenades should remain explodable. it could be used as an extra tactical option for when you just want to flood an entire area with smoke, quickly.
I think the smoke grenade is good in a way, but in other ways it can sorta ruin gameplay if the scout can sit at an ammo crate and (on some maps) spam smoke (tactical is safe for example). First it sorta ruins gameplay (in CS:S cs_office, anyone ever had terrorists camping and smoking the hostages?), second it can seriously lower fps for some of us.
Im not saying throw the idea of a smoke grenade out the window, but im saying (if at all possible) only give the scout one on spawning, and not able to retrieve one from an ammo crate.
Oh and BTW, Welcome Zoc!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stieffers
Walls are all around us. Walls provide privacy. They protect us while we're taking a crap.
Looks a lot better, huh ?
Now it really covers a good area, looks thick enough to be useful, and was looking really great!
Sadly, I don't have all the steps I made. They were pretty funny, since you could see a big red/blue ball of small smoke... it sure looked more as some kind of vortex than smoke at all!
Here is a video I just made for this post:
You can see the "Smoke Grenade Beta 2" in action... Sadly, quality isn't very good... No idea why, but youtube just made my video look awful... =/
Anyway, let's explore some flaws of this new grenade (Which were noticed just at the test time... Everything was sooo perfect before it! )
Problem #1 - Smoke spawning
This is a screenshot from the very beginning of smoke generation. As you can see, the smoke doesn't spawn from the grenade itself, it randomly spawns from the area around it. This needs some improvement.
Problem #2 - No regular smoke spawns
In this one, I was inside the smoke spawning area, and exactly where I was (which happens pretty much), there was no smoke spawning. That's one of the problems of random spawning...This completely ruins the idea of grenade to the scout in battle. Also, if the smoke was spawning from the grenade (which were on my "feet", even not appearing on the screenshot), it would have at least a minimum of smoke covering that area.
Also, if you look carefully in the video, there's a moment where I looks directly to the grenade. There was no smoke spawning at that moment, also.
Problem #3 - No light differentiation.
As you can see, the appearance of the smoke looks the same on the spot that have lightning and in the one that doesn't have it. I don't want a self-illuminated smoke, even if it has red and blue colors... Don't look natural. That's something else that needs to be addressed.
This version of the smoke grenade was the one posted in the news page, tested on last weekend playtest.
Here are some more screenshots for your pleasure
Also, on the same playtest, some of these bugs were noticed (ex: Smoke wasn't spawning from the grenade itself), some were noticed after it (ex: Smoke didn't cover all the area), and some from the first post (ex: The smoke grenades weren't being removed, they would explode on shoot).
On the next post, we will see how each of these problems were addressed, the new smoke generation scheme, and some new bugs that appeared with the changes...
Also, some brand new screenshots, that even the beta team haven't seen yet!
__________________
-Zoc
Never let the children compete with adults. When the child eventually loses, they will play pranks as much as he/she can against the adult.
Last edited by Zoc; 12-19-2007 at 05:21 AM.
Reason: typo
Smoke Grenade
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Hybrid Mode
