Renegade X: Black Dawn Released

[Lauren 78]

Fobby[GEN]' timestamp='1327955371' post='201509']There were a few consistent negative comments that I'll talk about. First I'd like to make clear that the purpose of Black Dawn was to put out a preview of the game before the multiplayer. This is the first time Renegade X goes standalone, and thus it's the first time we make rounds on the internet outside of the C&C and UT communities, and the only real way a free game can advertise itself on big sites is through a demo release.

This statement and attitude has a huge problem:

People from outside the C&C and UT communities see a SINGLE player game. Even if you want to do a multiplayer game in the long run, this creates 3 problems:

- People only interested in multiplayer wont look at it and forget about it very quickly, or don't recognize it from the start.

- People only interested in singleplayer look at it and find a huge amount of bugs and dumb AI. Even if it's a nice showcase, it isn't really fun to play.

- People interested in both find a huge amount of bugs and also no real fun.

If your game has that many difficulties it is at most bad advertising. Seriously, some more time, especially with the UI would have made it much better. I actually can't understand why there are so many UI/Menu bugs.

Also it seems your kismet AI overrides the standard AI or you simply didn't put any AI marker on your maps because if you played the demo levels that come with the UDK the AI acts fine, they don't just stand there to let someone kill them.

 

All in all: if you release a singleplayer only game you will get feedback for a singleplayer only game. Simple as that.

 

Fobby[GEN]' timestamp='1327955371' post='201509']Black Dawn has its bugs, but I don't think you can find another indie high quality C&C FPS singleplayer game like us.

Sorry, but when you strike the C&C in that part you get tons of that. It's nice that it's C&C but "C&C" can't counter bugs and bad AI. If that makes the game bad, the game is bad. For example TT is a bad game, but it's the only C&C RTT game, having C&C in it doesn't make it better.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Lauren

[Nmenth 291]

Warning: multiple quote boxes to follow, prepare yourself.

 

Fobby[GEN]' timestamp='1327955371' post='201509']

What we'd like to hear more of are comments about the long-term features as a whole -

Ok:

 

the HUD

Health bars looked nice and neat, however in the middle of combat, they are unnoticeable and I died multiple times because I didn't even notice I was running low on life; the original Renegade's were much more visible, which is what you want when you have bullets flying at your head. The rest of the HUD is ok.

 

the way weapons handle

Something seemed off about these, maybe mouse sensitivity.

 

the animations

Not much to constructively criticize here other than the explosions, which seemed to have crazy contrast.

 

the art

Not bad.

 

and lighting

Too dark, way too dark. Sure, it was "dawn", but everybody was a silhouette, you couldn't tell friend from foe, or hardly even see the difference between troops, trees, and gun emplacements.

 

the vehicles

Not bad.

 

recoil

Unexpected at first, but once gotten used to, an interesting bit of realism. However, the recoil seemed to be on tanks too, but tanks should scoot sideways, not recoil like a rifle.

 

cameras

Wasn't fond of 3rd person, but didn't try it much, so might need getting used to.

 

the effects

Again, explosions... not so good, and missile launches felt like they were spitting out firecrackers. The dust and sparks and such were pretty good.

[Aircraftkiller 9]

was this the terget of the team that started to make Multiplayer Only? no it wasnt! this was a slight demo.

 

Pray tell, what is the point of a buggy single player campaign? The team who built this doesn't have a lot of single-play design experience. Their experience so far has been in developing multiplayer release content. This is what Renegade X was always about up until recently, when this project is announced and released. What is the point of this? To show that they're doing something? Posting art update threads would solve this. Less "dev blogs" and more art updates would solve this. When they finish a model, put it up so it can be examined from different perspectives. ****, make a 3D PDF of it! Let people play with that ****er and see how it looks in real time. But really, this release was essentially without any justifiable reason for its existence.

 

They're quite capable of refining a MP release. I'm not sure why time wasn't spent on the multiplay aspect, instead. Do what we endured for the Renegade beta in 2001: Make us play Field and Under constantly. Fine tune the dynamics, find out where the problems in gameplay are. It would have been better received and would have generated a lot of excitement. This buggy release is not generating a lot of good publicity, though we can argue about the merits of "good" and "bad" publicity... The point remains, their talents would have been better off in a multiplay release. It was a good attempt, but it falls flat.

 

I'm not averse to changing my mind on IndieDB and rating it higher or lower depending on what they do. I'd love to see them go back and attempt to improve it. However, the attitude from their team seems to be inconsistent - some members publicly rebuke anyone who criticizes their work, while people like Fobby seem to half-heartedly encourage it. I want to see you guys succeed, but I also want to see you accept this: without your fans helping prod you along and give you feedback, you're designing this for nobody but yourselves.

 

those who can't create, easily criticize!

 

Try digging around on my website, which is easily (and obviously) accessible via my signature. You might be enlightened as to what kind of C&C art I've developed, or the role I've played in a lot of C&C games in the past 12 years.

[Sonic 295]

Added more mirrors in the original post.

 

And to all you guys bitching and arguing. This is exactly why I choose not to offer any comments publicly. I refuse to be part of it. As the main admin around here I don't think it looks to good if I'm bad mouthing another person(s) work. But all our forum members are more than welcome of share their opinions.... good or bad. Don't let me non-involvement stop you.

[Lauren 78]

It's nice to always say someone is bad mouthing, Sonic. There is a huge difference between a release there the AI is like it is, which would be perfectly fine alone as a first release, and a release with an enormous amount of bugs that are easily spotted. Also things like "we want to advertise our mp game through a sp game" is just completely redicolous. Especially if you can only hope these bugs get fixed because the focus seems solely on the MP game now that it's released.

Please don't call people badmouthing if they just state the obvious truth.

I guess no one disagrees that it was a load of work but if the result is nearly unplayable because of whatever reason it still is nearly unplayable.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Lauren

[Golan 6]

And to all you guys bitching and arguing. This is exactly why I choose not to offer any comments publicly. I refuse to be part of it. As the main admin around here I don't think it looks to good if I'm bad mouthing another person(s) work. But all our forum members are more than welcome of share their opinions.... good or bad. Don't let me non-involvement stop you.

I'm sorry but we are trying to give constructive criticism here or at least give feedback on flaws so the devs can find solutions to the problems. I respect your stance trying to avoid offending someone by not voicing negative aspects about their work, but doing so while calling sincere criticism "badmouthing", "bitching and arguing" seems very hypocritical.

 

RenX is an incredible piece of work, one that the team deserves praise for, but it also still has very severe flaws that need to be taken care of in order to get the game up to a standard fit for getting the quality put into its foundations across to the actual players.

 

€dit:

UI - needs to be made more prominent.

The health bars especially are very difficult to notice in the heat of battle, more intense colors and some red screen tinting when heavily damaged could help.

Damage indicators are too subtle. Might work better if they are solid bars directly inside the rectangle instead of faded ones around it.

The weapon inventory should be fully indexed, i.e. 1-first primary, 2-second primary, 3-pistol. Toggling through the primary weapons seems awkward. The inventory indicators would also already support this, just keep them in the FIXED order 1,2,3 and only highlight the selected one.

 

Weapons - kinda sluggish ATM.

Targeting is kinda odd, I often find myself targeting too far ahead or not being able to make small adjustments. Scoped targeting is especially bad due to the targets turning (almost?) instantly, so I often end up oscillating the reticule around enemies.

Recoil is okay'ish though it seems to be less prominent when spraying and much more severe when sniping (tactical rifle). Could just be me though.

The Flamethrower is a bit too much, really. It appears to be the single most powerful and accurate weapon even at medium distances. The Pistol also seems to overshadow many of the advanced weapons.

 

Lighting, FX - not fit for gaming.

It's extremely difficult to tell apart enemies from the surrounding. There needs to be more light even in dark areas, more saturated colors and more specularity on important objects.

FX set the wrong focus. There is barely any muzzleflash to find targets but much of the scene is filled with tracers and explosions marking stuff you don't have to take into account.

GFX: The explosions seemed somewhat subpar. Very basic PFX texture with little volume and contrast to it.

 

Vehicles

Somewhat sluggish to handle like the weapons.

Very annoying that you can't push or crush obstacles/vehicles with more powerful vehicles.

A reload indicator instead of clip indicator would be very useful for single-shot clips. It's very difficult to tell when the medtank gun is ready for the next shot, for example.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Golan

[Johnnyxp64 20]

i just finished it

i give it 7.2/10*

 

 

*details when i get the time to play it on my Primary system. on my laptop i cant jusdge everything easily.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Johnnyxp64

[Sonic 295]

Lauren, Golan and anyone else. Sorry I didn't mean to insinuate you were being negative for sake of being negative. Now you should all understand why I'm taking a back seat and not commenting on things,

[Aircraftkiller 9]

Seems kind of pointless to say that you're not going to comment on anything while simultaneously commenting! ;-)

[Sonic 295]

Yeah I know, bit of a contradiction.

 

Anyway lets keep this thread on topic.

[AZ-Stalker 88]

ATi Radeon HD 4800 Series, Windows 7...

OK, so I got it working with no problems so far. I just ran the UDK installer in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3). Worked like a charm!

 

So far, the opening invasion part felt cool until Gunner started twitching along with some other GDI dudes while firing on their own LCAC... Also, the ALT + Tab return to desktop option makes all of the ground textures disappear/become "transparent". Returning to the game after ALT Tab-ing launches a whole new game, so I had 2 games running at the same time which bugged the **** out of them. I saw something that looked like a modeling program's grid over at the main menu once after that. So yeah, bugs... The game's still pretty epic though.