My A1 suggestions/request

[ukimalefu]

Hi-res sprites Or 3D models, but I think I'd be happy with hi-res sprites. They should be optional so people could turn then off if needed.More skins/colors for online playI understand that the online player colors are built-in, but, is this really impossible to do? We now have Hi-res textures for everything (except sprites), only the hosts needs to have a map... and... well I wish we had that.Copy/paste and clickable URLs for A1's chat window.This should be doable, right? please? For those times when n00bs ask where to get maps and you type simplici7y.com. They should be able to click that and have their browser open and take them there.

Oh, and I don't have one, but it would be nice to see Marathon on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

[treellama]

Hi-res sprites Or 3D models, but I think I'd be happy with hi-res sprites. They should be optional so people could turn then off if needed.

Aleph One already supports hi-res sprites and 3D models.

More skins/colors for online playI understand that the online player colors are built-in, but, is this really impossible to do? We now have Hi-res textures for everything (except sprites), only the hosts needs to have a map... and... well I wish we had that.

This would require new shapes, so it wouldn't work for Infinity, which is all anyone plays online. So, I don't see the point.

[*]Copy/paste and clickable URLs for A1's chat window.

This would be very difficult, and is not a priority to me. Fortunately there is a workaround: type what you see in Aleph One into the URL bar.

Oh, and I don't have one, but it would be nice to see Marathon on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

http://www.pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?t=4068

[irons]

My request: give players read/write power over the "run key" flag (e.g. player.action_flags.run_key = false) and make it behave the same way the weapon triggers do (latched? unlatched? I never remember the difference). Although maybe it would be a bad thing, considering the "always run" option (unless that just sends the "run key" flag constantly until the run key is pressed).

[sweatervest]

How hard would it be to implement some sort of surround sound? Maybe not 3D sounds but perhaps the ability for sounds to be placed behind the player. I figure that could add a lot to the single player since the enemies make sounds that give away their positions.

[acks45]

Aleph One already supports hi-res sprites and 3D models.

He's right goddamnit. lets make our own goddamn sprites instead of askng a programmer to do heavy 3dsmax work.... What a Birlliant IDEA!!!!





lol

[treellama]

How hard would it be to implement some sort of surround sound? Maybe not 3D sounds but perhaps the ability for sounds to be placed behind the player. I figure that could add a lot to the single player since the enemies make sounds that give away their positions.

There is OpenAL, which can do 3D sound. It's difficult to put sound behind or in front of you, when you only have left or right ears, but with a 3D sound card it's possible. Unfortunately, OpenAL isn't supported very well, so a major investment in rewriting Aleph One's sound (which I've already done once) to use it might result in a less maintainable sound system, which isn't what we want

[acks45]

just more mappacks or map conversiond... like red spectrum and second quest into m1 net maps would be cool.... not enough m1 hosted imo.... ( i just love the old sprites.. also how come the smoke trail on the spnkr is transparent in m1 but not m2 or infinity....)

[jessenator]

I was thinking perhaps effects for the sound.

I know AO is cross-platform, but in some OSX programs, like Richard Bannister's (www.bannister.org) emulators in particular, can utilize audio unit effects, like reverbs, echoes, filters, etc. on the sound.

Could something like this be implemented for AO? like being able to indicate that a certain area will have more reverb/resonance like a canyon, where sounds coming from sprites or nearby ambient sounds could be effected? It might be nice so that you can create sounds that are totally dry, making them easier to loop, and then have the seamlessly looped sounds be affected by the effects, perhaps open source effects of some kind, that come built in or as a script or some addition to AO?

just a thought

[sweatervest]

I was thinking perhaps effects for the sound.

I know AO is cross-platform, but in some OSX programs, like Richard Bannister's (www.bannister.org) emulators in particular, can utilize audio unit effects, like reverbs, echoes, filters, etc. on the sound.

Could something like this be implemented for AO? like being able to indicate that a certain area will have more reverb/resonance like a canyon, where sounds coming from sprites or nearby ambient sounds could be effected? It might be nice so that you can create sounds that are totally dry, making them easier to loop, and then have the seamlessly looped sounds be affected by the effects, perhaps open source effects of some kind, that come built in or as a script or some addition to AO?

just a thought

That would definitely be a possibility if EAX wasn't scrapped for Vista. With that in mind however, adding such a feature would either be begging for A1 to lose more and more compatability in the future (as EAX dies out) or it would involve creating a software system to simulate EAX (like create some algorithm that analyzes the geometry of the current sector/area and from that determine reverb, delay, EQ and all of those parameters) which would be quite a formidable task! It is certainly a shame, jDoom was given that feature through EAX and it is pretty cool. OpenAL might be able to do some things like that (I know it can handle moving sounds and doppler effects and things like that) but like Treellama said OpenAL isn't even that well supported.

In the context of sound, what I meant when I was considering sounds in front of or behind the player I just mean basically the possibility of opening up a couple extra sound buffers in addition to the main "left" and "right" channels. If you had four sound buffers, front left/right and rear left/right then sounds could be placed anywhere around the player at his same vertical position, like if an explosion happened right in front of you the sound would be sent equally to the front left/right channels, and if it happend right behind you it would be sent to the rear left/right channels equally. I'm not sure about the details of how DirectSound or other audio APIs work though so I don't know just how involved such an addition would be. I figure the possibility of placing sounds above and below the player would be more problematic because A1's engine, at least how I understand it, is not intrinsically 3D and also because the lack of speakers above and below players would require those sounds to be modelled with head-related transfer functions, and the only sound cards I know of that do that are Creative ones so only some users would benefit from what would probably be a pretty involved addition.

I agree that more map packs would definitely be cool. The thing that kept me literally addicted to the first Unreal Tournament for years was that the modding community had a virtually endless supply of maps, mods, and all sorts of things to keep the game new and interesting. But I guess asking for that is just asking for a bigger modding community. Maybe if more people discover that Marathon is the precursor to Halo it will catch on more!

[treellama]

I don't know of any cross-platform way to play four channel sound other than OpenAL.

[Odie]

My wish list: Weapons Enhancement Pack for m1a1!

[acks45]

My wish list: Weapons Enhancement Pack for m1a1!

talk to the guy who made the other WEP. what your talking about is a graphics overhaul, not something a programmer is particularily interested in implementing into the engine.

http://www.pfhorums.com/index.php?showuser=80

though i think he said he was to busy to finish the WEP 1.5 thing he was working on, too bad really i liked the idea of ammo and weapons looking like they were laying on the ground instaead of floating in the air.

[ukimalefu]

What about a leader board?

Aleph can already send game results to everybody playing a game, right? So, the difficult part would be sending results to a server where they would be sorted and added, or whatever, and posted to a web site for all to see.

And since there's only a max of 8 players, maybe there could be a points system similar to Formula 1:

1st Place : 10 points

2nd : 8

3rd : 6

4th : 5

5th : 4

6th : 3

7th : 2

8th : 1 point

[treellama]

Mariusnet would be the logical place to keep stats, but there's a chicken-and-egg problem with that. Mariusnet doesn't support stats for Marathon because Aleph One doesn't send game scores, and Aleph One doesn't send game scores because Mariusnet doesn't support Marathon stats.

There's also the fear that ranked games / stats would encourage even more spawn killing / suicides / otherwise not fun behavior. Having games be fun for everyone involved is more important than a leader board, IMO.

[interion]

Mariusnet would be the logical place to keep stats, but there's a chicken-and-egg problem with that. Mariusnet doesn't support stats for Marathon because Aleph One doesn't send game scores, and Aleph One doesn't send game scores because Mariusnet doesn't support Marathon stats.

There's also the fear that ranked games / stats would encourage even more spawn killing / suicides / otherwise not fun behavior. Having games be fun for everyone involved is more important than a leader board, IMO.

Why not start collecting data now, and figure out what to do with it later? I don't think it would be too hard to record post game results to a local file, or send them to a web server to be stored in a database. Tying that in with mariusnet, figuring out how to best interpret the data, and allowing player's to opt-out are all things that can be considered down the road.

If we look at the monthly metaserver stats currently collected, I think people would agree they have provided useful information about map trends and player activity levels, and for the most part haven't been abused.

Game stats could provide more than just a leader board. I'd like to see a list of which players I've been playing with lately, and if I've been improving against them or if I need to adjust my strategy. I'd like to know when a player was last on, so we're not guessing how many weeks it's been since we've seen someone. I'd like to know players favorite maps and game types so that when I'm hosting I can select maps everyone in the group would enjoy. I'd like to see a list of my own favorite maps, sorted by when I last hosted them, so that I'm not hosting the same maps all the time. I'd like to know when the peek playing times are, or when a particular player tends to come on. I'd really like to see replays save for all games.

I'm sure people could come up with plenty of other ways to use this data. Some players are very competitive and others take a more relaxed view of net play. I don't think adding stats is going to drastically change behavior of either group.

Can Lua write to the Aleph One log? If so, it would be pretty easy to make a data collection script for hosts to optionally use.

[irons]

Tim, here's a suggestion that might make you calm down a little on the game stats:

[Iritscen]

Some of the CLIQUE surely remember me asking for this same thing a short while back on #alephone, but I didn't mention it on the forum, so I'm just posting here to reaffirm my support for leaderboards. As Tim said, either people are naturally competitive or they are just logging on for fun; this won't make A1 games into some dirty-playing dog-eat-dog world where it's all about the ranking. I'm somewhere in the middle of the scale of competitiveness; but I'm still interested to see who would be #1, and where I'd stand (pretty far down, no doubt).

And knowing peak times would be good too, although technically that info would probably be most useful (vis a vis ping) if we knew where everyone was and could present the data as, "Here's the peak time for East Coasters, here's the peak time for West Coasters, here's the peak time for the Asian crowd, etc.". Perhaps that's more up W'rk's alley with his activity logs, dunno.

One thing, though, is that ukimalefu's scoring would lead to most frequent players being rewarded the most by far, so I am not in favor of that system (unless I misunderstood your proposal, uki). What's needed is a persistent-rank-based system where each player has a standing rank based on past performance, and the bigger an opponent you topple, the more your own ranking gains from it. http://www.browardtennis.org/how.htm has the best set of rules I've seen for ranking players of anything, where "best" encompasses fairness and simplicity. The gist of it is that it rewards players for exceeding the predictions that are based on their past performance, and penalizes them for underperforming based on those same predictions. It's a great system.

[chinkeeyong]

animated Terminal Picts (done like animated textures but using picts instead of the shapes file) MML or Lua floating icons and HUD (from outside bitmaps or shapes files, with a different definition for size and position for each resolution) MML configurable chapter screen scroll speedsI've been requesting these for a while now on sf, but since there's been no response I decided to move these here like Odie, Tim and Iritscen. What do you think?

[treellama]

I've been requesting these for a while now on sf, but [...] there's been no response

There's a surprise!

[Iritscen]

I like the idea of being able to superimpose icons onto the screen through scripting. I had a netscript in mind that would require that functionality.

[treellama]

I like the idea of being able to superimpose icons onto the screen through scripting. I had a netscript in mind that would require that functionality.

Already possible: check out Players.overlays

[Iritscen]

I asked about that, and somebody told me that it was for the display on the bottom, not for the actual screen the players appeared on.

P.S.: I guess this is quite out of date, isn't it? http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc....p;group_id=1997 Just noticed it dates to 2003; fortunately I had also bookmarked the one on Treellama.org.

[ukimalefu]

One thing, though, is that ukimalefu's scoring would lead to most frequent players being rewarded the most by far, so I am not in favor of that system (unless I misunderstood your proposal, uki). What's needed is a persistent-rank-based system where each player has a standing rank based on past performance, and the bigger an opponent you topple, the more your own ranking gains from it. http://www.browardtennis.org/how.htm has the best set of rules I've seen for ranking players of anything, where "best" encompasses fairness and simplicity. The gist of it is that it rewards players for exceeding the predictions that are based on their past performance, and penalizes them for underperforming based on those same predictions. It's a great system.

Well, yeah. The other day I played a guy who was very good, and he said it was his first day on Aleph One, but I play a lot so I would hace more points and that wouldn't be exactly fair, right?

And it wouldn't be fair either, that the winner of a 2 player game, earned the same points as the winner of an 8 players game.

The thing is, that a system that is more fair and more detailed would be more complicated to make.

As the Stones said, you can't always get what you want.

[Iritscen]

I dunno, I thought the rules I linked to were pretty simple and fair at the same time. Of course they would need to be adapted to support more than two plares per match. Since I don't think Tl even plans on implementing this I won't waste my time working out how the system could support multiple players, but ti should be doable.

[marathonalpha7]

Please consider the possibility of modify the auto center view option in network games. It makes the gameplay better.