27 July 2008

Naota's New Weapon

Recently, team member Naota's posts in this thread have alluded to the presence of a new weapon. It does not currently have a finished model nor, we assume, fire animation or sounds, but it does exist.


The thread originated as a question about the Pancor Jackhammer being in the official release. Team member Hitman had this to say:

"
The Jackhammer is not confirmed as an official weapon for the game. You'll notice we took the link to the weapons page off the main menu, as our list is being heavily revised. If it appeared on there before, please ignore that, as it's not an accurate indication of what is being worked on for RC1 at this point.
"

Our very own Grunt postulated that the Saiga-12K, of which many of us have fond memories, or a Streetsweeper may take its place. While there have been no confirmations or denials as the the Saiga, Streetsweeper or Jackhammer's status, there have been hints of a new, as yet unknown weapon. According to Naota's post here, he is no longer modeling either a Saiga or Streetsweeper, due to unknown difficulties in constructing the unknown weapon. This trouble is so great as to cause him incredible stress, and if he were to continue without finding a better technique, the model might be ruined.

According to Pork Fried Squirrel, another team member and tester, Naota is just lazy.

Team member Inveramsay tells us this about our upcoming new toy:

"
when this nifty little device of death sees the light of the greater public you will lol, I promise.

It's quite amazing dicipline testers and team have for not uttering a word about this object of pure doom clocking in at a very reasonable amount of credits.
"

I managed to get a hold of Naota on IRC, and the only clue he would give me (after much prodding and guessing on my part) is that it is, indeed, a shotgun.


That's all I have for now. More to come, and hopefully an update soon.
-Z

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I figured some elaboration is neccessary on my part about those posts, and about something I hinted at in IRC :P.

Firstly, I hadn't started modelling either the Saiga or the Streetsweeper, but rather was pledging not to in the coming future. Why? Because then Grunt would be right. AGAIN. Rather, I was searching for another shotgun of equivalent capabilities that he could never guess as a measure of spite. None of this save the Grunt factor, however, is related to Tse. At the time of that topic, she was already introduced to our latest build, and so cannot be the hypothetical shotgun model I was discussing :P.

Presently I don't think it would be too revealing to state that Tse came into existence when I finished her model, albiet in an incomplete form. After all, what can exist without flesh and blood? What HE did, however, is force her to manifest unfinished, flawed and broken with his incessant, roving EYES. But don't worry, with every corpse she becomes more whole. I'll fix you, Tse. I just need more... Ever more for the pyre of lifeless husks, for the sea of blood, for the throne of skulls.

Like all things, Tse's name reflects her. There is more tangible a thread there than one may think.

Finally, my timing was probably woefully off in IRC, but I never intended to specifically lend favour to the speculation that she is a shotgun, or that I was developing a shotgun model. I would say that probability of that is no higher than that of any other weapon type. This is, of course, open to your own speculation based on what you see in the topic.

Anonymous said...

Oh, after scanning over the update again I realize I forgot to make one other correction about the FAS Team. This may well be a topic for a further update if you deem it neccessary, but I figured I may as well make things clear here. There are essentially three groups of people involved in FAS's development: The FAS dev team, Affiliated Developers, and the Testing crew. Naturally, the FAS Team are the suave, debonaire and attractive people making the core content of the mod, from programmers to modellers to level designers and soforth. Consequently, affiliated devs are people who may be working for us on a smaller basis but don't have the time or desire to commit to being a full-time team member, or are showing us their stuff so we can gauge their talent, strengths, and personality before they come on board the team proper. Finally, the testing team are a dedicated group of players who meet on scheduled testing nights to play the latest builds and report bugs, gameplay issues, and generally get a feel for how the mod will really play. Affiliated devs aren't neccessarily testers, and testers needn't be affliliated developers.

In essence, the trickle-down of information on new features from most to least informed looks something like this:
-Hitman's brain (woe befall any who witness its fell conents)
-FAS Team
-Testers (slightly less informed) & Aff Dev (slightly more informed)
-FAS Report Subscribers :D
-Forumgoers
-The general public
-Crazy homeless guy in the alleyway outside your house

With that in mind, Skitz and Standingcow are part of the Testing Crew for example, while Ultra4sshole is the PR Rep from the FAS team. Inveramsay, on the other hand, can be considered an Aff Dev/Tester, as he's part of both groups. Should you have questions for the FAS Team in general, the best person to consult is definitely U4, via the Alpha Testing Journal. It's also probably your best bet of receiving a concise answer as well, as other team members are tight-lipped for fear of assassination, or merely weave a tapestry of incomprehensible madness with words strung together like ravenous locusts when addressed. Oh, if only I could speak a black string of actual hungry locusts...