Steamy Goodness

Now that steam has made their new UI official, you may have noticed that not much is done for third party programs and mods, as shown here.


This feature, DysPatch said, is available to games only who use the Steam Cloud in some way, for now. Unless FAS can be integrated with Steam like previous mods, everyone will have to suffer from the simple display.

Lowlight

The highlight feature in the previous news update may not make it to the first release candidate. DysPatch said in this thread that the highlighting was unstable, and had to be cut. If this means for testing, or for the first RC, has yet be determined.

Audiophile

Tired of repeating weapon sounds in games? Vunsuntra has the answer! "Upon release, each weapon will have 3-5 random stereo gunshots the engine will choose from for the 1st person perspective. All the weapons will have a distant sound as well, for when your far away from the gunshot source."Also for RC 1.0, there will be ricochet sounds as well as well as surface impact sounds.

Ting ting ting ting ting!

In many FPS these days, there is some indicator whether you hit someone or not, be it a change in your cross hair, a noise, or some other visual clue. FAS will not be much different from these other games.

As DysPatch states in this thread, "we plan on having a nice helmet thud or flesh break if you hit someone in the head" and continues with, "I wouldn't mind a cross hair flash for hit recognition. Its been brewing in my mind for sometime." However, adds that it would be something for after the initial release of FA.

Not everyone though shares the same philosophy as DysPatch. Naoto points out that, "hit indicators are borderline cheating." Citing examples from play test, Naota recalls when damage was displayed on the HUD, saying "[it] was one of the most frustrating parts of the game until we went out of our way to remove the damage indicator from testing." These on screen indicators showed when you hit someone, allowing players to "fire their machine gun into the darkness/undergrowth/water/solid walls/prone players/window ledges far away and have the UI feedback tell them to keep shooting because they're hitting someone."

And as Naota said, "As awesome as it might be, bullets are not one of the five senses."

Can I Has Server?

DysPatch has stated that server binaries for FAS will be released a week prior to the FAS client.

Source

FAS Testing Debrief (25 APRIL 2010)

The April 25th testing continuned testing the stability of FAS on the orange box engine, as well as enusring that the push and territorial control gameplay worked. Thankfully, most of the issues have been sorted out, however, there are still issues when a team reaches zero reinforcements and someone captures all the points. Futhermore, there are still some issues with the rag-doll physics. Lastly, some balance changes will be looked at such as increasing each team's reinforcements, as well as increasing the effectiveness of armor. The following are known issues that will be fixed for the next build:

• Increase M24 Scope Accuracy
• Decrease M82 No-Scope Accuracy
• Decrease M79 Damage
• Increase M67 Frag Damage
• Increase Desert Eagle Recoil
• Increase Reinforcement Threshold
• Increase Armor Effectiveness
• Recompile Ragdolls
• Decrease Sako 95 Damage
• Increase SR25 Movement Penalty
• Fix Game rules on Map Full Capture
• Fix grenade throw animation

FAS Testing Debrief (18 APRIL 2010)

DysPatch will now post Testing Debriefings in the Beta Testing Journal. Testing Debriefings summarize the last testing session as well as list bug fixes and changes that will be made for the next round of testing.

The 18 April 2010 testing tested the stability of the game on Orange Box, which is progressing but not as stable as previous builds, with issues such as PS and TC points crashing the server. However, many bugs have been identified and will be fixed for the next round of testing, including:

• Fix Armor Credit Cost
• Decrease Wind Volume in Snowstorm
• Optimize Snowstorm
• Re-add Ammobox reload sound
• Give More Magazines on Spawn
• Decrease time between magazine pick at ammoboxes
• Fix sprint speed, and movement speeds in general
• Stabilize TC and PS capture points
• Add weapon distance firing sounds
• Ragdoll recompile (To fix seizures upon death)
• M24 Animations

FA RC 1.0 Weapons

These are the original 27 weapons released with Firearms 1.0. Of the 31 weapons in FAS (not counting the mortar), 19 are from the original Firearms, indicated by the italics.

Melee

Seal Knife 2000

Pistols

Colt Government 1911A1
Beretta 92F
Beretta 93R
IMI Desert Eagle
Colt Anaconda

Shotguns

Benelli M3 Super 90P
Kalashikov Saiga 12-K

Sub Machine Guns

HK MP5A5
HK MP5KA4
HK 51-B Vollmer
Ingram M11

Assault Rifles

AK47
FAMAS
HK G3A3
HK G36E
Colt M16A2
Colt M4
Steyr AUG

Sniper Rifles

HK PSG1
Barret M-82A1

Machineguns

M-60

Explosives

M79
Frag Grenade
Flashbang Grenade
Stielhand Grenade
M18A1 Claymore Mine

FA RC 1.0 Maps

These are the original 12 maps released with Firearms 1.0. FAS includes remakes of ps_sand and tp_mine (remade to sd_mine).

By Beserker

cti_artic
cti_rama
tp_zerk
ps_check

By LooseCannon

tp_boat

By David "Hitman" Reeves

tp_soviet

By CrowbarSniper

cti_mideast
ps_waterfall
tp_dish

By Tylak

ps_sand
tp_mine
tp_ware

Founding Fathers

Special thanks to the original FA team for inspiring 10 years of Firearms!

Project Leaders

Casper Milan Nielson (Syre)
Brian Fuller (Democritus)

Programmers

Mike Weldon (FalloutBoy)
James Twohey (Judicator)
Gary Weis (Weis)

Modelers

Ben Irwin (Ninja Monkey)
Christian Oelund (Gekko)
Ross Thelen (Toedip)
Mike Kopinski (TWIN48DCOE)
Ken Bentley (Real Man)
Jack Prince (Wonder Warthog)

Level Design

Eric Smith (Beserker)
Joel Gabel (Tiger)
Natalie Gabel
Paul Oakes (Oakesy)
Gary Lanza (Lanza)
Dominic Crompton (Users-Lag-Time)
Eugene Smozhevsky (-ED)

Graphics Artist

Tobias Dedenroth (Quakie)
Omni Trio (Omnir Trio)

Here is to 10 more years of "guns, and lots of them."

Happy Birthday Firearms

Happy Birthday Firearms - Monday, April 29, 2002

[Ten] years ago today, Firearms RC1 was released. It's kind of hard to believe, especially when you take into consideration the fact that it's been over [5 years] since we released the most recent version. I'd be the first person to admit that RC1 was hardly brilliant. In fact, when looking at it now, a lot of other team members along with myself are embarrassed with what we released. Graphically, it was pretty nasty. The code was buggy, with a lot of crashes, glitches and exploits. It still appealed to people though, and a buzzing community formed. Many of the original Firearms fans are still heavily involved with the mod, which is really nice to see.

During the year after RC1's release, there were several other releases of Firearms, I personally wasn't too heavily involved with them due to all my time being taken up by a job that I got thanks to Firearms. But with each new version that was released, the improvements were obvious. We were learning from our mistakes, and Firearms was getting better and better...

Lastly today, I'd like thank everyone who's ever made a contribution to Firearms. From Caspar who started it all, to Eric who made Firearms what it is today. There's also this page, which was once [upon] a time run by our lead programmer, Scott. That particular piece was written the very same day that Firearms was first released...Quite a transformation I think.

-Ben

[This post is Ben's two year birthday post, edited to be more relevant to FAS. You can view the original post by clicking the link at the top]

Highlight System Revealed

The highlighting system in FAS was revealed with little fanfare, leaving many questions unanswered. Luckily, DysPatch has answered many questions about its implementation in this FAS Forum post.

Q: Or is there an option to turn highlights off for specific things, such as objectives, crates and people with specific skills (medic/leader)?

A: Yes, you can turn these effects off in your multilayer options.

Q: Does the ammo box's color change depending on the damage? Like if its in mint condition, its bright green, but servery damaged its dark green (or yellow)?

A: Not currently.

Q: What happens when an objective is destroyed? Does the outline just disappear completely?

A: The highlight will stay there until it is respawned.

Q: Would CTI items also get this glow when they are included as well?

A: We haven't completed the CTI gameplay model since we do not have any CTI maps yet, but the CTI objects in the map will have the glow. We have other plans to indicate where the intelligence is when a player is carrying it.

Q: Is this a mapping entity added to the specific objects, or does the engine automatically apply the glow for these specific objects?

A: No it is not a mapping entity, it is automatically created.

Q: How would the leadership aura work with this?

A: In terms of leadership, we haven't decided what we are going to do with the highlights, but it will most likely show on the players affected by the aura. In terms of whether or not YOU are being supported by the aura, we will either have an icon or a shader for RC1. Our ultimate goal is to get a shader that adds a subtle effect to your screen, but we may not have time to implement that and may stick with just a leadership icon on the HUD.

Q: What effect does this have on the all ready existing player indicators, if at all?

A: We are keeping the overhead indicators because they still serve a purpose that the highlights do not (health indicator, rank indicator, and skill indicator). We most likely will not be adding highlights to individual players because the screen could get cluttered very easily.

FAS NEWS (2 APRIL 2010)

Following FAS's April Fool's news announcement, the team has released an actual news update. The team has showcased two of the grenades in FAS, the M67 Fragmentation Grenade and the M84 Stun Grenade. The fragmentation grenade is a FA staple and retains the cost in previous RCs at two credits for two grenades. The stun grenades cost slightly more than the frag grenades at three credits, but can blind enemies in a large area and grow more effective the more confined the space is.


FAS has also included objective highlighting. Similar to what is found in L4D and L4D2, the objective highlighting in FAS provides quick visual clues to players about where objectives are. In the pictures provided, you can see the red ammo crates with a red highlight, the blue ammo crates with a blue highlight, and a neutral object (the ammo box) with a green highlight.

FAS NEWS (1 APRIL 2010)

FAS's April Fool's joke was the removal of dedicated servers and the implementation of "FANet." FANet would provide players with various "features." Such included matchmaking which determined games, "Based on mystical properties of fate beyond the ken all but our most astute software engineers, FANet will place you in the game you are meant to play." As well as a revolutionary new system of communication, "text chat" and custom content, reassuring the community that, "[those] who wish to contribute custom maps, models, skins, or other third-party content will be pleased to learn that they can't, thereby saving them from the very real, very dire threat of Communism."

You can check out the robust feature list of FANet here.