Level Up!

DysPatch has revealed in this FA Forum post that the skill system and credit cost of FAS has been changed. The skill system will feature six unique skills, with three levels each, for a total of 18 skills. Players will be able to chose as many skills after they want for a set number of kills, for now. In the future, when more skills are added, there will be a cap to how many skills an individual can acquire. With so many skills though, it is unsure if there will still be the standard 10 kills per skill upgrade in previous versions.

DysPatch also provides an example of how this new skill system will work with the new Commander skill.

* Commander I
o 5% Faster Movement Speed for Nearby Teammates
* Commander II
o 5% Accuracy Boost for Nearby Teammates
o 10% Less Damage to Nearby Teammates
* Commander III
o Capture Objectives Twice as Fast

In addtion to the skill changes, FAS will move from the traditional 30 skill points to an even 100. This is for the anticipation of new weapons in the future, allowing for better balance. All current items in FAS will have their credit cost raised to reflect this new system, such as the cost of grenades being raised from two credits, to six credits.

Updates!

The FAS Map page has been updated, showing off the new, darker, visual style of tc_iwojima as well as the new map sd_Dragovo.

SD_Dragovo is made by a new team member, Wolf, who has previous experience with mapping in the source engine, as well as professional mapping as seen on his blog.

Wide Tracks of Land

Those with very large resolutions, such as 2560x1600, need not worry about FAS supporting your resolution. DysPatch confirms in this FA Input Forum thread that FAS does support larger resolutions.

FAS NEWS (29 APRIL 2010)

FAS has released a time line of every FA releases that you can find on their history page (or a more detailed view here). In it, they release the release window for FAS which is sometime in July, as well as a new map SV_Dragovo.

You can also check out FASR's FA Birthday Coverage:

FA Remembrance
FA 1.0 Team Thanks
FA 1.0 Maps
FA 1.0 Weapons

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