Revoluzzer

Afaik APB did crop to widescreen, i.e. remove the top and bottom (I guess vertical FOV in other words). If this is still the case it creates a tangible technical advantage for using 4:3 over 16:9. Albeit it is "only" more vertical visibility, not the more important horizontal FOV.

You've got a false friend there. Eventually & eventuell Got nothing to add to this thread besides you guys keep on trucking, spectacular finds so far!

Originally playtime was only recorded in action districts, not in Social. And idling in action districts gets you kicked. If the former is still the case and rudimentary systems to prevent simple walking/movement scripts to count as actions exist (which I believe they do), going by playtime might actually work.

APB condensed into a single sentence. Bought from a third party, I'd assume. At least that's the kind of software I'm working with which gives me the biggest headaches.

The Impact Combat Gear was only briefly awarded to Enforcers at release of the pack. This issue was resolved within hours and you only got those items if you retrieved your mail before the emergency patch was rolled out (for example I bought the pack before, but couldn't retrieve the items in time and thus missed out on those sweet clothes). It's probably still in cross-faction because technically the gear can be owned and equipped by both Criminals and Enforcers.

Matchmaking = placing players from a pool against each other, ideally based on their skill Distribution = putting players into a matchmaking pool, ideally based on their skill The former currently exists and technically works. The latter currently only exists in a rudimentary and flawed form (district threat labels). They're independent systems which ideally work in tandem.

To think getting the 'Hitman' achievement was a noteworthy thing once ... I think ripchen was the first to ever get it? Which, I guess, was 7 or 8 years ago, lol.

Is the overpass in Waterfront still using grass/dirt particles and sounds, though? As the story goes the original developers came up with a lot of mechanics for APB which weren't state of the art at the time, e.g. seamless world-streaming and day-night-cycles. I doubt they didn't understand how half the stuff worked, they probably understood very well how fickle the whole construction was. The clothing simply extrudes the body to assume the desired shape, as far as I'm aware. They'd probably have to recreate (i.e. import a higher poly version of) every single clothing "item" from the original zBrush file, assuming they still have access to those.

that’s just a consequence of having static threat levels instead of dynamic, since a majority of players will improve over time it’s only natural that threat distribution will be skewed towards higher threats - especially in a game like apb where the population is stagnant at best In a closed group the threat levels shouldn't gradually increase, since every time one players gains threat, another loses an equal amount. As many players who try out APB will only spent some time getting their behinds kicked, increasing someone else's threat in the process and then leave the game, the overall average threat most likely does gradually increase. And only those who can consistently beat weaker players remain active. Assuming the matchmaking system is based on Glicko. I wouldn't be surprised if it's based on the actual threat levels, however. Either way, matchmaking really was never the issue. Distributing players into the correct districts was and is to this day the major flaw in the system,

Was expecting exploding ambulances. What a let down.

Is UE3.5 some bastion that cheaters haven't conquered yet? I'd expect working cheats to appear within minutes of release, assuming there is no "mole" in the testing group(s). Otherwise they'll probably exist long before release. Bottom line it should be trivial to use existing cheats for UE3.5 in APB, no?

Action districts have never accommodated more than 100 players total (50 Enforcers, 50 Criminals).

Threat inflation only occurs in poorly designed matchmaking systems to begin with. I've laid out before in this threat that a dynamic threat distribution system could easily combat this issue, removing the necessity for resets like the one suggested altogether.

From a purely technical point of view I would expect FairFight to be the best suited anti-cheat for APB (or most games, for that matter), simply because it's server-sided and as far as I am aware the servers already check for a bunch of things (e.g. accuracy and weapon damage). I would also expect a server-side, statistics based anti-cheat to be much more difficult to be circumvent compared to client-side anti-cheats. And concerning privacy and data-security I'd much prefer a game not to pollute my system with software that rummages through my files and inspects processes at will. Anyway, I can see why FairFight did not work as expected in APB, given that several missions essentially provide players with wallhacks and certain bugs also made player names visible through some objects. However I'd consider changing these missions for the sake of improving gameplay (I don't think wallhack-deathmatch is a lot of fun), as well as giving FairFight the ability to better monitor players. And of course MrEpicGoat showed that APB is mechanically very exploitable, which hopefully gets fixed with the engine upgrade. Even that out of the way, client-side anti-cheats are probably still bypassed with a bit of effort.

If this would actually fix anything, it would've done so in the past. The underlying system needs improvement, threat won't "re-calibrate" itself because it currently doesn't have the means to do so. What you suggest is only a short-lived reset.

Bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off.

Using the best weapon the game has to offer is certainly more fun than using an inferior alternative. The STAR is also free and you get a permanent version, but you hardly ever see anyone use it. If the N-Tec and STAR were on the same level both would be a common sight in high-rank play, right? You made a very solid argument explaining why the N-Tec is better than all other assault rifles. You could've gone even further and laid out how it beats several SMGs and rifles in their niche. Nonetheless you came to the conclusion that the N-Tec is not op? And how would balancing the N-Tec break the game at all!?

They did originally deal the same damage, which implies they do. Obviously one is an unwieldy, but accurate long-range sidearm, while the other is a quickly drawn, inaccurate CQC shooter and that's what sets them apart. Buffing the SNR to 350 damage would make it a more viable choice again. Combined with the attempt to make shotguns more reliable, while dealing less damage, the original reason for lowering its damage (iirc, shotgun -> SNR quickswitch) would be less of an issue, too. Is that wall at a 10m distance? Because that's what the crosshairs represent: The weapon's accuracy at 10m.

Since you are well aware of the drastic range limitation in APB, why do you suggest a minimum damage range of 30m for lethal weapons? It compresses the range way too much and leaves no room to create distinct CQC weapons. In APB 30m is essentially the limit for 'short range'. As shotguns are generally supposed to be CQC weapons that carry an advantage over SMGs the closer you are to an opponent, their minimum damage range should be fairly low, just like their maximum (either with a hard limit or spread).

I'm well aware of that. But it was an attempt at taking the APB lore and do something new with it, instead of working on the same old game that has a rough reputation. Hey, good to hear. That's something I was just really curious about.

That perpetual upgrading of things is essentially what has been holding this game back ever since, I'd say. By the time the code is mature enough to allow further development of the actual game it might not even be economically viable. Have you ever considered taking the lore, art and assets and rebuilding the game to a more modern standard instead of trying to upgrade the existing thing? I feel like in the years that have been spent taking very small steps, this one big leap could've been done instead. Gamersfirst at a time had a similar idea with APB: Vendetta, although I think their goal to transition into a different gameplay-genre was flawed. What I'm trying to say, really, is that all the mechanics which make APB what it is seem to be comparably easy to achieve in modern game engines. With the added benefit of better compatibility to modern hardware.

More people should do it like you. Waiting exacerbates the issue by taking a team out of the standard matchmaking routine. The longer they are in a mission, the more willing the system becomes to give them just about any opposition, no matter how close their threat levels are. When this happens two teams are removed from the matchmaking-pool who could've been assigned to more appropriate opponents, who in return might now wait for opposition.

Inventory space is a limited resource, because the servers will collapse under stress if inventories grow too large. I guess sorting items doesn't work because the interface reads directly of the dataset for each character. Each new item gets assigned a consecutive number and the inventory just displays this list. Remember, like most things in APB, the UI is a fairly complex, confusing and convoluted creation. Supposedly it is built with Kismet, which, if my understanding is correct, isn't meant for such a thing. "In general, Kismet does not execute on the client; it runs on the server and programmers can allow changes that are relevant to gameplay for a given client to be replicated to it." I've never really put my greater attention to this fact, but this sentence might explain why most of the interfaces are so extremely slow. Wouldn't surprise me if your client makes a call to the server every time you want to open the inventory in order to request the necessary information.

That image is actually from a blog post introducing a third hitbox state. Originally it was either standing or crouched, where crouched was fully covered by some objects (the stack of pellets in the picture, for example). That update introduced the "crouched moving" state, which is slightly taller, making you a target when moving behind low cover. It has to be noted, however, that character height does affect shooting behaviour. Tall characters can fire over certain objects, while short ones can not. Conversely short characters can hide behind some objects (even if their hitbox is "showing"), while tall characters can not. The difference is mostly negligible, but existent nonetheless. Never heard of this. Do you, by chance, confuse this with player-information not being sent to clients outside the 100m range? It was, iirc, added to lower the amount of information cheaters could collect and theoretically enabled players to "bait" suspected cheaters by hiding somewhere outside a 150-200m radius around the mission area, at which point the cheater would have to drive around in circles to "pick up their signal". Caused some major issues with several mission finales (e.g. TDM, VIP, object hold), because the target-indicators wouldn't update properly anymore and thus had to be reverted.

How future-proof would you consider the engine-upgrade? Is it at all reasonable to expect a stable and smooth experience or will APB's situation in UE3.5 be a similar hackjob as the original creation? Reloaded Productions talked a lot about the upgrade making things better all around, but considering how long it has been underway and how many issues seemingly will persist even then, it seems to me like another major headache.