Revoluzzer
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Posts posted by Revoluzzer
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On 3/8/2019 at 11:04 PM, SpeedyCat said:Eventually there is a hidden message?!
You've got a false friend there.
Got nothing to add to this thread besides you guys keep on trucking, spectacular finds so far!
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On 2/25/2019 at 9:18 AM, Nymphi--DoubleDee said:Ooooooooooooooooooooor.... Just make a new account, and let it idle in Social... And not do anything while you sleep with a belly full of tendies that you used GBP for, and wake up and cheat all day while REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-ing at legit players.
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.
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On 2/17/2019 at 9:23 PM, MattScott said:But the more I dig into the code, the more I want to overhaul the whole
storething to be easier to maintain.APB condensed into a single sentence.
On 2/17/2019 at 9:27 PM, Lord Cashpoint said:Now I want to know how the hell G1 managed to make such a complicated interface for what is essentially a store front.
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.
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9 hours ago, Saxtus said:But that variant has the Armored combat gear instead of the Impact combat gear I am after.
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.
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On 2/1/2019 at 10:28 PM, Jazeker said:Distributing players into the correct districts was and is to this day the major flaw in the system,
(ppssst That's matchmaking)
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.
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2 hours ago, killerskull said:Sounds reasonable. I remember people on NA east has 100k+ years ago.
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.
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On 2/1/2019 at 11:24 PM, CookiePuss said:I walked around social for an hour listening to footsteps and found some stairs and a landing with no footstep sounds.
... testing is fun!
Is the overpass in Waterfront still using grass/dirt particles and sounds, though?
On 2/3/2019 at 9:53 AM, Nymphi--DoubleDee said:It seems so many forget that even the original developers didn't even know how half the stuff worked.
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.
On 2/4/2019 at 10:21 AM, Nitronik said:potentially even reworking the geometry for each clothing asset (given how they're kind of "stitched on" to the human mesh)
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.
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On 1/29/2019 at 4:40 PM, BXNNXD said:On 1/29/2019 at 4:14 PM, Nite said:Personally kinda feel that the gold levels make up more total rating points than the silver and bronze levels do....
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.
On 1/29/2019 at 5:06 PM, NotZombieBiscuit said:The great thing is this skewing of threat only affects the graphical indicator. The MMR/ELO behind the scenes is unaffected and thus so is matchmaking. So the excuse of matchmaking is one that is flawed.
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,
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Was expecting exploding ambulances. What a let down.
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On 1/30/2019 at 6:19 PM, Knite said:once 3.5 lands, we should have some blessed quiet from the cheaters for a little bit while cheatmakers rush to make something that works for APB.
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?
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23 hours ago, Stunny said:why are you lying? i used to play on joker NE and it was 100/100. then 80/80 then 50/50.
Action districts have never accommodated more than 100 players total (50 Enforcers, 50 Criminals).
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3 hours ago, TheJellyGoo said:Many games have done it since threat inflation is a natural occurrence. If you can't find that magical key for the perfect system just move the bar higher.
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.
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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.
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On 12/23/2018 at 1:06 AM, TheJellyGoo said:Maybe its time for another threat reevaluation by dropping everyone down a certain elo coupled with less elo gain in the future.
Let's see how threat re-calibrates itself. Might be a good opportunity to bridge the time until EU.
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.
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On 12/13/2018 at 6:01 PM, SkittyM said:would never touch an AMD GPU but im sure APB will run fine on both.
Bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off.
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On 12/6/2018 at 10:12 PM, CookiePuss said:Its fun to use and free?
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?
15 hours ago, Onadan said:TL;DR
0) Yes, the N-TEC 5 is the better choice overall.
1) No, it's not OP
2) Having a "stapple" weapon isn't a bad thing per se
3) There's no simple way to "fix" it without breaking the game
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!?
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16 hours ago, Excalibur! said:Do snr and rsa share the same caliber?
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.
15 hours ago, Archon said:Not only is the accuracy laughably bad but also this:
Is that wall at a 10m distance? Because that's what the crosshairs represent: The weapon's accuracy at 10m.
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On 11/25/2018 at 11:54 PM, MrsHappyPenguin said:30M should be the minimum damage range for all lethal weapons.
On 11/26/2018 at 9:08 AM, MrsHappyPenguin said:APB's max range is so low nothing can be called a sniper. This and the overly open districts makes it tough to properly balance and separate weapons. In other games you don't even need a scope at 100M.
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).
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On 11/25/2018 at 10:59 PM, Kewlin said:Vendetta was never supposed to be a successor to APB, it was a spinoff.
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.
On 11/26/2018 at 1:40 AM, MattScott said:Yes. But we made the call to focus on 3.5 since it was a much faster timeline. More on this in the future.
Hey, good to hear. That's something I was just really curious about.
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On 11/24/2018 at 1:06 AM, MattScott said:I would not describe what we are doing as "future-proof". A large portion of the code will be exactly what is running under Unreal 3.0.
The goal is make the game better, but also to consolidate the codebase so we can upgrade everything again.
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.
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On 11/19/2018 at 3:16 PM, BXNNXD said:if im in a group we just do the no-opp mission and ready up again
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.
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On 11/21/2018 at 1:43 AM, Frosi said:If I remember correctly they currently are very limited to what they can do with the Inventory in itself. I'm fairly certain they're currently at the absolute limit when it comes to Inventory space and I'd imagine that them being so limited in what they can do is also the reason why a sort functionality has never been implemented. Fingers crossed for 3.5 adding those features down the line.
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.
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On 11/19/2018 at 6:25 AM, BXNNXD said:they’re all the same, one large box that’s slightly bigger than the tallest, fattest character possible
only official image i can think of, but the only difference between crouching and standing is how tall the hitbox is so
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.
On 11/19/2018 at 6:46 AM, BXNNXD said:there’s not much to be done, if hitboxes are altered to conform to each character individually then anyone who doesn’t run with the shortest skinniest female character (i.e. anyone who wants to actually use the customization system the game offers) will be at a disadvantage 24/7
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.
On 11/19/2018 at 10:19 PM, Jazeker said:Funny fact about APB hitboxes; at one point the previous host had an in-house dev hacking the game, to explore ideas to fight closet cheaters, right, and at one point these 'hitboxes' in APB ran away from cheaters when the enemy itself was out of direct line of sight! xD Seriously! Just remembering this dev brings a smile back on my face, what a clever guy. Might be a close all-time hero just second under Neume.
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.
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On 11/21/2018 at 5:48 AM, MattScott said:At this point, we have finished rebuilding the music editor and all but one of the external libraries are upgraded. After that we know there are several graphical issues, and some frame rate issues we need to address.
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.
[important!] Will APB continue to support the stretched image?
in General Discussion Archive
Posted
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.