Saturday, July 21, 2012

Sub Rosa Update 7/21/12


Version 0.06 is close to being done, the voice chat has taken a while to get working but it's close.  Right now I'm adding cell phones, so each team will start with a phone they can use to talk with the other teams.  I'd like to have an option for voice only servers, so the teams will need a way to communicate over distances.

The other thing I'm working on is solving the problem of TKing/griefing, you would think a game would have to be popular before someone tries to ruin it for everyone else but that's unfortunately not true.  I have a few ideas, mainly having persistent accounts for players on a server, and players with the highest points can be captains of their team and kick griefers off their team.  I'm also considering a voting system, or maybe a combination of voting and persistent scores.

In the video you can see a simple AI I've implemented, I want to add some singleplayer/coop missions, part of the reason I want to do this is to hopefully get some media attention.  I've sent emails to a few different websites but haven't got any posts about it.  Multiplayer games have such a varied experience, if someone actually does try it out the servers might be empty, they might have lag, or there might be griefers.  Having a singleplayer or coop mode with a more controllable experience will help I think.  I'm also planning on hosting some games where people can join and learn how to play.

Finally I'm thinking of ways to sell this game, my current plan is to keep it free, but if you buy it you can customize your player (I'm adding faces, hair color and a few other details).  It won't be a free-to-pay model where you have to buy every single item, and definitely won't give you an in-game advantage.  I think it's a good way to keep the player base but still hopefully make money so I can rent a dedicated server and stuff like that.  What do you guys think?

By the way I am working on A New Zero again, and a lot of the tech for Sub Rosa will find it's way into ANZ and vise versa.


38 comments:

Anonymous said...

im not a big fan of PVP and multiplayer, i prefer playing with AI most of the time, so one thing i really love about some of your games, a new zero mainly, is the AI in them.
if you ask me, the singleplayer/coop idea is a good one.

Oliver Lataste said...

I'm liking these ideas, everything except voice only. Idk, I don't have a mic so being excluded because of that would suck.
Kicking griefers I think should go towards account making system and vote kicking works as well.

One time fee should be around 5-15 dollars, idk about pricing but that seems fair. As for additions, yeah that would be fine.

At first I liked the team captain idea, then I realized it'd be impractical because a troll can easily become team captain then destroy the server. Also it wouldn't be fair for newer players + account making system wouldn't be good.

If you wanna flesh-out a single player mode, maybe add a bank to rob guarded by cops (with another team on the way)? NPCs? Obstacles? Those are all fine since in single-player you don't have the constraints of multiplayer.
Another suggestion is to make a easy-to-use map creator.

Also your forums are bugged.

coolguy1 said...

I'd give you money for what ever.

Unknown said...

Hi Alex, the update looks good. I'm curious why you changed the bullet-resistance of the cars... I kind of liked having a bit of safety when driving. Is there a tactical/game mechanic reason?

It would be nice if the car glass could withstand 4 incoming shots before breaking.

cnasd3 said...

I think the idea of a Single player/Coop is a great idea but the game should be free for now until it gets more popular or maybe pay to change skins, have custom maps, but otherwise great update and keep up the good work.

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

A way to halt the near-instant spawn-killing could be a short time of invincibility (on cars as well to prevent griefing the cars), maybe ten or even fifteen seconds?

As for the one-time fee? I'd gladly chip in for that since it's nothing gamebreaking (unlike pay to win) and it would unlock all aesthetic options (unlike free to play). Please stick with this option.

JT said...

Play for free, pay to support developers - best model ever imaginable.

Unknown said...

I like your idea about skins. But what about price? I dont think anyone will buy it for more than 10-15 usd

Sam O said...

@Unknown The game mechanics are broken when you have to destroy the car to kill people inside.

The following is a true story:
I had the briefcase, was out of ammo, and had no car when I saw grey driving towards me. I hid behind a corner and when the car got near me, I ran towards their car and entered it before they were able to shoot me. The grey people then got out of the car to shoot me, and while doing that they destroyed the car and as unable to get the briefcase back to their base :P

My feedback on the cars in the video:
The cars should be able to take way more damage to encourage people to go for the driver or tires.
One shoot on a window should shatter it, making it harder to look out of it. A second shoot should make it fall out. A rifle should be able to shoot though the window and kill the driver in one shoot.

\ said...

Man, I'd buy shit just to give you some money, just as long as you actually stick with it support-wise. You've gotta give games the time and care to grow, rather than making prototype after prototype. I would love to play this regularly. Pay-for-vanity sounds good. I just wish there were more people to play with close to Australia - nurturing a player-base is the single most important thing you can do at this stage. I love everything you've made and it would be great to see this actually development a solid community around it.

Unknown said...

My company is still ready to help you out for free with whatever you wish. Domains, Servers, Download space just ask us. Some other indie game devs are already glad to be sponsored by us ;).

FinDude said...

Teamkilling is an important mechanic though. Crossfire happens, and I once even saved a deal by shooting a teammate who was playing team deathmatch.
Speaking of which, please please allow friendly fire inside a vehicle.

You should probably enable 360 degree radius on car gunners now, too. Right now it seems that a single gunner in a tailing car will kill everyone inside the car being chased with impunity.
Perhaps change the current minor seat position adjustment into hanging out of windows.
Moving between left/right seat would be really useful as well.

Any system designed against griefing can and will be used for griefing as well. Manual moderation is the only foolproof solution.
Allowing the admin of a server to promote people to moderators should help. Also, a 'description' field on the servers would be nice, to inform of nonstandard rules/admin or mod contacts etc

Being able to turn bodies around to check their tie would be great. A chat log would be good. It would also be great if you could look into supporting different keyboard layouts when taking text input. Oh, and for the love of god: pasting from clipboard.

FinDude said...

Oh, and I think cars crashing into solid geometry/eachother should result in much more grievous bodily harm.

dionvc said...

A votekick/voteban system where people with higher scores would have more votes than those with lower would work. This would prevent those that grief to have several people get on just so they can't be voted off. On the account of the F2P model, I would say that would be an ok idea for larger games, but for this small of a game I do not know. I know that if you tried to sell the game you would lose a large playerbase. If you tried the f2p model you would not get too many purchases. The places you are marketing will also affect if it works or not. I think that in the end the f2p model will work if you draw in more players, and add a tutorial level, as most people will get on once and be driven away due to lack of documentation. (I almost walked away but I knew you have a good history of games so I kept playing). That's only my take, of course, I'm not some market analyst or anything.

Sam said...

i think that the game should be free but be like AOS, where ben took dontations so you could give him money but don't have to to enjoy the whole game. or maybe just give the early beta testers a code so they don't have to pay for it but the pepole who come in afterwards would, idk

Spike Tickner said...

This game's development has some momentum. Keep it up Cryptic, you rock!

I really enjoy your style that flows through all of your projects, with such an emphasis on simulation.

Thanks for the awesome game man!

DanteNumero said...

Hey I beleive I commented on your last subrosa update,I can't play Sub Rosa do to my comp not being able to use OpenGL 2.2 or 2.0, I remember that you had made A New Zero compatible with OpenGL 1.1 in your ANZ .78 update, if you can could you possibly do the same

And I would gladly pay you, but I don't really care about skins and such, but if it is Implemented I will

Unknown said...

We need to find out how to get rid of the reddit scrubs from ruining this game like they did with minecraft and ace of spades


check out my sub rosa killtage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bQY0SBfDSo

dionvc said...

Aidz Aidz: Reddit ruined minecraft and ace-of-spades? Are you serious? Reddit is hardly the reason any game has been ruined ever. They host a game server for each of them but so what? That doesn't ruin your experience and you can just play on another non reddit server. And what is with you always advertising videos when you comment? Every time you advertise some youtube video at the end. Are you trying to get more views?

Oliver Lataste said...

Aidz is a griefer. Anyway Reddit hosting servers and advertising their subreddits rubs me the wrong way, especially that one guy who kept on pushing it on our faces. Luckily he's not here anymore so we don't have much of that anymore.

Martin said...

There's really no decent way to identify players at the moment which is frustrating.

I can see why you're not keen on name tags - it ruins the feel of the game. Instead when a player says something and they're in view + proximity, the text would appear above their head for a moment. This makes sense since you're hearing their voice and know where it's coming from and would let you be able to tell who is who.

Ezzam said...

For me, gameplay is extremely choppy, i tried the affinity fix, but it didn't do the trick. Could low performance be related to the fact i've got an Intel GPU?

Unknown said...

oliver both the creators of minecraft and ace of spades went to reddit for ideas and pandered to them, thats why they turned into casual piece of shit games

ps check out my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bQY0SBfDSo

Dan Fraga said...

"What do you guys think?
Great site, came across it some how through the internet and ANZ, with the Tank v. Tank scenario.

This game [Sub-Rosa] is seriously fun and awesome! Never lose the three team scheme.

Here is some food for thought:

I think you should carry on the idea of points setting a threshold for weapon privileges. It helps prevent rampant TKing, but it also keeps incentive truer to money for those getting points. Maybe let the player choose their payload of 2 items during countdown, where the items have point values, and must total below the players points.
No points actually get -spent-, they are still only lost through death, tking, and disk outside HQ.
Should also consider non-firearm items like switch-blades, tazers, smoke grenades, ninja-rope, and cell-phone jammers.

Car related items would also be fun.
A repair kit good for one fix, bullet proof windows (active when item-holder sits in vehicle), caltrops (held in hand with no steering penalty), remote car bombs, things like that.

The agent ranks [Kingpin (team captain), Hitman, Thug] could also be regulated through score. Whoever is the most capable agent on the team is maybe sort of "the boss", maybe gets a third item, body armor.

I trust that whatever you do will be good though, and the important thing is to just have fun!

Unknown said...

VamPiro

Where can I download the Linux Dedicated Server for this game?

dionvc said...

@Вячеслав Михайлов
The game is an exe so you will need WINE or equivalent software similar to it. Check it out at: www.winehq.org

Unknown said...

Really really like the look of this game. Seems like a brilliant idea.
However, I'm having some serious framerate issues.

I'm limited to a laptop at the moment. 2gb ram, intel i3 and a 1gb intel graphics card. Hardly a super computer, I know, but I would expect it to be able to run something that seems as visually simple as this ?

Any help would be appreciated.

Unknown said...

@ dionvc

Thanks for the advice, but "WINE or equivalent software" did not put on a decent server, decent resources.
So have to wait until the developers make a Linux version for Dedicated Server this game :(

Jonny said...

I'd totally buy that, so no: don't make it completely free. I'd rather see a constant development of the game that you can afford.

Also someone said it would be cool if a window glass needs 2 b shot a few times. Love that idea - should be harder to shoot someone in a car.
Aside from that, this website's bookmarked until you offer a pre-sale or so ^^

Jonny said...

Oh, and make ppl be thrown out of colliding cars, please ;)

dionvc said...

@Вячеслав Михайлов Yes, unfortunately WINE does not run well at all. One of the main reasons I moved back to windows. I hope the developer can release a linux version in the future so that it can reach a larger audience.

Anonymous said...

Why server create only for windows? I must start up virtual (windows) machine on my linux server, because WINE is not correctly =(

JT said...

sub rosa is dead

Alex Austin said...

No Justin Timberlake, Sub Rosa is not dead. I am working on a dedicated Linux version that will not require any libraries, but I have to remove all the references so it takes some time.

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Unknown said...

I preordered it!!!! when will it approximately come out?