Part 3
Tentatively poking a finger
around in his little gray cells ...
Is there going to be a steep learning curve with gameplay? It's been mentioned that actually getting on a server will be a piece of cake, but will becoming proficient be a long-term job? I remember hearing someone mention something like this in the TF2 chat which seemed so long ago ... will the game be playable on different levels of skill, so a newbie can pick it up and have fun, while a veteran can make manifold customizations to fit his style?
We're planning to string together a kind of single-player campaign that'll teach you to use the different classes abilities and weapons. The game itself should be more accessible due to the interface changes I touched on above. Players don't need to figure out what commands they need to bind to drop ammunition, or set explosives, etc.
Will there be many carry-overs from Quake? I don't mean things like rocket/grenade jumping (though I'd like to hear about that too) -- is the actual control and movement similar enough to other first-person shooters that a Quake player will be able to pick it up rather easily?
Yes, its still fairly similar. Rocket jumping is out, due to the way the RPG launcher works. While the movement is still similar, its effect on the players is more pronounced. Crouching, running and walking are all important due to the way they adjust your accuracy, recoil, etc. Explosives don't knock you around as much as they do in Quake. Bullets affect you more than they do in other FPS.
If rocket jumping is out, how about grenade jumping? Reportedly, TF2 grenades are much stronger -- will it end this strategy?
Explosions don't knock you quite as far as they do in TF1. You'll probably be able to do a boost of some kind with them. But they're more dangerous... you'll come out looking a lot worse after a grenade blast than you did in TF1. They're harsh on body armor.
Will falling from a ledge 10 times your height do more than just take away small amounts of health?
The realistic fall damage from TF1 will stay in TF2.
Many would disagree that TF's falling damage was realistic. Will TF2 damage be closer to, say, Action Quake in magnitude, or similar to what we have now?
I haven't seen Action Quake, so I can't compare it to that. It's slightly stronger than TF1's.
Will TF2 weapons be based on half-life weapons, like TF was on Quake? Or are you guys just stripping the game bare and creating almost a whole new product?
TF2's initial class and weapon design was done way before we saw Half-Life... even before Quake2. We've adjusted some of the weaponry based upon Half-Life's weapons. Mostly we've adjusted visual effects, due to the added goodies Half-Life's engine provides.
How many weapons will there be? How many will each class carry?
All classes carry a minimum of 2 weapons.
Saw no mention of the chaingun in the PQ interview -- will TF2 have a multi-barelled weapon like the Assault Cannon or Q2 chaingun, or will they be more focused on machine-gun like weapons?
Mainly on machine-gun like weapons.
Will there be any female models? If there is only one model per class, will any classes be female?
Currently no, because even though we have individual models per class, we still build them off a base model. A fully individual model for each class would still be a little too expensive on memory. This was also partly due to our limited model resources.
Now that we've got Valve's modellers behind us, this might change. I'd like to have a female model for every class. I'd like the game to fit in 24 meg of RAM too.
We'll see :)
Teamplay -- how will communication be handled? Anything along the lines of Qvoice, or triggered radio sounds?
Half-Life allows us to stream audio files together into "sentences". This allows us to provide you with a bunch of wav files and allow you to dynamically string them together to form anything you'd like. For instance, if you were to bind a key to "speak I have the enemy flag", The engine would stream and play I.wav, have.wav, the.wav, etc, and play them to the other players in your team/squad/etc. You can select from a variety of different "voices". We can even allow you to adjust your sentence's pitch, allowing you to have a fairly unique voice. Half-Life's providing a wide range of sentence wav files which are used throughout the game, and TF2 will be providing even more. We'll also allow maps to provide new ones that the mapmaker thinks people might need to work effectively on his/her map. And of course, clans can create their own.
This approach to voice communication is great... it is extremely low on network bandwidth, while still allowing players a very customizable communication system.
This is one of the most innovative ideas for communication in multiplayer gaming that I have heard in a long time. We'll have to see how it works for ourselves, but I'd be willing to put a lot of money on this feature being a huge success.
The question on everyone's mind is how cheating is going to be prevented. What's going to be different in how the game files are implemented and/or checked (if at all)? Will TF2 be uncheatable?
Uncheatable is a strong word :)
It goes without saying that we'll be doing everything we possibly can to prevent cheating. Part of the problem with TF1 was that we were working in QuakeC, and all we could do there was work with the tools Quake gave us. We couldn't checksum models, or maps, or anything like that. With TF2, and more importantly Half-Life, we've requested and got additions to the networking to allow stronger cheat prevention.
The other facet of TF1 cheating was people exploiting loopholes in the TF code, and this was the result of us being from a LAN environment where preventing people from cheating isn't really an issue, let alone a concern when designing and coding. Suffice it to say, the cheating issue was in our minds throughout all of TF2's design, and continues to be throughout the implementation.
One issue which I always found strange was game sounds. If TF2 is going for realism -- how are game sounds going to be reflected?
Half-Life's sound engine is very powerful, thanks to the efforts of Kelly Bailey. The main difference is in the Digital Signal Processing. Wav files are never just "played". The engine adjusts all wav files played depending on a few factors, the main one being the environment the sound is played in. So if a sound is played underwater, it'll be dull and muffled. If it's outside, it'll be louder and echoey. If it's in a tube, it'll sound umm... "tubey"?
*grin* You get the idea... sounds sound like they should depending on where they are, and it's yet another small way that Half-Life makes the game environment more immersive.
What about Damian Scott's demo we've all been waiting for? I remember speaking to him a LONG time ago about it, but that was when we were thinking it was for Quake2. Will the new engine affect his job security?
Damian's not working for us anymore.
Will there be a demo in TF2?
We're not sure yet. We hope so, time permitting. It took 6 weeks to do TF1's.
Does Half-Life have the ability to create demos and movies like the Quake engine did, or has it progressed to a new level?
Half-Life has some advanced demo features that movie makers are going to love. Simple features like stopping and starting demos ingame and appending separate demos are supported, right up to some more trickier stuff, like editing a demo while it's running.