Print

Liero v1.0 – 20lt
IP: 140.113.238.249
Game Mode: Death Match
Lives: 3
Max Kills: 10
Version: OpenLieroX 0.58 rc3

Players:
RJ^^(2 lives, 3 kills)
OpenLieroXor(0 lives, 1 kills)

Modern Warfare1.0 – 20lt
IP: 37.205.11.54
Game Mode: Death Match
Lives: 0
Max Kills: 15
Version: OpenLieroX 0.58 rc3

Players:

Cruel v0.96 – 50lt
IP: 69.255.183.244
Game Mode: Death Match
Lives: 5
Max Kills: 0
Version: OpenLieroX 0.58 rc3

Players:
iRod(0 lives, 0 kills)
[CPU]I'm Not A Human(4 lives, 0 kills)
[CPU]I'm Not A Human(4 lives, 1 kills)

Liero v1.0 – 100lt
IP: 91.156.42.210
Game Mode: Death Match
Lives: 5
Max Kills: 20
Version: OpenLieroX 0.58 rc3

Players:

[Gaston]

Ruki, though I agree with your concerns, I don't think they matter much anymore. OLX development has halted, and the community is dwindling. I think it's reasonable to at least see what Jason has to offer with his lx version before we dismiss it. Sure it may split up the community, but what community? There really isn't a lot of people left these days. And I think if Jason is serious and wants to develop at a somewhat steady pace for a foreseeable future improving upon the problems with 0.56 and implementing stuff we've gotten used to with OLX, it could actually help the community.

Any confusion for newbies can be cleared up on informing on the download pages what LX does what.

[Raziel]

Hi Jason,

if you would like to do something new regarding LX/OLX, I think I could give a hand with the layout designs, if you would need it of course. I might need some new things in portfolio, so I would be happy to work a little on this game again for my own benefits.

Also, from my view, one of the most important things in OLX was extended frontend and new layout. I never could stand the old LX look ^^

[JasonB]

Thanks Raziel. Probably just wait & see what happens first.

One of the biggest changes with v0.60 was a new UI engine, based on skins & UI layout text files. Used the same UI engine i made for Cortex Command.
It's fairly customizable. With both skin & layout.

[Tafka]

Mm, there's just too many different opinions on what everyone really wants the game to look like, so I suggest you make some sort of a group where people could discuss what should be included and what now. The problem with OLX for a long time was/has been is that they didn't consider the opinion of players much.

Another thing you can avoid compared to OLX is releasing many different version to public and compatibility. It caused a case where a lot of players used different versions that behaved in a different way and was unfair for one side or the other.

I think it would be good if you just listened to the players what kind of a game we would want and work on something like that, if you want to of course. If it eventually is better, I bet most players would go for it. I wouldn't think this community could split thanks to the small size.

[Gaston]

As far as I can remember, it seemed to me that when Jason quit developing LX way back when, it was in part due to the fact that it was impossible to meet the demands of the community. So I don't think it's going to work out having a comitee saying what's best for LX. I say let Jason develop it the way he wants, and we can give him feedback that he decides himself if he wants to take into account or not.

[Tafka]

It was more like.. he made 0.6 versions without most people even knowing he was doing something and then released it all of a sudden without lobby and lots of other things players like and they kept playing 0.56 due to it?

[Gaston]

the 0.6 versions were out for public testing for a long time before he released them. However he didn't get too much feedback on them as most players were busy flaming about mortars/making "I'm leaving" and "I'm back" threads. And when they were released officialy the community was all of the sudden surprised and angry because things changed. That's not to say the community alone was to blame, but the whole situation was messed up.

Jason seems to want to work on his own code in his own way (at least that's what I gather from the hints he leaves in his posts), and having a comitee deciding what should be in or out is not something I think is gonna work out. I think the best way for such a thing to work out, is to let Jason work on his own thing, and let the community give feedback and let things run its course, without letting the community get out of hand like happened at GU way back.

[Ruki]

the 0.6 versions were out for public testing for a long time before he released them. However he didn't get too much feedback on them as most players were busy flaming about mortars/making "I'm leaving" and "I'm back" threads. And when they were released officialy the community was all of the sudden surprised and angry because things changed. That's not to say the community alone was to blame, but the whole situation was messed up.

Jason seems to want to work on his own code in his own way (at least that's what I gather from the hints he leaves in his posts), and having a comitee deciding what should be in or out is not something I think is gonna work out. I think the best way for such a thing to work out, is to let Jason work on his own thing, and let the community give feedback and let things run its course, without letting the community get out of hand like happened at GU way back.

I don't know in what dimension you live but when JasonB put out 0.6x versions to test them there weren't mortar combos present at Gaming Universe or perhaps they were existing already but GU lx community didn't care about it. We mostly tested it on Liero v 1.0 mod, and there was Liero v 2.0 mod in 0.6x versions which would replace the old 1.0 default version. Nearly nobody was playing 0.6x though, some 42 guys and perhaps other few individuals for a few times. As I recall those versions were quite different than 0.56 and they were pretty buggy. The only thing the GU community was arguing about were clan wars and occasional personal issues. Not to mention the LieroX Enhanced, the successor of LieroX which failed.

[JasonB]

With v0.60 i tried to redo a few things that really needed restructuring internally to move forward. Like the netcode rates, dedicated server, etc.

In the end quite a large number of things ended up changing. Like lobby removed, UI redone. With such a large change, quite a few bugs crept in & worst of all, somehow, the physics felt different.
That wasn't intentional, but something changed from v0.56 -> v0.60. Add onto that the bugs, and it just became a different, buggy game and it wasn't well received. After that i kinda just lost interest & moved onto other things.

Now, moving forward, i would like to make the game feel like v0.56. I see a ton of people mentioning v0.56 & wanting to go back to those days.
I would like to persist with the idea of not so much removing the lobby, but putting it inside the game.
Besides that, i want to go back to the physics of v0.56. Keep the mods, the levels, the skins all in v0.56 format.
The netcode has changed, but i'm hoping it won't make the game feel too different from v0.56, which was all client side.

That is pretty much what i'm aiming for.

[Ruki]

Yeah, I think the cruical thing would be to keep the v0.56 physics before you do anything else.

[albert]

Hi all,

OLX development hasn't really halted. But the amount of time we had put into it has become much much less.

On 0.58, not much was done anymore because it's pretty much stable. Some minor problems were fixed recently (around Christmas) by DC and there might be some 0.58 final, soon.

On 0.59, a lot of further work was done since the last release. Esp. since the last months, I put a few hundreds working hours into this. The plan is to make it just working as it is, but stable with all existing functionality and to remove some other concerns. And to unify the Gusanos engine with the LX engine, making them both look the same. The progress  was quite good and the code is much cleaner now. Also, right now, the game is really stable (and that includes everything, the full Gusanos Lua scripting engine, etc.). It is even in a state that I can prove mathematically that most things will just work (that was one of the goals of much of the work; I might add a testing framework later which checks some of those conditions). Before a new release can be made, some last (simple) remaining work on a (partly) new network engine needs to be made, though.

(Some stats from here: 1,128 changed files with 140,770 additions and 161,893 deletions.)

Right now, University has caught me again and I'm quite busy with other stuff, probably for the next 2 months, so I'm not sure if I can put much work into OLX then.

So, I cannot really put a date on an upcoming OLX release. People are very welcome to compile & test the current code themselves, though. I also thought about just finishing the network changes (should be doable on a single day) and just release some new beta where many of my goals are only half-finished, though.

[DarkCharlie]

The issue with OLX is that it has become too programmer centric. There are lots of configuration options and the main focus has been to polish the code. While that is good for the future (better graphics, less lag, more modding), the user experience suffers. I have been planning to fix this with a new GUI system (much like the 0.6x one) but it has overgrown my schedule possibilities.

We did many things wrong during the OLX development. However, I'm an optimist - we can learn and fix what we did wrong

Also, we listened too much to the community. That is a highway to hell 

@Jason:
I'm glad you are considering joining the LX world again. I very much understand the urge to work on an own code instead of OLX. After all every programmer prefers his own code.

When I started hacking on LX, I had been programming for 1 year (in Pascal) and had never seen C++ before. It was damn hard to get around in your code! Yet, I managed to release the first LX Pro (future OLX) a month later. I doubt it's hard for you, an experienced C++ programmer who wrote the code base, to read OLX code.

I would very much appreciate if you joined OLX and brought your ideas and vision to it.

I am not afraid of competition as some mention. It won't give me free time to work on OLX and make it awesome.

Neither I am afraid of splitting the community.

What I am afraid of is splitting forces. There are very few talented programmers who are interested in LX/OLX. You are among them. Moreover, you are the most valued one. Redoing much of the work that has already been done in OLX is waste of your time. Likewise, it's waste of our time to build a GUI engine and fix the network when you already have solved that. Is it not easier to join OLX if you consider it pragmatically?

One more thing. However you decide, please don't wait on "how it turns out". I have a job + a university. Even though I would love to hack on OLX, my time is severely limited. It's similar with Albert. Pelya hasn't commited anything for about 3 years. If you wait for too long, there really might be no (O)LX to save anymore.

[JasonB]

The thing is, i've always considered OLX as having a different aim as v0.56/v0.60.
As you've mentioned, OLX always seemed like it was trying to please everyone. Adding feature after feature to the game, merging another game engine (Gusanos) into the codebase, and various other things.

My aim (most of the time) was to keep the core Liero look & feel and try to make the online game 'just work'. Last year i spent a bit of time concentrating on nothing but making the game work well online.

The effort probably goes both ways. If OLX or LX get abandoned, the work done to date on the other project goes to waste.

[Gaston]

I think (O)LX needs to progress. Aiming for "0.56 feel" is not going to do much for the community IMO. Well, what's left of it anyway. OLX spent a few years trying to do that as well as trying to please everyone, and in turn the community dwindled away. Oh well.

[Ruki]

Claiming community is becoming less and less active because of OLX is ridiculous. If not for OLX, even less players would play this game. Without the future development after JasonB has left, lets be honest, LXE was a failure, this game would be probably gone by now. Without OLX, new design, new ads, new project team, there would be no activity here right now. You will claim you would still play it but I highly doubt you would play anything when you would be alone in the server day after day. People who claim they would play this game so much more if it would be still good old 0.56 are just full of bullshit. Face it, this game is old, outdated, prehistoric and beside the enthusiasts and few newcomers who find this game fascinating, what more would you expect? You can't turn shit into gold, people play games which are on several DVDs not in a tiny Rar pack. I remember few years ago when the community was supposely still active I tried hosting several contests here at LXA as well as in game and activity was poor, if I didn't constantly encourage people to join, practically beg them, they would all fail, so eventually I stopped bothering and stopped creating skins and stopped putting more effort until I stopped playing this as well. People only care about clan wars which are meaningless anyway since there are no ladders and there are 300 of them in one day with same few clans. One guy wants this in OLX, one guy wants that. When he gets what he asked for he goes inactive until he randomly pops up again whining about something else. What else do you expect from the community then? Just stop whining and be happy with what you have for as long this still exists... everyone I used to play with except for Tafka and IRC perhaps are long gone so screw it. People won't play this game for ever so get used to it. I think current OLX release is a damn good one. I can play in lag without shooting myself most of the time while moving forward and there are all these new game styles which you all love to play. Not to mention the download missing level and join in the middle of the game. Freakin' 0.56 didn't even have a ban function...

[Gaston]

Assuming you're referring to me Ruki, I don't see where we disagree. My point was only that OLX demonstrated to some extent how useless it is to try to please everyone at the same time. Without OLX, the community would be even smaller than it is now.

\general rant{
The situation is simple really.

Liero was an amazingly fun game in it's time. LieroX took some of that fun and carried it over to netplay. However, after 0.56 had been out for an already long time and 0.60 didn't turn out too popular, people got too used to 0.56, and 0.56 has turne into some sort of quasi-religious experience, where anything that doesn't feel like 0.56 for the old timers is blasphemy.

However 0.56 has bad graphics (enlarging pixels 2x), was mildly buggy (0.56 crashed several times a week for me. OLX 0.58 rc3 has crashed maybe 1 or 2 times totally.), and lacks a lot of core functions. The goal (unless it's just a personal project) shouldn't be to duplicate the 0.56 feel. It should be to progress the game. Not stall on some bygone era just because the community happened to peak at a version called 0.56.
}

[Ruki]

I was more refering to the general belief around here by some players.

[Tafka]

It is correct that 0.56 wasn't that good, due to crashes & errors and a lot of missing things we have in OLX such as easier connecting, you see server details more, 8+ players, ban, weapon presets etc. which made it all better. What I think we mostly refer to is the 0.56 gameplay. And the RC3 game is pretty near to that one. It's very playable and the only few things you can really notice difference is lasers, rifles, spawning and some other specific guns, which everyone should admit - they are being worse compared to 0.56. Also new GUI is a step up from 0.56.

But the part of RC3 being very decent right now is that people still play mostly only the things that were part of 0.56 - that's classic 100% or rifles, rarely some mods with deathmatch or TDM mode. Very few of the additions related to gameplay such as all the frictions, relative air jumps or so have added barely anything extra to the game. Yes some people play race or H&S was played a bit ago, but as I understood game modes were really easy to add. So very big part of OLX is stuff that nobody uses - even noobs really if you check the server details time to time, which was the main argument why to add these.

The third part is some specific things like you can see enemies health very accurately, how much damage you did with certain hit and so on. It doesn't make sense to see enemy's health in a game like this. Pretty much like WH in CS or other shooter games. It changes all so much especially that main games are deathmatch and TDM where everyone goes for the kills, or even Fightbox concept where you fight for kills - seeing health just messes things up really. For example it changes my gameplay quite a bit when I have it turned on. I see enemy with low - I use CG immediately because it's most effective, while without knowing health I might be using something totally else. In some games I see a guy with full health coming near me I might run away to go get someone with lower health. I don't really do it, but you get the idea how it changes. Strafe is one thing a lot of discussions were made of.


To sum it up:
Basically these 3 groups of text go into:
1) Things that add something to the game, make it more comfort, easier to use, better.
2) Things that don't hurt anything, but doesn't really add anything either as you can just ignore it.
3) Things that are basically bit harmful to playing this and make things worse.

Perhaps new level system or resolution or net engine(less lag) anything like that would go to group 1, it wouldn't affect gameplay really but make the game better.
OLX had pretty much all the things from group 1 already in Beta 3 when the new skin came and all, but had worse physics and some different kind of bugs. The rest of it was just extra imo, went from fixing bugs into adding stuff & fixing bugs.

But then everyone got different views on how OLX should look like, what should be added and what not so it's pretty understandable that if 1 guy wants 1 thing and other guy wants other thing you don't get to something that everyone wants.

[JasonB]

Interesting
I'm not sure there is an easy solution to this.


Couple random points though:
1) The LX community started from scratch when LX was first created, and the same applies to other games.
I don't see the current group of people here as the only players that will ever want to play (O)LX.

2) If you check out games like VVVVVV, Minecraft, Cortex Command, and other retro games, it gives me belief that there are people out there (like us) that enjoy the retro graphics style. Or won't let it get in the way of a fun game. And they will even pay for it too.

[Gaston]

Sure the community can build up again. If there was no chance of that, I wouldn't still hang around here. I just think the focus amongst what seems to be the majority, is misguided in terms of recreating the 0.56 "feel".

People want to play 2D games. And LX has a good concept for that. But there is absolutely no reason to enlarge everything 2x as it is now. The only purpose it serves now, is to scare off new people because of the pixellated look.