With it being Open Source, I don't see these demands being a problem.
I do see it being a problem, considering people in the scene are too lazy to do it and we'd have to hold the hands of linux nerds to get it done right after the 17th iteration.
If by weapon fix you mean getting rid of 50% of them it's not going to happen unless you want to code your own mod that will be played by 0.27% of the community.
Why bother playing a different game if you're going to play the same shitty maps again.
No, it looks awful as does any game with picmip. Case is, just like q3/ql, xonotic looks even worse without.
I love how you like to ride your "removeredundantweapons" horse, when it was already told gazillion times, that there are core weapons, and only fun ones. If you don't play FFA public deathmatch, you won't even encounter any of the fun guns, because all of them are missing on competitive maps.
You might only run across them in warmup time, as you get 200/200 + all weapons fully loaded, though I'm pretty certain with the "New Toys" mutator system now to be defaulted, you'll get only the core weapons in warmup too.
Btw. there's already a "competitive" mod, that differs from regular public (eg. you can't stack over 100/100 just only with 5hp/am), but that was told gazillion times too.
just don't follow warsow's route of not implementing or removing anything the community asks for. If people don't like having 18 weapons and prefer just 8 then please do so, or it'll fail like wsw did.
That's just an example of something that it seems it's going to be fixed, but there will be controversial topics such as weapon balance, adding maps from other games and whatnot.
On the first note, for us, there's no easy and clear difference between developers and regular community members. And yes, adding/removing/modifying weapons is already ditched out a lot in the forums (it's like a mad, angry beehive nowadays in there, with stingy nerds :D ), mostly because there's something one likes/dislikes, and would hate the change if that one particular thing will be removed/won't changed.
Personal experience: I'd really hate to see the shotgun melee atack go away (as we call it: trouting, reference to IRC slapping :D ), but there are high chances it'll have to go :(
We already listened to a lot not just to our main community, but requests from ESR too, like:
-implemented formerly unavaible client side controlled forcemodels
-just implemented simple items
-ELO system and stats tracking
-weapon balance from multiple inputs
-simplified weapon handling
Btw. we don't like to remove stuff, mostly because we really appreciate work done in ones free time. Most of the time, a function is rather hid, or moved to a place where only those find it in the game, who know about it and precisely seek for it. I know this mind sound stupid, but like I said numerous times, we do this all in our free times, and we do it because it is FUN. And nobody likes his/her own entertainment to be ruined;)
This is Samual btw, one of the lead developers of Xonotic--
Actually, what i've been working on primarily for our next release is finishing the gameplay design. The weapons are going to be FAR better in the next release, certainly able to blow other games out of the proverbial water in design. My goals are essentially to remove redundancy, improve on usability, simplify overly complex designs, and generally streamline the system to be more consistent and logical. For competitive players, this will be absolutely essential as it provides the various features/ideas they've been requesting for ages -- for casual players, it makes the game less confusing and less messy in its design.
Some of the main changes planned include: Removing several of the redundant weapons (so they will never be in core gameplay), merging the 2 spawn weapons into only 1 spawn weapon with more simple design, adding Lightning Gun to replace the Machine Gun, and splitting up the ammo more efficiently/logically to better balance out the weapons on maps... And obviously tweaks/fixes for the designs of the other core weapons in the mean time.
As for the other features requested... We already have ELO ranking (stats.xonotic.org), the weapon design is already under construction, we expect ~10 new good CTF maps from a mapping contest started a month ago, and the configs are easy to change/improve. -- Unfortunately chat and TV streaming as such are quite a bit more difficult tasks, I simply don't have time for that and neither does the other lead programmer. For chat, it wouldn't be too difficult for someone to use an XMPP system though-- if we could find someone willing and able to program it, that would possibly be able to make it into the next release as well.
I fear this is not a proper way to ask for a feature.
For me, I cannot tell what is better/simple for you, as you didn't give any directions. And I also think that while our weapon models are still not as shiny and Christmastree-like as eg. UT3, we won't dumb them even further in looks - that'd be just plain ugly.
I cannot even tell how many times I already said this, but here it goes n+1:
Nex:
Core weapon, with auto charging from 40 to 90 dmg points, secondary is zoom, NO HEADSHOTS, no splash damage
Rifle:
NON CORE WEAPON (=Fun gun, it's not used in competitive games), primary dmg 40, secondary damage 10, both can do HEADSHOTS (primary=+40, secondary +20).
I clearly fail how these two act like the same, just because basically both of them are hitscan, slow refire rate guns... Also, ut2k4 had both Lightning gun (with splash damage for crying out loud) and sniper rifle, but nobody complained there...
Shaft is WIP, though only Samual can tell when it'll be ready to test.
you are correct, i simply wanted to get it out there.
i am ofcourse biased after 10+ years of q3/cpm/ql.
i find the quake weapon models are the way to go:
they are simplistic, yet different enough to be distinguishable. after playing the game once, you can already tell which gun is which. and imo they are also top notch in the arts department.
the reason i say this, is that you dont get a nice looking gun model by putting a handle+trigger on an imperial stardestroyer. sure, it looks really detailed and flashy, but thats just showing off. try to make the weapons look like they won't break when they fall to the ground (think quake rl/mg/gl, anything really), and i think you'll have a winner.
reload effects like putting a new grenade or rocket into the weapons are also outdone. people know you can do it, it's not really needed anymore.
ELO/ladders must be integrated into the game's client, forums (badges) and everything related. That's the whole idea of that concept in videogames: showing off your penis size.
GTV is not needed. Actually streams -whether individual or "official"- are a great advertising tool; way better than having an in built solution that takes several months to develop.
Global chat is an absolute must. It's not like the old days in which everyone went through the hassle of searching local communities, tournaments, adding people in msn just to play friendlies, looking for ts2 IPs, etc.
Nowadays it's all about having everything integrated.
We actually can integrate the statistics into the client, all we need to do is finish developing the standard protocol/template for making such a request on the client, and then the client (and server) can know information such as ELO/player accuracy/match information, etc... Note, the information provided in the menu would probably be minimal compared to the stats site... it's very difficult to code such an interface in game. Also, maybe it would be a good idea to add automatic image generation for i.e. forum signatures. Like, showing off your player accuracy and such with an auto-generated image... In fact, i'll go talk to the developer of the stats right now about implementing that, sounds pretty simple/easy.
XMPP can do global chat too btw. Right now most people use IRC though anyway, but it would be better to be inside the game itself of course.
There is one minor drawback to global chat though, that means you CERTAINLY have to create an account... so far we've been able to avoid such a system, as we really don't want to have to deal with all of that (plus, players don't like being tied down ANYWAY) -- but for chat, it's really quite necessary.
have you tried LoL? There are literally hundreds of thousands addicted to it only because it shows a number and a badge in-game and on the website (I'm plat btw :)). No need for accuracy or other info.
There's only one guy who works on the stats system IIRC (called Antibody), with 3 (?) kids, one of them is a toddler. Everything will come eventually, but it requires time :)
Damn, I really need to buy a new PC. On the lowest possible settings I would get 20-40 fps. On zeroql's cfg I only get 9 fps haha
it's quite depressing