- requires a lot of time. We'd need to create concepts of these additional elements for each modifier, then create 3D models and set up their positions for every weapon and equipment piece. Even if we had resources to add a feature like that, it would be better to spend the time of our 3D artists for something better (like adding to Survarium new weapons, equipment or modules).
Moreover, changes like this one require programmers, who also have more important tasks.
- anges that you call easy in fact require a lot of effort, especially when changing map geometry is required. Of course, we will see what we can improve, and we will try to make at least some of the changes.
- re, we will enable it.
- 's possible technically, we will see what we can do.
- e position of collimators and the camera (when aiming) was set in a way so it's comfortable to play. We understand that certain collimators on some weapons might look worse than the others, but even if you could move the collimator, it wouldn't fix the issue. Moreover, some collimator positions might cause serious issues with the camera, including not being able to see the collimator or its center not aligning with the center of the screen.
- have already identified the issue causing this and are working on fixing it. We will add the fix to the public server in one of the upcoming updates.
- eating a new map based on an existing one is indeed easier than from scratch, but it's not enough to simply take a map and cut it in two (though it already is a rather hard technical task).
For every game mode we need to set up key areas (for instance, control points or battery spawns), respawn points for the players and bots, and navigation routes for the bots.
In truth, creating a map for a game designer doesn't depend on its size too much, it's still a lot of work even for small Slaughter maps. And that's exactly why we don't introduce new maps as often as we'd like.
- already fixed some L85A2 animation issues in the recent update, but it's unlikely we will be able to fix them all. This has to do with the weapon itself (bullpup configurations) and the way the animation works in the Survarium engine.
"Symbolically" picking up items was never planned. It's a really complex task from the standpoint of animations and correct positioning of the character's body parts. Even games with extremely high budgets which have thousands of people (including dozens of animators, programmers, and technical artists ) working on them have issues with correct arm positioning when picking up an object. For instance, The Last of Us Part 2. And this is a singleplayer game with fixed character models (there's not that many different equipment items) and no network synchronization!
If we add a "simple hand movement" that will look so-so, and will irritate you more than help or provide any useful gameplay information.
- obably we would do that.
- anging weather on a map requires a lot of time and effort, because to do that we need to rework the lighting. Unfortunately, Survarium engine can't make that automatically, and all lighting sources, particle effects and other changes need to be done manually. This is why we don't often add new weather even on the existing maps.
But there's another thing to consider. In an online shooter you need to be able to quickly locate enemies, and that's more important than atmosphere. If there's a lot of gloomy dark locations in the game, you will quickly get tired. We mean, physically tired: it's hard to aim at grey enemies inside grey environments.
This is why the majority of locations are bright, and for the same reason part of the equipment is also colorful (even though many players don't like that).
We can tell even more: a couple years ago we created a night version of one of the locations. And it was completely unplayable: you simply couldn't see enemies. And this is why we didn't even release this version on the PTS.
Finally, there's no nuclear winter in the world of Survarium, so why can't the weather be sunny?
- inging them back essentially means creating them from scratch (we can only reuse the existing 3D models, but they could require changes to display in the new renderer correctly - the modules were removed in 0.51, the renderer introduced in 0.52).
Besides, there are more than 300 modules in the game, and we wouldn't want to add even more just for the sake of quantity. It's possible we will add some more modules with specific functions (for instance, those x2 optics), but we don't think that increasing the number of modules will do the game any good. And this has to do not only with balancing, but with the fact that it's hard enough to get the modules you want already. And if there are more modules, it would be even harder.
- didn't want to reply to this, because regardless of what we say, it will be considered an excuse. On the other hand, we don't want to avoid answering this.
For starters, let's recap what was done in less than a year. Four major updates. Custom matches, clan battles. A new weapon: H&K G3SG1. Paintball game mode, changing the rules of other game modes. Rework of artifacts spawn logic. Updating several character skill trees, including adding completely new skills. Special weapons (chance to get as a reward for PvP). And also five game events, numerous balancing changes and bug fixes.
Perhaps this note is about the last few months? But a software development studio is not a factory, so we cannot produce wares and send them to the clients all the time. Some features require a lot of work for development (a year of even more), some have to be postponed or reworked, some – scrapped. This is why not all numbered Survarium updates are equal in terms of new features. And this is true for every online game.
Aforementioned bug fixes are an important part of any software development. As well as reducing technical debt as a whole. If we don't do that, Survarium will quickly become unplayable. And what's the point of adding new features, if the old ones don't work properly or are not fun? This also means that we do work that is invisible to the players but takes a lot of time (say, code optimizations, server and database maintenance, and generally supporting the backend).
Moreover, some things that have only a couple lines in the change log take dozens or even hundreds of hours to develop. And then to test. And then to bug fix and optimize. We could make a change log a few times bigger by mentioning every single small change and fix, but do you really need it?
Finally, during the summer all members of the team were on vacation, and we also released the summer event, so that's why Survarium 0.68 is relatively small. But we think it's better to release at least something than to wait until more features are done. What do you say?
