2/7 Dev Chat Notes: Very thorough and long. Quickly cleaned/editted/posted

[OmnipotentKiwi]

May not be perfect, but for all you eager people, enjoy:

START
Buildings: They are huge buildings, encompassing subterranean areas. All upgrades listed are to all buildings on the continent.
Five facilities
Drop Ship Center: One of the only locations to get galaxies other then the sanctuary, almost the sole purpose of the building.
Tech plants: Upgrades all facilities to be able to buy all vehicles except galaxies that are only available at drop ship center and sanctuary.
AMP Station: Reduces MPU consumption of buildings.
Interlink facility: Superior radar.
Bio Lab: There is an implant terminal in basement. After capturing the base, it turns healing consoles into advanced healing consoles that heal armor, as well as health, at all stations.

Towers: Hack the ground floor to gain control. There are lockers in each tower. In addition, the towers have spawn centers.
Watch towers: Five story tower, no turrets, and good for observation as well as sniping. They are located in vantage points.
Air Towers: Like gun towers, with man-able turrets and two air vehicle pads that may have abilities later. Other areas of the continent can be difficult to land in. Currently this tower is underpowered and being tweaked for balance.
Gun Towers: Many turrets.

TURRETS: Missed it�

Environment interaction: If it is important, it is destroyable, but not consoles. Terminals can be destroyed, as well as turrets, etc, except silos and consoles.

Water: �We do not swim, we sink�. Vehicles will short circuit after a short amount of time, approximately 45-60 seconds, and you need to abandon it if it does or you will go down with the vehicle.

Lockers: Lockers are un-powered, so you can use them when power goes down in a building. There are also no gun control panels at towers, so you need lockers to store weapons in case you die and respawn at towers weaponless.

What kinds of terrain types are there: There are lava pools, snow/artic terrain, temperate terrain, and desert terrain in varying degrees and form. Each with lots of variations for example: temperate has from hills to swamps, deserts from rolling and open sand to craggy rocks and canyons with bridges, artic from pure snow to high cliffs with plato with hairpin roads.

Weather effects: You currently cannot be hit by lightning, although it is on the drawing board. In general, rainstorms and snowstorms of varying degrees will roll through areas so you can actually coordinate under the cover of storms, or avoid them.

Weather Map: Looks like watching the evening news, can see the cloud fronts moving across including the severity as well as the direction it is moving.

Sun glare: Not yet

Objects: Cannot currently shoot through any object or part of the world.


Projectile physics: There are projectile physics, with no effect from wind, but gravity does plan an effect. May add wind effects if human accuracy is too good at long ranges. Bullets have life spans that determine range. For example, the bullet is shot with a certain velocity, travels for its �lifespan� of time and then ceases to exist when the lifespan is up.

Projectile speed: Currently no instant-hit weapons, with the speed of weapons varying. The Lasher is one of the slowest, while the Lancer and Boltdriver are some of the fastest.

Headshots or no: There are NO headshots or any body locations because some weapons are already very lethal, and headshots will make the combat go by even faster. Some kills will take place in a matter of three seconds or less. �There is no game purpose for [headshots] in our game�.

Boltdriver: Reload is about a second or two (open, take out old shot, put in new one). Everything except MAX armor and Infiltration suits can use a bolt driver.

Phoenix: It is currently being tweaked a lot, but it is currently a camera guided missile and your viewpoint changes to its after firing as you have control over it. The turning radius is currently very tight. Currently this weapon is far too powerful, but it will be changed.

Rounds: You hit X to switch between AP and normal clips.

Where weapons inspired from real life guns? No clue.

Physics: There are currently no rag doll physics, but there are different death animations for all the specific armors.

Region specific damage: None, it is too complicated for a big game like this. There are just too many complications in the scale of combat we foresee.

Knife: Knife may kill in one hit only in secondary mode, which is a loud but powerful blow, and the melee booster is good for damage too. There is no bonus damage for knifing when you come out of cloak while wearing an infiltrator suit.

NOTE: Technical difficulties began here; some information may be incomplete from here on until the end of the note.

Infiltrator suit: Can use hacking/med/engineering, and will go to visible mode when doing these actions, but keep in mind that they have less inventory space.

Agile suit: Missed it, chat was incomprehensible.

Hacking: Anyone can hack a control console or a door without a certification, but it takes a long time. Hacking/Advanced hacking speeds up the hack times. Skill abilities: Hacking: Terminals (Can use enemy terminals in their base). Advanced Hacking: Nothing listed during the chat.

Standard armor has no benefits to any other armor.

Macros: You can set up text macros or voice macros on hot bar. Something was mentioned about radar, but missed.

Reviving: When you are dead, you can be revived. You can only stay, without releasing, for five minutes before you auto-release to your last bind point. When a healer attempts to resurrect you, you get a confirmation dialog box, as you may not want to be resurrected during a bad situation.

NOTE: Technical difficulties went away.

Lighter armor means a faster moving character. If speed was a percentage, these are the speeds of the various armors: Infiltration 100%, Agile/Standard 90%, Reinforced 80%, MAX 50-60% (plus auto run which slowly ups their running speed until they are going fast enough to keep up with vehicles.)

Can MAXes use implants: They cannot use melee boosters, but they can use dark light vision, audio amplifier, shield, etc implants. They are the same implants as the ones a vehicle pilot could, and would, use.

TR MAX pounder only uses one type of grenade, but it can launch a lot of them a far distance, especially when anchored.

Vanu MAX: It takes as long, if not twice as long, to recharge your depleted jump pack energy as you spend jumping. The jumps are parabolic only, and the arc is determined by your current movement speed when you fire the jump pack.

TR MAX cannot plant down on vehicles.

How effective are heavy tanks main guns on infantry w/ splash: Tanks have multiple guns, with the main being mainly for other tanks and vehicles, while the secondary are anti-infantry guns. You can switch between weapons as a driver or have gunners. Main turrets do have SOME splash damage but are mainly for tanks so will be less useful against infantry.

Standard Jumping: You can jump onto the roof of the vehicle, but you can take damage on impact depending on if the vehicle is moving or not. In general, you will fall off the vehicle generally when it is moving.

Infantry vs. Tanks: Infantry can take out tanks with the anti-vehicular weapons, among others, although other tanks are better suited to the task of taking out another tank.

Lightning Steering: Some vehicles are steered by mouse, and some by keyboards. Steer with keys, aim turret with mouse, as in the lightning (roughly 60* arc).

Auto aiming on turrets in tanks: Turret movement is separate from tank movement so that you have a much easier time aiming when in a moving vehicle, but firing from a non-moving vehicle is still easier. (Ex. If your driver suddenly jerks to the left, you will not suddenly be missing all over the place.)

Tank fire: Tanks can fire in arcs and have indirect fire.

ANT: The process is the ANT gets fuel from a warp gate, drives to the silo that needs refueling, dumps, and repeats. They can be picked up from any vehicular pad including at the sanctuary. Silos take a long time to lose power if there are no currently raging battles going on in the area. If silo empties, building goes to neutral. Can do drops with Galaxies, but it is not a cakewalk for the pilot. The ANT is a very slow vehicle with not very heavy armor.

Drop Pods: No trunks in drop pods

Galaxy: Holds up to 15 people INCLUDING a tank or buggy. The 15 people comes from one pilot, three gunners, two MAXes, six passengers, and up to three people sitting inside the biggest buggy. The Sunderer is the biggest land vehicle, carries 11 with heavy armor and guns. Even though heavily armored, remember these vehicles are massive, so impossible to miss. You should still bring escorts with these vehicles.

Kinetic Dampers: You can bail out at nearly any height without taking damage, and the entire procedure is automatic.

Exploding vehicles: When destroyed, they have a good size explosion that will cause you to take quite a bit of damage especially if you are standing right next to it. Size of the vehicle depends on how much damage, and radius of it. No shrapnel
CONTINUED ON PART 2

[OmnipotentKiwi]

PART 2
Driving: There is still room to tweak the driving system, but in general, each vehicle handles differently (i.e. Galaxy vs. Mosquito), and even some have different control schemes. In general, they are simple to pick up and use, but there are skilled nuances. There are many ways to excel besides controls though.

Flight Module: Reminds you of Tribes 2, and that is pretty much it.

Outfit System: Leader has promoting and kick abilities. Statistics for the outfit are tracked (tons of them), and you are ranked against other outfits. There is a special chat channel for the outfit, and there is currently no size limit for an outfit.

Outfit Tags: Currently it shows the full outfit name under your name. Enemies will show outfit tags, but not names, unless you have advanced targeting implant. You also get logos on armor and vehicles.

Platoons: You can only have one platoon; this is currently the highest you can have. Anything higher should be contained in an outfit.

Commanders: Ranks 3-5 are currently being tweaked, and not mentioned. Rank 1: Waypoints. Can organize squad into teams, and then give commands to the teams, as well as have the ability issue order to the group. Rank 2: Select specific members to issue orders to. They can ask for information from the satellite uplink (getting locations of friendly units). Higher ranks will see an expansion of these abilities. As you get higher in rank, you get more armor pieces (leg, arm, collar, etc) for visuals and it makes it very easy to spot officers, including enemies targeting officers.

Continent Lock: Benefits cannot be revealed at this time. You must own all the facilities (not including towers) on the continent, and all the warp gates will be flipped to secure (you can leave if you are the former owner, but you can not come back). Only way to unlock the warp gates is to drop pod onto the continent and recapture (not just hack) a building.

Sanctuaries: There is no way for an enemy to get into a sanctuary in the beginning, and weapons do not even work. More information will be coming at some point.

Weapon Ammo: You cannot purchase weapons/armor/ammo from another empire unless you loot the corpse of an enemy. Therefore, if you take a Vanu weapon you must get Vanu ammo as well. Certifications must be comparable as well in order to use.

Certification Tree: There is no more then one pre-requisite for any certification. For example, hacking is required for advanced hacking, agile armor for MAX armor, etc. Certifications are not for combat balance, but for requiring you to specialize so you can be relied on for certain things. You can always unlearn a cert and learn another one later on.

Grief Points: Still in tweaking, so this information is very general. There is no distinction between health and armor. The grief system is over 24 hours, so everything clears after 24 hours but the tick down loss of grief is over each minute.

Server Locations: They want to have servers in Europe, Korea, as well West, Central, and East USA.

56k Connections: Initial tests show very positive connections even for 56k, but have not been tested in battles with forces over the count of 30 members.

Cost: Upper management will make the decision much closer to release

Alternate forms of payment: Probably

Free trial: It is planned, but not authorized, but pretty much a given.

Server Switch: You can play on any server at anytime, but you cannot move characters from server to server.

Certs/Skills: We will be putting more information out about the game very soon so you may know how to play the game before it even goes gold.

Release: We will attempt simultaneous releases among the world, but not sure how technically feasible it will be.

European: You should be able to buy a US copy and play on European servers, but it will not have localization files so you will only be able to play in English.

Alt-Tab: You can probably alt-tab in game, but it is in discussion.

Battles: Not a small squad game, expecting 100-200 player battles with lots going on.

Switching Empires: Delete all your characters and you can switch to another empire. You cannot play two empires on the same server, at the same time with one account.

Faction (player amount) balance: Empires incentive program: When teams get really out of balance, grossly outnumbered teams will get more XP and the ones who outnumber you will get a XP penalty. If Empires are SERIOUSLY (2:1 outnumbers) unbalanced, we will adjust health maximums, as well as other incentives currently in test. Server tracks total play time, and not population for incentives.

Server moves: You have to start over when you go to a new server.

Cussing: There is a chat filter. Default is on. A customer support representative can handle racist comments and other very inappropriate comments, and when you appeal the server automatically logs all the chat information over the past 10-15 minutes.

Live Events: If any GM controlled events were ever planned, they would be total surprises. It may happen occasionally.

Stats: Still not fancy looking, but they track a lot: kills, weapons used, what you kill, vehicles destroyed, amounts of hacks, captures, assists, as well as outfit info, etc. Screenshots will be forthcoming

Seamless Servers: We want to keep servers separate with separate worlds in order to keep the worlds similar to the community. We do not want one giant server.

Expansions: Most information is currently black boxed. There are goals beyond BEPs, such as trying to inspire outfit goals as well.

Back-story: The story will change over time, but unknown to what degree. We have not really planned retention features yet, but we have a long list of what we want to do. Will watch to see what we should strengthen and add according to what players want.

Empire Specific Aircraft: No concrete plans for any new aircraft.

Unrevealed Info: There is nothing new to release yet. Producers� letters will be released as normal. We do not release info when things are not fully completed, and we have sometimes agreed to let other media outlets get the story first as an exclusive.

Devs: We do enjoy the game. We really enjoy working on the game even with the stress and burden. �We make things explode as a living�

Which faction will you join: TR, many of the artists are Vanu, and many of the programmers are NC.

How many man-hours went into Planetside as well as Twinkies: No Twinkies, but we have free sodas. I think we have eaten maybe one Twinkie. Many man-hours went into the project, with about 13-14 hours a day, every day into the game.

Beta Registration: We will reopen beta applications right before the open/external beta, but closed beta will only come from those in the first applications.

Beta: Closed beta is the 22nd of February, with about 50 people to start, letters will be mailed out next week. This stage of beta will have a couple of events each week, with open beta being afterwards. First play test will be on the Saturday (missed the date). We will slowly add people until we are ready to do external testing, we will start sending out CDs to about 10,000 people for the External Beta test.

COMMUNITY QUESTIONS:
Dual Monitors: There is currently no support for dual monitors, although we could do it.

Logo creation: Outfit logos are pre-made to begin with because we do not want to play content cops, and the more additions of user created content, the more you have to download on the fly. Brainstorms pertaining to player made logos as outfits reach a certain level (so many active members, and so many outfit points, etc), we MAY allow custom icons, although it would have to be very rare.

Beta emails: Emails will be mailed mid to late next week and we will post about it when it is sent.

Locker Capacity: �You can cram a lot of stuff in there�. How much is dependent on the item size. The MAX armor inventory is the largest inventory, and lockers have about four to five times as much room.

Chat channels: Local chat as if speaking, squad chat, outfit chat, commander chat (CEP ability), broadcasting through the continent (HIGH CEP ability), some macros and quick keys for in battle chat. We do allow use of voice communication from Third Party Products.

Email System: You can have a message of the day for the guild outfit, but there is no email system.

Beta, European: First 50 or so players will most likely not be European, but we will be expanding afterwards and definitely before external beta.

Cross-Empire Communication: No chat, but you can be overheard by local area voice macros by enemy empires.

Outfit: There will be ranks, but we are still tinkering with what abilities ranks within an outfit can have.

Temporary structures: Currently there are no temporary structures but they are on our retention plan.

Ammo Switching: Any time you want to switch ammo, you hit X, although you can change the key, as it is player mapped. A quick-change animation plays, and afterwards you can shoot. Vanu do not need to change ammunition types, and can quickly switch with the flick of a switch by right clicking of the mouse.
FINISH

[Navaron]

Congrats. I was going to do this, then decided, fuck it. Someone else can. You're someone else. Congrats.

[TeamR]

Ahhh....
Very shway! Pat on the back for taking time out to do this. thanks.

[Civilian]

Wow, great job man. Looks like it was lots of work.

[SandTrout]

Sorry I asked a question twice. I came in late and didn't know that it has already been asked.

[coljac]

Didn't hear the chat yet, but here's what I found interesting from the notes:

Objects: Cannot currently shoot through any object or part of the world.

That's a shame. Knowing when someone is in cover and blasting them is always fun.

There are NO headshots or any body locations

I'm not sure what to make of this. I suppose they playtested it and found headshots unnecessary.

When a healer attempts to resurrect you, you get a confirmation dialog box, as you may not want to be resurrected during a bad situation.

That's amusing - "I'm better off dead."


Some vehicles are steered by mouse, and some by keyboards.

I didn't quite follow the reason for this. Why would this be? And can you use joystick for aircraft?

The Commanders stuff was very good info. I'm looking forward to playing that role.

Server Locations: They want to have servers in Europe, Korea, as well West, Central, and East USA.

No Australia! That is a real shame. What will all the Aussies do?

Chat filter

That's a bit of a drag. Won't affect the gameplay I'm sure.

Outfit: There will be ranks, but we are still tinkering with what abilities ranks within an outfit can have.

It would be nice to be able to reward good players with a promotion and extra abilities. I'll be keenly looking for more info on this later on.

[OmnipotentKiwi]

Some vehicles are steered by mouse, and some by keyboards.

I didn't quite follow the reason for this. Why would this be? And can you use joystick for aircraft?

Basically the point is some vehicles require dual stearing (one for the vehicle, one for the vehicle weapon) so they try to keep the most important steering function on the mouse (ie GUN) since it has more flexibility.

On the note of the joystick, although not spoken about tonight, I remember them saying you could use a joystick for some vehicles.

[Hamma]

nice job

[Squeeky]

Heh, I was doing this, Was about half way done, oh well, good job

[TheGreatCarbini]

I'm just glad they are gonna give people another chance who missed november, and I'm gonna have to go find a Vanu lasher and hide it in my locker once i find one.

[�io]

I'm gonna wait for audio version.

Was too busy helping out eMa and staff to even listen to the darn thing.

[OmnipotentKiwi]

That's a long listen as a warning Probably roughly two hours after a bit of editting

[StrontiumDog]

Thanks for that Omni, that must have taken some time to do.

Can anyone add to the bits Omni missed out?

/edit

"Congrats. I was going to do this, then decided, fuck it. Someone else can. You're someone else. Congrats."

lolol btw!!

[NapalmEnima]

Locker's must be F'ing HUGE.

My god... I mean... HUGE


It may be a real pain to fill them up. Trucking back and forth back and forth dropping stuff off and picking up more. I wonder if they'll have something to make it easier. Like an inv terminal that lets you dump stuff straight from there to your locker.