Interview with Oswald by 4ever

Oswald hi, Im ready

thats okay

Well for about the last three years I have been involved with Silicon Ice, working on Urban Terror. Before that time I had not had any direct contact or affliation with a mod or development team. Coming from the Action Quake 2 community, I was in charge (at one time) of the map depot, so I guess I got my reputation from there, then start my own website, the6thfloor.com, which has been around for about 5 years.
The mod really is a full time job, believe it or not. I work a 40 hour a week job with the airlines in Los Angeles, doing tasks similar to that of SID, in coordination and communication. So my real life experiences have really helped me in position as Project Coordinator and PR for Urban Terror. Outside a few close friends I have locally, I have actually met some very cool people through the mod.

I still have my private life, but usually if I am home, I can be found in front of the computer, working on Urban Terror or shotucasting for TSN. I guess having my webcams up and being on the radio allows for many people to get to know me and the development quite a bit. I guess that can be a good thing, but there are times, when you do need a break and will head out to find some other activity to enjoy. (done)

OMG, the coders have been crazy mad when it comes to their involvement in this development cycle. Taking nothing away from everyone else who has put many long hours in, like Blade and Dragonne, but the coders really are the integral part to any development, Urban Terror is no different.

With three nearly full time coders, we have been able to accomplish more then I think we actually intended. TwentySeven, Density and Highsea deserve more praise than I could ever give them. They dedication and effort has been unparalleled during this cycle. That is the reason we have made so much progress on many different fronts of our codebase.

Correct, this cycle meaning Beta 3.

Right now we do not want to open source anything we have worked on because we are not done. We do not want to see mutliple versions of our game being played. We want SIDs version of Urban Terror only. So we will not release any of our code until the mod is finished. Even then, that will be the decision of the coders to release it or not.

Well right now Beta 3 is NOT the end of Urban Terror. I am talking a year or two after we are done, we could possibly give out the source code. That is what I mean. What next, after Urban Terror? That is still open for discussion, we are considering some other projects on different engines, such as AMP2. We are possibly looking at forming a company and trying our luck as game development. But there are many things that need to fall. Well the development's to do list is getting shorter and mine is getting longer.

We still have some tweaking and bugs to fix, which we are doing now. But this is the point in development where I get busy, getting amny of the support documents updated, along with trying to coordinate the release, but getting FTP sites and trying to get files early to them and server admins. I think I have about 40 itms on my to do list before the release date.

We support all major platforms, Win32, Linux and of course Mac. It has been this way since we first began. No reason to ignore alternate gaming platforms, even if they are not as widely used as Windows.

There are really no cvars implemented like cg_camping 0/1 that can be turned on or off. Hahaha. Would be nice though, wouldnt it?

Hard to say, because I really don't get involved in the codebase itself. But still there is no real code that can be added. I mean the mod is very fast, being that fast it really does not promote camping.

Poland is borded to the north by the Baltic Sea, with German to the west and waht used to the the USSR to the east. The capital is Warsaw and their currancy is the Zloty. :)
I am not a geographically challenged AMerican

What do you want to know about the testers?

Yes we do have have some Polsih members, I believe {synth}Duke is from Poland if my memory serves me correct.

As for qualifications or criteria, there is none really set. As long as you are trustworhty (which seems more difficult to find these days in gamers) and do not cheat (again, hard to find) then you have a chance to test the release. I think we have had as many as 300 testers, before some asshat thought it would be cool to leak all our files. Really didnt hurt too much, we removed them and all their access. Since we only give out cl

Well, for testing purposes, the pak files we give out to the play testers only consist of client side files, files the clients need to play Urban Terror. It does not include the files necessary to start a server. For example with 2.6a you can start your own server. If you had the Beta 3 test files you could not do this. You must play on a passworded SID sanctioned test server

gimme a minute on that question

can we skip to the next one...trying to get some info from the coders.

np, go ahead

I had spoke to TonyRay, the head man at EvenBalance, makers of Punkbuster, before this was included in Urban Terror. Unfortuantely at that time, since SID did not have full engine access, it was not possible to implement into our game code. Thankfully, with a new point release by id Software and Ttimo, Punkbuster was integrated and I really commend them for that move, and here is why.
Up to PB being included, we had to content with the like of script kiddies who thought themselves 1337, creating OGC hooks and bots in order to cheat and ruin the fun and enjoyment of our mod and other vanilla Quake 3 games and mods. With PB, that burden of having to development counter cheats was lifted from the mod team and place on Punkbuster, since that is what their software is intended to do, help prevent cheats like OGC.
Now the gaming community sees it like this. If they cant get it to work, then they dont like it. It also means that you MUST have a legit copy of Quake 3 with a valid CD key, or else you were bound to get an error message. I do think that a bit of reading and understand what PB does goes a long way, but that seemed to fall on the dev teams shoulders as well.
At this point, there are very few problems that pop up that are PB related that the team or community can not answer. I do think if it were integrated earlier, the community would have supported it a bit more. But from the dev team's point of view, we are very thankful for Evenbalance and Punkbuster.

** I have the asnwer for the code question now.
Please give credit to Highsea...his answer is:
number one reason would be, to give an equal opportunity to enjoy the game to a wide range of people, with very different connection types for example, you can totaly hold your own with a 200 ping vs someone with a ping of 50.
Second reason would be that in q3 most of the guns are not hit-scan, but projectiles, that means that you can predict where your rocket will hit. that makes it easier to play with higher ping cause you can adjust to it. Its would be harder to that with hitscan guns.
Thats about it.

One more comment on cheating. I really dont think it is as widespread as the gaming community makes it out to be. Sure there are cheaters out there, but I really think that it ends up being skills over cheating. But a small complaint about cheating gets the community in a fury.

Okay for the Beta 3 questions

checking...

got another while I wait for an answer

Highsea responds: thats prbly not possible because the engine handles rcon commands directly, so the game code doesnt see commands like map or cvars g_passowrd get executed/ or change. its possible to write a wrapper code for example something like foo_rcon map ut_casa, the command foo_rcon will be game code that can log stuff...btw, that foo_rcon thing is not planted at this point. Just a theoretical way to implement stuff...im not exactly sure what and how much the server logs of the game state. We didn't think about modifieng logging stuff.

As I have stated previously on Urban Radio, it's hard to judge all the changes based on what we say. For example, we can say weapon 'A' ROF has been decreased compared to that of another weapon, while we tweaked the damage up a .1 or .2. But that tells the community nothing. Its difficult to sit here and give exact thoughts on the tweaking of the weapons in 3.0 compared to that in 2.6a.
I think there is more to it, such as aiming where you hit. That is just as important, if not more so from a gamer point of view. The weapons have been a focus of attention, again during thie development cycle. While there will probably be some gamers who complain, we cannot please everyone.
The community will have to adjust to some tweaks on a few of their favorite weapons. And I think that is part of the progression of Urban Terror itself.
So they have a choice, learn them and have fun or don't play. We have a large cross section of the community testing and we feel confident about the weapon tweaks.

Hmm, not sure. We have been featured on a UK gaming league a few years back. More recently, we were invited to techtv (techtv.com), the show is called The Screen Savers, where we played Urban Terror on the TSS LAN. It was a great time and the community really enjoyed seeing their names and scores on TV. Not sure about a show fully dedicated to gaming.
From our point of view, I am working with TSN on providing full streaming coverage of all the urban Terror matches and video for Urban Radio, but that is not TV.

We could, but have decided we want to save some of the bomb/defuse stuff for the actual release. We need to give the community something to look forward to. I had mentioned we would see a video of the arming of the bomb and the explosion, but those are too cool, so we decided to wait until we release it. :)

The model, created by CrazyButcher has been finished for some time now. Miles does have the model and is working on finishing up the new skin for it. As of right now, it is not ready for implementation, but we still have a bit of time before we release. I believe it will be completed in time to be included.

You are welcome.

thanks for the time!!!!