06 May 14, 06:15AM
- About You - First contact with AC, favourite game modes and maps, country, age, clan, other games:
First encounter was .93 - I had begun dual-booting Linux and Windows after discovering how awesome Linux was(is) and I stumbled across AssaultCube in a repository while looking for games... I had no experience in First Person Shooters as a general style of gameplay, and I was owned from day one in the game.
I wouldn't ever play regularly because it was so brutal then - I felt I could never win, and I usually didn't spend very much time gaming... I played infrequently over the subsequent versions - but I really committed to learning the game in late January of 2013...
As for favourite gamemodes and maps - I remember when TDM ac_complex comprised a significant number of the masterserver games and I always hated it because I didn't have any map awareness about me. There were times I would wait in the corner of CLA base, thinking I could get an advantage, and some 'pro' would come and headshot me before I could even get my aim straight.
Rocking 23 FPS and a shotgun, I was the definitive 'unarmed' (.93-1.0.0.4 days for me).
Playing on that map again I miss those games and wish more people would play it again...
I am playing from the United States, I am 32 and I am part of the |Art of eXecution| family...
As I hinted before, I was an off and on again player for a long time - never improving or learning. At the end of the 1.1.0.4 era I began playing more seriously and I began to get more involved with the community surrounding this game. I also developed an odd fascination with hosting servers for this bizarre crew of rabid cubers I tag with - but that's another story...
Other than that I grew up playing a beat up C64 and early consoles - I was into the Mechwarrior and MechCommander series for a period of time, but I disconnected from a lot of things as a working parent and AssaultCube is accessible and fun... Now I dabble in in a few other FOSS games like Xonotic, Cube 2: Sauerbraten and Red Eclipse, but AssaultCube is my flavor...
- Do you mostly play public matches or do you prefer clan competition? Are you a regular 1vs1 player? Do you care about your ratio or your flags-per-minute value? Do you support team players even in 'just-for-fun' games?
For me this has always just been a release from other things - now more than ever it is a serious hobby for me, but playing the game infrequently there were a number of things that were apparent to me over the years - There are hackers out there - many hackers - over time less hackers - and while we still have a significant amount of people abusing - it is also significantly more manageable than it was in year's past, in my opinion...
However, pros are good - really good... And if you take this game seriously you will find people who take the execution of this game to the limit and have put forth tremendous effort in owning others...
When you break in to this it is hard - and to answer the question - I am still in a state where I very infrequently do 1v1s but I do a lot of matches and inters... As for my preference - I love a casual game between friends and I have no aversion to playing in pubs...
I like the open-door feel in the game sometimes and the short talks between friends on the server. Playing against tougher players and pushing yourself to the limit has it's upsides - but however it plays out - I am here for the fun.
As for metrics, there are different ways to measure many aspects of the game, but I when I play the numbers aren't what is driving me.... But, for sure, teamwork is important in any venue whether it be in pubs or matches...
- Community ties - Where does the AssaultCube community "happen" for you? Is it only in-game, in the official forum, clan forums, IRC, mumble, teamspeak?
I feel like the community is much broader than many people realize. I think the 'community' is often relegated to referring to the dedicated cubers of this forum who have 1000+ posts and the developers who put up with the constant snarkiness and negativity.
But I know for a lot of players the community is in-game - across Teamspeak servers, and on crappy do-it-yourself websites where new clans fade and burn in the blink of an eye without an iota of concern from the 'community.'
The community exists throughout the world, wherever cubers connect in from - but AssaultCube brings them together. This is a fascinating thing to be able to play with good people from around the globe - often this is overlooked in this modern digital age.
- Is it easy for you to get help with problems with the game? Where do you get help? Which problems could not be solved?
The documentation is excellent and there is nary a time when someone in the official #irc isn't willing to help.
Of course, I don't seem to have the 'problems' a lot of people tend to regurgitate around the forums....
- What do you think about the AC community? How could the community be made better? What would you like to contribute?
I think the AssaultCube community as a whole is a unique and diverse crowd of people. Inevitably, in such a situation, there are bound to be problems between people, and especially so across language barriers.
But I think there is an interesting balance of people who are constantly participating and encouraging the development of others in the game, and the people who continually work to break other people down...
It is sad in a sense but I wonder at times if this bizarre clockwork is what keeps AC going.
I think that we need to encourage the newcomers - the 'noobs'
I think there are too many players out there that need to demonstrate their lack of accomplishment in real life by insulting and degrading new players while gloating over their so-called 'skillz.'
However correct their assessments may be, if we run 5 new players out of the game with that behavior then who is really winning?
- What do you like about AC?
Free and Open Source Software that is available cross-platform, played Internationally, with fast and simple gameplay... And don't forget about all of the mods....
- What do you hate about AC?
That so much of the community is playing an open-source game with a closed-source attiude. Also, I think Brazilians get it rough from a lot of people - I feel like their is some kind of cuber-racism going on sometimes where we forget that everyone is an individual and an entire country isn't hacking - just a few dozen jerks with dynamic ips...
- Do you play on a laptop or a desktop? Does it have a dedicated graphics card or do you use chipset graphics? What average fps do you play at, and what screen resolution do you use? Do you use features like "reduced violence mode" or degraded textures? Do you use colored vests?
I used to play on a laptop with integrated graphics on Linux at 1600x900 with all of the graphics features turned down I could run anywhere from 58-72 fps. I currently play on a desktop with a budget GPU and I play with just enough detail to see the wall and floor textures I can run between 140-200 fps in Windowed mode - regardless of resolution... Due to (I am assuming) some limitations in the open-source drivers for linux, I can't ever get the full screen fps higher than 60 at 1600x900
- Do you play with headphones or with a surround system or do you use the builtin speakers of your laptop?
Headphones are a must...
- Where should AC development be headed to? What should the next release bring? Would you like AC to concentrate on it's own classic gameplay or should it be molded to be more like another game (and what other game)? Do you play other games from the Cube family?
I think there needs to be some serious consideration in regards to the long-term direction of AssaultCube... We don't need a lot of extraneous bells and whistles clogging up the works - but I would like to see feature decisions take into account the benefits of implementation and not so much the difficulty of implementation..
With that said, I follow all of the Cube games at a distance, and I can't help but dream that someday we might see a rewrite of the AssaultCube mod built on the Tesseract engine...
- One feature AC should add:
I don't think the game needs to add any features - I think development is better focused on refining and better implementing what is already in place....
- One feature AC should remove:
Unfix the vote bug so we can vote after the vote ends again... >:D