We've got some very exciting (we think) changes coming in the following Rokkitball releases, and would like to discuss them so that we can have them grow into exactly what you guys need.   We hope that the continued support of the features listed below will help nurture community organized competitions like those taking place on the InstantActionLeague.



Observer Mode :

We've seen you guys struggling to create a competitive environment to foster this game long term, so we've added an Observer mode (that is accessed through the Team Switcher) so that you can compete to your hearts content.

* Observe players in a game using a Follow camera that can be zoomed in and out
* Observe the stadium from a locked point on the map




Team Switcher :

* Accessed using "Esc" key on the keyboard while in-game
* Displays Player information across all teams
* Top slot on the Home/Away teams specify the team captain of that team
* Clicking on any slot will attempt to add you to it.  If another non-bot player is already there it will do nothing.
* Players can re-order themselves in the list by clicking on a different slot.
* Players may become a game observer by clicking on the observer list at the bottom of the picker






Energy Display and Crosshair

* Toggle between two reticle configurations by pressing "R"
* Classic Reticle with energy on cross-hair
* Point-Of-Reference reticle with an Energy bar on top of screen




Please discuss, we'd like your help in figuring out where to go from here.

EDIT : Condensed thread, pruning posts that are off-topic or have been resolved by clarification in this post.

I think a demo recording option would be great so that it would make shoutcasting with video quite easy to do.

Kind of like how T2TV worked with Tribes 2.

I think this is a great idea.   We've already tinkered with Demo recording, and hope to support it in the next few releases in some way.   Granted it will not be a demo streaming video-casting solution, but between that and being able to Observe matches to shoutcast audio, you can get most of the way there.

We're thinking something like a simple 'Record Demo' option in the GUI that will save off your next session to a standard recordings directory.   From there you'll be able to see and view the recordings in your directory, and should be able to zip/share them with others. 

Yeahh, trying to keep track of my energy with the tiny little squares was annoying.
I like the view you previewed. simple and readable.
observer mode! about time ;P
demo recordings would be nice. i think, though, allowing people to share their videos through some sort of automated IA process would be much more user-friendly.

I totally agree with this, but first thing's first, get it working in a simple form and in your hands.

Once we get that far we can look at the next jump

I have question about observer mode : Will party limit still be 8?

Because in that case there wont be so much observers in 3v3 match and there wont be ayn of them in 4v4 match, so there should be option to set party size to , for example 10 and when all player spots are full you would automatically become observer. If one player leaves game , observer can fill his slot and play , or just continue observing match.

That way more people could watch larger games (like 3v3,4v4 matches)

But if there are more players in party before match starts (like 12 people for example), than team captains would create their team (they would pick players they want to have, and others would be observers.

For new energy bar its nice you created because lot of people couldn't get used to old one, i will see it but most probably will stay on old one  because i got used to it

*EDIT* another question: so game will be pay per play with free plays.
If you are out of all free plays and without AT will there be still ability to observe matches (if you can't play you can watch for free) and if someone just wants to watch the game and no play it will he lose his free play(that would be stupid its called pay per play , not pay per spectator)

So people could watch Rb pro's playing great matches anytime they want without limits

Team switching in game is great feature it will help to balance teams in no time

And last question : when this build will come to IA ?? I cant wait to see all these features in game !!

Same time as the ActionPass update. Justin said that if things ran smoothly, it would come out at the end of next week.

Party limit will still be 8 for now, but we've talked about upping that limit on Dedicated servers once they're up and running.   The reason for this is that each observer still consumes upstream bandwidth, because they're connected to the server, and this will cause a lot of Peer connections to get worse if there more than 8 people.   

We'll see how it works with the next release and adjust from there.   Until then you can't have a bunch of observers.   

BUT you could still do things like have 3v3 matches, with an extra person in observer running FRAPS to record a match.   Upload that to YouTube and you can essentially have a bunch of viewers for awesome competition matches that have already taken place.


For this release Observers do count as using FreePlays just as players do.   This is not ideal, we know, but we wanted to get this out sooner rather than later, and doing that would have required a bunch of special logic to deal with locking people that have no FreePlays into observer in that case.   

Long and short is we did it this way as a first step.   Once it's released if a bunch of people request it, we can investigate changing this.

Cheers,
-Justin

Well there might be some easier way to bypass whole that.

If you could add on RB another option with start game,join game , there should be option "Observe game" and that option would be free and we could join game we pick and we wont have ability to jump into game, we can just observe it.

But those people who join party would need to have some sign that they are observers (so we know that they cant play)

Why not up the party limit and only allow 8 players to actually play the game? Seriously why?




Someone who is not playing the actual game hardly uses any bandwidth or whatever.

It is true that observers require slightly less bandwidth than an actual player because they are not generating their own moves, but for them to observe they still have to suck up the bandwidth required to send all of the other players moves to them.

If it were as simple as you like to think it is, we would have done it already. 

I think you all really need to understand that we know vastly more about the technicalities involved in game creation than you likely do.   We've been making games for many years professionally, and it's not as simple as most users of games would like to think it is. 

well it was just suggestion, i know that you guys are good (well you did create awesome game after all) but it is better that new guys can know that they can observe match, not just play it (i know that i will observe lot of matches when i get on server with high ping or something) . But if it is to complicated to get something like that , than just do in way you started 

I know your the dev here and you have years in experience, but I have years of experience too. Gaming experience at least. A 8 player/observationer is just unacceptable.

I feel that you all can do MUCH better than 8 players... Especially with the fact that we will be using dedicated servers. Come to think of it, why can't we do more than 8? What is stopping it? *chocolate cookie*, legions already has 16 and it's just a matter of time before they have 32 player (or much more) matches, and those are all players. I am ignorant on this subject, please inform me why it won't work.

8 players is fine for a player limit (the game goes crazy with more people playing), but 8 players including observer seems very lame to me.

Adding lots of observers results in players complaining that observers lag them. The real solution is to have the "gameplay" server send information to an "observer" server, so that any number of observers can view a match without effecting play.

Honestly when it comes down to quality of experience for the players vs quality of experience for the observers, players will win hands down. Unacceptable or not. The 8-player limit stands for now.

Edit - I think RB can do better than 8 players. Hopefully as RB progresses we can look into this matter.