The third and penultimate instalment of Q&A feedback, happy reading...
Which maps are planned to be available on release? The actual list of maps that will be included when the game is officially released is not fixed, and will depend on what we have complete when the core game itself is ready; we currently have several Urban Terror 5 maps that are nearing completion and being tested by the private alpha participants: Algiers, Mykonos, Orbital, Skylines, Tohunga, Turnpike, Uptown and Uranus. There are also other maps being worked on which we will announce in due course! Both official and third party map development will be an ongoing process and hopefully there will be many new maps over the coming years!
Will there be any new weapons? New weapons will and are being created in addition to the original set, the final selection for the public release will also depend on community feedback. Names of weapons are 'made-up' to avoid copyright issues, if you have ideas for alternative names, feel free to post them on our Discord.
Would it be possible to publish a development roadmap? We do not have a fixed roadmap for development, as a team we know what we are aiming for, and as volunteers we work on our specific areas at different times, so the various aspects of the project are not always aligned. We are also flexible with features as we try new ideas or take feedback from the community.
When will it be possible to add to the Steam Wishlist? Steam's 'add to wish list' feature is something we will look at when we are at the right stage in development; a key requirement to kickstart a Steam page for a game is to release a gameplay trailer. We currently think that we need a bit more development and testing time to be able to create a satisfying trailer truly showing the game's potential. We are getting closer though! In the meantime, if you have some video editing skills or know the phone number of Mr Spielberg, please let us know. :)
Will it still be possible to jump with the back against a wall? It will absolutely still be possible to jump with the players back against a wall without the need to press the back key. You can see it in action in our Jump gameplay video: youtube.com/watch?v=NOMZdfRbsRI
Will there be vocal chat? We do want to implement voice chat in the future (at least for matchmode / matchmaking), and there are a number of options for it, but we haven't discussed that subject enough to give you an answer at the moment; we'll assess the possibilities in the coming months. We do already have working Discord integration to display game activity, that may provide one option for voice chat amongst others.
Will there be a 2v2 mode? It will be possible to have a 2v2 mode, it will be up to the server admin to specify.
Do you have any plans for reaching new players with UrT5? Reaching new players and 'getting the word out' will happen a lot by word of mouth; "A 20 year old game created by volunteers releases major new version" is quite a story which should have potential to reach many new players. The community can help a great deal by spreading that story :)
What about features that are realized with mods at the moment? Features that are currently realized with mods in UrT 4.3, for example infinite stamina and player count will be available for sure; Zombie mode is a larger special case, that will probably make it eventually but we cannot say for sure at this stage.
Can we still personalize the color of team identification using RGB? Personalizing the colors of team identification using RGB color will not be possible, but pre-sets similar to the current options will probably be included later in development.
Is the bullet spray pattern the same as urt 4? The style of recoil and bullet spread will remain almost identical to 4.x, the details and exact values might differ a little.
How will hit detection work, something like tickrate? How hit detection will work is a complex question, tickrate is only a tiny factor that goes into hit detection in a game like CS:GO. Initially hit detection will be client side with server side verification, and we'll probably rework the netcode and hit detection entirely at some point after open beta.
Will it have anti-toxicity? The best way to combat toxicity is to foster a positive environment; beyond that, we'll certainly aim to provide every possible tool to shield users from toxicity (e.g. muting players, disabling chat, and so on).
Will it have an honour system? There are no plans for an honour system at the moment, but once we have our own supporting framework in place behind the game itself, features like this will certainly be explored.
Will language translations be available We've not discussed the language translation subject too much internally, but it'd be nice. Our team is quite diversified and we speak quite a few different languages. It'd be a huge task to keep the translations up to date with frequent releases though, but, the Unreal Engine does provide some assistance with localisation.
Will you have different types of grenades? There are no specific plans regarding things like smoke grenade/vision, nocturne / flash grenade, decoy grenade etc. yet. Urban Terror is not a tactical shooter so this is not likely to be a priority, but we are always open to experiment with new features (and maybe provide them as options for custom servers).
You can find the original question threads here; > Forums > Reddit
Stay tuned for the next set of answers in the coming weeks!
Oops! It seems that we missed the official start of the Nations Cup, probably because OJ is still running around the office and hiding memos... we'll catch him eventually.
So at least we would love to inform you, that the final kickoffs have started. And we are very much looking forward to the finals.
Continuing from the first instalment of Q&A feedback, we hope you find the second instalment just as informative...
What maps are being worked on? When the game is released to the community, it will include a mix of original Urban Terror maps that have been re-made, and some maps that are completely new to Urban Terror 5. The official maps that are being re-made will, in most cases, have layouts as close to original as possible, though some may have been changed slightly based on feedback from play testing; the layout may also be different depending on the game mode. At the moment there are actually a lot of maps being worked on! It's crazy how a little team of mappers and modelers together can produce so many maps of high quality so fast. 18 maps are currently being worked on by the FS artists.
Have there been any weapon balance changes? Weapon balance and loadout have not been finalized, but it is likely they will be mixed-up quite a bit compared to Urban Terror 4; community feedback during beta testing will influence this.
Will there be more character diversity and inclusivity? With regard to character identity, we have plans to include iconic locales from around the globe, and character diversity of colour, ethnicity, and gender. At this stage, we have not made a decision to add user customizable characters and/or clothing, but it is an interesting option that we will consider at a later date. In general, game development is based more on community feedback as to desirable game enhancements over internal and subjective decisions.
When do you think we'll be able to play a kind of Beta/Alpha? When do we think you will be able to play a beta/alpha, well, we are continuously bringing more people into the private alpha testing team. The current stress tests have shown some weaknesses in the game optimization that we need to address before allowing a huge amount of players to try it out. The last thing we want is another 4.2.001-like release with servers crashing all over the place! It is fairly reasonable to assume that we will be able to do a public release of the game during 2021. No promises, but it is our target!
Did the wall running mechanic make it to the private Alpha? If so what was the general consensus? We still plan to include 'wall running' in the final release, it took some time for a few testers to get used to it, but overall the feedback is extremely positive; it might still be tweaked further before the game goes public, but so far so good. However, it is a material option along with grabbing and climbing that can be turned on or off, so it will be the map creator who will decide if wall running will be included in their map and which surfaces it will be applied to.
Will there be a Pinging system like in Apex? We did not have plans for a pinging system, but the question started a discussion internally, we really like the idea. We have already included the 'enemy spotted' radio call, pinging of some kind may make a nice addition.
Will we get events like retro UrT maps? Regarding events like retro maps and seasonal content, the ability to frequently update the game seamlessly will allow us to do such thing, yes. :) We cannot wait to do that kind of thing to be honest, they are very cool to do.
Will the game be available on streaming services? Streaming streaming services like Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce Now are great for a lot of things, but not really for fast paced multiplayer 'twitch shooters'; For this reason we do not currently plan to use those services.
What about servers, how will that work? There will be a server system where anyone can create a server, similar to now. The server won’t need graphics requirements as it only runs the core game to coordinate the attached clients. RAM, CPU and network connection speed will be the key elements.
Can you bind/macro like UrT 4? We have planned to add something like the existing bind/macro feature at some point in the future.
Can we still disable/enable visual pollution? Being able to disable/enable fire/smoke impact, show zero visual pollution; this is to be determined, but visibility is important to us. Ideally all players are on an equal playing field with few visual distractions.
Will it still have an Auth system? Initially the authentication system (Auth) will be provided through Steam, this may change or be added to in the future.
Will it have a 'ranked' system? Ranked systems are planned, but might not happen for the initial release.
Do you plan to update your website? We do plan to update our website; By the way, we are looking for a website developerâ€
It's been one hell of a year, and in these times the team is incredibly grateful to share in this experience together, to channel our focus into creating UrT 5, and to find joy in playing and speaking with you, the Urban Terror community.
All of us at FrozenSand want to wish you the very best for 2021. A huge thanks to you, for your continued support, engagement and patience. And to our incredible QA testers, we send our love and appreciation for your invaluable help over the past year!
2020 - a blessing and a curse
Whilst quarantines undoubtedly suck, for UrT it was a blessing in disguise! With many of us suddenly presented with an abundance of free time, we've managed to grow the team, create regular updates and have made significant development progress on UrT5.
Today marks the 1 year anniversary of UrT5's private alpha launch! This year, with the help of the QA team, we are proud to say that we've done 16 QA releases with over 580 updates, including 249 bug fixes and 168 new additions. We hope this progress gives assurance to the ongoing hard work we are all giving to push UrT towards an eventual public alpha.
We currently have a staggering 14 maps in active development - recreations of classics such as Turnpike, Uptown and Orbital, as well as brand new maps such as 'Skylines'. The game has full jump-map support, and in our conversion testing, is nearly identically playable on imports of 4.3 maps.
UE4 presents a massive step in the ease of map creation, we have developed new tools this year enabling time-trial mode, and with expanded movement mechanics, UrT5 is looking to be an incredibly exciting step for all of you jumpers and map creators!
Great progress has also been made across the board - the optimisation of netcode, new weapon and player models, game optimisations, improvements in animations and core audio logic, further development and testing of our 3rd party mapping tools, and the optimisation of essential code for things like the player movement system.
2021 - LOOKING AHEAD
Next year, we will share more insight into the development process with you all. Expect to see live streams from our Twitch channel(go follow us!) by different members of FS, showcasing dev work on models, maps and audio. Further more, look forward to seeing an updated video of a populated alpha play-session, showcasing real, visceral, up-to-date UrT5 gameplay in action!
We often receive messages asking when the next round of QA testers will be accepted. At our current development stage, the feedback we receive from a small, focused group of testers is incredibly valuable and best suited for our current needs. However, over the next year, you can expect us to accept more alpha testers into this small group. Once core game-issues are ironed out, we will begin to expand into a much larger testing group to iterate on netcode, balance gameplay and gain more general feedback. When exactly this will happen is entirely dependant on the needs of our development process as the year progresses, but rest assured we will keep you all fully in the loop when positions open up.
We have high hopes for the upcoming year - the game is in a good stage of development, our momentum is high and the team is in a great place. However, as UrT is developed for free by volunteers, we rely entirely on the hard work of the team and the support of you the community. If you want to help bring UrT closer to public alpha, please consider supporting us to help cover development costs, or, if you or someone you know would like to join FS! we are always seeking new talent, and have numerous roles currently open, so don't be shy to get in touch.
That's all from us. Keep an eye out in the new year for the second round of Q&A answers!
So long 2020 - don't let the door hit you on the way out
The winter season is with us, and it is time for an update on the team as well as the first instalment of the long awaited Q&A feedback.
New Faces on the Development Team
Recently we welcomed two additional members to the team!
We're delighted to welcome Clear into the team. A talented programmer and previous FS member who is in the process of completing a Computer Engineering degree. Clearskies has joined our team to help develop, improve and add to our core gameplay programming, and is currently hard at work refining our movement system.
In addition, give a warm UrT welcome to our new Sound Designer, JHyde. Jack recently completed an MSc in Sound Design, and has incredible experience creating interactive soundscapes, experimental ambience and working in post production. Jack is working on the in-game map audio, currently focused on creating a new soundscape for the beloved map Orbital.
Question and Answers
While the Development Team have been working away behind the scenes, bringing Urban Terror 5 ever closer to public release, and the community members on the QA Team have been busy bug reporting and providing valuable gameplay feedback, we have taken the time to review over eighty questions submitted by the community to our Q&A posts; the original intention was to select a few good questions to answer, however, it was difficult to choose just a few, so the team have provided answers to almost all of them; we will post these in batches over the coming months, starting with the first set below, keep an eye on the News Board for the next set in a few weeks!
Thank you for your patience, we hope you find these answers informative...
What have you accomplished in the past year? In the past year we have progressed from having a working backbone of the game with a few characters, weapons and two or three of work-in-progress maps being tested by the developers, to having a QA Team of approximately thirty community members, a more robust and reliable game, more developed characters and weapons, and seven almost complete maps; in fact, so many things! Because of (or thanks to?) the COVID-19 lockdown earlier this year, we've been able to dedicate a lot more time to the game than usual. We are currently preparing our 15th private alpha release, with each one being comprised of several dozens of bug fixes and improvements, as well as many changes thanks to the testers' feedback. The use of Steam and continuous build and deployment really helped us speed up the development of the game.
Will crouching mid-air continue to increase accuracy? With regard to Urban Terror 4 movement bugs that became quirks of gameplay, and whether those quirks will be reproduced; Our policy so far has been that we only reimplement bugs as features if they are either: required to recreate the feeling of Urban Terror, for Jump map compatibility, or because it is fun by itself and does not cause other negative effects. This particular quirk doesn't really fall into those groups.
Will it have a spectacle UI; stream ; OVERLAY; function for see every player? There will be a basic spectator UI and over time we will build on it.
Will you provide a tutorial or a video for newbie? Like how to move, simple mechanic? There will very likely be a few “how to get started videos”, we also have a Jump tutorial map almost finished.
Will we implement matchmaking, ladder rank, division rank, etc? Regarding Matchmaking, leagues, rankings and alike; it is too early in the development of the game to make any firm decisions on these supporting features, so it is not possible to say what will or will not be available at release or at a later date, however, some discussion has started and we have a team member looking at options; the picture will be clearer as we head into the next year, and as that happens, community feedback will add to the decision process regarding the finer details of what the supporting services will include.
Mouse input, will that be different or the same? All mouse input is raw and uses identical settings to Quake. Mouse acceleration is not yet implemented but probably will be at some point, and at the very least provide a Quake compatibility mode.
Will "funstuff" feature in the game? if so, how will it be accessible? We like funstuffs! There are some crazy ones out there. We'll probably start fresh and gradually add more to the game, and surely get a user friendly in-game User Interface. Adding community-submitted content is not out of the question.
Will there be knife throwing? Knife throwing is a feature we are planning to include.
Will the Bleeding system be the same? The bleeding system will be pretty much the same as the current system.
Will we be able to choose what protection we want to use? The idea of choosing what protection to use (Kevlar, leg protection + helmet protection + arms protection) has been a thought but no real discussion. Right now we’re sticking with helmet and Kevlar.
What new features are there compared to UrT 4? We've hinted some new features in the past months, especially on the official UrT Discord where we post a lot of WIP screenshots and videos. Among them, vaulting, wall running, piercing bullets, jump mode ghosts, loadouts and moreâ€
As the leaves start turning red again and summer comes to an end, it is time for some competitive Urban Terror again, with the Urban Zone FallCup season, starting with the Fun FallCup.
We hope you have stayed safe this summer and are ready, recharged and focused, to compete for the chance to claim the right of calling yourselves the best team around. This time there will be a total of 24 teams battling it out and only a few spots are left, so be sure to head on over to urban-zone.org/index.php?name=Content&mid=901 and sign your team up!
The rules, as well as the game modes will stay the same as previous Cups, but if you’re in need of a quick refresh, they are listed on the cups page.
The 2020 FallCup season will start on Monday, October 12th. We hope to see you compete for the crown.
As some of you might have noticed on the official Urban Terror Discord, we have been adding a few people over the last few weeks to the blue group.
New Faces
In our latest Q&A post we already announced Neon as our new QA manager, but he wasn’t the only one to make the step from the Quality Assurance team to FrozenSand.
Joining us from Italy is Markinho, a long time player who some might already be familiar with from his jump maps he created, most notably as part of the duo which made 'Moria'. First part of the QA team, now has joined the devteam to help us create props, which will be a big help to get many of the placeholders out of the way.
Alongside them, a French programmer by the name of Holycrap has just signed his paperwork to join us. Living abroad in the US at the moment to get a PhD in aerospace engineering, with a drive to help the team where needed. In the UrT space he was part of the moderation team for the French community forums and has now returned to the game after taking a break for his studies.
Returning
Returning to FrozenSand after a hiatus is another programmer, Zenity. He has used his time away from the game to work on other projects and is coming back to us with a renewed passion and drive to push Urban Terror 5 to a state in which we can invite all of you to try the game out yourselves! During his first time with the team, he focused mainly on the movement implementation, as well as the guns and their behavior, something he will be picking up again. If you would like to find out more about his work, feel free to have a look at his devblog posts.
Please take a moment to welcome them all to our team, committing their free time to help develop Urban Terror 5 for you to play for free!
It's been some time since we last released some news, sorry about that! Many of us have been taking a little break and enjoyed the weather after being locked to our homes due to the pandemic and are now returning, ready to keep pushing for Urt 5!
Changes in the QA team
While we were away, things didn't completely come to a stillstand. Our QA team has given us very valuable feedback so far and we were able to improve core mechanics, like the movement, and bring it closer to what you would expect for Urban Terror.
Unfortunately during this time, Slis notified us that his life had gotten too busy to be handling QA responsibilities, as he had just gotten engaged. Luckily, we already had somebody in QA who was helping us and Slis before that, and he decided to apply for the vacant position. Some of you might have already seen him be active on the Discord server, and a few noticed his new blue colors, for the rest we would like you to give a warm welcome to Neon, who has joined us and will be taking over QA from now on!
We would like to thank Slis for his work and efforts to bring the alpha testing on a very good track, setting up a workflow that has given us good results and wish him all the best for him and his soon-to-be wife.
Better late than never - Question and Answers
We promised you to be able to ask us questions a while ago, but other things took priority soon after, so apologies for the delay. We have already set up everything for you to post your questions, so no further push backs - promise!
You will be able to post your questions both on our forums or on our subreddit for 2 weeks, until Sunday, 6th of September midnight UTC timezone. We want to give everyone a chance to get their questions out there and will then select some of them to answer. For more info on the format, please read the announcement post in either our forums or on Reddit.
Urban Zone has rebooted an old competition in its #stayhome series; this time it’s the Skeet Shoot Tournament!
Signups are open until Thursday 23:59 CEST, so be quick and head over to the Urban Zone website for all the details.
It has been 8 years since the last tournament like this so it might be new to many of you. This promo video from the last competition will give you an idea of what it entails:
» Services
» Bug-Tracker
sl.Home
sl.Search
sl.Forum
sl.Settings
sl.Serverlist
sl.Maplist
sl.Support
sl.Wiki
» RtCW/Enemy Territory
Lobby
Splatterladder Admin Channel
RSS-Feeds