new preview of quake wars new map for beta 2!!

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[rip|Ripper]

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/enemy-territory-quake-wars/809938p1.html


Somewhere off the western coast of Africa sits Moore Observatory, which currently holds important strategic value for Earth's Global Defense Force (GDF): somewhere in its data banks, it's recorded the location of the slipgate the Strogg used to transport to our solar system before launching an attack on Earth. Our job is to get in, restore power to the observatory, retrieve the data and transmit it to GDF scientists. Of course, the Strogg know this, and have sent a sizeable force there to stop us, so it won't be easy.

In advance of QuakeCon 2007 later this week, we visited Activision for an exclusive playtest of the newly-unveiled "Island" map from the upcoming Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (which will be on display at the show). In addition to getting our first real hands-on time with the new map, this also marked our first opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the new computer-controlled bots that will be able to fill out games when you're running short a few teammates.

Like most of the maps we've seen in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to date, "Island" is a hybrid of indoor and outdoor locations. The GDF starts on the beachhead, and first needs to infiltrate a bunker where an engineer must repair a generator that will restore power to the rest of the island.





Starting out, there are multiple routes from each team's spawn point to the objective. There's a bridge to the left of the GDC spawn point, and a few boats directly below to traverse straight across the water. In this case, it's a short distance, but having that second option makes it harder for the Strogg to concentrate long-range artillery on one location, and the boats also make it possible for the GDF to send a small squad further into the Strogg camp to disrupt things away from the frontline.

Once the GDF has reached the bunker that holds the power generator, they can attack directly from the front, or liberate a secondary path in the form of a doorway on the top of the hill that the bunker is built into. Getting to the generator against a good defensive squad can be a challenge, as the Strogg would set up turrets outside the bunker entrance, and then load up the power generator room with mines. Eventually, lobbing in a few grenades to clear out the room, followed by a team of two or three engineers to repair the generator in tandem, allowed us to capture the point before Strogg reinforcements could arrive.



The second major objective required the GDF to break into a vault and steal the data disc with the slipgate coordinates on it. This played out similarly to the first objective, with a stretch of outdoor fighting, culminating with a heated indoor battle. This time it was the soldier class that needed to complete the objective, by planting explosives on the vault door and then preventing the Strogg from disarming them.

The final stretch of the map was a bit unique compared to the rest of what we've seen in Quake Wars so far. Someone would need to grab the data (it appears in the form of a suitcase that anyone can run over to pick up), run it up to the observatory's main radar dish, and transmit it to waiting GDF scientists. If you're killed while carrying the data, it drops on the ground, where another teammate can grab it and continue running, or a Strogg can touch it and send it back to the vault. When you're on the GDF side, a small icon appears onscreen showing you the current location of the data; on the Strogg side, the icon only appears when the data is dropped.

Getting from the vault to the radar dish at the very top of the map proved to be an adventure. The shortest route is straight up the hill, but with lots of other buildings surrounding the dish, it's extremely easy for the Strogg to set up defenses on rooftops and pick off GDF players as they run up the hill. The other option is to steal a boat in the base of the vault, travel around the perimeter of the island and take a back road up to the radar dish. It's a longer run, but can allow a GDF player to sneak in relatively quietly if the Strogg aren't paying attention.

Playing against the bots, we had a much easier time winning the map as the GDF than defending it as the Strogg. Bots were generally well spread out across different classes, and clearly understood where the objectives where, so the GDF side was continually pressing forward, even when us human players were personally getting slapped down. Defense, on the other hand, is a more subtle art, and while the Strogg bots had been programmed to do things like place mines at the radar dish transmission room, it was a little too easy to break through their defenses; it's easier to see each of the objectives becoming a much huger challenge with 8-12 human players clogging up the indoor areas and the radar dish.



While the bots seem decent so far, they haven't quite reached the point where they'll be confused with human players (even with them spamming random comments in the chat channels). After spawning, the bots on the GDF side tended to cluster together as a group, making it easy to take out large numbers with a grenade or artillery strike. At times, we'd see a tank driving into a wall or in circles, and bots would sometimes have trouble navigating tricky bits of geometry (like vehicles parked in odd locations). And, although it was hard to confirm, it seemed the bots were omniscient to some degree, always spotting me instantly (even when trying to flank from far-off out-of-the-way locations) and quickly gunning me down at long range. Creating realistic computer players for this style of game is a pretty hefty challenge -- even UT2004's brilliant bots lost a step when it came to the objective-style Assault mode -- but even if they still need some work, it's good to see that ETQW's are already capable of filling out a game and providing some offline action.

Graphically, "Island" may be the most impressive Quake Wars map we've seen to date. The locale provides an excuse for some impressive postcard-like vistas, and at times the water effects (which we really hadn't seen much of in previously unveiled maps) had us thinking of Far Cry and Crysis. The reworked DOOM 3 engine seems to handle large outdoor areas just fine, leading to lots of frenzied battles, whether it's tanks rolling in on the ground or a few airborne vehicles raining down death from above. (One thing's for sure; the bots do a far superior job of flying than we do.)



Considering how excited we are for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, just one big question remains: when's it coming out? At the moment, Activision still hasn't announced a date, but that could always change later this week at QuakeCon. Check back throughout the week for more on Quake Wars and other news direct from the QuakeCon floor.

[rip|MightyMax]

And the many fixes to ....

http://community.enemyterritory.com/index.php?q=node/90

Balancing, Refinements and Bugs

The whole team has worked on thousands of bug fixes, refinements, and balancing improvements in this build that couldn't be applied as a simple patch to Beta 1. This covers most weapons, items, tools, vehicles, deployables, and the user interface, including fixes for uncapped frame-rates, improved server administration functions, interaction with objectives, better weapon spread modifiers, vehicle firing rates, better sniper scopes, more consistency between weapons and their UI components, better fire support, improved deployables, and smaller tweaks like time-stamping for messages from friends, and tweaked special effects.

Improved Bots

id Software's John Dean is making great progress with the Bot code, and our Level Designers have added full support to Valley - You can now play through the map while off-line against Bots, co-operatively with friends, against friends each using Bots, or simply flood the empty slots on a server with them. Even at this early stage, they are the most advanced implementation of multiplayer combat AI that I've ever seen. They understand player level tactics and priorities, and team-level strategy. Sure, there are some bugs (else it wouldn't be a Beta!) but I'm positive you'll be impressed by them.

Improved Prediction and Player Physics

Our Physics Programmer Tristan 'Fearog' Williams has developed the new Anti-Lag feature, so we're finally nearing the point where the goal of 'what you shoot is what you hit' will be realized, despite a player perhaps being on a higher latency connection. There are improvements to the collision system, player knock-back, player speed, hitting targets that are jumping, interacting with the world while going prone – it's a big list.

Improved Vehicle Physics and Controls

Tristan has been working hard on this stuff too, with the Husky Quad Bike, Armadillo Truck, and Trojan Amphibious Personnel Carrier in particular feeling much more dynamic (as a test of this, power-sliding now works properly). It's easier to aim as a Gunner when in vehicles now too.

Improved Interface

You'll see masses of refinements across the whole User Interface, but our primary focus has been on accessibility. Gordon "digibob" Biggans' work on the Mission System makes seeing, choosing, and accepting missions much slicker, while class-specific mini-map markers and damaged vehicle indicators make finding the team-mate or vehicle that you need a lot easier. Jared "jRAD" Hefty has been overhauling the Server Browser too, with more detailed information on servers (such as which map of a campaign it's on, and whether the server is in warm-up, the time left, etc), while 'friends filters' list only those servers with buddies or clan mates on them. You can now tweak many more options in the Game Settings Menu, including much more control over graphics settings, and even a color picker to make customizing your alias and clan tag much easier.

Improved Audio

Lots of attention has been given to the GDF handheld weapons in particular, but improvements across the board have been made based on your feedback.

Improved Game Performance

Beta 2 comes with a slew of performance optimisations and tweaks. There are also several new menu options allowing you to tweak the visuals of the game even further. Compared to Beta 1, we've seen performance increase as much as 30% - we're keen to get all the feedback we can in this area, so please keep your performance reports coming.

PunkBuster

The latest PunkBuster revision is included with Beta 2 and should alleviate any remaining problems people are having. The PunkBuster folks have also revised their manual updater and it works correctly now across all versions of Windows, should you ever have to use it.

Unranked Server Support

Beta 2 will include everything you need to put up your own unranked ETQW multiplayer server. There's been a lot of demand for this and we're eager to get the server out there for you to test and play around with. It's worth noting that the unranked server code offers a wide variety of tweakable options; for example, you'll be able to turn ETQW into a fast and frantic game, or a slower, more tactical experience, depending on your preference.

Brand-new Statistics Website

The Official ETQW Stats Site will launch alongside Beta 2.



Along with Beta 2, we're launching the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars statistics site, where you will be able to track your achievements, military ranking, comparative leaderboards, and comprehensive stats. Members of our Global Volunteer Force, which includes fansite admins and tournament organizers, have had access to the site for several days now and their feedback has been extremely positive. We can't wait to get it out to the rest of you.

[stalk282]

BETA 2 IS LIVE BOYS get your key now...



http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/quakewars/beta2/

[stalk282]

yup stats are being updated now


http://stats.enemyterritory.com/


http://qwtracker.com/

[ajax]

I'm in the queue on fileplanet and simultaneously downloading the torrent from 15 seeds, sharing with 73 peers, ~100kB/s!!!
search for ETQuakeWarsBeta2Setup.exe on mininova!!! I've got the feeling somehow that the torrent will be faster, I dunno just a hunch

[stalk282]

download  from file planet for beta 2 toke about 30min and that is at work were the speed is slow  about 350kb/sec

[rip|Ripper]

I'm in the queue on fileplanet and simultaneously downloading the torrent from 15 seeds, sharing with 73 peers, ~100kB/s!!!
search for ETQuakeWarsBeta2Setup.exe on mininova!!! I've got the feeling somehow that the torrent will be faster, I dunno just a hunch

lmao my god nice pic !!!  lol!!

[ajax]

download  from file planet for beta 2 toke about 30min and that is at work were the speed is slow  about 350kb/sec

I just started the d/l from fileplanet, ~210kB/s, (west coast serer) looks like it will overtake the torrent.

[rip|forkev]

download  from file planet for beta 2 toke about 30min and that is at work were the speed is slow  about 350kb/sec

got my key and DL @ 145 max
so don't complain about you work speed

[ajax]

How well do you guys think my system will run it? What are your rigs like?
AMD athlon 3200+
AMD X850XT
1.2GB DDR2
CLI X-FI

[ajax]

NVM,     download finishing!!

[rip|Ripper]

How well do you guys think my system will run it? What are your rigs like?
AMD athlon 3200+
AMD X850XT
1.2GB DDR2
CLI X-FI

might want to upgrade your cpu you can get a amd athlon 64 4000+  for $60-$70

need a vid upgrade too i think?

[SpaceCayote]

I got the same gfx card, works perfectly fine. But I do agree on the processor upgrade. Possibly ram if running into long loading.

[ajax]

Actually it runs fine, its loading quick. My system is at its end of upgrades pretty much. I can't use athlon 64 procs on it, XP only and its AGP, at the time the video card was the best agp you could get, now the NX 7900 is available in AGP. When I do upgrade, I'll have to get a new mobo, CPU and thinking of getting the NX 8800 GTS but ti depends on what the GTX is priced at when I do upgrade.

[stalk282]

download  from file planet for beta 2 toke about 30min and that is at work were the speed is slow  about 350kb/sec

got my key and DL @ 145 max
so don't complain about you work speed

okay i will ...... you old fart