Our ReVolt Pub

I know there is an existing topic about suggestions for Re-Volt 1.2 but I decided to post a separate new proposal for the multiplayer scene of it. The reason is that many suggestions could easily be overlooked in the Re-volt 1.2 suggestion compilation thread. As for this thread I'm trying to show what's the best ideas to introduce ingame in my opinion for the multiplayer scene.
I assume that multiplayer is much more of interest than offline racing for majority of players. Idea's like improving AI, custom carboxes and player profiles have not brought any big visible changes ingame during gameplay. With all respect the measurements so far have been positive, but I find that there are other things that could have an impact on what the game is made for, playing.

Before I continue to explain more in-depth about every topic I include that I have no idea about how much time it takes to implement and add every idea into the game or even if it's possible to introduce it to the game.
The suggestions are the ones that I find useful for the game.

Of course there is no update that is bad, and every bug fix has been beneficial for the game, but some ideas have been more visible and useful in the multiplayer scene.
The previous very useful Ideas:

Late join - being able to join races even if host already started a game

Reduced waiting time - When the waiting time before every race was 60 seconds, now reduced to 15.

Bad starts fix - saved time for restarting game after some cars started earlier than intended to.

Other bug fixes such as the toytanic 1 star bug fix and other fixes have improved the multiplayer scene.

I think most of the following ideas have already been suggested earlier in other treads, but the importance of them have not been highlighted.


Multiplayer Championship - This is a game mode that most revolters should be familiar with, but it only exists in single player mode. If this game mode was added to the multiplayer scene it could bring positive changes. It would be more encouraging to win, to get the best overall result in a round of races. Also if late join would be available and allowed the final results would be in favor of those who joined the game early. Therefore i suggest late join to not be active on this game type, but it can be further discussed.

Knockout Gamemode - This is another game mode but that is not available ingame. I've hosted and joined few races of this type and they were proven to be successful. The game mode is simple, the player that becomes last in a race gets kicked out from the game. In the end there are only 2 players left fighting for the first place. This game mode would be fun in the way that everyone try their best in order to stay in the game. As it is possible to play it without an ingame feature with good management by the host I don't expect it to be top priority. But if it's introduced ingame it would be much easier to play the game mode and those who are not familiar with it could enjoy it.

Customs Skins for stock cars - This is already possible, but if you change the car skin then the other players skin change too. It would bring a new athmosphere to re-volt if everyone could have their own customized skins. The racing of course is more important than watching the painting of the others cars but it makes the game more colorful. Everyone could then identify their car as they wish. I know that everyone needs the required files to view the different skins, so I see the difficulty of making it work. In any case it does boost the game looks and the introduction of this is favorable for the game.

Best lap time shown - Even though I don't usually play races without pickups I still find it useful to have the best lap time shown in public just as the total race time is shown. It should be both for pickup and non-pickup races. I know that in recent updates you can view the results of every individual by some sort of spectator mode after finishing a race. But it could be more useful to see the best lap time highlighted in public without having to search trough every screen.


Whether you think the ideas are good or bad, feel free to discuss it.

All of them are good, I like the custom skins for everyone the most. As most of the races are played with 90% Toyecas, it becomes a bit... (but Stingox explained it well)


Another idea, what is suggested in the other topic, but is concerning multiplayer, is the ability to add AI bots to multiplayer games ( I think I don't need to explain why would that be good) The best would be if the host could add bots and choose cars for them (so there are no "noob AI cars" if players don't want), even more of the same car.



EDIT: And how could I forget... No collision mode would be really good to see too!

I want custom skins online so bad heck it wouldn't take too much to implement.

I would like to see the ability to change cars during the race session instead of exiting revolt and going back in the room, especially if the room is full and someone takes your spot.

Capable to change reversed and mirrored track types during pause menu. That way, you wouldn't need to restart room/server. It would be simple - when pressing enter on selected track, you could push down and/or up to choose it, like in frontend.

I don't really have anything to add to all the other ideas already proposed in this thread, other than I second all of them.

But something I would like to see is the ability to see what cars your opponents are driving as you join a game and select your car. This would cut down on clueless people joining a Toyeca/Cougar/Humma race with rookies and idiots like me joining rookie races with pro cars, and similar things.

I agree with Dave, being able to see what other people are driving when joining late would be a great addition, I imagine the simplest way to do this is not automatically start the game when you reach the lobby, you could make it so pressing tab would start the game instead of automatically.

Dave-o-rama @ Aug 18 2012, 08:31 PM wrote:I would like to see the ability to see what cars your opponents are driving as you join a game and select your car.

You can see your opponents' cars while joining already, but only for half a sec.

Making a stop in the waiting room and pressing TAB to start the race as stoner says would be a nice solution for this, instead of inmediately starting it.
So I sum-up to this suggestion.

I have nothing else to add to this thread, more than I already wrote my suggestions for Multiplayer HERE

What Stoney suggested was what I instantly thought after reading Dave's post, yeah, that's the best solution I think.

About the no collision thingy... I think it could be in an other way than it was in WolfR4. The host should be able to set no collision/collision mode, and it applied to everyone, as you can't see other's names as well as you can't see their cars if you late join, so you don't know if you late join to a no collision or a collision race. Also if newcomers join in they may not know/understand what they have to do, to fit in the race.

It's just an opinion, but I think these multiplayer suggestions are more important then improving single player, as the actual community mainly races together, to be honest I don't care too much about how AI cars do. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your work, which makes a great positive impact with every patch.

As I mentioned in my first post, there can't be any bad updates.
I think that everyone is stressing out on having what they find most useful for themselves to be introduced in the game (not in a selfish way), and that includes me also.

If you are driving offline only, you probably want better fixes on the AI's because you have no use of changing cars during races.
If you only race non pickup races, you might want non-collission mode but the "only pickup racer" thinks it is not an important update.

In the end all the ideas are good, there is no question about it.
But what I'm trying to propose is what I find most useful for the multiplayer scene that reaches everyone.
Custom skins for instance makes good for both pickup and non-pickup racers (even offline racers for that matter).

If the community have higher demand for a particular new update, then that request will most likely be implemented much faster.

I remmember several ppl have been discussing about this problem in RV house few weeks ago.Unfortunately for us multiplayer lovers,ive noticed too that they have some strange priorities when it comes to immplementing stuff...

I dont know the rason why they refuse to implement some easy stuff for a long time now,cause its been suggested for i dont know,more then a year now

And i dont mean something big,dont wanna pressure developers,but i really dont know why they didnt do some simple stuff that would refresh the game,for example,best lap shown in race,that couldnt be so hard for them to do,or immplemnting points in races like in singe mode,i remmber once huki said to me that chamionship with points is not actually hard thing to do...

So maybe im wrong but one of this stuff that you highlighted stingo ...i think thats is still nowhere on radar for them to do

p.s dont look at this post as a negative comment,i think most of us are only curious about your developing plans....i mean your weird devloping plans

I sometimes feel the same than Cosmo and we're not the only ones, there's a general agreement about this in RV House so don't take it as a negative comment, just a feeling.

We understand perfectly that spending time working in an old game for free is not a priority for anyone, so I usually just answer myself saying they are doing important stuff in real life, which makes me very happy too if that's happening.
But since we don't know what's happening to you in real life, all this mystery about the development in the last months generates doubts and expectations like Cosmo's saying, which is perfectly understandable.

We also wonder if you still read what we post in the forum or can't read anymore (for example this thread, which didn't have any reply from you, at least a negative one saying there are more important stuff to do) would be better than the mystery.
Nobody want to put pressure, that's clear. We just want to put some light on this road to know what else to expect from our loved game and this awesome development.

From what I have read here on ORP, I understand that there aren't much changes in the multi-player area because we are to upgrade to WinSocket instead of using the outdated Directplay protocol (meaning no need to do port forwarding anymore). I also recall reading about 1.2 switching to a newer version of DirectX soon as well as going from MSS to DirectSound. All of these things are pretty huge, and I suppose it would only mean more work for Huki and Jigebren if they began implementing new features in multi-player, only to port them over to the new libraries making it all a duplicate effort. Oh, and the documentation on the website of Re-Volt 1.2 is over 1 year old, as is the beta. To me it sounds like they already got their hands full.

I like most of the ideas proposed in this thread though and hope to hear what jigebren or huki may have in mind in regards to this if they have time.

Ok, well we do read the posts, all posts. I agree most of time we don't use to reply, but there's a reason for that, it's the lack of time mostly.
Also, as far as I'm concerned I can't answer any point off the top of my head. To give an accurate answer I would always have to double-check in the source and that's actually too time consuming, sorry. So either I let Huki give his answer, or I let any one else here give the best answer as he can (because contrarily to both Huki and I he's not expected to give a 100% accurate answer).

Not being an online player myself (once again mostly by lack of time) I'm not involved much with new multiplayer features. It's not that I don't care, I'm aware this is key feature of re-volt, but I just can't work on features I'm not used to and I won't test myself.

About the weird plan, maybe it looks weird because it just doesn't exist. I'm joking a bit, we do plan things roughly. But sometime you just feel like working on a feature and you do it, just for the pleasure of it, even if it's not the most expected feature, even if that was not actually planned the week before... We actually work on our free time, we share it for free and we do not get nothing in return, so we can't behave like a professional team, can we?

I also hate when a project I follow has no frequent update, or an outdated documentation, or no clear roadmap, etc. but well, sometime that's the reality of small amateur project, things can't be perfect, people can't do better that their best...

Anyway thanks for your constructive comments. I understand the lack of communication from us can make the project look a bit opaque. As far as I'm concerned I presumed you were rather in touch with Huki through eg. RVHouse but maybe it's not the case...

Perfect Answer. Thank You.