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Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 1:52 am
by W1D3A55
*Note: The RGA resource wads constantly change every couple of days. Things mentioned within this review are subject to possible change and/or invalidation.*
Refined by -Jes-
Original RGA2 made by Voltlock
Thread Link (With the Download Link There): CLICK HERE PLOX
Spoiler: Some RGA gameplay with Alien Vendetta (Open)
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Real Guns Advanced 2 (also known as RGA2) is a standard monster and weapon replacement mod designed for Coop/Survival that tries to apply the Modern Warfare 2 feel to Doom. There sure is a lot within this mod, so ill try to ramble on.

Lets start off with when you connect to a server. You get the option of either making your own class, getting random weapons and perks, or getting a random default class. Although making a custom class can be nice, it just seems like it takes away the skill factor a little bit considering any weapon within the same class category can show up at the weapon spots in the map. As for the last 2 options, I feel that it should really become 1 option as they're more or less the same thing.

Onto weapons. Holy shit there are a lot of weapons in this mod. There are several different types of pistols, smgs, lmgs, assault rifles, snipers and rocket launchers. Overall the weapons themselves are fairly well balanced, however there are some problems that are a bit annoying.
1. The sniper swaying while looking down the scope is pretty damn annoying. Although you can hold down shift (at least that's what it is for me) to steady it, you're lucky if you can get a few shots in before you have to catch your breath. I know this is supposed to be realistic but cmon.
2. Weapon recoil. Although the recoil is realistic to that in MW2, it really gets in the way when you're trying to take out several monsters at once. It's almost impossible to aim straight on some weapons and not waste ammo.
3. In general, the spriting doesn't make much sense. The weapon pickup sprites are all in HD, yet when they're in your hand they look badly pixelated, hell they look like they were taken a picture of by a camera. It looks like the author(s) didn't even try to touchup on them. also weapon pickup is quite comical because they don't stay on pickup, but rather respawn. This is funny because it actually respawns like 8x faster than the ammo spawns, so I can fill up on ammo before anyone else.
4. There's a glitch within the coding in which the gun you're currently using will just not execute a hitscan upon firing. Your ammo count goes down, but nothing comes out of the weapon. The only workaround for this is if you drop that weapon and pick up another one of the same kind.

Now comes the leveling/awards system. Similar to MW2, when you kill monsters (or assist in killing them), you get XP, which is used to level up. For every level you gain, you get an inventory item (or award as it's called) of your choosing. There's not much to say about this, other than that this really only works best in medium-concentrated monster levels. Anything lower, and it simply becomes boring after a while. Anything higher, and it seems like the leveling up system is virtually pointless.

Now onto perks. All of the perks within MW2 are in here with some modifications done to them. I have mixed feelings about the perks. On one hand, you have perks that are truly useful (some practically required ie. Stopping Power, Juggernaut, Danger Close, etc.), and on the other you have perks that just don't seem to have a purpose. Take Last Stand for instance. Is pulling out a pistol to shoot the monster that tried to kill you really going to help at all? Probably not. You also have a solid 90% chance of dying. Rarely do you ever survive last stand without being revived by a teammate, which reminds me. With Last Stand Pro, you get to revive dying teammates. This sounds like a good idea, but it's poorly executed. Here's what needs to happen:
1. The victim needs to be sitting still. If they move they basically can't be revived.
2. Make sure someone else has your back, because you can't shoot while reviving someone.
3. Pray you live.
All in all, the perk system isn't the best, but its overall a somewhat useful aspect.

Then comes the projectiles within the game in general. Most projectiles (and even some death states actually) have a custom HD explosion. Unfortunately, although it looks nice, it makes the same mistake Brutal Doom made in that its a severe frame-rate killer when at least over 10 explosions happen (at least for me it is). There are also a few recolored caco and baron projectile sprites that although look pretty decent, are a bit too fast. However, the one type of projectile that's probably the most overpowered is the large, fast green orb that certain mancubi, archviles and cyberdemons can fire. This has a very, very big splash radius (not really kidding when i say you can take damage from it when its 10 feet away.) with a ton of damage to compensate.

Oh god. The monsters in this mod. This is easily the single worst part about the mod because of the many annoyances that come with them. We have lots of variant monsters, some of which taken from ST actors and slightly modified. The monsters in this (revenants to be specific) are practically color coded according to what projectile/hitscan they use. Also, some of the projectiles that are fired from them are a bit overpowered. Some examples include super-fast cacoballs, super-fast impballs, revenant homing missiles that have a stupid damage radius and even large, fast moving green orbs with an even more absurd splash damage and radius. I mean really, how are you actually supposed to avoid taking damage? In addition, some of the recolored sprites on some of the monsters (specifically the dark archvile and dark baron just look poorly done. Here are some of the features I find most annoying however.
1. Every former zombie and former zombie replacement is somewhat overpowered. Also, a bit less than half of the replacements you think you just killed end up shooting you while in their Last Stand state. This can really fuck you up.
2. Every other kind of monster has the ability to respawn after death and become a different type of monster within the same monster class. These respawns can happen basically at the most random of time. Not only does this completely piss off everyone (and making you constantly look around to make sure you killed them all), but this can also fuck up percentage of monsters killed if you have the specific DMFLAG on.
3. Some of the monster sounds (specifically those of the human/imp kind). This is both annoying and just plain comical/bad. Just some of the phrases such as "EXTERMINATE", "I MUST BE HEARING THINGS", and "STAY ALERT BROTHERS" just sound a bit cheesy, even though some of them have been modified to give a "demonic" tone. This becomes annoying however when there's 15+ monsters in one area searching for players. Half the time It simply sounds like some weird repetitive conversation or a 10-yr old pressing all the buttons on a soundboard at the same time.

Lets talk about health and armor. Your max armor is the standard 200, however your max health is at 300. This may sound like a lot, but in reality, that's a good thing. Because most of the monsters are kinda overpowered, you lose health more health faster. Thankfully (can't believe im saying this), your health can actually regenerate up to 100 if you don't take damage for an extended period of time. Also, Health and Armor bonuses give add two instead of one to the designated count. And, similar to Complex Doom, monsters actually drop health bonuses (yes they're pretty useful).

Now lets have a look at the Custom HUD we got here.
[spoiler]
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This doesn't look bad for a custom HUD. The stat bars look very nice and sophisticated. However, it all seems like it's a little....too much. It feels like there's a lot on screen that's blocking my line of sight. Otherwise looks fairly decent.

As far as gameplay goes, it depends on what kind of map you're playing. If you're playing a standard survival map in coop mode with low-medium concentration of monsters, this mod is okay at best. If you're playing a slaughtermap style map however, good fucking luck to try and get far, because it'll be a challenge. Overall however, its actually a little bit of a mess even though its mostly playable). All i have to say is that you should prepare to not blow through a map in one life. Just prepare to die....a lot. Also, this mod works best with no more than 4 people (any more and it starts becoming a little boring)

Conclusion:
This mod certainly isn't pretty. Like many mods of its kind, it has its bugs, imbalances and such. This mod is also certainly not for everybody. Some may enjoy it for awhile, while others may hate it and never touch it again. However, It's playable and is best served as a mod just to kill time if you have nothing better to play.

Summation/Scores

Gameplay: 5.5/10 It's certainly not a good mod to play, yet not so bad you just want to cringe. Like I said, it's good as a "filler mod", but not much else.

Balancing: 4/10 its on the right track, but it needs some serious work.

Visuals: 5/10 nothing thats truly eye candy in here. Just your standard recoloring of sprites and such.

Originality: 3.5/10 Although it implements a few different concepts and ideas, the standard weapon/monster replacement idea has been done before, and this doesn't do it very well.

Overall Rating: 4.5/10

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 3:07 am
by -Jes-
This seems fairly accurate actually..
My notes on the review:
W1D3A55 wrote: The sniper swaying while looking down the scope is pretty damn annoying. Although you can hold down shift (at least that's what it is for me) to steady it, you're lucky if you can get a few shots in before you have to catch your breath.
In point of fact, Refined generously increased said time. A single match of deathmatch showed me not to entirely remove it though.
Currently, it lasts just long enough to empty a semi-automatic sniper.
W1D3A55 wrote:Weapon recoil.
It really depends on the weapon in question. DPS is quite literally balanced against accuracy and stability. And it's one of the things the mod's fanbase (there is such a thing) actually LIKES.
W1D3A55 wrote:In general, the spriting doesn't make much sense.
The pickup sprites are taken directly from MW2, while the wielding sprites are some awkward resolution resulting from screenripping. RGA3's rips are way less hideous, but also much larger filewise AND in half the numbers. And you would not believe how many of them I've polished up for holes, white splotches and etc. The UMP45 dry reload bolt pull is purely a photoshop of other frames by me.
W1D3A55 wrote:also weapon pickup is quite comical because they don't stay on pickup, but rather respawn.
This is a 'necessity' of the weapon limit system. There is a way around it, but I'm a lazy bastard who is bad at code. Also, people complained about longer times.
W1D3A55 wrote:There's a glitch within the coding in which the gun you're currently using will just not execute a SHOT upon firing.
Most people experience this with the missile weapons actually. I blame the extreme abuse of inventory checking jumps that RGA2 is built around.
W1D3A55 wrote:(On the rank system) There's not much to say about this, other than that this really only works best in medium-concentrated monster levels. Anything lower, and it simply becomes boring after a while. Anything higher, and it seems like the leveling up system is virtually pointless.
Sounds like every other levelling system.
W1D3A55 wrote:Is pulling out a pistol to shoot the monster that tried to kill you really going to help at all?
Not really. Not losing a life, however, is really useful in survival games. But that's another story...

Fun fact: I'm all for removing last stand altogether.
W1D3A55 wrote:(On Last Stand Pro usage)
1. The victim needs to be sitting still. If they move they basically can't be revived.
The one point at which you are factually wrong. The 'attack' even has a 64 unit splash radius - you can literally revive several people with one shot.
W1D3A55 wrote:Then comes the projectiles within the game in general.
The faster projectiles are also typically less damaging than other 'higher tiered' ones.
As for the 'BFG' shots, yeah. I nerfed it significantly on one monster, while keeping it OP on the other to account for that 'higher tier' archvile not having the traditional vile attack.
Balance is a bitch when you don't get any input, like, ever.
W1D3A55 wrote:Oh god. The monsters in this mod. This is easily the single worst part about the mod.
You'd think that, but then you meet the people who have consistently asked me to add RGH's monsters to the mix!!

RGA2 even had a 'juggernaut henchman' occasionally replacing mancubi - basically the Wolf3D Death Knight complete with only one facing sprite.

I still get complaints about my removing him, so go figure.

Fact is, much of Refined's been about making the 'new' monsters less Realm'y, less different and so on, to the point where the former Skulltag Belphegor is barely more than a 25% health increase and slightly faster attacks.
W1D3A55 wrote:Every former zombie and former zombie replacement is somewhat overpowered.
Still easily killed though with the excess of absurdly rapidfire weaponry in the mod.
W1D3A55 wrote:Also, a bit less than half of the replacements you think you just killed end up shooting you while in their Last Stand state.
It used to be nearly ALL of them. Refined nerfed that into the ground, but still.
W1D3A55 wrote:Every other kind of monster has the ability to respawn after death and become a different type of monster within the same monster class.
another of the things I nerfed to hell and back in the first release of Refined. At least now, seeing 'god revenants' is unlikely even with a good 100 regular revenants in the map.

W1D3A55 wrote:Some of the monster sounds (specifically those of the human/imp kind). This is both annoying and just plain comical/bad.
Agreed. I've considered ripping them out as well, but as you know by now, I still get complaints about removing the juggernaut...
W1D3A55 wrote:Lets talk about health and armor.
Hilariously enough, RGA's health regen is a slow, tedious affair as opposed to every single fps made in the past 10 years.
As for the health bonus spam, it was literally lagging people MORE than the explosions.
W1D3A55 wrote:(on the hud)
However, it all seems like it's a little....too much. It feels like there's a lot on screen that's blocking my line of sight.
And on the flipside, I've been screamed at by people using 1920x1080 to scale it UP.

As it stands, the hud is designed for a middle-of-the-road resolution like 1280x720, because Zandro only allows you to forcibly scale a hud to match a 320x240 resolution which honestly looks like shit.

Hopefully when Zandro 2.0 comes around I can just plug the value in there and everyone will be happy.
W1D3A55 wrote:If you're playing a slaughtermap style map however, good fucking luck to try and get far, because it'll be a challenge.
Fun fact: me and two guys cleared Chillax map04 in a 3 life survival game earlier today.
W1D3A55 wrote:It's playable and is best served as a mod just to kill time if you have nothing better to play.
Overall Rating: 4.5/10
I'm amazed it got That much. :lol:

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 3:12 am
by Ænima
There's a glitch within the coding in which the gun you're currently using will just not execute a hitscan upon firing. Your ammo count goes down, but nothing comes out of the weapon.
Sounds like desync to me. This happens to me online sometimes. You don't have to drop the weapon to fix it, just switch to another weapon and then switch back.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 3:15 am
by -Jes-
Ænima wrote: Sounds like desync to me. This happens to me online sometimes. You don't have to drop the weapon to fix it, just switch to another weapon and then switch back.
Or reload manually.
I literally spam the reload key whenever I'm not getting blown up.
And I rarely ever experience desyncs.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 3:33 am
by Ænima
Oh also, after playing RGAR extensively in singleplayer, my only big nags (that I can recall off the top of my head) are:

1.) Stone demons and ghost imps need to spawn less frequently. Revenants too.

2.) Those fucking semi-invisible lost souls that are 4x as aggressive as the vanilla lost souls. WTF. You have no idea how many times I've been killed by a Lost Soul that I wasn't even able to find until it was too late. You can keep the super-aggresive opaque ones in, but please remove the invisible ones. Infact you might as well remove invisible lost souls and pain elementals completely. Sometimes it just feels like swatting flies, honestly.

3.) I agree with Wideass about the imp sounds. Not sure what sort of alternative to suggest, though, other than the vanilla sounds.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:42 pm
by -Jes-
Ænima wrote:1.) Stone demons and ghost imps need to spawn less frequently. Revenants too.
NR6 had a chance of 128/256 I believe. Refined dropped that to ~36/256. Guess I can nudge it down further to ~28/256. Cue the complaints.
Ænima wrote:2.) Those fucking semi-invisible lost souls
Yeah, I just removed those entirely. No one will miss those I bet.
Ænima wrote:3.) I agree with Wideass about the imp sounds.
Gone for good. Cue additional complaints.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:59 pm
by W1D3A55
-Jes- wrote:
Ænima wrote: Sounds like desync to me. This happens to me online sometimes. You don't have to drop the weapon to fix it, just switch to another weapon and then switch back.
Or reload manually.
I literally spam the reload key whenever I'm not getting blown up.
And I rarely ever experience desyncs.
The thing is i try to reload manually and switch weapons, but the same damn weapon still doesn't want to fire. Since the weapon is practically useless at that point, i drop it and pick up a different one.

Although this does happen mainly with the rocket launchers, its also happened while using the M4A1, Ranger, and Vector.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 1:26 am
by Slim
Weird, I usually got the same bug. I think it needs looking into.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 3:06 am
by -Jes-
Excessive bump, I know.. But given recent 'revelations' (hint, I glossed over and finally noticed a dumb bug two other people never saw),
I had to come back here and point out something almost stupidly hilarious in hindsight about this:
W1D3A55 wrote: On one hand, you have perks that are truly useful (some practically required ie. Stopping Power, Juggernaut, Danger Close, etc.)
... And the bug? These perks NEVER WORKED. AT ALL.
Not only was the scripting dodgy enough to only apply these powerups on coop respawns (and essentially got 'removed' when entering Last Stand),
but the names the powerups used for their respective effects were mislabeled, meaning they had no effect.

So finally, in 1.23, for the first time in the sad, sad history of RGA... THESE PERKS ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING. Anything we experienced until now was entirely a placebo effect - and we all fell for it.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:26 pm
by Ænima
You're fucking kidding me.


I could have sworn that Sleight of Hand made reloads faster.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 11:56 pm
by Slim
Ænima wrote: You're fucking kidding me.


I could have sworn that Sleight of Hand made reloads faster.
It did. I thought he meant Danger Close, Juggernaut and Stopping Power were the ones that didn't work.

RE: Real Guns Advanced 2 Refined v121: Review by W1D3A55

Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:31 am
by -Jes-
Suicide Slim wrote:It did. I thought he meant Danger Close, Juggernaut and Stopping Power were the ones that didn't work.
Yep, in fact I quoted Wideass exactly because the ones he named were the ones not doing anything.
They all rely exclusively on damagefactor powerups to deliver an effect, and as stated the associated effects were mislabeled.

This also affected Commando though the standard perk (not the Pro) still applied a range increase for knife attacks.

All other perks beyond those have worked fine for a loooong time now.