A mod I’ve been watching for a while now was release, the much anticipated WWI Source. I was excited to download it when it was released with its uninspired, yet easily memorable name. I’ve played a few hours of it, most of it I believe were enjoyed and not endured but that doesn’t mean the mod isn’t without problems.

Hopefully this post will help show some of the issues I’ve had with the mod so far, as well as some ideas I’ve seen on the WWI Source forums and my thoughts on them.

Problems and Bugs

• Friendly fire defaults to off: this may not seem like a big deal, but it was for the first couple of nights after release. Every server that had any player count what-so-ever was full of griefers ruining it for everone.
• You can shoot and bolt while moving in prone: even though there’s no animation telling you this, it does.
• You don’t spectate after you’ve died: nope, it should go to spectator. The code’s already there for it, they just don’t use it. Instead you hover with jerky movement.
• If you select a class that’s full after joining, the menu doesn’t reopen and you have to re-select your team: this is very annoying if the MG class is full. You have to select your team again as well, I don’t see why you would have to.
• The infamous spawning bug: sometimes, after joining, you will not spawn after selecting your class. Sometimes you don’t get a reinforcements timer, sometimes you do. When the round resets you spawn.
• You can constantly spam the prone button: in most games, there is a delay for how often you can toggle prone, but in this you can keep on doing it
• MGs take forever to deploy and undeploy: it’s very annoying once you have sight of someone and are just completely helpless to do anything. Which also leads on to my next point.
• You can’t move until fully undeployed: it would be nice to move as soon as I right click, so I can get out of danger.
• Phantom player clips: There’s some weird player clips around, some blocking things you wouldn’t expect to be blocked like the top of a hill near Allied spawn on the map Devil’s Wood.
• Bleed-out doesn’t remember the weapon that caused it: When you die from a bleed out, it uses the player who caused the bleed out’s active weapon, not the one that caused it.
• Low-resolution death notices: The icons on death notices are incredibly low resolution, attacker pixel victim
• Score padding bug: if you switch to spectate, then join a team and select a class, and repeat, you will be +1 score better off every time you do it.
• Ironsights not aligned properly: a problem on pretty much every weapon
• Overpowered officer pistols: or sniper rifles, as they currently should be known. They do way to much damage at range.
• Dodgy animations: hands clipping through the gun, all sorts of issues here
• Bolting and reloading is too fast: you’d think the SMLE was a semi-automatic.

What could be added

Medics or Wound Dressing

It don’t think a medic class would be needed, it just doesn’t fit because of the absence of field medics in the actual war. But, something to counter the bleed-out system would be incredibly nice to have. Being able to dress wounds or a friends’ would be a much needed addition, but as suggested on the forums it shouldn’t heal health – just stop bleeding. I can imagine it working like L4D, but to heal others it would need some kind of incentive that makes you want to give it to others over yourself.

MG Class sidearm

Very easy to do, melee or pistol would be nice. You can’t defend yourself unless you are deployed which makes it really frustrating when you die from an easily-avoidable death on any other class.

Other things to consider

I’ve seen bits of other things I’d like to see addressed is simplifying the UI, which Dead.Pixel puts a very nice looking solution to here.

I will update this post if I see or think of anything else.

I own quite a few Steam games, my community page says 104. So why is it that I always end up playing the same old shit? That “shit” being Modern Warfare 2, mostly. I am a multiplayer kind of guy.

The single player game I most recently (and I use that term rather loosely) played was the first Max Payne game, a game released when single player campaigns lasted more than a couple of hours and I throughly enjoyed it. I haven’t really played anything since, not even Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2.

I need to start somewhere.

Well, over the past few months many great games have been released, many more than I can play due to my lack of time and my own ability to procrastinate at a world-class level. The immense Steam holiday sale did not help, every game that I’d ever thought I might kinda want I bought. My Steam games list alone ballooned upto 111 games at this point, and as my friend made me count, I’ve only actually completed one of those (and that was MW2. Edit- CoD4 as well).

So I am going to make a stand. I’d love to do some hardcore 30 games in 30 days thing, but due to both college and my job I just do not have time for that, so I’m going to do a pussy version. 1 long game (ie Dragon Age) or 2 regular size games (6-15ish hours) per week, and then write some words about them on here. Hopefully this will give me the inclination to actually complete some games that I do genuinely want to play through.

EDIT: So I got to thinking, and 2 games a week might be too tall of an order with everything going on, and my need to play some other multiplayer games as well. So I’m changing the format to “52 games in 2010″. 1 game per week, 1 blog post about it, sounds good. Will do the list in 4 parts during the year, so I can stay more up to date with new releases.

A few things that have to be said. This list may change and games may be pushed back if a new game comes out in a specific week that I want to play more than the games I have planned (I have tried to plan in advance for games with solid release dates). Secondly, I am going to try my best to stick to this list, but as I mentioned I do have other responsibilies that I may cause a week to be pushed back (ie a deadline at College). Thirdly I do not own either of the main consoles at the moment as I am primarily a PC gamer. I am planning on investing in both a PS3 and an Xbox 360 in the coming months, so I may do a console version of this list as a sequal later on (already have a few games on that list – how good does Bayonetta look?). I think that’s it, so let’s go.

The List

Week 1 (18th Jan) – Dragon Age: Origins, Torchlight

It is a sin and a travisty that I have not seen this game to completion yet as it was one of my most anitcipated games of the holiday season. I am going to start this game now and count it as next weeks game so it’s all nice and tidy – and because I really want to spend some hours in this game. With the hours I will hopefully have left of next week I’ll complete Torchlight. I’m about half way through and really enjoying it so far.

Week 2 (25th Jan) -  Mass Effect 2

This is a tricky week. Mass Effect 2, which I cannot wait for, comes out on the 29th of January. A game that I could spend a long long time playing if I wanted to, but I do want to stick to this one per week thingy. That could be tricky as the game does not come out until the 29th(but will hopefully arrive a few days early), and it is just a regular week with no time off from work or college so it may spill over into the next week, but I will try and prevent it. Will update if it does.

Week 3 (1st Feb) – Bioshock

Bioshock and me have had a wierd past. I played it a while ago on the 360, but FPS’ on consoles give me motion sickness – don’t ask. Have been wanting it on the PC for ages now but never actually got round to it, and then it was on the Steam holiday sale.

Week 4 (8th Feb) – Bioshock 2

Sequel to Bioshock does look like it will be fun, have the preorder ready to go, hope I enjoy Bioshock 1 so this is something I’ll be looking forward to.

Week 5 (15th Feb) – Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters was a fiver in the Steam holiday sale, bought it, watched both of the movies in preperation, not yet played it.

Week 6 (22nd Feb) – Crysis

Another big shame of mine. Two games that I have not completed and I call myself a PC gamer, with a decent gaming machine. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played them as a cool benchmark when I got my PC, but not even 10% of the way through the orignal. Must fix this.

Week 7 (1st March) – Crysis: Warhead

Stand alone expansion meant to be as good as the original… we’ll see.

Week 8 (8th March) – Plants vs Zombies, Braid

Indie blowout spectacular! Although, I don’t think PopCap count as indie, I think of them as such. Ah 180 employees you say Wikipedia… Fine. Casual gaming blowout spectacular! Anyways, both great games from what I’ve seen with enough play time in them to class giving them their own week, so much so it is going to be somewhat of a challenge.

Week 9 (15h March) – Fallout 3

I think this game requires it’s own week as I can tell it is quite a large game. Need to play this game and I have no excuse why it has taken me so long. Will possibly try and play all of the DLC as well, will see how it goes.

Week 10 (22nd March) – King’s Bounty: The Legend

Well, I bought King’s Bounty: Armored Princess when it was in the holiday sale and played basically the tutorial only. At the time of writing, both of the King’s Bounty games are on sale, so I picked up The Legend as even though they don’t follow on or anything I like to be chronological. May add Armored Princess to the list if I fall in love with the first one.

Week 11 (29th March) – Prey

Prey was in the Steam holiday sale before they ran out of keys, luckily I was quick enough.

Week 12 (5th April) – Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash had  Steam weekend sometime before Christmas. Played the demo, liked it, bought it, then never actually played the game.

Week 13 (12th April) – Borderlands

Borderlands is a bit of a maybe. I don’t know if I want to play through the whole game on my own, and don’t know if there will be anyone left who hasn’t played it yet to play through it with me. It does look like a good game, but will have to assess the situation closer to the time.

Week 14 (19th April) – Chronicles of Riddick: Assault of Dark Athena

Bought this one in the 5 day Steam sale, the one before Christmas (I really do love Steam). Looks great, looking forward to playing it.. in 4 months.

Week 15 (21st of April) – Call of Duty: World at War

CoD: WaW I skipped on it’s release due to lack of funds at the time and due to the poor reviews. Since learnt that the single player is more than playable, and I like hearing Kiefer Sutherland in any capacity. Want to play as more of an experiment to find out the truth of the matter.

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Well, I think that covers everything so far. There are a few games that are expected the first quarter of this year that I am looking forward to such as Max Payne 3, Splinter Cell: Conviction (if it is as good as it looks), Thief 4 (Ubisoft are deffo trying this year aren’t they?). All games that if they come out before some of the later games on my list I will be inserting in there and will be pushing other games back. This list has really just made me realise how much of a fail gamer I have been for this long. Damn.

So that’s that. I will be updating the list every Monday and posting my thoughts on the games, somewhat of a mini review. May do a full size review of some of the new release games, but do not see the point of reviewing a game that has been out for a while. I’ll also be updating my twitter with my progress and thoughts as I go,  because I’m all upto date like that. So wish me luck.

For an interesting little experiment, I decided to make a little web page that counts down the release to Steam games. What makes it that bit more interesting is that it also gives you the option to launch the game as soon as it’s released.

The principle behind it is pretty simple. It gets the countdown from the Steam store page and uses it to calculate the release time, this is then stored in a database so it doesn’t have to scrape the Steam store page again. Then the countdown is calculated client side with Javascript and the page doesn’t need to be refreshed and doesn’t use any AJAX so it’s not constantly sending traffic to my server.

The only disadvantage with the current version of this is that it only uses release dates and app IDs that are accessible from the server’s territory. My server is located in Jacksonville, Florida so it will use the US storefront’s content.

If you want to give this a try you can see the countdown for Borderlands or Left 4 Dead 2. Want to see another game’s countodown? Append ?game=<appid> to the end of the URL.