Old Gamer's Suggested Improvements.

[Lionman]

I am highly motivated to play this game. I bought it almost as soon as it came out having played the UT2004 MOD version a lot previously but so far I am having to spend 9/10 ths of my time just trying to get it to run properly, consistently and for at least 24 hours to start with, trying to get it to run at all! That would be OK with a BETA but not even the MOD version took THIS amount of hassle to get working. For a paid final version this is totally unacceptable.

Here are what you guys URGENTLY need to fix if you want to make a success and a lot of money from this otherwise excellent title..

1. Streamline the code so that it loads FASTER because it takes a really ridiculous length of time to even just get into a map!

2. Add a "fuel bar" to ALL the game's loading screen stages so that one knows if the game is even still WORKING. (I have spent absolutely ages staring at loading screens when the game has in fact actually stopped working at all. Had I not had other friends on voice comms watching the server I would never have known and would still be sitting waiting.)

3. Please FIX the issues with firewalls and especially with Zone Alarm - which is used extensively by gamers.

4. FIX the bug that puts one apparently "in-game" but actually alone on an empty server and not in-game at all, able only to spin around on the spot, fire one's weapon with unlimeted ammunition but unable to move! Saying this BUG is "a matter of insufficient RAM" is nonsense as the game runs sometimes perfectly normally on the same PC. My PC can run Far Cry, Battlefield 2 and many other CPU and RAM intensive games - this is just bad code. I find that I am having to run the verification utility every couple of days just to keep the code running. No commercially viable game should be that fragile!

5. FIX the dumb, totally ridiculous and unrealistic motions of the avatars and bots which still spin around like helicopter rotors, ruining one's immersion in this otherwise exceptional infantry simulator which is far too good to be called a mere FPS game. How come virtually every other combat game out there has realistic, smooth, motion-capture style avatar movement yet RO's avatars move like spastic zombies? Again - bad code - the avatar animation needs to be up to the same standard as all the rest of this otherwise excellent sim.

5. FIX the "Favourites" section of the browser because one's favourites often seems to stop working, maps don't show up when they are loaded on the servers, and question marks appear instead of details. Why does this section of so many games seem so badly done? Also please add a big, clear, simple "add to my favourites button"! (It took me ages to work out that I had to right click on the Favourites background as that is NOT intuitively obvious and it isn't in the manual either.)

6. Please FIX the "clunky" and very "unsmooth" way the code operates all through the game.


I am 60 and a compulsive military gamer, online for well over a decade, who has played the whole Medal of Honour series, the whole Call of Duty series, the Brothers in Arms series, the whole Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2 series and the whole Ghost Recon series, from their beginnings. Red Orchestra is right up there with the best ever WW2 military combat simulators but the only game that loads slower or is as demanding of PC power is Battlefield 2.

This is not just due to the graphics or the excellent and vast maps, it's the way the code is written, because although COD 2 has excellent graphics it runs fast, is as smooth as silk and you can jump right in and play with a minimum of fuss even on a 512 MB RAM PC with a slower processor.

Red Orchestra has better detail, better weapons research and realism and really is an "infantry combat simulator" rather than another mere run & gun FPS game so it really is worth fixing these things.

One thing is on my wish-list. Something that so far only the ancient and venerable Microsoft Flight Simulator (about to appear in its TENTH incarnation) the most long-lived and successful game of all time, has. DYNAMIC WEATHER! In FS9 you can download real-world weather by satellite every 15 minutes. Maybe that's a "step too far" for a FPS but at least dynamic changing weather could be an option. Imagine the battlefield as dusk falls, or dawn rises, or as fog gradually blots out the landscape enabling rapid advances across open ground, or as a sudden shower fills the shell holes with water and blots out the sounds of gunfire and cries? Great games are all about atmosphere and immersion in virtuality. The RO maps with wind and rain show this excellently - I can do without the epic music - I game to be transported to another time, another place, another reality.

The people who created Red Orchestra are obviously of the same mind - so please FIX the problems chaps! Hey I'll write you all the rave reviews you need if you do!

You may not know it but your new (potentially largest) target market is people like me. Well educated mature gamers between 40 and 70, who can afford the time, attention and PC power, for whom virtuality and gaming is the one way left for them to continue to have vicarious extreme experiences in virtuality!