Thankfully, I managed to get a copy of Warfork running thanks to MxCam for giving me a heads up. That being said, I can now properly rant and give my impressions of Warfork.
First of all, it’s a fork of Warsow. Some people appear to not know what a fork is, and comment that Warfork is copying and stealing assets from Warsow. Other than the name, and sound files (I guess, never bothered to research), the license allows the assets to be used elsewhere as long as the source is present.
Warfork (Warsow) is pretty much Quake 3’s CPMA mod, mixed with Street Fighter 2 turbo, mixed with Street Fighter 2’s rainbow edition hack. You got your (ab)normal Quake 1+2+3 hybrid physics (CPMA), and a dash which also doubles as a wall jump. The dash+wall jump will be easier to learn rather than the CPMA physics.
SOUND: The main dev states that the sound effects are just place holders, and is looking for someone to help with the creation of the sound effects. So complaining about the sounds is kind of pointless, none the less, I never really liked the sound effects in Warsow to begin with, and found them pretty weak. Oddly, the ElectroBolt firing sound has not been changed, that coming from Warsow. Regarding looking for someone to handle the creation of sound effects, I could always help as I created all of the sounds on my main project. :)
GRAPHICS: Other than using a placeholder logo for Warfork, the graphics appear to be mostly the same, which some changes here and there with the models and icons. Not much to change other than making some textures less flat, but not too noisy.
GAME PLAY: I’m reminded on some of the things that can turn me off to the game, but I’ll still play regardless. :) The game is very stingy on ammo. You’ll find yourself running out of ammo quickly, as if we’re trying to out due CPMA in terms of difficulty or hardcore-ness.
Rocket/grenade splash damage is another thing that I don’t understand. I find I’m getting hit by Rocket/grenade splash from a long distance, while shooting rockets don’t seem to do much splash damage towards the enemy for me, quite odd.
THINGS I WOULD CHANGE: Self damage for one is just crazy, and the Warsow devs seem to have been trying to make the game more hardcore or something. I would bring self damage back to 50% damage at least.
For ammo, this would be tricky, since you don’t want to alienate the Warsow playerbase. I would suggest an ‘easy’ mode, which will allow items tagged with the ‘easy’ flag to spawn only in this mode. This would help new players not get too distracted with the weapon ammo, and pay more attention to other game play elements. Though, this should be brought up for discussion with the community, not just throw it in the game without getting feedback from the community.
‘Free For All’ vs. ‘Death Match’, both names refer to Quake 1’s death match game type. Warsow treats them as two different game types, which is quite confusing. Either use ‘Free For All’ or ‘Death Match’, and add ‘Arena’ at the end to indicate that you start with all weapons or something along the line.
Regarding match times, they can be a good thing, however only if the match is pretty even (scores are close). If it’s a blow out (EG: 50-0), the match needs to end early to reduce the waiting time for people waiting to play (depending on the game type of course). While it should be up to the community, I suggest looking at MFArena’s 2 round system on how this works. Pretty much, the match will be divided into 2 seamless rounds (advancing to the next round will not reset anything, and the match will continue as if nothing happened). When the match hits the end of the first round, if the trailing team or player is within half of the leading team’s or player’s score, or the trailing player is within 5 points in Duel, or 20 points in Team Death Match, the match will advance into the second round. Otherwise, the match ends. In other game types such as Capture the Flag for example, this would be 4 points. This round system will not apply to Free For All, Clan Arena and Bomb game types for one reason or another.
Finally, the game’s name. While the name ‘Warfork’ is easily searchable, unlike for example ‘Reflex’, this isn’t a good name and I would suggest searching for a better name. Since the theme of the player models will be cat-like creatures, perhaps a name relating to cats (perhaps). But be sure to come up with something searchable, and something that sounds cool, like ‘DoomBringer’ or ‘MFArena’.
Also, can we make it easier for non-Steam users to download the game? It will help players like me participate in the game. Just saying. :)
[–]Ian 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun - (1 child)
[–]m68k[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)