Big Trouble from 1.6 for Battle Ground

Hey guys, new info was announced in the forums that it seems they are changing the levels of Battle Ground also this update and this is going to be a big problem for everyone who participates in BG because a lot of people are sitting at the last level and getting stronger and not leveling up. I heard that they did this level change because of exactly this reason to push people to move. So the new levels, if they are implemented, are:

Battleground Level Brackets have now been changed to the follow:
30-39
35-44
40-49
45-54
50-59
55-64
60-69
65-74
70-80
Players are randomly placed into one of the Battleground groups they fall into when they enter the battleground.

So this means that when I am holding now at level 69 then i could be put into the brackets for up to level 74, which is going to be a huge problem. However, if i do get put into brackets 60 to 69 that would be just wonderful :)

COSMOS gets Will Destroyer for PvP

Hey guys, let's talk a little bit about Will Destroyer. I am now pumping it up to use it for pvp because it has become quite clear that if you are not a top guy (or gal) then it is not possible to just stay with critical attacks for pvp. Criticals are amazing for World Boss and I am of course keeping all my crit astrals as well as gems for every World Boss fight or anything at all which is not pvp, but I am going to be switching to a "solid" knight build for pvp because the armor people have there is so high that unless

I do critical attacks the damage is very low and also survivability is low because of lower defense and health. So now I pumped up Will Destroyer to level 4 today and I will try do battle ground with that and also by switching my crit astrals to PDEF and HP and also then using a Block astral. I have high hopes for this strategy and for PvP (player versus player) it will do better.

I even used star points to help me level up Will Destroyer faster and I put here the picture of that.

Xonotic 0.7 released

After an agonizingly long wait, I am happy to report that a new official release of the premier FOSS arena FPS Xonotic is available to the masses.

Here is a nice (but slightly older) game-play video for those not having played Xonotic yet:



Changes are quite extensive compared to the last official release... most notably an extensive update the the CTF mode, some neat additional features for competitive gaming and an assortment of great new maps.

New maps in Xonotic 0.7

On the technical side of things, the engine DarkPlaces got quite a few performance improvements (mainly due to the fact that the creator now works at Valve software and thus has direct access to Nvidia's and AMD's graphics hardware divisions) and that an all new script compiler is now in use. That it runs on SDL 2.0 might also increase it's usability a lot for some.
There are also finally an animation bending feature for the player-models and creation of new characters has never been easier now that the iqm format is used.

You can comment on this release over at the Xonotic forum release announcement thread (or of course here in our comment section).

Also check out these two still under heavy development mods for xonotic:

• Overkill is a mod that attempts to combine the best of minsta gameplay and TDM/CTF. It also has some nice vector shaded new weapons and player models.
• DotC is an DOTA like but in 1st person view type of mod.

Last but not least, the awesome all new level editor for quake based games, Trenchbroom is making great advances and should soon allow easy mapping for Xonotic out of the box.

P.S.: If you have a really fast Android device, you can also try to run Xonotic on it via this newly fixed DarkPlaces port. Just don't expect to be able to compete online with touchscreen input :p