Decoy, media manager at Frozen Sand, described it as “loud, accurate, and lots of power”.

However.. seriously guys.. how many sidearms and secondary weapons can you possibly add? Well.. apparently tons and tons. Oh and by the way.. still no release date.. which seems far, far away (Q3 2010 hopefully).

The Video

A new weapon?

In addition to see dual sidearms, we can notice a Uzi from a screenshot of the video, which might be introduced in Urban Terror 4.2.
This would probably mean ANOTHER (unneeded?) secondary weapon.

How they will work?

We still haven’t official news about how they will work. They likely going to be used with Left/Right mouse buttons. My guess is that they will be a pickable equipment like Laser or Silencer that will double the number of sidearms (2 berettas, glocks or DEs) and possibly secondaries (this could mean that the Uzi is a new secondary weapon). We don’t know if accuracy will lower but probably it will, however this might seem the only downturn for now.

How will they affect the release?

The concerns goes to the release of Urban Terror 4.2. Adding new stuff always means more time to test it and balance it. We can agree that 4.2 it’s already late and should be released asap, that’s why many suggested that this featured could slip to the next release (4.3?).

What do you think about akimbo weapons? How do you think they will affect the gameplay? Tell us in the comments!

UPDATE

Looks like the DE will have 14 bullets instead of 7. If it keeps the same damage, rate of fire and accuracy it will become devastating.

The first thing that pops is the amazing work done on the map. Tombs looks very nice and we can also see the bump maps and the specular maps working. We have a first look at the Benelli M4 also. Altrough it doesn’t seem very interesting for now since it just looks like a SPAS with the model changed.
Animations and models still have flaws but it’s a step forward.
What are your opinions? Share them with us!

[source]

Graphics

Personally I look forward to see a renewal in the graphic engine. The improvements will give a new look and feel to the game that will be well recieved. Also my concerns about older machines have been adressed by Frankie V, which said that the new effects are tweakable and you can always come back to a more 486 friendly experience.

Weapons

Weapon stuff is still unclear. The P90 and the Benelli aren’t fully implemented in the game, so we can’t really say that if they are going to change the game or just fall between the not so often used secondary weapons. The fact that hitting arms and legs will no longer unzoom a sniper will be a huge game changer. Right now the Sr-8 is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the game (behind the Negev, of course ), but this change will make it even more powerfull to the point of being maybe too powerfull.
The weapons need a rebalance. M4 and LR300 are practically identical and some other weapons are too bad to be played. I would like to see more and more weapons in competitive play rather than just the same 3 or 4.

Animations

By having Frankie V as animator, Urban Terror will hopefully benefit from more realistic animations. However there is still a lot of work to do. In my opinion for example the standing position just doesn’t seem right and there are some flaws here and there.

UrT Passport

Another topic which is still unclear. BladeKiller refused to give further information about this to prevent hackers to figure out a way to get around it before its relase. I’m confident that will work but not forever. No anti-cheat system is 100% secure and the best anti-cheat system are Lan Partys.

Gameplay

The gameplay will rest practically unchanged…? We don’t know. If arms and legs will no longer unzoom we will see an explosion of Sr-8 players… I mean more than now. New animations will lead (probably) to differences in the hitboxes. The crouching stance has shown to be different and the player crouches more when he’s not shooting or aiming, making it a less hittable character. The gameplay itself will rest probably unchanged since UrT found a formula that just works.

Now we would like to hear your opinion.

What do you expect from 4.2? Are you looking forward to it? Are you scared that it will ruin the game? Tell us in the comments! We will pack your opinion in a future post and perhaps FrozenSand will listen to your suggestions and implement some stuff in the game. For example I’d like a giant panda in the middle of Turnpike. Wouldn’t it be great?

Hi Frankie and welcome! So.. what can we expect from 4.2?

It’s a given that the overall game play must remain the same that has made Urban Terror so popular over all these years. It’s a formula of success that could be easily ruined by adding too much all at once.
The one thing that I’m hoping to do with the updates to the animation is just to create a much better ride and a stronger relationship between the 3rd person model, the target, and the environment.
So what I hope is expected is the ability to make better tactful decisions during the course of the game in a manner that should be possible in the first place. As for the coding part that’s a different department but I do hear the words “fixed” a lot.

That’s cool. There is a lot of stuff coming.. doesn’t this sound like a major relase? Something more than just a .1 advance?

The next release is defiantly going to be a major step forward for Urban Terror just taking into consideration Passport alone. So much so that we have been toying with the idea of getting off the numbering band wagon and give it a sportier name.

There have been some rumors about Glock and Flashbangs inclusions.. can you give us some news about that?

Not much I can say about the addition of flash bangs for the moment.

As for the addition of a Glock.

Weapons in general is one of those subjects that comes up on a consistence bases. Some are good ideas others not so good but they all suffer from and creates the same problems.
Urban Terror currently has a well-developed inventory of various weapons each having their own cost verses benefits package and adding a new weapon only creates a variation of one already available to the player.
There seems to be a notion between players that a weapon needs to be uniquely different in its specifications even when dealing with weapons that in the real world have similar specifications. So the question becomes does the addition of a new weapon server a purpose or is it just being added for eye candy?
What motivates the team to add a new weapon is does it offer something else besides just eye candy when faced with more important tasks at hand and the possible addition of the Glock to the inventory is based more on circumstances rather than a design decision.
Hoi, a member on the message boards, decided on his own to develop the Glock from the ground up and to completion based on the promise that I would at least reward him for his effort by getting it into the game engine.
Will it be included in the game?
That’s still to be decided but there are always possibilities in doing rather than just suggesting.

How the improvements in the graphic engine is going to affect the game? Will players have the possibility to tweak down the settings to let UrT run on older machines?

Better graphics does not automatically make for better game play. For that matter good graphics should be a non-intrusive element of the game yet creates the impression of an overall quality to the gaming experience.
Painting an old clunker car does not change the fact that it’s a clunker but Urban Terror has a history of being a great game so giving it a paint job only makes sense.
On the other hand like most games these will be things that can be turned off or tuned down as they are done now.
The gorilla in the room though is just what is an older machine?
The one nice thing about the Q3 engine is it’s designed to chew up polygons and spit out renderings so even a box bought at a yard sale would probably do the job.

Another interesting question: What can you tell us about the workflow of Urban Terror? You are a quite large team spread all over the USA and the Europe. How do you guys work together and take decisions together?

Lets not forget Canada we count too.
I’m more or less still then new guy so it took me a bit of time to figure out the rhythm of how the team functions in the world of the Internet project.
Everybody on the team knows what needs to be done, which for me is a refreshing change, and is very good at what they do. Decisions are usually based on discussions with an eye towards what is in the best interest of those that play the game.
In regards to the animation I’ve made it a point to actually talk to some that play the game rather extensively to get a better idea of what flaws in the game play could be corrected in the animation.
Some ideas would not work in one area but fit nicely in another in a non-intrusive way so once I got a player pack ready some on the team would check it out to make sure that I was not creating some unknown problem for them.
More or less that is how things flow with in the team and everybody just seems to know what needs to be added yet not cross the line that leads to possibly nerfing the game.

Thank you very much Frankie!

So what do you guys think about this interview? Tell us in the comments!
I’ll post my personal thoughts about what he said tomorrow. For now, thanks to Frankie for his help and keep up the good work!

The first big improvements is in graphic:

TwentySeven continues to work on making the engine more efficient. He has added normal, bump and specular mapping, global fog, depth of field and bloom. This engine can be found in the Urban Terror .net forums.

A new graphic will make Urban Terror more appealing to both new players and possible sponsors for bigger competitions. There is no reason to run UrT on a monster PC on a big competition like WCG, it will still look like an outdated game in comparison to Modern Warfare or more recent games.
However there will still be the Quake 3 engine on 4.2 but what about further relases?

We aren’t sure what we are going to do after we release 4.2.
There is always the temptation to move to a new engine if one comes along that does things better than Q3. There are some things that Q3 does very well like the net code.

Good news on the weapon front, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

We are able to add guns now that we have someone (Frankie_V) to animate them. The P90 has been waiting since 2002 to be added. Adding more weapons does mean we will need to do a lot of play testing to get the balance right of course.

However the work to do is still a lot and the relase date is sometime in 2010.

There is so much work to do. The P90 is in game but it doesn’t have its own specs yet. The Benelli isn’t in game yet and I am updating the player models. Raedwulf doesn’t have much spare time to code so that is going slowly which gives the rest of us time to get our work done.

Here at DailyNade.com we are fairly optimistic about its relase. It’s gonna be big in my opinion.. something more than a .1 advance. I’m happy to tell you that the official FrozenSand animator Frankie V has given us an interview and it’s going to be published tomorrow. We are starting today a series of posts about 4.2 and we would be happy to hear your comments about this. Make shure to follow our posts by subscribing to our RSS feeds.