ET: Legacy 2.75 'Learning to Fly'

[KeMoN]

Release 2.75
'Learning to fly'

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Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free and open source multiplayer first-person shooter set during World War II and heavily focused on teamwork. More than a decade after its release, after spending countless hours of escorting tanks and trucks, stealing gold and radar parts and transmitting confidential documents, there comes a project which aims to relaunch and dust off a game which consistently refused to go down.

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Long overdue, but it is finally here! Nearly one year ago, we released version 2.74 which has since been downloaded more than 50 thousands times. Today, we are pleased to announce the release of ET: Legacy version 2.75 'Learning to fly'.

As the game has been in a stable state since quite some time, we had the possibility to specifically focus on polishing the game feature-wise as well as improving the general player experience. Both the game engine and Legacy mod came to the table and received innumerable bug fixes and further code clean-up, making this new version the biggest we have ever released.

The changelog is long and ranges from rather simple UI changes like the 'landmine spotted' spamming to more serious back-end updates.

Key updates worth mentioning are the additional OpenAL sound backend that will surely rejoice 7.1 surround system owners, as well as the new openGL 3 renderer. While now available for general public testing, this new renderer remains for now in an ‘experimental’ state and will be improved gradually over the following months. Other notable changes include a working multi view feature and the re-activation of the gamepad device code.

The implementation of a skill rating system definitely reached a milestone, and the addition of a SQL backend will allow flexible and powerful control with a complete LUA administration suite that will be delivered to you soon. Both of these features will be introduced in more details in the coming days, so make sure to keep track of this project!

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Download

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We are confident to say that ET: Legacy is the most advanced, stable and optimized ET version ever created and we will continue to work to live up to that statement.

Future features and updates are already in the pipeline and are being worked on. The work on getting ET: Legacy away from the licensed assets took a big leap forwards as well a few weeks ago. We are definitely on the right track!

Our thanks goes out to all regular contributors, fans and helping hands that participated in bug reports, suggestions and fixes.

Thank you for following our project. If you are interested in joining our efforts, please don't hesitate to get in contact with us. We are a community driven project and everyone is welcome to join. You can leave a reply here, on our forum or our IRC channel.

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[Spl@$h~]

Damn man, havent been around for a long time, i'll give it a try for sure,
thanks.

[KeMoN]

Hello everyone.

The good people over at modDB have launched their annual "Mod of the Year" award competition. There are three phases and in the current phase 1, people can nominate their favourite mods. After Phase 1 the Top100 will advance to Phase 2 and in phase 3 the mod of the year will be announced.

Admittedly, the competition is fierce and we are a small mod for a 13 year old game. However, there are over 10.000 mods out there and we are convinced of the general performance and visual enhancements we have already brought to the game. The fact that this forum thread is relatively quiet right now is a little bit misleading.

• Our activity on GitHub is wonderful.
• The regular game textures are ready and awaiting the 2.76 release and we are working on setting up the advanced texture mapping with normal and specular maps.
• Thunderpwn has been hard at work replacing all static mapobject models to bring us one step closer to complete freedom from the license restrictions that are still in place.
• DimitriZer0 is working on a custom player model to replace the standard ones. Currently still in alpha state, the future plans are promising with different skins depening on the map setting and also appropriate backpack and gear for the different classes.
• There are currently 3 maps that are being worked on, to ship ET: Legacy with fantastic maps that make full use of the new, powerful renderer. These maps are Bergen, Würzburg Radar and Goldrush. And Seawall Battery is even a close candidate for a 4th map.

This sounds like a lot and you might now be wondering, why there aren't more news on Forums or Social media.
The answer is, that the majority of these points are still in alpha state, which means they are still subject to constant change. We are testing different ways and approaches, which means that showing something off, could mean that after a few weeks this is already outdated. Nevertheless, if you are interested in the closer development and want to follow current discussions, bug and feature problematics and the occasional sneak-peek into said alpha state development, then please don't hesitate to join us in our public Gitter channel.


Our latest release 2.75 'Learning to Fly' from the 13th of September, has already been downloaded a staggering amount of 14.000 times!
We are very proud of that fact and appreciate all the support we get from you, our community.

Please help us spread the word.
If you have a modDB account, please take the 2 minutes and nominate us for the 'Mod of the Year' award.
Let's make sure the global gaming and modding community, knows that great games can live to great age.

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[JoNny]

Posted this reply to the TrackBase Homepage!

/JoNny

[KeMoN]

Posted this reply to the TrackBase Homepage!

/JoNny

Thank you very much!

[Adrian]

this is all great work keep it up.

[KeMoN]

No more XP save!
Let's measure your skill instead

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Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free and open source multiplayer first-person shooter set during World War II and heavily focused on teamwork. More than a decade after its release, after spending countless hours of escorting tanks and trucks, stealing gold and radar parts and transmitting confidential documents, there comes a project which aims to relaunch and dust off a game which consistently refused to go down.

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What are XP?
Enemy Territory implements XPs, which measure player scores based on specific actions, such as kills, construction, or revive. They are also used to control the various skill levels, similarly to a RPG. While not part of the original game, the ability to accumulate XPs indefinitely, as known as "XP save", has been a popular addition in many mods. We all know it: players crave for their XPs. Players accumulate XPs like coins map after map, and they love exhibiting XPs on servers to show how hard and how long they worked to earn them.

The downside of XP save
However, XPs don't give any indication of the real global performance of a player. At best, they merely give a hint about the time the player has played on a specific server. Saving XPs also create some imbalance by enabling special abilities given by skill levels permanently, such as adrenaline for medics which directly leads to the infamous "Rambo medics" that everyone hates. This has never been accounted for in the original game balance, where XPs were reset at the end of matches or the end of campaigns.
With Legacy mod aiming to stay close to the original game design, it makes sense to not encourage the use of XP Save as so many mods do.

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Starting from the next 2.76 release, only the XPs earned in the current map or campaign will be displayed.
Instead of the total accumulated XPs, we're introducing a new metric, known as "Skill Rating".

The Skill Rating has been gradually implemented in the past Legacy release, with the final version being currently tested on our official test server.
Connect now to etlegacy.com to have a preview of the system!

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The idea is simple:
Skill Rating is a new, proven metric that can be used to compare skill of players over time. As FPS require skills in multiple areas like reflex, planning, tactical analysis or teamwork, with the relative importance of these skills depending on the map, game mode, player roles or team compositions, a skill rating can be defined as a measure of "all parameters of a player that help his team to win" and calculated using a statistical approach.

The idea of using statistics to estimate the skill of players isn't new. ETPub implements such a metric with its "Player Rating" that gives a normalized skill score. However, "Skill Rating" of Legacy mod is modeled after TrueSkill, a more modern algorithm that has been developed by MicroSoft for its XBox matching service.

• It has many advantages over the ETPub's PR, and is very well documented.
• It has been extended to take map bias into account.
• Ranks will also be adjusted to reflect the rating of the player, instead of reflecting the skill levels and XPs.

The better you perform the faster you'll rank up. However beware, several 'bad' matches and you might lose a rank again.


And now fire up the game and /connect etlegacy.com to give the system a test-run on our official test server.
Feel free to join our Discord voice chat for proper teamplay.

Cheers

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FAQ

What is Skill Rating?
It is a value between 0 and 50 assigned to each player. It represents its ability to help his team to win the map. Rating will be updated after each map played at intermission. New players will have a rating of 0, and it will increase over time. The rating value determined by using the strength of the team, time played in each team and the map. The performance of disconnected players is taken into account.

What do I need to do to have a good Skill Rating?
Do whatever is necessary to win the map.

What are the percentage numbers displayed on scoreboard (using double Tab)?
The first value represent the real time estimate of each team winning the map, while the second is the map bias.

The numbers show that the current game is unbalanced!
The rating system takes balance into account when updating rating. It is thus "fair" to lose an unbalanced map. Winning a map against a much weaker team will not increase your rating much, but losing against a weaker team will make your rating drop sharply. Conversely, to increase your rating quickly, join the weaker team and win as an underdog!

Where do I learn more about this Skill Rating system?
For interested people that want additional details, see the related wiki document and implementation ticket.

[Adrian]

this sounds intresting i will try it our today for sure.