I really hope enough people get the game to hold several LAN's. I think it will be a great LAN game that will make you think HALO 1 is boring. For some reason, I don't think Gears of War is fun to LAN. Perhaps it's the party size. But, I think SR will be a good LAN game.

I plan on holding at least one LAN open to the testers that I've met. But I hope we can get several Shadowrun LANs for the THX'ers in before H3.

Shadowrun has the making of a game that THX will like. If you like HALO 1, you'll like Shadowrun. They are very similar in gameplay with some magic and technology added to the game. 1up talked about Shadowrun being a "HALO 1 with magic" recently. Although it has an economy, it's more like HALO than Counter-strike.

BTW: Convict, Cig, Midnight, and myself will all live within a one mile radius of each other at that time. :)

I'm hoping it will be the next big game that brings us together for LANs, or XBL at the least. It also might pose a viable option to Halo 3 if it is too Halo 2-ish.

Hopefully, by the time it comes out, I'll actually have the money to spend to buy a $60 new game, in addition to saving up for the super duper gank my wallet version of Halo 3. From what I've seen it looks good, hopefully I'll randomly get into the beta soon :).

DJ

I think I understand what you mean rap about GoW not being the best LAN game. I'm not sure what it is, but it may be the fact that it will never attract those gamerz who like to rely on their individual skill a little more. I think GoW would be a blast to LAN, but I'm not sure that some of the people who are really good at Halo would think that. That may be it's curse, it's perfect for team based gameplay, but not for showing off and asserting one's domination over everyone else in the room (ie. Number of kills don't mean as much).

From what I've seen, shadowrun would be perfect for LANs

Eric you're crazy. Shadowrun is no Halo 1. I don't even really think of it as a shooting game. It is a magic game which happens to have shooting. The shooter aspect of it is more "spray and pray" then Halo 2 before the 1.1 patch.

Not saying I don't enjoy it. However, all the stories of it being like Halo seem fairly bogus. More to do with ex-Bungie people working on it and them using the engine. The game doesn't feel like Halo at all. I can't think of one aspect that I say, "yeah thats Halo'ish". Not one.

The gravity, the grenades, the physics, the human's speed of movement, the 3-shot kill with the rifle or pistol, the height of jumps, the fall damage, etc. are very HALO 1-ish. The rifle has similar damage and zoom to the H1 pistol. The shotgun is very much like the H1 shotgun. All of those properties changed in H2. Shadowrun's gameplay is closer to H1 than any other game. Not Quake. Not CoD2. Not BF2. Not H2. It's very similar to H1. (BTW: There's even red and blue teams.)

1up are other ezines are even suggesting that it's H1-ish. "H1 with magic".

Of course, Shadowrun is very different from H1. But, it's closer to H1 than any other shooter. If you wanted to describe gameplay to someone, you wouldn't say that it's Quake with some magic or a first-person Gears of War with some modern tech. Because of some of the properties mentioned above, I'm telling people that aren't familiar with the game that it's H1 with magic/tech.

When I first equipped the rifle. I thought "here's my h1 pistol". It feels similar, but now there's actually a good smg to balance it out.

I still think it takes some skill to kill with the smg though, I'd be reluctant to say "spray and pray" because whenever I spray and pray, I end up dying. I hate the smgs in H2, but in SR it's actually hard for a n00b to kill me.

The grenades I'd say are a lot like H1 in killing power (a good thing), closer to H2 in physics (meh).

I guess I'm confused about your opinion because 98% all of the killing in SR is with weapons, and the magic feels like it's more for support and mobility. I agree it is VERY different from Halo, but it does have some Halo roots in there.

The other day Bry4 was camped on top of the Statue in the lobby on Lobby. From the other side of the map I zoomed in with my Rifle and 3-shot him. It felt great - like 3-shotting someone from across Hang 'Em High. It all happened in about a second.

I haven't experienced the "spray and pray" yet. "Spray and pray" could only apply to the SMG in Shadowrun. However, I'm not sure it fits. I know when I use the SMG I don't have to pray. I aim and shoot. The shots go where I want them to go. There's no luck in killing someone with it. I know what's going to happen and how much damage my enemy has taken. It's not like in Counter-strike where if one of your rounds is a headshot the enemy will die. Because the SMG shots aren't random, both sides have equal opportunity to kill with it. There are hit boxes and conical spray patterns. They are all predictable and consistent. So, I can't buy into the "spray and pray" theory.

I understood spray and pray to mean looking at someone, mashing the trigger until your clip is empty, not taking into account accuracy, which goes down the longer you hold it.

Here's my synopsis of Shadowrun SMG fire and how I think they are calculating hit damage: Your reticle will get larger the longer you hold down the trigger. BUT, the reticle is not exactly where your bullets will go. I think there's a separate invisible "cone" where the base radius increases and the hit percentage decreases as you hold the trigger. If you keep this cone small enough, ie. bursts, you will find at medium-close range that you can get 3 burst headshots that result in a kill. Also, squatting to a knee decreases the rate at which the cone's base radius will increase.

Also, (god, this is extremely nerdy, but there's no other way to explain what I'm thinking, so here goes..)
Imagine that there really are no bullets, only a cone where the rate at which a damage point will be taken away from your opponent is controlled by a value T. Forget about the cool gun effects, and the rumble in the controller. T is increased or decreased according to how long your trigger is held down. If T is at its highest, say 1 damage point per ms, then any friend or enemy in your cone will receive that damage. Now, the longer the trigger is held, then T will decrease to say, 1 damage point per 10 ms, and the cones radius is increased.

Now factor in distance and head hitboxes, and you have the SR SMG.

The way the SMG works (to my understanding) is as follows:

The reticle gives a visual indicator of where your bullets will land. It expands as you fire, move, or reload; however, it only expands to a certain maximum radius. When you fire, your bullets will land somewhere inside this radius. It is important to note that the SMG's reticle is different from that of every other weapon's in that it is actually about 20% larger than the actual cone of fire. If I remember correctly they did this so the player would have an easier time of judging where most of their bullets would land.

Crouching allows the reticle to decrease at a faster rate when you stop firing (since the act of holding down the trigger to fire increases the radius to its maximum anyways). So, crouching is really only effective with the SMG if you use it in conjunction with burst-fire.

Burst-fire only seems like it is useful when you are closing in on an enemy or they are running away (and staying just outside of optimum range). I have never heard of someone being able to get a three burst headshot kill with the SMG and I don't think it is even possible from a damage perspective (unless our definitions of bursts differ drastically).

Burst-fire becomes more important against certain races, such as Dwaves and Elves, because of their smaller profile. Likewise, there is little reason to use burst-fire against a Troll because they fill the entire reticle, even when it is at its maximum radius.

By burst I don't mean tapping on the trigger, but holding for a short period . But yes, you're right that it is not possible with just a tap. So what your saying is that you don't think the damage percentage decreases the longer you hold the trigger? Also noted is the fact that squatting only quickens the reticle shrinkage, I had it reversed thinking it slowed the reticle's expansion.

A thing I'm still shady on is how the SMG factors in headshots. Is it just me, or do they help with the SMG.

I'm more interested in getting to the bottom of how it works rather than proving my knowledge about the subject since I've only been playing for a little over a week. Glad you corrected me.

When you hit someone with a bullet, that bullet does a specific amount of damage to a player. This amount does not change, but the number of bullets hitting your target does as the reticle expands beyond the profile of your enemy.

On the shrinking reticle, the "shrink time" is a constant effect while crouching, so it does have a very limited effect on the amount of time it takes for the reticle to expand completely. The thing is that the act of firing causes the reticle to reach its maximum radius almost immediately. Crouching really only adds maybe a couple of these more accurate bullets to a burst, and you lose the benefit of moving. Crouching is most effective when used to reduce the wait time between bursts.

Every weapon does bonus damage for headshots (excepting the katana and RL). If a bullet hits the head's hitbox, then it does its base damage plus extra headshot damage. This extra damage varies depending on the weapon used. Snipers for instance do a huge amount of extra headshot damage, enough to kill any race (except Dwarves since they don't take extra damage from headshots). Meanwhile, the SMG deals little extra headshot damage. Pistols and rifles do about double damage with a headshot and shotguns do about 30% more damage by my reckoning. I'm not sure exactly how much extra damage the SMG deals, since I typically aim for the chest with that weapon in order to maximize the number of bullets hitting my target.

UPDATE:
I was searching through some old threads on the Shadowrun forums looking for something completely different when I stumbled upon this.

First sentence kinda negates my second sentence. This game is so intricate, even a vet can still learn a new thing here and there.