Dirty Bomb Alpha Vs. Current Dirty Bomb. Thoughts?

(YeOldeButtcheek) #1

This is a thread based on how I feel Dirty Bomb’s Alpha and Current build differ in good to bad. Overall many changes made were for the good, but some not so much. I’ll be going over what these may be. I understand that these changes could have been necessary for further development of the game, and that Dirty Bomb is fantastic as it is now!

My personal opinion and the most dearly missed feature, In-game Sound.
In the current build of Dirty Bomb if you were to play the game now, you will here gunfire and explosions as you normally hear, nothing really noticeable.
But in the old Alpha this was a major step up in what we have now. The sound design was so well done, I could see many strategic plays be made if it was still available. You could hear merc dialog echo from room to room, Detailed and cool burst explosions, and Gunfire bounced and echoed through the map.

This video (mind the bad gameplay) shows off how the game looked in 2013. (One hour of gameplay)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ECpaf93tzvk
Watching some of the footage, you can see the drastic changes that were made between then and now.
-Sound
-HUD
-Overall Aesthetics (Trash, clutter, etc)
-Lighting and Godrays
-Textures
-Drastic Map Changes (Especially on Bridge)

Personally a lot of the changes listed and shown in the video look better then what we have. Considering this was in 2013, I can’t imagine how many changes went into what the game is now.

But now onto the current build of the game, this is what makes it superior to the alpha.
-Fantastic Performance from Alpha
-Variety of Mercenaries
-Loadout Cards
-Execution :#
-Decent Game Balance
-Decent Graphics

Hopefully in the actual release of Dirty Bomb, these changes could be brought back in some way.

IMO: The Winner: Dirty Bomb 2015

TL:DR, more TLC went into gameplay, and less into the overall eye-candy.

(KorpKyuuSama) #2

The thing i miss most is the community. fun 8v8s melee only and stuff like that

(Black) #3

I really like the aesthetics of pre-alpha.
It was nice serious and gritty, how I believe a post nuclear war theme should be.

(Amerika) #4

The sound didn’t seem like it was mixed all that well and instead just sounded louder for almost all things as opposed to better. Most likely, due to the sound issues they’ve found over time, a lot of things like the echoes have been taken out. There is a lot of effort that goes into proper sound mixing so that more important and useful sounds are heard over less important ones. And I’m not expert in this area, and somebody who is better with UE3 and/or sound cards, there might be a hard limit on some soundcards for how many channels can be used. Or there might be a soft limit that most devs want to stick to for performance reasons. I know earlier this year you could easily miss the sound of an airstrike if enough sound events happened at the same time which turned off the entire warning. You still get issues with warnings being played when there are multiple airstrikes out at one time.

I absolutely hate the generic modern warfare bro-shooter #593 look of the old alpha. Does it look OK? Yeah. Does it look like a generic “modern” shooter that was trying too hard to have a “me too” gritty look as opposed to creating an aesthetic design that is unique to itself? Definitely. I much prefer the less gritty and less serious look and feel of the game today. Also, a lot of those textures looked like they were maybe stock textures taken from somewhere else. In fact, it might have a lot of stuff taken from the “shootergame” demo that was used for UE3.

I like the old design of Bridge for sure. I don’t know why it was changed but if I had to guess it might be to keep the maps shorter and less complicated.

Also, fun fact, some of the animated stuff on maps was removed due to performance issues. Not long ago, and I think it was before the open beta hit, maps like Terminal had birds and trash and stuff floating around. It looked cool but apparently it was a major source of FPS lag for some systems. If this wasn’t the case most likely there would be a lot more stuff floating/moving around maps and less static cars and such.

So I too prefer the modern DB more than the older one. It has it’s own style in everything that matters. Graphics, character design, sound, doesn’t take itself super serious while also not going off the rails, a somewhat unique and deep movement system that is hard to find in games these days and it has a pretty solid metagame for merc choices and even loadouts. I can make a giant list of things I’d like to see changed in the current DB but most of them are “nice to haves” and not “omg do it or I quit” things.

(N8o) #5

I think it was really cool where the EV was positioned. It made the attacker’s job easy compared to what it is now >.>

(YeOldeButtcheek) #6

[quote=“Amerika;125519”]The sound didn’t seem like it was mixed all that well and instead just sounded louder for almost all things as opposed to better. Most likely, due to the sound issues they’ve found over time, a lot of things like the echoes have been taken out. There is a lot of effort that goes into proper sound mixing so that more important and useful sounds are heard over less important ones. And I’m not expert in this area, and somebody who is better with UE3 and/or sound cards, there might be a hard limit on some soundcards for how many channels can be used. Or there might be a soft limit that most devs want to stick to for performance reasons. I know earlier this year you could easily miss the sound of an airstrike if enough sound events happened at the same time which turned off the entire warning. You still get issues with warnings being played when there are multiple airstrikes out at one time.

I absolutely hate the generic modern warfare bro-shooter #593 look of the old alpha. Does it look OK? Yeah. Does it look like a generic “modern” shooter that was trying too hard to have a “me too” gritty look as opposed to creating an aesthetic design that is unique to itself? Definitely. I much prefer the less gritty and less serious look and feel of the game today. Also, a lot of those textures looked like they were maybe stock textures taken from somewhere else. In fact, it might have a lot of stuff taken from the “shootergame” demo that was used for UE3.

I like the old design of Bridge for sure. I don’t know why it was changed but if I had to guess it might be to keep the maps shorter and less complicated.

Also, fun fact, some of the animated stuff on maps was removed due to performance issues. Not long ago, and I think it was before the open beta hit, maps like Terminal had birds and trash and stuff floating around. It looked cool but apparently it was a major source of FPS lag for some systems. If this wasn’t the case most likely there would be a lot more stuff floating/moving around maps and less static cars and such.

So I too prefer the modern DB more than the older one. It has it’s own style in everything that matters. Graphics, character design, sound, doesn’t take itself super serious while also not going off the rails, a somewhat unique and deep movement system that is hard to find in games these days and it has a pretty solid metagame for merc choices and even loadouts. I can make a giant list of things I’d like to see changed in the current DB but most of them are “nice to haves” and not “omg do it or I quit” things.[/quote]

With the nice to haves, the whole “Apocalyptic” look to the game isn’t very obvious, especially in Dome. With the older looks It looks more ruined and had the dusty and foggy expectations of the world that has been abandoned. The only things making it exist is the CDA Blockage.
But i’ll pick gameplay over graphics any day.

(Amerika) #7

Yeah, I get that. The current design isn’t selling the apocalypse scenario very well but I think that might have been a conscious choice to move away from the gritty dourness that almost every FPS, at the time of this game’s original development, was going for and instead go for something that was a bit more unique and lighthearted. That’s my guess as to why it changed fairly drastically. It’s definitely harder to sell the lore now than it was back then.

I’ve watched more of that video and I’m almost 100% certain a lot of the sounds were simply placeholder/stock sounds.