Some of the members from the Red Orchestra Mod Team anwser some questions before the festivites of Red Sunday start.

Just exactly who are we talking to?

I'm Jeremy, and I am the Co-Founder of Red Orchestra, and the current Lead 3d Artist on the team. I've been with the RO team since day 1. I'm here with one of our programmers as well, Ramm-Jaeger, who will shed light on a few of your questions.

What is in store for version 1.2?

Jeremy:
A lot. Well, the entire team thinks that the mod has a lot of room for improvement, and as a whole we decided it was very important to start working on the mod's gameplay and start introducing new juicy features that the gaming community will crave. Our latest effort has been to try and make the mod easier and more fun to play, without losing realism and the overall feeling that you are in the pit of an escalating conflict between two superpowers. So, we found ourselves making the maps more playable by optimization, and also making them more balanced and functional. Aside from making the other maps look and play better, we've also worked on creating new maps to add to the others. You will hopefully see 3-6 new maps in 1.2, all of which are in totally new and unique environments. You will also see 13 new characters featuring the German Splinter camouflage tunic and the Russian padded jackets used in the colder weather. You will also hopefully see a few new weapons and even possible artillery, and other goodies and changes and bug fixes in the 1.2 release. Almost forgot to add that we've got all new incredible weapon and ambience sounds :)

What do you guys do with community suggestions?

Jeremy:
We actually listen to our community quite a lot. If we didn't care about our community, we probably wouldn't be doing this Red Sunday event that we're doing today; Sunday, November 23rd. It's hard to completely listen to our community however, as we often hear things like "Where the hell are the crosshairs!" and "This game is so slow." Such suggestions and comments do not really help. There are also a handful of figures within our community who would actually like RO to appeal more to the mass market by making the mod less realistic and a lot more arcadey, which is not the original nor current goals of the RO team. However, we gladly look at suggestions coming from the community reguarding making the mod even better while maintaining the historical accuracy and gameplay that we wish to achieve.

What changes will the maps be making in the new version?

Jeremy:
As I've mentioned above, our Mapping team is hard at work, creating as much new content for this upcoming release as possible. You will likely see bug fixes, optimization, and new content in the previous maps, for the upcoming version. As well, you should see 3-6 new official Red Orchestra maps, which information we would like to keep secret for the time being. There is also a chance we might make a Red Orchestra Community Map Pack, consisting of various maps created by the community to help show support for our strong, and striving mapping community.

Are there any major code renovations?

Jeremy:
Most of the -major- code renovations will take place for our 2.0 version, as that will truly bring this mod to its next stage, introducing machine guns and more. However, we've already reworked our scoreboard, and actually made our death messages Half-Life styled, except instead of the weapons showing, it shows the type of bullet round. This was decided to kind of take a unique and new approach. We're also working on redoing our grenades, which are currently pretty bad, and a few other secrets and minor things such as fixed bolting and new third person weapon animations and such.

Ramm-Jaeger:
A lot of the smaller changes we have made are in response to community requests, such as being able to move at normal speed while working bolt action rifles. We are reworking and improving the grenade system as well. We are working on some major new features, but whether or not those make 1.2 in time depends on how well they come along in the next few weeks.

Will any new weapons or character classes debut in this version?

Jeremy:
Yes, as mentioned above, 2 whole new sets and a total of 26 player faces will be in this upcoming release. You will start seeing different types of uniforms and equipments in the field of battle as compared to players looking somewhat the same all the time. This will add a lot more feel and atmosphere to the game. In terms of weapons, there might be a few new weapons, however we have not completely decided which ones yet. However, the inview weapons and hands and sleeves are going to go through a facelift, as we've reskinned the first person sleeves, and remodelled and skinned the first person hands to look as real as possible.