I shared the demo of the game with some of my friends over on Reddit. /u/bear10 had the following to say about it:

Behold! I have played this game which you have presented to me, and I bring you my opinions!

On the whole, I loved it. I really, really loved it. The player AI mechanics (like automatically taking cover against a wall if you're against it, and being able to fire LMGs from braced positions against walls, cars, etc without having to lay down) were very fun, if a little iffy when it came to actually aiming at enemies when prone, that's when things got a little difficult. The fact that you could mantle over obstacles and such made traversing the map a lot more fun, even while in combat, and the fact that the player and enemy AIs didn't get caught up in those situations was pleasant to see as well. The stand/crouch/prone system seems very well designed as well, and I'm glad that actually using those positions makes a difference in combat.

Oh! That's another thing! I really enjoyed how you're rewarded for playing smart and staying alive instead of just soaking up bullets, respawning, killing some doods, dying again, repeat. The fact that an area can be won or lost in the seconds it takes you to respawn and get to where you need to go made it much more challenging and I loved that. And the leveling system was interesting as well (though the demo stopped at Staff Sergeant First Class). I was rather frustrated at the beginning because I didn't know how (or if) I would be able to unlock the rocket launcher and such, but once I figured out how it worked, it all made sense.

The graphics styling was appealing too, it was simple, yet lively. The explosions weren't excessively large, but seeing bodies go ragdoll from the explosion was always tons of fun. And the fact that you keep the weapon you died with was also a plus; though I'll admit, once I grabbed the M240, I ended up being pretty OP, so that might be something to consider.

The fact that your character doesn't start announcing things like "Reloading" until you have squad members is pretty clever too, I liked that.

There were a lot of things that I really liked about this game, there were a number of things I didn't like though. The fact that there isn't an easy way to form-up your squad (is clicking on yourself the only way?). The fact that any upward changes in elevation would render your LMG almost useless was also another very annoying thing, like your character can't aim upwards a bit higher. And speaking of aiming, knowing where you're actually going to hit is such a pain in the ass. I can't tell you how many times I spent a whole clip just hitting the edge of a roof while I was trying to shoot down at guys (though I really like how you can't shoot straight down at guys, that was a nice touch) because I didn't have a clear indicator of whether or not there was anything in my way. Or sometimes, I would be shooting from one rooftop to another, but my gun would act like I was aiming downwards more and the little X that shows where the bullets would go would stop right in the middle of my rooftop. And it would be great if the target indicator lights were explained earlier on, though I find their inclusion to be a clever plus overall.

Some kind of health and experience meter would be an awesome help as well. I know there's the little number readout next to your rank when you put your cursor over yourself, but I had no idea what those numbers were in relation to until I reached 3000 and actually noticed them. It would be great to have an xp bar somewhere to show you how far you have to go until your next rank.

I would have liked to be able to test the vehicles, but over all I really like this game. Fix up some things, put some polish on it, include a tutorial, and it's the kind of game that I would seriously consider spending money on if I saw it on Steam or some such place.

Your friend has some very strong points about the game and I'll probably just address the concerns with the game right now.

1 - Forming up your squad can also happen if you walk right next to your squad. It will happen automatically and your character will say something like "SQUAD FORM UP" on his own.

2 - I have never really had any issues with aiming uphill with any of the weapons. However, if you are downhill of the enemy, they do have a clear advantage but this is the nature of firearm warfare. It may help when aiming uphill to have the cursor directly on the target or maybe even behind him to get the bullets to go where you want them to go. The unique ballistics of this game are really learned by playing and observing how bullets react and how line of sight works.

3 - There is no health in the game. You have 1 hitpoint and each bullet that impacts you has a certain % chance of doing 1 hitpoint of damage. Thus, you are alive, or you are dead in RWR. Therefore, a health bar would simply be either full or empty and would be useless.

4 - The experience "meter" is the number under your rank. It would not be a bad idea to have an experience bar but IMO this game goes for something of a minimalistic view where only essentials such as ammo, grenades, and squadmates are displayed.

Lastly, I have posted a series of written and video tutorials here:

Text: http://www.modulaatio.com/runningwithrifles/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=445

Video: http://www.modulaatio.com/runningwithrifles/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=919

Hope this helps out your friend.

ComJak

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ComJak's house... stay out of it

I have.

Oh, I fucking have.

This is a part of the game to place yourself at a good position for shooting. For myself, I don't even use isolines anymore and well it happens sometimes that I shoot the ground but not often. I only use MG on flat terrain or when I know that I have a good cover or I can shoot downhill. Imo people should play a bit more than a few hours to get the feeling for such things, but he maybe did

Shooting uphill: you have to consider that your guy will aim at the ground (actually a foot or two above it) right where the crosshair is in a straight direct line. If you are downhill, and you aim at the very top of the hill, your bullets will go over the crest of thehill. However, if you aim at somewhere further away on the hill, the closest direct line between your muzzle and that point is intersecting the hill itself: thus, the bullets hit the side of the hill.

If there was no direct path of fire to a location and the game detects an obstacle, it would be cool if you guy automatically adjusts his aim upwards a few feet to shoot over the obstacle instead of at it.. because that's way more useful. Shouldn't be too extreme though, otherwise you'll have bullets flying over buildings into the sky because you're trying to shoot someone on the other side. it would be more useful against people behind sandbag walls and such.

But honestly, have you ever seen a weapon deployed on a bipod in a prone position? It would be fairly difficult to aim upwards with it before the butt of your gun hits the ground and you can't aim higher, unless your bipod was really, really tall. Of course, there are adjustable bipods but... you're not going to be screwing around with your bipod if you're in the middle of getting shot.

The sight line indicator could be better, I've actually posted about it in this big post

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Ozymandias, King of kings, God of Caves, Wizard.

We will soon enough have something against sandbag wall campers (like me)

Besides grenades?

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Ozymandias, King of kings, God of Caves, Wizard.

sure
Hopefully for 0.80

Good point about shooting uphill. The way the aiming system works if you aim at terrain directly, not at an object or a character, is that shooting target will be chosen as the crosshair position on terrain + a random offset upwards in range of 0.2 to 1.6m. This happens so that you would manage to shoot beyond that position at targets either prone or standing on level ground. Same logic is used regardless of you being able to actually shoot at the position where your crosshair is, there could be either objects, characters or more terrain between you and the crosshair target.

Inspired by the uphill comment, I changed the system for 0.79 so that if more terrain is located between you and the crosshair target, the actual shooting target will be the intersection of the ray and the terrain bump/slope obstructing the ray, + that usual upwards offset (a more truthful solution would be to offset along the normal of the slope..). Seems to work very well with uphill action, thanks for the suggestion OzyThesage!

While the complete line visualization from the weapon barrel to the obstruction point to the crosshair would be too much for the look & feel RWR has, maybe it would work if only the line from obstruction point to the crosshair would be visualized, perhaps with just darkening effect. This would also evade the awkwardness with rendering the line from the weapon while you are just running around and the weapon might be pointing to who knows where.

Hey, something I said was finally of some use |3

I never thought about making it just between the obstruction and the crosshair, that makes more sense and would be less stuff on the screen.

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Ozymandias, King of kings, God of Caves, Wizard.