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Hugh

Cameraman

10:20PM

Do the "Perfomance-Jam"!!!

Radman wrote: » When it affects the playability of the game to the point where players do not/can not continue playing, its not that ridiculous. Whether you mean to or not, you are putting up a straw man, to make me look like I said something I didn't. No one at UWE, not me not anyone, questions the assertion that late game performance in Natural Selection 2 is not as good as it should be. What I said was, judging an entire game engine by the way a particular game runs in a particular situation is... Ridiculous! You could take the late-game logic of Natural Selection 2 and put it into CryEngine 3 (Which, like Spark, is written in C++ and uses Lua for game logic) and watch machines struggle to keep up. You are confusing game with engine. biz wrote: » from the players' point of view ... Well, seeing as you are a programmer, you won't have much trouble showing me a game made using twenty year old tech that is bigger in scope, more complicated in execution, and richer in intricate logic and interdependencies than NS2. I went through a few Id-Tech 1 games in my head... Came up empty. I have subscribed to this thread and eagerly await your reply!

Hugh

Cameraman

8:55PM

Do the "Perfomance-Jam"!!!

male_fatalities wrote: » They took a risk using their own engine, didn't work out. It worked out spectacularly well, and the future of UWE is brighter for it. The financial, technical, creative, and intellectual freedom that Spark has granted UWE is immeasurably valuable. Judging the engineering value of an entire game engine by the behaviour of a particular game's late game performance when entities are exploding out of every pore on a is utterly ridiculous.

Squeal_Like_A_Pig

Squeal_Like_A_Pig

Janitor

8:08PM

UWE to replace Vanilla NS2 with Sewlek's balance mod in the near future

Just to clarify a little bit, at the moment UWE is planning on moving forward with implementing the Balance Mod into Vanilla NS2 in some form, unless there is a huge outcry, which at the moment there does not seem to be. And as Hugh points out, this is a massive undertaking, and does come with a lot of risks. What has been more up in the air is the release date for that, and which features are going to make the final cut, and that is where we are trying to solicit as much feedback from the community as possible. So I think the best thing to do is assume that we are going to incorporate a large amount of the mod into the game at some point soon, and if you want to have a say, play it. And play it a lot, not just a single game before passing judgement. And please don't just read the changelog before passing judgement, either.

Hugh

Cameraman

7:57PM

UWE to replace Vanilla NS2 with Sewlek's balance mod in the near future

(Remember - My post wasn't passing a judgement on whether Balance Mod is a good or bad thing, only pointing out that it is a BIG THING and that there is no UWE 'Master Plan' - So we should all discuss more!) Also @Comprox is a boss.

SteveRock

7:50PM

Do the "Perfomance-Jam"!!!

Hi all, We're all aware of the performance issues and are doing our best. In a sense, every week is a performance jam for us. We're always trying things and open to new ideas, and some things work out and some things don't. Believe me, we're not happy about the game's performance either. --Steve

Hugh

Cameraman

6:57PM

UWE to replace Vanilla NS2 with Sewlek's balance mod in the near future

There is a lot of misinformation flying around about what UWE is and is not going to do with 'Balance Mod.' Here is clarification, and the whole truth. First up, well done @thelawenforcer for starting this discussion. Let's not mince words: Balance Mod makes huge changes to the game and it may as well be considered a new version of NS2. Having discussions about it is very important. Though your post title could have used a '?'! Balance Mod is a mod. There is no 'official plan' to replace Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod. It is a creative experiment by Andi that has produced wonderful, useful, pertinent discussion about how to design asymmetrical multiplayer games. Most people at UWE have no idea what is in Balance Mod, or how it differs from Vanilla NS2. It is very much a 'skunkworks' project. There is no master plan. At no time has everyone at UWE sat down and discussed if we want to make such a huge change to NS2. Making a huge change like replacing Vanilla NS2 with Balance Mod would not be simply a case of swapping out some Lua code: 1. Entire official tutorial systems would have to be ripped out and replaced 2. The collective NS2 playerbase would have to relearn how to play. That includes pubbers! 3. Balance Mod has not undergone the rigorous and continuous playtesting that Vanilla has and does. The immediate impact on the programming crew would taking time away from other projects to join a bug-hunt. 4. The sum total collective learning resources of the NS2 community would be rendered outdated. Thousands of YouTube videos, dozens of recorded competitions, tens of thousands of hours of livestreams, carefully crafted community tutorials. That's not to say it won't happen. Or it will happen. Or that parts of Balance Mod will or will not make it into Vanilla NS2. No one knows, and that's why forum threads like this are important. There are big questions to ask about which direction NS2 is going to go in, and what we as a community want to experience when we double click that little Hive icon. In a discussion like this, it is easy to come to the conclusion that 'everyone' agrees with you. Seeing a post you agree with getting lots of 'Agrees,' or noticing lots of forum threads promoting your view. Reading an articulate poster pick apart an argument you do not like. But the fact is none of us know what 'everyone' wants. Step outside this forum to r/ns2, and the vibe is difference. Step from r/ns2 to facebook.com/naturalselection2 or @NS2 and the vibe changes totally, again. Join a pub game and people will give of yet another vibe. All those opinions are valid. All those people love NS2. Those at the coal face, discussing Balance Mod here on the forums, need to consider carefully who 'everyone' is and what 'everyone' wants. What is best for the NS2 community as a whole?

Hugh

Cameraman

5:57PM

Anyone else sick of this invincible structure bug

ezekel wrote: » Reload bug! There has never been, never will be any bugs with weapon reloads. Or rifle sounds. Or sentry gun sounds. Or anything in NS2, really. /me slinks away

Sewlek

The programmer previously known as Schimmel

2:30PM

Sewlek's Balance mod

current1y wrote: » You can any time switch between upgrades still right? What prevents people from switching from cara to regen then back to cara whenever they get chipped? Now instead of falling back to the hive or crag spot they just heal up around the first corner. its faster to fall back to the hive and heal there than evolving (and being extremely vulnerable as egg)

MurphyIdiot

NS2 programmer

May 1

New official modding tutorial

I have created a modding tutorial aimed at new modders. http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/time-to-make-the-mods/ Let me know what you think! I plan to make more tutorials in the future assuming these are useful.

Unknown Worlds Entertainment

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