Best Of
Re: 27 Days Later
Now that *something* is planned for release on May 1st, I will reveal that yes, the date on that whiteboard was a long-ago out-dated speculated NS2 Build 265 release date. I have watched this thread, and the previous one, with some interest. It appears that revealing some types of information, particularly highly opaque and confidentional information such as that whiteboard, causes more upset and frustration than satisfaction for members of the NS2 community.
In this particular case, it appears many members of the NS2 community assumed that a pixelated whiteboard was an announcement, when in reality it was a cheeky phone photo of a whiteboard that is scrawled on every day in the office, with dates and milestones constantly being wiped off, pushed out, pulled in, or created. That's certainly a valid way of looking at the situation - One might reasonably assume UWE is trying to 'build hype' or achieve some other public relations objective, when in reality there was no objective other than to just show one of the more banal and quirky elements of the office (the whiteboard!). All of about 10 seconds of thought went into the entire post.
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
In any case, it's very exciting to be getting so close to release of new Natural Selection 2 update. Whatever your feelings about whiteboards, this update is sure to be a good one
In this particular case, it appears many members of the NS2 community assumed that a pixelated whiteboard was an announcement, when in reality it was a cheeky phone photo of a whiteboard that is scrawled on every day in the office, with dates and milestones constantly being wiped off, pushed out, pulled in, or created. That's certainly a valid way of looking at the situation - One might reasonably assume UWE is trying to 'build hype' or achieve some other public relations objective, when in reality there was no objective other than to just show one of the more banal and quirky elements of the office (the whiteboard!). All of about 10 seconds of thought went into the entire post.
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
In any case, it's very exciting to be getting so close to release of new Natural Selection 2 update. Whatever your feelings about whiteboards, this update is sure to be a good one
Re: X-Post from Modding: Imminent Update to Break Certain Mods
I'ma help you guys out with the reading comprehension:
1) UWE wants to focus on longer patch (quality) patch periods instead of bi-weekly (rushed) patches that are guaranteed to require hotfixes.
2) Bi-weekly (rushed) patches and their mandatory hotfixes are stressful to UWE (and UWE's work hours) and will eventually burn out future development.
3) The current "hotfixes" requested by the community on the current build are simply a victim of UWE's change of focus between the two patching methods.
1) UWE wants to focus on longer patch (quality) patch periods instead of bi-weekly (rushed) patches that are guaranteed to require hotfixes.
2) Bi-weekly (rushed) patches and their mandatory hotfixes are stressful to UWE (and UWE's work hours) and will eventually burn out future development.
3) The current "hotfixes" requested by the community on the current build are simply a victim of UWE's change of focus between the two patching methods.
GorgeCraft On RockPaperShotgun
I have just discovered about 4th hand, that GorgeCraft has been mentioned on RockPaperShotgun. Have a read and allow me to have my 15mins of fame >-
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/29/gorgecraft-download-natural-selection-2-mod-released/
>-http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/29/gorgecraft-download-natural-selection-2-mod-released/
Re: X-Post from Modding: Imminent Update to Break Certain Mods
I think what Hugh meant to say is this:
Re: X-Post from Modding: Imminent Update to Break Certain Mods
Except you didn't explain anything, like RisingSun said. If you can actually "discuss that explanation in more detail" I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate it, but at the moment all we got was a bunch of nondescript corporate catchphrases that mean nothing. All we hear is "it's broken and we didn't fix it cuz 2hard/cbf".
Forgive me for my cynical attitude but we get the same thing over and over from you and as soon as somebody calls you out on it you just go on the defensive and claim things like "not sure how to engage productively". If this was the first time this has happened I'd cut you some slack, but you rarely say anything productive to begin with.
Important: Imminent Update to Break Certain Mods. Fix Included!
Hi everyone!
Natural Selection 2 will, if all things go to plan, receive a sweet new update on May 1st. On that day, certain mods will experience a mini-apocalypse. @SamusDroid, an extremely talented and motivated member of the NS2 community, has been the technical lead on this upcoming update. He has been responsible for all aspects of technical development, and the following message regarding mods is from him. I am extremely proud of the effort @SamusDroid has made for this update, and even more proud of him for making this effort to warn all mod creators of the impending effects on their mods.
I only posting the message to give it 'gold background' prominence!
From @SamusDroid:
*****
Soon a build will be released for 265 that will use a new method to change textures on models called texture atlasing. Due to there being a large amount of models that would need to be created in order to have weapon variants, we were forced to use texture atlasing. There is no way around this change, and with Natural Selection 2 becoming increasingly closer to the 32-bit memory limit we can not afford to increase the likelihood users will crash due to an increase of memory usage. Texture atlasing allows us to instantly change textures on models without the need to create new models, unfortunately this means that Exo and Rifle retexture mods will need to be updated in order to work properly. Below you will see an example of what an improperly working Exo skin will look like if it is not updated to the new format. An out of date mod will appear as if two textures have been mixed together over a model, to fix this you will need to update the material files of certain models.
Your mods are valuable, and this is an opportunity to prepare for this upcoming patch by providing the resources needed to update your mods. Below you will find information on what you will need to do in order to update your mods, including files for replacement.
Exo retexture mods
If you modify the third person Exosuit model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8f3dco149gbpeka/exosuit.material
If you modify the third person Claw model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tux6rds6dm68lwf/claw.material
If you modify the first person Exosuit view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrae8gezyiippa6/claw_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f0yahdfn4ad1xpp/minigun_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ip81sj3i6hghtiu/forearm.material
Rifle retexture mods
If you modify the first person Rifle view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/rifle/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xp6j9o2g7298jus/rifle_view.material
The files you are downloading are changing the shader and “numRows 2” to “numRows = 1”
What this is doing is setting how many atlases are in the texture and where the shader will look for the texture. The following is an example of a texture wth two atlases http://i.imgur.com/5XhmOlj.jpg. In code, we are specifying the textureIndex of the model, 0 being the top, and 1 being the bottom. Before 265, the textures for the Exo and Rifle did not use texture atlasing therefore are only a single texture. These changes will provide support for existing retexture mods that require minimal work to fix.
*****
End.
Natural Selection 2 will, if all things go to plan, receive a sweet new update on May 1st. On that day, certain mods will experience a mini-apocalypse. @SamusDroid, an extremely talented and motivated member of the NS2 community, has been the technical lead on this upcoming update. He has been responsible for all aspects of technical development, and the following message regarding mods is from him. I am extremely proud of the effort @SamusDroid has made for this update, and even more proud of him for making this effort to warn all mod creators of the impending effects on their mods.
I only posting the message to give it 'gold background' prominence!
From @SamusDroid:
*****
Soon a build will be released for 265 that will use a new method to change textures on models called texture atlasing. Due to there being a large amount of models that would need to be created in order to have weapon variants, we were forced to use texture atlasing. There is no way around this change, and with Natural Selection 2 becoming increasingly closer to the 32-bit memory limit we can not afford to increase the likelihood users will crash due to an increase of memory usage. Texture atlasing allows us to instantly change textures on models without the need to create new models, unfortunately this means that Exo and Rifle retexture mods will need to be updated in order to work properly. Below you will see an example of what an improperly working Exo skin will look like if it is not updated to the new format. An out of date mod will appear as if two textures have been mixed together over a model, to fix this you will need to update the material files of certain models.
Your mods are valuable, and this is an opportunity to prepare for this upcoming patch by providing the resources needed to update your mods. Below you will find information on what you will need to do in order to update your mods, including files for replacement.
Exo retexture mods
If you modify the third person Exosuit model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8f3dco149gbpeka/exosuit.material
If you modify the third person Claw model download the following and place it in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tux6rds6dm68lwf/claw.material
If you modify the first person Exosuit view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/exosuit/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jrae8gezyiippa6/claw_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f0yahdfn4ad1xpp/minigun_view.material
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ip81sj3i6hghtiu/forearm.material
Rifle retexture mods
If you modify the first person Rifle view model download the following and place them in “models/marine/rifle/” in your mod folder.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xp6j9o2g7298jus/rifle_view.material
The files you are downloading are changing the shader and “numRows 2” to “numRows = 1”
What this is doing is setting how many atlases are in the texture and where the shader will look for the texture. The following is an example of a texture wth two atlases http://i.imgur.com/5XhmOlj.jpg. In code, we are specifying the textureIndex of the model, 0 being the top, and 1 being the bottom. Before 265, the textures for the Exo and Rifle did not use texture atlasing therefore are only a single texture. These changes will provide support for existing retexture mods that require minimal work to fix.
*****
End.
Re: Combat Standalone Revealed - Natural Selection 2
RichardRahl wrote: »This seems like a shameless money grab to what should of been included in NS2 to begin with. Pretty disgusting.
This seems like a shameless troll post to what really wasn't worth saying. Pretty disgusting.
Re: Combat Standalone Revealed - Natural Selection 2
I second that, can we keep this Combat related and stop arguing about what UWE is doing with THEIR game, surly there are other topics out there to go to for that sort of thing.
Re: NS2+ (The mod previously known as Custom HUD)
- Voice chat now shows the team color correctly when alltalk is on. (Thanks remi.D!)
- The scoreboard now keeps the time of the previous round until the next round starts. (Thanks remi.D!)
- The Infantry Portal now shows the name and progress of the spawning player. (Thanks remi.D!)
- Dropped marine weapons now have different colored outlines. (Thanks remi.D!)
- Minimap is now a rectangle under Minimal GUI setting instead of using the hidden UI element shape.
- Added last comm actions to be toggleable instead of hiding it with the minimap.
- Minimap option now only toggles minimap and location text.
- Show commander name option is now independent of minimap option.
- Game time now doesn't depend on commander minimap on marines.
- Added grenades and mines to Insight's equipment display (only shows 3 icons max with this priority/order: JP > Welder > Grenades > Mines).
- Added parasited name color to Insight names on the sides.
- Added a new Alien bars option made by Rantology.
- Added map atmospherics slider, available in the Misc. tab.
- Added server toggle for Hive stats reporting.
- Hitsounds also work in pregame now.
- Disabled backgrounds for the Voice/Request menu under Minimal GUI setting.
Big thanks to remi.D for all the cool stuff he added!
Edit: Released a hotfix with this:
- Changed map changing method for the mod updater, since the previous one was being blocked by the NSL Mod.
- Fixed bug that caused commanders to be stuck with the game timer after a reset or getting logged out at the end of the round.
- The scoreboard now keeps the time of the previous round until the next round starts. (Thanks remi.D!)
- The Infantry Portal now shows the name and progress of the spawning player. (Thanks remi.D!)
- Dropped marine weapons now have different colored outlines. (Thanks remi.D!)
- Minimap is now a rectangle under Minimal GUI setting instead of using the hidden UI element shape.
- Added last comm actions to be toggleable instead of hiding it with the minimap.
- Minimap option now only toggles minimap and location text.
- Show commander name option is now independent of minimap option.
- Game time now doesn't depend on commander minimap on marines.
- Added grenades and mines to Insight's equipment display (only shows 3 icons max with this priority/order: JP > Welder > Grenades > Mines).
- Added parasited name color to Insight names on the sides.
- Added a new Alien bars option made by Rantology.
- Added map atmospherics slider, available in the Misc. tab.
- Added server toggle for Hive stats reporting.
- Hitsounds also work in pregame now.
- Disabled backgrounds for the Voice/Request menu under Minimal GUI setting.
Big thanks to remi.D for all the cool stuff he added!
Edit: Released a hotfix with this:
- Changed map changing method for the mod updater, since the previous one was being blocked by the NSL Mod.
- Fixed bug that caused commanders to be stuck with the game timer after a reset or getting logged out at the end of the round.
Skittle Gun Drops
Ever run towards your dropped shotgun only to get closer and realize someone's already picked it up and all that's there now is a rifle? This is a little something I've been working on to remedy that. I used the same color theme as the Insight/NS2+ ammo bars. All other pickupables will still be the default blue, only these ones have unique colors.
I'll be releasing this mod one way or another in the next couple days.
