Development Blog Update - Premiere videocast - Natural Selection Art Process
Flayra
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Please post comments on the topic Development Blog Update - Premiere videocast - <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2008/01/premiere_videocast_natural_selection_art_process" target="_blank">Natural Selection Art Process here</a>
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=103612&view=findpost&p=1667225" target="_blank">Transcript</a> - Thanks afratnikov
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=103612&view=findpost&p=1667225" target="_blank">Transcript</a> - Thanks afratnikov
Comments
You should incorporate Cory's rambling more. If Flayra and Max were coffee, Cory would be the sugar and cream. You should just slap him in there, even when not talking about art direction. Offer him more cake, since it seems to lure him in.
I think everyone would love a podcast about potential ideas for skills and be sure to incorporate Cory in there, so that he can sort of ramble on about how he might visually bring the skill some depth (and the same for Max for programming and Flayra for gameplay). Or any combination of those things/people talking about anything pertaining to alien skills.
I really like the idea of marines being insectiod tech - it makes sense when you think about it, insects have a hard shell and a soft centre (yum) but humans don't. So it makes sense that humans would base their technology on insects so that they can have the same sort of protection a insect has. and The idea of aliens being warm, alive and reptilian is great - i'd even like to see marine tech be more insect like and aliens even a bit more reptilian - skulks more lizard like with tails ? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> (might spot people thinking they are dogs that climb walls lol)
The marine helmet concepts are great (even they have been shown before) I hope there will be some options in game to choose which look you want your player to have. And I love how the helmet and eye gear, chin strap is removable or foldable. How cool would it be to see a freshly spawned marine player teleport in through an I.P. and then adjust the strap, lower the head protector, lower the visor and enable the blue glowing display <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
That last concept shown with the blue orbs pretty much sums up how i'd like to see NS2 <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> its just got such a think atmosphere which I haven't seen any sci-fi film pull of since aliens and blade runner.
p.s. podcast are much much much more interesting when there is a visual element <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
You should incorporate Cory's rambling more. If Flayra and Max were coffee, Cory would be the sugar and cream. You should just slap him in there, even when not talking about art direction. Offer him more cake, since it seems to lure him in.
I think everyone would love a podcast about potential ideas for skills and be sure to incorporate Cory in there, so that he can sort of ramble on about how he might visually bring the skill some depth (and the same for Max for programming and Flayra for gameplay). Or any combination of those things/people talking about anything pertaining to alien skills.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A very good podcast, I especially enjoyed the picture slide show of the original concepts. Corey's input on the podcast was very enlightening and soo interesting to hear from the concept artist and his connection to the actual game play of NS. I hope to hear more from Corey and possible other people that have influenced NS.
The picture of the "Hive" with the eggs was really surprising to me that you guys did not include it in the actual game, because i thought of that concept as another feature in the game, and i think it would have definitely enhance the alien game play and give it more of a distinct "alien" feel when playing or against the Kharaa
Will we see more of these?
I also agree that you should try bring the hive/hive room closer in visual style to the original (final) concept art, especially with the mist/steam thing and the eggs.
Yup... a simple trigger and func_dustcloud or func_smokevolume on the mapper's part could make this a very nice effect... or they could make it built in. Either way would likely add a nice ambience. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/pudgy.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::gorge::" border="0" alt="pudgy.gif" />
Me too, that would be awesome.. if we spawned as eggs and hatched, that would be AWESOME.
The hive should be something that makes us cringe and wish we never had to be there, the thought of getting tackled by a skulk or fade then dragged to the hive which would be all slimey, sticky, steamy and full of hungry predators wouldn't really be a walk on the beach would it?
So adding steam, eggs and fog around the hive will DEFIANTLY add a lot more excitement to the game, will also make it harder for the marines to camp at the aliens hive and kill the aliens when they spawn as usual as Doppy said.
I still think that you should invest more time to make the audio track better. Have you applied any compressor audio filter? Also you should normalize the audio after applying compressor. The intro tune was much louder than the speech after that, which was quite annoying.
Overall I liked this videocast very much, it was really interesting and I hope that you guys do more videocasts.
- Garo
i like the concept arts
i thing that make the aliens more reptilian can only be good
@rendy jea that would be cool + you can roll yourself maybe 10 feed away in the egg (whats invinceble) to prevent spawnkilling
but here is the wrong thread to discuss that
ps: most concepts are already in the media section
see you my avatar? he is from there
bring more people like cory - very interesting to hear what he has to say too.
This time around, I didn’t use headings and instead chose to break up the Wall of Text whenever the images changed. Let me know how that works for you. Enjoy.
<b>UW Videocast #1</b>
Charlie: Welcome to the 16th Unknown Worlds podcast. Today is Friday January 11th and this is Charlie
Max: and Max
Charlie: And today we have a special guest for you: Cory Strader.
<b>Cory Strader photo (0:35)</b>
Cory: Hi
Charlie: First of all you’ll notice this is our first video podcast. We don’t know how this is gonna work, but we’re gonna give this a shot and try to go through some of the artwork Cory has created and talk about some of the art process behind the original Natural Selection as well as some of the process for NS2. So…
Cory: Let me start by saying: I was lured here to do this podcast with the promise of cake
<b><a href="http://aperturescience.com/" target="_blank">Portal Cake</a> (0:57)</b>
Charlie: that’s right
Max: You’ll get it
Cory: I don’t see a single piece.
Charlie: You will get it, you can see it right
Max: The cake is not a lie.
Charlie: Three quarters of a carrot cake.
Max: if you eat it now, with your mouth full…
<b>Discarded Alien Concepts (1:10)</b>
Charlie: There you go. It’s only if you do a good job. So I guess the first thing we will talk about is the original art vision for Natural Selection, which has actually evolved quite a bit. We wet through a bunch of different art visions, all basically over the course of one dinner, I believe, back in Boston. And we talked about a few different themes. One of them was, reading through here, “technology to flesh,†which actually is a theme that made to Natural Selection.
Cory: What does it mean “technology to flesh�
Charlie: Sorry, it meant that on the marine side it was technological and on the alien side it was flesh-ological. And the description I have here is “marines start in landing pod that attaches to infested colony ship - check. Marines start in their technologically superior, clean, hard ship†– basically the aliens are wild and they know what their ancestors knew and act on instinct. So, this is kind of bug theme that actually did make into Natural Selection. It was just one of many themes. Cory, do you want to talk about this rejected theme? Do you remember this one?
Cory: Aliens as amputees? Yeah, that was dark and disturbing and grotesque – just the way I like it. But we felt it would be too dark, a little weird.
Charlie: I think that was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cronenberg" target="_blank">Cronenberg </a>kind of thing
Cory: Yeah, we were just sitting around one dinner just throwing around a bunch of ideas: “Aliens as human organs†I’m not sure who…
Charlie: Oh that was a different one! I am Jack’s raging kidney. Every alien was going to be a different organ from the human body.
Cory: How much were we drinking that dinner, do you know?
Charlie: Actually, none. This was back in 2000 so this was kind of the world… anything was plausible.
Max: So most of these concepts seem to reflect this other one: aliens as dangerous animals.
Cory: I think we talked about having like warning spots and stripes and other danger signs that would change based on something, I don’t know… their actions.
Charlie: The description here says: butterflies, jaguars, snakes, insects in the safari, skin stretched over bones, yellows, reds, and oranges. Yeah, that was from Starship Troopers, I guess. I think that was the idea behind it.
Max: So this is: you watched Starship Troopers and Existence [??] and you came up with these ideas?
Charlie: Existence or video Drone [??] Probably, what are you trying to say, Max?
Max: Nothing
Cory: Ended up initially settling on something that was more reptilian and insect-like combination and even that, from this early art vision ended up branching of more from –less of the insect theme in the aliens – more animal, we were thinking just jungle animals.
Charlie: Actually the description here for reptilian insect, the one that we in theory decided on, was: “scales, mandibles and wings are all part of the physiology. Snake-like creature, a crocodile-type thing: long, low and very powerful, lots of teeth.†We actually didn’t… Some of the elements did show through, but we actually ended up by going with the original theme that we talked about: …
<b>Early Skulk Concept (4:28)</b>
Cory: Melee
Charlie: technology to flesh. Well yeah that and just a more wild animal feel. So here is… I don’t know if we ever released this one. This shot is the predecessor to the final skulk image, right?
Cory: Yeah
Charlie: You can see he didn’t have spikes for arms, so he used the alien goo to stick to - it’s a common strategy - to stick to the walls. Oh, look at the date: Cory Strader ’01. It’s great.
Max: Yeah, most of this stuff is from 2000, 2001 right?
<b>Hive image (5:05)</b>
Charlie: God it’s crazy. I’m sure everyone knows this final hive concept. Anything you want to say about that, Cory?
Cory: Well that was, I mean,
Charlie: that’s back when we had eggs
Cory: we had eggs
Charlie: and the hive laying eggs
Cory: originally we wanted it to emit a kind of steam, like mist. We never really got that in there. In the final version of the game
Charlie: No we didn’t. NS2.
Max: Yeah, Charlie talks about that stuff a lot for NS2.
Charlie: That’s true. My calls are unheeded: “Max I want mist, Max I want little glowy eggs!â€
Cory: It pretty much established the initial infestation look too, I guess.
Charlie: Oh yeah. The <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/substrate" target="_blank">substrate </a>underneath the eggs.
Cory: And just all around and the way the creatures and the walls
Max: Where did the infestation idea come from?
Charlie: Probably a visual interest. You probably wanted a way to add…
Cory: Obviously, I think it tied into gameplay in some way.
Charlie: I don’t think it did originally.
Max: And all the story came later, right?
Charlie: Yeah
Max: It was all retrofitted.
Charlie: Actually what’s interesting - we have to do a podcast with Jeff some time – but actually Jeff did his writing hand in hand with the game design. We would go to cafes all the time and I would tell him “oh this is a new ability in the aliens, the aliens have this build†and he’d say “oh†–click click click – “let me retrofit the story to fit that.†And he’d come up with an idea and then I would take his ideas and put it into the game. It would go back and forth.
Cory: That’s all later than this
Charlie: That was probably all later, yeah. But it was all pre-1.0, so it was definitely development time. But Jeff is really good because he is able to pretty much manufacture a fiction no matter what the constraints are. And Cory is good like that too.
<b>Early Gorge image (6:50)</b>
Cory: That was close to final version of the gorge, but obviously you can see we made some changes there . .
Max: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovipositor" target="_blank">ovipositor</a>
Cory: Exactly, good word. I’m not sure why that was removed or why we didn’t go that way, but it’s just a pain. I think we didn’t want to animate the ovipositor.
Cory: It would probably be a lot more informed if we could actually remember stuff from original NS.
Charlie: One of the things I want to do is: I’m gonna keep a journal of all the decisions that are made, ‘cause I don’t remember why we made most of our decisions. <b><Gorge Image></b> Here is the final gorge concept, which is pretty true to the final model.
Cory: Yeah, that’s probably the most reptilian of the aliens
<b>Early Level Design (7:38)</b>
Charlie: Oh yeah, that’s true. So here is an early shot of … this is something Cory mocked up in 3D Studio Max for what the levels might look like. Or what the loading dock might look like in the Natural Selection world. This is so ancient
Cory: Yeah. These are just really quick, rough, basic models. Just slapping some quick textures on them, just to get a sense of, to see the tiling textures, how they would look, and the look were going for lighting, things like that.
Charlie: I think lighting was a big test here. So crude, looking back on it now.
Max: It’s a pretty useful technique, I think: mocking things up to see what it would look like in the game
Cory: Yeah. And some of those textures made it into the final, right? The very first texture set from this I think actually made it in but in limited use.
<b>Early Marine Concepts (8:27)</b>
Charlie: *laughs* We shouldn’t laugh.
Cory: This was, who?
Charlie: This is Steve
Cory: Steve Ashley [sp?]. So he had done I think way back when Charlie was first generating the idea of NS, him and one of our friends, Steve, had been talking about it. So Steve did an early marine concept. Some of the stuff we have maybe used, I don’t know. <b><Cory’s Marine 8:50></b>
Charlie: I think we’re only laughing at this, ‘cause it’s so different from NS. Obviously that’s not the aesthetic we went for at all, but… This is Cory’s version, which I still love.
Cory: I think I kept the kneepads from original concept that Steve had done, but then we didn’t even keep those for the final game.
<b>Alien Models and Wall Textures (9:07)</b>
Charlie: Oh that’s true. This is the final gorge. You can see the texture unwrapped there. So that whole texture is what’s being wrapped on to the final model.
Max: So you did all of the textures on all of the creatures in the game, right? Next one
Cory: Yep. Pretty much all player models I did textures for. A lot of the marine buildings and alien buildings did models and textures for. All the level textures.
Charlie: Pretty much the man
Cory: I guess that would be the word.
Charlie: <i>we really are just trying to give you an idea of A) the art direction behind Natural Selection but B) kind of the process behind pre-visualization and then concepting and then building the actual game assets. </i>
<b>Armory model (9:51)</b>
Max: It’s pretty crazy just going through all these images: how many versions of everything and all this stuff
Charlie: I’m sure I didn’t save everything either. Probably a lot more. The final armory.
Max: We talked about alien design, but where did the marine designs come from?
Charlie: You know, we didn’t talk about that too much did we? It’s always easier because it was based in near-future humans.
Cory: it kind of evolved quickly. A lot of this just because, given the time constraints we were just doing this on our own free time after work and little bit by little bit. I think some of the things just kind of got rushed in without really sitting down and working it out as solidly as we would now.
Charlie: Right. Even now, though, we have limited resources: we can’t sit down and do ten concepts and pick the best one. We do one or two and pick the best one.
Cory: I mean the marine concept that I did, that was my <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/images/ns/concept/marine-concept.jpg" target="_blank">first ever Photoshop painting</a> I think. It was basically just practice for me painting and I was kind of thinking of the marine too for NS, but kind of went with it, but normally we’d do a lot more iterations. We worked closely with the modeler for it and went back and forth and made a lot of changes, so even looking at that concept, with the final model, ended up being revised from that. Plus, then I went into the model, made some changes when I was doing the texture on it, pulling it further. But it’s why even now I’m not happy with the original marine. I wanted to revise it for NS2.
<b>Prototype Lab Model and Texture (11:37)</b>
Max: I think there are definitely distinctive elements, like the last image. There are definitely a lot of shapes, angles and the segmented metal thing. It’s kind of organic – a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pill_bug" target="_blank">pill bug</a> or something.
Cory: Actually I was in some ways moved by
Max: Even the way it opens up – it’s like a flower opening up.
Cory: And you can see the color scheme. We hit on that pretty early on with the green and the military green, which seemed different from a lot of color schemes in a lot of space games, which is grey or blue or black. So…
Max: I guess Sci-Fi is such an overdone thing, that you really have to make an effort to differentiate yourself visually.
Charlie: Definitely, and even our organic/technoesque aesthetic, the blend between the two on both sides, it’s probably been done a million times, but hopefully we do it just slightly differently.
<b>Machina Mining Vehicle Concept (12:53)</b>
Cory: So this is more recent concepts.
Charlie: Now amputees, on the other side! Never been done.
Max: There is a reason for that.
Charlie: So this one – you can see Cory’s skill obviously increasing a lot. When did you do this? Like two years ago I guess?
Cory: No, it’s like a year ago maybe. Half a year ago maybe?
Charlie: Can’t remember.
Cory: Maybe it was a year ago.
Charlie: This is for the <a href="http://www.mapcore.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7847" target="_blank">mining vehicle</a> outside the window on Machina.
Cory: So yeah, different concepts for everyone with the top one there which was eventually used.
Charlie: So that was nice. You got to do a whole bunch of them there. Six different ones and choose the best.
Cory: Yeah this is more the way you should be doing concept work. A lot more iterations and a bunch of different early designs to choose from and then pick the best direction and iterate on that more and then end up with your final.
Max: It looks like quite a bit of work and detail in these drawings. Is that the way you normally do it?
Cory: These ones are a lot faster than some of the other concepts, but… these are done pretty quickly.
Charlie: How much time do you think for each one? A couple hours?
Cory: Yeah.
Charlie: At least. Four?
Cory: No, not that long.
Max: Two? Three?
Cory: Somewhere maybe an hour. They started with really quick sketches and then once I got the shape and then that one would be worked with a little more detail and quick color pass on it. So some if these would be an hour, hour and a half
Max: Where do you come up with the shapes? Do you look at a bunch of reference stuff?
Cory: Yeah, everybody has their own processes of working, but in general, most concept artists have so many folders filled with references, have so many reference books - desks are just cluttered with them. So a lot to draw from for inspiration and whenever you see something cool, you download it and save it and you can go back to it later and it could work for something. For the aliens on this, I was looking through a lot of animal books, so a lot of them, parts are based on actual existing animals, which always lends a bit more believability.
Charlie: you want to talk about the marines – this marine design? Or I guess we already covered it for the most part
Cory: Yeah, the marine went through a bunch of changes initially too. Remember just based on various feedback and I remember the version before this he had like an exposed neck and we covered it
<b>NS Marine Model and Texture (15:26)</b>
Charlie: He still does, actually.
Cory: Yeah not armor, but … we didn’t want him totally armored up, but I think it was actually just skin showing. It was too
Max: Conan the Barbarian
Cory: Well too unprotected and felt
Charlie: My big thing about the marines. I have no idea if this makes sense, but, I always wanted …
<b>Marine vs Skulk Action Image (15:47)</b>
Max: Oh boy, here we go.
Charlie: … skin to be showing. And the reason why is: you might share humanity with something, that you can identify as human. Whereas if it’s completely covered in armor, I feel there might be less empathy among the team and less teamwork actually. I have no idea if it makes any sense, but.
<b>NS2 Marine Concept (16:05)</b>
Cory: So, you can see old and the new. So this is the latest version of the marine for NS2. It was an opportunity for me to go back and fix some things that I wasn’t happy with and some of the original design
Charlie: Like what? Helmet?
Cory: Yeah, the helmet, I never really liked.
Charlie: this is kind of the thing you were talking about: covering up the player’s face, you know, you lose the humanity.
Max: Yep
Cory: Yeah. People felt that the original helmet was too Robocop-like or something.
Charlie: it was. Was that Max’s term?
Max: No, but it’s funny
Charlie: It is true, though.
Max: it is true, it is kind of Robocop-like.
Cory: kneepads never worked right. The way they were modeled and textured they were a little weird. So the torso armor is different.
Charlie: looks more insect-like actually, which I really like.
Cory: Yeah. It’d been more and more like pulling the insect stuff. Before, originally, we wanted that for the aliens, we talked about it, and then pulling back from that and aliens less of that, but more into the marine side and their technology. Kind of worked that look into, I think.
Charlie: nice. Looks beautiful.
Cory: Keep going with the compliments.
<b>NS2 Helmet Concepts (17:17)</b>
Charlie: It’s true! I’m totally serious.
Cory: You can see a lot of iterations for the helmet. So the top one on the left, obviously that’s taking the old NS helmet and revising, updating it a little bit, but it was the same visor look, that people didn’t really care for, so we did a bunch of other iterations as well.
Max: It’s pretty hard to decide - these are all pretty cool.
Charlie: Except the exposed hair one in the lower right. Those two, I don’t like those. They are too ‘80s, based on the hair style.
Max: It’s the hair, yeah. She needs leg warmers.
Charlie: yeah or a mullet
Max: it is a unique concept though
Charlie: it is unique.
Cory: the helmet retracts so…
<b>Helmet opens up (18:06)</b>
Charlie: is that what it is?
Cory: Yeah, so basically, on the far left is the battle mode and then you can have different… the visor can go up and the rest of the helmet retracts back there, so when you’re not in battle, the helmets are hot, so you’d want to be able to…
Charlie: Gotcha
Cory: So rather than taking the whole thing off…
Charlie: Damn that would be pretty sweet!
Max: I think I wrote a blog entry about it.
Charlie: I didn’t really read that I guess. That’s cool. I just immediately discounted that because of the mullet potential.
<b>Railcar Environmental Painting (18:35)</b>
Cory: And yeah, this was the designs for the railcar. And a lot of these … I was brainstorming a lot of props – we needed different things that could be interesting and gameplay potential, so I figured some kind of a railcar thing where your team can ride on it. I mean, we had elevators in the first NS, so this is similar in some aspects of the way it would work, gameplay wise…
Charlie: We ended up removing most of the elevators.
Max: Oh like the airlock in Bast.
Charlie: Yeah.
Max: It was kind of a fun thing, everyone jumping in the airlock.
Charlie: Oh it was awesome!
<b>Black/White Railcar concepts (19:11)</b>
Max: everyone jumps the elevator
Charlie: Oh come on, awesome!
Max: it was good sometimes.
Charlie: yeah it had its moments
Cory: So a concept like this, I got a lot of faster black and white iterations of different railcar concepts, and then I just did some environment paintings using those different concepts in them. So, those are more for: to get a sense of what the railcar would look like in the environment, but also to help out the texture artists and other people working on NS to get a sense for lighting and textures and some of the detail that could be in the new maps.
<b>Onos vs. Railcar Painting (19:50)</b>
Charlie: Yeah, the rest of the team could make tons of textures off this, and they have. Every time they see one of these, they get really excited and they crank out a whole bunch of textures.
Max: How long does a picture like this take?
Cory: this was probably about 20-25 hours, some go faster, anywhere between 15 to 25 hours I guess.
Charlie: All painted in Photoshop?
Cory: Yeah
Charlie: With a tablet?
Cory: With a tablet. And these tend to be … depending on the purpose of the concept art it has to serve, if it was just a concept for the modelers to work with the railcar, the background could be a lot more minimal, you would not have to spend as much time in it. But again, with something like this, we’re using it as [_?_], so it’s a lot more detailed and an overall thing. So it’s more of a completed illustration than sometimes a lot of concept art is.
Max: Do you ever work on paper or always on Photoshop?
Cory: Primarily Photoshop now, I mean sometimes I’ll do quick pencil sketches and then scan them in, and paint over them, or totally repaint them from scratch in Photoshop, but primarily everything is done digitally right now.
Charlie: But you could pain this stuff in real oils, if you wanted to, right? Or maybe not this detail, but I mean your background is oil painting, right.
Cory: Actually I used acrylics mostly, but when I was in school, I was primarily painting with traditionally media. It’s wasn’t until pretty much my Senior year, that I started getting more into the digital side of it. And even that was still heavily combined with … I would paint on canvas and then scan that in and then work on top of that digitally, so it still had that kinda combination to it.
Charlie: Crazy. I wonder if that has a different quality.
Cory: It can. I mean it’s nice to get the tactile, textural feeling of the actual paint and the actual canvas. You can actually mimic some of that look …
Charlie: I can see you do that
Cory: … in Photoshop now you can create custom brushes that allow you to do that to some extent.
Max: I’ve heard of people using scanned-in oil painting just as a faint overlay to give it some texture
Charlie: the paper? To scan the paper, you mean?
Max: That kind of thing
Cory: Yeah, I’ve played around with a lot of things with that various times.
<b><a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2007/08/lab_specimen_concepts" target="_blank">Specimen Pod</a> Concept (22:15)</b>
Charlie: We’re getting near the end here
Cory: This is the concept for another prop in the environment alien specimen container in a laboratory. Pretty typical Sci-Fi kind of thing, every game and movie has, but it’s always fun to see.
<b>Specimen Pod Environmental Painting (22:25)</b>
Charlie: Alright, that wraps up our first video podcast, hope you enjoyed it. Give us feedback, let us know what you think and we’ll see you next week.
I'd also love to see a kind of dynamic helmet like others have described in this thread as well as the smoke covered eggs. But this isn't really the place to discuss it, is it? ^^
Keep up the good work!
Yes it was great to hear from Cory (insane respect for that guy, up there with the NS devs themselves), and it was cool to see all the original concepts and such. Really crazy to find out about the helmet, I think almost everyone missed that on their first glance.
But there was nothing new in this videocast. Not a thing. There were new 'old' things, but that doesn't make them actually new. We want to see substantive progress on NS2! We want to see any and all art assets that are already complete! We want hope for the Tech Release! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Not much new artwork, but maybe you could do that for the next one with Cory?
On a serious note... What is the purpose of podcasts? It definitely isn't just informing the community about new NS2 information. In the first podcast you mentioned that it is a quick and easy way to report your progress during the week. Though the last two podcasts had very specific themes, you didn't report what you actually did that week. So, will the purpose of podcasts change or will it go back to the old format once you have new stuff to report?
Last two podcasts have been very informative, giving a behind-the-scenes look of Unknown Worlds and NS/NS2 development. I'm sure NS fanatics and would-be game developers appreciated them. Still, i hope this didn't distract you from NS2 development too much and you will let us know what you work on in the next podcast.
Seeing as I can't split my attention very well, having the slideshow there helped me focus more on what was going on. I didn't have to rewind and relisten to much at all this time round.
+1 <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Will ns use the sources face animations abilities? i remeber when hl2 first hti magazines and the facial animations were talked about alot, id like to see some of that techniology make it in to ns2.
As for the aliens i quite like the aliens in ns1 but i think some of the concepts that didnt make it look more terrifying and i like terrifiying aliens. i think of the current aliens the fades probs the scariest because its got an eri human edge to it thats quite unsettleing. one of the lerk like concepts in the vidcast has more human esc eyes making it more eriy and frightening. Id like to see more human undertones in the aliens. by this i dont mean they have to be humanoid but little details like the eyes can make them more unsettling as u can relate to it rather than just consider it as a dangerous animal. For me an expresion of intellegence and sophistication in aliens is what makes them scary.