Nope the cinematic editor has many issues. It was like a decaying process that led to render it not interesting to use. 1 yes it's a little user unfriendly, but we adapt. 2 making a single animation is ok (rotating light, etc.). But creating something quite bigger like a scene is just not possible now. Infestation, animations (skulk, etc.). 3 not to mention the crashes.
If it was better we would have a NS2 movie or more menu animations (if the code was modified to make a rotation between animations - already discussed somewhere in the mod forum if i remember correctly), and eventually more animations in maps (vessels etc.).
Modding never really took off because the whole modding system was never fully implemented/supported.
Granted, _fully_ implementing/supporting a mod system (in which I include great tools, great documentation and great version control) would have been several man-years worth of work... and with Unity/UE4 engines maturing, I guess the idea of licensing the Spark Engine (and thus having a monetary incentive to actually get tools/docs in place) kinda died - hard to make money competing against basically free stuff.
And Unity/UE4 may also have drained the market for the kind of modders that could have used Spark to make more advanced mods. After all, if you did not already have a relationship with NS, why would you choose to work with Spark over UE/Unity?
That said, the Spark engine actually does a lot of really cool stuff that I suspect other engines don't.
Also, the engine code (C++) is very high quality and rather enjoyable to work with .
Despite all this, Spark Engine looks phenomenal. Unity is nice but kinda looks like a joke compared to almost hyper realistic scenes in NS2. I mean the shading, shadowing, lighting, atmospherics etc in Spark Engine are just incredible.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Hang on a minute....
I've just read that @UncleCrunch is criticising UWE, for not writing plug-ins for more than one piece of software.
Do you have any idea of the scale of the challenge and the feats that UWE pulled off.
The fact they added lua to the engine, and made the game entirely scriptable is a phenomenal achievement by UWE, considering the resources at their disposal. Yes we all get frustrated with the way they did various things, but the fact we got what we did was mindblowing.
Sure, I got too close to it and complained at times, but that is just frustration borne out of passion.
When I signed up to this journey by buying NS2 in 2006 or whenever it was, I knew they were going for something epic, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined UWE would pull of what they did with NS2. Sure they over-reached on certain things, so they came up short in places, but I much rather UWE stretch themselves than play within safe limits, even if it doesn't always come off.
UWE were way too overambitious, but it was that ambition that brought us the amazing experience that NS2 is. Heck, when the site died for around a year in 2005, many of us thought NS was consigned to the history books. The fact that I am able to type on the same(ish) forums 10 years later having had such a ride along with UWE is another amazing achievement.
Yes we can get frustrated with many things, but getting so upset over this issue is just not productive.
Deal with it, and appreciate what we have. The grass is always greener..
I've just read that @UncleCrunch is criticising UWE, for not writing plug-ins for more than one piece of software.
Do you have any idea of the scale of the challenge and the feats that UWE pulled off.
The fact they added lua to the engine, and made the game entirely scriptable is a phenomenal achievement by UWE, considering the resources at their disposal. Yes we all get frustrated with the way they did various things, but the fact we got what we did was mindblowing.
Sure, I got too close to it and complained at times, but that is just frustration borne out of passion.
When I signed up to this journey by buying NS2 in 2006 or whenever it was, I knew they were going for something epic, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined UWE would pull of what they did with NS2. Sure they over-reached on certain things, so they came up short in places, but I much rather UWE stretch themselves than play within safe limits, even if it doesn't always come off.
UWE were way too overambitious, but it was that ambition that brought us the amazing experience that NS2 is. Heck, when the site died for around a year in 2005, many of us thought NS was consigned to the history books. The fact that I am able to type on the same(ish) forums 10 years later having had such a ride along with UWE is another amazing achievement.
Yes we can get frustrated with many things, but getting so upset over this issue is just not productive.
Deal with it, and appreciate what we have. The grass is always greener..
What is exactly to you "added LUA to the engine" ?
The "what we have" (3DSMAX2009 plugin) isn't usable unless you go piracy or get rich (or whatever). It just looks like UWE didn't think about that for a second. I mean, that one was really easy to spot. If you want to enable modding in some digital product, you have to put yourself in the modders shoes for a little while. It's especially weird coming from modders in the beginning, remember ? The funny part is: the one that asked for that thing first is the one who did the blender exporter... tada!
Concerning scripting; it is obvious that since the game came out, many things have been changed. eventually breaking stuff. I'm not the one who ranted about that particular area. It did crippled some mods. The echo of some rant threads still ring in my head. I would have done something if i could be sure it wouldn't be crippled the same way with time. So i was facing this: debug/support more than creating (with little doc/info) or trying to make something "stronger" that could last more. Mapping is the one thing that can fit the bill. Unfortunately... the exporter, you know the rest.
McGlaspiewww.team156.comJoin Date: 2010-07-26Member: 73044Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester
edited July 2015
@UncleCrunch We're (the CDT) WELL aware of the shortcomings of modding capabilities (models being the most obvious), and have some plans to mitigate these shortcomings. Harping on past decisions only serves the purpose of ranting, and nothing else. Our primary focus has to be on moving NS2 forward. Along the way we'll do what we can, when we can for mod support. A great example of what I mean, is we've got a fix for the Invalid Triangles error from the Editor in the pipeline right now.
Myself and @BeigeAlert have been working together to come up with a permanent solution (or at least an alternative) to the lack of decent modeling support. It's come along far enough (almost entirely in part because of Beige's efforts) that I'll be integrating support for new models into our Build System.
I'm also going to be investigating integration API Documentation into the new build system. This will, ideally, mean the full API Docs will get distributed with the game. I just have to find the time to make it happen, hopefully sooner than later.
As always, considering the CDT is a Volunteer Team, I can't make any promises when updated modding tools will arrive, but I can say they are being worked on.
NS2 is : 2 years, 8 months & ~10 days old now.
NS1 lasted +8 years or so.
What i was pointing out is not about choices ? A choice is when you select route A or B. In the "exporter case" it looks (no to say IS) like UWE strictly didn't even take the time to think about it. For what i saw until now (many episodes since NS2 was out) I think UWE simply forgot a thing here, another one there.
Nobody is perfect but sometime you just do a "face-palm" in front of your screen. 1 because you just get speechless about the thing you're studying. 2 because you have to give up on what you wanted to do. Therefore you lost your time. It makes me wonder about what was the project management methods used ? If someone says Trello: You; Out !
Then we have the CDT that is, as you just said, working as volunteers. So it's when you (all of you) can, if you find the bug or if it can be achievable (new things). No promises. I don't blame. Just understand that it's a big blurred line to say the least. Nobody can rely on that.
This game was always talking about competitive stuff. I couldn't care less as i don't like it. But I think it did shot a bullet in the leg of NS2 to do so (steamcharts tends to say that too). If you want new competitive players you need new players in the first place.
If you wanna know what really piss me off is this: For every single strategy game that I could lay my eyes on for 3 decades (All of them in fact), Natural selection (1&2) is a tremendous concept. I think we can all agree on that. I could easily forgive NS1 about graphics, bugs as it is a HL1 modification (you're forced to work as a HL client, etc.). Then NS2 is on the way. Yay! I wasn't expecting a big Art of Computer Programming piece, but something that was ok (Or even a little less compared to the average game.) as long as mod support was available. At least stable. Unfortunately the story took a different turn.
I mean by concept : A game that is
-able to please FPS players
-able to please RTS players. Introducing human success/fail as a replacement for "stupid micro management".
-2 different teams. It kills predictability as long as the players have to explore and discover maps. Thrilling!
-mod support, enabling extended life span (if community is willing to produce something new).
And we're stuck with:
-Rookie stomping / Rookie quit (or rage quit)
-Worthless FET (see the other treads)
-mod support broke several times / mod dependency issues / Steam workshop issues.
-Performance issue (1st year). Never before i saw CPU going nuts with a game like that.
Unless there is a drastic change in the next build that will actually bring more people. Whatever it is, any shape it takes, it should definitely be efficient to reverse the player base decay. Eventually "moving forward". And it would be great. But I'm realistic and won't hope as many things did come late to be honest. I'm afraid to say : "it's probably one of the last run for NS2". It's a different era and maybe we cannot expect NS2 to last as long as the older brother anyways. But it's sad to see that NS2 did have a hard time to take off because of the many issues mentioned in many threads.
Rest assured i understand your position. Having a lot of people always being on your nuts (including me? haha (: ), asking for specific things (not me this time) to get what they want (selfish manner). They always are saying "go for it" but never, ever move a single finger to help a little. The life of a modder is usually harsh as a desert.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited July 2015
Most games don't innately come with mod support today.. and even when they do the documentation is either non existent, lacking, or there's a limit to what exactly you can modify. Some games even have your modifications result in a VAC ban.
Is NS2 the most moddable? No, not by a long shot.. it's difficult to compete with the likes of source or UE for ease of developing.. but remember how few UE engine games today are even moddable! (not many)
Then of course there's the issue of developing mods on something that's constantly getting updated, which requires maintenance for your mod - but everyone knew the game was planned to continue development since launch day as it was announced.
Is NS2 moddable though? Yes. The game code is open sourced, many of the assets are available, it comes with a map editor, a cinematic editor, a model viewer, a performance profiler etc and is hooked up to Steam Workshop. That's a large step, especially for an indie company making a complex game with a lot of moving parts.
So I'll say this: Cut it some slack.. it ain't perfect, but it's been enough to severely improve the game through server side mods, alternate game modes, and 1,445 other items on the workshop.. far better than the likes of many AAA games that are released today at double the cost by much larger teams. So why would you be "pissed"?
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
What is wrong with cutting some slack to a tiny Indie company, that turned out a game that people mistake for being a Triple-A release?
Some of us live in the real world and have realistic expectations of what is Humanly possible, what with time and financial constraints. As pointed out, most AAA games don't have anywhere near the modding functionality of NS2. The demands and expectations of better modelling support etc are alright being thrown at large companies backed by large budgets.
But demanding this from a team that devoted years of their life to creating this game, almost going broke a few times, which would have left us with nothing, is over the top. Definitely cut them some slack.
They have over-achieved with what they managed, and they are being critiscised for not meeting AAA standards.
If you are being judged as an indie against AAA games, you know you've achieved something amazing.
People expect too much all the time. Some dumb idiot once coined a phrase - 'The customer is always right'. Some customers heard this and took it to heart, now they expect the impossible. The customer is rarely right, but often judgemental and noisy all the same.
@UncleCrunch Absolutely I am away. As you may have heard, Unity is free game engine, where not only can I make games, but I am allowed to SELL them as well.
Unfortunately, making mods, while fun, pays like shit. As much as I loved modding for NS2, time has come for me to earn some cold hard cash from making games. And of course, if it wasn't for the opportunity given to me by UWE, to be able to mod NS2 for so many years (6 years in total), I wouldn't have the skills or ability to do what I am doing now.
So I may be working with a new engine, but I owe everything that happens in my Game Dev career to the opportunity and inspiration NS2 gave me.
FrozenNew York, NYJoin Date: 2010-07-02Member: 72228Members, Constellation
What's the last Triple-A multiplayer you played and actually liked?
Mine is Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. That's a long time ago. Slack Granted to UWE, and while I'm not interested in it, it's good to see the very positive reviews on Subnautica.
However, monetarily as you say, going close to broke, I do think that a better system for skinning would have got them a bunch of money at this point. Nothing wrong with cosmetic DLC in a non-f2p environment. I know I'd rather have the game than the skins, but I can't help but see it as skins-->better game + money, and better game -/>skins+money
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
Skins were very problematic for a long time, you couldn't change the skin of your character in game, you had to go out to teh main menus. This was eventually fixed to the current method which can be changed in-game by SamusDroid, around the time of the Kodiak update.
Even so, it is not really suitable currently for skinning on the kind of level needed to support that kind of environment.
I am sure if it was technically viable, it would have been tried already, as most people seem to agree offering paid for skins as DLC in a paid for game is acceptable.
maybe future changes by the CDT will help things along in that regard, but who knows what the future really holds..
Comments
If it was better we would have a NS2 movie or more menu animations (if the code was modified to make a rotation between animations - already discussed somewhere in the mod forum if i remember correctly), and eventually more animations in maps (vessels etc.).
Despite all this, Spark Engine looks phenomenal. Unity is nice but kinda looks like a joke compared to almost hyper realistic scenes in NS2. I mean the shading, shadowing, lighting, atmospherics etc in Spark Engine are just incredible.
Why did I do that?
I've just read that @UncleCrunch is criticising UWE, for not writing plug-ins for more than one piece of software.
Do you have any idea of the scale of the challenge and the feats that UWE pulled off.
The fact they added lua to the engine, and made the game entirely scriptable is a phenomenal achievement by UWE, considering the resources at their disposal. Yes we all get frustrated with the way they did various things, but the fact we got what we did was mindblowing.
Sure, I got too close to it and complained at times, but that is just frustration borne out of passion.
When I signed up to this journey by buying NS2 in 2006 or whenever it was, I knew they were going for something epic, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined UWE would pull of what they did with NS2. Sure they over-reached on certain things, so they came up short in places, but I much rather UWE stretch themselves than play within safe limits, even if it doesn't always come off.
UWE were way too overambitious, but it was that ambition that brought us the amazing experience that NS2 is. Heck, when the site died for around a year in 2005, many of us thought NS was consigned to the history books. The fact that I am able to type on the same(ish) forums 10 years later having had such a ride along with UWE is another amazing achievement.
Yes we can get frustrated with many things, but getting so upset over this issue is just not productive.
Deal with it, and appreciate what we have. The grass is always greener..
What is exactly to you "added LUA to the engine" ?
The "what we have" (3DSMAX2009 plugin) isn't usable unless you go piracy or get rich (or whatever). It just looks like UWE didn't think about that for a second. I mean, that one was really easy to spot. If you want to enable modding in some digital product, you have to put yourself in the modders shoes for a little while. It's especially weird coming from modders in the beginning, remember ? The funny part is: the one that asked for that thing first is the one who did the blender exporter... tada!
Concerning scripting; it is obvious that since the game came out, many things have been changed. eventually breaking stuff. I'm not the one who ranted about that particular area. It did crippled some mods. The echo of some rant threads still ring in my head. I would have done something if i could be sure it wouldn't be crippled the same way with time. So i was facing this: debug/support more than creating (with little doc/info) or trying to make something "stronger" that could last more. Mapping is the one thing that can fit the bill. Unfortunately... the exporter, you know the rest.
Greener ? I heard you're away, is it?
Myself and @BeigeAlert have been working together to come up with a permanent solution (or at least an alternative) to the lack of decent modeling support. It's come along far enough (almost entirely in part because of Beige's efforts) that I'll be integrating support for new models into our Build System.
I'm also going to be investigating integration API Documentation into the new build system. This will, ideally, mean the full API Docs will get distributed with the game. I just have to find the time to make it happen, hopefully sooner than later.
As always, considering the CDT is a Volunteer Team, I can't make any promises when updated modding tools will arrive, but I can say they are being worked on.
NS1 lasted +8 years or so.
What i was pointing out is not about choices ? A choice is when you select route A or B. In the "exporter case" it looks (no to say IS) like UWE strictly didn't even take the time to think about it. For what i saw until now (many episodes since NS2 was out) I think UWE simply forgot a thing here, another one there.
Nobody is perfect but sometime you just do a "face-palm" in front of your screen. 1 because you just get speechless about the thing you're studying. 2 because you have to give up on what you wanted to do. Therefore you lost your time. It makes me wonder about what was the project management methods used ? If someone says Trello: You; Out !
Then we have the CDT that is, as you just said, working as volunteers. So it's when you (all of you) can, if you find the bug or if it can be achievable (new things). No promises. I don't blame. Just understand that it's a big blurred line to say the least. Nobody can rely on that.
This game was always talking about competitive stuff. I couldn't care less as i don't like it. But I think it did shot a bullet in the leg of NS2 to do so (steamcharts tends to say that too). If you want new competitive players you need new players in the first place.
If you wanna know what really piss me off is this: For every single strategy game that I could lay my eyes on for 3 decades (All of them in fact), Natural selection (1&2) is a tremendous concept. I think we can all agree on that. I could easily forgive NS1 about graphics, bugs as it is a HL1 modification (you're forced to work as a HL client, etc.). Then NS2 is on the way. Yay! I wasn't expecting a big Art of Computer Programming piece, but something that was ok (Or even a little less compared to the average game.) as long as mod support was available. At least stable. Unfortunately the story took a different turn.
I mean by concept : A game that is
-able to please FPS players
-able to please RTS players. Introducing human success/fail as a replacement for "stupid micro management".
-2 different teams. It kills predictability as long as the players have to explore and discover maps. Thrilling!
-mod support, enabling extended life span (if community is willing to produce something new).
And we're stuck with:
-Rookie stomping / Rookie quit (or rage quit)
-Worthless FET (see the other treads)
-mod support broke several times / mod dependency issues / Steam workshop issues.
-Performance issue (1st year). Never before i saw CPU going nuts with a game like that.
Unless there is a drastic change in the next build that will actually bring more people. Whatever it is, any shape it takes, it should definitely be efficient to reverse the player base decay. Eventually "moving forward". And it would be great. But I'm realistic and won't hope as many things did come late to be honest. I'm afraid to say : "it's probably one of the last run for NS2". It's a different era and maybe we cannot expect NS2 to last as long as the older brother anyways. But it's sad to see that NS2 did have a hard time to take off because of the many issues mentioned in many threads.
Rest assured i understand your position. Having a lot of people always being on your nuts (including me? haha (: ), asking for specific things (not me this time) to get what they want (selfish manner). They always are saying "go for it" but never, ever move a single finger to help a little. The life of a modder is usually harsh as a desert.
Is NS2 the most moddable? No, not by a long shot.. it's difficult to compete with the likes of source or UE for ease of developing.. but remember how few UE engine games today are even moddable! (not many)
Then of course there's the issue of developing mods on something that's constantly getting updated, which requires maintenance for your mod - but everyone knew the game was planned to continue development since launch day as it was announced.
Is NS2 moddable though? Yes. The game code is open sourced, many of the assets are available, it comes with a map editor, a cinematic editor, a model viewer, a performance profiler etc and is hooked up to Steam Workshop. That's a large step, especially for an indie company making a complex game with a lot of moving parts.
So I'll say this: Cut it some slack.. it ain't perfect, but it's been enough to severely improve the game through server side mods, alternate game modes, and 1,445 other items on the workshop.. far better than the likes of many AAA games that are released today at double the cost by much larger teams. So why would you be "pissed"?
Some of us live in the real world and have realistic expectations of what is Humanly possible, what with time and financial constraints. As pointed out, most AAA games don't have anywhere near the modding functionality of NS2. The demands and expectations of better modelling support etc are alright being thrown at large companies backed by large budgets.
But demanding this from a team that devoted years of their life to creating this game, almost going broke a few times, which would have left us with nothing, is over the top. Definitely cut them some slack.
They have over-achieved with what they managed, and they are being critiscised for not meeting AAA standards.
If you are being judged as an indie against AAA games, you know you've achieved something amazing.
People expect too much all the time. Some dumb idiot once coined a phrase - 'The customer is always right'. Some customers heard this and took it to heart, now they expect the impossible. The customer is rarely right, but often judgemental and noisy all the same.
@UncleCrunch Absolutely I am away. As you may have heard, Unity is free game engine, where not only can I make games, but I am allowed to SELL them as well.
Unfortunately, making mods, while fun, pays like shit. As much as I loved modding for NS2, time has come for me to earn some cold hard cash from making games. And of course, if it wasn't for the opportunity given to me by UWE, to be able to mod NS2 for so many years (6 years in total), I wouldn't have the skills or ability to do what I am doing now.
So I may be working with a new engine, but I owe everything that happens in my Game Dev career to the opportunity and inspiration NS2 gave me.
Mine is Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. That's a long time ago. Slack Granted to UWE, and while I'm not interested in it, it's good to see the very positive reviews on Subnautica.
However, monetarily as you say, going close to broke, I do think that a better system for skinning would have got them a bunch of money at this point. Nothing wrong with cosmetic DLC in a non-f2p environment. I know I'd rather have the game than the skins, but I can't help but see it as skins-->better game + money, and better game -/>skins+money
Even so, it is not really suitable currently for skinning on the kind of level needed to support that kind of environment.
I am sure if it was technically viable, it would have been tried already, as most people seem to agree offering paid for skins as DLC in a paid for game is acceptable.
maybe future changes by the CDT will help things along in that regard, but who knows what the future really holds..