Querys
Venmoch
Join Date: 2002-08-07 Member: 1093Members
Join Date: 2002-08-07 Member: 1093Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Questions for the development team</div>Just a few questions regarding the development of NS (please don't flame me if these questions have been answered before I searched the FAQs and Forums)
1.) Why choose the Half-Life engine over a more recent engine (eg Quake 3, Unreal Tournament)?
2.) How were you inspired to make a First Person Strategy with marines and aliens why didn't you just do what most Mod teams are doing and make a mod that involves wars past or present?
3.) Where did the CC idea come from?
4.) What inspired the visual look of NS? (Films etc)
I'm sure I can think up more later and I'm sorry if I sound like a rabid journalist!
1.) Why choose the Half-Life engine over a more recent engine (eg Quake 3, Unreal Tournament)?
2.) How were you inspired to make a First Person Strategy with marines and aliens why didn't you just do what most Mod teams are doing and make a mod that involves wars past or present?
3.) Where did the CC idea come from?
4.) What inspired the visual look of NS? (Films etc)
I'm sure I can think up more later and I'm sorry if I sound like a rabid journalist!
Comments
1.) Why choose the Half-Life engine over a more recent engine (eg Quake 3, Unreal Tournament)?
2.) How were you inspired to make a First Person Strategy with marines and aliens why didn't you just do what most Mod teams are doing and make a mod that involves wars past or present?
3.) Where did the CC idea come from?
4.) What inspired the visual look of NS? (Films etc)
I'm sure I can think up more later and I'm sorry if I sound like a rabid journalist!<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll answer as best I can. (:
1) Halflife has the largest fanbase and the best mod support of any multiplayer FPS, hands down. Nearly half of HL players still play in software mode - that means they couldn't play Q3 or UT even if they wanted to! VALVe has also been continually supportive of its community; I know Flay has worked with company employees directly while working with certain bugs and features of NS.
2) He wanted to do something *other* than a CS-clone or another WW2 sim. It's not possible to make "a better CS" - the fanbase is too large and too entrenched, and any attempt at recreating it will simply be a clone. Likewise, the historical sim has been done to death recently - MoH:AA, RtCW, and DoD stand out in particular. Rather than jump on the Me-Too Train, Flay went out on a limb and made the game *he* had always wanted to see, and made it well enough that the whole HL community would stand up and take notice.
3) Do you mean the Command Console (the in-game structure), or Commander Mode? Commander Mode is the heart of Natural Selection - the RTS element that makes it truly unique. NS is "a real-time strategy game with a first-person front end." As for the CC itself... you'd have to ask the modeller about that one.
4) Lots of things... the Alien movies and the Q2 mod, "Gloom," come to mind, though those aren't necessarily the two biggest influences - just things I've heard Flay mention. The aliens themselves are designed to be *different* - rather than the "traditional" insectile or reptilian foe, Flayra decided to take a more mammalian approach. The marines and their technology borrow from real-world military, science fiction, and many other things.
Anyway, of course these are 2nd-hand answers, but hopefully they help a little. (: Flay's a busy guy; no telling when/if he'll get a chance to answer himself!
Actually, the *original* command console idea was a brush-based entity, which mappers could build to look like whatever they wanted it to. It was changed to a standard model to make it easier for the aliens to know just what the heck they had to attack.
Correction, coil: UT has a software mode that is, in many ways, better that HL's.
However, HL's fanbase as well as Valve's support for mods make HL the best choice, at least until Valve's next game comes out.
1)CS
2)RTCW
3)Q3
4)DoD
- The numbers for software mode are closer to 18% or so. It's listed as "Microsoft Corporation GDI Generic" in <a href="http://valve.speakeasy.net/survey/" target="_blank">this survey</a>. What I'm really not sure of is whether there are any software rendering users in the "Others" category.
- Yep, UT supports software rendering and it looks utterly fantastic. They have a special trick for filtering that will make you think their software mode is hardware rendered.
- Cory (Squeal Like A Pig) and I worked together on the high-level direction of the game and the aliens, but he is the guy that did all the concept work, most of the texture work and is responsible for the visual look of NS.
we wuv ya cory <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
i think im inspired to make some art now :>
Awww shucks. Thanks guys.