The Unofficial Ns 3.0 Manual
kavasa
Join Date: 2003-01-05 Member: 11889Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-01-05 Member: 11889Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">it's huge</div> So I wrote the very first words of this thing before 3.0's first public beta release, when the official manual was still very much out of date. I continued to work on it off and on (mostly off) for several months, and finally finished off the first version today. Warning: it really is huge. The archive containing the .pdf and some custom crosshairs is 1.28 mb. The document itself is 50 pages of text and images.
Comments and criticism are appreciated, from the most piddling of typos to sweeping disagreements about how I've structured it.
It needs a cover image of some sort, so if any of you namby-pamby art-type people want to come up with some sort image brimming over with justice and freedom and what have you, go for it. If anyone makes something especially righteous, it'll be the cover of the next release and they'll get credit in the manual. For whatever that's worth.
#nslearn people - you're welcome to upload this over there. Hell, anyone can distribute it however they please, although I'd appreciate it if you kept the original archive intact. Since it professes to have the fixed shotgun crosshair along with the manual, it'd be weird if there were copies floating around without that crosshair.
For the bored and the curious, here's the download link: <a href='http://s89711202.onlinehome.us/manual/ns_manual.zip' target='_blank'>enjoy</a>.
Comments and criticism are appreciated, from the most piddling of typos to sweeping disagreements about how I've structured it.
It needs a cover image of some sort, so if any of you namby-pamby art-type people want to come up with some sort image brimming over with justice and freedom and what have you, go for it. If anyone makes something especially righteous, it'll be the cover of the next release and they'll get credit in the manual. For whatever that's worth.
#nslearn people - you're welcome to upload this over there. Hell, anyone can distribute it however they please, although I'd appreciate it if you kept the original archive intact. Since it professes to have the fixed shotgun crosshair along with the manual, it'd be weird if there were copies floating around without that crosshair.
For the bored and the curious, here's the download link: <a href='http://s89711202.onlinehome.us/manual/ns_manual.zip' target='_blank'>enjoy</a>.
Comments
Good job...I think.
What's with the crosshair files? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<span style='color:red'>Kavasa. You've been on this board a long time, and you're always making fun of stupid people, which earns you points with me. But this manual needs some work and fact checking. LMG can only kill 3 skulks? 7 pistol shots for a skulk? You even said that carapace increases the armor coefficient and SLOWS THE SKULK DOWN FFS. Nowhere in the manual are there any damage tables, you don't describe the effects of the Arms Lab upgrades, you have no numbers at all. The numbers are the nuts and bolts of this game. Damage isn't randomized. The LMG always has a base attack power of 10 HP per bullet, 20 for the pistol, 30 for the knife, skulk bite does 75 HP, focus does 150, etc and it never changes from game to game or server to server. The math is the most reliable part of this game, and it's what separates the people who know from the people who just don't.</span>
Be precise. Look up the exact numbers, make sure your facts are triplechecked by reliable sources, IE coders and PTs.
Maybe this manual is just version 1.0? Good effort, but I have to mark you down for technical merit.
</span>
It's nice that it's detailed and you cover common things, never diescribed in official manual (shortcuts, bhop etc..) I would certainly recommend it to any newbie, that want's to learn the game.
Well, many of them did with the 1.0 manual didn't they?
For this reason, precise damage tables are a low priority for me, because which fact is more useful, especially for the newcomer:
1. A base skulk kills a marine in 2 bites, or
2. A base skulk does 75 points of damage per bite?
I mean, they'll probably make it in as an appendix at some point, but the meat of the manual is always going to be "real world" application. And yes I realize how dumb the idea of real world video game stuff is. Sorry.
Again - I'm not saying you're wrong, that stuff should be in there and will at some point. Just explaining why it wasn't a priority for the first version. Making all the screenshots and doing the initial framing and writing was enough drudgery for a while.
I was under the impression cara does still increase armor coefficient; the "slows you down bit" reflects how long ago that section was written. Editing your own stuff is so tiresome, but I still should have caught that.
The crosshair files are, uh, crosshairs. They even get their own little section in the manual. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> Wither was apparently a fan of them (I was playing on lm just now and he kept mentioning them).
Eclipse - yeah, but you never know. And it's not like I slaved over it night and day. All told, this is somewhere around 30 hours of work, I think.
snozzle - yeah, once someone (apparently yourself) started updating the official manual I was like "well, hell." I thought about dropping it, but I already had on the order of 30 pages of text written, and I'm covering some of the non-official stuff that doesn't get covered otherwise.
ok
but who will read it?
dun think those nubs n00bs...
Erm, wrong? I'm pretty convinced it does increase aborbtion rate, just like in all previous versions of NS..
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Not nearly as much out of date than the official manual....
Why don't you entrust this guy with the manual stuff officially?
If he's willing to put that effort in it, why not let him?
</.02>
cam (god that's weird, my real name is Cameron) - yeah, I can't edit my own stuff the second I've written it, my brain glosses over errors, typos, and poor phrasing. I'll go over it in a month or two and re-write awkward stuff.
Any specific suggestions for the additional visuals? I've got a "stuff to fix" textfile where I'm compiling all the stuff that'll go into the next version. The carapace entry is listed there now.
Also - I did set up bookmarks for this document, so you can use those to navigate around. And the next version will make all website addresses clickable links, and I'm thinking of setting it up so the first instance of any unfamiliar term links to that term's entry in the glossary.
Snozzle's already got the quick access html manual going, I think I prefer pdf format for my project. Again, it's supposed to be an exhaustive manual for public play, so the idea is a new player downloads this once and then has it available to refer to for any questions he might have.
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<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->he spread looks like a couple pentagons, the larger one slightly rotated
about the inner one, centered a little up and to the right of the default crosshair. You can
see this exactly if you load up a map locally, enter the command ?sv_cheats 1? in
console, get yourself a shotgun, and shoot a hive with it. I?ve also bundled with this
manual a couple different<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href='http://www.naturalselection.pexgames.com' target='_blank'>http://www.naturalselection.pexgames.com</a>
True, just aim at the Kharaa and hold the trigger and "deliver some hot lead" until the Kharaa dies, then release the trigger. OMG RECOIL HAX!11
BattleTech - Well, the way I'm thinking of it is thus: fundamentally, LMG/HMG aim are just ability to track. I can't impart that through any writing, people will either figure out how to lead fast moving targets or they won't. Also, our definitions of burst fire here are probably different. I'm saying "don't burst fire in the way you would in CS", since you don't have to wait for the reticle to shrink back down. If you've got an alien in your crosshairs, you should be shooting it. That of course doesn't mean just spray bullets all over the walls in hopes that some hit. I'll re-work the handgrenade description though. I was thinking they're not as useful for clearing lame as a GL is, which is true, but they're better than nothing.
Thanks for the additional comments. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->