I would suggest looking at different game types for CS, DOD, BF2, and TFC. All of these have some...very interesting map types.
CS only has hostage, escort & bomb maps...kinda boring.
DoD has conquest flag captures with territory scoring.
BF2...well..eh..never played it. :x
TFC has murderball-style, avanti-style, dustbowl-style, hunted-style, canalzone-style, and the classic 'capture the flag, 2 base' maps.
I think a lot of variety that everyone is looking for would be best served by having a wide variety of maps for doing different things and having them prefixed differently.
Keeping the core components of gameplay (to make the learning curve as simple as possible & to have consistant gameplay), would be very very good. =D =D
But if people want to make NeoTFC's for NS, .......I guess that's ok.... But those people..really, I don't know what is going through their head :x.
<!--quoteo(post=1606587:date=Feb 14 2007, 07:35 PM:name=Flayra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Flayra @ Feb 14 2007, 07:35 PM) [snapback]1606587[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Great feedback everyone. But oops, I forgot to qualify a big point here: even though we want to encourage modding of NS2, we will definitely maintain our own "core" gameplay that is the main game. We will draw an obvious distinction between "core" NS2 and "custom" NS2.
We'll probably do this by making the server browser default to showing default "NS2" servers, and then having a "custom games" tab or something that shows only modified servers.
Hopefully this way we get the best of both worlds. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm down with that. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
Also, what Aeroripper said: where do you draw the line? How will it be regulated? <!--quoteo(post=1606639:date=Feb 15 2007, 12:32 AM:name=locallyunscene)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(locallyunscene @ Feb 15 2007, 12:32 AM) [snapback]1606639[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Okay I'm glad I'm not the only one who focused in on that first. Honestly though, I have faith. I could see a "Savage" like system where the player have limited options to choose his or her layout based on team resources, commander research. Or maybe it isn't even as complicated as that, sounds like an interesting tack to take. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Giving more power to the individual player is usually the best way to go. But there are different ways to do it. You could let players buy better weapons from the armoury using their own 'personal resources' gained from completing objectives (or, dare I say it, <i>RFK</i>), or you could have the commander pay a certain amount of res to 'unlock' weapons for all units to use, but allow the armoury to only give out 3 shotguns every 15 seconds, or one flamethrower every 20 seconds, etc.
I'd personally prefer the last option, as it means you don't need the commander to drop weapons, but he still has some control over when they first appear on the battlefield. Later on in the game you could have an upgrade to allow the armoury to 'regen' weapons more quickly or even an ability ('powersurge', for example) that makes them regen more quickly for a short amount of time (kinda like a catpack for buildings, with obvious other uses for increasing research times, increasing spawn rate, etc.). Either of these options would allow the commander to restock his troops quickly when in need (base defence, PG rush, JP rush, shotgun rush, HA train).
P.S. Some good ideas in <a href="http://features.moddb.com/271/nuclear-dawn/" target="_blank">there</a>, some of which won't now make it into the less ambitious first release we're planning. Feel free to liberate any ideas; many of the design principles were heavily influenced by an NS retrospective.
<!--quoteo(post=1606667:date=Feb 14 2007, 09:51 PM:name=Sheepe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sheepe @ Feb 14 2007, 09:51 PM) [snapback]1606667[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> How about a tweakage bar? A little meter in the custom games section that shows how much has been added, changed, or removed and you could filter by that?
-Sheepe <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That would be a good idea! Only I dont think a "tweakage bar" is feasable with Steam. Perhaps just a drop down list of level of modification presented?
SloppyKissesomgawd a furreh!VirginiaJoin Date: 2003-07-05Member: 17942Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1606320:date=Feb 13 2007, 10:47 PM:name=Scythe)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Scythe @ Feb 13 2007, 10:47 PM) [snapback]1606320[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> The thing I hated most about Tribes 1 was the number of custom serverside mods. They essentially ruined the game for me. Nobody ran vanilla servers anymore. They were all Team Aerial Combat or some variant of Renegades.
Surely a per-server player experience is a very bad thing? What if a new player joined a modded server unawares and has a terrible time due to poorly-thought-out plugins?
I'm all in favour of being able to embed scripting into custom maps for events and complex interlocking systems, airlocks, power systems, etc, but scripts that effect the gameplay on other maps at a base level are a very bad thing.
At least from my point of view.
--Scythe-- <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, i myself still play tribes 1!! I know how you feel, what mod did you just play? was it base?
I used to play elite ren, then when it died like tribes1 i now play just good ole base ;o
there is still the effect of custom servers taking players away from normal servers. it hurts competitive ns too, theres less 'potential clanners' because they've all turned down the challenges of standard ns (and playing with clanners in the same servers) and moved into custom servers where they'll stay unable to step-up to the core game.
If you're doing your own custom game browser, how about an easier way to view server info -- like WHICH mods are installed -- without having to open another window for every server. Sort of like the preview pane in most email clients.
<!--quoteo(post=1606625:date=Feb 14 2007, 06:35 PM:name=Underwhelmed)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Underwhelmed @ Feb 14 2007, 06:35 PM) [snapback]1606625[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> <@Dirm> the real concern here is: <@Dirm> do we interpret this as flayra endorsing 50-level combat<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Flayra has two entirely different player bases. The traditional players, and the combat players. A large portion of the servers are combat, many with extralevels and plugins that *******ize his game's vision in every conceivable way. Therefore it would be a nightmarishly bad business move to alienate the people who who play with all those plugins. On the other hand Flayra (as far as I can tell thus far) wants to make an interesting, skillful, and highly tactical sci-fi strategy-fps. This is a productive way of dealing with that problem.
I'm for it.
<!--quoteo(post=1606910:date=Feb 15 2007, 04:00 PM:name=Ahnteis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ahnteis @ Feb 15 2007, 04:00 PM) [snapback]1606910[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> If you're doing your own custom game browser, how about an easier way to view server info -- like WHICH mods are installed -- without having to open another window for every server. Sort of like the preview pane in most email clients.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How about each mod having a corresponding icon built into the mod that would show up on steam's server browser? What would be hot is if the icon represented a mouseover event or hyperlink that would give you info about what the mod does, but I don't know if that's feasible (Max?)
Sarisel.::' ( O ) ';:-. .-.:;' ( O ) '::.Join Date: 2003-07-30Member: 18557Members, Constellation
Players will inevitably play what they like. If NS2:Core sucks, then Flayra's server filter won't save him from an overgrowth of NS2:Custom. Likewise, if customizing doesn't really work out that well (this is unlikely), NS2:Core would prevail.
Without tight restrictions on customization, you can almost be guaranteed that the most popular form of NS2 will be watered down and will go right to the action, pretty much like combat does right now.
That's really cool. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" /> Nice way to add more potential interest to the game.
I'm sure it'll help ease development too, once you get the full API written out. Obviously it'll trivialize playtesting the official build.
I'm not too familiar with LUA, is the overhead of callbacks going to be anything to be concerned about? I'd imagine there would be a lot of LUA calling going on when something like a turret farm is built (with all the entity thinking), or with a lot of touch functions.
For those who were understandably against this, like it or not modding the Source engine with plugins is already possible, and while the developers could go out of their way to make it harder to do, it would still be doable.
I can't say how excited I am to be able to tinker with the LUA for this. It's a marvelous thing in Garry's Mod, and while this is a totally different type of game, I think most people will love it in NS as well. I'm a core guy myself in that I like standardization of servers, (though coding is a fun pasttime by itself) but having LUA allows people to experiment so fluidly that so many more ideas will be able to be tested out. With the success of a lua script and enough support, the community could more quickly and broadly contribute to the core gameplay. That Territory mode? Easy as pie. Got an idea for balancing the chambers? Test it out in minutes. Of course, you'll need testers. We'll probably see more subgroups spring up to collaborate on and test out different scripts. (sub, not separate)
<!--quoteo(post=1607055:date=Feb 16 2007, 02:20 AM:name=Sarisel)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sarisel @ Feb 16 2007, 02:20 AM) [snapback]1607055[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Players will inevitably play what they like. If NS2:Core sucks, <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Blasphemy! Burn Him!
Seriously with all the time and effort put into NS2 I doubt it will suck.
True, but sometimes even the best produced games are crap. And last I heard V2 was pretty bad... (I can't remember it)
I personally thing that having a meter is a much better way rather than icons for every mod. What if a server has several mods? Do you display all those icons too? And what if an icon isn't coded in? It could be mistaken for a core server.
How would you implement a meter? A meter is a quantitative graph based on the NUMBER of plugins in the server. If you graphed tacticalgamer it would reg with 60 some odd plugins but none of them touch the core gameplay.
If the icon's not coded in then give it a default ? icon, or maybe a skull and crossbones.
The trick is, we need to have some way of distinguishing between servers that just run administrative plugins vs servers that actually modify core gameplay. I haven't got a perfect solution, but how about this?
Use 3 icons--blank icon for vanilla server, one icon for servers that only ADD code, and a second icon for servers that CHANGE code already in the game, since you can expect that to be more disruptive of normal balance.
Clicking on the icon brings up a window with a small textfile written by the server owner, that lists the plugins running. You'd sort of have to trust the server owner to be honest, but thats still easier than running a function that tries to figure out what the plugins are without benefit of a human. Anyway, it would be to the advantage of a server owner to advertise correctly, so players that are looking for those types of plugins can find him, while players that dont like those types of plugins won't waste their time.
I would give that a shot, but it sounds exploitable. How about if you do it that way, representing it as a meter or icon (green=core, yellow=stuff added, nothing modified, red=existing code modified (bullet damage, rof, armory workings, etc) ) and then when you mouse over the meter, it brings up a list of plugins, and clicking on the meter would give you a description like he said?
GISPBattle GorgeDenmarkJoin Date: 2004-03-20Member: 27460Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester, Forum staff
Only 2 people working full time on NS2? Jebus... we (the players) will be lucky if the beta gets out before 2010 <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Hey folks, I'm a bit late to the party here, but that won't keep me from adding my two cents.
First, to avoid any confusion, do you see that 'Developer' symbol on the left of my post? It means nothing. Nada. I'm currently not an active dev for NS1 and never was involved with NS2 in any capacity. What I have to say here is my opinion, <i>not</i> an official one.
I have to admit that I flinched a bit when I read the word 'Prosumer' in this well thought-out post. The term currently gets thrown around a lot in the scientific circles, to the extent that it's impossible to meet more than two other researchers without a discussion about Second Life springing up. Last December, I got to attend a congress that featured an IBM Research rep delivering a keynote on Prosumerism. In it, he likened the importance of YouTube to Gutenberg's printing press. So yeah, I think the concept might be overhyped a little bit right now.
One of the things to keep in mind about fostering a creative community is that 90% of its output will be utter rubbish. Sorry. Browse YouTube. Check the ModDB. Look around the NS1 metamods. There are a few true gems - surrounded by a lot of crap. This is not a new phenomenon: When the internet gained traction in the late nineties, a lot of researchers observed that we were moving out of a society in which information was scarce, into one where directions to the <i>good</i> information was scarce. Similiarily, we are now facing a time with a wealth of creative content, and few means of seperating the good from the bad.
If UWE wants to incorporate Prosumerism into its strategy, and I think that this is very sensible since you folks have a lot more experience with the phenomenon than those think tankers who came up with the term 'Prosumer', it'll be critical for your success to establish robust mechanisms by which to identify and reward high-quality consumer content.
Just a question about the code there, although its obviously early alpha days, the question is more about LUA and its capabilities.
Would it be possible, within LUA, to define the OnMapPostLoad() and OnSpawn() functions in the base class in such a way that the local modelName is in the base class, and precaching etc is handled there?
I assume it would be common initialization for all buildable structures. I guess the question is - if you were to then override the modelName local in the derived class...would it precache the correct model...? Unfortunately I know very little about LUA <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Can't wait for the NS2TR to mess with this stuff <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1607588:date=Feb 18 2007, 05:38 AM:name=rsd)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(rsd @ Feb 18 2007, 05:38 AM) [snapback]1607588[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Just a question about the code there, although its obviously early alpha days, the question is more about LUA and its capabilities.
Would it be possible, within LUA, to define the OnMapPostLoad() and OnSpawn() functions in the base class in such a way that the local modelName is in the base class, and precaching etc is handled there?
I assume it would be common initialization for all buildable structures. I guess the question is - if you were to then override the modelName local in the derived class...would it precache the correct model...? Unfortunately I know very little about LUA <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Can't wait for the NS2TR to mess with this stuff <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yes the mechanism you describe would be possible in Lua (and interestingly wouldn't be possible in the same way in C++). This is one of the nice things about using Lua as a development environment for the game code; it's a very flexible language that lets you write very concise and simple code.
As you mentioned the code posted is very early on in development, so it's subject to change. Personally I'm not happy with the pre-loading situation since you have to write that same code for every model. What you see there is pretty closely modeling how the Source SDK works, and what we really want to do in the scripting code is provide a layer that's easier and more concise than the engine SDK. So yeah the pre-caching of resources will probably change so you just have to write one line of script code per file name, and hopefully don't even have to think about the details of pre-caching.
I'd prefer if the altering was limited to when you make a map, since then you'd have to put some actual effort into it. Would cut down on the lazy "hmm i wonder what happens if i change these" results.
As an avid modder, *thumbs up* <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> (tho I would prefer Python...)
I'm finding it a bit silly that people are so opposed to this idea.
What's the difference between this and NS as it currently stands? Why should in depth coding knowledge be some weeding-out process to make a mod for NS?
I'll bet that for every voogru of the world that has good gameplay ideas and coding skills there's 10 people who have good gameplay ideas.
I'd say that the idea in the blog is less about "prosumerism" and more about lowering the knowhow needed to be a "pro."
<!--quoteo(post=1608179:date=Feb 20 2007, 05:04 PM:name=404NotFound)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(404NotFound @ Feb 20 2007, 05:04 PM) [snapback]1608179[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'll bet that for every voogru of the world that has good gameplay ideas and coding skills there's 10 people who have good gameplay ideas. I'd say that the idea in the blog is less about "prosumerism" and more about lowering the knowhow needed to be a "pro."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You seem to be forgetting that a lot of what voogru did (as an example) was really, really bad. mp_blockscripts anyone?
Seriously, modifying the gameplay is what, in my opinion, killed ns1 (co, extralevels, siege maps). Please don't make the mistake of encouraging the same behaviour from your players.
Sarisel.::' ( O ) ';:-. .-.:;' ( O ) '::.Join Date: 2003-07-30Member: 18557Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1608193:date=Feb 20 2007, 06:24 PM:name=SpaceJesus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SpaceJesus @ Feb 20 2007, 06:24 PM) [snapback]1608193[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> You seem to be forgetting that a lot of what voogru did (as an example) was really, really bad. mp_blockscripts anyone?
Seriously, modifying the gameplay is what, in my opinion, killed ns1 (co, extralevels, siege maps). Please don't make the mistake of encouraging the same behaviour from your players. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What do you know about what voogru did anyway, other than mp_blockscripts? I think he fixed some bugs.. anything else?
douchebagatronCustom member titleJoin Date: 2003-12-20Member: 24581Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
the problem with making it so almost anyone can modify the game is that there will be so much crap to wade through to get to the good plugins that a lot of people will leave. i think its true that being modded killed ns1 because it created all these outlets for people who play 30 minutes a month to come in and play their 30 minutes, but on the other hand they are all playing these modded versions of the mod and theres not enough people in the vanilla games because no one is playing the versions that keep people around for hours, or days even.
Extra levels was fun when they only added 2 levels... but that was it... everything else was crap... except some of the seige maps... one or two were good...
Comments
CS only has hostage, escort & bomb maps...kinda boring.
DoD has conquest flag captures with territory scoring.
BF2...well..eh..never played it. :x
TFC has murderball-style, avanti-style, dustbowl-style, hunted-style, canalzone-style, and the classic 'capture the flag, 2 base' maps.
I think a lot of variety that everyone is looking for would be best served by having a wide variety of maps for doing different things and having them prefixed differently.
Keeping the core components of gameplay (to make the learning curve as simple as possible & to have consistant gameplay), would be very very good. =D =D
But if people want to make NeoTFC's for NS, .......I guess that's ok.... But those people..really, I don't know what is going through their head :x.
Great feedback everyone. But oops, I forgot to qualify a big point here: even though we want to encourage modding of NS2, we will definitely maintain our own "core" gameplay that is the main game. We will draw an obvious distinction between "core" NS2 and "custom" NS2.
We'll probably do this by making the server browser default to showing default "NS2" servers, and then having a "custom games" tab or something that shows only modified servers.
Hopefully this way we get the best of both worlds.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I'm down with that. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
Also, what Aeroripper said: where do you draw the line? How will it be regulated?
<!--quoteo(post=1606639:date=Feb 15 2007, 12:32 AM:name=locallyunscene)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(locallyunscene @ Feb 15 2007, 12:32 AM) [snapback]1606639[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
Okay I'm glad I'm not the only one who focused in on that first. Honestly though, I have faith. I could see a "Savage" like system where the player have limited options to choose his or her layout based on team resources, commander research. Or maybe it isn't even as complicated as that, sounds like an interesting tack to take.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Giving more power to the individual player is usually the best way to go. But there are different ways to do it. You could let players buy better weapons from the armoury using their own 'personal resources' gained from completing objectives (or, dare I say it, <i>RFK</i>), or you could have the commander pay a certain amount of res to 'unlock' weapons for all units to use, but allow the armoury to only give out 3 shotguns every 15 seconds, or one flamethrower every 20 seconds, etc.
I'd personally prefer the last option, as it means you don't need the commander to drop weapons, but he still has some control over when they first appear on the battlefield. Later on in the game you could have an upgrade to allow the armoury to 'regen' weapons more quickly or even an ability ('powersurge', for example) that makes them regen more quickly for a short amount of time (kinda like a catpack for buildings, with obvious other uses for increasing research times, increasing spawn rate, etc.). Either of these options would allow the commander to restock his troops quickly when in need (base defence, PG rush, JP rush, shotgun rush, HA train).
P.S. Some good ideas in <a href="http://features.moddb.com/271/nuclear-dawn/" target="_blank">there</a>, some of which won't now make it into the less ambitious first release we're planning. Feel free to liberate any ideas; many of the design principles were heavily influenced by an NS retrospective.
How about a tweakage bar? A little meter in the custom games section that shows how much has been added, changed, or removed and you could filter by that?
-Sheepe
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That would be a good idea! Only I dont think a "tweakage bar" is feasable with Steam. Perhaps just a drop down list of level of modification presented?
Or am I saying the same thing?
<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" />
The thing I hated most about Tribes 1 was the number of custom serverside mods. They essentially ruined the game for me. Nobody ran vanilla servers anymore. They were all Team Aerial Combat or some variant of Renegades.
Surely a per-server player experience is a very bad thing? What if a new player joined a modded server unawares and has a terrible time due to poorly-thought-out plugins?
I'm all in favour of being able to embed scripting into custom maps for events and complex interlocking systems, airlocks, power systems, etc, but scripts that effect the gameplay on other maps at a base level are a very bad thing.
At least from my point of view.
--Scythe--
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, i myself still play tribes 1!! I know how you feel, what mod did you just play? was it base?
I used to play elite ren, then when it died like tribes1 i now play just good ole base ;o
<@Dirm> the real concern here is:
<@Dirm> do we interpret this as flayra endorsing 50-level combat<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Flayra has two entirely different player bases. The traditional players, and the combat players. A large portion of the servers are combat, many with extralevels and plugins that *******ize his game's vision in every conceivable way. Therefore it would be a nightmarishly bad business move to alienate the people who who play with all those plugins. On the other hand Flayra (as far as I can tell thus far) wants to make an interesting, skillful, and highly tactical sci-fi strategy-fps. This is a productive way of dealing with that problem.
I'm for it.
<!--quoteo(post=1606910:date=Feb 15 2007, 04:00 PM:name=Ahnteis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ahnteis @ Feb 15 2007, 04:00 PM) [snapback]1606910[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
If you're doing your own custom game browser, how about an easier way to view server info -- like WHICH mods are installed -- without having to open another window for every server. Sort of like the preview pane in most email clients.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How about each mod having a corresponding icon built into the mod that would show up on steam's server browser? What would be hot is if the icon represented a mouseover event or hyperlink that would give you info about what the mod does, but I don't know if that's feasible (Max?)
Without tight restrictions on customization, you can almost be guaranteed that the most popular form of NS2 will be watered down and will go right to the action, pretty much like combat does right now.
I'm sure it'll help ease development too, once you get the full API written out. Obviously it'll trivialize playtesting the official build.
I'm not too familiar with LUA, is the overhead of callbacks going to be anything to be concerned about? I'd imagine there would be a lot of LUA calling going on when something like a turret farm is built (with all the entity thinking), or with a lot of touch functions.
For those who were understandably against this, like it or not modding the Source engine with plugins is already possible, and while the developers could go out of their way to make it harder to do, it would still be doable.
I like the idea of being able to change huge aspects of the game without the mission of setting up visual studio...
Players will inevitably play what they like. If NS2:Core sucks, <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Blasphemy! Burn Him!
Seriously with all the time and effort put into NS2 I doubt it will suck.
I personally thing that having a meter is a much better way rather than icons for every mod. What if a server has several mods? Do you display all those icons too? And what if an icon isn't coded in? It could be mistaken for a core server.
-Sheepe
If the icon's not coded in then give it a default ? icon, or maybe a skull and crossbones.
Use 3 icons--blank icon for vanilla server, one icon for servers that only ADD code, and a second icon for servers that CHANGE code already in the game, since you can expect that to be more disruptive of normal balance.
Clicking on the icon brings up a window with a small textfile written by the server owner, that lists the plugins running. You'd sort of have to trust the server owner to be honest, but thats still easier than running a function that tries to figure out what the plugins are without benefit of a human. Anyway, it would be to the advantage of a server owner to advertise correctly, so players that are looking for those types of plugins can find him, while players that dont like those types of plugins won't waste their time.
Anyone got a better idea?
Jebus... we (the players) will be lucky if the beta gets out before 2010 <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
First, to avoid any confusion, do you see that 'Developer' symbol on the left of my post? It means nothing. Nada. I'm currently not an active dev for NS1 and never was involved with NS2 in any capacity. What I have to say here is my opinion, <i>not</i> an official one.
I have to admit that I flinched a bit when I read the word 'Prosumer' in this well thought-out post. The term currently gets thrown around a lot in the scientific circles, to the extent that it's impossible to meet more than two other researchers without a discussion about Second Life springing up. Last December, I got to attend a congress that featured an IBM Research rep delivering a keynote on Prosumerism. In it, he likened the importance of YouTube to Gutenberg's printing press.
So yeah, I think the concept might be overhyped a little bit right now.
One of the things to keep in mind about fostering a creative community is that 90% of its output will be utter rubbish. Sorry.
Browse YouTube. Check the ModDB. Look around the NS1 metamods. There are a few true gems - surrounded by a lot of crap. This is not a new phenomenon: When the internet gained traction in the late nineties, a lot of researchers observed that we were moving out of a society in which information was scarce, into one where directions to the <i>good</i> information was scarce. Similiarily, we are now facing a time with a wealth of creative content, and few means of seperating the good from the bad.
If UWE wants to incorporate Prosumerism into its strategy, and I think that this is very sensible since you folks have a lot more experience with the phenomenon than those think tankers who came up with the term 'Prosumer', it'll be critical for your success to establish robust mechanisms by which to identify and reward high-quality consumer content.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
Would it be possible, within LUA, to define the OnMapPostLoad() and OnSpawn() functions in the base class in such a way that the local modelName is in the base class, and precaching etc is handled there?
I assume it would be common initialization for all buildable structures. I guess the question is - if you were to then override the modelName local in the derived class...would it precache the correct model...? Unfortunately I know very little about LUA <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Can't wait for the NS2TR to mess with this stuff <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
Just a question about the code there, although its obviously early alpha days, the question is more about LUA and its capabilities.
Would it be possible, within LUA, to define the OnMapPostLoad() and OnSpawn() functions in the base class in such a way that the local modelName is in the base class, and precaching etc is handled there?
I assume it would be common initialization for all buildable structures. I guess the question is - if you were to then override the modelName local in the derived class...would it precache the correct model...? Unfortunately I know very little about LUA <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Can't wait for the NS2TR to mess with this stuff <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
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Yes the mechanism you describe would be possible in Lua (and interestingly wouldn't be possible in the same way in C++). This is one of the nice things about using Lua as a development environment for the game code; it's a very flexible language that lets you write very concise and simple code.
As you mentioned the code posted is very early on in development, so it's subject to change. Personally I'm not happy with the pre-loading situation since you have to write that same code for every model. What you see there is pretty closely modeling how the Source SDK works, and what we really want to do in the scripting code is provide a layer that's easier and more concise than the engine SDK. So yeah the pre-caching of resources will probably change so you just have to write one line of script code per file name, and hopefully don't even have to think about the details of pre-caching.
Max
*Edit: aaack double post
What's the difference between this and NS as it currently stands? Why should in depth coding knowledge be some weeding-out process to make a mod for NS?
I'll bet that for every voogru of the world that has good gameplay ideas and coding skills there's 10 people who have good gameplay ideas.
I'd say that the idea in the blog is less about "prosumerism" and more about lowering the knowhow needed to be a "pro."
I'd say that the idea in the blog is less about "prosumerism" and more about lowering the knowhow needed to be a "pro."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You seem to be forgetting that a lot of what voogru did (as an example) was really, really bad. mp_blockscripts anyone?
Seriously, modifying the gameplay is what, in my opinion, killed ns1 (co, extralevels, siege maps). Please don't make the mistake of encouraging the same behaviour from your players.
You seem to be forgetting that a lot of what voogru did (as an example) was really, really bad. mp_blockscripts anyone?
Seriously, modifying the gameplay is what, in my opinion, killed ns1 (co, extralevels, siege maps). Please don't make the mistake of encouraging the same behaviour from your players.
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What do you know about what voogru did anyway, other than mp_blockscripts? I think he fixed some bugs.. anything else?
-Sheepe