One thing that always bothered me about babblers/snarks is that.... when they die, its just a bit stupid... why would they just explode?
I think maybe if shot by marines, they could explode, like a gorge spit frag grenade, or bile grenade...
I dont think they should have timers
Also... uh... I think babblers should have a more intelligent AI control, and should have a proximity around wherever they were dropped, which they would randomly roam around, and attack if enemies come.
They would last forever, but in the same way as web, you could have only say... 3 in proximity to each other, for each player.
I like the idea. Either the gorge spawning them or dieing and they spawn would work and be very cool. I also agree and think 100% they should be used as a decoy role. This would allow others to run in among then and help get revenge on those marines that just killed that gorge. As well as distract them that little extra time you needed.
AngeluszHarmonic entropistJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18072Members, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester
<!--quoteo(post=1652804:date=Sep 28 2007, 09:12 PM:name=Stars)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stars @ Sep 28 2007, 09:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1652804"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One thing that always bothered me about babblers/snarks is that.... when they die, its just a bit stupid... why would they just explode?
I think maybe if shot by marines, they could explode, like a gorge spit frag grenade, or bile grenade...
I dont think they should have timers Also... uh... I think babblers should have a more intelligent AI control, and should have a proximity around wherever they were dropped, which they would randomly roam around, and attack if enemies come.
They would last forever, but in the same way as web, you could have only say... 3 in proximity to each other, for each player.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Well, this can easily be explained lore-wise. Bacteria clumping together forming the lifeform, after some time becoming incoherant, eventually falling apart. The only things you'd have to do is make a nice animation for it (cloud of bacteria expanding from the dead babbler). And the explode should only occur with enough force in my opinion, like a GL or mine. There's many ways to go on this. Secondly, I don't like dropping them as free sentries; that would degrade the tactical use as opposed to having them follow the gorge, enabling the gorge to order them around. An option there could be to just put them on sentry somewhere, somehow.
<!--quoteo(post=1653022:date=Sep 29 2007, 11:37 PM:name=ZONK)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZONK @ Sep 29 2007, 11:37 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1653022"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I like the idea. Either the gorge spawning them or dieing and they spawn would work and be very cool. I also agree and think 100% they should be used as a decoy role. This would allow others to run in among then and help get revenge on those marines that just killed that gorge. As well as distract them that little extra time you needed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> They <b>are</b> decoys. Babblers have never been strong enough to easily solo marines or anything; perhaps if the gorge is really skilled, the combo of healspray and babblers could keep him alive long enough to kill the marine, but that wouldn't be easy. I think people are afraid this would become too strong, tipping the balance in the alien favor, but that won't happen easily, since there's a lot of things you can do to make the babblers weaker; less hp, less damage, slower attacsk, name it. (I'd go for decent HP, low damage, slow attacks to make them useful)
i loved babblers, i used to go gorge and help at the end of the game attack marine base with babblers. while they did a bit of damage to marines, they did a bit more to structures and would explode upon death and damage everyone around it..
I must admit, i died alot from my own babblers because they would hurt anything near their mouths, i think it was a bug, not sure, but they would kill your own team if not placed properly.
How about have an ability that shoots a small egg that spawns a babbler. You would need to shoot it onto infestation then you will see a babbler spawn out. If their is no infestation nearby you can shoot the egg into a marines corpse.
<!--quoteo(post=1654227:date=Oct 5 2007, 09:47 AM:name=The_Disposed)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(The_Disposed @ Oct 5 2007, 09:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1654227"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How about have an ability that shoots a small egg that spawns a babbler. You would need to shoot it onto infestation then you will see a babbler spawn out. If their is no infestation nearby you can shoot the egg into a marines corpse.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I still have yet to find a video or see some pictures of these so called "babblers", does anyone have even one picture or Youtube link?
I had a quick look corpsman but no luck, just imagine a gorge spawning 4-5 babblers (skulks) in front of a marine, although they had very little armor and were pretty dumb, they were fun <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
AngeluszHarmonic entropistJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18072Members, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester
<!--quoteo(post=1654271:date=Oct 5 2007, 03:19 PM:name=corpsman)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(corpsman @ Oct 5 2007, 03:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1654271"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I still have yet to find a video or see some pictures of these so called "babblers", does anyone have even one picture or Youtube link?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> They're creatures of old. I don't remember 100%, but I think you should still find them in NS 1.3 --> Good luck finding one of those clients. You could test them with a dedicated server though, just enable cheats to start the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1650810:date=Sep 20 2007, 03:38 PM:name=corpsman)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(corpsman @ Sep 20 2007, 03:38 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1650810"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It would be cool if a gorge who chose them as an upgrade, upon death would spawn these. So just like the "last ditch effort" that redemtion brings, a gorge could choose to spawn these when he dies. The HPO they do could be very little, so it is more of an annoying thing to the marine, but it would still make them stop to shoot these creatures, opening them up to other aliens, plus would be kind of a funny thing if say the marine had lo health and these little guys killed him >D<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
lol, Bob killed by blabber <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Anyway, this would actually work out great for my nonlinear evolution idea, i mean to have these for the first stage of the tree, and mabey head crab blabers for the second? It would be great!
(ive always wanted to see something headcrabish in ns) mabey limit it 2 one head crab though, to have a marien to a gorge like beings bidding <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Reason babblers were removed to begin with is because they used hl1 code for the snarks, which i'm pretty sure they wanted as little of the original code as possible without crippling the engine.
I'd love to see them back too, as i'm a big fan of =<1.04.
AngeluszHarmonic entropistJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18072Members, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester
<!--quoteo(post=1654816:date=Oct 9 2007, 01:00 AM:name=Drfuzzy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Drfuzzy @ Oct 9 2007, 01:00 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1654816"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Reason babblers were removed to begin with is because they used hl1 code for the snarks, which i'm pretty sure they wanted as little of the original code as possible without crippling the engine.
I'd love to see them back too, as i'm a big fan of =<1.04.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Were that the only reason, wouldn't they have added them back in? So many people loved them.. This topic is the... uhh... living? Proof of it!
I really love babblers, and if theres a chance to bring them back, they should be implemented in the best way possible.
In 1.04 babbler were just shot out of the gorge, and most of the time if the marine was already shooting the gorge, the babblers were killed as they came out and only worked as a sort of meat shield. There were few times where babblers were actually useful, like taking out resource towers and buildings, or trying to get away from a lone marine. But, now that gorge has bile bomb one of its uses is well, useless. And when your in a group most of the time the gorge should be healing, and not spewing out babblers.
Now I'm not saying that babblers weren't totally awesome, because they are! The only problem is having an ability like this, takes away one of the gorge's current abilities and is subpar to the ones the gorge currently has.
Rather than an ability, babblers would be built as an egg. And stay as an egg until a marine came into range a FoV. For example, a gorge just dropped a resource tower and is worried about leaving it alone. Well if its the start of the game, that gorge might not have enough resources to drop an offense chamber, so maybe he could drop a few babbler eggs. And then as the marines come into the RT room and think they get to take it out without a fight, babblers pop out of their eggs and attack them. Now depedning on the skill of the marines they could all die, or destroy all the babblers, but the babblers would have warned the aliens to the marine presence, and would have bought the aliens time to save their resource tower.
<!--quoteo(post=1654848:date=Oct 9 2007, 03:04 PM:name=Wyattx3)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wyattx3 @ Oct 9 2007, 03:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1654848"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really love babblers, and if theres a chance to bring them back, they should be implemented in the best way possible.
In 1.04 babbler were just shot out of the gorge, and most of the time if the marine was already shooting the gorge, the babblers were killed as they came out and only worked as a sort of meat shield. There were few times where babblers were actually useful, like taking out resource towers and buildings, or trying to get away from a lone marine. But, now that gorge has bile bomb one of its uses is well, useless. And when your in a group most of the time the gorge should be healing, and not spewing out babblers.
Now I'm not saying that babblers weren't totally awesome, because they are! The only problem is having an ability like this, takes away one of the gorge's current abilities and is subpar to the ones the gorge currently has.
Rather than an ability, babblers would be built as an egg. And stay as an egg until a marine came into range a FoV. For example, a gorge just dropped a resource tower and is worried about leaving it alone. Well if its the start of the game, that gorge might not have enough resources to drop an offense chamber, so maybe he could drop a few babbler eggs. And then as the marines come into the RT room and think they get to take it out without a fight, babblers pop out of their eggs and attack them. Now depedning on the skill of the marines they could all die, or destroy all the babblers, but the babblers would have warned the aliens to the marine presence, and would have bought the aliens time to save their resource tower.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Umm i know this is off topic but that would go great with well lets say someone wants to gestate and is worried about being pwnd as a egg, just lay a few blabber eggs near him and hes well defended ^^.
i recon they should have hullucnagens (poor spelling) instead of babblers. In short the gorge should be able to shoot a barb kind of like the skulks parasite but with no sound effects and the marine doesnt get a warning. The marine can then see a skulk that isnt really there. Only the infected marine can see the skulk, and since it isnt real he cant kill it. The effect would ware off after a preset time, and the gorge wouldnt be able to reinfect the same marine with in a certian time period.
It would be uber cool cos the gorge could infect a rine and hed be shooting off at nothing while the gorge gets away. If he infected several rines they'd all be shooting nothing too.
Obviously pros would clockon to this trick pretty fast. alone gorge, suddenly becomes a gorge and a skulk? shoot the gorge. but if there was a real skulk with the gorge, which skulk is real which isnt? The hulluniation skulk with have to have a reasonably good ai so it wud move like a real skulk and when it eventually goes for the bite on the rine it dissapears.
This isnt quite the same as babblers and maynot be as powerful but i recon it wud be fun, and it would help the rines explore their sanity
AngeluszHarmonic entropistJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18072Members, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester
<!--quoteo(post=1655740:date=Oct 13 2007, 08:50 AM:name=invader Zim)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(invader Zim @ Oct 13 2007, 08:50 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1655740"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i recon they should have hullucnagens (poor spelling) instead of babblers. In short the gorge should be able to shoot a barb kind of like the skulks parasite but with no sound effects and the marine doesnt get a warning. The marine can then see a skulk that isnt really there. Only the infected marine can see the skulk, and since it isnt real he cant kill it. The effect would ware off after a preset time, and the gorge wouldnt be able to reinfect the same marine with in a certian time period.
It would be uber cool cos the gorge could infect a rine and hed be shooting off at nothing while the gorge gets away. If he infected several rines they'd all be shooting nothing too.
Obviously pros would clockon to this trick pretty fast. alone gorge, suddenly becomes a gorge and a skulk? shoot the gorge. but if there was a real skulk with the gorge, which skulk is real which isnt? The hulluniation skulk with have to have a reasonably good ai so it wud move like a real skulk and when it eventually goes for the bite on the rine it dissapears.
This isnt quite the same as babblers and maynot be as powerful but i recon it wud be fun, and it would help the rines explore their sanity<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This would be a really nice idea for another ability, but it doesn't do what I'd like the Babblers to do. The babblers should remain what they were in ns 1.xx - small chompy aliens that swarm targets. Variations on this can apply, ofcourse, but in essence, they should remain just that.
that was a kinda interesting idea, but not a very babbler-like one. i like the theory of affecting a marine so that he sees "ghosts", add in some sound-effects on top of that and you would easily be able to distract a marine enough to get close to him. make a new thread for it...
Comments
I think maybe if shot by marines, they could explode, like a gorge spit frag grenade, or bile grenade...
I dont think they should have timers
Also... uh...
I think babblers should have a more intelligent AI control, and should have a proximity around wherever they were dropped, which they would randomly roam around, and attack if enemies come.
They would last forever, but in the same way as web, you could have only say... 3 in proximity to each other, for each player.
I think maybe if shot by marines, they could explode, like a gorge spit frag grenade, or bile grenade...
I dont think they should have timers
Also... uh...
I think babblers should have a more intelligent AI control, and should have a proximity around wherever they were dropped, which they would randomly roam around, and attack if enemies come.
They would last forever, but in the same way as web, you could have only say... 3 in proximity to each other, for each player.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, this can easily be explained lore-wise. Bacteria clumping together forming the lifeform, after some time becoming incoherant, eventually falling apart. The only things you'd have to do is make a nice animation for it (cloud of bacteria expanding from the dead babbler). And the explode should only occur with enough force in my opinion, like a GL or mine. There's many ways to go on this. Secondly, I don't like dropping them as free sentries; that would degrade the tactical use as opposed to having them follow the gorge, enabling the gorge to order them around. An option there could be to just put them on sentry somewhere, somehow.
<!--quoteo(post=1653022:date=Sep 29 2007, 11:37 PM:name=ZONK)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ZONK @ Sep 29 2007, 11:37 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1653022"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I like the idea. Either the gorge spawning them or dieing and they spawn would work and be very cool. I also agree and think 100% they should be used as a decoy role. This would allow others to run in among then and help get revenge on those marines that just killed that gorge. As well as distract them that little extra time you needed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They <b>are</b> decoys. Babblers have never been strong enough to easily solo marines or anything; perhaps if the gorge is really skilled, the combo of healspray and babblers could keep him alive long enough to kill the marine, but that wouldn't be easy. I think people are afraid this would become too strong, tipping the balance in the alien favor, but that won't happen easily, since there's a lot of things you can do to make the babblers weaker; less hp, less damage, slower attacsk, name it. (I'd go for decent HP, low damage, slow attacks to make them useful)
I must admit, i died alot from my own babblers because they would hurt anything near their mouths, i think it was a bug, not sure, but they would kill your own team if not placed properly.
yes for babblers again.
I still have yet to find a video or see some pictures of these so called "babblers", does anyone have even one picture or Youtube link?
They're creatures of old. I don't remember 100%, but I think you should still find them in NS 1.3 --> Good luck finding one of those clients. You could test them with a dedicated server though, just enable cheats to start the game.
lol, Bob killed by blabber <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Anyway, this would actually work out great for my nonlinear evolution idea, i mean to have these for the first stage of the tree, and mabey head crab blabers for the second? It would be great!
(ive always wanted to see something headcrabish in ns)
mabey limit it 2 one head crab though, to have a marien to a gorge like beings bidding <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
I'd love to see them back too, as i'm a big fan of =<1.04.
I'd love to see them back too, as i'm a big fan of =<1.04.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Were that the only reason, wouldn't they have added them back in? So many people loved them.. This topic is the... uhh... living? Proof of it!
In 1.04 babbler were just shot out of the gorge, and most of the time if the marine was already shooting the gorge, the babblers were killed as they came out and only worked as a sort of meat shield. There were few times where babblers were actually useful, like taking out resource towers and buildings, or trying to get away from a lone marine. But, now that gorge has bile bomb one of its uses is well, useless. And when your in a group most of the time the gorge should be healing, and not spewing out babblers.
Now I'm not saying that babblers weren't totally awesome, because they are! The only problem is having an ability like this, takes away one of the gorge's current abilities and is subpar to the ones the gorge currently has.
Rather than an ability, babblers would be built as an egg. And stay as an egg until a marine came into range a FoV. For example, a gorge just dropped a resource tower and is worried about leaving it alone. Well if its the start of the game, that gorge might not have enough resources to drop an offense chamber, so maybe he could drop a few babbler eggs. And then as the marines come into the RT room and think they get to take it out without a fight, babblers pop out of their eggs and attack them. Now depedning on the skill of the marines they could all die, or destroy all the babblers, but the babblers would have warned the aliens to the marine presence, and would have bought the aliens time to save their resource tower.
In 1.04 babbler were just shot out of the gorge, and most of the time if the marine was already shooting the gorge, the babblers were killed as they came out and only worked as a sort of meat shield. There were few times where babblers were actually useful, like taking out resource towers and buildings, or trying to get away from a lone marine. But, now that gorge has bile bomb one of its uses is well, useless. And when your in a group most of the time the gorge should be healing, and not spewing out babblers.
Now I'm not saying that babblers weren't totally awesome, because they are! The only problem is having an ability like this, takes away one of the gorge's current abilities and is subpar to the ones the gorge currently has.
Rather than an ability, babblers would be built as an egg. And stay as an egg until a marine came into range a FoV. For example, a gorge just dropped a resource tower and is worried about leaving it alone. Well if its the start of the game, that gorge might not have enough resources to drop an offense chamber, so maybe he could drop a few babbler eggs. And then as the marines come into the RT room and think they get to take it out without a fight, babblers pop out of their eggs and attack them. Now depedning on the skill of the marines they could all die, or destroy all the babblers, but the babblers would have warned the aliens to the marine presence, and would have bought the aliens time to save their resource tower.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Umm i know this is off topic but that would go great with well lets say someone wants to gestate and is worried about being pwnd as a egg, just lay a few blabber eggs near him and hes well defended ^^.
It would be uber cool cos the gorge could infect a rine and hed be shooting off at nothing while the gorge gets away. If he infected several rines they'd all be shooting nothing too.
Obviously pros would clockon to this trick pretty fast. alone gorge, suddenly becomes a gorge and a skulk? shoot the gorge. but if there was a real skulk with the gorge, which skulk is real which isnt? The hulluniation skulk with have to have a reasonably good ai so it wud move like a real skulk and when it eventually goes for the bite on the rine it dissapears.
This isnt quite the same as babblers and maynot be as powerful but i recon it wud be fun, and it would help the rines explore their sanity
It would be uber cool cos the gorge could infect a rine and hed be shooting off at nothing while the gorge gets away. If he infected several rines they'd all be shooting nothing too.
Obviously pros would clockon to this trick pretty fast. alone gorge, suddenly becomes a gorge and a skulk? shoot the gorge. but if there was a real skulk with the gorge, which skulk is real which isnt? The hulluniation skulk with have to have a reasonably good ai so it wud move like a real skulk and when it eventually goes for the bite on the rine it dissapears.
This isnt quite the same as babblers and maynot be as powerful but i recon it wud be fun, and it would help the rines explore their sanity<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This would be a really nice idea for another ability, but it doesn't do what I'd like the Babblers to do. The babblers should remain what they were in ns 1.xx - small chompy aliens that swarm targets. Variations on this can apply, ofcourse, but in essence, they should remain just that.
make a new thread for it...