Overgrowth-NS1 exchange program
wilbefast
Join Date: 2009-10-18 Member: 69079Members
Join Date: 2009-10-18 Member: 69079Members
<div class="IPBDescription">introductions, FAQ, etc</div>edit: got the title wrong :S should be "NS2"
There are a lot of NS2 people over on the Wolfire boards now, which is fantastic. Likewise there are a whole bunch of people who are coming into <i>these</i> forums for the first time, and so I can finally justify being interested and yet having no idea what I'm talking about: I've never actually played NS1 so I'm not entirely sure how it works, despite all the stuff I've read about it. Anyway, I wanted to create a thread here to provide a sort of rally-point for anyone coming over from Wolfire and to get some questions answered about the game, for those of use who are total outsides (including those not from Overgrowth). A similar <a href="http://forums.wolfire.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5821" target="_blank">thread</a> has been created on the Wolfire board.
First up, I never actually introduced myself when I first got here: I'm William - British-Australian, living in France, studying Informatics (a sort of theoretical Computer Science). Interested in Cognitive Science (Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Sociology), Philosophy, Martial Arts, reading, writing and making games. Anyway, a couple of questions - if your an NS buff you should be able to get through them in a couple of minutes - it's good to have a wide change of opinions. If not, introduce yourself!
<b>NATURAL SELECTION 1</b>
<ul><li>I've played games like Savage and Battlefield: what makes Natural Selection unique and how/why?</li><li>How does the average game play out? Do you have any interesting experiences/anecdotes?</li><li>Is the onus on following orders, throwing away your life to gain a few meters, being part of the team or excelling as an individual?</li><li>What is the player's average life expectancy? How long do games last?</li></ul>
<b>UNKNOWN WORLDS</b>
<ul><li>Who are the people behind Unknown World?</li><li>What are their backgrounds, educations, work experience?</li><li>Who does what for the team?</li></ul>
<b>NATURAL SELECTION 2</b>
<ul><li>How will Natural Selection 2 be different from its predecessor?</li><li>How will it be similar (À propos the questions in the first section)?</li><li>What features do you find most exciting and why?</li></ul>
<b>COMMUNITY</b>
<ul><li>How long have you, personally, been following Natural Selection 2?</li><li>Are there any in-jokes we should be aware of :P</li></ul>
Looking forward to hearing your opinions!
William
There are a lot of NS2 people over on the Wolfire boards now, which is fantastic. Likewise there are a whole bunch of people who are coming into <i>these</i> forums for the first time, and so I can finally justify being interested and yet having no idea what I'm talking about: I've never actually played NS1 so I'm not entirely sure how it works, despite all the stuff I've read about it. Anyway, I wanted to create a thread here to provide a sort of rally-point for anyone coming over from Wolfire and to get some questions answered about the game, for those of use who are total outsides (including those not from Overgrowth). A similar <a href="http://forums.wolfire.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5821" target="_blank">thread</a> has been created on the Wolfire board.
First up, I never actually introduced myself when I first got here: I'm William - British-Australian, living in France, studying Informatics (a sort of theoretical Computer Science). Interested in Cognitive Science (Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Sociology), Philosophy, Martial Arts, reading, writing and making games. Anyway, a couple of questions - if your an NS buff you should be able to get through them in a couple of minutes - it's good to have a wide change of opinions. If not, introduce yourself!
<b>NATURAL SELECTION 1</b>
<ul><li>I've played games like Savage and Battlefield: what makes Natural Selection unique and how/why?</li><li>How does the average game play out? Do you have any interesting experiences/anecdotes?</li><li>Is the onus on following orders, throwing away your life to gain a few meters, being part of the team or excelling as an individual?</li><li>What is the player's average life expectancy? How long do games last?</li></ul>
<b>UNKNOWN WORLDS</b>
<ul><li>Who are the people behind Unknown World?</li><li>What are their backgrounds, educations, work experience?</li><li>Who does what for the team?</li></ul>
<b>NATURAL SELECTION 2</b>
<ul><li>How will Natural Selection 2 be different from its predecessor?</li><li>How will it be similar (À propos the questions in the first section)?</li><li>What features do you find most exciting and why?</li></ul>
<b>COMMUNITY</b>
<ul><li>How long have you, personally, been following Natural Selection 2?</li><li>Are there any in-jokes we should be aware of :P</li></ul>
Looking forward to hearing your opinions!
William
Comments
<a href="http://www.ausns2.com/ns2-megalist" target="_blank">http://www.ausns2.com/ns2-megalist</a>
Natural selection, is the first game combining both of FPS and RTS game in one.
You have one person playing like an RTS game (in marine) and giving order, looking the map, making upgrades and buildings with ressources.
But every unit he has is a humain marine who play like a FPS game , with a crosshair and everything.
So he give his own skill to the unit.
He can also decide if he will follow orders, waypoint or no.
You have plenty of differents upgrades, the game is totally fair between the two camps (50% win 50% losses) Wich even in full RTS game is pretty rare.
Then you have alien, each alien played by a real player too.
The difference is that ressources are distributed between each alien equally (you can get personal extra 2 res each time you kill a marine).
And each alien can use the ressource like he wants : getting a team building or morphing to a new lifeform, more powerfull.
You have a really rich game play in this game :
Moving silently, invisible, with a high celerity, regeneration, etc for aliens
Jetpack, heavy armors, welding vents to avoid little alien to go through, grenade launcher, motion tracking and teleportation for marines.
Moreover alien can choose to be either a little alien dog which can climb walls a kind of alien bird (lerk) which can fly, a kind of alien like in the ALIEN movie (fade) very fast, a little pig to build things (gorge). Or a big indestructible but slow monster. (Onos)
Its a Very rich gameplay, either in RTS (a lot of strategy)
And FPS (it's very hard to aim an alien bird moving very fast, it's totally different than others realistics fps game where targets moves slowly.)
Each alien lifeform have a very unique way to play.
So the Game and the teamplay is VERY RICH
that's also his biggest negative thing :
There weren't a lot of people staying to the point they understand fully the game.
It's not as simple as CS, but each game is very immersive, and you can train for years without reaching your full potential.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[*]How does the average game play out? Do you have any interesting experiences/anecdotes?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
each game is very different. Each map too.
Each round alien starts in a different place of the map, so you can't have "THE " strategy to apply on a map, it's very dynamic, always changing.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[*]Is the onus on following orders, throwing away your life to gain a few meters, being part of the team or excelling as an individual?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You dont have to choose.
Both are necessary
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[*]What is the player's average life expectancy? How long do games last?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A game can last from 30sec to more than an hour.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[*]How long have you, personally, been following Natural Selection 2?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Since before they announced it :p
(I would have made it myself if they didn't ! ^^)
Well all i can say is that i'm playing for 7 years and still having a LOT of fun.
My problem was getting muliplayer (VAT and stuff) working, and NS is worthless without it. This was a long time ago though, so it might have improved since.
Thats why i'm so excited for the linux version of NS2 :)
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=104522&hl=" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...=104522&hl=</a>
Haven't read through it myself, but your answer is probably in there
Comparisons with Tremulous are probably quite common, but I actually quite disliked Tremulous - it's a rather ugly game and you get kicked for not being any good at it, which is problematic because the only way to get good is not to be kicked :S
edit: oh yeah - the question there is: Tremulous < = > NS1?
The game unfolds basically as an RTS. The battle is fought over resource nodes (which grant resources over time) and hive locations (which are powerful tech points for the aliens). Early game is largely a resource battle: each side tries to keep their resource towers alive or build new ones while destroying the other team's resource towers or disrupting their attempts to build them. At some point the marines will research phase tech, which allows them to establish remote bases: they may try to lock down a hive location, a double resource node, or some other important spot.
Around 3-5 minutes into the game an alien will have enough resources to build a second hive. The second hive takes 3 minutes to build itself and this duration is often the culmination of the game: if the hive goes up, the alien strength increases dramatically, while if it falls, the alien tech stagnates and they must try to retake a hive location from ever stronger marines. Aliens can also bring fades to the defense of the second hive during this time (since the fade has the same resource cost as a hive), and on the marine side the advanced armory upgrade may have completed, giving them access to heavy machineguns.
The outcome of the battle for the second hive often decides the game, but not always. If it goes up but the marines still hold many resource nodes, then both sides can bring their full tech to bear on each other. If it falls but the marines have few resource nodes, then the marine tech also stagnates and the aliens have a chance to recover.
By the way, what is "bunny hopping", what is "BUS" and what is the "hovar scorpian"?
By the way, what is "bunny hopping", what is "BUS" and what is the "hovar scorpian"?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
bhoping describes the use of an old engine weekness, originating from the old quake days.
You basically strafe left and right in an alternating manner and you turn your field of view left and right in an alterating manner, without pressing forward.
When you strafe left you turn right and vice versa. This results in a significant speed gain and in a hard to hit movement pattern.
The scorpian that hovers without flapping originates from one of the worst (or best) suggestions on how to immprove ns gameplay. It quickly became a meme and there is even a comic about it ;)
The BUS (aka NEXUS) is the grand feature that was supposed to revolutionize the way we play NS, but somhow never made it into a patch.
Someone please look up the nanites and bacteria comics and post them. I seem to have mispalced my copies :)
Bunnyhopping was not originally intended to be present in the game but it has since been officially recognized as a legitimate move. The full technique only works on the alien side (it used to work for marines too but that was changed), but certain aspects of it are still available for marines.
Bunnyhopping is also present, naturally, in Half-Life and many of its other mods.
Edit: it is also confirmed that skulks will be able to bunnyhop in NS2.
---
BUS stands for "big unannounced system". It was to be implemented in NS at some point (and there was some hype over it), but the coder who was developing it left, so it never became announced.
---
In late 2002 a user posted a list of suggestions in the suggestions and ideas forum. One of those suggestions was, paraphrased, "a new alien class like a scorpian [sic] or something that hovars [sic] without flapping". "Scorpian that hovars without flapping" quickly became a meme.
edit: Oh - another question: in Savage 2 most of the control seems to be delegated to a couple of "officers" which other players tend to stick around to get special bonuses. The officers generally do their own thing though, especially since there's generally only 3 ways of getting from one base to the other (front and sides). The question is: do people actually follow the commander's orders in NS or is he just an ammo dispenser? What I mean is: is the commander necessary to organise the team, or just to support them?
I've watched a couple of videos - noticed that Skulks do tend to zig-zag-jump rather a lot. It's not something that would have naturally occured to me to do. Better than Tremulous though: as an alien you only need to run into an enemy to hurt them, so you can basically have an epileptic fit in a room full of marines and if you're lucky they'll all be dead by the time you've finished. Either way I'd certainly I'd never have thought of bunny-hopping as a Marine - doesn't seem like a particularly marine-y sort of thing to do :S
A lot of games accidentally encourage jumping around like crazy because there's no friction in the air. Warsow actually had "bunnyhopping" (in a slightly different form) as a "feature". There's this sort of golden rule of game design though: "players expect reasonable solutions to work" (I read it in a book so it must be true) which implies that unreasonable ones shouldn't. Then again Warsow was anime-inspired so it sort-of makes sense. Sort-of.
We haven't a lot of information on NS2 yet..
We dont know if bh will still be present (i hope not, except if they make it simple so everyone can do it).
And i always hated Marine BH. it's a non sense , not immersive at all (a marine walking faster than a skulk ? wtf)
As for NS, isn't BHopping a skulk frequently called "Glide Jumping" as well, or was that a different technique? Also worth noting that as I recall, there were two basic variants of BHopping. One involving alternating directions each jump, and a second where you'd flip the mouse back and forth within the same jump.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNMOtvwU2JM&fmt=18" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNMOtvwU2JM&fmt=18</a> - video to get an idea about it.
Either way, I always sucked at it and for a while, a lot of ppl were pissed at ppl who scripted it.
Yes, the commander is necessary to organize the team. There's way more strategic depth to the game than just the question of how to get from one base to the other (often attacking the other team's base/hive isn't even a good idea).
<!--quoteo(post=1746460:date=Jan 9 2010, 10:50 AM:name=Tgaud)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tgaud @ Jan 9 2010, 10:50 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746460"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->We dont know if bh will still be present (i hope not, except if they make it simple so everyone can do it).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=107569&st=0&p=1730475&#entry1730475" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...p;#entry1730475</a>
<!--quoteo(post=1746470:date=Jan 9 2010, 12:01 PM:name=Karrde)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Karrde @ Jan 9 2010, 12:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746470"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As for NS, isn't BHopping a skulk frequently called "Glide Jumping" as well, or was that a different technique?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I believe that refers to a (similar, but not quite the same) method of gaining speed while on the ground. It's much faster than in the air, but naturally you have to follow it immediately with a jump or you lose the speed to friction.
<!--quoteo(post=1746470:date=Jan 9 2010, 12:01 PM:name=Karrde)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Karrde @ Jan 9 2010, 12:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1746470"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Also worth noting that as I recall, there were two basic variants of BHopping. One involving alternating directions each jump, and a second where you'd flip the mouse back and forth within the same jump.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Those are the same, just changing direction with different frequencies. You can alternate directions as frequently or infrequently as you want.