Natural Selection 2 News Update - Friday Update - The Harvester and Spark Q&A
Max
Technical Director, Unknown Worlds Entertainment Join Date: 2002-03-15 Member: 318Super Administrators, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
Technical Director, Unknown Worlds Entertainment Join Date: 2002-03-15 Member: 318Super Administrators, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
Comments
It'd be cool (And quite creepy) if it moved upon contact with a marine, like the hive does in Ns.
Too many possibilities!
<!--quoteo(post=1752800:date=Feb 12 2010, 07:30 PM:name=Quovatis)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Quovatis @ Feb 12 2010, 07:30 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1752800"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->No water? I guess that means no sludge or lava either. That's too bad, as it really added to the atmosphere in NS1.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No water means no water. IE, swimming, underwater vision, and all that fun stuff. If you want lava or sludge, make an animated texture scrolling. Done and done. You won't be swimming in either of those, I don't think.
I don't know much about a 3D engine, but you know, the material would have a subtle bump map and specular map and act like a glass maybe.
Btw, happy birthday Charlie ;)
With the cinematic editor, it sounds like you could put in all kinds of things. I'm imagining dropships coming in for bombing runs, dust storms, and pitched battles in the distance.
Although I'm curious how you guys are going to optimize all this to work on regular computers, sounds rendering the world that you play in that by the looks of it in the video had some difficulties and also taking care of a 3D-scene that can be animated and whatnot sounds like a huge undertaking to me at least. Glad you got the extra money from the pre-orders, seems like you're taking many bold steps with the engine to say the least.
And the new Harvester... it's quite hard to tell but do they have eyes? I think I can see something similiar to it on the conceptart and for a brief moment on the video. For me it would change my outlook on it at least to actually being something living; it's just a bit too gross being a huge tentacle with a suction-cup for my taste.
The harvester is interesting- in game it looked great but now with this video a few things are bugging me about it. The real problem with it are the tentacles around the glowing area... they seem completely for show, they don't really add to it. I could completely see them being veins or something like in the original, but them flailing around was pretty funky. We will have to see it in-game, again in the video it seemed to fit in just fine and perhaps it will, but on its own it looked like one of those sculptures in beatlejuice that crawl around.
Pity about water, but thats a later consideration!
"omg gtfo here this thing is gonna blow"
maybe let it blow instead off fall down when it dies that realy look much better as dead animation ;)
and dont let it pump that much on size on gathering resources.. it might be good to see if the harvester is builded complete or not
but its enough with a litte less pumping ;)
hope my comment helps
Mega
Cheers guys!
But where is Marilyn Monroe ? :)
Also I agre Me9a with;
"maybe let it blow instead off fall down when it dies that realy look much better as dead animation ;)"
I'm pretty sure that the skybox question was the one I sent. You spelt my name wrong. It's one T, not two. :P
-Mathew
As for the Harvester, it's a great design, and it looks alot better and seems more alive than its NS counterpart. Nice name change too. But I think it would look MUCH better if it was to sway from side to side a little more, it looks too stiff for a living thing.
Agreed.
Glass: Hope to see this soon, I think it adds a lot to the atmosphere to have a few windows where you can view the outside of the station/ship or wherever you are. :)
Water: Doh, I'll have to rethink one of my rooms :\ I wanted to have boiling water in the bottom of a cave, so if you fell into it, you'd die pretty much instantly. Will it be possible to have "bottomless pits" you can fall down and die in? :p
Cinematic Skybox and Editor: Sounds really nice :)
I allso love the new "RT" model, superb animation and it is so life like compared to the one in NS1
I see a potential issue here:
What will will call this for sure? RT was perfect, what do we say here "can someone drop an H"???
Maybe it should have been called a resource harvester or something so we can use something other than "harvester" all the time.
Nonetheless Max is the man and he delivers.
RT was decent
Rest ignore.
The current resource model has a couple of things that I'm concerned with. First of, the Gorge is now has less cover as they won't be able to hide behind the RT and cower from bullets. This likely means that a Gorge has either two options: Run or Die. The 3rd option, "Stay and own any marine who dares touch my RT" is no longer on the table. I think is would encourage players playing as the Gorge to be far more cautious than they should be. If I'm not playing as a Gorge myself, I'd want the nearby Gorge to put his life on the line for the sake of the team, rather than run away at the first sign of trouble like a scared sheep.
I'm also concerned with the size of the model in respect to just the look of it. It currently looks like it lacks the strength to hold itself like that over the RT. The Marine RT got bigger and bulkier (I think?) but the alien RT looks like it got an eating disorder and was somehow turned into a parasite/worm (which may have been what you were going for, as it totally looks like its using the Resource Nozzle in a symbiotic relationship). The Parasite/worm look, I think I kind of like, for what it is, but I think you should consider adding more mussle support or reposition the "head" of the RT. Why not have the RT latch on, and then curl itself around and around the RT like a Snake would curl around a victim? I think it would give a much more animated look and give some interesting animation options, it would give the Gorge/Aliens a bit of cover, and it would convey to the players that is clinging to the res node as if it needed it to survive.
I do love the tentacles that latch on to the res node though.
Edit: About the water/glass... if its really desired, I doubt it would be difficult to write entities up in Lua.
Great job UWE, keep it up!
Edit1: Happy Birthday Charlie!
Edit2: Btw, don't know if anyone caught the Lerk easter egg in the cinematic photo. I think I can sort of make him out. There's proof that he's in the scene. He's one of the actors in the time frame ("Lerk1"). And in the second photo, I can see something up in the rafters. If someone wants to quickly circle it, would appreciate it.
You guys should at least create a "floor" water affect, which would basically be a surface that people would use for puddles/wet floors. It would be clear with a transparent texture on top, and would make a splash sound when walked on.
Also, on glass, I LOVE levels with lots of glass-- big panoramic windows to space, observation decks, laboratory windows, etc. Hopefully people who are already designing maps know glass is coming and leave placeholder spots to be added in later.
I just figured we'd leave giant holes in our space ships so people can be sucked out into space and get a real good view of it.
:3
One issue that I do have with it, is that it looks kind of stiff. Like the neck of the tower does not move side-to-side which makes it seem unnatural for an organic thing.
well done
golf_clap
Also, what kind of room are we supposed to make to house these resource towers? I've got a few ideas, but it will take some really creative mapping to integrate an even distribution of gas nodes throughout the entire facility. Like why would a cafeteria or sleeping quarter have resource nodes in them? Why would any room other than one specifically designed for resource extraction have them?
Whatever, I know it's just a game and I will overlook all of this very easily if I am supposed to just suspend my disbelief. Just curious I guess.
Yea. And the name of the map they have open is called 'lerk_reveal_p1". Expect Lerk reveal soon.