Development Blog Update - Unknown Worlds Podcast #24 - NS2 First Prototypes
Flayra
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Game Director, Unknown Worlds EntertainmentSan Francisco Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 3Super Administrators, NS2 Developer, Subnautica Developer
Comments
Good job guys, finally something, would be happy if you would post more like this
Oh and do you want us to start sending you pencils and paper so you guys can actually write your ideas down? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Just a thought.
For the alt fire for the granade launcher you could consider a solid heated metal slug. It oculd fire in a straight line in shoot through multiple enemies but have a slow rate of fire. If the primary fire is an arching explosive and you want the nade launcher to be an option for players who which to get stuck into combat the secondary fire may have to be something with out blast damage or a shockwave, since this could cause splash damage and may encourage the granade laucher welding trooper to stay on the edge of combat like he does in ns1.
The gorge suit is obviously a mint idea, could you make one as merchendise, cos id like to buy one
Yes Please.
Selecting an individual marine inside the squad blob might be difficult. As would targeting aliens and buildings inside the blob area.
Automatic squad formation might get annoying, unless there's a strong mechanic that forces marines to stick together, or a strong disadvantage to not being in a squad.
I'm still iffy about letting marines buy their own weapons. Having the commander supply them was always kinda cool.
--Scythe--
I would have to disagree with the Alien HUD, its just too much of an eye sore, but the idea of separate energy bars is great. putting in the gestate menu as the "5" button fits, plus reducing the overall pop-up menu usage.
The buy menu, soo beautiful to my eyes. very visually pleasing, even with out the menu textures. Making the marines individually enhancing their weapons will definitely enhance the game-play. How would the gun-despawn system work out? will the spawns immediately despawn as the player wielding it dies? or will the gun be left on the ground and have a despawn timer? The "hidden "abilities" is awesome, allowing the players to discover new tactics. The "Flechette" rounds should be a great upgrade to the NS1 shotgun, I hope you guys do put in "Challenges" like TF2 and COD4 has, and one of the "challenges" should be to kill X amount of aliens with the Shotgun using FLechette, killing the alien as the SG round bounces off of a wall.
and yes I would like to know more, A lot more
Very nice.
Oh and the chat in the first picture is priceless.
Flayra complaining about "rates"
and J making the ultimate move to get "yoclanned" <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
By the way Charlie i found a music guy that does incredible work and wants to work on the film and I am sure would be into working on a game if you want to check out his stuff I can send it to you.
Its very exciting to see pictures even if they are mock ups.
Send me a line if you need anything, i would love to help if i can.
Understand that people do mockups for alot of diffrent things. By having the mockup here it probably means a) Things are already done but they want to show us the mockups first or b) (more likely) the commander mode isnt done and they are doing mockups to conceptualize what they want the commander mode to be, before they do the heavy lifting of actualy coding it. Its likely that they have a running NS2 game, probably with a commander mode, but its extreemly basic and only provides a top down view and MAYBE a few buttons. They are trying to figure out what they want it to be, rather then just building on what they already have.
I'd like it a lot if the commander bought weapons, but marines had to retrieve them from the armory. That is after all how armories usually work. You could even write it in that the armory manufactures the weapons, instead of having them dropped from the sky by Thor or Mars, the god of war.
You gotta realize the hardest part in making the game is the idea and the textures. I'm sure that JJJ1 has been going all out with textures, and he probably already has an entire collection of them, its just that it can't be implemented yet making it unnoticeable (no maps). Also the balance and concept is the second hardest. The engine from what I understand is probably operational (Source is already proven technology), now all they need to do is finalize their ideas. Blizzard has been working on StarCraft 2 since Warcraft 3 came out (in 2003), its mid-2008 now...... The game is fully operational, yet they are still taking units out and keep modifying them. And from past experience, I know that Blizzard makes some of the best games. Kinda shows whats important to them. I rather have them not even be in alpha stages yet because that reassures my confidence in the NS2. Quality over deadline.
I also agree with less menus being a better thing. While it is an important mechanic to the game (as suggested), sometimes you see confusing menus remove the player from the game playing experiences.
Two seperate resource types sounds interesting, should definite allow for more startergy. I can't belive more people aren't talking about this.
Are you thinking like 1 type of res allows commanders to build and the other type allows marines/aliens to upgrade? or is it more like you need a certian amount of both res types to buy anything (with vary mixed proportions depending on the purchase, like warcraft's gold and lumber)? I just thought of a 3rd possibility, classic res (for purchases) and power (used to maintain active structures, like turrets), more of a CnC thing... Steam power as a resource would be fun, good excuse for lots of atmospheric particle effects <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Another resource idea I know you tinkered with during the development of NS was having a limited pool of resources that it was possible to exhaust. So prehaps both res types are spent the same way, but one res type comes in a slow feed that will never run out and the other has a fixed amount in the map (scaled to # players?) that you can extract at varying rates depending on stratergy.
I had some concerns about marines spending all the commanders cash on HMGs, but then I thought about it some more and realised you can manage res distributiosn in the team to make sure this doesnt happen.
The alien HUD seems a bit disconnected and floaty, for what was described in the fluff as part of the creatures eyeball. I didn't "get" what it was all about until I heard it described in the podcast, so I guess n00b players wont either <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/confused-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="???" border="0" alt="confused-fix.gif" /> It might be more intuative when a player is interacting with it.
Could a commander clicking on chat names have his view center on the marine that was chatting (if alive)? I think that would be really usefull. The squad mini summaries, might be more usefull if they showed player health/ammo levels rather than facing and distribution.
to summarise:
mmmm eye candy <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
You know, shoot an alien and pieces start flying out of it, or munch a human and he loses an arm.
Plastic people are just less fun <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />)
- I would opt for leaving the power of giving out JPs, exoskeletons and gorge suits (<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />) to the comm - why? The future audience of NS2 will probably hear about NS in general for the first time and might not understand how team-based it is - more importantly, how fulfilling orders is important, even when you don't like the guys who's commanding atm. If they can buy weaponry and equip themselves with no constrains, than why bother listening to the comm? New players might choose chasing skulks and ruining the experience of others. If comm would have part of the equip essential for mid-game (and fun!), it might make him more important in the eyes of others, but still leaving the fun of blasting aliens in the way one likes up to the players.
Another thing about the JP/ES, is that they provide other means of transportation, with different speeds (I acknowledge the fact that ES might be faster then HA), which might cause a hive-rushing squad to split up, due to the fact that ES will go down the corridor, new players in JPs will do the same route but 3 times faster and players who discovered the map will choose a different route through the vent.
I think it is crucial for the comm to choose the tactic of the attack and as a consequence - whether it will be JP/ES/both attack.
I'm worried that in NS2 instead of "GIMME A SHOTTY COOM!" we will hear "PLEASE CHANGE TO JPS PEOPLE THERE ARE ONOSES ALL AROUND"
- if mines would have to be bought by marines, than on public servers people will rarely buy those to cover building, saving res for HMG's instead. It would be sensible to have comm buy it as well.
- the buy menu is the consequence of NS players complaining about running with LMG 90% of the game? To what extent will the add-ons change the look of the weapon? Will it be attached in the front under the barrel in all of the situations (those are usually hardly seen in FPS view, especially on big guns like HMGs), players might end up again running with LMG most of the time. As it was mentioned on the forums (oh, by me even! :]) how about making the add-ons bigger with different ways of attaching them, which would make guns look different (e.g. grenade luncher to look like a collar with a magazine below, which would be put onto the barrel, changing the visuals of under-the-barrel-parts as also the sides (e.g. with sth which looks like an aiming device for nades) and upper part of the weapon.
Didn't you have this impression when changing the model / sounds of a weapon in HL mods, that they work.. um.. better? If you would have a LMG in front of you, the new add-on functionalities may not seem as good as they really are
- I don't know if I got this right: add-ons are not assigned to any particular weapon, i.e. you can have an add-on (e.g. flamer unit) on LMG, SG and HMG?
- I also had different first impression with the alien HUD, but after you gave explanation it seems good,
What I do love:
- second resource! wohoo! awesomely accommodates the space in comms tactics / duties left after giving away the trouble of weaponry to the marines
- new cool add-ons!
- good to see minimalistic / transparent HUDs! btw. about the comm view - maybe make a button in the middle of the upper chat bar which would expand/decrease the chat window to some pre-set height, apart from the scroll of course?
- mockups is a wise thing to do!
I think the best way to keep the old ways and also integrate the new buymenu you should do the next thing.
From the "resourcetowers" only the commander get the resource. If a marine kill an alien, he get that resource, not the commander. So if he killed enough aliens, then he can buy weapons and upgardes for his self. But if the team need extra resource then the player can donate his resource to commander, or to another player.
Example like in World in Conflict. Every body gets Tactical Aid points in the fight. But you can give your point to other players, so together you can call in better airstrikes, ariborne, scan, nuke etc.. If you press the TAB button the scoreboard is show up and you can see the names. Next to the players name there are 2 button. A number 1 and a number 5. Number 1 give the player 1 TA point number 5 give 5 TA point. Thats all. And i think this is a very simple and good system.
The buy menu also sounds like a nice bit of polish, but there are a few things that have me personally concerned: the more you guys talk about the game, the more I get the mental image of the two sides being almost entirely symmetrical. You can't differentiate with graphics only, and the fact that the objective of the marine side's gameplay (to kill at range) differs from the objective of the alien side's gameplay (to ambush) doesn't negate how bland the game is going to feel from first person if the two sides a) comm alike, b) upgrade alike, c) spawn alike, d) move alike, e) expand alike.
It seems like you're moving very aggressively toward a, b, and d from what the podcasts have explained. You need to focus as much on making the first person experience enthralling as you did in NS1 where you had drastically different upgrade systems between teams (especially in earlier versions), airspeed control (as well as bhop, which isn't the same thing) was handled very differently on both sides (where marines had to be thinking of potential rail hops and aliens had wall jumps and all sorts of acrobatics), aliens would upgrade with a very unique system of hives and chambers, while marines were more free form being restricted by time and res, etc.
The advent of a minimap marked an obvious developer attitude change toward empowering the individual over balancing the teams, so I guess you have to now take that mentality to its logical conclusion with marine buying of upgrades and so forth, but I think a lot of the gameplay features were lost in doing that, and also in polishing the game with features such as the acceleration rate of blink (for +movement's implementation) and the removal of the permagorge system.
I'm not saying that these changes are in themselves bad, or that NS2 needs to upgrade and comm exactly like NS1 - only that I very much enjoyed the <!--coloro:lime--><span style="color:lime"><!--/coloro-->diversity<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> of gameplay in NS1, and it feels, from what I'm hearing in the podcasts, that most of that is going to be stripped away in NS2 - I hope there's a lot of other diversifying features being developed that I'm just not seeing.