Q&A for Devs
xVisions
Join Date: 2009-07-03 Member: 68021Members
Join Date: 2009-07-03 Member: 68021Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Ask your questions.</div>Please only post questions for devs, not comments about others posts. Keep thread clean for Dev's to sift through!
Hopefully They do a Q&A podcast for us and answer few things :)
What do you have planned for the squad system?
Hopefully They do a Q&A podcast for us and answer few things :)
What do you have planned for the squad system?
Comments
Joke aside, when will there be some better documentation for modding and how do you make custom entities exist in spark map editor?
Received an answer!
<!--QuoteBegin-'Max the awesome'+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ('Max the awesome')</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->We want to get some good tutorials up on our site about modding, but at the moment our attention is 100% focused on the game. So far the community has been amazing at discovering things and modifying our code (including submitting bug fixes), so there's a good chance they will get to this before we do! For anyone that wants to take a crack at creating custom entities, check out the editor_setup.xml file.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
-what about water? Still no plans about adding it into the engine?
-are the alien warp-tunnels still a possibility or have they been axed?
-is the eye-candy system already finished or are there features yet to come? HDR? Bloom? Is AA/AF going to be implemented?
Lots of people will poke around in the SDK when they first buy, if there's no documentation many will just leave it for the 'hardcore modders' and not come back even if there's good documentation later.
Also, these tasks in pivotal tracker have been there for quite a few builds (under gameplay tasks):
* Profile and optimize OnProcessMove()
* Hydra optimization (create 5+)
avoiding the annoying non-feature tasks (which I sympathise with!) or awaiting engine work on LUA interface optimisation?
--Cory
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. What is your current "to implement" list before v1? I know there will be bugs to fix in the mean time but what core functionality is missing.
2. You've mentioned that you would be looking to do TF2 style updates, being a tf2 player i love this and it really as made me keep playing it for the last, wow 5 years. When did that happen!? Anyway, you must have some initial thoughts, what would you want to see the game evolve into further down the line?
3. Brian, would you rather be a body double for Zach Galifianakis or Joaquin Phoenix in the movie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Still_Here_(film)" target="_blank">I'm Still Here</a>?
4. Clearly the mini-icon competion style thing was a success, do you have many more opportunities to get the community involved?
5. Despite being an indie company of less than 10 people, how much does it piss you off that people keep forgetting that? - You don't need to answer that one.
6. If you had a pet gorge, what would you call it?
2. When can we expect to be playing with onos, exo suit, etc.
3. A while ago you did a news post about entering beta because you needed more funds, how is your funding situation now? I get the feeling your able to relax a bit for a while again which is good.
As I have a AMD Radeon card that feeds the rage guy inside of me.
Why would you go with a physics engine that only works on nVidias cards?
Especially when their code for CPU calculations (on systems without nVidia graphics)
is intentionally craptastic and written as such just to try and brute force ppl into buying nVidia cards.
(didn't bother looking up the source on that, but Im sure you're aware that it was proven.)
How much eye candy will AMD users miss out on?
At this point, are there any heavy physx calculations in game?
2. How much choice will aliens have when selecting "chamber" upgrades? Are the upgrades now predetermined based on your life form?
As I have a AMD Radeon card that feeds the rage guy inside of me.
Why would you go with a physics engine that only works on nVidias cards?
Especially when their code for CPU calculations (on systems without nVidia graphics)
is intentionally craptastic and written as such just to try and brute force ppl into buying nVidia cards.
(didn't bother looking up the source on that, but Im sure you're aware that it was proven.)
How much eye candy will AMD users miss out on?
At this point, are there any heavy physx calculations in game?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This has already been answered. PhysX only runs in software mode; Nvidia cards do not have an advantage over ATI cards. They also use Havok. I don't remember exactly which physics engine they use for what. Have a look at Max's posts.
Link here: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=Search&CODE=getalluser&mid=318" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index....ser&mid=318</a> It's not that far back. It's on the second page. There are two posts about this. Just search 'physx' in your web browser.
Also, this seems a lot more like a criticism than a question.
My question:
<b>How many, and which, systems/assets in the game are placeholder?</b>
I ask because I imagine Lerk flight, for example, needs some work.
If the next vid could involve max talking about this monumental challenge, how it's being tackled, any help needed etc
I think it would be fantastic if the NS2 team took a slightly different approach to getting custom maps out there to make it painless for players to play them.
Right now, a server needs to install them manually in order to have them playable.
Server ops also need to setup 'download URL' features etc to allow players to download the maps as well (or let the download 'trickle' to the player, which imo is horrible).
Players don't know about custom maps unless a server is already playing them, or has browsed a website for them.
--
What about allowing a map to be published on an UWE based website? Once published, the map can be voted for on any server to be played - without ever having seen it before.
The map gets downloaded to the game server and clients when its needed. Its also updated when a mapper releases a new version without any input needed by server ops or players.
--
There's a few security and bandwidth concerns to think about; but those are solvable problems and I think it would be great to avoid making it painful for players to enjoy custom maps.
The process of playing a custom map from both a player and server op position must be literally painless and resistance free, otherwise it means for me personally I won't be playing a custom map, no matter how great it is.
Make custom maps first rate maps instead of hacked add-ons that you need to micro manage to get working and get a game organised. All other games that do custom maps suck at it.
What do you think?
so what is your plan on keeping the game development running?
a yearly full price update like call of duty, or constantly gaining new users trough heavy mod support till it becomes standard that everyone got a spark key?
what is your strategy on this?
what are your plans for spark 2?
what are your plans for anti cheat protection?
as some one mentioned in an other thread,
wallhack is not this important for NS but it will
be for the most of the mods! But aimbot and other hacks
would be! what the plans on that field?
would you release an unfinished game? the alpha beta switch was good marketing,
releasing an unfinished product would be a hard hit for the reputation of uwe.
i hate money so much, ppl like you guys should get payed from the public!
you have said that you play TF2 and other games to compare to your own engine as far as the "feel" of the game and fluidity goes.
have you discovered the culprit?
is there any progress?
is it just the rubber banding / network / tick rate issue?
the beta in its current state is great and so much fun to play. actual large scale games (14 player servers) occuring and it is awesome, but people are still experiencing rubber banding on SOME servers. (unrelated to latency) any ideas?
2) What sort of additions (both functional and stylistic) are planned for the player and commander minimaps? How will they be different or the same from the NS1 version?
3) Will the person who gets his icons used on the minimap receive a lock of Brian's beard as a reward? Also, will Brian consider participating in an extremely competitive beard vs. beard throwdown against <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keIx6QJ8U88" target="_blank">John's Beard of Lore</a> from Wolfire Games?
@Cory: What inspired you to make the aliens have a whole new look with bone matter, colour, theme, etc? (besides the obvious of saying that the aliens have evolved...did you look at any specific creatures or do research on dinosaurs or something haha) Also when can we expect the female marine to make an appearance in NS2 as well as wanting to know if she will have black armor as well.
@Max: Approximately how many lines of code is the Spark Engine? What would you say has been the longest task to overcome besides having to release version 1.0? I also noticed a few former developers from Iron Lore are working on a new IP using the TQ engine. What do you think so far of their work?
@Brian: How did you manage to score a job with the best indie developers this generation? (Did you know any of the developers prior to NS2 development, or just apply regularly through the job link on the front UWE page?.....cookies?) Are there plans for having the rest of the Marine/Alien Commander GUI to be animated? Is it close to it's final form right now, or are there tons of revisions yet still to come?
@Simon: The sounds so far in NS2 are absolutely brilliant. Are we to expect more ambient sounds to come? Revisions on some of the weapons? I was very impressed by your sound overlay of the StarCraft2 trailer. The welder sounds were superb. Also my only gripe so far are footstep sounds. Will those be projected louder, because it's sometimes difficult to hear your enemies.
@David John: Excellent score my fellow Canadian. Are we to hear in-game music at any point besides the subtle death music. I recall Flayra(this can be asked for you too Charlie) mentioning the exo will have a boombox attachment with customizable music tracks being played from your music directory. Was this just jokes? :D
@Level Designers: How many maps are we expected to have at 1.0? I recall hearing 3 maps? Tram, Mineshaft, Biodome? How many hours/days does it roughly take to make one detailed room or map with good lighting, properly textured, props in, and revised before it gets the green light. We know Tram is still getting worked on and balanced and Mineshaft is being worked on. Very excited for that. Also in Tram, from the latest build (162), I noticed broken glass textures. Will that just be kept as a texture, or will collision detection be properly used for the glass on players/objects?
I hope I'm not forgetting anyone. I probably am, but I just want to say great job to all. You're all doing terrific, keep up the amazing work, and hope to hear some of my questions answered.
Cheers.
Marines can build now thoguh I completely agree with gorges needing to build!
- Is GetSatisfaction still used by the team? Have you considered giving moderation access to some of the internal testers, allowing them to work with the reporters to create proper repro steps and push the really important issues to the developers?
- Have you considered getting a full-time UnknownWorlds server running on the public build (maybe in association with one of the server admins), to be able to test server behavior, memory leaks and packets exchange in real-life conditions?
- What's the plan to support non standard textures in custom maps, will mappers be allowed to insert just the textures that are unique to that map or is it a case of having to resort to large monolithic WADs with lots of space wasted on repeated textures?
- Realistically, Will linux servers ship with V1 or is it going to be a case of post release / vapourware ala linux dedicated for alien swarm and the recent AVP (i.e. far side of never)
- Are there any plans to expand on the use of knocking lights out / prolonged darkness as these really are atmospheric and somewhat of a unique point to this game?