An (Siege) Update!
KKyle
Michigan Join Date: 2005-07-01 Member: 55067Members
Michigan Join Date: 2005-07-01 Member: 55067Members
Hi! Some of you may know me. Some of you may not. For those who don't, my name is Kyle Abent. I am the one man team behind Siege, a mod for ns2. Now, by one man team, well, don't take it the wrong way. I do use work contributed to the community by other members. Enforced Exo by Scatter, portions of NS2c by Dragon, anti unstuck exploit by lhvwb, maps by Brian and Rines Rool, server hosting by MCG. But for the most part, I'd say I do 90% of the work. Managing the mods, the maps, the community, the updates, etc.
Now my fascination with starting another thread isn't to float my ego, but more of.. give an update to the community. What is Siege? siege is a game mode designed in NS1. Where basically, both sides have an average of 9 resource towers on marine side, and 12-14 on alien side, all kept almost safe, in a dedicated room. Some Siege maps have marine RT's spread throughout the map, so losing locations means losing res, and so there's less of a chance of turtling the marine base without anything actually happening.
The main point of Siege is this: Marines defend. Aliens offend. When the game starts, there's a setup period. Each map has a front doors and siege doors. The front doors stay closed for X amount of minutes, so that way both sides can setup and prepare for when the doors open, and when the doors open, it's the aliens job to attack the marines and take them out before the siege door opens. Where on average, the siege door is located in marines base. And what's inside the siege room is a path directly parallel to the alien hives, but in a safe way, in that, marines can arc out said alien hives unless aliens do something about it, either by taking marines out or rushing the siege room as a team to take out everything there.
This is the basic principal of how siege was in ns1 atleast. The mod depended purely on maps, with very few scripting.. because, NS1 wasn't as script-able as it is now. Now we can bend the rules, make maps where aliens have siege, or both sides do, but the project hasn't reached that point yet.
The most recent statement I've posted here is.. well.. a bunch of things that probably contradict each other. Trying to state the path of the mod without having an understanding of how a path is made. Basically, the mod.. has many updates. Many Many. Many many experimentation, many failures, many successes. If you can't tell by now, I take this project very seriously. Ever since it began last september I've spent day and night on it. And that's no joke. I have no job, I don't go to school. I leach off my parents. It's not healthy. I don't know why I do it. But I do it.
You see, well, to slightly stray off topic here. Siege in NS1 was a "core" of my growing up. I've been playing on and off since the original launch of ns1 the first day of launch. I remember my brothers friend coming over, and my brother and I playing a round on some classic maps. And I have vague memories throughout the years playing NS1 in all of its formats, constantly having its balance changed over time, forging basically what NS2 is now... Only by having that length of time to experiment with what works and what doesn't, and even though balance may never be 100%, there may come a point in time where it feels good enough to leave it alone for a while. Atleast this is what I'm experiencing now, anyway.
So if I may share the current state of siege It's this. As of 1 month ago (4/21/15 or april 21st for you brits or other non americans with different timezones and such), the mod started from scratch, pure vanilla ns2. But since then it hasn't changed. I do not wish to go into specifics of whats changed via the balance. Though I can, because I know every detail. It's just better off to say that the balance is a huge work in progress constantly changing based off playing and playing and playing and observing and listening to all the feedback (though insults ~= feedback).
What I can say is this. What is active among a few balance additions to suite a full 12v12 server are a few defining Shine plugins. Credits, rollthedice, and the visual timer display showing the countdowns for the front and siege door.
Credits somewhat merge combat into siege. As dissapointed as I am with the non possibility of merging a single server to have Siege and Combat in one, just like the good ol' days, I suppose my sub concious wrote the credits system loosely based on it. (honestly I just laid down, visualized this, didnt have much to go on other than a red display saying credits, and old childhood memories of a popular TFC server (titled Girlpower 2 funhouse) which had a credits system where 10 kills = 1 credit. I remember a buy menu that changed player models and that's about it)). Basically what I've done with credits is 10 score = 1 credit. You press m and click credits and you can buy a number of things depending on what team you're on. Catpacks, medpacks, nanoshield, enzyme, umbra, hallucinations, ink. You name it. Credits only save for a user at the moment if I manually input them into a config file to save/load, otherwise it resets on every round (haven't figured out a way for this process to be automatic yet).
BUT IT'S THIS PROCESS WHICH GAVE ME AN EPIPHANY. Having to manually input each and every user into a config file for their credits to save. It's made me realize how HEALTHY the community is. Despite my past ramblings, despite many people saying "ns2 needs to be f2p" or the countless debates saying the player count is dwindling. From first hand experience, I can say there's a LOT of people. There's a LOT of itnerest. EVERYONE wants to play and have a good time. In my opinion, it's not a valuable game to spend said time on. There's no updates. There's nothing new. It's dull. Everyone plays a routine. I guess this is where siege comes in, once again, not to float my own ego or horn here. Merely stating that by manually inputting users into a config file It made me realize first hand by how healthy the player count is and such.
Rollthedice is basically a gambling feature. Don't wanna get too much into this.. I'm writing this entire statement in one go and honestly my mind is racing trying to share so much information so fast that I don't even share with my parents that I leach off of to form this mod without getting anything in return for, other than to have people I've never met, be so graceful, so supportive, as to accept something I project in my imagination, and load onto their screens almost instantly (sometimes with broken features which are quickly fixed, and sometimes with new features that are excitedly anticipated).
Oh one more thing, I'm excited about this leveling system that I've put in placed for X amount of structures that level up and grow in size, health, damage, range, whatever else, that's loosely based off the maturity system, except it's not time based, but almost XP based, once again, almost like combat, but for structures. I've even wrote ns2_tinysiege which scales all players model size into whatever I want, half the size? sure. It scales the player model, max health, max armor, damage output, model extents (only if <1 otherwise >1 means lots of stuck spots!)
Even a command I wrote to dynamically change player size on the go (which is HILARIOUS having 20 players the size of ants duke it out, I have a screenshot of this.. actually plenty, it's hilarioius ((ns2_tinysiege I remixed the pushtrigger from EEM to be a 'sizetrigger' or even a 'gravitytrigger'))
But at any point, I'm rambling, and not speaking english.. More of a mix of english and lua mixed in one and it's not making any sense. So in conclusion, what brought me here to type this is this...
TL;DR ~ The community is healthy. The community is active. The community is supportive.
Now my fascination with starting another thread isn't to float my ego, but more of.. give an update to the community. What is Siege? siege is a game mode designed in NS1. Where basically, both sides have an average of 9 resource towers on marine side, and 12-14 on alien side, all kept almost safe, in a dedicated room. Some Siege maps have marine RT's spread throughout the map, so losing locations means losing res, and so there's less of a chance of turtling the marine base without anything actually happening.
The main point of Siege is this: Marines defend. Aliens offend. When the game starts, there's a setup period. Each map has a front doors and siege doors. The front doors stay closed for X amount of minutes, so that way both sides can setup and prepare for when the doors open, and when the doors open, it's the aliens job to attack the marines and take them out before the siege door opens. Where on average, the siege door is located in marines base. And what's inside the siege room is a path directly parallel to the alien hives, but in a safe way, in that, marines can arc out said alien hives unless aliens do something about it, either by taking marines out or rushing the siege room as a team to take out everything there.
This is the basic principal of how siege was in ns1 atleast. The mod depended purely on maps, with very few scripting.. because, NS1 wasn't as script-able as it is now. Now we can bend the rules, make maps where aliens have siege, or both sides do, but the project hasn't reached that point yet.
The most recent statement I've posted here is.. well.. a bunch of things that probably contradict each other. Trying to state the path of the mod without having an understanding of how a path is made. Basically, the mod.. has many updates. Many Many. Many many experimentation, many failures, many successes. If you can't tell by now, I take this project very seriously. Ever since it began last september I've spent day and night on it. And that's no joke. I have no job, I don't go to school. I leach off my parents. It's not healthy. I don't know why I do it. But I do it.
You see, well, to slightly stray off topic here. Siege in NS1 was a "core" of my growing up. I've been playing on and off since the original launch of ns1 the first day of launch. I remember my brothers friend coming over, and my brother and I playing a round on some classic maps. And I have vague memories throughout the years playing NS1 in all of its formats, constantly having its balance changed over time, forging basically what NS2 is now... Only by having that length of time to experiment with what works and what doesn't, and even though balance may never be 100%, there may come a point in time where it feels good enough to leave it alone for a while. Atleast this is what I'm experiencing now, anyway.
So if I may share the current state of siege It's this. As of 1 month ago (4/21/15 or april 21st for you brits or other non americans with different timezones and such), the mod started from scratch, pure vanilla ns2. But since then it hasn't changed. I do not wish to go into specifics of whats changed via the balance. Though I can, because I know every detail. It's just better off to say that the balance is a huge work in progress constantly changing based off playing and playing and playing and observing and listening to all the feedback (though insults ~= feedback).
What I can say is this. What is active among a few balance additions to suite a full 12v12 server are a few defining Shine plugins. Credits, rollthedice, and the visual timer display showing the countdowns for the front and siege door.
Credits somewhat merge combat into siege. As dissapointed as I am with the non possibility of merging a single server to have Siege and Combat in one, just like the good ol' days, I suppose my sub concious wrote the credits system loosely based on it. (honestly I just laid down, visualized this, didnt have much to go on other than a red display saying credits, and old childhood memories of a popular TFC server (titled Girlpower 2 funhouse) which had a credits system where 10 kills = 1 credit. I remember a buy menu that changed player models and that's about it)). Basically what I've done with credits is 10 score = 1 credit. You press m and click credits and you can buy a number of things depending on what team you're on. Catpacks, medpacks, nanoshield, enzyme, umbra, hallucinations, ink. You name it. Credits only save for a user at the moment if I manually input them into a config file to save/load, otherwise it resets on every round (haven't figured out a way for this process to be automatic yet).
BUT IT'S THIS PROCESS WHICH GAVE ME AN EPIPHANY. Having to manually input each and every user into a config file for their credits to save. It's made me realize how HEALTHY the community is. Despite my past ramblings, despite many people saying "ns2 needs to be f2p" or the countless debates saying the player count is dwindling. From first hand experience, I can say there's a LOT of people. There's a LOT of itnerest. EVERYONE wants to play and have a good time. In my opinion, it's not a valuable game to spend said time on. There's no updates. There's nothing new. It's dull. Everyone plays a routine. I guess this is where siege comes in, once again, not to float my own ego or horn here. Merely stating that by manually inputting users into a config file It made me realize first hand by how healthy the player count is and such.
Rollthedice is basically a gambling feature. Don't wanna get too much into this.. I'm writing this entire statement in one go and honestly my mind is racing trying to share so much information so fast that I don't even share with my parents that I leach off of to form this mod without getting anything in return for, other than to have people I've never met, be so graceful, so supportive, as to accept something I project in my imagination, and load onto their screens almost instantly (sometimes with broken features which are quickly fixed, and sometimes with new features that are excitedly anticipated).
Oh one more thing, I'm excited about this leveling system that I've put in placed for X amount of structures that level up and grow in size, health, damage, range, whatever else, that's loosely based off the maturity system, except it's not time based, but almost XP based, once again, almost like combat, but for structures. I've even wrote ns2_tinysiege which scales all players model size into whatever I want, half the size? sure. It scales the player model, max health, max armor, damage output, model extents (only if <1 otherwise >1 means lots of stuck spots!)
Even a command I wrote to dynamically change player size on the go (which is HILARIOUS having 20 players the size of ants duke it out, I have a screenshot of this.. actually plenty, it's hilarioius ((ns2_tinysiege I remixed the pushtrigger from EEM to be a 'sizetrigger' or even a 'gravitytrigger'))
But at any point, I'm rambling, and not speaking english.. More of a mix of english and lua mixed in one and it's not making any sense. So in conclusion, what brought me here to type this is this...
TL;DR ~ The community is healthy. The community is active. The community is supportive.
Comments
First it started off as a biography about the author, then we got a brief synopsis about Siege mod, then we was given a brief history about the mod in relation to the author's experiences with it. Now it's a biography again. Ok now it's a brief history regarding the mod itself and then it became a thank you letter in regards to the community before it became about you again.
You mentioned you reverted siege back to vanilla but you have started steadily adding more additional content and gameplay changing mechanics? Credit system? RollTheDice? Structure levelling system?
My point is, you are a very confusing person KKyle, I've read some of your previous posts in other threads and all I have observed is from outright rude
Am I thankful siegemod is on NS2? Hell yeah why not I am very thankful for the work you have put in but your post seems very hypocritical and I don't know to whether to take you seriously or with a pinch of salt, you claim you do none of this to boost your ego but the amount of times you've used the first person narrative in your paragraphs is farcical at best.
Don't take this as an attack I just want some clarity on what you are trying to achieve here? Is this a thread about siege update?
is it thread with an overview of what siege is itself? Are you thanking the community on how your mod has saved the community or are you just trying to let off steam...
Stay humble and recognition will come your way regardless.
Sign up at a college/university for computer art (or if you like it more generalized for computer science) in the upcoming semester. That way you will learn tons of things about software design, management and so on while still having enough time to work on your own project at the beginning (some colleges even support you to work on your own projects).
Also that way you will be able to work at what you seem to love for money once you graduated.
Because i see that you want your project to succeed but imho currently you struggle with some of the basic points.
E.g. the best way to inform users about your project and it's updates is to have one thread like the ns2+ one: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/129560/ns2-the-mod-previously-known-as-custom-hud/p1 (give a structured overview about the project, react on feedback and post updates)
Otherwise use a project management website like github or bitbucket (or build your own site) to provide a way to keep track of issues and changes.
You are more then welcome to live in my shed when your parents finally decide enuf is enuf.
I've been playing siege on MCG for the past week or so and it's pretty fun if both teams know what they're doing. It's quite a viable alternative to Combat and I look forward to a more streamlined version of your credits system. Speaking of that system, I recommend integrating a menu similar to the Combat mod where every upgrade can be immediately clicked after pressing the Evolve/Buy key. The current M-key menu is orderly and intuitive, but having to click a sub-menu before being able to click an upgrade makes it less viable to use while in combat. Another drawback to the M-key menu is the slight delay on opening it up and being able to press buttons; you should be able to click sub-menus and upgrades immediately.