Natural Selection For Unreal2003
FATALgamer14
Join Date: 2002-11-04 Member: 6929Members
Join Date: 2002-11-04 Member: 6929Members
You guys did a pretty good job on NS for half life. There are a lot of bugs, at least for me. It probably has something to do with the Half Life game engine and Windows XP because as i re installed my game, my whole computer started acting stupid. Anyways, why not make a port to the Unreal Tornament 2003 engine, have better graphics, fewer bugs, and bots!
Post if you agree. <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo-->
Post if you agree. <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
It also would take more resources, and people with lower end machines would not be able to play.
A) as many people can play it as possible
B) because the HL sdk is easily modifiable (sp) and valve do an EXCELLENT job providing support for mods.
What ive heard about the UT2003 engine is (like the UT engine) not very customizable (is that even a word???) at least to the extent of what will be needed for NS.
Also, the Half-Life engine is over 4 years old. If you are complaining about not being able to run a game on an older machine like UT2003, your in trouble because look at DOOM 3. The game will look like crap if you dont even have a GeForce 4 Ti. I heard Quake 4 is supposed to use the Doom 3 engine also.
C'mon people, we can use the Half Life engine forever, it is time for a change, especially with a mod this good.
I am not talking about porting it because that would require all the code to be re done. Make Natural Selection 2 or something. This is a good idea and Half Life just does not provide the technology to expand with it.
I mean, if people make great mods which they are bound to do, people will go on buying the original software to play them
Its just stupid in my books to not give mod makers all the tools they need, as it sets a life span for the original game. Who would have thought that Half life would still be this popular 4 years later?
God dammit, why doesnt ctr S work to submit a message...
Anyway, natural selection is already very much enjoyable. A better looking / playing version on a "better" (newer) engine would be fun, but the team will judge what's best for NS. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
1) HUGE mode comunity
2) Valve is supotive of mod teams so far as I understand (Flay has gotten some direct help from them)
3) yah know what, Flay is nice to us poor bastd college students who can't AFFOARD A GeFORCE 4!!
4)and btw, this mod has been indevelopment for 2 and 1/2 years, it has been the only thing Flay has been doing for like the past year or so (no he hasn't had a job)
the time that it would take to create another version of NS for another engien probably isn't worth it
5) Flay aint done yet, he still has more things planed for NS
oh and as a side note, porting to UT2K3 will give you bots? no, I think not
HL has bot support also, however NS is to fn complicated to create bots for, if you want to YOU can try and make the bots (the instructions are out there)
The physics on that engine alone is a major improvement over ANY FPS shooter. It's easy to use and works great. The lighting, reflexions, ability to use better quality textures... The fact that it handles polygons in a way more effecient way then the Half-Life engine...
The unreal tournament 2003 engine is infinitely better then the Half-Life engine (wich is a modified version of the quake 2 engine, wich is a modified version of the Quake 1 engine.... getting old...).
Anyway, my 2 pennies.
anyway, the deathmatch games like quake3 and ut2k3(the quake3 clone) have a bulkiness to them that I just hate, and wouldn't like that at all in NS.
Hypothetically speaking, imagine a NS mod for doom 3 - talk about real scary <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
doom 3 will have awesome graphics / lighting / sound the works to make a good spooky atmosphere.
I'm not saying it should be ported though, I like it the way it is. Too bad that CS has a monopoly over HL mods though. Maybe NS could get up there? Maybe people who play cs will mature? Maybe pigs will fly? <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
HL has bot support also, however NS is to fn complicated to create bots for, if you want to YOU can try and make the bots (the instructions are out there)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
hmm it WILL give u bots (bots are built in the game, youll just have to edit them a little)
Anyway i would like to see NS redone or cloned for ut2k3. It's stupid to think NS team will do that, after spending 2 1/2 years on building the current mod, but a similar mod from other ppl would be great. And btw what do you think guys ? ... HF2/TF2 will have the same graphics as HL ?? lol sure not <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
That engine is great (it's id software's engine anyway) but it's time is slowly fading. After a year or two HL will look very ugly in the way it is now.
The only sad thing is VALVe still dont release their engine (it's about time), coz moders can do amazing things with it (like the Tenebrae for quake 1 - it's graphics are comparable with d3).
So NS is fun the way it is and i like it the way it is, but i would defenatly love to see such quality mod from similar kind made for ut2k3 (it's not only the idea, it's the way you make it <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> ).
Let me show you a few numbers here...
At the moment I'm typing this, these are the top 10 games, by players (note that ALL these numbers are low due to the time at which I'm posting this, during the day HL typically has at least 20,000 more, and MOH about 3,000 more):
1) Half-Life, 64895 players
2) Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, 5319 players
3) Quake 3: Arena, 3787 players
4) Battlefield 1942, 3742 players
5) Return to Castle Wolfenstein, 3127 players
6) Unreal Tournament 2003, 2966 players
7) Americas Army: Operations, 2966 players
8) Soldier of Fortune 2, 2368 players
9) Unreal Tournament, 2333 players
10) Neverwinter Nights, 2186 players
Now let's break down the Half-Life totals.
55,289 of these players are for CS alone. But before any of that "CS is all that keeps HL going" BS, let's look at this total... After subtracting that 55,289 from the base 64,895, we're left with 9,606 players. MOH, the next closest game and so-called "HL Killer" still trails by more than 4,000. This gap often reaches 5 to 6 thousand players during the day, with HL player totals sans CS peaking at about 14-15,000.
Of the remaining Half-Life players, most of the 9,606 remaining can be summed up in TFC, DoD, and NS.
Team Fortress Classic is on 1365 servers with 3276 players, Day of Defeat on 972 servers with 2496 players, and Natural Selection on a mere 315 servers with 2136 players. This puts TFC as #5 of all games, and has Both DoD and NS comparable to other retail games, NS after less than a week of release. In fact, during peak hours, DoD typically outnumbers UT2K3 and NS is within only a couple hundred players.
At this moment, DM-Asbestos, the most played UT2K3 map is on 30 servers with 105 players. Antalus is a close second with only 28 servers but 126 players.
At this moment, the most played Natural Selection map is ns_eclipse with 47 servers and 545 players. Next is ns_caged, with 38 servers and 392 players. The least-played NS map has 12 servers for 129 players.
Regardless of how old the engine is, there is no competing with HL's player base... UT2K3 offers a base matched by mods for HL -- leaving an even smaller potential audience for
Also, UT2K3 is LESS efficient with raw BSP (yes, the term still applies) polygons than HL -- If you look at UT2K3 maps in-editor and toggle the static meshes, the base architecture is often less complex than Quake. HL wouldn't need much modification aside of model/mesh lighting and increased efficiency to be able to do that as well. That's why we see such an apparent polygon leap between UT and UT2K3.
And no, HL is not a modified Q2, HL is based of <i>Quake</i> source with what is estimated to be a bit over 50 lines of code from Q2.
Don't get me wrong, I think that Unreal Engine is fantastic and I expect great things from id for Doom3's engine (if not the game... :-\), but the fact is HL is still the best all-around solution for mod development.
But that doesnt look very good in HL, doesnt it ? And dont get me wrong - im not a fan of "gameplay = eyecandy" community <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> I'm a q3 pro player from since the game is out, and believe me that game can look UGLY <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> But mods like NS could take advantage of a very detailed and SCARRY looking <!--emo&::onos::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tiny.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tiny.gif'><!--endemo--> , and some nice lightning on the maps, that makes them look REAL creepy . That's beyond the HL engine capabilities <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
That's just my $0.02 <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Only thing I'd improve on is the alien models/animations(i.e. skulks flip when on the walls, legs move in somewhat accordance to speed, fades don't twitch like drug addicts).
I can just imagine what NS would look like on a new engine, and I start drooling. But will I care at all when I'm flying up being 3 marines and biting frantically just trying to keep them in front of me? nope, but HL is great for those consistant frames.
Plus, I can do it all at 4x FSAA with my GF4.
Same answer but different reasons ... its just not feasable.
Note: I am not advocating a switch for NS at all. Just letting everyone know it is feasible...Sort of.
That can't be further from the truth. The UT2k3 engine is amazingly equipped for mod makers. The OOP unrealScript means you can make a whole mod without ever touching C++. The amount of resources they put into adding extras specifically for the mod community is amazing. You could take the UT2K3 engine and make pretty much any type of game you can imagine.
If you did not know, the company bungie software produced this marathon series and the popular game HALO was themed off of marathon which a lot of people don't know. Infact the Halo marine is based off of the original marathon marine. Marathon fans actually liked the storyline more than the game itself for it was a book in itself.
Hard to beleive that Marathon Central has over <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'> 7 BILLION website visits and growing</span>
www.Marathon.Org
To this day people still make mods and maps for this game...
The HL engine will never die as long as the community is around and I see the possibility of it coming to an end as never happening.
but i heard that ut 2003 has been selling like hot cakes...
so when ns has finally been tweaked on hl to perfection ( like cs... ) then hey you never know!
but lets wait a year or so , so that people get better computers ( since they are cheaper )
until then hl engine is still great! even still improved upon when valve realises a new hl patch
hl engine isn't competely dead yet! i mean look at cs zero... the graphics for that game look great! <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo-->
good times ahead for ns and cs <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
more like 2.
more like 2.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
not really.. i heard ut2003 is easy to develop mods for because it comes with tons of tools
but they don't need to playtest it as much since balance is ironed out in the hl version <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
only thing i don't like about ut 2003 is the game itself personally i find the game pretty bad in general compared to q3 and installing 1.5 gigs just for mods seems like alot of wasted space....
the engine is great but the game itself isn't my cup of tea...
Are you kidding me? Marathon is the best FPS ever hands down. Marathon is so cool, glad to see there are other former marathon fanbois lurking around other than me. Marathon REPRESENT! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Anyway back on topic... I totally agree with the use of the Half-Life engine. It has so much going for it now. Sure the graphics are behind the times a bit but they are still acceptable, especially for the type of gameplay in NS. Half-life has robust netcode, great "handling," great features like voice comm etc. Plus it get's updated and cared for by valve.
It sounds like a good idea to have NS in a new engine like UT2k3, but be real here folks. Half-life has a lot of stuff UT2k3 doesn't have, it's just a bit behind in graphics. I'm pretty positive it would only detract from the mod.