pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
edited March 2010
most of the people buttkissing UWE don't know wtf they are talking about, and generally just want to play a no-brainer game with fancy graphics.
the rest of us wants a worthy sequel of ns
Trolling aside, I agree with Ryo and fuyuki. They should be able to handle the negative feedback. And all the others should stop falling for them and quit playing wannabe-mod.
most people agree that the people who overly criticize and the people who overly praise often have interesting points, but neither are informed enough to say whether the game will be "worthy" of NS or not.
if i worked for UWE i would probably get a headache every time i visited the NS2 forum.
<!--quoteo(post=1760411:date=Mar 21 2010, 07:20 AM:name=torisutan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (torisutan @ Mar 21 2010, 07:20 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760411"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->most people agree that the people who overly criticize and the people who overly praise often have interesting points, but neither are informed enough to say whether the game will be "worthy" of NS or not.
if i worked for UWE i would probably get a headache every time i visited the NS2 forum.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--quoteo(post=1760412:date=Mar 21 2010, 12:31 AM:name=fuyuki359)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fuyuki359 @ Mar 21 2010, 12:31 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760412"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> i have absolutely no idea how you twisted my words around to get that impression.
i'll leave it at that, lol.
if you want my opinion it's sad not see awesome reveals every week, but it's expected considering the size of the UWE team, and that they most likely have to put a lot of work into everything they release (including reveals and other presentations).
if i were a dev i wouldn't want to rush out a bunch of sub-par updates, reveals, or an alpha that wouldn't do my project the justice i feel it would deserve.
release the game when it's ready, and release updates when they are convenient. as long as there isn't silence for months at a time, i'll keep waiting, and so will the rest of us who aren't demanding more than what is "reasonable".
<!--quoteo(post=1760404:date=Mar 21 2010, 06:07 AM:name=schkorpio)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (schkorpio @ Mar 21 2010, 06:07 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760404"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->most of the people complaining don't wtf they are talking about, and generally just want to play NS1 with better graphics.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Are you sure you know what you're talking about? NS can be looked from so many different viewpoints.
Some might say NS2 is all the same because it has still got 2 races and it's FPS/RTS.
Then again, I've played NS for years, put a big amount of thought into understanding it. For me how the skulk ability set works makes a world of difference for my gaming experience, no matter whether I'm a marine, skulk or fade myself.
The thingy I'm trying to point out is that some people base their NS enjoyment on details that other people don't even know. It's fine that way, but it would be awesome if people quit thinking that their way of playing the game is the only way to do it.
<!--quoteo(post=1760399:date=Mar 21 2010, 02:49 PM:name=Kwil)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Kwil @ Mar 21 2010, 02:49 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760399"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Maybe it's just me, but when I'm doing something and a bunch of the folks I'm doing it for keep saying, "Oh that's crap." "That's depressing", "That's boring", it certainly doesn't inspire me to do *more* for these twats.
It inspires me to do a whole helluva lot less.
As I said, maybe that's just me.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
UWE aren't sharing information with us because of some altruistic principle. They're a business. They exist to make money. They want as many potential customers as possible. Look at the effect the NS2 teaser video had; interest in the game skyrocketed. Sharing information with the community gets them more customers, either from people directly seeing it, or people who have seen it telling their friends. UWE isn't doing <i>us</i> a favour by releasing news updates. They're doing <i>themselves</i> a favour. The fact that we get something out of it too is a valuable bonus.
If the reaction from the community is "Oh, that's crap", then a good business doesn't say "Well stuff it, no pleasing some people, lets just give up on giving out anything". No, they say "Hmm, that wasn't well received, lets look at releasing something different next time". A local case in point, Kraft here in Australia recently brought out a new type of Vegemite that they decided to name iSnack 2.0. The reaction from the general community was not positive. Kraft quickly reversed their decision and held a new poll to rename the product.
Businesses aren't thin-skinned. They can handle criticism. The individuals running the company might not like it too much, but they know they can learn from it. In some ways it can be the most valuable feedback of all.
<!--quoteo(post=1760413:date=Mar 21 2010, 07:55 AM:name=torisutan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (torisutan @ Mar 21 2010, 07:55 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760413"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i have absolutely no idea how you twisted my words around to get that impression.
i'll leave it at that, lol.
if you want my opinion it's sad not see awesome reveals every week, but it's expected considering the size of the UWE team, and that they most likely have to put a lot of work into everything they release (including reveals and other presentations).
if i were a dev i wouldn't want to rush out a bunch of sub-par updates, reveals, or an alpha that wouldn't do my project the justice i feel it would deserve.
release the game when it's ready, and release updates when they are convenient. as long as there isn't silence for months at a time, i'll keep waiting, and so will the rest of us who aren't demanding more than what is "reasonable".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> <!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--quoteo(post=1760417:date=Mar 21 2010, 08:52 AM:name=OnosFactory)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (OnosFactory @ Mar 21 2010, 08:52 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760417"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->"We care about OUR game..."
Uhm, last time I checked up about intellectual property rights, its NOT your game, your just buying a liscence to play it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The last time I checked. If the game suck. Consumer retaliate. Sales went down. No profit. Game company dies...
pSyk0mAnNerdish by NatureGermanyJoin Date: 2003-08-07Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
edited March 2010
<!--quoteo(post=1760419:date=Mar 21 2010, 10:59 AM:name=fuyuki359)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fuyuki359 @ Mar 21 2010, 10:59 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760419"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I haven't listened to the podcast, but I wouldn't call these meetings and whatever useless. I guess you kinda need those meeting to make new contacts (sponsors) or refresh old ones and be up-to-date in the gamedev-business.
<!--quoteo(post=1760419:date=Mar 21 2010, 01:59 AM:name=fuyuki359)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fuyuki359 @ Mar 21 2010, 01:59 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760419"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> they're video game developers, not slaves in a chinese sweat shop.
i felt a little let down when they pushed back the release date, but it's still no reason to go ape###### ragemode on the forums, trying to tell devs how to spend their time.
<!--quoteo(post=1760419:date=Mar 21 2010, 10:59 AM:name=fuyuki359)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fuyuki359 @ Mar 21 2010, 10:59 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760419"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, couple of days somewhere else than headquarters is always setback /sarcasm. If you could read between lines, you really could hear what they learned from the GDC and why they went there (I won't tell it to you).
The podcast was informative and as they sayd, they made it because some of us wanted to know what they learned from the GDC. And making polished reveal takes time from developing the game, I rather listen 25minutes of talking (which took 25 minutes out of their game developing time) than see new reveal (approximately would take them 24-48 hours).
PS. I have no idea why I answered ragetroll post... Maybe I'm weak.
<!--quoteo(post=1760427:date=Mar 21 2010, 03:05 PM:name=Tom Hoen)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tom Hoen @ Mar 21 2010, 03:05 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760427"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The podcast was informative and as they sayd, they made it because some of us wanted to know what they learned from the GDC. And making polished reveal takes time from developing the game, I rather listen 25minutes of talking (which took 25 minutes out of their game developing time) than see new reveal (approximately would take them 24-48 hours).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> If you believe they did not "orchestrade" the podcast you are a bit naive, it obviously took more than 25min and doing normal update shouldnt as long as you suggests. The truth is I want to know more about how NS2 runs thats why I'm wasting my time here on the forums and last week was a bit off topic although not completely irrelevant and this week was a last nail into the coffin.
I'm just annoyed that it seems we dont get anything of real interest in a very long time.
Going to conventions is quite useful, it's important in the games industry to talk to other people and get to know them, as well as to be known yourself. Going to something like GDC lets you see what other companies are working on, where the industry is going as a whole, and you can adjust your projects accordingly.
<!--quoteo(post=1760434:date=Mar 21 2010, 02:28 PM:name=TrC)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TrC @ Mar 21 2010, 02:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760434"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm just annoyed that it seems we dont get anything of real interest in a very long time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Patience is a virtue and it's been widely discussed and I don't know why people have to keep being reminded, however a small team constantly giving updates; more so the fact they are giving more updates than any other game company I've ever witnessed, is hard to keep up.
A positive mental attitude from here on in this thread would be nice, keep an open mind and remember, the game will be released when it's ready.
Kouji_SanSr. Hινε UÏкεεÏεг - EUPT DeputyThe NetherlandsJoin Date: 2003-05-13Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
Hmm you guys seem to want, because they have your precious preorder moneys? Stop wanting, UWE gives out more information with twitter and weekly news posts then any other company in this industry even dares to give. For valid reasons like the general reaction, which is "OMFG WE WANT MOAR!!!"
Give them an inch and they want more, give them all and they still want more...
<!--quoteo(post=1760434:date=Mar 21 2010, 08:28 AM:name=TrC)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TrC @ Mar 21 2010, 08:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760434"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you believe they did not "orchestrade" the podcast you are a bit naive, it obviously took more than 25min and doing normal update shouldnt as long as you suggests.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually it took 25 minutes. Plus maybe the 5 it took Max to upload it and post it on the front page.
<!--quoteo(post=1760469:date=Mar 21 2010, 02:46 PM:name=BreadMan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (BreadMan @ Mar 21 2010, 02:46 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760469"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Actually it took 25 minutes. Plus maybe the 5 it took Max to upload it and post it on the front page.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't take his word for it. All of those "and um what else did we do?" and "oh, yeah, I forgot you went to that. How was that?" were just rehearsed and well acted lines of banter to make this seem like it only took half an hour. I think it's safe to say we all know that this podcast shut down NS2 production, probably for days, as opposed to the claim that it's something you guys all did on a break or during lunch.
I mean, after that <i>performance</i> I'm pretty sure you guys can be your own voice actors.
schkorpioI can mspaintJoin Date: 2003-05-23Member: 16635Members
<!--quoteo(post=1760512:date=Mar 22 2010, 07:47 AM:name=Thaldarin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Thaldarin @ Mar 22 2010, 07:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760512"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Did you really just say that SentrySteve? Maybe you should consider leaving the forums.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1760512:date=Mar 22 2010, 05:47 AM:name=Thaldarin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Thaldarin @ Mar 22 2010, 05:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760512"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Did you really just say that SentrySteve? Maybe you should consider leaving the forums.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You might want to check your sarcasm detector, I blame the trolls!
I really liked the talk about telling a story with the environment, especially since I often wonder about the general story behind each map.
How did the xenos get on board?
How did the marines get on board?
Where are we? Not just are we on a planet or in space, but where exactly are we? Far from Earth, close to Earth?
Why are we here? Why not just nuke it from orbit? Why is this valuable enough to warrent clearing it out?
I think those questions should be answered for each map. Perhaps sometimes directly, like in the loading screen to the map, but preferably through the environment, as you mentioned.
Building a interesting story behind each map would be a great leap forward for online FPSes.
Little things give the world life, like a scientist's corpse behind a locked door, pistol in hand, with a nearby vent visibly broken open.
The only other place where I've seen these sorts of questions asked and answered was Quake Wars, but that was all through the loading screen, never through the environment. And the story was nothing beyond "we have to do this because Earth's fate depends on it." Nobody existed besides you, which lessened the feel of the game's world.
Podcast 28 Transcript: Work in progress Gosh! It has been such a long time since the last podcast. Unfortunately, this time there wasn't much new information about NS2. This transcript is about halfway through the podcast (i'll probably finish the rest later during the week). There were a lot of game names and peoples' names used that i don't know, so i may have misspelled them.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->C: Welcome to Unknownworlds podcast number 28. This is Charlie and with me is Max, Brian and Brendan. M: Hello B: Hi Br: Hey C: we haven't done this in quite a while. It's gonna be a little rough, but we thought we would talk about the Game Developers Conference that happened here in San Francisco last week. We went to a bunch of sessions, and we thought we would go over some of the stuff that happened and how it relates to NS2. So, One of the big trends i saw this year was using statistics in games to see what players are doing, what they're buying and how they're playing. We saw this a bit with Valve and their heatmaps, and things they did a year or two ago. But now with all the behemoths doing tons of money with social games like Zinga (?) and Playfish (?) - they're going crazy instrumenting their games figuring out what people are clicking on, what things they can put in their game to increase play length. It's kind of crazy. It's like they have automated how to make games better. They don't talk about it, they just test. . It's kinda creepy and kinda cool at the same time. They do AB(?) tests for everything. You wanna make this little change to the game? - ok we're going to deploy this one little change to 5% of our users and see if it's better. I don't really know what happens if they make bad changes – i guess some of the players would get confused. Like "why did the super strawberries cost 10 coins yesterday for me and only 5 coins for you?" I guess nobody notices, because they are not that engaged in it. If we did that, you guys would freak out M: Yeah, we were talking about games like Farmville – "the way games should be", in air quotes. C: that's true M: It's hard to imagine how we could do AB testing like that for Natural Selection. But i've heard about cases where a game developer will introduce some game feature into the game which just turns out to not work very well which they take out. It's not really an AB test, it's an A test. C: Right M: But it is using the feedback from the audience. So even a hardcore multiplayer game you can take that kind of feedback and change the game C: But then i saw some other guy who did kinda the same thing with Xbox live data. He worked at Microsoft, but he scraped all the data – he didn't have any access to anything internal – but he just wrote the software to scrape all the public Xbox life status updates, so when you join the game, that's available on the web . He created all these graphs: how long people play games, how long after they buy a DRM they play the game – It's crazy, crazy graphs, which are actually pretty cool. Gave me a bunch of ideas how we can leverage stats in NS2 though we don't have any capability for that yet, so it's kinda long term. M: Steam has the ability to record some of that data, C: Ok. I know they did some of it for TF2 M: Which is a good segue way, because one big announcement at GDC was that Steam is coming to the Mac with source engine . So all the source engine games will be available on Mac. C: Yay! M: It doesn't meant that every game on Steam will be available on Mac C: Right, of course. M: But it's obviously exciting news for us, because we're fully integrated with steam, actually steam is required to play the game, so .. before it looked like we might have to sacrifice future plans of bringing Natural Selection to the Mac , but now that steam is going to be available, that is not a barrier C: That is awesome. Good for them to be doing that. It's gonna be so awesome. We're definitely big Mac fans here. I think most of us have at least one Mac – a PC and a Mac. Br: I don't – i do have an Ipod. C: You're halfway there. You'll buy one soon enough. It's the whole plan. So actually Brandon was at GDC, so tell us what you were doing there. Br: I had a game called Cogs, which you may have heard of , which was nominated for an excellence in design category in IGF, which was a lot of fun. M: IGF is the Independent Games Festival M: And in case you don't know who this is, this is Brad Mann (?), who was narrating the videos and was doing the level design Br: Yes. If you don't recognize the voice, it's because i also got sick a GDC. That was great. Being nominated means you get a free all-access pass, you get to sit at the table in front of the awards ceremony and you get to have booth space on the show floor. So, that was a lot of fun, meeting a lot of all kinds of great people and hanging out with all the other indie developers there. C: Talking non-stop for three days ... at high volume Br: Yes, talking non-stop for three days, getting Niangitis (??). But no, it was totally a blast and totally worth it. C: That's awesome M: Was that the first time that you've really seen other people at your game at high volume like that? Br: Actually we were fortunate enough to also be invited to E3 for the indie gate, so we were able to get there. But much higher volume here at GDC C: Oh really that's nice. Br: Indie kid(?) was kinda at the back corner of E3 in the dark , but yeah it was great. B: At Games Developers Conference I've heard from a lot of people that the highlight was checking out the indie games C: It's pretty inspirational to see that stuff. It's really wonderful. I don't know, there always so many clever concepts and great art direction – i love the spirit there: everyone is cranking out something really interesting, totally passionate Br: The indie game developers are some of my favorite people in the world. Half of GDC is just hanging out with people C: Right. The indie scene seems to be growing every year. At least i hear the wrod "indie" more often. More indie parties, everything is indie. So its cool. What else did we see? Br: I actually went to a full day of level design talks, which i found really interesting. A lot of people from Epic and Chaos. I thing the most interesting by far was Joel Burgus (sP??) from Bethesda . He is really a smart guy and just hearing him talk about building characters into the environments and telling little stories using just your environment, that i'm definitely will be trying to work into C: Is that like handwritten notes in Bioshock? Br: Yeah, there was a lot of talk about bioshock C: ... Battlestar Galactica- like wall of death notes – what happened here (missing) Br: He showed some examples from fallout 3 where you were wandering through wasteland and you would pick up a radio broadcast that would take you to a bunker with some skeletons in it. You'd get a little story about the people who were there M: ... lat year where they talk about something like that. They were talking about farcry 2 and they showed this one little world where one level designer set out this little encampment. There was this whole story the level designer thought out, where those 2 guys were stationed there and they would wake up one time in the morning and they would sit on top of the encampment on easy chairs and see the sun come up and drink beer all day and they would have props set up for that. And he mentioned that really small percentage of people would ever get to see that and even smaller percentage of people would get all that. But i guess you have enough of that so it creates an interesting world. Br: But Cory and I have definitely talk about characters in maps. Make the maps look lived in and that is definitely along the same lines C: I guess the trick with that is you don't want to tell the player what's happening. You want to show the player through level design. So ideally you wouldn't be listening to or reading logs . You'd just get it M: In left for dead they had all these notes on the wall, which played into that. C: Yeah i guess they were handwritten so they were really short and easy to read. It wasn't like you had to read a journal entry or a ___ page. It was just a second as you were exploring . You're right that was actually really awesome. Also a legal talk from Legends __ from __ games. They were talking about taking an existing game, in their case DODA and keeping the hardcore gamers really happy with the sequel but also expanding it to reach a bigger, larger casual audience, which of course were good lessons for NS2. I'm trying to think of some good examples. I took some notes here: Don't change the UI without good reason, Seems obvious, but... They moved the minimap from lower left to lower right and they had a huge fallout from it . They didn't have a good reason for moving it – they just thought it just flowed better . Br: Hotkeys C: Yeah, don't mess with hotkeys, although Starcraft 2 has messed them way a lot. Br: It must not be a really good then though (???) C: Yeah i just figure Blizzard could do no wrong, but i don't know why they changed so many . What else did you guys see? I saw the main blizzard guy talk about randomness, yeah Rod Parker (??) He says, on of his take always is that when you make things actually random, you can still have really long strings where something really improbable happens and players freak out, because they think it's not random, because they think they should have gotten something by now, or that they shouldn't have something rare happen a bunch of times in a row, so they actually made their random number generator and their random events less random. B: It sounds like where e__ was talking about this design where --- Will Write C: Oh yeah the Will Right talk. What's up with that. He payed all that money B: It was packed so. People new about it C: Did they? Ok. M: Sid Meier talked about the same thing same randomness thing. He was talking about civilizations revolutions, i think, which i have never talked about before this talk. I guess it was the latest civilizations game and they had the same issue with the randomness. People just didn't expect the events they were getting from a true randomness generator. So they did all this monkeying with the C: That blizzard also mentioned<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1760568:date=Mar 22 2010, 03:16 AM:name=SgtHydra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SgtHydra @ Mar 22 2010, 03:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1760568"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I really liked the talk about telling a story with the environment, especially since I often wonder about the general story behind each map.
How did the xenos get on board?
How did the marines get on board?
Where are we? Not just are we on a planet or in space, but where exactly are we? Far from Earth, close to Earth?
Why are we here? Why not just nuke it from orbit? Why is this valuable enough to warrent clearing it out?
I think those questions should be answered for each map. Perhaps sometimes directly, like in the loading screen to the map, but preferably through the environment, as you mentioned.
Building a interesting story behind each map would be a great leap forward for online FPSes.
Little things give the world life, like a scientist's corpse behind a locked door, pistol in hand, with a nearby vent visibly broken open.
The only other place where I've seen these sorts of questions asked and answered was Quake Wars, but that was all through the loading screen, never through the environment. And the story was nothing beyond "we have to do this because Earth's fate depends on it." Nobody existed besides you, which lessened the feel of the game's world.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's nice for the designer too because it gives you lots of ideas for dressing. If you have a room that fills a gameplay purpose but you can't really think of anything you really like to do with it visually, you can usually just think of a function, maybe it's an airlock and so it needs airlock things, it needs big doors, air pumping apparatus, vents etc, then think about the things the people working there would be doing with it, they would probably store some of the gear there, and then think about what happens when the aliens get in, do they run to the airlock to try and use the equipment or take shelter behind the big doors? Did they manage to get out?
Place > function > people > story is a good method I've found, gives you a lot of cohesion in the map because you see the connective links between each room and the story touches can add a nice feel to the map. Treating the map like a functional thing is good practise, break from it if you need to but wherever you can, run your map through a few years of use by people in your head and see what they're doing, then think how they act to events leading up to the game taking place there.
It's especially pertinent for a singleplayer game but it can be done in multiplayer too.
Comments
the rest of us wants a worthy sequel of ns
Trolling aside, I agree with Ryo and fuyuki. They should be able to handle the negative feedback.
And all the others should stop falling for them and quit playing wannabe-mod.
if i worked for UWE i would probably get a headache every time i visited the NS2 forum.
if i worked for UWE i would probably get a headache every time i visited the NS2 forum.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
i have absolutely no idea how you twisted my words around to get that impression.
i'll leave it at that, lol.
if you want my opinion it's sad not see awesome reveals every week, but it's expected considering the size of the UWE team, and that they most likely have to put a lot of work into everything they release (including reveals and other presentations).
if i were a dev i wouldn't want to rush out a bunch of sub-par updates, reveals, or an alpha that wouldn't do my project the justice i feel it would deserve.
release the game when it's ready, and release updates when they are convenient. as long as there isn't silence for months at a time, i'll keep waiting, and so will the rest of us who aren't demanding more than what is "reasonable".
Are you sure you know what you're talking about? NS can be looked from so many different viewpoints.
Some might say NS2 is all the same because it has still got 2 races and it's FPS/RTS.
Then again, I've played NS for years, put a big amount of thought into understanding it. For me how the skulk ability set works makes a world of difference for my gaming experience, no matter whether I'm a marine, skulk or fade myself.
The thingy I'm trying to point out is that some people base their NS enjoyment on details that other people don't even know. It's fine that way, but it would be awesome if people quit thinking that their way of playing the game is the only way to do it.
Uhm, last time I checked up about intellectual property rights, its NOT your game, your just buying a liscence to play it?
It inspires me to do a whole helluva lot less.
As I said, maybe that's just me.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
UWE aren't sharing information with us because of some altruistic principle. They're a business. They exist to make money. They want as many potential customers as possible. Look at the effect the NS2 teaser video had; interest in the game skyrocketed. Sharing information with the community gets them more customers, either from people directly seeing it, or people who have seen it telling their friends. UWE isn't doing <i>us</i> a favour by releasing news updates. They're doing <i>themselves</i> a favour. The fact that we get something out of it too is a valuable bonus.
If the reaction from the community is "Oh, that's crap", then a good business doesn't say "Well stuff it, no pleasing some people, lets just give up on giving out anything". No, they say "Hmm, that wasn't well received, lets look at releasing something different next time". A local case in point, Kraft here in Australia recently brought out a new type of Vegemite that they decided to name iSnack 2.0. The reaction from the general community was not positive. Kraft quickly reversed their decision and held a new poll to rename the product.
Businesses aren't thin-skinned. They can handle criticism. The individuals running the company might not like it too much, but they know they can learn from it. In some ways it can be the most valuable feedback of all.
i'll leave it at that, lol.
if you want my opinion it's sad not see awesome reveals every week, but it's expected considering the size of the UWE team, and that they most likely have to put a lot of work into everything they release (including reveals and other presentations).
if i were a dev i wouldn't want to rush out a bunch of sub-par updates, reveals, or an alpha that wouldn't do my project the justice i feel it would deserve.
release the game when it's ready, and release updates when they are convenient. as long as there isn't silence for months at a time, i'll keep waiting, and so will the rest of us who aren't demanding more than what is "reasonable".<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro-->Contents removed by JazzX<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Uhm, last time I checked up about intellectual property rights, its NOT your game, your just buying a liscence to play it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The last time I checked. If the game suck. Consumer retaliate. Sales went down. No profit. Game company dies...
its common sense bro
I haven't listened to the podcast, but I wouldn't call these meetings and whatever useless.
I guess you kinda need those meeting to make new contacts (sponsors) or refresh old ones and be up-to-date in the gamedev-business.
they're video game developers, not slaves in a chinese sweat shop.
i felt a little let down when they pushed back the release date, but it's still no reason to go ape###### ragemode on the forums, trying to tell devs how to spend their time.
Yes, couple of days somewhere else than headquarters is always setback /sarcasm.
If you could read between lines, you really could hear what they learned from the GDC and why they went there (I won't tell it to you).
The podcast was informative and as they sayd, they made it because some of us wanted to know what they learned from the GDC. And making polished reveal takes time from developing the game, I rather listen 25minutes of talking (which took 25 minutes out of their game developing time) than see new reveal (approximately would take them 24-48 hours).
PS. I have no idea why I answered ragetroll post... Maybe I'm weak.
I for one was thankful that there was at least an update, and that it was at least a podcast.
If you believe they did not "orchestrade" the podcast you are a bit naive, it obviously took more than 25min and doing normal update shouldnt as long as you suggests. The truth is I want to know more about how NS2 runs thats why I'm wasting my time here on the forums and last week was a bit off topic although not completely irrelevant and this week was a last nail into the coffin.
I'm just annoyed that it seems we dont get anything of real interest in a very long time.
Patience is a virtue and it's been widely discussed and I don't know why people have to keep being reminded, however a small team constantly giving updates; more so the fact they are giving more updates than any other game company I've ever witnessed, is hard to keep up.
A positive mental attitude from here on in this thread would be nice, keep an open mind and remember, the game will be released when it's ready.
Give them an inch and they want more, give them all and they still want more...
Actually it took 25 minutes. Plus maybe the 5 it took Max to upload it and post it on the front page.
Don't take his word for it. All of those "and um what else did we do?" and "oh, yeah, I forgot you went to that. How was that?" were just rehearsed and well acted lines of banter to make this seem like it only took half an hour. I think it's safe to say we all know that this podcast shut down NS2 production, probably for days, as opposed to the claim that it's something you guys all did on a break or during lunch.
I mean, after that <i>performance</i> I'm pretty sure you guys can be your own voice actors.
EDIT// Apparently my sarcasm detector fails.
pretty sure it was sarcasm :)
BWA HAHAHA.. hungry much?
You might want to check your sarcasm detector, I blame the trolls!
thank you,
schkorpio.
How did the xenos get on board?
How did the marines get on board?
Where are we? Not just are we on a planet or in space, but where exactly are we? Far from Earth, close to Earth?
Why are we here? Why not just nuke it from orbit? Why is this valuable enough to warrent clearing it out?
I think those questions should be answered for each map. Perhaps sometimes directly, like in the loading screen to the map, but preferably through the environment, as you mentioned.
Building a interesting story behind each map would be a great leap forward for online FPSes.
Little things give the world life, like a scientist's corpse behind a locked door, pistol in hand, with a nearby vent visibly broken open.
The only other place where I've seen these sorts of questions asked and answered was Quake Wars, but that was all through the loading screen, never through the environment. And the story was nothing beyond "we have to do this because Earth's fate depends on it." Nobody existed besides you, which lessened the feel of the game's world.
Gosh! It has been such a long time since the last podcast. Unfortunately, this time there wasn't much new information about NS2.
This transcript is about halfway through the podcast (i'll probably finish the rest later during the week). There were a lot of game names and peoples' names used that i don't know, so i may have misspelled them.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->C: Welcome to Unknownworlds podcast number 28. This is Charlie and with me is Max, Brian and Brendan.
M: Hello
B: Hi
Br: Hey
C: we haven't done this in quite a while. It's gonna be a little rough, but we thought we would talk about the Game Developers Conference that happened here in San Francisco last week.
We went to a bunch of sessions, and we thought we would go over some of the stuff that happened and how it relates to NS2.
So, One of the big trends i saw this year was using statistics in games to see what players are doing, what they're buying and how they're playing. We saw this a bit with Valve and their heatmaps, and things they did a year or two ago. But now with all the behemoths doing tons of money with social games like Zinga (?) and Playfish (?) - they're going crazy instrumenting their games figuring out what people are clicking on, what things they can put in their game to increase play length. It's kind of crazy. It's like they have automated how to make games better. They don't talk about it, they just test. . It's kinda creepy and kinda cool at the same time. They do AB(?) tests for everything. You wanna make this little change to the game? - ok we're going to deploy this one little change to 5% of our users and see if it's better. I don't really know what happens if they make bad changes – i guess some of the players would get confused. Like "why did the super strawberries cost 10 coins yesterday for me and only 5 coins for you?" I guess nobody notices, because they are not that engaged in it. If we did that, you guys would freak out
M: Yeah, we were talking about games like Farmville – "the way games should be", in air quotes.
C: that's true
M: It's hard to imagine how we could do AB testing like that for Natural Selection. But i've heard about cases where a game developer will introduce some game feature into the game which just turns out to not work very well which they take out. It's not really an AB test, it's an A test.
C: Right
M: But it is using the feedback from the audience. So even a hardcore multiplayer game you can take that kind of feedback and change the game
C: But then i saw some other guy who did kinda the same thing with Xbox live data. He worked at Microsoft, but he scraped all the data – he didn't have any access to anything internal – but he just wrote the software to scrape all the public Xbox life status updates, so when you join the game, that's available on the web . He created all these graphs: how long people play games, how long after they buy a DRM they play the game – It's crazy, crazy graphs, which are actually pretty cool. Gave me a bunch of ideas how we can leverage stats in NS2 though we don't have any capability for that yet, so it's kinda long term.
M: Steam has the ability to record some of that data,
C: Ok. I know they did some of it for TF2
M: Which is a good segue way, because one big announcement at GDC was that Steam is coming to the Mac with source engine . So all the source engine games will be available on Mac.
C: Yay!
M: It doesn't meant that every game on Steam will be available on Mac
C: Right, of course.
M: But it's obviously exciting news for us, because we're fully integrated with steam, actually steam is required to play the game, so .. before it looked like we might have to sacrifice future plans of bringing Natural Selection to the Mac , but now that steam is going to be available, that is not a barrier
C: That is awesome. Good for them to be doing that. It's gonna be so awesome. We're definitely big Mac fans here. I think most of us have at least one Mac – a PC and a Mac.
Br: I don't – i do have an Ipod.
C: You're halfway there. You'll buy one soon enough. It's the whole plan. So actually Brandon was at GDC, so tell us what you were doing there.
Br: I had a game called Cogs, which you may have heard of , which was nominated for an excellence in design category in IGF, which was a lot of fun.
M: IGF is the Independent Games Festival
M: And in case you don't know who this is, this is Brad Mann (?), who was narrating the videos and was doing the level design
Br: Yes. If you don't recognize the voice, it's because i also got sick a GDC. That was great. Being nominated means you get a free all-access pass, you get to sit at the table in front of the awards ceremony and you get to have booth space on the show floor. So, that was a lot of fun, meeting a lot of all kinds of great people and hanging out with all the other indie developers there.
C: Talking non-stop for three days ... at high volume
Br: Yes, talking non-stop for three days, getting Niangitis (??). But no, it was totally a blast and totally worth it.
C: That's awesome
M: Was that the first time that you've really seen other people at your game at high volume like that?
Br: Actually we were fortunate enough to also be invited to E3 for the indie gate, so we were able to get there. But much higher volume here at GDC
C: Oh really that's nice.
Br: Indie kid(?) was kinda at the back corner of E3 in the dark , but yeah it was great.
B: At Games Developers Conference I've heard from a lot of people that the highlight was checking out the indie games
C: It's pretty inspirational to see that stuff. It's really wonderful. I don't know, there always so many clever concepts and great art direction – i love the spirit there: everyone is cranking out something really interesting, totally passionate
Br: The indie game developers are some of my favorite people in the world. Half of GDC is just hanging out with people
C: Right. The indie scene seems to be growing every year. At least i hear the wrod "indie" more often. More indie parties, everything is indie. So its cool. What else did we see?
Br: I actually went to a full day of level design talks, which i found really interesting. A lot of people from Epic and Chaos. I thing the most interesting by far was Joel Burgus (sP??) from Bethesda . He is really a smart guy and just hearing him talk about building characters into the environments and telling little stories using just your environment, that i'm definitely will be trying to work into
C: Is that like handwritten notes in Bioshock?
Br: Yeah, there was a lot of talk about bioshock
C: ... Battlestar Galactica- like wall of death notes – what happened here (missing)
Br: He showed some examples from fallout 3 where you were wandering through wasteland and you would pick up a radio broadcast that would take you to a bunker with some skeletons in it. You'd get a little story about the people who were there
M: ... lat year where they talk about something like that. They were talking about farcry 2 and they showed this one little world where one level designer set out this little encampment. There was this whole story the level designer thought out, where those 2 guys were stationed there and they would wake up one time in the morning and they would sit on top of the encampment on easy chairs and see the sun come up and drink beer all day and they would have props set up for that. And he mentioned that really small percentage of people would ever get to see that and even smaller percentage of people would get all that. But i guess you have enough of that so it creates an interesting world.
Br: But Cory and I have definitely talk about characters in maps. Make the maps look lived in and that is definitely along the same lines
C: I guess the trick with that is you don't want to tell the player what's happening. You want to show the player through level design. So ideally you wouldn't be listening to or reading logs . You'd just get it
M: In left for dead they had all these notes on the wall, which played into that.
C: Yeah i guess they were handwritten so they were really short and easy to read. It wasn't like you had to read a journal entry or a ___ page. It was just a second as you were exploring . You're right that was actually really awesome. Also a legal talk from Legends __ from __ games. They were talking about taking an existing game, in their case DODA and keeping the hardcore gamers really happy with the sequel but also expanding it to reach a bigger, larger casual audience, which of course were good lessons for NS2. I'm trying to think of some good examples. I took some notes here:
Don't change the UI without good reason, Seems obvious, but... They moved the minimap from lower left to lower right and they had a huge fallout from it . They didn't have a good reason for moving it – they just thought it just flowed better .
Br: Hotkeys
C: Yeah, don't mess with hotkeys, although Starcraft 2 has messed them way a lot.
Br: It must not be a really good then though (???)
C: Yeah i just figure Blizzard could do no wrong, but i don't know why they changed so many . What else did you guys see? I saw the main blizzard guy talk about randomness, yeah Rod Parker (??) He says, on of his take always is that when you make things actually random, you can still have really long strings where something really improbable happens and players freak out, because they think it's not random, because they think they should have gotten something by now, or that they shouldn't have something rare happen a bunch of times in a row, so they actually made their random number generator and their random events less random.
B: It sounds like where e__ was talking about this design where --- Will Write
C: Oh yeah the Will Right talk. What's up with that. He payed all that money
B: It was packed so. People new about it
C: Did they? Ok.
M: Sid Meier talked about the same thing same randomness thing. He was talking about civilizations revolutions, i think, which i have never talked about before this talk. I guess it was the latest civilizations game and they had the same issue with the randomness. People just didn't expect the events they were getting from a true randomness generator. So they did all this monkeying with the
C: That blizzard also mentioned<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How did the xenos get on board?
How did the marines get on board?
Where are we? Not just are we on a planet or in space, but where exactly are we? Far from Earth, close to Earth?
Why are we here? Why not just nuke it from orbit? Why is this valuable enough to warrent clearing it out?
I think those questions should be answered for each map. Perhaps sometimes directly, like in the loading screen to the map, but preferably through the environment, as you mentioned.
Building a interesting story behind each map would be a great leap forward for online FPSes.
Little things give the world life, like a scientist's corpse behind a locked door, pistol in hand, with a nearby vent visibly broken open.
The only other place where I've seen these sorts of questions asked and answered was Quake Wars, but that was all through the loading screen, never through the environment. And the story was nothing beyond "we have to do this because Earth's fate depends on it." Nobody existed besides you, which lessened the feel of the game's world.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's nice for the designer too because it gives you lots of ideas for dressing. If you have a room that fills a gameplay purpose but you can't really think of anything you really like to do with it visually, you can usually just think of a function, maybe it's an airlock and so it needs airlock things, it needs big doors, air pumping apparatus, vents etc, then think about the things the people working there would be doing with it, they would probably store some of the gear there, and then think about what happens when the aliens get in, do they run to the airlock to try and use the equipment or take shelter behind the big doors? Did they manage to get out?
Place > function > people > story is a good method I've found, gives you a lot of cohesion in the map because you see the connective links between each room and the story touches can add a nice feel to the map. Treating the map like a functional thing is good practise, break from it if you need to but wherever you can, run your map through a few years of use by people in your head and see what they're doing, then think how they act to events leading up to the game taking place there.
It's especially pertinent for a singleplayer game but it can be done in multiplayer too.
Thus saying Accountants, Lawyers and Gf's are braindead? Not everyone does a science degree, 'bro.'
Never, never will it be common sense to tell ones Gf they're braindead!
Wow some people get over excited. Trolls and fools are out in full force.
Ignore the vocal minority. The podcast was interesting, even though it had little to do with NS2.