20 000 keys out, time to push modding!
derWalter
Join Date: 2008-10-29 Member: 65323Members
Join Date: 2008-10-29 Member: 65323Members
i really like the way the modders are going atm, but to be honest,
why are there no total conversions out there?
i mean there are near 20k keys sold and the game is fully modable
from the very first release of it, so whats holding back the ppl?
what i noticed in the mod community i sometimes streak,
is that that nearly no one knows of the ultra great possibilities
the spark engine offers!
i think this is one of the most underestimated and neglected features
in the PR and advertising of the game.
this is the biggest anchor for constant selling numbers after release.
because when the fps/rts hybrid marked is saturated, uwe could
still sell TONS of keys because everyone wants to play the mods!
if mod installing is totally newbfriendly (perfect would be an own serverbrowser tab
and only a doubleclick needed to start download and install of a mod)
also a list with installed mods would be nice, so i have only to double click on
my favorite mod and the serverbrowser instantly shows my mods sers.
so what i am talking about is, that we, the community should try to focus more on
advertising the modding capabilities of the spark engine, then vanilla NS2.
the ns2 advertising runs great and is running, now we should start to thing about
the future and going deep as underground as possible.
there are artwork communities, sound communities, modding communities for all
different types of engines, we should try to flood and infiltrate them and pull
as much ppl over as possible. because than uwe can work on spark for five and
more years making spark the top of the pop and we get tons of good mods to play.
i personally hope for CS2 to be a spark mod... but for that spark and spark server!
has to evolve some more stages, to keep up with 100fps rockstable goldsource
on 1000fps server feeling.
they should try to get the maximum out of it,
if they don't see the quality they should see the PR.
numbers is everything :P
i hope some of you guys will join me ;)
why are there no total conversions out there?
i mean there are near 20k keys sold and the game is fully modable
from the very first release of it, so whats holding back the ppl?
what i noticed in the mod community i sometimes streak,
is that that nearly no one knows of the ultra great possibilities
the spark engine offers!
i think this is one of the most underestimated and neglected features
in the PR and advertising of the game.
this is the biggest anchor for constant selling numbers after release.
because when the fps/rts hybrid marked is saturated, uwe could
still sell TONS of keys because everyone wants to play the mods!
if mod installing is totally newbfriendly (perfect would be an own serverbrowser tab
and only a doubleclick needed to start download and install of a mod)
also a list with installed mods would be nice, so i have only to double click on
my favorite mod and the serverbrowser instantly shows my mods sers.
so what i am talking about is, that we, the community should try to focus more on
advertising the modding capabilities of the spark engine, then vanilla NS2.
the ns2 advertising runs great and is running, now we should start to thing about
the future and going deep as underground as possible.
there are artwork communities, sound communities, modding communities for all
different types of engines, we should try to flood and infiltrate them and pull
as much ppl over as possible. because than uwe can work on spark for five and
more years making spark the top of the pop and we get tons of good mods to play.
i personally hope for CS2 to be a spark mod... but for that spark and spark server!
has to evolve some more stages, to keep up with 100fps rockstable goldsource
on 1000fps server feeling.
they should try to get the maximum out of it,
if they don't see the quality they should see the PR.
numbers is everything :P
i hope some of you guys will join me ;)
Comments
Also, I doubt Spark really is the engine to be building the next Counter-Strike on. The atmosphere is just completely off.
Having said that, I do look forward to seeing Combat (and possibly Classic) built on top of NS2.
why are there no total conversions out there?
i mean there are near 20k keys sold and the game is fully modable
from the very first release of it, so whats holding back the ppl?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. no model converter (collader is the exporter but you have to compile to model)
2. you can only edit lua not c++ so there not all functions in the engine
3. the game isn't done which means if you work on a mod/TC then they change some stuff, you have to fix or start all over
4. have patience, after its final, there will come a lot of mods i guess.
<b>
I hope its okay for Cory to post his message here:
</b>
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...will it possible to create own Total Conversations for natural selection 2, with custom models and stuff?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes. Since NS1 was a mod, we are making a big effort to make NS2 very friendly and easy for modders, which is why we ship with all of our internal development tools, such as the level editor, model viewer, model exporter, etc. So, you should be able to make all new models and textures and environments, and even code new gameplay pretty easily using the LUA script. There are some elements missing at the moment, or that we still have to make easier to use, but once we ship we can put more focus onto the tools again.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is just great, so you will see a lot of modifications i guess.
Maybe new races, weapons and stuff.
To be really honest about the modding scene of NS2. Wait until it is close to the official 1.0 release OR a few months after it.
You should start seeing possibly total conversions in the making.
I would like to start modding NS2 myself and make skulks shoot out fireballs and have my super onos be lifted by a lerk or have my flamethrower spit out nanobots!! :P
I got some ideas too but its a TC.
I would be like Mount and Blade + RTS but with my own ideas.
Their engine does also still lack a huge amount of functionality, such as reading/writing files (afaik).
[plead to uwe]Please, atleast give us access to some sort of data/ folder where we can play with .txt files xD[/plead to uwe] and we could not use steam id before build 161 (iirc).
So even tough it has potentiall, it is still limited (unless you add a custom .dll yourself ;P). Hopefully they implement those features soon, so we can do map cyclers, admin mods and more.
What holds me back the most though, is my lack of time. If I had time I could have learnt their engine without documentation (like some seems to have), I could have modded at all. But for some reason all my time is devoured school (internship atm), a gmod srv, and life (life? :O). Sure I could take myself the time, but I rather get good grades ;).
I did make a reserved slots mod though, but people got confused by it for some reason, thinking it had to do with special edition. As soon as we get abilite to change amount of slots the srv shows in browser, I will update the mod, as then people wont think they join an open server. Hopefully I can also get the steamid before they actually joined the game, to boot them faster. I would also prefer if I could customize the text showing client why he lost connection :P.
Nice enthusiasm and all; but the game, the engine, and the tools are nowhere near feature-complete.
Additionally there have been a few reshuffles and changes to the way the LUA interfaces with the engine without backwards compatibility (which pre-v1.0 I wouldn't ever expect) during the alpha so until v1 there is a chance you'd have to go through and change significant portions of your LUA due to engine changes.
Also, I doubt Spark really is the engine to be building the next Counter-Strike on. The atmosphere is just completely off.
Having said that, I do look forward to seeing Combat (and possibly Classic) built on top of NS2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You are not wrong here, but I would like to add that this depends entirely on what you're shooting for. If you want your mod to visually compete with the current big titles then yes, you basically need a pro-team for that. Recent success of a number if Indie games suggests however that looks aren't everything and a great game can work well with blocky graphics.
What's the point of modding at the moment? I'm not even bothering to map because I don't know how everything is supposed to work and I'll only have to redo everything.
Patience is a virtue, it is more fun and more efficient to wait until you have a solid game to mess about with, rather than working with something half finished and unstable.
There already are some mods, though they are the traditional type (i.e. small changes) rather than games. I'm currently using both the Marine GUI and minimap mods.
bla bla bla<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why aren't you making one then?
so there is no argument ns2 gets updated so regularly :)
ofc the amount of artwork to do is intense if you want a cutting edge gfx quality mod,
but u can start with jumping boxes if you want :) and you have to code your game
by yourself. a tc is independent from the ns2 lua code and i dont think that they
will cut out so much functionality from the spark engine you are building on :)
and if, they will tell you if they know you are working with it!
i would love to bring cs 1.6 to the spark engine, but do not want to do it alone ;)
i still got the c++ code from counterstrike but some one has to translate it into lua.
there are tons of free models out there in the web wich could be used;
i dont see big problems at mapping... as far as we could bring in enough DUST :P
so there is no argument ns2 gets updated so regularly :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There's no point in re-inventing the wheel, there are a bunch of great reusable classes from the NS2 code. Also since there's no proper documentation, modders have to rely on the NS2 files as a starting point. UWE is also changing how parts of the engine work still so some lua functions may get added,removed, or just used differently.
<!--quoteo(post=1827505:date=Jan 26 2011, 12:52 PM:name=derWalter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (derWalter @ Jan 26 2011, 12:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1827505"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i would love to bring cs 1.6 to the spark engine, but do not want to do it alone ;)
i still got the c++ code from counterstrike but some one has to translate it into lua.
there are tons of free models out there in the web wich could be used;
i dont see big problems at mapping... as far as we could bring in enough DUST :P<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I also had the idea of remaking CS too and I even had started a CS/COD like mod but stopped for 2 reasons. The first reason was that I wanted to wait for the game to become more final. The second was that it will be easy to create hacks like aimbots and wallhacks for NS2, so I didn't want to make a mod that could easily have it's gameplay ruined by aimbot/wallhacks. Aimbots and wallhacks won't ruin NS2 as bad as they ruin other FPSes like CS because of the drastically different gameplay. As for having the CS c++ code, it's illegal to posses that so I wouldn't make that claim on an internet forum.
HL has around 15 years of testing (including Quake code base). NS2 has very little and simplest bugs like scoreboard aren't getting fixed. You've got to be a masochist to mod NS2 instead of UDK.
I also had the idea of remaking CS too and I even had started a CS/COD like mod but stopped for 2 reasons. The first reason was that I wanted to wait for the game to become more final. The second was that it will be easy to create hacks like aimbots and wallhacks for NS2, so I didn't want to make a mod that could easily have it's gameplay ruined by aimbot/wallhacks. Aimbots and wallhacks won't ruin NS2 as bad as they ruin other FPSes like CS because of the drastically different gameplay. As for having the CS c++ code, it's illegal to posses that so I wouldn't make that claim on an internet forum.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
uwe will have to find a solution for the aimbot and hack issue.
they want to have vanilla only servers, so the have to check integrity of local lua files too.
so i leave that open to uwe :) if its flooded with cheaters the game will not last for long!
the c++ code i am talking could be found an google code ;)
also who said that i didn't lie?
what did you do so far? and how many ppl where involved?
are you still interested? if yes, lets have a talk :)
Or enjoy a good challenge.