<!--quoteo(post=1867980:date=Aug 9 2011, 11:08 PM:name=meb3)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (meb3 @ Aug 9 2011, 11:08 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1867980"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Good joke guys. Competitive NS2 is a bigger joke to UWE than the joke they played on us over 5 years ago called the ATI tournament.
Maybe UWE will start to care about you brave veterans two months after they release NS2 1.0 and begin to realize no one is playing it because they designed it to cater to the finicky scum of multiplayer video games that flourish on poor game mechanics and 'nostalgia' and aimlessly flock from game to game like birds in the wind.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Talk about not having the ability to move on...
If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all [or I'll cut you]...
<!--quoteo(post=1868065:date=Aug 10 2011, 12:56 PM:name=Bacillus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Bacillus @ Aug 10 2011, 12:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868065"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The gameplay relation to competetive play is a bit of a mystery for me. Certainly you can have competetive community even in rather unfavorable gameplay structure (The recent CoD games come to mind first), but I'm not sure how it works on a community of this size - And I doubt anyone exactly knows how big of an actual community we are running even now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> At this point I can't see how we can avoid a pro-mod to be frank. I try NS2 on and off and cannot believe how incredibly gimped the movement is, and it does not seem to get any better, nor do I think UWE has the intention to do so. It's not really something I hold against them, as they're trying to put out a game for a larger audience this time round. It's just that for the life of me I cannot see myself playing this for any length of time, or invest any time in trying to master it's gameplay (for which the learning-curve doesn't appear to be significant anyway). It's not beyond a point-of-no-return, but it may not be the devs who will do the salvaging...
<!--quoteo(post=1868216:date=Aug 10 2011, 03:29 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Aug 10 2011, 03:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868216"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->At this point I can't see how we can avoid a pro-mod to be frank. I try NS2 on and off and cannot believe how incredibly gimped the movement is, and it does not seem to get any better, nor do I think UWE has the intention to do so. It's not really something I hold against them, as they're trying to put out a game for a larger audience this time round. It's just that for the life of me I cannot see myself playing this for any length of time, or invest any time in trying to master it's gameplay (for which the learning-curve doesn't appear to be significant anyway). It's not beyond a point-of-no-return, but it may not be the devs who will do the salvaging...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I went back and played NS1 last night for the first time since 2007. What a difference! I don't just mean one is a finished game and one is not... I played NS2 afterward and I felt like everything was covered in molasses. The movement mechanics are just so much better in NS1!
Anyway, another post for the organized play forum!
Competitive NS2 will never have an official forum on these boards just like it will never have an HLTV equivalent within the first year of NS2 1.0.
Dota 2's developers don't think balancing and designing a game for competitive play is a joke. Competitive play has become serious business, and Dota 2 is coming out of the gates a competitive game and a spectator sport. Esports in 2011 is missing an FPS game. There is a very brief window of opportunity that is wide open right now. UWE chooses instead to continue to hamstring alien and marine movement, decrease the skill ceiling with static structures, and add to an ever-increasing feature heap that pushes back its release date.
The idea that UWE shares your interest in competitive NS2 is a joke indeed.
I'm pretty sure I can fabricate various kinds of demo-recording functionality (state-snapshots as well as packet-recording). HLTV I have a very good idea on how to pull off as well using only what we have right now.
It really is just the performance that's downright bollocks. In and of itself that's not really a biggy as we're in *cough* alpha *cough*, I'm just concerned at what kind of performance we'll be looking at down the road with 1.0. Lua-gamelogic isn't much practiced so it's anyone's guess what we will end up with.
Anyhooo, +1 for that seperate forum in case I hadn't done so. Would be nice to discuss with like-minded folks.
<!--quoteo(post=1868247:date=Aug 10 2011, 07:16 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Aug 10 2011, 07:16 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868247"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm pretty sure I can fabricate various kinds of demo-recording functionality (state-snapshots as well as packet-recording). HLTV I have a very good idea on how to pull off as well using only what we have right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> You mean that stuff could be implemented as a Lua mod? I'm impressed if that is the case. UWE, put this man on your payroll. His job title should be "future hero of esports."
<!--quoteo(post=1868247:date=Aug 11 2011, 10:16 AM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Aug 11 2011, 10:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868247"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm pretty sure I can fabricate various kinds of demo-recording functionality (state-snapshots as well as packet-recording). HLTV I have a very good idea on how to pull off as well using only what we have right now.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[Thread derailment] Player this is not a statement to make lightly. If you believe you can create a system to facilitate game recording and playback, then NS2 needs you to do it. The possibilities that a replay system would open up... There are too many to list. I'd love to chat to you about it, hit me up on the NS2HD email below if you are even mildly keen on following through on what you say you can do.
<!--quoteo(post=1868216:date=Aug 10 2011, 09:29 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Aug 10 2011, 09:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868216"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->At this point I can't see how we can avoid a pro-mod to be frank. I try NS2 on and off and cannot believe how incredibly gimped the movement is, and it does not seem to get any better, nor do I think UWE has the intention to do so. It's not really something I hold against them, as they're trying to put out a game for a larger audience this time round. It's just that for the life of me I cannot see myself playing this for any length of time, or invest any time in trying to master it's gameplay (for which the learning-curve doesn't appear to be significant anyway). It's not beyond a point-of-no-return, but it may not be the devs who will do the salvaging...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> To clarify, my previous post was more trying to observe where at least some competetive community can exist. Personally I definitely do want the gameplay (and preferrably performance) pushed much further than the treshold where some kind of primitive competition is possible.
Having seen how things went in NS1 and how difficult it is to run a miniatyre competetive community, the promod still kind of spooks me out. However, it does seem it may be needed big time.
<!--quoteo(post=1868236:date=Aug 10 2011, 03:06 PM:name=meb3)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (meb3 @ Aug 10 2011, 03:06 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1868236"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Competitive NS2 will never have an official forum on these boards just like it will never have an HLTV equivalent within the first year of NS2 1.0.
Dota 2's developers don't think balancing and designing a game for competitive play is a joke. Competitive play has become serious business, and Dota 2 is coming out of the gates a competitive game and a spectator sport. Esports in 2011 is missing an FPS game. There is a very brief window of opportunity that is wide open right now. UWE chooses instead to continue to hamstring alien and marine movement, decrease the skill ceiling with static structures, and add to an ever-increasing feature heap that pushes back its release date.
The idea that UWE shares your interest in competitive NS2 is a joke indeed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> That is you opinion, but please consider that not everybody thinks like that.
I personally like it to be able to have clan matches. We all know that most of the times the aliens will win (in the current build) but that makes a marine win much more awesome. Nobody forces you to participate or even read about the clan matches, but for me I am glad that we are able to have some matches even in this unbalanced beta, because it is (at least for me) way more fun to play with a coordinated play instead of playing publing mit a half team of ramboes.
But atm we only have the threat by vlnc .. and it would be nice to have a whole forum in which every clan has his own threat (for presenting themselfes and new applicants) and so on. It would be much less cluttered than the current single threat..
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->[Thread derailment] Player this is not a statement to make lightly. If you believe you can create a system to facilitate game recording and playback, then NS2 needs you to do it. The possibilities that a replay system would open up... There are too many to list. I'd love to chat to you about it, hit me up on the NS2HD email below if you are even mildly keen on following through on what you say you can do.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are multiple ways to do this, each with their own up- and downsides. I have a technique in mind that should be easy to construct, and does pretty much what you want it to do (player\spectator-perspective recording). Not entirely sure I can get it to work (there are always little snags that can throw a real monkey wrench in there). I'll bump it up the priority-list and do a prototype-ish test with it to see if it's a good direction to go into. I'll post back about this in a week or 2 (hopefully in an "Organized Play"-section by then).
Okay, seeing as I brought it up in this thread, might as well comment back in here. I've gone ahead and created a packet-based demo- and playing-system, the results are disappointing (not entirely unexpected though). The way it worked simply put is it recorded all the packets going from the server to the player (these were mostly world-updates, which is what we're after) written them to the disk, and played them back at a later moment. This is how HL1\HL2 (and probably most other games out there)-demos work. And while I got it to work this way with NS2 too, it was a loooooooong way from HL1\HL2 demo-quality (which isn't spiffing to begin with). I guess it is cause #1: the interpolation system probably isn't as refined in NS2, as it is in HL\HL2, and it shows when updates are 'imposed' on the client without the client being able to foretell any of it, and #2: I'm guessing HL1\HL2 also mux in the client-side information (angles, prediction et cetera), making things approximate the actual gameplay A LOT better. Unfortunatly client-side DLLs are out of the question, Spark is closed-source, and its netcode-protocol is a mystery (I've been able to reverse-engineer it a bit to make the packet-IDs match upon playback at a later moment, but it still botches up 9 out of 10 times).
So the sum up, this kind of demo-system is something UWE will have to do (and with direct access to the engine and the netcode this should be breeze, so go on devs). The alternative way of demo'ing would be a server-side gamestate-capturing mechanism of sorts. Something that scans the game COMPLETELY and stores all that can be stored (primarily entities) and do this every single tick (or often enough anyway). This is costly on the server to record, costly to play back, and VERY labour-intensive to build I would imagine, so it is defintely not high up on my list of priorities.
<!--quoteo(post=1870291:date=Aug 21 2011, 02:37 AM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Aug 21 2011, 02:37 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1870291"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Spark is closed-source, and its netcode-protocol is a mystery<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A few month ago I did some reverse engineering and also got some information from Max about the network protocol. Made a post about it here: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=111870" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=111870</a> The game specific protocol is missing though.
Too bad the packet approach didn't work out.
And on topic: +1 for the Organized Play sub-forum.
Aye I recognize a lot in that post. For example there also appears to be a type '38' that seems to be essentially a ping-packet with an incremental (possibly 2-byte) number sent in semi-regular intervals (ranging from 1 to 4 seconds). Also each second worth of game-updates (type '1'), which accounts to 20 packets per second at the moment, are inclosed by a '0' and a '4' each sporting 2 different incremental numbers as well. In between these 1-second 20-packet updates there exist 5 '1'-packets pretty regularly.
Often though it can get very irregular and hard to deduce, and as it was clear the server-side packet-imposing wasn't really gonna work out, I didn't bother with further.
I really don't see the harm in adding a NS2 Organized Play forum... Or actually would be nice to know why the devs/admins haven't commented on why they aren't putting it up yet. =o
<!--quoteo(post=1872773:date=Sep 2 2011, 01:37 PM:name=player)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Sep 2 2011, 01:37 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1872773"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I think Cory said elsewhere that it ment reading an additional section (and not really having the time to do it), or something to that effect.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Comments
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/news/2003/11/international_online_ns_v2_1_ati_tournament_announced" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/news/2003/...ament_announced</a>
Maybe UWE will start to care about you brave veterans two months after they release NS2 1.0 and begin to realize no one is playing it because they designed it to cater to the finicky scum of multiplayer video games that flourish on poor game mechanics and 'nostalgia' and aimlessly flock from game to game like birds in the wind.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Talk about not having the ability to move on...
If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all [or I'll cut you]...
At this point I can't see how we can avoid a pro-mod to be frank. I try NS2 on and off and cannot believe how incredibly gimped the movement is, and it does not seem to get any better, nor do I think UWE has the intention to do so. It's not really something I hold against them, as they're trying to put out a game for a larger audience this time round. It's just that for the life of me I cannot see myself playing this for any length of time, or invest any time in trying to master it's gameplay (for which the learning-curve doesn't appear to be significant anyway). It's not beyond a point-of-no-return, but it may not be the devs who will do the salvaging...
I went back and played NS1 last night for the first time since 2007. What a difference! I don't just mean one is a finished game and one is not... I played NS2 afterward and I felt like everything was covered in molasses. The movement mechanics are just so much better in NS1!
Anyway, another post for the organized play forum!
Dota 2's developers don't think balancing and designing a game for competitive play is a joke. Competitive play has become serious business, and Dota 2 is coming out of the gates a competitive game and a spectator sport. Esports in 2011 is missing an FPS game. There is a very brief window of opportunity that is wide open right now. UWE chooses instead to continue to hamstring alien and marine movement, decrease the skill ceiling with static structures, and add to an ever-increasing feature heap that pushes back its release date.
The idea that UWE shares your interest in competitive NS2 is a joke indeed.
It really is just the performance that's downright bollocks. In and of itself that's not really a biggy as we're in *cough* alpha *cough*, I'm just concerned at what kind of performance we'll be looking at down the road with 1.0. Lua-gamelogic isn't much practiced so it's anyone's guess what we will end up with.
Anyhooo, +1 for that seperate forum in case I hadn't done so. Would be nice to discuss with like-minded folks.
You mean that stuff could be implemented as a Lua mod? I'm impressed if that is the case. UWE, put this man on your payroll. His job title should be "future hero of esports."
[Thread derailment] Player this is not a statement to make lightly. If you believe you can create a system to facilitate game recording and playback, then NS2 needs you to do it. The possibilities that a replay system would open up... There are too many to list. I'd love to chat to you about it, hit me up on the NS2HD email below if you are even mildly keen on following through on what you say you can do.
Edit: Spelling
To clarify, my previous post was more trying to observe where at least some competetive community can exist. Personally I definitely do want the gameplay (and preferrably performance) pushed much further than the treshold where some kind of primitive competition is possible.
Having seen how things went in NS1 and how difficult it is to run a miniatyre competetive community, the promod still kind of spooks me out. However, it does seem it may be needed big time.
Dota 2's developers don't think balancing and designing a game for competitive play is a joke. Competitive play has become serious business, and Dota 2 is coming out of the gates a competitive game and a spectator sport. Esports in 2011 is missing an FPS game. There is a very brief window of opportunity that is wide open right now. UWE chooses instead to continue to hamstring alien and marine movement, decrease the skill ceiling with static structures, and add to an ever-increasing feature heap that pushes back its release date.
The idea that UWE shares your interest in competitive NS2 is a joke indeed.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is you opinion, but please consider that not everybody thinks like that.
I personally like it to be able to have clan matches. We all know that most of the times the aliens will win (in the current build) but that makes a marine win much more awesome.
Nobody forces you to participate or even read about the clan matches, but for me I am glad that we are able to have some matches even in this unbalanced beta, because it is (at least for me) way more fun to play with a coordinated play instead of playing publing mit a half team of ramboes.
But atm we only have the threat by vlnc .. and it would be nice to have a whole forum in which every clan has his own threat (for presenting themselfes and new applicants) and so on.
It would be much less cluttered than the current single threat..
There are multiple ways to do this, each with their own up- and downsides. I have a technique in mind that should be easy to construct, and does pretty much what you want it to do (player\spectator-perspective recording). Not entirely sure I can get it to work (there are always little snags that can throw a real monkey wrench in there). I'll bump it up the priority-list and do a prototype-ish test with it to see if it's a good direction to go into. I'll post back about this in a week or 2 (hopefully in an "Organized Play"-section by then).
Also looking forward to them creating the forum, come on guys, it isn't difficult. :)
So the sum up, this kind of demo-system is something UWE will have to do (and with direct access to the engine and the netcode this should be breeze, so go on devs). The alternative way of demo'ing would be a server-side gamestate-capturing mechanism of sorts. Something that scans the game COMPLETELY and stores all that can be stored (primarily entities) and do this every single tick (or often enough anyway). This is costly on the server to record, costly to play back, and VERY labour-intensive to build I would imagine, so it is defintely not high up on my list of priorities.
Don't put away your fraps just yet folks...
A few month ago I did some reverse engineering and also got some information from Max about the network protocol.
Made a post about it here: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=111870" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=111870</a>
The game specific protocol is missing though.
Too bad the packet approach didn't work out.
And on topic: +1 for the Organized Play sub-forum.
Often though it can get very irregular and hard to deduce, and as it was clear the server-side packet-imposing wasn't really gonna work out, I didn't bother with further.
...because now there are more clans!
And the general discussion is in a clutter and this way it will be less clluttered
I really don't see the harm in adding a NS2 Organized Play forum... Or actually would be nice to know why the devs/admins haven't commented on why they aren't putting it up yet. =o
Nobody forces him to read the clan forum ;-)
^^
...because now there are more clans!
And the general discussion is in a clutter and this way it will be less clluttered<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree :P