What happened to the babblers?
Kuiki
Join Date: 2012-02-03 Member: 143467Members
Join Date: 2012-02-03 Member: 143467Members
On Moddb i found this little passage under a concept art:
"The Crag's late-game "targeted" ability is...Babblers! If you played early versions of NS1, you may remember this fun but unrefined feature that allowed Gorges to spew out small creatures (they were scaled down Skulks running the Half-life Snark code!). Well, we are bringing those back, but making sure to give them their own model this time around. In NS2 they are controlled by the alien commander, who will unleash a multitude of these small cat sized critters from the various openings in the Crag’s shell which swarm around Marines, obscuring their sight somewhat, slowing them down and inflicting a small amount of damage."
What happened to them, in ns1 i really love this to have it with the gorgie ^^ but in crags its also okay to give the alien commander attack units like the marine commander and his arc's.
"The Crag's late-game "targeted" ability is...Babblers! If you played early versions of NS1, you may remember this fun but unrefined feature that allowed Gorges to spew out small creatures (they were scaled down Skulks running the Half-life Snark code!). Well, we are bringing those back, but making sure to give them their own model this time around. In NS2 they are controlled by the alien commander, who will unleash a multitude of these small cat sized critters from the various openings in the Crag’s shell which swarm around Marines, obscuring their sight somewhat, slowing them down and inflicting a small amount of damage."
What happened to them, in ns1 i really love this to have it with the gorgie ^^ but in crags its also okay to give the alien commander attack units like the marine commander and his arc's.
Comments
As it stands, they won't make 1.0. See MrYiff's explanation.
<!--quoteo(post=1948340:date=Jul 2 2012, 11:02 AM:name=MrYiff)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MrYiff @ Jul 2 2012, 11:02 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1948340"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Pretty much the same thing as the NS1 babblers, they didn't really work so well and ended up causing performance problems. They may well reappear if they can be made to work without killing the server but for now there are more important things to work on.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Or calculate the swarm as one entity. Single babblers just move randomly around the squad-center. The squad center moves with AI.
With only a few months left until release we've had to make the difficult call of picking and choosing what we could get into the game and what we needed to cut, in order to hit our feature complete status, to leave ourselves enough time to fix, polish, balance, and optimize all of the existing features.
A task like Babblers has a lot more involved then just the previously mentioned performance issues, and it requires unique models, animation, and a good deal of programming and testing to make sure they work properly. While they would certainly be a cool additional feature, Babblers are just not a necessary core element of the game, but they will make for a fun addition after 1.0
--Cory
Now with umbra back on the lerk, the crags role as a defensive structure has diminished to a heal spam button.
About babblers; please no, not even after release. NS2 does not need more negative abilities, it needs less of them.
Sounds reasonable:)
Btw, is Dynamic Infestation pushed back for post-release as well? Or are you trying to get it in before launch?
Mainly since all the two structures have them.
Shifts can echo structures around the map.
Shades can spawn Hallucinations, fake units that take fire.
Both of these can help end games.
What can a crag do? Sit still and heal, or sit still and heal faster.
Btw, is Dynamic Infestation pushed back for post-release as well? Or are you trying to get it in before launch?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think the plan is to still try and get this in to 1.0 however it relies on a few other things getting done first to ensure it can work properly (mainly performance stuff I think).
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnaJLk8MhL4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnaJLk8MhL4</a>
It has to be in v1.0...
Shifts can echo structures around the map.
Shades can spawn Hallucinations, fake units that take fire.
Both of these can help end games.
What can a crag do? Sit still and heal, or sit still and heal faster.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's pretty much how defense chambers worked in NS1, and it worked great. Defense chambers had the most universally powerful upgrades, but the movement and sensory chambers had much more powerful abilities. That helped balance the chambers to the point where they were all equally "good" during NS1 version 3.2 (although movement chamber was the most common starting chamber because it was the easiest to use efficiently on all maps).
That was a much better way to balance the chambers than the current attempts at giving the defense chamber upgrades "downsides".
I don't understand why the devs keep trying to reinvent the wheel, instead of using the lessons learnt during 8 years of iterative NS1 updates.
That was a much better way to balance the chambers than the current attempts at giving the defense chamber upgrades "downsides".
I don't understand why the devs keep trying to reinvent the wheel, instead of using the lessons learnt during 8 years of iterative NS1 updates.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes that is a good point.