Thanks for that little insight into pre-2.0 Soylent. I've been wondering what I've been missing since I saw that NS 2.0 banner on Fileplanet and decided to try it out. On your last note I've actually had quite a few "epic" games that go on for hours in 2.0. I imagine they were much more rare though, even more so in NS2.
Feel like such a newbie having only joined in 2003.
Going by your join date you joined when NS 2.0 had been released.
NS 1.0x played very, very differently from NS 2.0 and onwards. It wasn't better, but it was so different you could almost say the original NS died when 2.0 was released, and was replaced by a very different game with the same art work. I knew a few people who left and never came back because 2.0 wasn't the same game they loved.
In 1.0x, alien armor was hive-dependent in a non-intuitive way. That's why hive 3 aliens were so powerful!
I don't really remember how games went in 1.04, but I remember that a JP+HMG could get in the game at roughly the same time as the second hive (quite often before) and that could make or break the game. Because the HMG could easily solo the hive while ignoring skulks (the jetpack had FPS-dependent fuel rate and recharged midair, which basically meant infinite fuel for any half-serious player)
It was nice in a nostalgic kind of way, but I can't really say it made the most interesting games.
I remember I was going to re-write this to update it for when 3.0 came out because I was trying to do writing things at the time, but then I didn't because I was also doing being lazy things at the time.
In 1.0x, alien armor was hive-dependent in a non-intuitive way. That's why hive 3 aliens were so powerful!
I don't think that was it. Onos was the size of a marine, you could shoot it anywhere else, but it wouldn't do damage, just this small 32x32x72 block in the center. Spores were ridiculous, they would stack (meaning if you shot 3 spores in the same place, it would do 3 times the damage) and they did damage to heavies. Fades had bilebombs, which massacred everything including players. lerk and fade had health and armour amounts balanced for poor mobility (fade had instant teleport blink like early NS2, but it didn't work very well and often got you stuck in func_walls), lerk flight was more like jumping in the air repeatedly and slowly falling.
Because the HMG could easily solo the hive while ignoring skulks (the jetpack had FPS-dependent fuel rate and recharged midair, which basically meant infinite fuel for any half-serious player)
That was only one of many game-breaking bugs. Toggling your flashlight on and off would make you build faster. You could restock grenades directly into your clip from an armory if your inventory was full; obviating the need to reload for massive spam. In 1.03 there was the stopcommandermode bug which allowed aliens to look like a marine, use marine weapons, run as fast as a skulk and benefit from defense chambers etc. Marines could bunnyhop crouching and move faster than running without making a sound. Biting marines from below would usually not do damage (which was a particular pain in the ass in maintenance hive on eclipse; remember the really old maintenance with the ladder?). Leaping would do damage every frame, allowing you to practically instagib heavy marines by leaping on them from above and "sitting on their face" for half a second or so. Webs activated as soon as created, allowing you to "stunlock" a marine with webs indefinitely.
I remember the alien armor being essential to how hard it was at 3-hive! Cara was definitely essential on all lifeforms, but even gorges were tough to kill on three-hive.
Of course, there's also the web+babbler+spores+umbra+scream+xeno+bile...
(And remember, while the Onos was the size of a marine, so was the skulk!)
I only joined these forums yesterday, but the original NS halflife mod used to be my favorite game for a good period of time back in the day.
I've played a good bit of NS2 since it's release, but have probably logged no where near the time I logged in the original NS. That is probably more related to my life changing a lot the past 11 years, though. I still enjoy NS2 a great deal, too.
I remember the first time playing on release. Every noob was taking the dropdown advice to play marines and stacking. There was no team balance at the time, often it would be four or five aliens vs. fifteen marines, which made things hopeless at times even with the increased rez flow.
Fortunately, since everyone was new, very people knew the tricks of the trade. Sitting over doorways waiting for 'rines to pass by then dropping down and making mincemeat out of them was a tactic people only very slowly adapted to. The locations of vents was unknown, which made for some great ambushes, and almost nobody defended rez nodes.
Eventually marines started cluing in, looking up, and working in teams. That's when people started playing aliens more as well. The skulk rush became a rite of passage for both sides, while the more savvy marines clued in that the hitboxes were a tad messed up and that crouching made you effectively invulnerable as it would put your hitbox below your model and partially into the floor... the trick was to aim below the marines feet.
Commanders also got better as time went on. The two-hive lockdown was a surefire and dreaded strategy. It was ridiculously effective all the way up to NS 2.0, just relocate to a hive, turret farm the other one and sit on them both until rez flow could give the marines the HA/HMG's they needed to crush the aliens underfoot. JP/HMG's were a bit rarer but still happened with good players and confident commanders, and if the marines really wanted to rub it in, they'd deploy a HA/HMG train with JP/HMG skirmishers to harass the aliens and camp them in the hive as they spawned.
Alien strategies consisted of the universal DMS... Defense, Movement, and Sensory chambers. Upgrades were tied to hives, and if you dropped a Sensory chamber on one hive the team screamed bloody murder at you and often F4'd the hell out of the game, since it was more or less a guaranteed loss.
In fact, F4'ing was a favourite way for some of the scrubbier teams to 'deny' the opposite team their win. It got to the point where it became a huge joke. "Oh god I respawned! F4! F4!", "Holy crap they have rez! F4! F4!", "Skulks in the vents! F4! F4!". There was even the end of a match where someone did a "Brave Brave Brave Brave Sir. F4!" parody in the RR that had the entire server in stitches, even the F4'ers.
And that's not counting the exceptional games where aliens came back from no hives, Marines with just three jetpackers managed to down all three alien hives after their base had been destroyed and won via Ping of Death, bunkering down in an isolated vent for over an hour while marines searched fruitlessly, followed by another hour of trying to flush them out and murder them prior to Ping of Death, Walls of Lame right outside unobservant marines bases before they had phases and locking them in for the inevitable Onos rush.
Then there were a few times where I decided to toy with map making and alternate gameplay modes. One time I managed to get a Marine vs Marine mode working (badly). I built a base as Team 1 with some turrets, then switched to Team 2 marines. I ran into the base I built as Team 1, turrets shooting at me the entire way, and hopped into the command console... whereupon the turrets then aimed right up for the roof and started shooting at me. It made Picture of the Day over at PHL, back when that was a thing...
Then there were the times on the suggestions forums, such as Smart Bomb's legendary 'Scorpian or something that Hovars Without Flapping' and other assorted suggestions. My own small claim to fame was this particular suggestion with regards to the ranks for Combat which then found its way into the game, so I was quite chuffed with that.
Err, wow, I really waxed nostalgic. I'll just leave a video I've kept for quite some time down below.
" Toggling your flashlight on and off would make you build faster "
That was some funny shizz right there, everyone in a circle around the extractor toggling flashlight like a circle jerk session. That and Onos paralysis, with their cool dreadlocks. Smacked down by the Rasta Space Rhino.
Did anyone save demos from 1.0x of a typical game? What I'm looking for is a bog standard ~20-30 minute game that was representable of the level of chaos and not understanding how the game was supposed to be played that was pretty much the norm before 1.03 - 1.04.
I might have a few demos from NS 1.04, but only short snippets of things I found noteworthy at the time, which is not what I'm looking for.
Those demos may not be very easy to get into a viewable state and record to video, but it should be doable.
Those demos may not be very easy to get into a viewable state and record to video, but it should be doable.
It shouldn't actually be that hard, you would (most likely) just need an old Sierra install of HL, and the right version of NS. After that it is just a matter of recording via fraps or whatever the kids use these days. The only trouble you'd run into would be if it were recorded on SteamHL, at which point demos will have probably been broken by a patch years back with no way to rollback to earlier versions.
Those demos may not be very easy to get into a viewable state and record to video, but it should be doable.
It shouldn't actually be that hard, you would (most likely) just need an old Sierra install of HL, and the right version of NS. After that it is just a matter of recording via fraps or whatever the kids use these days. The only trouble you'd run into would be if it were recorded on SteamHL, at which point demos will have probably been broken by a patch years back with no way to rollback to earlier versions.
Fraps (or equivalent) often does not cooperate with ancient games like HL and you need to figure out which gamma setting (actually contrast) the map used and adjust in post (absolutely required, NS 1.0x used extreme contrast for overbrightening, with rather weak, moody lighting).
Funny, I just logged back in thinking about how long ago its been since I joined. I remember joining for the customization forums when they were popular so I could post a few model ports I had worked on. My how time flies. Think I had another account a few months before I made this one since I was working on this stuff way before 2.0, but I could never remember the account.
Comments
Man, those were the days!
I don't really remember how games went in 1.04, but I remember that a JP+HMG could get in the game at roughly the same time as the second hive (quite often before) and that could make or break the game. Because the HMG could easily solo the hive while ignoring skulks (the jetpack had FPS-dependent fuel rate and recharged midair, which basically meant infinite fuel for any half-serious player)
It was nice in a nostalgic kind of way, but I can't really say it made the most interesting games.
I remember I was going to re-write this to update it for when 3.0 came out because I was trying to do writing things at the time, but then I didn't because I was also doing being lazy things at the time.
...we do.
Though i think it's broken atm.
I don't think that was it. Onos was the size of a marine, you could shoot it anywhere else, but it wouldn't do damage, just this small 32x32x72 block in the center. Spores were ridiculous, they would stack (meaning if you shot 3 spores in the same place, it would do 3 times the damage) and they did damage to heavies. Fades had bilebombs, which massacred everything including players. lerk and fade had health and armour amounts balanced for poor mobility (fade had instant teleport blink like early NS2, but it didn't work very well and often got you stuck in func_walls), lerk flight was more like jumping in the air repeatedly and slowly falling.
That was only one of many game-breaking bugs. Toggling your flashlight on and off would make you build faster. You could restock grenades directly into your clip from an armory if your inventory was full; obviating the need to reload for massive spam. In 1.03 there was the stopcommandermode bug which allowed aliens to look like a marine, use marine weapons, run as fast as a skulk and benefit from defense chambers etc. Marines could bunnyhop crouching and move faster than running without making a sound. Biting marines from below would usually not do damage (which was a particular pain in the ass in maintenance hive on eclipse; remember the really old maintenance with the ladder?). Leaping would do damage every frame, allowing you to practically instagib heavy marines by leaping on them from above and "sitting on their face" for half a second or so. Webs activated as soon as created, allowing you to "stunlock" a marine with webs indefinitely.
Of course, there's also the web+babbler+spores+umbra+scream+xeno+bile...
(And remember, while the Onos was the size of a marine, so was the skulk!)
I've played a good bit of NS2 since it's release, but have probably logged no where near the time I logged in the original NS. That is probably more related to my life changing a lot the past 11 years, though. I still enjoy NS2 a great deal, too.
I am not too sure
I am still dreaming sadly
Fortunately, since everyone was new, very people knew the tricks of the trade. Sitting over doorways waiting for 'rines to pass by then dropping down and making mincemeat out of them was a tactic people only very slowly adapted to. The locations of vents was unknown, which made for some great ambushes, and almost nobody defended rez nodes.
Eventually marines started cluing in, looking up, and working in teams. That's when people started playing aliens more as well. The skulk rush became a rite of passage for both sides, while the more savvy marines clued in that the hitboxes were a tad messed up and that crouching made you effectively invulnerable as it would put your hitbox below your model and partially into the floor... the trick was to aim below the marines feet.
Commanders also got better as time went on. The two-hive lockdown was a surefire and dreaded strategy. It was ridiculously effective all the way up to NS 2.0, just relocate to a hive, turret farm the other one and sit on them both until rez flow could give the marines the HA/HMG's they needed to crush the aliens underfoot. JP/HMG's were a bit rarer but still happened with good players and confident commanders, and if the marines really wanted to rub it in, they'd deploy a HA/HMG train with JP/HMG skirmishers to harass the aliens and camp them in the hive as they spawned.
Alien strategies consisted of the universal DMS... Defense, Movement, and Sensory chambers. Upgrades were tied to hives, and if you dropped a Sensory chamber on one hive the team screamed bloody murder at you and often F4'd the hell out of the game, since it was more or less a guaranteed loss.
In fact, F4'ing was a favourite way for some of the scrubbier teams to 'deny' the opposite team their win. It got to the point where it became a huge joke. "Oh god I respawned! F4! F4!", "Holy crap they have rez! F4! F4!", "Skulks in the vents! F4! F4!". There was even the end of a match where someone did a "Brave Brave Brave Brave Sir. F4!" parody in the RR that had the entire server in stitches, even the F4'ers.
And that's not counting the exceptional games where aliens came back from no hives, Marines with just three jetpackers managed to down all three alien hives after their base had been destroyed and won via Ping of Death, bunkering down in an isolated vent for over an hour while marines searched fruitlessly, followed by another hour of trying to flush them out and murder them prior to Ping of Death, Walls of Lame right outside unobservant marines bases before they had phases and locking them in for the inevitable Onos rush.
Then there were a few times where I decided to toy with map making and alternate gameplay modes. One time I managed to get a Marine vs Marine mode working (badly). I built a base as Team 1 with some turrets, then switched to Team 2 marines. I ran into the base I built as Team 1, turrets shooting at me the entire way, and hopped into the command console... whereupon the turrets then aimed right up for the roof and started shooting at me. It made Picture of the Day over at PHL, back when that was a thing...
Then there were the times on the suggestions forums, such as Smart Bomb's legendary 'Scorpian or something that Hovars Without Flapping' and other assorted suggestions. My own small claim to fame was this particular suggestion with regards to the ranks for Combat which then found its way into the game, so I was quite chuffed with that.
Err, wow, I really waxed nostalgic. I'll just leave a video I've kept for quite some time down below.
LB sighted!
siege both hives at the same time from the same spot
yeah time flies when you are having fun.
That was some funny shizz right there, everyone in a circle around the extractor toggling flashlight like a circle jerk session. That and Onos paralysis, with their cool dreadlocks. Smacked down by the Rasta Space Rhino.
Ahhh the good old days.
Can't believe I'm still playing this game after 11 years. So many good times and friends.
I might have a few demos from NS 1.04, but only short snippets of things I found noteworthy at the time, which is not what I'm looking for.
Those demos may not be very easy to get into a viewable state and record to video, but it should be doable.
It shouldn't actually be that hard, you would (most likely) just need an old Sierra install of HL, and the right version of NS. After that it is just a matter of recording via fraps or whatever the kids use these days. The only trouble you'd run into would be if it were recorded on SteamHL, at which point demos will have probably been broken by a patch years back with no way to rollback to earlier versions.
Fraps (or equivalent) often does not cooperate with ancient games like HL and you need to figure out which gamma setting (actually contrast) the map used and adjust in post (absolutely required, NS 1.0x used extreme contrast for overbrightening, with rather weak, moody lighting).