Images from NS2 On Source circa 2007
Comprox
*chortle*Canada Join Date: 2002-01-23 Member: 7Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
*chortle*Canada Join Date: 2002-01-23 Member: 7Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Developer, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
First off, I checked with Charlie if it was ok that I released these images. So, while I was doing some forum work I started digging through some old archives and found a screenshot thread from the early days of NS2 back when it was planned to be on the Source engine. Some mappers and other smart people were given the tools to start playing around with. These were insanely early in development and are from late 2007. I have listed the mapper with each set of pictures that still existed. Many of the pictures were now gone so not every mapper is represented here. Finally, many of these shots are literally the first attempts by these people and they continued to refine and make them better, but I wanted to show off the absolute earliest work.
PogoP
Kouji_San
Olmy
Huh, a Tram station...
Rendy_Czech
DrunkenMonkey
Reeke
nosebleed
PogoP
Kouji_San
Olmy
Huh, a Tram station...
Rendy_Czech
DrunkenMonkey
Reeke
nosebleed
Comments
Pretty cool.
It's interesting to see where it was going, and if spark was developed close to that date, how amazing spark looks in comparison to source at that time.
*runs off to plagiarise*
Here's a link from my last night screwing around, trying to get NS2 Assets into Hl2.
I can do some model importing/exporting if anyone needs help with any projects, besides due to support i'd rather work on source engine.
Also, I have yet to see a UE3 multiplayer game that doesn't suffer from warping / jerky player movement... even recent ones like Nosgoth can't deal with fast paced melee properly. Same with Primal Carnage and Chivalry etc..
Source can handle fast movement smoothly... but it's also much more limited in what it can accomplish. You couldn't port NS2 features over, for instance.
You'd have to make an incredibly stripped down version of it.
I am hopeful that newer engines like that proprietary one being used for Reflex, can offer better player movement and maybe could be Modded for NS purposes. (They also sample input 1,000 times a second)
UE3 suffers from having too much flexibility when it comes to that maybe, its up to the game devs to implement multiplayer as they see fit. Many UE3 games are actually P2P games, however I am not sure how its implemented in Nosgoth. Archeblade was a third person fighting game on UE3 which probably had the best netcode I've seen to date in that engine, but it had no form of lag compensation. Sadly that game is mostly dead and there probably isn't any decent servers left to get examples from.
I've heard rumors about UE4 doing something different though
It's not free, but is is somewhat affordable. The UWE team is using it to make Subnautica right now actually. It was not an option back when NS2 was being made.
I do 0 work on the game so I have no thoughts, sadly. I just handle forum and other community stuff
forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/135695/natural-selection-2-trailer-fan-made
From hearing comments behind closed doors, I'm almost absolutely positive that they would have still gone with Spark over Unity for NS2. Unity is a great engine for a wide variety of game applications, it's extremely scalable and flexible, has a ton of tools and great support, but the proprietary engine did and still makes the most sense for a project like Natural Selection due to its complicated structure and coding depth. This is the same reason why they've continued to develop Spark for Future Perfect.
And don't think that I'm belittling Unity or Subnautica, which has to be one of the most ambitious and wonderful Unity games made thus far. SN has been getting really good content and gameplay updates essentially every week, and I'm sure that Unity's tools and support at least play a role in that. But it might just be Charlie being that super inspiring dude still, magically motivating people to go above and beyond. It's great to be able to boot up a game and see cool new changes nearly every time.
Anyways, the more intelligent question revolves around the Source/Spark debate. If you look at NS2 today, I would argue it was not necessary to create a custom engine for what this game is now. Obviously UWE had bigger ambitions with this engine and the ability to license it out later from a business side made sense. But purely from a gameplay side, NS2 could have been made sooner with comparable (and perhaps even better) gameplay than what we received with Spark. The whole performance debacle may have never happened and you are probably looking at a better, more popular and polished game. So from a pure consumer side, yes I am disappointed in their choice. From a developer side, they still made alot of money and got so much experience in developing their own engine, I think Spark still remains the better choice for them, even looking back now.
I disagree with this sentiment. There is no feature in its current iteration exclusive to Spark that is worth all the negatives that came with it. Even the whole dynamic infestation idea (which was supposed to be a hallmark feature of Spark and lead to cysting/powernodes being forced into NS2 gameplay) ended up negatively impacting the game we have today.
Edit: Btw, I don't want to sound too negative on UWE's decision to develop their own engine for NS2. At the time, the positives did seem to outweight the negatives, and I was just excited as anyone to see what NS2 would become with the freedom of a custom designed engine.
Would be nice to see a conversion mod, surely someone has it on there hardrive, or atleast basic framework. I can't get around head to toes the HL2 modding, or even start converting it.
http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/natural-selection-source-code-released/
https://github.com/unknownworlds/NS/
- The reason the Spark engine even started was due to limitations of the Source engine. They were having problems with some stuff and waiting on Valve to fix/add/whatever was just not going to work.
- Even then, the original plan was just to make the engine display BSP levels and to continue to use tools like the Hammer editor to make the maps. They understood quite clearly how much work making all the tools would be. Sadly Valve did not allow this. If you use Hammer, you have to use Source, or somesuch.
- Something like the Unity engine had 1 game released on it at this point. Better to use your own, barely used, engine which you can fix on the fly versus a 3rd party, barely used, engine which you must wait on them to fix.
- Original NS2 cost multiple millions to make. Something like the Reinforced patch cost around $550 000 to make. Hence why the reinforcement program had a goal of $550 000.
While LUA came with performance issues, it definitely allowed them to develop and iterate wayyy faster.
Idk why you disagree with what I said since I was just stating facts.
I just stated that Source was technically unable to accomplish the features they wanted at the time.
Whether or not they are worth it or the inherent value they provide is entirely subjective. I personally think spark looks better *shrug*
Seeing as Source was released in 2004, insanely early development would ideally have begun years before 2007.