NS2 minimum requirements and Combat minimum requirements are not the same. This is one of the non legal issues preventing this. Though theses aren't necessarily unsolvable.
Yea.... a lot of people called this... sucks though. Sorry you spent your time and money on this. I'd ditch it and get away from UWE to do your own thing.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
I can't say anything, but there is a new game mode being worked on, and it may or may not be something similar to what you are requesting.
There are many reasons why Combat and NS2 can't be on the same engine. Apart from the obvious Combat is compiled as a 64bit exe only, making combat work within the confines of NS2 without breaking the code is very difficult.
Going standalone for the team also allows them a great deal of freedom that isn't possible within NS2. Making a game mode in NS2 requires Combat to stick to the design principles and ideas of NS2, by going standalone, while it is using the same universe, the limits on how players can play the game is relaxed hugely.
Again, I can't see anything, but the new game mode may or may not move slightly away from the current norms of NS2 gameplay.
I can't say anything, but there is a new game mode being worked on, and it may or may not be something similar to what you are requesting.
There are many reasons why Combat and NS2 can't be on the same engine. Apart from the obvious Combat is compiled as a 64bit exe only, making combat work within the confines of NS2 without breaking the code is very difficult.
Going standalone for the team also allows them a great deal of freedom that isn't possible within NS2. Making a game mode in NS2 requires Combat to stick to the design principles and ideas of NS2, by going standalone, while it is using the same universe, the limits on how players can play the game is relaxed hugely.
Again, I can't see anything, but the new game mode may or may not move slightly away from the current norms of NS2 gameplay.
ns2:combat is like ns2 compiled as x86_32. The reason they set a 64bit OS as requirement was afaik to avoid running into having to maintain those memory corruption issue we have to deal with at ns2. Have in mind that back when ns2:combat was released ns2 was not working on win xp 32bit.
The biggest difference between ns2 and combat engine wise is imho that ns2 is using a older version of the steam api than combat.
Still not working for me. Weird. Anyway Combat can't integrate with NS2. NS2 is 32 bit, combat is 64. Somebody running 32 bit os will run out of mem trying to play combat.
anyway of integrating the server browsers for both games into the ns2 browser? perhaps a toggle option in the server browser options menu that would be off as default.
turn it on and u can see ns2 combat servers in the ns2 browser and if you click on the join button your game will exit and switch to loading up combat and connecting to the server
Still not working for me. Weird. Anyway Combat can't integrate with NS2. NS2 is 32 bit, combat is 64. Somebody running 32 bit os will run out of mem trying to play combat.
anyway of integrating the server browsers for both games into the ns2 browser? perhaps a toggle option in the server browser options menu that would be off as default.
turn it on and u can see ns2 combat servers in the ns2 browser and if you click on the join button your game will exit and switch to loading up combat and connecting to the server
eh, that would be incredibly annoying. Accidentally clicking the wrong link meaning you'd have open-close one client and re-open another.
Anyway, the two games are made by separate developers, uwe and cdt have no obligation to try and salvage flg's failure of a game.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
edited February 2015
If only it was an official gamemode like it was an ns1, it could have been a big draw of the casual gamer which doesn't necessarily have the time for long coordinated games. Unfortunately it had to split off from the community with a rather high price point for re-used assets, and then die off taking the ns2 combat mod with it. Everyone saw it coming and no-one cared enough to stop it.
If one day by chance owners of NS2:Combat could have their game converted into dlc for Natural Selection 2(maybe with a copy of the game if they don't already own it) and have the content used for an official gamemode dlc($5.00 at most), then maybe the effort wouldn't have gone to waste. Although at this point we're just beating the dead horse.
If only it was an official gamemode like it was an ns1, it could have been a big draw of the casual gamer which doesn't necessarily have the time for long coordinated games. Unfortunately it had to split off from the community with a rather high price point for re-used assets, and then die off taking the ns2 combat mod with it. Everyone saw it coming and no-one cared enough to stop it.
If one day by chance owners of NS2:Combat could have their game converted into dlc for Natural Selection 2(maybe with a copy of the game if they don't already own it) and have the content used for an official gamemode dlc($5.00 at most), then maybe the effort wouldn't have gone to waste. Although at this point we're just beating the dead horse.
Game would never get done if it was going as a dlc or new gamemode for NS2. UWE has incredibly high art standards that would surely prevent or at least severely delay combat as being a part of ns2. I've heard that only one... maybe two of combat's maps are actually up to that standard.
It would be cool if Combat was released as a ns2 dlc, especially from a modding stand point. There's a lot of new content in combat (some being released with the final content patch). Would be interesting to see what would come from it.
There are many reasons why Combat and NS2 can't be on the same engine. Apart from the obvious Combat is compiled as a 64bit exe only, making combat work within the confines of NS2 without breaking the code is very difficult.
Well, compiling as 32-bit is easy enough, and as for the rest it's solvable.
As others have noted, the 'lazy' reasoning for switching games doesn't actually even enter into it. People are like water -- they choose the path of least resistance. It's human nature. And these people are your customers. Just like any other business in the world, you deliver what your customers need or the product fails.
It *sounds* logical to have Combat be a separate game from a separate studio, and you can say this till the cows come home, but it won't change what is. You don't tell them what they should want. Your job is to listen to what they want, and deliver it. In truth, you have no choice here. If you want the game to be played more, especially at this stage, integration into NS2 is your only option.
I have Combat, barely played it for the same reasons as every one else. If I'm in the server browser and my favorite NS2 servers are full, I'd happily jump into a combat game while I want for a spot to appear (and then inevitably get attached to that Combat game), but I'm not going to quit and load another client to do it. I'm in NS2, so instead I'll just go join a server with a higher ping, seed a new one, or just wait for a slot. Imagine if instead my browser listed Combat servers, you can see how easy it would be to just click on that and off we go.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
The funny thing is, all the NS2 players who get so defensive and offensive around combat, don't realise that they are not the target audience.
The target audience is people who have never played NS2, that was UWE's and Faultlines target market for the game. It didn't grab them unfortunately. But hey, NS2 players were not who UWE wanted to buy combat, it was the people who had not yet experienced the NS2 world.
You can keep going on about they should have done it in NS2, all you want, it was never going to happen.
UWE wanted to sell games to non NS2 players to increase revenues, and maybe even get some of those move on to NS2 I guess. It didn't work, but instead of criticising combat because it wasn't made how you wanted it (Entitled Much?) accept it for what it is and was.
An attempt by UWE to create additional income by giving a mod team the chance to make a game. Did it work? No not so far, and I think Faultline are making a big mistake by drastically dropping the price, as lower prices does not guarantee new players.
I bet Faultline think all the NS2 players who have said I'd buy combat if it was $5 will buy the game if they put it at $5, when we all know, the NS2 players complaining about the price really won't ever buy Combat, they were just finding another thing to whine and moan about.
If cutting the price massively, ends up massively increasing the playerbase, I will eat my hat..
I think Faultline are making a big mistake by drastically dropping the price, as lower prices does not guarantee new players.
I bet Faultline think all the NS2 players who have said I'd buy combat if it was $5 will buy the game if they put it at $5, when we all know, the NS2 players complaining about the price really won't ever buy Combat, they were just finding another thing to whine and moan about.
If cutting the price massively, ends up massively increasing the playerbase, I will eat my hat..
There are a ton of problems with Combat, the price is one of them. If they ONLY adjust the price, then no, it will not bring in more players, but it will fix one of the problems.
Really, the biggest problem with Combat is that nobody outside of ns2 knows about it! They didn't do much of any marketing for it -- though I understand they didn't have much of any budget to do so anyways.
Also, most of the people I hear complaining about combat are the ones who did buy it, or at least own it. lol
i have no issues with combat, i just prefer the build up and expand, capture res node style of ns2. i like having a human commander and i like the fact that when i die i risk something if i have decent equipment.
what i want is more content for ns2, i have invested 2k hours into it and rarely do we even play different maps other than the official ones.
at this point ns2 has probably made all the sales its going to make with its current content. i think uwe should allow the cdt the freedom to add new content to the vanilla game and balance it gradually. anything could be added to the game using a minimum tech level amount. 4tech points for new content and then 3 for beta conent and finally after that when the content feels balanced you make the switch into the earlier part of a game when its likely to have more of an impact.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
But the ones who own it are complaining about the lack of players when they want to play it, rather than the game itself...
There have been a fun couple of builds recently, lol, and now the changes have settled down it is in a much nicer place. Still needs a few tweaks but gameplay wise it is fairly good. They are working on trying to resolve the need for end game tech to end the game, and that is the only really big issue at the moment.
The problem comes though not from the tech itself, but from an inherent NS2 mechanic. As pointed out by @Scatter before, killing all your enemy when you want to rush the objective results in a dis-advantage, rather than an advantage. This is because the team players spawn at the objective, rather than away from it as in most normal FPS games.
NS2 gets around this with the IP's, spawn queue's, beacons, egg locking etc, but this is not available in combat, so when you kill the aliens then rush the hive, they all spawn to greet you and defend it, and the same goes for the marines.
Inherently, any FPS only game that is based on NS2 and uses the hive/cc as spawn points when needing to destroy them will result in un-endable stalemates. Fixing this is no small task, and would require redesigning maps, as well as the coding changes.
tl:dr - Shooters spawning at the objective you need to destroy will always lead to end game stalemates. It is sticking too close to NS2 that causes those problems as most of NS2 solutions involve the RTS mechanics.
Combat never had a chance to get any players outside of the seasoned NS2 players for a variety of reasons. The NS2 community is so small that I can't even get on NS2 servers sometimes these days so there isn't really much hope for combat.
I would say that a model like Red Orchestra 2 and Rising storm would be good. Purchase RO2 (base game), and you can play RO2 and a light version of Rising Storm. If you join a Rising Storm server, you can play, but you only get access to the basic weapons. NS2 combat (in NS2 main client) could offer the Armor and shotgun upgrades as marine, and Gorge and Fade for aliens, to the free players. If you want the full deal, buy the DLC.
Also Gun game, Instagib, and King of the hill modes would make it more interesting.
I would say that a model like Red Orchestra 2 and Rising storm would be good. Purchase RO2 (base game), and you can play RO2 and a light version of Rising Storm. If you join a Rising Storm server, you can play, but you only get access to the basic weapons. NS2 combat (in NS2 main client) could offer the Armor and shotgun upgrades as marine, and Gorge and Fade for aliens, to the free players. If you want the full deal, buy the DLC.
Also Gun game, Instagib, and King of the hill modes would make it more interesting.
Instagib marine vs. instagib skulk??? I don't see many different outcomes there... lol
Or better yet, instagib lerk. You just hold RMB and walk around the map spinning wildly.
The funny thing is, all the NS2 players who get so defensive and offensive around combat, don't realise that they are not the target audience.
The target audience is people who have never played NS2, that was UWE's and Faultlines target market for the game. It didn't grab them unfortunately. But hey, NS2 players were not who UWE wanted to buy combat, it was the people who had not yet experienced the NS2 world.
Which just shows how much some people seem to have lost touch with the actual gamers out there.
NS:Combat SA never even remotely had a chance of capturing any audience outside of the NS2 playerbase.
It's yet another arena style FPS in an market that's already crowded and over-saturated with games like that, many of them being way more high quality, having a lower learning curve and quite many of them being F2P.
In that environment Combat SA never stood a chance on it's own.
The only thing that would have allowed it to stand a chance would have been by the same way NS has always prevailed: Trough the community supporting it and spreading love for it.
By explicitly not aiming at the established community, Combat SA had been destined to fail. It appealed to nobody and those few it could have appealed to have been (and are still being) told: "This is not for you, stop criticizing!!1"
You can keep going on about they should have done it in NS2, all you want, it was never going to happen.
UWE wanted to sell games to non NS2 players to increase revenues, and maybe even get some of those move on to NS2 I guess. It didn't work, but instead of criticising combat because it wasn't made how you wanted it (Entitled Much?) accept it for what it is and was.
Yes entitled much, many people around here have bought NS2 several times over, I'd bet money that the majority of people who bought Combat SA had been people from the NS community, i bought it twice for example. The people who never heard of NS before, that bought into Combat SA, can most likely be considered negligible.
If the goal really had been to bring more people to NS2, or vice versa NS2 players to Combat, the most sensible approach would have been the DLC/SA combo route, having everything in one client, give the NS2 package more variety and value overall, increase it's overall appeal.
Instead it split the community, killed off a former popular NS2 mod (thus removing variety from NS2) and is now pretty much a dead horse. Sorry to say, but i can't imagine any possible worse approach and outcome to all of this.
An attempt by UWE to create additional income by giving a mod team the chance to make a game. Did it work? No not so far, and I think Faultline are making a big mistake by drastically dropping the price, as lower prices does not guarantee new players.
That very same attempt could also have happened by integrating Combat as an DLC/SA combination into NS2, without introducing all the drawbacks it's now suffering from.
Just lowering the price won't fix anything, it still won't make Combat:SA stand out from the flood of similar themed games out on the market, on that i agree with you.
I bet Faultline think all the NS2 players who have said I'd buy combat if it was $5 will buy the game if they put it at $5, when we all know, the NS2 players complaining about the price really won't ever buy Combat, they were just finding another thing to whine and moan about.
And here you are doing it again: Crapping all over those few people who actually supported this, while belittling their input on how this could actually be fixed.
Martigen speaks a ton of truth in that regard with this:
Just like any other business in the world, you deliver what your customers need or the product fails.
(Rest of his post is also pretty much spot on)
You have to work with what you got, if all you got is the NS2 community, guess what? You've gotta work with that and start from there. Renouncing what little you got, in favor of appealing to some mysterious possible/could be/maybe market out there, is pretty much the worst possible approach to all of this.
To be honest if they want a remote chance of making revenue from Combat, they are best off working with CDT / UWE into integrating it into NS2 and generate revenue through the use of skin packs.
This seems to keep coming up, but Combat could never have been a DLC. Both from a compatibility stand point and a legal stand point.
Please, enlighten us on the legal issues about incorporating a mod as a dlc. I mean, nobody is saying FLG were supposed to force it on uwe, an agreement with uwe is of course implied.
Combat being SA is how FLG was approached, so the contact between the two was written accordingly. There was no discussion of it ever being a DLC, for better or for worse. That doesn't mean that things could be changed around to allow for a DLC now, but the chances are slim at best.
Now that you mention legal stuff, I still see no credits for the original authors of the maps they remade (of which I'm one of them), which they assured me a few times they were going to do. Or the CDT work they integrated.
Comments
There are many reasons why Combat and NS2 can't be on the same engine. Apart from the obvious Combat is compiled as a 64bit exe only, making combat work within the confines of NS2 without breaking the code is very difficult.
Going standalone for the team also allows them a great deal of freedom that isn't possible within NS2. Making a game mode in NS2 requires Combat to stick to the design principles and ideas of NS2, by going standalone, while it is using the same universe, the limits on how players can play the game is relaxed hugely.
Again, I can't see anything, but the new game mode may or may not move slightly away from the current norms of NS2 gameplay.
ns2:combat is like ns2 compiled as x86_32. The reason they set a 64bit OS as requirement was afaik to avoid running into having to maintain those memory corruption issue we have to deal with at ns2. Have in mind that back when ns2:combat was released ns2 was not working on win xp 32bit.
The biggest difference between ns2 and combat engine wise is imho that ns2 is using a older version of the steam api than combat.
anyway of integrating the server browsers for both games into the ns2 browser? perhaps a toggle option in the server browser options menu that would be off as default.
turn it on and u can see ns2 combat servers in the ns2 browser and if you click on the join button your game will exit and switch to loading up combat and connecting to the server
eh, that would be incredibly annoying. Accidentally clicking the wrong link meaning you'd have open-close one client and re-open another.
Anyway, the two games are made by separate developers, uwe and cdt have no obligation to try and salvage flg's failure of a game.
If one day by chance owners of NS2:Combat could have their game converted into dlc for Natural Selection 2(maybe with a copy of the game if they don't already own it) and have the content used for an official gamemode dlc($5.00 at most), then maybe the effort wouldn't have gone to waste. Although at this point we're just beating the dead horse.
Game would never get done if it was going as a dlc or new gamemode for NS2. UWE has incredibly high art standards that would surely prevent or at least severely delay combat as being a part of ns2. I've heard that only one... maybe two of combat's maps are actually up to that standard.
As others have noted, the 'lazy' reasoning for switching games doesn't actually even enter into it. People are like water -- they choose the path of least resistance. It's human nature. And these people are your customers. Just like any other business in the world, you deliver what your customers need or the product fails.
It *sounds* logical to have Combat be a separate game from a separate studio, and you can say this till the cows come home, but it won't change what is. You don't tell them what they should want. Your job is to listen to what they want, and deliver it. In truth, you have no choice here. If you want the game to be played more, especially at this stage, integration into NS2 is your only option.
I have Combat, barely played it for the same reasons as every one else. If I'm in the server browser and my favorite NS2 servers are full, I'd happily jump into a combat game while I want for a spot to appear (and then inevitably get attached to that Combat game), but I'm not going to quit and load another client to do it. I'm in NS2, so instead I'll just go join a server with a higher ping, seed a new one, or just wait for a slot. Imagine if instead my browser listed Combat servers, you can see how easy it would be to just click on that and off we go.
The target audience is people who have never played NS2, that was UWE's and Faultlines target market for the game. It didn't grab them unfortunately. But hey, NS2 players were not who UWE wanted to buy combat, it was the people who had not yet experienced the NS2 world.
You can keep going on about they should have done it in NS2, all you want, it was never going to happen.
UWE wanted to sell games to non NS2 players to increase revenues, and maybe even get some of those move on to NS2 I guess. It didn't work, but instead of criticising combat because it wasn't made how you wanted it (Entitled Much?) accept it for what it is and was.
An attempt by UWE to create additional income by giving a mod team the chance to make a game. Did it work? No not so far, and I think Faultline are making a big mistake by drastically dropping the price, as lower prices does not guarantee new players.
I bet Faultline think all the NS2 players who have said I'd buy combat if it was $5 will buy the game if they put it at $5, when we all know, the NS2 players complaining about the price really won't ever buy Combat, they were just finding another thing to whine and moan about.
If cutting the price massively, ends up massively increasing the playerbase, I will eat my hat..
There are a ton of problems with Combat, the price is one of them. If they ONLY adjust the price, then no, it will not bring in more players, but it will fix one of the problems.
Really, the biggest problem with Combat is that nobody outside of ns2 knows about it! They didn't do much of any marketing for it -- though I understand they didn't have much of any budget to do so anyways.
Also, most of the people I hear complaining about combat are the ones who did buy it, or at least own it. lol
what i want is more content for ns2, i have invested 2k hours into it and rarely do we even play different maps other than the official ones.
at this point ns2 has probably made all the sales its going to make with its current content. i think uwe should allow the cdt the freedom to add new content to the vanilla game and balance it gradually. anything could be added to the game using a minimum tech level amount. 4tech points for new content and then 3 for beta conent and finally after that when the content feels balanced you make the switch into the earlier part of a game when its likely to have more of an impact.
There have been a fun couple of builds recently, lol, and now the changes have settled down it is in a much nicer place. Still needs a few tweaks but gameplay wise it is fairly good. They are working on trying to resolve the need for end game tech to end the game, and that is the only really big issue at the moment.
The problem comes though not from the tech itself, but from an inherent NS2 mechanic. As pointed out by @Scatter before, killing all your enemy when you want to rush the objective results in a dis-advantage, rather than an advantage. This is because the team players spawn at the objective, rather than away from it as in most normal FPS games.
NS2 gets around this with the IP's, spawn queue's, beacons, egg locking etc, but this is not available in combat, so when you kill the aliens then rush the hive, they all spawn to greet you and defend it, and the same goes for the marines.
Inherently, any FPS only game that is based on NS2 and uses the hive/cc as spawn points when needing to destroy them will result in un-endable stalemates. Fixing this is no small task, and would require redesigning maps, as well as the coding changes.
tl:dr - Shooters spawning at the objective you need to destroy will always lead to end game stalemates. It is sticking too close to NS2 that causes those problems as most of NS2 solutions involve the RTS mechanics.
Also Gun game, Instagib, and King of the hill modes would make it more interesting.
Instagib marine vs. instagib skulk??? I don't see many different outcomes there... lol
Or better yet, instagib lerk. You just hold RMB and walk around the map spinning wildly.
I assume the combat mod is no longer maintained and not freely available?
Which just shows how much some people seem to have lost touch with the actual gamers out there.
NS:Combat SA never even remotely had a chance of capturing any audience outside of the NS2 playerbase.
It's yet another arena style FPS in an market that's already crowded and over-saturated with games like that, many of them being way more high quality, having a lower learning curve and quite many of them being F2P.
In that environment Combat SA never stood a chance on it's own.
The only thing that would have allowed it to stand a chance would have been by the same way NS has always prevailed: Trough the community supporting it and spreading love for it.
By explicitly not aiming at the established community, Combat SA had been destined to fail. It appealed to nobody and those few it could have appealed to have been (and are still being) told: "This is not for you, stop criticizing!!1"
Yes entitled much, many people around here have bought NS2 several times over, I'd bet money that the majority of people who bought Combat SA had been people from the NS community, i bought it twice for example. The people who never heard of NS before, that bought into Combat SA, can most likely be considered negligible.
If the goal really had been to bring more people to NS2, or vice versa NS2 players to Combat, the most sensible approach would have been the DLC/SA combo route, having everything in one client, give the NS2 package more variety and value overall, increase it's overall appeal.
Instead it split the community, killed off a former popular NS2 mod (thus removing variety from NS2) and is now pretty much a dead horse. Sorry to say, but i can't imagine any possible worse approach and outcome to all of this.
That very same attempt could also have happened by integrating Combat as an DLC/SA combination into NS2, without introducing all the drawbacks it's now suffering from.
Just lowering the price won't fix anything, it still won't make Combat:SA stand out from the flood of similar themed games out on the market, on that i agree with you.
And here you are doing it again: Crapping all over those few people who actually supported this, while belittling their input on how this could actually be fixed.
Martigen speaks a ton of truth in that regard with this:
(Rest of his post is also pretty much spot on)
You have to work with what you got, if all you got is the NS2 community, guess what? You've gotta work with that and start from there. Renouncing what little you got, in favor of appealing to some mysterious possible/could be/maybe market out there, is pretty much the worst possible approach to all of this.
Only chance they have of making a buck now.