IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING MODS!!
IronHorse
Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
Valve has suddenly updated their API for Workshop mods, and as such **ALL MODS WILL NOT BE WORKING** for the time being. (including our mod backup server feature, if there is any update to the mod since this change)
A decent sized segment of the ModServices part of the NS2 engine has to be rewritten and will require another day of testing before release. We're rolling this fix into build 320 - which was originally scheduled to be released tomorrow morning (PST).
This is currently our #1 priority as of right now and we are doing our best to release this fix and the patch ASAP.
We will update you here when we have more information.
Thank you for your understanding, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
A decent sized segment of the ModServices part of the NS2 engine has to be rewritten and will require another day of testing before release. We're rolling this fix into build 320 - which was originally scheduled to be released tomorrow morning (PST).
This is currently our #1 priority as of right now and we are doing our best to release this fix and the patch ASAP.
We will update you here when we have more information.
Thank you for your understanding, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
What is wrong with you?
I find it hard to imagine that they've just updated it out of the blue...
Anywho, thanks for the quick response!
EDIT: This little hiccup emphasizes that the vanilla game is kind of unplayable.
Proper shuffle
Ghoul's balance mod
These two features guarantee help so that games are playable (balanced)
Your own fancy crosshairs?
Aren't there enough threads and posts why ns2 is unfun without ns2+?
It's ridiculous how much stuff is removed by NS2+..even plants in seeding, which completely block view around the res node area.
Yeah, but the competitive mindset dictates the only two things I should see is collidable surfaces and gameplay entities.
Also, you can have competitive with visually-obscuring entities. I never understood since when did simplifying things == competitive, pro players should learn how to deal with more variables in their gameplay.
What was stopping you from having Biodome look great before? Oh, wait.
It is only unfun when you already use NS2+. I suspect many people have never explored the options there.
What's sad is some people might agree with you. I'm all for people enjoying a game the way they want, but geez at some point why not just replace all the player models with cubes of various sizes ?
- clunkier Spark engine vs GoldSrc
In NS1.04+ (NS 2.0)
- You'd have the most detailed maps available for the GoldSrc engine
- Even these maps, while detailed, still were quite bare compared to NS2
- Visual clutter is quite the trend in NS2 and I'm not just talking about all the visual obscuring stuff, but map clutter and sounds
The way our brains used to fill out the world in NS, is now negated by the fact that NS2 is a lot more detailed. I for one still think that cleaner maps do tend to play better on high level play, mostly cause you don't get confused with random doodads in the map and it is indeed a pure PvP environment.
On the other hand, the casual player wants their immersion and this is where more detail does it's thing. Although I still believe some of the maps in NS looked a lot better than their NS2 counterpart, as their newer counterpart are only visually more detailed, but in terms of gameplay and gameflow are quite lacking compared to the classics from NS. Not even mentioning that even without all the detail, the NS maps felt way more immersive, perhaps tied to the fact that your brain had to fill in the details, which is a weird brain thing we do, but might also suck us into the game more...
There is a reason, besides engine choking, why NS1.04 and earlier had much more cinematic and detailed maps, which were changed in later version of NS to strike that perfect balance between detail, clutter and visual clarity, having your own brain fill in the gaps in the details.
Oh an of course there's something to be said for Spark (any engine really) spewing out more FPS with less stuff... Heck pro-gamers usually turn down all graphics to gain FPS, making the game look like poop, but less obscuring and FPS happy.
Watch this: You can remove certain things that would otherwise obscure your view. It's verging on a cheat really.
Shouldn't that kinda stuff be set by the server... Reminds me of the condoned ancient clientside RivaTurner gamma-brightness tweaks
Not just that, you don't want your fps to drop unnecessarily in your matches..
On the other side of the coin, it would also be fair to force players to have the same settings regarding shadows, particles, or props, the way CS:GO and other competitive games force certain graphic settings in competitive matches.
Never
I feel like some of the official NS2 maps have too much visual detail. ns2_eclipse is the main one that comes to mind. It's full of a large number of similar props that have no real purpose beyond increasing the number of polys rendered. There also isn't real theme to the map beyond generic sci-fi, it's raining and there's a laser.
But it's a difficult balance to find, with ns2_fusion I'm trying to create a relatively simple, consistent theme that doesn't intrude upon the play space. It's odd trying to detail it.
However, it also makes for less actual memorable areas because we are constantly in the same detail overload.
Game was released five years ago and I never had any problems what so ever on my old computer, which was scraping around minimum specs. I think as a rule, if your computer is less than twice the power of your phone, it's not the game that needs to change
Previous posters are right though, any alteration that affects the competitiveness of the gameplay should be universal. Not user set in a menu of a mod that I don't know how many people realise is there.
It's so much easier in a groupfight in lategame to keep your head up high if your fps aren't dropping like hell.
So yeah in theory, I agree, but practically it won't work unless you give others with a highend-pc an unfair advantage
Feels like everyone who hit the agree button on your post never really thought it through
You might not have noticed, but the community is already small enough
I think you misread what I wrote. I just want a standardization - even if the game looks like NS1, at least whatever I'm looking at is the same thing another player is looking at.
RETRACT THY HERETIC WORDS YE SCOUNDREL!
Alterra Corporation (our church and employer, may it profit for eons to come) worked hard to establish a research colony on this monsoon planet. The site has abundant gas deposits, so it's perfect for the inertial confinement reactor (the one you casually referred to as "laser").
I do appreciate your discreteness of not disclosing the main reason for the site though: the teleportation system being developed there
You would want to disable the bubbly infestation first then.
Pfft are you kidding? Competitive players ideal comp game would be all gray non-textured maps with bright pink character models..
Nothing should ever interfere with being able to see the target.. remember all the "competitive killbox" maps games used to have? lol
What hardware specs do you have, which is causing that problem?
I used to have 2.4ghz quad core, 4gb ram and 2gb graphics card (still use that today). I've never had any problems with FPS. Plus these settings in NS2+, get rid of things that are permanent on the map throughout the round like holograms and the gas effect around empty res nodes. If you are saying that these issues are caused in late game, am I right in thinking the problem is actually caused by character models and maybe a setting to make these low resolution could satisfy those with hardware problems, without affecting the gameplay?
You want to force shadows, ambient occlusion or other horribly implemented rendering extras that tank performance? All that does is give the advantage to those people with the hardware to run it, except even with the hardware to run said features the rendering times in NS2 become horrifically inconsistent and input lag goes through the roof.
Force low settings for everyone, sure most competitive players already play low settings and certain values are forced in compmod. But what if someone wants higher quality textures, what if someone wants to play with their viewmodels on? You're taking choice away from people.
This is a shooter that grew from NS1 because competitive kept it alive, competitive brought many mods and importantly fixes to vanilla, to start taking features away from the players this games devs and casuals already shunned would result in the game dying even faster.
Although maybe casuals will actually be able to win without a challenge, ignorance is bliss.
People who think this game performs well are living a lie. It struggles 5 years after release to perform at a consistent rate, the devs consistently rewrite code in the name of performance, which rarely seems to do anything. People who play at a higher level are more aware of the problems performance issues cause and performance between successful competitive shooters and NS2 is night and day.
Resolution isnt the issue, this game is CPU bound to hell and back, late game entity counts hog cpu resources and destory render times and adding more things for the cpu to think about doesnt help at all.
This is the reason NS2+ exists.
Except conveniently the only people complaining about all the performance benefits and entity removing features are those who are casual players and not the competitive ones. Even if you forced half those entities back into view on a pub, you're still going to lose vs a better player, these features help those players have a more consistent gameplay through framerate and visuals when playing against other people who are just as good where a tiny little plant that blocks 20% of the view doesnt make a difference in their ability to see you, just their ability to keep consistent performance when you remove 200 pointless assets throughout a level.