Nancy Withdrawal
relsan
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3720Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3720Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">say it isn't so</div> I was enjoying my fill of natural selection 2.0 today when I realized something was missing. I couldn't put my finger on until I realized I hadn't played nancy yet in 2.0. I asked the players I was on a server with "Hey anyone play nancy yet in 2.0" and someone said "Nancy is gone; they couldn't locate the map file" Being a mapper myself I realized the direness of the situation and felt a large pang of loss. No more nancy? I loved that map. Some of my best ns experiences were on that map. I guess I have no choice but to submit to the fact that Nancy is gone but I would like to let the dev team know that Nancy will be sorely missed and was in my opinion one of the best maps ns had to offer. I hope there is someway for nancy to get back in the map rotation.
Comments
zippy
joev.
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No-name hive, mess hall, mother interface, had a mad vent system. Ring any bells ? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Did the maps need to be updated for this new release or something?
Thats the essence of it. As Onos' would be being used much more all the maps in 2.0 simply <b>had</b> to be onos friendly. This involved fiddling with player spawn points and other miscellaneous tinkering which TBH I don't know the specifics of.
As the source files for nancy were lost this was obviously impossible and made play as an onos likewise. The dev team then had to unfortunately pull it from the official maps.
There is talk of working backwards from the HL map file, there are programs which can un-compile it, but it's a <b>lot</b> of work.
We tried that on the Trailblazers server with siege006 and it didn't work. Everything was all good untill we realized that you can't upgrade anything, so marines were helpless, so we pulled the map and all other 1.04 custom maps from our server.
Thank god, that was one of my favorite maps, solely because of the vent system. That was a real work of art. The hives were pretty good, except subspace. The long hallway was killer for skulks.
Aww..... crap!
Even if you did get to wander around the map you got stuck in the floor, even if you took a movement.
For decompilers, there's a bit of a problem with them in general. HL maps are based on BSP trees, basically lots of polygons sorted by the plane they're on. The maps are made using "brushes", which are volumes. When the maps are converted to BSP, that volume information is lost. It's not needed anyway (only case where you'd need it is in games where the whole map is deformable), and it sheds some ballast (like the polygons on the outside of the map, as you don't need those). But, if you want to edit a map with standard HL tools and you only have the BSP version but not the brush version, you have to get information (the volumes) from the BSP file that isn't in the BSP file. So the decompiler can come up with quite different (generally less optimal) brushes that are not so intuitive as manually placed brushes. Which is a problem when the manually optimized version is already close to the HL limits.
One possible way out might be to work on the polygons directly to edit the map. You'd still need some decompilation (as BSP trees aren't really suitable for easy and fast editing), but at least there won't be the problem of resurrecting ill-defined volumes. The downside is that you'd have to rewrite most of the HL mapping tools to work with polygons, and mappers would be unfamiliar with those tools. It would take lots of time.
So, basically, recreating the map manually instead of salvaging it in a bad way is preferable. I do hope they lose the ridges on some vents that made them so hard for skulks to crawl in.
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lol
I love you.
<3
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In my last 1.04 game we were getting screwed, but just at the gorge tried to set up the second hive we got the drop on him and broke into noname. I got killed in the assaut and when I respawned, I went to mother interface which I held on to mother interface for 5 minutes (well at least it felt like that long) alone, eventually trapping all five aliens inside.
Skulks tried sneaking out via the vent system but we had motionstracking up at the time, so they never managed to surprise me, rushing me via the hallway was no good either, first 3, then 4, but they got butchered before even getting close to me.
That hive like an achilles heel on the aliens. Jetpacks and the vents were another.
almost cried LOL
I hope that group project for the reworking of nancy works out <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Nancy had so many perfect factors together, like flow, variety, ambushability, epicability, teamwork-forcability, etc etc <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->.
Easily, that map defined the mission statement of NS perfectly, and will be sorely missed.
The Marine base was so cramped that you had to expand half your base down the ramp just so you could move without jumping over all the turrets and stuff.
The vent structures were some of the finest map, such a good map in that respect.
Let's hope a new version will be out soon.
And not in 8 months. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->