natural selection 2

killingpeople · Oct 2008

i've been following this project for a few, as i have a not-so-secret crush on Max, their lead programmer and i wanted to spread the news that they've posted a new "videocast" a few days ago that shows off their new game engine! it's looking pretty cool!

http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2008/10/unknown_worlds_videocast_5

MikeF · Oct 2008

looks great, been kinda checking the website once or twice a year since the first one came out, nice to see it still kicking. So do these guys have a publisher or is this purely volunteer?

RazorBladder · Oct 2008

Very nice, I did wonder whether they were still workin on this, glad to see they are :]

IronHawk · Oct 2008

awesome.. Forgot about this. Glad to here it's still going.

Renaud Galand · Oct 2008

I just can't wait for this one. I played the first version during years.

aesir · Oct 2008

MikeF wrote: »

looks great, been kinda checking the website once or twice a year since the first one came out, nice to see it still kicking. So do these guys have a publisher or is this purely volunteer?

I was pretty sure these guys were making money now... not positive though. Or maybe the money thing is for when they sell it on steam.

System · Oct 2008

Nice work so far, it looks like an intuitive engine, should make for some particularly interesting and accurate lighting. For me, nice lights are the icing on the cake for any game or scene.

blankslatejoe · Oct 2008

i too have a not-so-secret crush on Max M. NS2 is going to be amazing.

SHEPEIRO · Oct 2008

nice tech

Parnell · Oct 2008

Sweet stuff!
B

ebagg · Oct 2008

The look of those environments just oozes aliens' style atmosphere, damn cool!

Wells · Oct 2008

blankslatejoe wrote: »

i too have a not-so-secret crush on Max M. NS2 is going to be amazing.

Let's form a club

frostymoose · Oct 2008

Played the original for YEARS... Will buy NS2 the day it is released...

Michael Knubben · Oct 2008

Another fan here!

Aesir: They made some money off of their Sudoku (Zen of Sudoku on Steam) game, and they're also selling a debugging application for Lua scripts, which they're using themselves since a lot of things will in fact be scripted using lua rather than hardcoded in, like game mechanics. Which is amazing news for mods!
They can also change these scripts ingame without any recompiling or anything, I think, which sounds great.
I'm hoping they get a fucking move on, though, I really want to play this.

pliang · Oct 2008

Best sense of lighting I've seen in a long time coming.

Peris · Oct 2008

awesome, i love natural selection. Good to see another developer realizing no one should be compiling or building light maps anymore, as that just eats up valuable production time

Mark Dygert · Oct 2008

Agreed, maybe they could sell the tech back to Valve... "Now the student has become the master" kind of stuff. Its the one thing I HATE about working with source.

TheSplash · Oct 2008

Yeah waiting for lightmaps to build is lame.. but dynamic lighting is still highly expensive and you don't get nice indirect lighting. Or if you do, that still has to be precomputed separately.

Also, I'm sure if valve wanted fully dynamic lighting they could do it themselves.

Michael Knubben · Oct 2008

Yeah, I imagine Valve could do it themselves, easily. I suspect they've got a team working on a follow-up to Source anyway. There was an absolutely ridiculous discussion in the comments here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/10/14/valve-drop-hints-about-episode-three/#more-4136
People were basically saying the Halflife 2 engine was better or --in their more lucid moments-- equal to UE3. They went into the usual predictable 'everything's plastic lol'-type comments, and were actively distrusting of new technology, since 'Crysis wasn't fun'. In the end they made it sound as if Crysis' engine was to blame for that.

I particularly liked this fuzzy-logic-employing comment:

"But also, why have crazy mad graphics when you can have a beautiful game (as many have pointed out). "

Ah yes, beautiful art direction is simply impossible nowadays, what with them there fancy normalmaps and all. (I realise the Source engine has normalmaps. There's no need to convince me.)

edit: ooh, this one's good as well:

"Source is a beautiful game engine, way better than that pseudo-photo-realistic Crytek crap. Source has a depth and artfulness that no other engine even comes close to.

The reason it looks shitty in L4D is because of cross-platforming compromises; the old L4D character models = PC, the new ones = consolitis in action."

Kovac · Oct 2008

Ah finally some footage! I was just watching their siege cannon concept a few days ago... I can't wait for this game.

Wells · Oct 2008

Pea - reading that hurts my head

frostymoose · Oct 2008

Vig wrote: »

Agreed, maybe they could sell the tech back to Valve... "Now the student has become the master" kind of stuff. Its the one thing I HATE about working with source.

I don't think that would work out. They're making their own engine. It isn't source.

JohnnyRaptor · Oct 2008

did i hear that right? a 4 man team? and theyv made the engine? pretty freakn badass

J Randall · Oct 2008

If those of you who have crushes on the programmer want to get in closer they are looking for a senior artist ... this might be your way in to stalk him.

ViPr · Oct 2008

graphic engines are supposed to use environment mapping and specular highlighting to simulate reflections until ray-tracing with huge numbers of subpixels becomes feasible. it appears that the Source Engine only uses environment mapping and not specular highlighting except in the latest Source Engine versions which almost nobody seems to use except Valve itself it seems.

rooster · Oct 2008

the.. source engine.. doesnt support specular? wah?

Mark Dygert · Oct 2008

Ever since its been called source, its had spec highlights...

Frosty, I was referring to NS being a Mod for Half-Life. It would be awesome to see a home brew mod team that started off using valves HL surpass their engine and even make a killing selling the new engine to Valve as a replacement to source.

TheSplash · Oct 2008

Interesting.. http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2008/10/engine_video_followup

Apparently they did have some form of indirect lighting implemented but decided it wasn't worth it in the end. Kind of a shame, some of the darker shots in their video stood out to me as looking quite flat.

Everyone seems to be throwing SSAO in their engines nowadays, maybe they will do that to help with the flatness..

natural selection 2

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