Dynamic Infestation live prototyping

[Dimeinurear]

There needs to be a way to go commando and cut off the Aliens' resource network. Disabling one cyst should bring down a wing of their network not just be an annoyance.

[DeinKoenig]

is this the prototype of world of goo 2?

:D

[Anddosdd]

dosent the cars keep going past anoy you?, why is it constant traffic?, where are these people going?

[Anddosdd]

cars always going past your window, thats anoying for me

[XxXScirishWarLordXxX]

Im liking these ideas! especialy the one with multiple vine per cyst thing.

And i can imagine marines going "oh shit" with a cyst going boom in their face.

[Mamonar]

I have the same speakers :)

[Megarith1to3]

Please implement the body-recycling *_* Best idea of this video

[soylentgreenb]

@unknownworlds You mentioned world of goo for inspiration. I also strongly suggest that you google "the space game"; it's a flash-based RTS game based on asteroid mining.

You connect solar panels, energy stores, relays, cannons, mining nodes and so on into a network. Expanding or rebuilding destroyed parts of the network consumes a lot of energy, so if you try to do too much all at once you run into problems. If you make the network long and spindly it is difficult to defend from attack.

[SicknessOnCan]

Wont infestation be able to spread to the walls and ceiling aswell as the floor?

Would make a great atmohsphere too, especially if the infestation gave away a bit of a orange / yellow / brownish haze, which could maybe reduce the marines sight aswell.

And i thought the infestation was orignally planned to be autonomous and kinda grow and spread by itself to a certain max degree from the alien hives or structures? I do hope you make it look and feel "alive" though :)

[BarerRudeROC]

I love the passion Charlie has for the game

[Locane256]

Awesome. I loved seeing the process.

By the way, if you make it so that exploding cysts puts a debuff on marines (or marine structures) to do extra damage, people will use them that way almost exclusively if they can. I don't know who it was in the video, but the guy that sat down and started making a checkerboard is thinking like a player - "How can I abuse this to win the game?" That's exactly the way people who are going to use it are going to think, and I was relieved when he did that.

[snooops01]

OK why do you waste time on creating a java tool to demonstrate stuff you could place on a ... whiteboard?

Exactly that is what you guys are doing wrong... 4 guys for a 16minutes video = 4 * 16minutes worktime... great job guys, you seriously thinking about buisness...

[DrDopehat]

@snooops01

Its not a waste of time. What you have in such a demo is the actual mechanic for what they want to do, and the best (if not the ONLY) way to see how it works with the mechanics going, is to make these. On a whiteboard you can only illustrate so far in what you're trying to convey - Also in terms of java (being a coder myself), these are really simple applications working on pure math.

So please, sit down and take a deep breath.

[koskorax]

@snooops01 Grats. 4*4 is indeed 16. Your point?

[Locane256]

@snooops01 I don't like to hear it, but you've got a point sir.

[ukuleleko]

@snooops01 Bobby Kotick is that you?

[snooops01]

@ukuleleko no

[snooops01]

@ukuleleko no

[HolmeBrian]

the crag heals buildings you cant remove that

[GigaBoost]

Great video! I don't know who this guy is talking but he seems to be in charge, he's really charismatic and has some great ideas.

I wonder if the game will ever be good though, it's not that much fun right now...

[harrisoncdx36]

It would be cool if the infestation had some sort of verticality to it. It might have to be done by the mapper to place cyst spawning areas that are not on the floor. But the game play implications are significant. Say a level 3 cyst can expand nodes up the walls to the ceiling. It's more of a end game or heavy fortifying strategy. If marines can see "connections" or cysts "glow" it would work out great as long as marines can somehow attack them.

[rammaj85]

LOVE these kind of videos just raw footage showing the brainstorming going on no editing no BS.

lol @Brian with that interrogation light in Charlie's face :D

[BBFNTL]

Good grief, man! You guys rox! I look forward to seeing some of this in game =)

[Hurramate]

I wanna live inside charlie's mind, his mind has a lot of shit growing inside it, a lot of fun ideas!

[lvldsnr]

Duh, i thought this arguments were settled at the beginning of design :)

[Alignn]

@lvldsnr

design is never finished

[lvldsnr]

@Alignn I very well know that, we just finished a small mobile game ourselves... it's just that the infestation was the first video ever from NS2 so i thought its gameplay was final by now.

[Runteh]

I thought the idea of different latices to create spells was interesting.

What if different types of latice patterns gave different advantages? The checkerboard latice may give aliens an energy boost perhaps? Or a triangular lattice would give better attack.

It would work in itelf that rooms that were spammed would have a defensive network, where as longer triangular chains would have a offensive style network.

[hzktotakoi]

I like the idea of a better armor regeneration for crag. It really shows crag's role of a farther battle/support healing node

[93Gamerz]

9:05 i like this system very much!

[Wavesonics]

++ Body Eating!!

Also the idea w\ Alien comm popping cysts is cool, how about it sorta coats the Marine with goo, which translates into the game play effect of NS1 webs? Gives advantages to any near by Aliens in combat.

[Waremonger]

Please keep these coming! I love watching these raw, candid videos. There were some really good ideas kicked around. I especially like the idea of the dead bodies energizing the infestation.

[dethem]

this is sooo cool i like how they are just brain stormingish

[PLAGAWAGA]

Late hours? I stay overnight in class for Game Dev in college having a blast. I can't imagine how long I'd be willing to stay working on something remotely close to the scale of NS2

[Sirusblk]

How about cysts giving off a heal spray of their own? That way it heals units around it, or damages them if they're marines. And when it blows up it's a violent ranged explosion that reaches farther out than a normal heal spray.

[elfprince13]

I like the first model you had, but the older a cyst is, the stronger it should be, and the stronger/fatter its connections should be. this gives an incentive to hold territory for an extended period of time.

[Alignn]

@elfprince13

But on the other hand that means they'll get stronger even if the commander does nothing but expand, which totally eliminates the whole trade-off idea.

[elfprince13]

@Alignn presumably if the commander is only expanding he won't be able to hold the territory.

[Alignn]

@elfprince13

But currently cysts cost energy, while fortifying (with chambers) costs res, right?

So making cysts automatically become stronger over time wouldn't change things from how they are now, except that they become stronger. What they wanted to do is force the commander to choose between expanding with new cysts or fortifying by strengthening the old ones.

[elfprince13]

@Alignn

You would still need to build more cysts in order to expand non-linearly, and the growth would be slow enough that it would still be worthwhile to "ladder" down hallways. Grow as x^(1/2) or some other fractional power.

But a biological network shouldn't remain static - it should grow.

[Alignn]

@elfprince13

"ladder" cyst links would work just as well now, and nobody uses it (because it's cheaper to replace the occasionally lost ones, I guess).

[extollo]

really cool vid. like the window into your brainstorming & prototyping concepts.

[Tigregalis]

that is some seriously late hours...

[NexCarnifex]

@suomiis its better this way, people will be more interested if they aren't allowed to play the simplistic unfinished version. People judge from first impressions alot

[NexCarnifex]

I really really like the body eating idea that would totally make the game 40x more immersive

[whiowhio]

great vid,thanks guys

[Agora2021]

As a predominately alien player, I support all of these ideas.

[zeroticked]

We need more videos like this, i love seeing what's going on behind the scenes And i loved the idea about Infestation consuming corpses and using it to speed up it's growth/Health restored. It's dark and alien like.

[Wolfwood34]

i dunno why most of these comments are negative. they are a what, 10 man team at most? working on a game that is complex and graphically pleasing. not to mention forming their own engine... interesting stuff guys keep it up.

[Kalabalana]

They seem to be oblivious of all the cyst suggestions in the forums?

[killerdecoy]

Around the 13min mark it reminds me of world of goo.

[Thaldarin]

You're making things too complex again.

[reznoire]

One day there'll be a TRL-esque crowd on the street in the background. One of these days.

[0kazaki]

cool :)

[l2ic3]

I love seeing how you guys work. More videos like this would be awesome!

[henrythewhite]

I second TheVistix and stickyboot.

I know as a gorge I try to hide my mini-cysts in nooks so 'rines can't shoot them. I'd love to be able to do something similar as alien commander, so anything that would let me place off the floor would be great.

[thelinxswe]

Interesting that you chose to prototype in Processing rather than LÖVE (which also uses Lua).

To each his own, I guess.

[explosivose]

How about some low level fog to represent infestation height/depth

[Suomiis]

Why isn't NS2 prepurchasable on Steam? My guess is that it would get much more players.

[D00MEDST]

@Suomiis Fuck Valve loooooool now unknownworlds they're in to retail their own product

Ya, HL1 NS mod was just a phase loooool a great mod but y'feel me d0g

[damasta717]

@Suomiis It's not quite released yet. The counter-question would be why they don't open up a preorder system via steam instead of just their website, boundaries likely being long process to push products through steam and unwillingness to release it to the public until it's in a more visually and mechanically appealing state. i.e, looks better, less lag, and more features with proper balance.

[FlopperMax]

@damasta717

I think its due to the fact that the game doesnt even have a release date. So it's all kind of in the air still, and Valve doesnt want to take up a project that could mean refunds in the end (from Valve's perspective)

[unknownworlds]

@Suomiis We will definitely launch on Steam when we're ready, but we're still in beta and don't want too much exposure too soon.

[thelooker28]

@unknownworlds Wait, what?

How do I have it on Steam then?

I got it with the Overgrowth bundle thing.

[XxXScirishWarLordXxX]

@thelooker28 You can get a code for it to be included on steam, but you cant buy it on steam directly.

[necox5]

@XxXScirishWarLordXxX yet ;)

[johnnyvdoremalen]

Scale the damage of a cyst blowing up to the amount of hp remaining (less hp -> less damage), this way the choice of the commander sacrificing it will be more meaningful. He wouldn't wait until 1% hp on every cyst then blow it up just in time.

If you blow it up automatically at 0% hp for a small amount of damage, some commanders might chose not to pay attention to the cysts and focus somewhere else on the map.

But yeah, I was also hoping for ingame footage :) Keep up the good work though! :)

[Waremonger]

@johnnyvdoremalen Yeah, that's a really good idea.

[GraydonW]

Reminds me of World of Goo :)

[00Svenare]

awesome vid, keep them coming

[BarerRudeROC]

Gigglesquee

[TheVistix]

Great video! Can't wait. But I have a question. How will this work with ceilings and walls because I imagine ideally the aliens would want the entire room to be infested but it's probably a bit tricky for the commander to be able to place tumors on any other surface than the floor.

[Rksager]

aw, I was kind of hoping for some ingame prototype, but seeing how you work is cool too :)