NS2HD[352] - Optimising NS2

http://www.ns2hd.com

Natural Selection 2 is a first person shooter cross real time strategy game being developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment, a small ~6 person team in California. It is a stand alone sequel to the popular Half-Life modification Natural Selection.

The game is currently in beta, and is available to purchase for US$35. Purchasing the game gives access to the beta and the full release when the game is finished. The beta is patched regularly, at a minimum every two weeks.

NS2 pits the human marine Frontiersmen against the varied alien Kharaa. The two teams, of up to 16 players each, vie for control of strategic points of large and small maps, with the goal of wiping each other out.

Each team has a commander, who views the game from a real time strategy perspective. The rest of the team plays from a first person shooter perspective. Players may seamlessly enter and exit commander mode throughout the game. Teams may build a large variety of structures to aid them in controlling territory, upgrading equipment, and unlocking new lifeforms, weapons, abilities, and support units.

The game is built on a brand new, UWE proprietry engine called Spark. Spark features fully dynamically lit environments (There is no static lighting at all), dynamic occlusion culling, and extreme modability. All game code is written in accessible Lua, and stands apart from the C++ engine.

A full suite of Spark tools, including level editor, lua debugger, cinematic editor, model viewer, and more is included with the purchase of the game.

The game may be purchased at http://www.naturalselection2.com/buy.

The development team maintains an active blog at http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2, including forums where developers post and converse with community members regularly.

The development team draws on the contributions of community members. Bug fixes submitted by the community are often included in beta patches.

Beta progress is tracked by 'build numbers,' which are visible in the NS2HD in-video titles, and in the top left corner of the game (red text).

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Natural Selection 2
• Gaming
• indie game
• indie
• indy
• independent game
• Unknown Worlds Entertainment
• UWE
• Spark
• Spark Engine
• First Person Shooter
• FPS
• RTS
• Real Time Strategy
• NS2
• NS
• Natural Selection
• Commentary
• livecast
• gamecast
• game commentary
• Natural Selection 2 commentary
• NS2 Gameplay
• Natural Selection 2 Gameplay
• 1080p
• 720p
• HD
• High Definition
• 1080 Gameplay
• HD Gameplay
• High Definition Gameplay
• NS2HD
• Unknown Worlds
• Indie Game

[MrVVheatley]

This is relevant to my interrests.

[AlmightyTurtleman]

really interesting, thanks.

[passerby500]

@Lobos222 Have you played the fucking game?

if they were added in, they wouldn't be used, since it just doesn't fit the gameplay, making them a useless feature, and there for not adding anything to the game.

let my guess to you want it to be set in the middle-east, with us marines too.

[Lobos222]

@passerby500

You mean backwaters unable to make a product to fit both with a modern and retro audience... Stop with the lame straw man arguments towards not including modern game dynamics.

People that have not played the first one and do not comment here are the ones that have expectations that a product they pay for meets common modern standards. Iron sights is today one of these. Grandpa might not care, but thats hardly the point, I think.

[Zache51]

@zeepster It´s written in lua to make it easier for future modding. Natural Selection 1 was a mod for halflife so there is history behind it too. Modding may be quite benificial for a game too. :)

[zeepster]

Seems to me that a big downside of LUA is that now you are also using your resources (Unknown worlds) to work on LUA performance issues instead of fully focussing on NS2.

[koskorax]

@VereorAUS Seems to me that "doing it right from step #1" becomes close to impossible if a project is as complex as NS2.

For commercial non-OS software, 1-5 bugs per kLOC are considered normal.

WinXP: 20 million LOC, VISTA: 50million LOC

[Raisonbran648]

These are my favorite videos, the interviews with the developers talking about more technical aspects of the game. I really like the new intro also, great videos keep em coming!

[gnatpat]

@VereorAUS If you watch the video, you'll see that they do talk about using a profiler.

[GestOfAll]

Very nice video this one. Good editing!

[VereorAUS]

They keep saying that finding code bottlenecks is the hardest part. That's what profilers are for. If you're guessing where stuff is slow, you're doing it wrong from step #1.

[theycalledmechris]

@Alignn Might have been an australian one, where I'm from. I suppose I'll continue to sit tight and hope that it all turns out ok