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December '09 Submission of the Month Voting

PewPewK — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:49:47 +0000

Please vote for what you think is the best submission of December 2009 on NS2.Devs!

http://ns2devs.com/index.php?/topic/132-december-09-submission-of-the-month-voting/page__pid__892__st__0&#entry892

Basic NS2 Mapping Guidelines

PewPewK — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:24:16 +0000

Hey everyone,

Official Mapping Guidelines are coming but in the meantime, here's some basic info to get you started. Note that the game is in active development so these can change at any time! We'll do our best to keep you up to date when and if it does though. A Spark pre-alpha update in the nearish future will include the official Mapping Guidelines.

Overview
Both the marine and alien teams have up to 16 players each and spawn in their own base at the beginning of the game. The marine base has a Command Station and room for all 16 players and a collection of other marine structures. The alien start has a Hive hanging from the ceiling and room for 16 players (including the huge and fearsome Onos) and room for some alien structures.

Besides the two starting rooms, there are 2-4 other main rooms that can be used for either marine or alien bases. There are also 4-7 resource points which can be captured and built by a team to give that team extra resources. NS2 layouts will typically have 6-10 rooms (bases plus smaller rooms for some resource points) and are simpler than the sprawling, nondescript corridors found in Natural Selection 1 maps. Rooms, resource points and other high-conflict areas should be relatively simple geometry-wise to lower confusion and aim interference. They should also be a little
bigger than in NS1 for less chaos.

To make maps easier to learn, rooms should use landmarks wherever possible. Landmarks are unique lights, props, soundscapes or themes to make them unique in the minds of players and easy to remember and describe. They should be easy to describe (“Warehouse”, “Sewer”, “Glass corridor”, “Loading bay”) or easy to remember (loud machinery humming, covering up footstep sounds, one huge mining drill coming down through the ceiling, a huge lava waterfall, etc).

Sizes
· All sizes are in inches
· Primary routes 160 to 192 wide, 160 tall
· Secondary route entrances/exits are 80 wide, 128 tall
· Wall textures are 128 tall
· Floor textures are 128 wide
· The male marine is 77 tall
· MASCs are approximately 100 long and 50 tall
· Doors are 100 by 100
· The Onos is 120 tall, 90 wide and 120 long (he must crouch to get through doorways)

Cover
Due to the ranged vs. melee combat, marines have a distinct advantage in wide open areas without cover. Medium to large hallways and rooms should have plenty of crates and props as cover for aliens. Marines will occasionally need to take cover as well.

Avoid Level-Over-Level
Commander Mode is the ability for Commander players to play the game from a top-down view. This is handled automatically by the game but does place special limitations on level designers: maps can't have “level over level” geometry. If one room is built on top of another, the commander can't give orders in or see into the lower room. Because of this problem, overlapping hallways and areas that cross over other areas should generally be avoided. Girders, catwalks, balconies, pipes, and other smaller geometry can overlap as long as they don't really block commander access to the area below them.

Q&A Update
Marine and alien start locations are both fixed. There are NOT three hive rooms like in NS1.
For vents, use our special vent models (they are coming in an update soon).
Nope, we're not supporting multiple levels for Commanders.

Spark Editor Build 127 Released

PewPewK — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:36:06 +0000

Changelog:

Spark SDK 1.0 (Build 127)

Added shadows for point lights
Added a flag to choose whether a point or spot light casts shadows
Added "paint" selection mode (activated by holding down shift in the Select tool)
Added Duplicate Selection to Edit menu
Added mouse wheel scrolling in the asset browsers
Added the graphics adapter name and driver version to the log file
Added additional information to the log file when a creating a Direct3D texture fails
Added current color and selection indicators for lights
Added new ceiling material (refinery_ceiling_04)
Added new floor tubes models (refinery_floor_tubes)
Added new pipe models (refinery_pipe_03_straight, refinery_pipemods)
Added new pipe models (refinery_pipe_03_straight, refinery_pipemods)
Added broken vent model (refinery_vent_broken_01)
Added broken vent model (refinery_vent_broken_01)
Added wall meshes with vent holes in them
Changed light selection to be based on its visual representation rather than lighting distance
Fixed crash when attempting to setup shadows for spot lights when a shadow map texture was not available
Fixed crash bug when the accumulation buffers necessary for rendering could not be allocated
Fixed selection bug in move tool for entities
Fixed broken ceiling material (refinery_ceiling_03)
Fixed broken ceiling material (refinery_ceiling_03)
Fixed broken materials on a number of models

State of the Site - Past, Present, and Future

PewPewK — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:35:33 +0000

Old news if you visit the site frequently, but here it is in Steam now!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Hello everyone!

Well it's been a fantastic 4 days so far since NS2.Devs opened its doors officially to the public. In that time we have had over 54 registered members averaging about 14 members per day. I would say that this is not too bad for a new site and it just speaks to how wonderful the Natural Selection community is. I have so far seen members from all over the world joining in the community and it has been a wonderful experience to talk with you all about the past, present, and future of Natural Selection 2.

So this leads me to discuss the future of NS2.Devs. As we are growing at an amazing rate it is time to start introducing some new content!

The first I would like to announce the proposal for a community interview for Unknown Worlds Entertainment. What I would like to do is get a thread open (look for it in a little bit!) where you guys who have joined NS2.Devs early in its life will get to brainstorm questions you would like to see the development team answer. I will be picking the best questions and sending them off to UWE. Now I can't guarantee a response from them as they are very busy and might not be in the mood for an interview, but my hunch is that it won't be that big of an issue for them to answer a few simple questions.

Second, I would like to announce that me and NeXuZ are in the process of creating video tutorials for Spark. I personally will be making an entire series dedicated to learning the basics in the Spark Editor which I hope to put out there on the internet to persuade people who have probably never even heard of Natural Selection, much less the Spark Editor, to pre-order the game and join the community. The Spark Editor is one of the most fantastic level editors I have ever seen and I think the gaming community at large needs to see what an amazing job the sole developer of the editor and engine has done (OK, well they have two programmers now!).

Finally, I am making the first announcement of our monthly contest! It's nothing incredible, it is just a contest to submit the most remarkable, amazing piece of content for Natural Selection 2! Be it level, prefab, gamemode, artwork, etc - I am looking for something that is unique, creative, and something that inspires us all to do better work! Every month, starting at the end of December, we will look over all submissions over the past month and create a poll where you will get to vote on your favorite! We will take the top three and then the NS2.Devs staff will vote on their favorite piece and that user will be the winner for the month! The winner and the two runner ups will be given Honorable Member titles and access to special forums will be granted. I will also think of something special for the winner himself, but I don't know what that will be yet...

Oh and before I forget! We are also looking to fill our staff ranks as the site becomes bigger. I will be looking for community members that show good leadership skills for Moderator positions and community members that submit fantastic work to join our official NS2.Dev team!

That's all for now folks! Thanks for an amazing four days and don't forget to idle... I mean participate in our IRC channel located at GameSurge.net, channel #ns2devs!

Peace and love,

PewPewK
Founder of NS2.Devs

Welcome to our Steam Group!

PewPewK — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:53:39 +0000

Welcome to the official Steam group for the NS2 customization community NS2.Devs.