This looks like a big NS weekend so far. The first thing that's going to be happening is the unveiling of the new NS site. This site will be shutdown by the end of the weekend, and the new site will be live sometime early next week, probably by Monday. The new site has lots of new functionality:
- Permanent player profiles allow community members to build a name and reputation for themselves in NS and through all of our games. You can upload your photo, change your SteamID (so your icon is always up to date!), view your recent forum posts, e-mail other players, and more. - Instant Constellation registration activation. - New mailing lists mean easier access to mapping information, Constellation happenings and information on NS and future games. - Player-submitted news items, gallery images, mirror links, community links, frequently asked questions and more. After approval by moderators, these items are then published. - The new site is now known as http://www.naturalselection.com!
During the transition, you may experience some site outage and your in-game icon may not work properly. All members of the NS forums will have their new profiles pre-created for them, preserving their post count, join date, etc. When you get to the new site, you'll want to log in to your profile with your forum handle and password, and make sure your name, e-mail address and SteamID are current.
The second big thing happening this weekend is the CAL finals! It all happens Sunday, and if these matches are anything like the pre-final matches this seasons, they will be a real treat to watch.
Terror vs. Scientifically Unstoppable - 5:30 PST (8:30 EST) Gorge Loving vs. Reflect - 7:30 PST (10:30 EST)
The HLTV information for these matches will be broadcast on #naturalselection around 30 minutes before the match. Good luck to these amazing teams, and hope to see you there!
For the Half-life 2 IRC launch party, hl2db.com held a big interview with some members of the NS team. grepdashv, TyrNemesis and Flayra talk for over an hour and provide a lot of insight about the behind-the-scenes development of NS. Download it from Surftown, here. Check this forum thread for more information.
The NS team is looking for a few good men and/or women!
If you can tell Photoshop from MS Paint and always wanted to contribute something to NS, this might be your big chance. If you write code in your sleep and dream of being a programmer on one of the biggest online games, then this might be of interest to you. If you see feel that the pinnacle of art is modern "digital motile art" in the form of animation then pull up a chair. This is the job for you.
We're searching for talented texture artists, modellers, programmers and animators to expand the NS development team. If you are proficient in one or more of the described areas below and want to do your bit for NS then read on. Multi-skilled or multi-disciplinary candidates are a big plus.
To show your capabilities in the area you are applying for, you will be required to provide a "sample" of your work as detailed below. Reception of your submission will be confirmed, every submission with the required application task will be reviewed and answered individually.
Thanks for your time and good luck!
Open positions: (links since removed) 2D Artists 3D Artists Animator Programmers
Come join the the Half-life and NS community as we count-down the final hours to Half-life 2. The release party is ramping up already, with over 600 users so far. Join #halflife2 on GameSURGE and see the madness for yourself.
Then at 7pm PST, there will be an interview with Flayra, talking about Source, the future of NS, and other topics. The interview will likely be on IRC and also broadcast via Shoutcast. Just make sure you have Winamp installed and join the channel for information as it gets closer. If you have mIRC installed, you can use this link to join. Otherwise, just find #halflife2 on GameSURGE.
See you tonight, and have fun with Half-life 2!
It's that time again. CAL (Cyber Amateur League) finals, it seems like only yesterday when the CAL season started and teams played through the official NS maps in an attempt to show each other and themselves who is the best in competitive play in North America.
Teams fought hard all season and it's finally come down to 6 teams in the Delta division and 8 teams in the Omega division.
CAL Playoffs are 2 rounds (each team takes one round as marine and alien). In the case of a tie (2 alien or marine wins), higher ranked teams get to choose which side they play twice.
Here are the first round matchups (note all records are in the format of Win-Loss-Tie).
If you have never used HLTV previously, check out an article written by Albino, here.
In closing, I'd like to personally say good luck to obscure :), and all the other teams. May the best teams prevail.
*(HLTV's provided by Amped News, location of demos, news and articles about Natural Selection and CAL).
With NS v3.0 beta 5 out the door, the NS development team is already hard at work on beta 6. After a development meeting that laid out the foundation of what we need to include (bug fixes/balance) and what new elements we feel make sense at this time, we are beginning to feel like there is a possibility that beta 6 will bring us to our objectives and allow us to make beta 6 NS 3.0 final. We're planning a number of balance changes, specifically to improve the gameplay experience of alien players in very small and large games, a number of cosmetic improvements, and of course, more bugfixes.
Now onto some new introductions. There have been several additions to the dev team that have not been formally announced, so I'd like to take a moment and recognize who they are:
Daniel "TyrNemesis^" Polcari - Level Design overseer. Tyr just celebrated his 1 year anniversary of being in the NS community, and now gets the task of organizing maps, reviewing them, making suggestions and assigning maps for playtesting.
Dave "MaDMaXX" Monks - Sound artist. MaDMaXX is the fellow responsible for the tasty new welder sound, as well as the recent reworks to the JP and LMG noises.
Harry "puzl" Walsh - Linux support, and "secret projects" programmer. Harry has been helping with the site, mirroring and much more for many months now, but now he is officially on board to handle aspects of Linux development, perform some system administration, and to work on upcoming projects (think, "BUS").
Mark "^Zunni^" Windle - Public relations. Zunni has just recently joined the team, and has already begun informing the fans of NS about new features coming in the future.
There has also been some shuffling of roles and responsibilities to improve the efficiency, consistency and quality of our development work:
Joel "grepdashv" Rubicam has taken on the responsibility of QA Manager and is tasked with ensuring that NS remains one of the highest quality mods available for any engine.
Joe "joev" Vaughan is now responsible for managing the development process. Basically this means he's the one who gets it in the neck if things aren't done on time and up to standard.
Florian "NemesisZero" Schwarzer, in addition to all the other work that he does as the NS community lead, has also taken on the role of "Producer" for NS. In essence he is responsible for the product "Natural Selection", deciding timeframes, schedules, and giving crucial input on release contents.
Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland is still doing all design and directing the future of NS, but is no longer doing NS programming.
We continue to be committed to bringing the NS players the best possible game that we can, and strive to make each release more balanced and a better playing experience than any of the prior releases. As work continues, keep checking the front page of nautral-selection.org or the announcement forum for new news regarding specifics that are being included for B6.
In competitive news, CAL-NS just went into their fourth season, and there are two European tourneys, one organized by the folks at GamingOrb.com, and one carried out by NS-Game.com, which just extended by adding an English sister site. Check them out if you're interested in some high-quality gaming.
Lastly, the new NS website is almost ready for prime-time, expect an announcement within a week or so.
NS v3.0 beta 5 has now been released! Head over to our downloads page and grab it!
Thanks for everyone's hard work in making this release a success. We'll see you online this weekend. Enjoy.