Blog entry - Prosumers and NS2, Discuss it here Options

[Flayra]

Please use this thread to discuss our latest blog entry.

[Lt_Patch]

Not a bad idea at all, adding the LUA methods to the engine.

The only issue that I see with this, is that it could cause a further split in the community, similiar to the "Combat Vs Classic", or "Vanilla vs Modded" arguments have. Adding new structure is a nice touch though, again, the main issue being balance for the new structures would be entirely in the hands of the person who created the LUA script. The main concern for this being akin to some of the anti-knifing plugins, which gave alien resource nodes which used to do 50 damage a second, to all classes, in an attempt to stop marines from conserving ammunition, by forcing them to shoot at the node, instead of knifing it.

On the flip side of this, it could give the community a chance to finally implement a volumetic flamethrower, if it isn't already planned for NS2. Again, the balance may be an issue, but it would actually give people the ability to change the way how the way is visualised, on a per server basis.

Obviously, from the above points, the main concern for the LUA scripting, is the issue of balance. If the server is running at the time, could a server admin rewrite the script, giving siege turrets a secondary ability, to shoot at line-of-sight aliens, in the same manner as a normal sentry turret? Could the damage for any weapon be magnified, at the simple whim of someone who can change a 10, into a 100?

Giving the community access to something as essentially powerful as the LUA scripting system could be a breaking point, in terms of sub-mods, but again, it may cause a player base split, more drastic than the current ones that NS is experiencing after a good run of 4-5 years...

Still, nice to hear some news on NS2 anyway. I'm sure Depot, and the rest of the gang at NSMod can't wait to start work on the new LUA modifications

[coris]

I thought Flay himself said that people should play the game the way the creator designed it and not as you wanted it to be designed (or something similar).

While I think the system itself sounds awesome, I'm a bit skeptical about giving the players too much room to freely modify the game mechanics. If the game play differently on every new server a player joins it's bound to alienate new players from the game.

However, I do like the thought of entirely new game-modes being created, kind of lika DoTA for wc3.

I do like the syntax of LUA aswell, kind of reminds me of ruby. I hope it's as elegant

[anty]

I think adding LUA is defenitly a good way to go!

If you code bad scripts, you will have no players on your server. This is natural-selection, the bad scripts will die

I really love the fact that you can add new abilities to a game, making it easy is the best step to make me happy

What I would suggest: make sure you can include scripts to maps (like in the *.res files in the HL1 engine) so you can provide special mappacks with scripts designed for specific maps.

I see a oc-defense mod in my inner eye, where all players are gorges and marines are only models with health that are moved from point A to point B, like in StarCraft

NS2 gets better and better, keep up the good work, and don't stop including new ideas!

[MasterPTG]

imho,

You don't want 10 different mods for the same game, as it fragments the community too much. Having a large base of playtesters that have a open-source game to mess around with would be nice. However, empowering all of the different server admins to change around the parameters quickly, will, I think, be a bad thing.

Bad thing, meaning differing game styles from server to server.

CS has 1 game style that is largely unalterable and stays the same from a single patch.

If NS server admins can change stuff around (as they already have to a small extent in NS and to a large amount in CO), then you risk the crappola that CO has turned into. Server admins often have warped senses of what is 'cool', while the Dev's have thought through endless streams of consequences & counter-consequences of possible changes. Leaving this to server admins is... B-A-D.

Lock out these scripts or encode them for the live game, so as to make modders approach you for changes. Would you want your game going down a course of action that you didn't really want it to go down? If you allow lots of mods, expect some REALLY funky stuff to start happening. What will that accomplish? Fragmentation.

Fragmentation, while not bad--as it's like 'diversification'--, will cause people to choose x community over x community and lead to a less competitive atmosphere (less people playing a game, less overall competitiveness).

The only games that have $$ prizes are the largest ones. BF2 (sometimes), CS, CS:S, & DoD (& maybe even Q3 or Q4). Don't you want NS:S to be there? Don't split the audience.

Develop different maps that have different map styles, NOT HAVING a different game mode. Only allow one game mode, but allow the map and map situations to be different. One core-core game mode == win.

This post has been edited by MasterPTG: Feb 14 2007, 05:05 AM

[Scythe]

The thing I hated most about Tribes 1 was the number of custom serverside mods. They essentially ruined the game for me. Nobody ran vanilla servers anymore. They were all Team Aerial Combat or some variant of Renegades.

Surely a per-server player experience is a very bad thing? What if a new player joined a modded server unawares and has a terrible time due to poorly-thought-out plugins?

I'm all in favour of being able to embed scripting into custom maps for events and complex interlocking systems, airlocks, power systems, etc, but scripts that effect the gameplay on other maps at a base level are a very bad thing.

At least from my point of view.

--Scythe--

[Router_Box]

I agree with coris and masterp.

This is really a neat technology to build into a game. But any time you let the general user base control a game you get the "Big Game Hunters" phenomenon.

People like to get cheap thrills from being able to do whatever they want. Let loose, this turns into an insta-kill-sporemines, perma charging onos, buildmenu, whichbot, cluster######. It sucks all skill, deep interest, and long term satisfaction out of your title.

You guys built an amazing game, which in my eyes has no rival. But you also didn't stick to your guns and let it stand on it's own. Amx is bad enough, this is going to be a train wreck unless done properly.

Make sure that some quality, unalterable core ns game remains the focus of the title.

This post has been edited by Router_Box: Feb 14 2007, 09:09 AM

[demm]

I share the concerns of most of the people that have already replied.

Look at the current AMX mods for NS that have a gameplay altering effect. They're all unbalanced! Whether its extra-levels, buildmenu or spawn-protection... they all ruin the balance of the game.

I completely agree with MasterPTG!

Develop different maps that have different map styles, NOT HAVING a different game mode. Only allow one game mode, but allow the map and map situations to be different.

If you really want to give the community so much power over how your game is played, then at least have some kind of server-side setting that is visible in the server browser that indicates whether a server has custom scripts or not. This way people that don't want to play on unbalanced servers can filter them out.

edit: PS: This blog entry completely ends the discussion about a global ranking system! good news

This post has been edited by demm: Feb 14 2007, 01:21 PM

[KungFuDiscoMonke...]

Sounds pretty interesting though I share the concerns of some of the people above. Having some consistency across servers is a good thing. I would prefer to play on different servers and have a similar gameplay experience (within reason) instead of servers having vastly different gameplay settings.

[Mouse]

Firstly, I'll ditto the general feeling in this thread so far; giving the players that much freedom with the base game mechanics is bound to fragment the community.

One issue with exposing large portions of the game mechanics to the players is that extensive and varied modification of the base game is that it indirectly increases the learning curve of the game.
Suppose I join a server and jetpacks are flying about. Going by the last server I was on, jetpacks have unlimited fuel and burn anyone they touch. However on this server, jetpacks have extremely limited fuel and they explode violently when killed. Prior to joining this server, I had no clue that jetpacks would behave any differently to how they did on the previous server I was on. I now have to keep in mind that jetpacks behave in a certain way.. except when they don't; which as you can imagine is terribly unintuitive and probably quite alienating for a new player.

That said; as you mentioned in the blog entry, from a development standpoint LUA is a godsend. It gives you the freedom to alter and tweak the game mechanics without lengthy recompiles or the danger of greatly affecting the stability of the game.

I also think that it'd be interesting to allow the community limited access to some of the functionality that LUA allows. For example; it would be unwise to allow access to the core game values (health, damage, movement speed, etc.), however it could be worth exposing variables and hooks that would be useful to mappers (game events, DI movement, structure birth/health/death, etc.) and modders (player status, team status, endgame data, UI data, etc.).

[Quaunaut]

I think it could be just fine overall. Yeah, it may fragment the community, but that will only happen if 1 thing doesn't stay true: NS is better than all of the mods. If it can stay ahead, continue to be better, then it will keep its place.


Flayra, this causes me to wonder: Are you going to ship NS2 with no combat, and then, if players want it, make someone code it up? It'd be an interesting, VALVe-like take on things(black mesa source omg).

This post has been edited by Quaunaut: Feb 14 2007, 02:25 PM

[Llama_Killer]

I do not particularly like combat, but it does draw in new players who will try NS mode and love it too. As for the modding tools (not a moder/coder so dont hurt me if I get terminology wrong) I just realised I did not finish my thought, (realised I was going to miss my bus) as for including open code/ modding tools I think it is great, it will help expand the community.

This post has been edited by Llama_Killer: Feb 15 2007, 04:20 AM

[Crispy]

Imo you should only allow these mods to work in a single-player vs. bots scenario. This way you can download the NS2 mods you want and have crazy customisation and weird map modes, but you're not gonna confuse anyone who doesn't understand that the gameplay they're experiencing is not the core gameplay.

If any of these SP mods are genuinely balanced and enjoyable the dev team can make take the decision to work closely with the author(s) to include a multiplayer version of the 'scenario' in the next release, but they can vet applicants closely to retain some control of the quality of gameplay given in NS (regardless of the game mode).

I understand it's the huge popularity of Gmod's sandbox gameplay that you're trying to cash in on here, but Gmod never pretended to be anything other than a sandbox, whereas NS2 is primarily a multiplayer game. All team games need a common set of rules that define their gameplay. Here, what your saying is that you're going to make the rules malleable for the sake of selling a few more copies of the game. (I see no other logical argument for handing over control of how your game is played to the players themselves)

Don't give stupid people the tools to change the game, it will ruin NS2. If you want to make tools available to people who understand game design and can have a positive impact with worthwhile addons, please regulate it somehow otherwise you'll have so many splinter groups for NS2 it will lose all sense of consistency and get blurred into non-existence.

By all means, create a sandbox mode, hell even have MP sandbox modes, but make it so they cannot interfere with the core gameplay (i.e. force all NS mods to use a different prefix so (a) there is a clear difference between the game modes, and (b) people who don't want to play unbalanced free-for-all game modes can avoid these at all costs).

This post has been edited by Crispy: Feb 14 2007, 03:54 PM

[Harrower]

It's a great idea, but the concerns here are valid. What if you set it up so that new server mods were proposed through a QA system, the way BSD handles them?

[anty]

I didn't expect so much bad posts after mine, but I can follow your concerns.
Maybe NS2 should introduce something that makes it possible to mark servers that have not vanilla ns2 running.

Like a small icon that shows unaltered games, together with the possibility to add your own icon to mark special types of scripts that have nearly the same game play.

I don't think that this would be a good solution, but it would be one

Try to find a solution for the "problem" you all fear, instead of saying it shouldn't be in the game!

This post has been edited by anty: Feb 14 2007, 05:54 PM

[KungFuDiscoMonke...]

I'm not sure what would have to be modified in Source ( or maybe steam) but I would really LOVE to have some kind of server flag for servers that run lots of custom content. Personally the second a server starts downloading random wav files, I hit cancel. I don't like playing games when they add all these extra distractions. I would be a happy person if I could filter those servers out.

[Lt_Patch]

I've had a thought, after seeing the "OC Defence" part, posted earlier.
Custom mods, and sub-mods are a break from the mainsteam Classic games, much like Combat is.

Having thought about the idea of sub-mods, they could be used to prlong the lifespan of NS itself.
The thought never crossed my mind until I re-read all the posts here again.

Warcraft 3 (the base version), is now 5 years old (according to the copyright on my copy of it...);. But yet the playerbase has only slightly fallen since Blizzard took it off of the current projects lists, and replaced it with WoW.

Why?

Because the majority of the WC3 players are custom game players. They're not interested in the micromanagement side of the "normal" multiplayer experience that WC3 has to offer. A great deal of them play things like Tower Defence (Much the same as the "OC Defence" proposed earlier), and the eponymous DoTA, or Defence of The Ancients. Which basically turns the normally micromanaged, squad based RTS of WC3 into an isometric, second person, RPG. Which now has its own CPL league... Not bad for a sub-mod...

This level of customisation is only really possible with the map editor, and the scripting triggers that are shipped with it.

HL already ships with a general editor, as does HL2. With the LUA scripting being implemented, this could spell the future of NS2, being modded by skilled scripters, into something that is a nice changed from the regular games that people play.

It's only an idea, but it stuck me mid read...

[sherpa]

I don't want a different gameplay experience from each server :`(

[KungFuDiscoMonke...]

Starcraft/Warcraft have an option to filter based on default gameplay and use map settings. Having something like that would be reasonable, so that those who wanted classic could find it, and those who wanted other gameplay could find that too.

[Flayra]

Great feedback everyone. But oops, I forgot to qualify a big point here: even though we want to encourage modding of NS2, we will definitely maintain our own "core" gameplay that is the main game. We will draw an obvious distinction between "core" NS2 and "custom" NS2.

We'll probably do this by making the server browser default to showing default "NS2" servers, and then having a "custom games" tab or something that shows only modified servers.

Hopefully this way we get the best of both worlds.