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Gaming Goodness
Let's shoehorn a few gaming submissions together: tabby writes "For those not in the know here's the most amazing game I've played in ages. Its a Half-Life mod called Natural-Selection. Try to imagine CounterStrike + StarCraft. Its essentially a multiplayer First Person Real Time Strategy game." real_b0fh writes "I'm surprised no one mentioned it here yet, but Silicon Ice Development has released the beta 2.6 for their very cool Quake 3 Arena mod Urban Terror. Have played it a bit and it features cool things like better weapon hit model, some anti-cheat features, improved maps and some new nasty bugs. Well worth a try if you are into FPS games." And on the lighter side, LSDsmurf reports that there's a patch for Doom III Alpha. Yes, you read that right.
Battlefield 1942.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
One of my assosiates in a gaming organization is in on Natural Selection because he helps moderate their forums. Due to this, my team of gamers got a first crack at Beta 1.00 and 1.01b [before it was released no less :)] and are still pointing out something thats obvious. The game needs some major balancing before it reaches its acme, as do most games. At first players complained that Aliens were underpowered and Marines could win the game in just about any situation. Now while the game is a little more even the Aliens are starting to come out a bit more powerful and the marines a bit weaker. The most obvious flaw in this game is that the whole outcome can be determined in the first 5 - 15 minutes of the game. With an average game running anywhere between an hour to four hours this is considerably undesirable. One team knows they're destined for doom hours ahead of their demise.
Another note is how players constantly claim that aliens can rush marines in the beginning and overpower all their foes easily with the high attack power on the level 1 alien creatures. Well the night before last I displayed what a marine rush and an alien rush can do:
Aliens Win: ~5 minutes
Marines Win: ~3 minutes
I'm pretty sure they didnt make this game to be played in under 10 minutes. So while it does have great prospects and is a considerably nice idea, I would like to see it balanced out before I start calling it the best game ever.
PA is a little bit faster than slashdot when it comes to game news.1 -04
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2002-1
Another note I'd like to make is where you can find a large variety of services for the gaming community. Anything from game reviews to servers for rent. They beta tested BF1942, another game noted on the comments, and AA [America's Army] as well. :) Its a great place to be if you love gaming.
www.homelanfed.com
thx :)
The patch:
What's new? :
There you have it.
It's easily the best, most innovative online game I've seen in a long time. It's amazing that a independently-developed, free mod for a four year old game can put the likes of UT2003 to shame.
To those who haven't tried it, it's a game that pits some Zerg-like aliens against a team of space marines in an innovative FPS/RTS hybrid. The humans are led by a single commander (a player voulenteer) with a bird's-eye view of the battlefield. The aliens have no central commander but -- this is neat -- they can "see" their teammates, important waypoints, and any enemies that another team member is seeing right then. (Sort of like an organic built-in radar.)
Anyhow, anyone who likes action games should try it out. There has been a lack of fast servers out there, so if you've got a decent spare box then set up a dedicated server by all means. Also, there may be some balancing issues so early after release, but honestly it's hard to tell.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Natural Selection Server Patch 1.01 (2.1MB)
Doom III Alpha Patch (2MB)
Urban Terror Beta 2.6 FULL (239MB ouch!)
BF 1942 patch (15MB)
I may not be able to keep that Urban Terror one up there too long, that's huge!
Free mirrors provided by Mr HOSTBOT. From that link you can get a free Gig with a new account.
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
Remember that UT mod can be played under Linux port of Q3A easily. I play it often.
:)
I love Natural Selection especially marines part (think Aliens movie).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not only does he need Bob the Angry Flower, his soundcard deleted his hard drive?
Wah!
I've been following this mod for over a year now and while your initial impressions might seem valid -- they are really the result of inexperienced teams playing.
Marine anti-rush build order:
1 IP
1 Turret Factory
A few turrets
1 armory
Have one or two marines tops building -- the rest hang around at base ready to shoot anything that enters it.
Dealing with marine defensive turrets in mid-late game:
Lerks + Umbra + any melee alien class. Anything inside the umbra cloud will take virtually no damage from machine gun and turret fire.
Also, unmanaged turret farms are easily taken out by persistantly attacking them with skulks. It may take a while but it is an effective strategy as the commander can't have his marines spread out all over the map defending every resource nozzle + turret farm.
With the latest patch, taking out the turret becomes easier as you can destroy the turret factory -- which disables all turret guns in the area.
Flying problems:
I've found that most maps can be navigated once you become adept at flying (either as a marine or a lerk). It just takes a lot of practice. You are always going to have some small/cramped areas in maps where flying is difficult or impossible.
Will this game appeal to everyone? Probably not. I can see where it can be quite dull if you are playing on public servers where people are disorganized and refuse to play as a team (ie: everyone on alien going builder class, marines not following commander's orders, etc).
Gloom is a Quake2 mod available at www.planetgloom.com It is phenomenal, and a truly fast-paced, balanced alien vs human game. All around, much more fun. The game is perfect, and the classes are wonderful. Go there! Natural Selection pales by comparison.
yes, the ue errors were a problem on linux. and windows. its impossible to play more than 2 or 3 rounds of hunters or rabbit without it crashing. only regular ctf seems to approach anything near stability.
and its not a hardware problem. that's why q3 rtcw ut2003 etc work *perfectly* but tribes2 is ONLY application that ever crashes.
the tribes2 crashes are the #1 complaint about tribes2 in the in-game forums as well as on the web sites.
the reason it "took off" in the first place is that it had a huge tribes 1 audience to pick from. the problem is that most of them went back to tribes 1 because they were pissed off with tribes 2.
what killed the game was a terrible reputation due to delivering it while unfinished. Then came the patches which either broke gameplay or brought new problems.
After a while, players quit playing it because they couldnt play it more than one hour before an error, because it was laggy and unplayable with a rtc modem or without a geforce and because gameplay was baaaad.
I finally bought it after nearly one year of remote deception and at loki's full price. Well, stupid of me. Stupid that i did listen to all this internet crap since the game fps were ok on my tnt2, the latency was playable with rtc modem unlike a quake3 game, and the game is just the best piece of multiplayer that has been put together (except action quake 2, of course). As for the crash, they just didnt exist with the linux version.
I reinstalled it today after a bit of deception by q3ut2 release, it still is the best game I can play right now. and you can find at least 10 full servers to play it.
If you are finding that you can't play well with a dialup modem, try buying a hardware 56K modem. At the local store they go for ~70$.
The benefit of a hardware modem over a winmodem is ping time; pinging 150 to a game server on a hardware 56K modem is not uncommon. If your ISP runs game servers, you may well ping lower than 150 to them.
Try to stick to games that have good prediction. Half-Life has client-side prediction on all hitscan weapons (Instant-hit weapons. Not sure about projectile), and it's very low-bandwidth and dialup friendly. I've been playing Natural-Selection quite a bit, and due to it's server CPU problem, I regularly play with pings of 250-300 or higher (I'm on DSL), and it's quite playable.
If you're the type who doesn't let server lists finish pinging, let them. The more servers that get pinged, the better the chance you'll find more low-ping servers. Always re-ping a server manually before you join it to make sure its ping isn't a fluke.
Gaming on dialup is entirely possible, and it's easy to get very playable conditions going.
Just a suggestion and a plug... try older games that are still cool. There are lots of good single player games, you just don't see them because they go under in the hype for the sweeeeet multiplayer games that come out.
I'm still plugging a bit at "Nocturne." The control is a bit roundabout, but the graphics are very good (considering the game isn't a new-off-the-shelf) and storyline is cool.
Otherwise, how about an RPG, or a racing game? If you're just talking about FPS games, then you're looking at the wrong genre as most people like to be able to extend their gaming value with multiplayer (long after the single missions grow boring).
Those who want to play alone should go console, one of the main aspects that made PC's into gaming systems was the superior multiplayer abilities.
1) Marines get a similar HUD bonus when they advance far enough to get motion tracking.
2) Rushing works when the Marine side is unprepared and disorganized in the opening moments. Aliens always try to rush with Skulks in the opening minutes and almost always are easily defeated so long as you don't have unskilled morons on the marine side.
3) Human Turrets are very hard to destory. But you are either playing an unpatched server or haven't read the docs if you think they are hard to disable. All you need to do is take out the Turret factory and all the turrets near-bye will cease to function.
4) Commander interface has a hotkeys to jump around the map more easily, the problem is that a lot of this is not obvious to newbie commanders. The biggest thing a commander needs is a headset. Communication between commander and troops is vital and with 10 marines yelling at you it is hard to type responses to all of them.
5) No this is not too powerful at all. It is very easy to take out a marine faster than the commander can select a new health pack and drop it and if the marine manages to last a long while the commander is occupied with that area and ignoring others which are then far more vulnerable.
6) Medics are not really necessary with the commander and the aliens already have the ability to cloak with an upgrade not to mention the skulk being able to climb walls and cielings to avoid detection. In the middle of a huge battle with turrets everyewhere I managed to sneak my Skulk all the way into the command area and attack and kill a commander and his command station.
7) There are several levels where flight is crucial and you can effect very very nasty surprises from the rafters of super tall rooms. One alien tactic is to evolve into a Lerk then fly 10 stories up to a vent then evolve into a Fade and bomb any humans that enter the room to death with acid rockets and the like.
Overall I have found that while there were some minor balance issues with game initially, with the server side patch NS is almost perfect and virtually all the "problems" people list stem from an inability to play the game properly. This is not a deathmatch game. This is not Team Fortress. There is a lot more strategy and tactical prowess need to play NS properly.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...