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.

Comments

Doom II patch

[AcquaCow]

And on the lighter side, LSDsmurf reports that there's a patch for Doom III Alpha. Yes, you read that right.

Does this mean that I might actually be able to get positive FPS now?

-- AcquaCow

Another good game,

[dirvish]

Battlefield 1942.

Re:Another good game,

[glwtta]

Yeah, you should check out Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake III, I hear they are pretty good too.

Huh?

[ar1550]

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

So are these bugs bugs, or are these bugs features?

No more unofficial D3 news!!!

[DaHat]

Come on, the first Doom 3 story about it being leaked was fine as a reporting of the news. The story did get a little overboard with publishing links to help people find and use the alpha... but this is just worse, a story not about news but completely about piracy. You should be ashamed!

New Games

[Tempelherr]

Some of these new games coming out are really awesome, but I find myself disappointed in the lack of games that still provide single player action. So many of them are going multiplayer only, and that leaves out a large group of people still stuck in the stone age with mdoems like me. Good thing I've still got Lan parties to fall back on for good entertainment.

Re:New Games

[Guspaz]

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.

Gaming mods as part of school curiculum

[zenst]

Given that school is meant too prepare us for later life and enable us to lead productive and fruitfull lives. When will that start embracing education into gaming mods. Not only would they be touching upon the real world but would also enforce the use of math's, physics, art,creativity, logic, design etc etc as part of the process. I'm sure that alot of mods/maps come from students already who even work in groups, just be a nice fun way to help educate and enforce knowledge though aplication.

Balancing Issues in NS

[TekReggard]

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.

Re:Balancing Issues in NS

[TekReggard]

First, I agree on your comment. I find it extremely cool that a game I bought for such a small price has blossomed into dozens upon dozens of good Mods that are completely FREE :)

In response to the 2nd half though... I am not a game developer but I know my way around the gaming community and I think I can give you a good idea of how it works.

Natural Selection takes advantage of both FPS [First Person Shooter] and RTS [Real Time Strategy] characteristics. Its in essence a hybrid.

To start with the marine side, it has a commander who plays the game more like an RTS [top down strategy] where you dont get to control your "units" [the marines / players] directly but you can give them waypoints and stuff to build or use. The players experience the game like a first person shooter and can ask the commander to drop them weapons and armor, or place turrets for them to build.

The Aliens follow a similar structure except they have no commander. They all have their own resources and have multiple levels of alien evolution. Each type of alien has its own attacks and stats like armor and health.

A major way to prevent aliens and marines from rushing is to adjust weapon damage, or available resources for either side or even both sides. With lower starting weapon damage rushing wouldnt do much damage. This would be undesirable because you would loose resources and time. It could also prove to be hindering to either side later on where their first level marines or aliens would be nearly useless against higher level creatures or equipment.

The other way, to adjust starting resources, could determine how quickly either side could build up defenses, evolve, or research better equipment.

In reality there are many different ways to approach that problem. Its determined more by the problem, the game, and the community that defines the problem.

Re:Balancing Issues in NS

[tpv]

I agree with what you say, but I'd like to make my own comments.

Th designer need to draw a distinction between a "full frontal assault" (FFA) and a "full frontal assault in the first 5 minutes" (rushing).

The FFA should be an acceptable tactic. If you're a marine, it is a good strategy to wait until half the alien team is away from their hive, and then go in with guns blazing. It just sucks when you do it in the first 5 minutes, and the game is pretty much decided from that point on.

So, they key is really to make it relatively easier to defend than attack, during the first few minutes.
How do you do that? Lots of ways
e.g. Give the team a useful defensive weapon that has limited lifetime (pehaps a fixed number of proximity mines), so that they can lock down their base for a short period, while they build up.
Or, make the maps harder to navigate. Have doors that don't open straight away etc. Make it hard to get to the other team in the first 5 minutes.

Now, I haven't played NS yet, but in general the key really is to make it hard to attack at the very beginning. It's not really about balancing the sides, it's about making sure the game last long enough for the strengths/weakneses of each team to come out.

Warez Patches?

[Hays]

John Carmack personally posted on Slashdot to express his frustration with the leak of the Alpha, and Slashdot keeps advertising it and aiding it's distribution anyway? Who cares if it's illegal, it's extremely immoral to continue hyping an effectively stolen piece of software that the authors desperately don't want us to have yet.

And this is id! They're an unbelievably community minded company and this is how we pay them back?

Re:Warez Patches?

[Hays]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44077&cid=4591 655

Though nobody will be reading this since some moderators went crazy on my grandparent.

Re:Patch?

[sheetsda]

At 2.02 megs thats the biggest config file I've ever seen...

PA's dream come true.

[Christopher Thomas]

A first-person Starcraft?

Someone tell Penny Arcade.

Re:PA's dream come true.

[brett42]

PA is a little bit faster than slashdot when it comes to game news.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2002-11 -04

Re:Doom III patch

[killthiskid]

The patch:

What's new? :

• Removed binary for loading intro. To watch video:type: map e3/intro at the console
• Removed flashlight3.tga and pointed the doomconfig entry to the existing flashlight2 changed flashlight lag so it is more responsive
• added F5 and F6 keymapping for recordDemo and stoprecording
• bumped up number of speakers to 6 and enabled stereo. Conflicting stories of whether this works or not.
• changed r_useNV30 back to 0 since noone should have one of these yet
• added give_weapon_flare to F12 weapon bind. (Use 0 to pick flares)

There you have it.

Natural Selection is Fantastic

[Rayonic]

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.

Mirrors

[RudeDude]

Natural Selection V1 full install (90MB)
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.

Re:Mirrors

[cmckay]

Free mirrors provided by Mr HOSTBOT. From that link you can get a free Gig with a new account.

Checked out Mr HOSTBOT. Seems cool, but I was a little disturbed by the fact that they sell a Mr HOSTBOT thong in their online store.

Honestly, people. A thong?

Natural selection is neat

[Bobulusman]

But I've had problems playing it. Due to legal issues, I can't set up my own server on campus, so I must depend on the servers I can find in the game. So far, it seems that most people are just playing small games with their friends that they password protect.

I like playing as an alien, but it is annoying to try to play by yourself versus several marines. Maybe I'm missing something, but I have not been able to attack a machine gun turret without dieing yet.

Also, if you are a server: Just becuase your crappy PC can run a CS server doesn't mean it can run a 30 person NS server. The game seems to need a lot more umpf per player. They have already issued a patch for the servers to fix this, but it doesn't help when your computer sucks already.

My take on the game after playing it recently:

[bertok]

I have tried a few dozen games of N.S. recently. I even played as a commander a few times. In my opinion, the concept is good, but the game seems incomplete and unbalanced, but I expect that that'll be fixed in upcoming versions. Some impressions:

• The HUD display of the aliens really helps teamplay. I wonder why other games haven't had the same feature earlier...
• The game is somewhat unbalanced. In the first few minutes on the smaller maps, aliens have a massive advantage, and can win quickly by rushing the human base.
• Later in the game, the defensive structures are unbalanced. Human turrets are nearly impossible to kill for the aliens, but the alien structures fall quickly to heavy machine guns or grenade launchers.
• The commander interface is a good, but they need to improve the mini-map. If it were bigger, more detailed, and showed team requests, it would make the commander's job much easier.
• The ability of the commander to heal 50% of a soldier's health instantly is too powerful, because it allows the commander to turn a few soldiers into unstoppable juggernauts. It would be better if the health packs only healed a few hit points per second.
• Neither side has enough weapons and upgrades to make the game interesting in the long run. I'd like to see humans with medic packs and an alien infiltrator class (like the Team Fortress Classic spy class).
• The jetpack and flight controls don't suit the maps that come with the game. They cause huge bursts of movement that prevent hovering or level flight, and all the maps have ridges and beams everywhere, making the flying classes nearly useless.

Re:My take on the game after playing it recently:

[alyandon]

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).

Re:My take on the game after playing it recently:

[ShadowDrgn]

The game is somewhat unbalanced. In the first few minutes on the smaller maps, aliens have a massive advantage, and can win quickly by rushing the human base.

I blame this on inexperienced marine teams. If at least one person is watching every enterance, the aliens don't have a chance of winning with a quick rush. The problem is when the entire marine team has their back turned building something, and no one starts firing until the first guy is already dead.

Later in the game, the defensive structures are unbalanced. Human turrets are nearly impossible to kill for the aliens, but the alien structures fall quickly to heavy machine guns or grenade launchers.

As was already said, the lerk is the ultimate anti-turret weapon. With a bit of experience, you'll get rid of them in no time. Three or four alien defense chambers can make any group of chambers nearly impervious to grenade fire, and will only fall to dedicated heavy machine gunning by multiple marines. By that time, hopefully a few aliens are snacking on them from behind.

The ability of the commander to heal 50% of a soldier's health instantly is too powerful, because it allows the commander to turn a few soldiers into unstoppable juggernauts. It would be better if the health packs only healed a few hit points per second.

I like your suggestion, but I haven't seen that abused too often. A commander can't continuously heal everyone, and a marine with full life and no armor is dead in 2 bites anyway.

Neither side has enough weapons and upgrades to make the game interesting in the long run.

Aliens have 5 classes with 4 weapons each. Marines are a bit more limited, but the whole RTS integration adds more stuff than any other FPS has. Speaking of enough weapons, Counter-Strike has tons of them yet how many people buy anything besides mp5, ak/colt, and the awp? It seems that most people don't care about weapon selection, as long as they like the weapons they have.

Obviously the game needs more work, but it's extraordinary for a version 1 release.

Re:My take on the game after playing it recently:

[Soulslayer]

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.

Agree.. but...

[Viewsonic]

Even John can't possibly turn down the free promotion Doom is getting from all of this. I mean, christ, it was an Alpha that barely worked, and people were going nutso over it! How many games can do that? And get on CNN, Slashdot, and every major news outlet? None. In the end, someone releasing a "patch" for an Alpha of this game is just HILARIOUS. I suppose what might tick John off more than anything is the fact other devs can get a peek at his brilliance ahead of schedule and figure out what he's doing that they're missing in their own games. Outside of that, I will bet anyone they'll be forking over their hard earned cash for Doom3 and a new vid card sometime early 2003 regardless if they've downloaded this, made a patch, or anything else that happens between now and then.

Re:Agree.. but...

[ergo98]

Even John can't possibly turn down the free promotion Doom is getting from all of this. I mean, christ, it was an Alpha that barely worked, and people were going nutso over it!

The reason he gets upset is because of the Duke Nukem syndrome: Duke Nukem was a great game, however they came out with the demo version of it so many months before the actual release that by the time people could buy it, most people were sick of it: The novelty had worn off. Because Q3 brings a lot of graphical "invention" to gaming, if people have seen it for months before the actual game comes out, suddenly it might seem run of the mill instead of special.

Urban Terror mod & Natural Selection

[antdude]

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). :)

Snide snipe

[MrEd]

And yet again I let you guy's down by missing another week for MOTW. Well, I'll have you know I had spent the week desperately trying to get my computer to a useable level after my Audigy Soundcard deleted my hard drive

Not only does he need Bob the Angry Flower, his soundcard deleted his hard drive?

...

Tribes 2

[nihilogos]

Was a f-cking awesome FPS with RTS components. Playing in a clan battle with organised and practice offense and defense was unbeatable. It wasn't exactly the most technically brilliant engine but it worked well on good enough hardware.

Unfortunately it is dead, at least in Australia. What killed it was a stupid proliferation of patches and mods. There was the "classic" mod where you ran around aimlessly killing everything - popular with braindead CS players who like to camp somewhere with a sniper rifle and work on their mouse skills. Then there was the latest "patch" which changed the gameplay and also included some bugfixes. The whole community (and servers) split into groups running different and incompatible versions of the game, each of these groups was below critical mass and they all died.

Mods can really, really suck.