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Natural Selection For Half-Life Overhauled

Posted by simoniker on from the servers-getting-naturally-selected dept.

Entropius writes "Natural Selection, a free Half-Life mod that contains elements of both traditional first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, has just gotten a complete overhaul with the release of version 2.0. In a nutshell, it combines the best elements of StarCraft and Counter-Strike. NS 2.0 adds new alien abilities, commander interface changes, changes to the resource model, four new maps, and more flexibility in alien evolutions. It's a whole new game now, and a blast to play... one of the most innovative new mods in a long time. The mirrors are straining to keep up, but here's a list of download links via readyroom.org." Update: 08/01 14:43 GMT by S : Here's a very necessary BitTorrent link, thanks to commenters.

6 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ummmm where's the Torrent? by tankefugl · · Score: 4, Informative

    You mean this one?

    http://nonoobs.com/ns_install_v20.exe.torrent

    Just can't wait to get home and play it after work ... *sigh*

  2. NS. by magsymp · · Score: 4, Informative

    I played Counter-Strike for a few years and then gave it up. I un-installed Half-Life and decided to give up the FPS genre at least for a while, after also having played alot of Unreal and Unreal Mods. Then I ran into Natural Selection and I have to say it's a great game. The only real problem I see with it is that the learning curve is really steep; in the sense that, at first you get killed repeatedly by more experience players, regardless if you are playing Marines or Aliens. Also people will rarely let you play the commander, unless you are skilled and, well, it's hard to become skilled without practice. I think both sides are fun to play, but I prefer the Marines. I've developed a fair amount of skill in the game now, all I can say is I can't wait to check out this new version.

  3. Why do modders seem to prefer Half-Life? by Joel+Carr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of 'great' mods have come out for Half-Life. Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and Natural Selection immediately come to mind. Meanwhile, not nearly as many great mods have come out for say a game like Quake 3 Arena, which is from the same sort of era. Although lots of mods have been made for Quake 3, the only great one I can think of off the top of my head is NS-CO, but that's not even finished yet.

    My question is, why do people seem to prefer creating excellent mods for a game like Half-Life and not so much for a game like Quake 3. Is it because Half-Life is easier to write mods for, is it a better engine, or did it just happen to have the critical mass since it was such a popular game. Or am I just taking crazy pills and just as many great mods have been made for Quake 3 as for Half-Life.

    The reason I'm so interested is because I would love to be playing these mods natively under Linux, and I was wondering what the Half-Life engine has that the Quake 3 engine doesn't. Also, does anyone know how the Doom 3 engine will compare with the Half-Life 2 engine with regards to the mods. I've heard Half-Life 2 will be a modders paradise.

    --
    Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
    1. Re:Why do modders seem to prefer Half-Life? by ThePyro · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Live player count stats taken from gamespy:
      • Half Life : 86807
      • Battlefield 1942 : 6872
      • Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory : 6601
      • Medal of Honor Allied Assault : 5338
      • Unreal Tournament 2003 : 4085
      • Americas Army: Operations : 3925

      Half-Life is beating 2nd place by over a factor of 10 in terms of player count. More players = larger pool of potential modders = more high-quality mods. More low quality mods, too, of course - but you don't really hear about those much :)

    2. Re:Why do modders seem to prefer Half-Life? by ziggles · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Those stats are pretty meaningless in this discussion. Half-Life already has lots of great mods, and everyone already knows it's the most popular online game today. The question is, is it the most popular because it has lots of great mods, or does it have lots of great mods because it's the most popular? Those stats don't answer any questions.

      Personally, I think it's a mix of both. HL is a great single player game, everyone who cared about PC gaming bought it. But it wouldn't have lasted without the mods.

      CS was the saving grace, after that it was just everyone else wanting to copy it's success.

      Anyway, in reply to the original post, there are some high quality mods for Quake 3. Urban Terror, Total Combat, Rocket Arena 3, Challenge Promode Arena(my personal favorite multiplayer FPS), and probably some others I'm not familiar with. Also, I'm kind of glad it's not as popular.. it's harder to find random people to play against, but it's also a lot less free of unexperienced idiots playing online games for the first time and treating it like an AOL chat room.

  4. Open-source bot for Natural Selection by clamatius · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A little project I've been working on in my spare time is a bot for this game. It's called WhichBot.

    Features include a bunch of fancy AI stuff (dynamic navigation, wall-climbing support, pack-based strategies, etc), Linux support and open-source code on Sourceforge.

    You can find it at whichbot.com.
    </plug>

    Important note: we didn't have access to the NS 2.0 server before release, so the current bot version DOES NOT support NS 2.0. We hope to have a compatible bot version up ASAP.