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- Will NS2 still have a strong competitive element?
Yes. One of our goals has always been to make NS2 the ultimate game for competitive play, while not sacrificing the game for public play either. It's a delicate balance to be sure, but I know we can do it.
- There's been abit of talk about the Alien 'overlord' is this going to make the balance better as well as keep the teams different in perspective to NS1? and whats the RTS view going to be like for the overlord?
It won't be an "overlord" per se, but an alien Commander. In fact, each team can have multiple Commanders if they want! This is one of the biggest changes from NS1 and I think it's going to improve the game a lot. The biggest reason there is an alien Commander in NS2 is to improve the balance. NS1 was designed and balanced for 6v6 play. It wasn't designed from the very beginning with this in mind, but happened later after I realized that there were some fundamental balance problems due to the asymmetrical resource model. The marines have only shared team resources and the aliens have team resources that are split among all the team members. This means that as the number of players in the game changes, the resource model on the aliens changes. In bigger games, this could mean the by mid-game, aliens could need to wait a long time to build a resource tower, because incoming resources come in so slowly (due to them being split up among everyone in the team). It also means that the early game changes because every alien starts with 25 resources - so even the starting resources change due to team size. The way to resolve this for competitive play was to choose 6v6 as the target and balance it for that. This was somewhat manageable in NS1, but it's not something we care to repeat.
So in NS2, the resource model for both teams is now unified. The details of it are a bit more complicated, but it means that no matter the team size, build orders won't change and one team won't gain an advantage. We will also allow more diverse Commander abilities. Keep in mind that this doesn't mean the teams are going to _play_ more the same - they will feel and play very differently. They will just use the same underlying mathematical system and structure for resource gathering and spending.
The alien Commander's role will not be like the marine Commander's. They will both direct the team strategy and contribute advantages to individual team members, but how they do so is quite difference. For instance, an alien Commander doesn't give orders to team members. That feels too much like military Command and Control and wouldn't fit.
- Any major changes to the current roles on each side like the marine or skulk?
We're trying to keep the feel true to NS1, but there are some changes to address some issues as well. Skulks are a bit tougher and a bit slower, to lower the amount of player death (which is especially brutal for new players). Marines have a melee attack with their assault rifle, so they can push aliens away. Skulks always have leap now, so they are going to be much more maneuverable, not just with the 2nd hive.
- Whats happening with Bunny hopping will that still have some kind of form in NS2?
Ah, the most polarizing question! We haven't decided exactly what's happening here but we can all agree on a few things: Skulks should have skill-based movement and we don't want marines jumping around like crazy. We're still playing around but our goal is to make the game look and feel right for both casual and hard-core players. Look for more info on this on our Twitter feed.
- How's the alien creep going?
We actually haven't been focusing on the dynamic infestation for awhile. We prototype it a long time ago to make sure we could pull it off, but since then we've been focusing on other things like the engine, including dynamic lighting, the level editor, Decoda and our scripting system, Commander Mode and core gameplay. We'll get back to it shortly.
- Will the game play and features of NS1 still be incorporated into NS2 or is it a totally new outlook we should get prepared for?
Our biggest goal with NS2 is it improve NS1 as much as we can, while still keeping the "soul" of NS1. We have no interest in making NS2 play just like NS1 and I don't think most of our players do either! The rule of thumb for building a good sequel is 1/3 new, 1/3 improved and 1/3 the same.
- How many official maps are been planed on release and will any of the popular NS1 maps be ported/adapted into NS2?
We are hoping to release four maps great maps. We're not currently working on porting any of the original NS1 maps over to NS2, mostly because our look and high-level layouts have changed quite a bit. I bet we'll try bringing over some classics later though.
- What will be the minimum PC system/video card requirement be for NS2?
We want the game to run at the highest framerate possible on as many machines as we can, so we're keeping the requirements low. You'll need a 1.2 GHz Processor, 256MB RAM, a DirectX 9 level graphics card, Windows Vista/2000/XP, mouse, keyboard and of course, an internet connection.
- For the server runners, do you know what the server usage will be like and also will there be new features to the server/rcon setup?
We actually haven't done any work on the dedicated server yet. To get it running, we mostly have to build a version of the game without graphics, so it won't be much work. I don't think we will add something like rcon for v1.0, but I could see us adding it afterwards. Our #1 priority is getting NS2 out there so anythig that we can add later instead of on launch we will. We won't repeat our mistake with NS1 which was to playtest only on a high-end dedicated server. Which led to "lag" problems on launch (you are officially old-skool if you remember this!).
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