What I think...

[zeus9860]

Don't like the sound of this, just saying... It seems the same has NS2, though i dont even like NS. Just the thing that they move to another engine abd make a free mod into a game which you have to buy. I don't see myself enjoying this happening with ms:c because it will ruin the fun of it being a free mod and having a small community, seriously.

 

[FER]

What about the unity engine?

 

[Thothie]

Thats why why you recruit.

Which we've been desperately trying to do for the past, what, four years now? The pool of folks we have to recruit from are mostly people who play MSC, and guess which engine that folks who play MSC are most likely to have experience with?

What about the unity engine?

What about it? :\

 

[DarkWasp]

Seriously? Whats so bad about the source engine?

 

[jon50559]

Nuttin, that's why we have a Source team.

 

[Thothie]

Seriously? Whats so bad about the source engine?

Actually there's a lot wrong with it. Sh*tty ass SDK. Comparatively tiny mappable areas. Various arbitrary resource limits... But most importantly - no engine. We don't have access to the Source engine. What we have is the ability to code mods for it. If something changes in the engine, it may very well break the mod (and that tragedy happens pretty regularly to other mods). We're in the same boat with HL1, and many HL1 mods have died from similar tinkering, despite the fact there's so much less motivation for Valve to tinker with a decade old engine.

But, as game developer Donald Rumsfeld says, ya work with the modder army you have, not the one you wish you had.

 

[DarkWasp]

In that case I vote that we all sneak over to Seattle and ninja loot Guild Wars 2's engine before they can catch us.

 

[Orochi]

Word of God on this one is no, we're not switching engines. This debate has already run its' course over on the MS:S boards. Supersoup has already decided that we're not switching engines.

 

[Thothie]

Thus you have witnessed, god has spoken.

Again, I don't personally have anything against anyone who wants to make MS under the UDK engine, should you happen to have a *cough* game studio full of designers capable of such, but no one we have can. Again, I'd be even willing to donate materials to such a project insomuch as I can get permissions from their original creators... I should warn ye, however, that Lord K himself seems to have issues with anyone making *money* on the MS "brand". (Something about "DMCA'ing his ass if he tries" or words to that effect.)

 

[Gurluas]

Perhaps the Alien Swarm Sdk can be used to get a more up to date version of Mss?
Of course you would need to restore the Fps qualities but that cant be too hard, can it?

 

[jon50559]

With Alien Swarm you'd lose all HL2 related materials, since it's its own free game

It didn't do much besides offer an even more limited SDK for free, with better dynamic light support and that stupid tile-based(ish) map system.

 

[Gurluas]

It also includes the Director system from the L4d series and the basis for the portal 2 liquid system, and the Installer can just detect if Hl2 is installed, that way you can keep it legal.

Imagine what the director can offer in an rpg...
Random spawning enemies, armies etc.

 

[Shadeska]

THIS TOPIC IS NOW ABOUT MAKING MS:S A TOP-DOWN ADVENTURE.

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

THIS TOPIC IS NOW DIAMONDS

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

WE SHOULD MAKE MS:S LIKE DINK SMALLWOOD BECAUSE DINK SMALLWOOD IS BADASS

 

[Gurluas]

By the way, the engine can be modified to be a standard fps.
In fact, you can turn ASW into an Fps with a few commands:

 

[DarkWasp]

Might not be a bad idea to look into if we absolutely need dynamic shadows before Portal 2 comes out.

 

[Gurluas]

Might not be a bad idea to look into if we absolutely need dynamic shadows before Portal 2 comes out.

Plus director

 

[Thothie]

Do you seriously realize how many lines of code it'd take to duplicate the effects of L4D's director?

Like... Maybe 10?

The whole, "Am I gonna put a Witch or a Tank here? (Flip coin)" or "Jeeze, they've not moved for 15 seconds, I better send the horde" thing is not exactly a wonder of sophistication. Hell, you don't even need to code to do it - you could do it map side, even in MSC.

 

[Gurluas]

Dynamic spawning without entities is what the director is about. All it needs are nav points, then it can spawn things randomly in the map and you can specify where it should not spawn things. That is why in L4d infected placement is always completely random..

 

[Thothie]

Dynamic spawning without entities is what the director is about. All it needs are nav points, then it can spawn things randomly in the map and you can specify where it should not spawn things. That is why in L4d infected placement is always completely random..

Funny how that's not how it works for L4D. All the specials have their own spawn areas. All the health and ammo have their own spawn areas. It's just a roll of the dice (and a check of how many health packs the players have) as to whether they spawn or not.

It *might* do that for little zombies, but it's not entity free then, it's just using nav points for spawn points.

Granted, making monsters spawn randomly on the map, even without nav nodes, wouldn't be too hard if you did it based on where the players move. Ya just store locations the player has traveled ever second or so - check said locaitons a second or so later, and if said point is not visible to any players, spawn a zombie. Like maybe 20 lines of code...

The AI director code is overrated. The concept of the AI director is good, but any coder worth half his salt can make it in his sleep.

 

[Gurluas]

Dynamic spawning without entities is what the director is about. All it needs are nav points, then it can spawn things randomly in the map and you can specify where it should not spawn things. That is why in L4d infected placement is always completely random..

Funny how that's not how it works for L4D. All the specials have their own spawn areas. All the health and ammo have their own spawn areas. It's just a roll of the dice (and a check of how many health packs the players have) as to whether they spawn or not.

It *might* do that for little zombies, but it's not entity free then, it's just using nav points for spawn points.

Granted, making monsters spawn randomly on the map, even without nav nodes, wouldn't be too hard if you did it based on where the players move. Ya just store locations the player has traveled ever second or so - check said locaitons a second or so later, and if said point is not visible to any players, spawn a zombie. Like maybe 20 lines of code...

The AI director code is overrated. The concept of the AI director is good, but any coder worth half his salt can make it in his sleep.

The specials do not have dedicated spawn areas, only the witch and tank. It is actually easy to prove, make a map and add a simple nav. Everything will spawn and work as it should.
While it should be recodeable there is no reason as to why we shouldn't get the latest source edition and use valve's code.

 

[Tentadrilus]

The AI director isn't integrated into the default Source base yet. And thothie, it's entirely automated - you provide the path and place the info_director entity and it works it out for itself. Moreso in L4D2.

 

[Gurluas]

The AI director isn't integrated into the default Source base yet. And thothie, it's entirely automated - you provide the path and place the info_director entity and it works it out for itself. Moreso in L4D2.

The Alien Swarm Sdk actually contains all assets used in Alien Swarm.
And Alien Swarm contains the director as well.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

I like where MS:C is going, and I like actually being able to support this mod via my random ability to put blocks together and call it a map... I haven't figured out how to do that for the source engine, probably because I haven't tried very hard, but either way, I'd concider this mod to be pretty active and in a good direction...ish