Natural Selection and its transition into two

Natural Selection 2 has been in the making for some time now, a game under-going a long development process in an era of constantly shifting markets. In this article I talk about Natural Selection as it has changed since 2002, market aspects of releasing a PC game like Natural Selection 2, and some of the core mechanics of the game.

It was so much different from training, the dark hallways, the constant fear of being ripped apart. The infestation growing everywhere and hundreds dying every day. It was just your fellow marines and your commander against the entirety of it, the Kharaa, some sort of futuristic Natural Selection. Then… it ended.

Natural Selection 2 was officially announced in 2006, two years after Half-Life 2 was released, and four years after Natural Selection was released. Natural Selection (2002) was released three years after Half Life (1999) was released.

So, long periods of time in between games, we get it. Natural Selection was a Half-Life mod, hailed by magazines such as PC Gamer as one of the most innovative and fun games to come out of the Half-Life mod scene. This is alongside games like Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Day of Defeat, big games picked up by Valve itself for their popularity. As Half-Life 2 came out all of the games mentioned were picked up as official modifications available for retail sale, and backed by Valve.

Natural Selection had a decent following for a few years. It came out in Half-Life’s twilight years, and people were already looking towards Half-Life 2 and the source engine. A conversion of all of their favorite mods were already slated for release (aforementioned) and those that were not supported by Valve themselves were expected to be converted to the Source Engine in some way or other. Natural Selection was one of these, but it took two years for an announcement. Making a Source mod of a game that used to compete with the best of them was ambitious for a small team working with a more complex, graphically intensive interface. Not to mention, that games made with the Half-Life engines apart from Valve, are not allowed to be sold for commercial retail.

Charlie Cleveland, founder of Natural Selection and its company: Unknown Worlds, is a pretty business savvy individual, Natural Selection 2, over time, started showing some tangible progress (speaking in terms of code and videos on youtube).
Cleveland does a one-hour lecture on Unknown Worlds as a company and a lot of the business aspects of running a small gaming company, in it he discusses a lot of the ways NS2 has gathered funds, one of which is selling the game before it came out. This has gathered over $500,000, becoming one of the better selling indie-games (even before its release) since Minecraft. Cleveland talks about how NS2 was sometimes described as vaporware before they decided to release a playtest to those who had pre-ordered the game. It was laggy, bad, didn’t really include anything about Natural Selection, but it gave players a sense of security. Pre-orders picked up, and so did business.
As a result, there’s staff now, something a free Half-Life mod wouldn’t have (shouldn’t have), started contract projects (ex. Decoda), are planning for a console release (more lucrative market), and they decided to create their own engine (so they can distribute commercially). It’s becoming a big deal, at least in this writer’s eyes.
As someone who has followed Natural Selection since its inception, it almost feels like it’s all happening too fast. Almost a decade has passed since Natural Selection, and now Natural Selection 2 seems like a reality. The closed beta is up and running, though the community and servers are… spotty (I only see people on for maybe four hours during the night) and open beta is soon around the corner (it seems).
Brad Petersen, long-time friend and Natural Selection fan feels almost the same way, talking about the dualism of a game’s release, “maybe it should have been released a year ago, sure. In a way I’m glad they’re taking their time, just seeing how the game has gone.”
Then there’s the aspect of a console release, which has huge implications for the PC and how a game is implemented on it, compared to the consoles. Brad and I have been playing games together since we were 14 years old and almost exclusively on computers. We’ve seen the results of such, but it was the worst with the release of the Xbox 360. Suddenly, you can’t save your game without a Windows Live account, clunky keyboard mapping because you didn’t want to buy a 360 controller, and the concept of a LAN is pretty much dying (which is hypocritical, since you only need one copy of a game to play with four friends on a 360, but you need four copies to play with four friends on your PCs, they make more money). Many major releases don’t even support LAN anymore (ex. Starcraft 2).
Petersen thinks consoles rely on exclusives rather than hardware to attract gamers, which is a quantity over quality approach. PC gaming never really did that, there were no exclusives to speak of (except with Halo 2 and Vista, but blame the Xbox for that too). There are certain elements that just don’t work on consoles, and NS2 has a few of them (RTS elements). So it will be interesting to see how the game works with a console release in mind.

An official release date for the PC version has yet to be given.

Here I do a little introduction to what Natural Selection 2 is and some very basic Marine functions. Natural Selection 2 is a tactical game and you -should- be paranoid about dying, it can ruin the game for your team. The other team gains an advantage, and you may lose an objective. However, sometimes it’s inevitable, but we can’t be noobs forever.

Brad and I also did a 10-minute talk on Natural Selection 1&2, as well as some of its core mechanics and play methods. Brad has been playing Natural Selection since he was 13 years old, and computer games since he was 8. Brad has been every kind of nerd, from Dungeon Master to Star Wars, and I felt like he was the best source for a Natural Selection discussion (being that he showed me the game in the first place nearly a decade ago).

Song: Spintronic – Rain in my Brain

Hm, giving a shot to a shot

Over Winter Break, my friend Drew and I have plans to work on a small-scale platforming game made with an engine called Unity.

If you play a lot of games you’ve probably attempted to make one before, maybe failed a bit, but it adds an appreciation of what people have done with the same programs and assets you’ve had (and done better). It’s like painting in analogy, most of us have messed around with paints, not everyone is a great artist, some are pretty good at it, and more people suck at it. Painting itself is the appreciation of the medium, and I suppose that’s the mindset I’m going to have going into this project.

Even if whatever game we make comes out as a giant turd, I’ll learn something, and have a better understanding of what I’ve been writing about for the last few months.

I’ve used Graphics Gale and Adobe Illustrator, Game Maker and RPG Maker, not much really came of what I made (a game where apples bounce against each other and a poorly animated sprite dubbed “Man-Dude”). There are a staggering number of programs out there for making your own game, probably in your underwear in your mother’s basement. For someone who knows very little code these tools are a godsend. There’s a lot more out there too.

So I suppose the point of this article is that about anyone with a bit of interest can probably make a game, just like anyone can play guitar to a certain level if they apply themselves a bit. Just a thought.

Chalk on my pants

Just been browsing around some freeware stuffs, looked into Noitu Love again and found Chalk, which has been well written about but it’s going to be written about again.

Chalk is a side-scrolling shooter where you use your mouse to draw “chalk” lines, blocking, defeating, and linking different objects and enemies to do damage or defend yourself. It also keeps in mind color and part of the strategy behind defeating enemies is paying attention to what color they are. It’s fun concept I wish would be introduced into more PC games, which it is I suppose in Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Chalk has to real story to speak of, you’re immediately just.. in the game, playing it. A lot of schmups do this, and why not? What more reason do you need to relish in the defeat of thine enemies? It works for schmups, maybe not for other genres so much (like platformers), and it certainly works for Chalk not having a story to speak of. The reward is in the game-play itself, it’s a very polished game with a lot to offer in terms of innovation (written again and again on every indie-review site).

Chalk’s creator, Konjak makes games for a hobby and isn’t actually trained as an artist, but he programs, does the art and music for all of his games as well as contributing art to a few commercial titles (ex. Contra IV). It’s all pretty cool stuff, I’ve been a fan of the Noitu Love games for a while now and am consistently impressed with what Konjak does. He’s an indie-game developer who literally makes games as good as commercial titles, not an exaggeration. And as a plus, most of his games are available for free.

So yeah, Chalk is free. Check it out. You literally have nothing to lose but an afternoon.

Ghost riding, geisterfahrer

Been messing around with a game called “Sleep is Death, Geisterfahrer” for a few days now. It doesn’t play like a game so much, the main thing feeling like a game being the 30 second mechanic. So you have a controller and a player, the controller sets up the scene and the player reacts to the scene, controlling dialogue for one character and ques. The controller does everything else. You have 30 seconds per turn, making a flipbook-ish story that’s completely free-form. You can do about anything story-wise, within the realm of MS paint-like graphics and a massive database of sprites and scenes (which you can also edit or create from scratch).

I’ll say the game is very addictive, actually being able to act out a story like this is something I think a lot of people have wanted the ability to do for a long time, but it has never been implemented properly. You have Garry’s Mod or a lot of sandbox movie making programs (with 3D models), but nothing that works as well as Sleep is Death works. The 30 seconds means you have to keep the story moving or else it just sucks. It’s not the end of the world or game over, and sometimes what you find in 30 seconds is what you have to do, creating some almost non-sequitur plot twists.

It’s one of those games you have to mess around a bit with to “get,” but the funnest part is actually coming up with a story with a friend, back and forth. Reminds me a bit of classroom exercises, writing a story as a group where all you can see is the last sentence the person before you wrote. You have more free range in Sleep is Death, but the feeling of limitation and what you can do given your limitations is what makes the game so fun.

The game is very well supported and is incredibly cheap, you pay what you can, a minimum of $1.75 for two copies that you can download unlimited times, with no DRM. The resource sharing and the compilations of story flipbooks (after you finish you can view what you did as a flipbook, look in your game directory) are pretty expansive. You can also edit and make your own models to use in the game (or import models other people have made), save them and they’re all stored in the game directory. So if you want to back up this game, all you need is the one folder.

Lacking a conclusion, try the game.. dammit. Anyone can play it, it’s not skill based, better than playing Monopoly on a rainy day… and it can run on basically any computer (900 MHz and up).

Mega Man, you’re very Mega… to me

Mega Man is an icon, there’s no way around it.  It was pointed out that this blog has a bit of an obsession with the character and there’s no denying it.

Actually, to stay on topic (indie) it inspired one of my favorite indie-games of all time, Noitu Love (you’ll have to find your own link to download if you want to try it, it’s free but I’m hesitant to link to more underground sites). It’s really hard to imagine gaming and how it would seem today without the blue bomber. I’d throw him up there with Mario and all the rest, really wish he was in SSB Brawl instead of Sonic actually… Oh well.

So, as a tribute here’s a timeline of every Mega Man game that I’m aware of. Large portion of information from the Capcom site and wikipedia.

Stozin’ it.

Seth Coster is a game developer in Iowa City, at least he is part time. Coster is a law student at the University of Iowa and is also soon to be working towards an MBA, but like many of us who are into games, has also dabbled in making them.

I tried one of his games, Project 87 (on the main page of his site, linked), for which there’s a free demo and can say it’s pretty cool. The puzzles are platformer based, where the player changes the direction of gravity and moving blocks onto switches in order to advance onto the next level. I had a few hang-ups though, which is understandable with someone who doesn’t make games for a living, probably not deserving of the same criticism as what a major platformer would deserve.. but still.

I would give this game a better review if it was free, but it’s not. Coster used Gamemaker to make Project 87, which is a pretty simplified suite designed to help people who want to make games, able to make a polished seeming game within a reasonable frame of time with limited programming knowledge required. Gamemaker is great, a lot of people use it and come up with some really creative stuff. Actually some of the best indie games come out of game maker, but… usually they’re free.

The demo is fairly extensive and you’re able to play through a lot of levels, but he wants $5 for the full version. That’s my main hang-up, think about utility. You have a lot of choices in the world of gaming, and if a game costs money it should be as good or better than games for the same price.

Otherwise, you would probably play the better game. World of Goo, when I bought it, cost $3. World of Goo is very polished, professional, has drawn world-wide acclaim and also breaks barriers that Project 87 simply does not. VVVVVV has done the reverse gravity concept pretty well, and is generally more enthralling, also a game around the same price range (5-10 dollars) as Project 87. Speaking of platformers, Super Meat Boy is one of the best ever made, in my opinion, and I bought it for around $3 when it was on sale (though Super Meat Boy could definitely compete with any major release, polished as hell).

So I don’t understand how an amateur developer can charge for his game, I suppose, when so many games do not, and are more polished. Frogatto, Pyschosomnium, Hurrican, etc. Also many original Nintendo games are entering the creative commons, or are available for much less. This is the competition, probably a better use of $5 than charity support for a developer.

I’ll say again that Project 87, from the demo, was pretty fun. Parts were clunky, the puzzles weren’t as hard as what it was made out to be (though this is coming from someone who plays puzzle games all the time), but as an indie-game I would say that the concepts though maybe not novel, are well implemented. I look forward to other games Coster might release, my hang-ups on the price aside.

More Cactus

I did a little review of the Cactus arcade suite. It contains: Burn the trash, Clean Asia!, Fractal Fighter, Fuck Space, God Came to the Cave, Illegal Communication, Minubeat, Mondo Agency, Mondo Mecials, MSOIDS, Protoganda, Psychosomnium, Retro II, Seizuredome, Shotgun Ninja, The Design and xWUNG.

What I really like about Cactus is how different his games are from the mainstream of indie. It’s strange thinking about a mainstream in a genre that inherently isn’t, but most indie games tend to be throwbacks of other games (Mario, Zelda, Metroid). Indie games just don’t have the ability in most cases, excluding games like Minecraft or Super Meat Boy (Braid, Terraria, World of Goo, NS2) to compete with industry standards.

If you make an fps, it has to compete with Modern Warfare, if you make a platformer it has to compete with every other platformer, and so on. It’s the same with movies, why watch a bad movie when there is such a wealth of good ones? It would have to do something completely new. Cactus does a good job of that, a lot of these games are just… novel. Some, maybe simple changes to existing standards, like adding a second dimension or maybe a suicidal component (xWUNG, Clean Asia!).

Find the suite here!

“I didn’t really think it was fair to review an indie game on its own. Most are made within ridiculously small amounts of time, or are just there to exhibit something new, not to compete with industry standards. But I’m still going to talk about Cactus’s arcade suite, which includes 17 of his over 40 something games. The suite as a whole is pretty… fucking fun. Something I think is really cool about indie games is that a lot of them start at jams, where they just have to engage an audience right away. You only have maybe 30 seconds to draw someone in. A lot of these games do that, Burn the trash, clean asia, fractal fighter, shotgun ninja.
Besides that Cactus does a lot of illogical stuff, which is what got me into his games in the first place. Mondo and Psychosomnium come to mind, almost having to go against the puzzles purpose to solve it. The whole suite has a spin on the conventional, industry standards games seem to reproduce over and over again. They’re not wholly tributes like many indie games, but more novel on that tangent. I’d give the suite a whirl, kill a few hours.”