ns_opensource

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In late 2001, after a summer spree of cranking out HLDM level after HLDM level, I was getting restless and looking for some other projects to work on. A Counter-Strike map was tempting, as was the call of the more advanced Quake III community, until I spotted a new level + texture back by Kevin “Relic25″ Roberts. He was building the Alien-inspired level for a new Half-Life mod – something called “Natural Selection.”

If you’re familiar with my past work, the rest is history. I went on to make ns_eclipse for NS v1.0, and ns_veil for NS v2.0. They became the most popular NS levels over time, often ranking #1 and #2 in active player count, and helped establish my career as a professional game developer. Lessons I learned in developing these levels still pay off today. Some people’s eyes still perk up when I mention them, and over a decade later community members have seen to it that these levels will live on in Natural Selection 2, as seen in Shawn Snelling’s re-make of Veil.

ns2_veil by Shawn Snelling

Over the years, I’ve made a point of releasing source files for my old levels, but never included anything from Eclipse or Veil. The levels continued to be developed after I left my modding career behind and I didn’t want to create a situation where multiple versions of the same map were floating around. After over a decade and with a new game in the series released (and after consulting with Charlie), I figure that shouldn’t be as big a problem.

So, without further ado, here’s 75 .rmf files of ns_eclipse, ns_veil, and the original ns_veil (which actually came before ns_eclipse). Enjoy this slice of nostalgia:

http://button-masher.net/content.php?i=1406
Mirror (via NS2-Fr.com)
Mirror (via ModDB.com)

Regrettably, the first month or two of each map’s work has been lost by way of overwriting the same file, but you’ll get to see some of the early beginnings of both maps: when ns_eclipse was grungy, and when ns_veil was 100% symmetric (above). Entire playtest builds of both maps are floating around in here, some so different from the final version that they could almost be released as a new map.

I wish I could give some interesting details about the changes from one version to the next or my thought process behind some of the changes, but after this long I’m even baffled by some of my own decisions, with some of the best locations in both maps left on the cutting room floor. Still, if you’re a Natural Selection fan and have NS1 + Hammer 3.5 installed, I hope you’ll enjoy this peek behind the curtain.

Huge mega-thanks of course go to Charlie Cleveland and Cory Strader, as well as Max McGuire and the rest of the NS1 and NS2 teams, and the NS community that has given these levels such a long and healthy life. I had a blast building these levels and it’s been incredible seeing people continue to enjoy them for this long. Thanks for playing.

No School Like The Old School

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Last night (and again tonight), I played Counter-Strike for the first time in a decade. I’m not one of the players that can tell you the ins and outs of how this balance change or that gun or whatever else over the years has ruined the game forever, so all I can say is – it felt really good.

The most striking part of the experience for me is looking at the top-down layouts on each loading screen. They’re so simple – simple as they ever were, but glaringly so when held up against the modern standard of super dense clutter-based shooters or the sprawl of massive multi-modal maps (including my own work on Starhawk’s multiplayer levels). There’s an elegance and intimacy in this era of level design that still has a place today amid higher-resolution graphics and higher detail meshes – maybe more of a place than ever as we get ready to move into a new console hardware generation and the inevitable “ooh, shiny!” effect.

Much like I was able to use lun3dm5 to finally check off the “make a damn Quake III map” bucket list item, I’m hoping to use CS:GO to mark off “make a damn Counter-Strike map.” I’ve had a fun idea for a setting floating around since the Counter-Strike: Source days that I think is due for some blockout ideas…

The Perpetual Testing Initiative

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As I’m typing this update, Valve’s Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC for Portal 2 is downloading via Steam. This update brings a slick and simplified level editor to Portal 2 along with Steam Workshop support to easily share and find other puzzles online – the first chambers are already beginning to show up!

Over at MapCore, we’re kicking off the Perpetual Testing Challenge in which designers will have about two weeks to create 1-3 Portal 2 test chambers using only the new editor. In addition to being a great quick and timely challenge (that also buys us some time to prepare for the next more technical challenge), it also provides as level playing field as we’ll probably ever get.

When it comes down to it, that’s really the beauty of this editor – whether you’re a professional, an amateur, or a first-timer, you’re on roughly equal footing in this editor. Sure, experienced professionals or hobbyists have the advantage of experience and the knowledge to take a test chamber and tweak/polish/detail it in Hammer. However, they no longer exist behind a thick technical knowledge barrier or this jumbled visual mess:

This type of tool gives anyone with an idea the near-immediate power to attempt to realize it, and that’s a very good thing. In the discussion for the MapCore Challenge, one user worried that tools such as this will somehow dumb down or diminish the achievements of more experienced users. We’ve been having a similar debate since Unreal Engine 2 stepped onto the scene with its modular/scalable mesh-based level design, and the art of level design has not yet crumbled into ruin (unless you count today’s countless destroyed battlefields and overabundance of conveniently placed half-height cover, but that’s another debate).

Simple tools like this, LittleBigPlanet, or Nadeo’s tools (pictured above: TrackMania 2 and ShootMania Storm) exist not to threaten the livelihoods of developers, but to create a spark. The spark of “oh wow, I can do this?” The spark of realizing that all those ideas you’ve had bouncing around in your head as you’ve played your favorite games over the years are something you can actually try out for yourself. For all the amazing ways that exist today to make entirely unique games, there’s still something to be said for the playground of mod tools for an existing game – for taking the familiar and adding your own personal twist. That’s something that’s been sorely lacking in recent years with the rise of this generation of consoles, more and more complex internal tools, and fewer and fewer resources to release polished user-facing toolsets.

In the time I’ve been writing this, the Steam Workshop link at the top of this page has gone from 3 entries to 136. Looks like Valve has ignited a pretty big spark.

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Unrelated: A little game called Starhawk is on shelves today in North America, and in the coming days in Japan and Europe. Sadly, I’m home sick instead of celebrating with the team, but it has been a great ride and I’m thrilled to have it out there. I’ll write some more words about it soon.

FINAL: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out (Q3)

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It’s taken a couple years, a couple layouts, and one hell of a Python script, but… Cubes. They’re done.

Partner-in-cubing Matthew Breit has his in-depth writeup here, with an even longer look at the CubeSpew™ script that created the cubes still to come. I’ve provided my own write-up and screens here.

Man, cubes. Next up will be the release of Starhawk, followed by my personal time going towards koth_roundhouse for TF2 and resurrecting an older, larger version of lun3dm5 as kfs3dm2.

Nightwatch Textures

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It came to my attention recently that the download link for the Nightwatch textures on FileFront randomly disappeared. I’ve updated the original post with two new download options, a public Dropbox link and a ModDB mirror. If you don’t feel like clicking through, here’s direct links for you:

Textures - nightwatch_textures.rar (46.52 MB)
- ModDB
- Dropbox
.rad files – rad.rar (5 KB):
- button-masher.net
- Dropbox

To see some of these in action, the guys over at the Sven Co-op forums have been doing the most with the textures so far; if you poke around there you can find quite a few maps with their own take on the NW set.

We also ran a Nightwatch-themed challenge over at MapCore back in July; you can view the winners as well as the rest of the entries over there. If you’ve made anything with these textures, I’d love to see it.

Identity Crisis

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“Hell yes,” I said aloud as my character stepped onto the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. I was so ready for this. Through its first three missions, Battlefield 3‘s campaign had been a shaky ride – literally, too, as the entirety of “Uprising” can be legitimately blamed on the earthquake that closed “Operation Swordbreaker” – and the game was teetering back toward the shelf. For all the hype, for all the amazing trailers closing with the Terminator Salvation-esque take on the familiar “da-dun dun da dun-dun” Battlefield theme, this was a game that seemed to be in the midst of a major identity crisis.

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