Natural Selection

Natural Selection

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Resuming progress. Current version on battle.net is in development and undergoing some large restructuring, so it will often be in an unplayable state, though usually testable.

Natural Selection is a famous mod for Half-Life. This is an attempt to implement it as a Starcraft 2 map, given the RTS nature of NS.

Currently about 80% complete.

Project Workplace forum thread

Progress (I'm sure that I'm missing some things in each category)

Working

  • Defense chamber healing in area
  • Movement chamber energy restoration
  • Sensory chambers cloak
  • Alien morphing between lifeforms (skulk to lerk or gorge, etc)
  • Automatic resource collection by towers / chambers (based on automated refinery)
  • Drop med-kits from command console
  • Most basic stats and models (health, damage, build time, etc)
  • Siege cannons splash and target only buildings
  • Observatory scanner sweep (same as normal SC) and motion tracking research (radar)
  • Siege cannons and sentry turrets require an active turret factory nearby
  • Kharaa basic attacks require energy
  • Marine spawning at infantry portals, queued properly
  • Place buildings from command console, but requires marines to build them, multiple marines speeds progress
  • Alien spawning at hives, queued properly
  • Gorge (alien worker) construction working, multiple gorges speeds progress
  • Chamber specific upgrades for Kharaa with 3 levels (Carapace, Speed, Focus, Regeneration, Scent of Fear, Adrenaline)
  • Lerk: Acid spores, umbra, primal scream
  • Skulk: Xenocide
  • Fade: Acid rockets, Blink, Metabolize
  • NS armor system rather than SC2's armor system
  • Ability for marines to notify commander with "need ammo", "need resource tower" etc
  • Allow marines to elect to become the commander by loading into the Command Console building
  • Phasegates warping to next gate in the chain for Frontiersmen
  • Movement chambers work properly porting you to a hive
  • One resource pool for all Frontiersmen (only usable by commander)
  • Repair armor via welders for Frontiersmen
  • Repair buildings via welders
  • Armor damage absorb % for kharaa having 1-3 hives
  • Heavy armor for Frontiersmen
  • Weapons for marines (shotgun, hmg, lmg, pistol)
  • Switch-able weapons for marines
  • Distribute gathered resources evenly between Kharaa
  • Marine tech tree
  • Trip-mines for Frontiersmen
  • Redemption passive upgrade
  • Marine armor upgrades affect heavy armor
  • Marine armor upgrades need to affect jetpack marines
  • Jetpacks for Frontiersmen
  • Onos: Devour
  • Gorge: Heal Spray
  • Commander resources display for frontiersmen team
  • Distress beacon fully operational
  • Onos: Stomp, Rampage
  • Gorge: Bilebomb
  • Hive tier logic for Kharaa having 1-3 hives (available chambers, ability unlocks)
  • Ability to ask fellow marines to repair armor
  • Skulk: Parasite
  • Ammo system for marines, and working commander droppable ammo packs, fully functional
  • Gorge: Web
  • Real jetpacks!
  • Ability for kharaa to say "need heal" or to taunt enemies
  • Marine taunt
  • Fixed armor system that was broken by 1.2
  • WASD movement control of your player unit
  • Allow players to choose their team rather than assigning them automatically, 15 seconds to choose, unassigned players are auto-assigned after 15 seconds - works but just looks ugly at the moment, have to work on the formatting
  • Ability for commander to issue waypoints and orders to marines
  • Ability to easily drop/change weapons as marine

In progress / Being Worked On

  • Aiming system - Point / click to fire at that location or any enemies at that location, can not attack through walls 80%

To do

  • Silence passive upgrade (no idea how to hit this one yet)
  • Cloaking passive upgrade needs levels (currently works but only 1 level)
  • Skulk: leap
  • Marine grenade launcher needs physics
  • Grenades for Frontiersmen (want a real fused grenade, not just toss grenade)
  • Flying lerks and jetpacks should have some sort of advantage besides speed
  • Determine system for allowing small Kharaa (aliens) lifeforms to use vents
  • Weldable locations
  • Reset game after completion if players wish to play again
  • Help system and tips for new players
  • Add in some LOS blockers for hiding areas for skulks
  • Leaderboard for each team
  • Reloading of shotgun / GL needs to be 1 grenade/shell at a time
  • Players being digested by an Onos need more undulating red stomach lining in their face
  • Reveal death area or follow an ally while dead and respawning
  • Hide health bars on enemy units
  • Alerts for marines when commander is upgrading something or places a structure / equipment
  • Hive status dialogs for the aliens, including health and what chamber is tied to the hive
  • Cap aliens at 100 res per player
  • Offense chambers should be ballistic with avoidable projectiles
  • Spawning and distress beacons should be at offset locations rather than clumped right below the Hive or right at Marine Start
  • Sentry turrets can fire through walls, prevent this somehow

Visuals, Sounds, and Information todo

  • Marine needs a melee attack animation for knifing (partially done)
  • Hive sight for aliens (partially in... trying to get the real icons in too)
  • Resource bounty for kills (needs floating text)
  • Onos stomp needs a shockwave sent out
  • Range radius actor for siege cannons, hive healing range when selected, chamber effect ranges
  • Passive behavior button for Hive healing (like "Heals nearby aliens for 7% of their HP or Armor" every two seconds), defense chamber healing, movement chamber energy replenish, sensory chamber detection and cloaking
  • Add a visual effect to the observatory for Distress beacon
  • Make the Hive build model animate while building (overlord cocoon model)
  • Heal spray visual should be a lighter color
  • Bilebomb explosion visual occurs before projectile reaches target point
  • Increase visibility of umbra and primal scream buffs
  • Ensure all hotkeys all work
  • Refine the tooltips for buildings and abilities
  • Make the Hive model less overlord-ish
  • Remove the "Hive Location" model when a Hive is built on it
  • Add in a "scream" sound for lerk's primal scream ability
  • Add in a skulk leap sound and xenocide activation sound
  • Add in a periodic, ambient sonar-ish beep sound for sentry turrets, audible through walls or out of LOS
  • Make a visual effect for unpowered turrets
  • Improve visibility of welding / building sparks
  • Decrease the visual size of the power range for command console's Infantry Portal build radius
  • Add in a sound for being healed by a defense chamber or having energy restored by a movement chamber
  • Add in a visual for spawning a skulk at a hive
  • Fix the "under construction" model/animation for some marine buildings
  • Make acid rockets exit from the hydralisk model head rather than overhead attachment, gorge spit needs the same I believe
  • Add in a "click click click" of empty magazine if a player is trying to attack without any ammunition
  • Commander alerts should leave a more visible Waypoint, similar to NOTD's red squares to indicate danger
  • Major terrain improvements with more doodads, terrain texture, additional lighting and shadows

Known Bugs

  • Floating +1 vespene text is visible by enemy team, revealing otherwise hidden resource towers
  • Skulk - Xenocide should not take effect until 2 seconds after being pressed
  • Marines can't reload and move at the same time, should be able to
  • Mines should instantly be active, be visible to aliens, and not "seek" like spider mines but explode on direct contact
  • Bilebomb was working but is broken now

Fixed (I think) Bugs

  • Alien's "scent of fear" range is visible to enemies, effectively revealing their position (Still reveals the radius but only if the alien is visible... will fix completely soon)
  • Multiple hives can be built on a single hive location
  • Marines are spawning without weapons (broke recently)
  • Sensory chambers not cloaking nearby units (broke recently) (also causing a memory leak, most likely recursively applying cloaking field behavior)
  • Turrets dont seem to use allied vision, so the commander has to scan for sieges to fire
  • Distress beacon spawned multiple marines for a single player
  • Cancelling a gestation (which should not even be possible, need to remove) keeps your model as an egg
  • Heavy Marines can not pick up Medkits or Trip Mines (may be a problem with Jetpack marines as well, have to test)
  • Apparently I broke marine Alerts to the commander, commander does not receive an alert
  • Weapon upgrades are only affecting the light machine gun, needs to affect the HMG, GL, Pistol and Shotgun, turrets(?), siege cannons (?), hand grenades(?), knife(?), mines (?)
  • Hotkey conflicts on some alien skills
personal notes
  • Aiming system is working somewhat. The Mouse Moved event may generate too much net traffic for 12 players.