Natural Selection 2 Spark Editor Released

[Shrinker]

I'm very glad that an editor gets big medial attention once again. Game developers should generally invest more time in those.

BTW, as far as I know, Spark is polygon-based, not brush-based, hence it allows you to mess with polygons in ways that are simply impossible in Hammer. It's a different paradigm.

[Fearian]

I guess I didn't say the word's 'First Release' and 'Alpha' enough in my post?? My point was I keep reading people calling it better than hammer from the get go which is clearly not the case. I have no doubt its going to blow hammer out of the water in the future, but you cannot overlook the bugs in it at the moment. Maybe I'm unlucky but a good third of my mapping time with it has been a battle against odd problems coming out of nowhere. I know Spark is designed for model based environments -like any editor worth its salt nowadays should be- but when I said complex geometry, I should have probably said, 'any room that isn't a straight up box'. And just so I'm clear, I realise this is an alpha release! I am not trying to slam the editor, I am just pointing out problems that I hope are first on the patch list.

Besides, it isn't 100 percent true that you cannot make interesting interior designs with this editor. It's very simple if you draw each face individually using the line tool, use create face, and if the face is drawn on the wrong side, use the "flip face" shortcut. I've seen many people making some very interesting designs, and it's much easier to "carve" things into walls without having the negative impact that valve hammer has when you cave into faces.　You can also modify verticies / points very easily, allowing you to easily make interesting brush shapes if you think creatively.

Of course you can make interesting designs in the editor! That's not what I meant to convey at all! But after that is where I start to disagree with you. I think its a great way to map but at the moment drawing in edges and carving out shapes is actually messier than hammer. For example... well for example I am a boring person and I had spark open so I recorded and example But I've had a ton of problems with faces that for some reason or another refuse to flip or even be drawn for me.

yes I realise I am arguing on the internet I need a job...

Ninja edit: probably because I've been in 3ds max all afternoon that I can think of a bunch of stuff I missed like not being able to weld verts together. again, all features to be added later. I know.

[Zipfinator]

That's a good list of fixes Fearian. I didn't run into most of those problems as I've only used it for about 30 minutes, but I did notice the random generation of texture shifts and scales which was quite annoying.

A question though, how do you move around so easily? Are you using WSAD? How did you set it up that way? Any type of movement is very awkward for me as I can pretty much only use my mouse.

[Fearian]

Hold the right mouse button! I get the feeling maybe there's a key to do other things like delete verts that I just don't know about

[vcool]

Fearian, you have a sexy tutorial voice.

Damn you all people from the internet with your sexy voices.

[YokaI]

I guess I didn't say the word's 'First Release' and 'Alpha' enough in my post?? My point was I keep reading people calling it better than hammer from the get go which is clearly not the case. I have no doubt its going to blow hammer out of the water in the future, but you cannot overlook the bugs in it at the moment. Maybe I'm unlucky but a good third of my mapping time with it has been a battle against odd problems coming out of nowhere. I know Spark is designed for model based environments -like any editor worth its salt nowadays should be- but when I said complex geometry, I should have probably said, 'any room that isn't a straight up box'. And just so I'm clear, I realise this is an alpha release! I am not trying to slam the editor, I am just pointing out problems that I hope are first on the patch list.

My overall point of the post is that you shouldn't be saying that the editor is crashing makes it inferior, because that's what you sign up for as being an alpha tester. Its more your responsibility to provide feedback on what could be causing the crashing, or what leads up to it. It's quite obvious that any piece of development software with the words Alpha in it are going to crash, which makes "it crashes too much" an invalid argument when trying to state it is "inferior to hammer."

Of course you can make interesting designs in the editor! That's not what I meant to convey at all! But after that is where I start to disagree with you. I think its a great way to map but at the moment drawing in edges and carving out shapes is actually messier than hammer. For example... well for example I am a boring person and I had spark open so I recorded and example But I've had a ton of problems with faces that for some reason or another refuse to flip or even be drawn for me.

I've had issues with faces drawing incorrectly or not drawing, but for many of this it depends on the angle in which your 3d viewport is facing, since it tries to make itself understand what you are trying to do. Half the time, it misses the goal completely, and starts doing some funky shit. However, that isn't exactly what you said in the first post and some clarification on your issues is probably something the NS team could use when trying to figure out problems!

[ixin]

The current version is not for making maps, just to give us early glimse into the tech, try buliding 5 rooms with lots of props and see what happens.
This version is only meant for getting us used to the editor so when the "final" version comes out we are ready to go.

[marks]

The current version is not for making maps, just to give us early glimse into the tech, try buliding 5 rooms with lots of props and see what happens.
This version is only meant for getting us used to the editor so when the "final" version comes out we are ready to go.

Man speaks the truth, and I for one am really glad I have the opportunity to learn it beforehand.

[Angry Beaver]

to be fair anyone who can make a balanced map before a game is released is a psycic, sure you have NS1 to guide your hand, but are we really going to have any actual idea how this shit plays to balance our maps

[YokaI]

btw Fearian: Textures don't randomly reset or change their properties, it's due to the fact you moved a face, and then undid the changes, but the texture is still applied as if it's still connected to the face you moved in the position before you ctrl+z'd the movement. Happens all the time, and all they need to do is work on the fluidity of their texture tools / shortcuts.

[9f1062f623f9]

I'm making the official maps with more or less the same editor you guys have been given access to.

[YokaI]

I'm making the official maps with more or less the same editor you guys have been given access to.

And with that said, I hope to see these epic maps soon. So far the media release from this team has been spectacular.

Idk if you mind me asking, but did you move over to the studio or are you doing it as contract work (in other words, you work from home?)