lineus Tech tips coverage of pxs 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel
and steel Series so we're here with Hugh Jeremy
who refuses to tell us his job title and insists that they do not have them but
is extremely excited to talk to you guys about the new expansion natural
selection reinforced so um okay I guess let's
start with the really difficult question first and foremost what have you done about the performance issues lonus you
asked the right question first it's a fact that when natural selection 2
launch the performance wasn't quite where it needed to be especially on
lower end machines and on higher end machines people would walk out of a game
of Battlefield 3 with tanks exploding and planes flying past and they go why
don't I get the same frame rate in natural selection 2 well in natural selection 2 reinforc we have address
this at the low level we've changed the way that natural section 2 uses its
scripting language lure in such a way that the frame rate is now a lot higher
and more consistent so not only are you running at say 60 instead of 40 but
you're not dipping down to 30 all the time like used to happen and guys there
are some great articles on PC perspective about the whole frame
latency or frame rating or frame timing issue and it really does affect the
gaming experience in a way that the the sheer time it takes to draw each
individual frame does not so with that
said you guys uh okay so run smoothly on Windows but you told me there was some
other cool stuff come on come on very cool stuff if you open up the options
menu in natural selection to now on Windows you might notice an option to
change between D3 d11 d 3d9 and openg
and that's a hint why would we be running openg the reason is that Linux
uses openg GL to draw Graphics in 3D games natural section 2 reinforc runs on
Linux you can go to the the the steam Linux store and buy natural section 2
and if you already own it on Windows it'll run on Linux right now as well you
don't need to buy a separate key that's fantastic now I'm going to confess that
I had a coworker uh his name's Ivan he's Russian he's uh an avid gamer hardcore
guy and he was telling me about natural selection telling me it was the greatest
thing since the invention of the wheel and he spent about 10 minutes explaining
the gameplay mechanic to me and I kind of by the end of it I had kind of glazed
over and I was like what it didn't feel that accessible to
someone who doesn't know how the game works 100% already what have you done
what have we done we we released a game that does have a lot of depth to it the
rewarding experiences that people have in natural selection to being led by a
commander leading as the commander having complex realtime strategy battle
cloaked in a firstperson shooter shell they come with time they come with
learning and when we initially released the game The Learning was too hard there
was no scripted single player tutorial there were a bunch of tutorial videos we
admit it they weren't good enough the reviewers said so in natural selection 2
reinforc there is now a full single player tutorial you can play through it
it is scripted will introduce you to the basic game Mechanics for both a marine
and an alien and the commander now has a contextual help system during play that
will hint you what upgrades are needed where you should Place buildings Etc to
ease you into the process because as you say it's a deep game there's a lot going
on when you take a real-time strategy game which is what natural section 2 is
and you replace all those units on the ground with real people you get a little
bit of complexity but is that complexity that breeds rewarding gameplay and now
that we have these tutorial systems we hope that gameplay is more accessible
now we've managed to get this far without actually talking about any of
the gameplay improvements that have been made and reinforced um I mean it's great
for the techie audience that we happen to have but if you had to you know want
them to buy the game what would you tell them they're going to get with reinforced well they're firstly going to
get everything that was in natural selection 2 it's a free update so anyone that owns ns2 gets reinforced for free
and if you buy ns2 now you get reinforced and gorgeous which is our previous expansion some of the headline
features that have gone into reinforced include biodome which you might be able to see behind us right now completely
new art set and that's important because all our previous Maps used variations of
the refinery art set biodom is a completely new look for natural section
2 female Marines are now in you can select your sex in the menu and that
includes all the custom armors the three different types of armors we've added the reinforcement program which allows
you to play as a black skull with red spines and various other armor types as
well in there to voluntarily support development of natural section 2 we have
added the tutorial system we've added Linux support we've added cluster grenades nerve gas grenades pulse
grenades the onos can now use bone Shield which has been an ability that's
been requested for so long there's been graphical improvements we can now render
glass a lot better which is essential for bodm because there's so many glassy
areas I'm going to run out of breath right now there's a huge change log on unknown worlds.com ns2 now I lost track
when you said that I could choose sex so the options are yes no and
uh the options are definitely male and female is there a
dog there is everyone everyone's adding
like female soldiers and dogs you got to keep you got to keep up see I'm going to
keep doing this to them well firstly we'll definitely admit that the addition
of the female marine was not held up for technical reasons there's nothing in the
Spark engine that stops you adding female Marines at launch What stopped us
was budget and time so now that we've got that we've managed to put her in and
that's very important to us with dogs we do have a dog but it's not a new feature
it's been in there from the start the skull has four legs except instead of
Paws it's got spikes that allow to stick to walls and ceilings the only time it
makes a barking noise is when it bites someone in the face fact the sound
designer for natural section 2 Simon kamakazi he's a genius and when he was
recording the uh sound for the skull biting he was literally sitting under a
Duna with a microphone going that is a fact that's awesome so
thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us guys this is Hugh and uh
don't forget our our trip to the show is powered by Western Digital Intel and
steel series don't miss any of our coverage of PS Prime 2013 thanks so much
man thank you lonus