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lineus Tech tips coverage of pxs 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel

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and steel Series so we're here with Hugh Jeremy

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who refuses to tell us his job title and insists that they do not have them but

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is extremely excited to talk to you guys about the new expansion natural

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selection reinforced so um okay I guess let's

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start with the really difficult question first and foremost what have you done about the performance issues lonus you

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asked the right question first it's a fact that when natural selection 2

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launch the performance wasn't quite where it needed to be especially on

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lower end machines and on higher end machines people would walk out of a game

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of Battlefield 3 with tanks exploding and planes flying past and they go why

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don't I get the same frame rate in natural selection 2 well in natural selection 2 reinforc we have address

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this at the low level we've changed the way that natural section 2 uses its

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scripting language lure in such a way that the frame rate is now a lot higher

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and more consistent so not only are you running at say 60 instead of 40 but

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you're not dipping down to 30 all the time like used to happen and guys there

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are some great articles on PC perspective about the whole frame

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latency or frame rating or frame timing issue and it really does affect the

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gaming experience in a way that the the sheer time it takes to draw each

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individual frame does not so with that

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said you guys uh okay so run smoothly on Windows but you told me there was some

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other cool stuff come on come on very cool stuff if you open up the options

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menu in natural selection to now on Windows you might notice an option to

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change between D3 d11 d 3d9 and openg

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and that's a hint why would we be running openg the reason is that Linux

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uses openg GL to draw Graphics in 3D games natural section 2 reinforc runs on

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Linux you can go to the the the steam Linux store and buy natural section 2

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and if you already own it on Windows it'll run on Linux right now as well you

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don't need to buy a separate key that's fantastic now I'm going to confess that

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I had a coworker uh his name's Ivan he's Russian he's uh an avid gamer hardcore

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guy and he was telling me about natural selection telling me it was the greatest

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thing since the invention of the wheel and he spent about 10 minutes explaining

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the gameplay mechanic to me and I kind of by the end of it I had kind of glazed

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over and I was like what it didn't feel that accessible to

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someone who doesn't know how the game works 100% already what have you done

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what have we done we we released a game that does have a lot of depth to it the

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rewarding experiences that people have in natural selection to being led by a

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commander leading as the commander having complex realtime strategy battle

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cloaked in a firstperson shooter shell they come with time they come with

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learning and when we initially released the game The Learning was too hard there

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was no scripted single player tutorial there were a bunch of tutorial videos we

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admit it they weren't good enough the reviewers said so in natural selection 2

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reinforc there is now a full single player tutorial you can play through it

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it is scripted will introduce you to the basic game Mechanics for both a marine

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and an alien and the commander now has a contextual help system during play that

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will hint you what upgrades are needed where you should Place buildings Etc to

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ease you into the process because as you say it's a deep game there's a lot going

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on when you take a real-time strategy game which is what natural section 2 is

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and you replace all those units on the ground with real people you get a little

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bit of complexity but is that complexity that breeds rewarding gameplay and now

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that we have these tutorial systems we hope that gameplay is more accessible

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now we've managed to get this far without actually talking about any of

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the gameplay improvements that have been made and reinforced um I mean it's great

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for the techie audience that we happen to have but if you had to you know want

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them to buy the game what would you tell them they're going to get with reinforced well they're firstly going to

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get everything that was in natural selection 2 it's a free update so anyone that owns ns2 gets reinforced for free

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and if you buy ns2 now you get reinforced and gorgeous which is our previous expansion some of the headline

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features that have gone into reinforced include biodome which you might be able to see behind us right now completely

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new art set and that's important because all our previous Maps used variations of

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the refinery art set biodom is a completely new look for natural section

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2 female Marines are now in you can select your sex in the menu and that

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includes all the custom armors the three different types of armors we've added the reinforcement program which allows

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you to play as a black skull with red spines and various other armor types as

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well in there to voluntarily support development of natural section 2 we have

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added the tutorial system we've added Linux support we've added cluster grenades nerve gas grenades pulse

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grenades the onos can now use bone Shield which has been an ability that's

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been requested for so long there's been graphical improvements we can now render

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glass a lot better which is essential for bodm because there's so many glassy

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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

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when you said that I could choose sex so the options are yes no and

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uh the options are definitely male and female is there a

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dog there is everyone everyone's adding

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like female soldiers and dogs you got to keep you got to keep up see I'm going to

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keep doing this to them well firstly we'll definitely admit that the addition

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of the female marine was not held up for technical reasons there's nothing in the

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Spark engine that stops you adding female Marines at launch What stopped us

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was budget and time so now that we've got that we've managed to put her in and

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that's very important to us with dogs we do have a dog but it's not a new feature

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it's been in there from the start the skull has four legs except instead of

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Paws it's got spikes that allow to stick to walls and ceilings the only time it

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makes a barking noise is when it bites someone in the face fact the sound

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designer for natural section 2 Simon kamakazi he's a genius and when he was

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recording the uh sound for the skull biting he was literally sitting under a

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Duna with a microphone going that is a fact that's awesome so

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thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us guys this is Hugh and uh

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don't forget our our trip to the show is powered by Western Digital Intel and

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steel series don't miss any of our coverage of PS Prime 2013 thanks so much

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man thank you lonus