Natural Selection Half-Life Mod Reaches 3.0 Beta

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the official Natural Selection page, where V3.0 Beta of the Half-Life mod "hybrid first-person/real-time strategy game" is now available. According to the page, changes include 10 new maps, as well as the addition of Natural Selection: Combat, a "...new fast and furious gameplay mode focusing on intense action. Combat games generally last less than ten minutes, and require very little knowledge to play." The mod can now be played using the add-on's "official Steam support", and will be "...listed under the 'My Games' section (not as a 3rd-party mod)", a laudable achievement for the Natural Selection developers, who've also implemented vital "skulk prediction fixes" for this update.

Quick problem / fix with NS 3.0 beta

[sladelink]

Although they say on their site that NS 3.0 supports Steam (which most players hate) and WonID, they don't make any mention about how to play it without Steam. The official Natural Selection forums are down right now, so this should help anyone trying to play the game without Steam. After downloading it and letting it install to your steam account directory, make a copy of the nsp directory and place it in your Half-Life dir. Same arguments apply for 3.0 as in 2.1, but replace the -game ns with -game nsp. Still though, I'm only able to see two active 3.0 public servers. Could be because it has gotten such an ill reception from the NS crowd, or maybe the clan servers are playing private for a bit. I would sure be interested in finding out what's up.

Re:I don't want to be cranky

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Its always been there and defaults if you don't have flash installed. If you do, its right under the monitor looking thing at the bottom of the menu: 'html menu [natural-selection.org]'.

Re:Quick problem / fix with NS 3.0 beta

[Sparr0]

Few CS players will move to CS2, because HL2 will be written well. No more "click on the head, get a head shot" bullshit like in HL/CS. CS players, as a general rule, are incapable of dealing with engines where you have to lead targets for motion and lag. This revelation only recently came to me. I play CS rarely, but after many years I never understood why I performed so poorly. About a month ago someone actually explained to me how aim works in CS (just click on your target). All this time I had been leading my targets. This rift is not easily crossed, and is why CS2, if it ever exists, will not draw a significant number of people from CS.

Ensuring Good Gameplay

[Anonymous Coward]

Play on regular servers if you want to play with ppl who do teamwork. myself, i play on Lunixmonster and the 3 Old Fogey servers [OldF] oldf.net. My handle is Niteowl. would be nice to see some slashdotters playing along side me :)

Personally, i'm really happy that NS has combat is in. since there are quite a few NS servers out there that run COMBAT ONLY, you can basically use those as n00b magnets. Ppl who want furious gameplay/want to learn the game/can't guard an RT to save their life will go play combat. Those who want to play the RTS part of the FPS/RTS can play classic NS ;)

A side note, this is still beta testing, so there is still some balancing to be done. IMHO, JPers need a more solid counter (now that lerks don't have spikes), and onii and fades with their new hitboxes, need something to buff them (they get shredded right quick).