Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of pax 2013 is brought to you by Western Digital Intel and steelseries 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 a really difficult question first and foremost what have you done about the performance issues Linus you ask the right questions first it's a fact that when natural selection to launch the performance wasn't quite where it needed to be especially on lower-end machines and on hiring machines people would walk out of a game of battlefield 3 with tanks exploding and planes flying class and they go why don't I get the same frame rate in natural selection too well in natural selection to reinforce we have addressed 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 it's a 60 instead of 40 but you're not dipping down to 30 all the time like used to happen 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 aisle is the sheer time it takes to draw each individual frame does not so with that said you guys okay so run smoothly on Windows but you told me there were some other cool stuff come on come on very cool stuff you open up the options menu in natural selection 2 now on Windows you might notice an option to change between d3d11 d3d 9 and OpenGL and that's again why would we be running OpenGL the reason is that Linux uses OpenGL to draw graphics in 3d games natural selection to reinforce runs on Linux you can go to the the lit the steam Linux store and by natural selection tool around if you already own it on windows it'll run on Linux right now so you don't need to buy a separate key that's fantastic now I'm going to confess that I had a co-worker his name's Ivan he's Russian he's a 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 wha 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've 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 battles cloaked in a first-person shooters shell they come with time they come with learning and when we initially release 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 to reinforce 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 plate 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 game players more accessible now we've managed to get this far without actually talking about any of the gameplay improvements that have been made in reinforced um I mean it's great for the techy 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 it was in natural selection 2 it's a free update so anyone that owns and it's through gets reinforced for free and if you buy an s2 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 biodome ism 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 customers the three different types of armors we've added the reinforcement program which allows you to play as a black skulk 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 had a Linux support we've added cluster grenades nerve gas grenades pulse grenades the onus 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 rent a gloss a lot better which is essential for buy them because there's so many glossy areas i'm going to run out of breath right now there's a huge change log on unknown worlds calm / ns2 now i lost track when you said that I could choose sex so the options are yes no and the options are definitely male and female was there a dog there is a present everyone everyone's adding like female soldiers and dogs well you gotta kick you got to keep up to I'm gonna keep doing this to him well firstly will 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 former 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 skulk has four legs except instead of pores it's got spikes that allowed to stick to walls and ceilings the only time it makes a barking noises when it bites someone in the face fact the sound designer by natural selection to Simon kamikaze he's a genius and when he was recording the sound for the scope biting he was literally sitting under a dinner with a microphone going oh that he's a fact that's awesome so thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us guys this is Hugh and don't forget our power ours trip to the show is powered by Western Digital Intel and steel series don't miss any of our coverage of pax prime 2013 thanks so much man Thank You Linus