Getting into competitive NS2

My Natural Selection 2 team, CiB, is now entering competitive tournaments against teams from all over the world. Last weekend we played several matches in the ENSL Custom Map Cup, all of which I have streamed in first person: vs. VexX, KKG, Team 156, flow and AtroX (aPx forfeited).

Of course, we speak Portuguese, so many of you probably won't understand our chatter ;)

After you're done watching the games, or if you want to know the results right now, see our division here.

We did quite well for a newcomer team. We're on par with most teams in our division, but still need to work on Marine tactics and dealing with the higher Kharaa lifeforms, as well as playing them better. Since this was a custom map cup, we had to give feedback on the maps. My overall opinion about them was not very good -- most maps had several balance issues and bugs in the form of stuck spots, missing textures or holes.

After playing these competitive matches, normal (pub) games are no longer the same. They're just for fun -- hop in, kill some aliens/chomp some marines, don't care about winning or losing. It's all about the fun (and honing skills).

On the next weekend we'll be playing the NSL Invitational #1 Qualifiers (see our division here), although we won't be able to get past the qualifiers since we're not an EU or NA team. We're up for the challenge, to learn new tactics, get some practice and, well, just for the sake of playing competitive games (and because they were missing three teams to fill up the 32 slots and decided to pick us). There are two well-known, strong teams in our division: Goðar and True North. We also met Team 156 before. The rest of the teams is new to me; hopefully they'll be on par with the teams we scrimmed.

Wish us good luck!

TCPRelay 0.3 beta 2

NOTE: there is a newer version of TCPRelay here.

TCPRelay 0.3 beta 2 is now available! Download the 32-bit or 64-bit version. You may also need to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.


What's new in this version:

• GUI
  • NEW: the Target URI list is now saved to a file in the TCPRelay folder (serverlist.txt) and reloaded every time TCPRelay starts.
  • NEW: pressing Enter while typing a Target URI or starting TCPRelay will add the current Target URI to the list if not already present.

Check out the official topic on XSplit's forums and see for yourself all the great feedback people gave me.

Natural Selection 2 is so much fun. Streaming with OBS is so much better

Hey there people, happy new year! It's been a while since my last gaming-related post. As you may know, I am now playing Natural Selection 2 a whole lot. This means I must have been streaming a lot lately, right?

Well, due to what amounts to extreme laziness, I haven't been streaming too much. :( But this is going to change, as I just found out this new streaming program called OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), which is, simply put, a "free, open source XSplit", except it is much faster and lighter.

For starters, it loads and closes as fast as Notepad. I can easily stream with the screen capture feature without as much as a dent on the frame rate, which I found very impressive. I can play NS2 at over 60 fps most of the time with the aforementioned software screen capture, just as if I wasn't streaming at all.

It has pretty much the same features as XSplit, lacking only a few I never used anyways. Even if it doesn't come with them out of the box, there is a plug-in framework so that people can add the features to OBS. I wouldn't be surprised to see plugins that replicate or perform certain features better than XSplit.

I have one complaint though: the video quality doesn't look as good as XSplit. Maybe I'm trying to push too hard with just 2000 kbps of video bandwidth? Who knows. I'll be tweaking it a bit more...

Back to Natural Selection 2! I did stream some matches, and they're available on my YouTube channel. Here's one of my recent ones - a ridiculous pubstomp (70 kills, 7 deaths!) with those newbies that bought the game on the recent Steam Sale:

TCPRelay 0.3 beta

TCPRelay 0.3 beta is now available! Download the 32-bit or 64-bit version. You may also need to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

What's new in this version:

• GUI
  • NEW: the last Target URI and Listen Port values are now saved to the Windows Registry under the key:
    
            HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\StrikerX3\TCPRelay
    
    Now every time you restart TCPRelay the last used server and listen port should be automatically set.

Check out the official topic on XSplit's forums and see for yourself all the great feedback people gave me.

State of TCPRelay, and Natural Selection 2

It's been a while since my last update here. If you're wondering why I haven't been updating TCPRelay lately, it's mostly because there was no demand for improvements or fixes for it. Also, I work as a systems analyst and that involves a lot of programming, so it's also a matter of being burned out too.
Anyway, here's a few ideas for the next versions of TCPRelay I have written down:

• Stream delay: I'm not entirely sure this is possible without inspecting the stream data, but this is definitely worth checking out.
• A way to fetch server lists from other services (own3d.tv, YouTube, ustream, ...). Also enable users to add their own lists, keep them between sessions and share with others.
• Improve localization support and allow users to translate TCPRelay to other languages.
• Fork into TCPProbe -- basically TCPRelay with packet inspection and manipulation capabilities through .NET plugins. Could be useful for network development.

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment.

On another note, I've been looking for a strong, competitive FPS that's reminded me of the old, but fun formula of Unreal Tournament and Quake: fast-paced action with insane movement skills and pinpoint aiming accuracy required. Unfortunately, since 2007 (when UT3 was released), there was not a single memorable FPS that followed the formula and caught my interest, turning me off from the genre. I went on to other games, including World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Borderlands 2 and several casual and indie games. That is, until last month.

Natural Selection 2 was developed by Unknown Worlds Entertainment and released on October 30th. I haven't heard much about the game until then, but instantly got addicted the moment I got into a multiplayer game. It's an amazing blend of RTS and FPS with a surprisingly friendly community -- the complete opposite of most popular games such as Dota 2, LoL and Starcraft 2. People in NS2 actually help each other out, newbies ask questions and learn tricks and tactics from veterans (there's even some pro players giving out "classes" for free on their servers! See here and here); there's no split between the n00bz and the pros. Teamwork and coordination are absolutely required to get somewhere. Trying to Leeroy Jenkins your way into the enemy base *will* get you killed, unless you happen to be an Onos fighting against a bunch of rookie marines (and even then, if they know how to press the fire button and move their mouse to follow a giant suicidal gorilla-rhino-thing around, you *will* go down).

I highly recommend NS2 to anyone who has been yearning for something other than the generic "realistic" war shooter #235 with killstreaks and "realistic" gunfights, or anyone who enjoys either the FPS or RTS genres at all. It may not be as popular as LoL or Dota or SC2, but it's definitely competitive and interesting to watch. Refer to this topic on the UWE forums for a list of streams/YouTube channels/whatnot on NS2 competitive play. Oh, and it's cheap on Steam -- just 25 bucks.

Reminder: TCPRelay 0.3 alpha 3 released!

For those people who follow my blog/Twitter: TCPRelay 0.3 alpha 3 is now available! Check out the original post for version 0.3 and download the 32-bit or 64-bit version. You may also need to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4. Keep in mind that this is an alpha version; some features may not behave correctly.
There were two changes to the GUI:

• NEW: [alpha 3] application now has an icon (thanks to Fryderyk "Ziel" Dachowski!)
• FIXED: [alpha 3] tooltips for speed buttons were incorrectly referring to "as slow as possible".