Unvanquished Forum

That is according to the forum belonging to Natural Selection 2 over on Steam. I find that to be quite the pity considering how the game just came out for Linux and is one of the bigger releases to boot. I was intent on buying it and doing a big giveaway, but all the complaints are really putting me off. In fact, I feel like dumping my money into Unvanquished instead as it's free and open source and didn't have any game breaking issues such as the ones Natural Selection 2 appears to be having when I tried it.

The thing is, I cannot actually try out Natural Selection 2 myself due to circumstances, and I have only put very little time into Unvanquished (again due to circumstances) so I was wondering how the two compare. Does anybody here have experience with both? Should I just ask the developers of Unvanquished to accept financial contributions as I really won't be able to learn any useful programming skills in quick enough a manner?

We do not accept donations.

On a separate note, why did SLUG not show up to the tournament?

kharnov wrote:

We do not accept donations.

On a separate note, why did SLUG not show up to the tournament?

Why is that? What prevents the Unvanquished team from accepting financial contributions/donations from users who want to help out but don't possess the desired coding skills? Regarding SLUG, I don't know about the others, but my summer has been a whirlwind of tedious errands which hit me in the face somewhat last minute. I'll be moving on Sunday, so I expect more such nuisances to come at me.

There is nothing we would do with outside money. Our project is entirely self-sufficient. Considering that there is nothing we need outside money for, it would not be right to accept donations. The pace of our development has nothing to do with money. Everyone works for free and is a volunteer. Hiring someone would cost tens of thousands of dollars, something that you cannot make up with donations.

If you really want to support Unvanquished, play it and tell your friends about it.

kharnov wrote:

There is nothing we would do with outside money. Our project is entirely self-sufficient. Considering that there is nothing we need outside money for, it would not be right to accept donations. The pace of our development has nothing to do with money. Everyone works for free and is a volunteer. Hiring someone would cost tens of thousands of dollars, something that you cannot make up with donations.

If you really want to support Unvanquished, play it and tell your friends about it.

That sounds very well organised indeed and incredibly generous to boot. You guys seem to handle this very well compared to other FOSS projects. At my current level, all I can do is vote with my wallet, and I want to vote for FOSS projects like these, especially with the Natural Selection 2 fiasco going on where nobody but the developers can do anything about it due to the closed code. I'll get access to my gaming PC again on Sunday (after what has been over a month now) so I'll definitely play Unvanquished and continue to promote it to interested parties as well.

Just installed NS2 today for the first time (since it went free for the weekend on Steam) and yeah, it's unplayable. I got 10-20 FPS and huge hang-ups in menus, O-K. I waited about 10 minutes for the first map to load, O-K. The connection timed out while the map was loading, O-K. I managed to get to the tutorial but then the game crashed without an error message. I could no longer bear. It's also 8 GB which is alright with my connection but probably not worth it to wait for if you have an average Western provider.

Qrntz wrote:

Just installed NS2 today for the first time (since it went free for the weekend on Steam) and yeah, it's unplayable. I got 10-20 FPS and huge hang-ups in menus, O-K. I waited about 10 minutes for the first map to load, O-K. The connection timed out while the map was loading, O-K. I managed to get to the tutorial but then the game crashed without an error message. I could no longer bear. It's also 8 GB which is alright with my connection but probably not worth it to wait for if you have an average Western provider.

Well, that's encouraging. Unvanquished is still its alpha and feels like it works way better, doesn't it? I really don't like how this update wasn't tested and was released right before the weekend when nobody will bother working on it. This isn't a selfless FOSS project. It's a proprietary game where people either pay up or get out. I guess there is no point trying to download it and fit a few games in on Sunday after moving when it's this bad. I was really hyped as well...

I heard that the original mod for half life was a lot better. It's like comparing TF2 to TFC though, some prefer the classic gameplay more than graphics. And I'm one of them.

I never bought HL so I never got NS and I have no money to provide, meaning that I can't buy NS2 or anything.

I don't think it comes down to what is "better" or "worse." It is merely a matter of preference. Although Unvanquished and NS2 share a common ancestor in Gloom, they are two very different games when it comes to gameplay.

I don't recall NS saying anything about gloom though. Wikipedia doesn't even mention tremulous in any way on the NS page.

The overall tactic in terms of "RTS" for tremulous/unv and NS are quite similar though, just that they use beasts and trem and unvanquished use aliens.