Who builds the builder that builds the builder?

Posted by brock 8 years ago
Natural Selection 2

Ed. Note: The context for this article can be found in the post “Let’s try something new.”

Greetings Babblings,

With all the excitement around the recent announcement on NS2’s future development, I thought it may be interesting for some to hear more about the ‘How’ versus the ‘What’. My biggest part of the CDT was managing all of its infrastructure: Servers, Repositories, Databases, and so on. From putting together all the hardware myself to setting up all of the associated servers, that was my gig.

This same role of “The Build Guy” will continue as I take a seat among the members of the new NS2 Development Team. Now that I’m moving to development on a much more significant basis, I’ll be able to break out of solely focusing on keeping the figurative lights on, and aim to do much more. Typically my efforts will be focused on what is under the hood of NS2, but won’t be limited to that. Continuing this focus, I’ll be working on tasks that will enable new content, new potential gameplay elements and/or modes, and other possibilities to be created.

I’ve always been the type of person that likes to see the granular changes in something and watch it take shape. Part of this change, means significant reworking of some several components in NS2’s current build system. The net-result will be a much more flexible and faster process, cutting down on time from developer changes to seeing them in-game. As an additional bonus, I fully intend on making our day-to-day work much more visible. This means you, the community, will be able to see the changes flowing into the next update to the game. In addition, we will be striving to create mechanisms to allow you ways to give direct feedback on specific changes. We want to hear from you. We want to know how we can make the game we all love that much better!

As a final note, since this is my first blog post, I want to take this chance to express my personal gratitude to Mendasp, Samus, Loki, Remi, fsfod, Flatorectomy, Narfwak, Decoy (pls), computerequip, Asraniel, ALL of the Playtesters, Map-Testers and the SCC. You all are utterly amazing, creative, enthusiastic, and all around badasses. Words will never be enough to express my thanks for all each of the contributors has done for NS2. THANK YOU!

 

Long live the Babbler King!

Brock ‘McGlaspie’ Gillespie

P.S. I haven’t forgotten about MvM, far, far from it.  🙂

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