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Exterminatus : destruction of all life on a world by the Imperium of man.
Exterminatus: Rival Species 2 saw a Beta release at the end of January, with well received receptions from their fans.
Exterminatus is a mulitplayer FPS modification for Half Life 2 set in the Grim Dark Future (AKA, the Warhammer 40,000 universe). Each online mulitplayer map has a unique scenario in which objectives must be carried out by the players on either team who work together to achieve their goals.
In Exterminatus you can play as the Tyranids; giant rabid beasts who have been brought together, reproduce themselves rapidly and devour entire galaxies out of the will of the Hivemind; a sentient, non-physical being who is in essence, the collective brains and minds of all Tyranid forces that are within synapse range. Or you can play as the Imperial Space Marines; genetically augmented 11' tall superhumans who have multiple hearts and a chest plate instead of a rib cage. They feel no fear and devote their immortal lives to the will of the emperor. (Badass or what?)
I'm relatively impressed with how well this mod has been put together, I must say. The mod is very true to the tabletop game, and original 40k fluff. Bolters have a slower more realistic rate of fire (as also seen in Fire Warrior), something that was missed out by Relic when creating Dawn of War. Scenarios and objectives are also very similar to that of what you would expect in tabletop games. My only real gripe was that some skins and animations look very amateurish, as well as the menu screen background and the Tyranid HUD. Certain aspects seem rushed. On the other hand, other aspects like player models and skins look very well done, as well as in-game imagery, and props that have been made.
While the quality of visuals can be lacking sometimes, this is made up for with gameplay. It really is an enjoyable and addictive modification, and has clearly been well thought out. Some people complain about balance issues, but from what I have seen, what the Tyranids lack in ranged combat, they make up for in their close combat superiority, and dubious amounts of HP. There has been one issue that I have picked up along the way though. Lack of an autobalance system seems to always lead the Tyranids to always have less players, so come on Tyranid fans, get your game on.
I even got a small Q & A in with Chrome Angel too (The lead developer from ModDB).
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Q) How well did your team find working with source and implementing your gameplay aspects?
A) Working with Source is a bit of a double edged sword.
The basics are well documented though the Valve developer wiki and with the community built tools like VTFEdit and GCFScapoe getting content in and out of the game is a doddle. However writing the code for a mod has been like building a house on quicksand. You've no sooner got something working than steam updates the game engine break it again.
Initially we wanted the respawning players to be flown in to the maps by aircraft, but the performance of Source wasn't smooth enough with a map large enough to fly a Thunderhawk around and detailed enough for a ground war, so we fell back to popping players out of thin air. Our player spawn points are still called "dropzones" though.
Another feature that fell by the wayside was broods. Tyranids are supposed to come in massive swarms with many smaller creatures accompanying the warriors. The plan was to mod the antlion companion behavior of the AIs in HL2 to add to the number of players on the Tyranid team. Sadly we were never able to control them as seamlessly as we wanted, so the feature got shelved.
Q) What do you think of the mod yourselves?
A) I would happily play it for hours
Q) What are you are hoping to do with the mod in future?
A) We're hoping to improve the maps and the game mode, add more weapons, abilities and classes in further updates. With Warhammer 40,000 you never run out of room for expansion.
Q) What do you think of audience feedback so far?
A) It's been great. The audience have been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to the maturity of Source they've managed to pull together more servers, where we were under prepared on launch day. I must say a big thanks to all the server operators out there hosting EX servers. An auto balance patch is in the works.
A) Working with Source is a bit of a double edged sword.
The basics are well documented though the Valve developer wiki and with the community built tools like VTFEdit and GCFScapoe getting content in and out of the game is a doddle. However writing the code for a mod has been like building a house on quicksand. You've no sooner got something working than steam updates the game engine break it again.
Initially we wanted the respawning players to be flown in to the maps by aircraft, but the performance of Source wasn't smooth enough with a map large enough to fly a Thunderhawk around and detailed enough for a ground war, so we fell back to popping players out of thin air. Our player spawn points are still called "dropzones" though.
Another feature that fell by the wayside was broods. Tyranids are supposed to come in massive swarms with many smaller creatures accompanying the warriors. The plan was to mod the antlion companion behavior of the AIs in HL2 to add to the number of players on the Tyranid team. Sadly we were never able to control them as seamlessly as we wanted, so the feature got shelved.
Q) What do you think of the mod yourselves?
A) I would happily play it for hours
Q) What are you are hoping to do with the mod in future?
A) We're hoping to improve the maps and the game mode, add more weapons, abilities and classes in further updates. With Warhammer 40,000 you never run out of room for expansion.
Q) What do you think of audience feedback so far?
A) It's been great. The audience have been overwhelmingly positive. Thanks to the maturity of Source they've managed to pull together more servers, where we were under prepared on launch day. I must say a big thanks to all the server operators out there hosting EX servers. An auto balance patch is in the works.
It appears that certain factors that I would have suggested myself were covered but scrapped. While playing I was thinking how it would improve things if Gaunts were implemented as AI controlled characters. And thinking about it, bieng flown in by a Thunderhawk would be awesome.
In all, Exterminatus is a powerful blast from the 40k world into FPS gaming, and we haven't seen much since Fire Warrior. Lets hope that there is much more to come.
You can see Exterminatus' ModDB page here.
And you can visit the home page here.
You can download Exterminatus from any of the mirrors listed here.
Article by--
Nidmeister
Edited by Nidmeister, 07 February 2010 - 22:03.
