Nathan/Natty

[VSMIT]

2 words: FISH BONE.

Actually that's one word, and technically, he hasn't released a full version of Dune Command yet.

[TheJamsh]

Dune Command doesn't compare to G66, but it is good in its own right. Fish isn't working on it anymore anyway which sucks a bit really

[technoid]

Yeah I roped Natty back into G66 (v2.0) development hell in early 2005 when I noticed he was gone for awhile.  I contacted him via email, when no one else did, and he said everything was on the backburner and had RL priorities.  Fortunately he returned after I made a case that he should contine progress on it. Unfortunately those forum threads on this matter of Natty's return were wiped a few years ago when Wz was asking for donations to keep this forum online (if those threads are still here, I couldn't find them).  Also, in our email correspondence, Natty said it was high time he transfer the G66 source code to someone else, which is what has since transpired.

And yep, Natty is not Nathan (must be those first 3 alliterative letters in both names). 

[Warfreak]

So that we can all have our own views:

Fishbone set the standard for MP Coding with campaign in mind.
Natty set the standard of "smart" AI and opened up a whole new frontier of modding for those who actually went on to learn how to code with C++ and the like.

[Red Devil]

It never ceases to amaze me all the people who modify some ODF's and then they think they are suddenly all-powerful masters of the world.  (I know I did)

Then I looked inside Natty's DLL and maps and the FE DLL and maps and found I knew nothing at all - and still don't.

It's like you suddenly learned how to feed yourself, but meanwhile there are astronauts doing EVA's outside the International Space Station.

[bigbadbogie]

It never ceases to amaze me all the people who modify some ODF's and then they think they are suddenly all-powerful masters of the world.  (I know I did)

That is exactly what they are.

And it never ceases to amaze me that people are willing to snub the brilliant work of many talented people in favour of something that is quite obselete.

Then I looked inside Natty's DLL and maps and found I knew nothing at all - and still don't.

Is anyone going to ever explain what is so good about it?

All I have read about it is that it randomly picks a path for enemies to attack from and adds patrolling units.

I could do that in 10 seconds with the scriptor.

[SkyNET]

Maybe you could play it? It's quite good, and the best teacher is experience.

[TheJamsh]

Personally i'm sat on the fence about this greatest modder of all time malarky. I accept that he is very good, and in all fairness i haven't released anything to the community yet, so my opinion isn't as valid as some. While G66 is good, what impresses me about it is that its actually quite dynamic and responsive.

A lot of scriptor based missions are usually only made difficult via a constant onslaught of upgraded units, and while thats hard, its outrageously boring. Natty seems to have made it hard using a range of techniques rather than the over-used onslaught idea, which i have the utmost respect for.

As BBB says, a lot of this can be done in the scriptor (although i am learning to hate the scriptors limitations right now and am seeing the appeal of C++ more and more), so aside from being the first guy to do it, it'd be nice to know exactly whats going on behind the scenes.

However, Forgotten Enemies is without doubt one of the greatest mods if not the greatest, mainly because it overly expanded on what we thought were the boundaries of BZ2 modding at the time, and all done via ODF and basic .dll scriptor.

[Red Devil]

Nope.  As far as I know, the Scriptor produces just SP/IA DLL's.  It's a whole other ball of wax working with MP because now you have to deal with multiple players coming and going, timing, assets, etc.

The FE MPI DLL is another work of art, too, which I neglected to note. (editing my above post to remedy that)

For the record, I am not snubbing other people's work, but just pointing out the naiivete we all experience that comes with newly-found abilities.

I really hope Natty returns because, even though I have (barely) been able to get my arms around his work, I am still humbled by it, even after a year's dedication to it.  Nathan has been kind enough to help me out when I get stuck, too.

[Nielk1]

I could beat G66 in complexity and such. I have drafts of code for running units in mini hives that elect leaders and set up ambushes and more code aside for graph theory applications to path grids using dynamic edge weighting via traffic/threat/strength analysis.

(IE an AI that baits your units into ambushes, moves in separate unpredictable groups, decides if it is a good idea to take a certain path depending on how many other units are on that path and what enemies are on that path, etc.)

These however are all concepts. So they do not count for much as of yet.