Originally Posted by Wyzcrak

The name is the result of a bad decision, but I'm not above judging the game based on what it is, not what it's called or from what it was born.

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

Hrmm it seems I'm going to have to overcome my instinctual desire to kill anyone who uses the phrase "intelligent design" before I'll be able to try this game.

Originally Posted by Zunni

crap 1 day later than I anticipated but here, if you have any other questions that arise from this, or want clarification about something, please don't hesitate to PM me:

That seems to be the million-dollar question these days..

We need to answer this and all other questions similar to it by starting at the beginning...

Every single Dev is a former/current NSPlayer, and I believe we have all played it almost constantly since its release.

I also need to publicly state each and every dev LOVES NS. It's our past and we respect the work put in by Flayra and the initial dev team, as well as the continued work guys like tanke and puzl, MadMaxx, Nem put into the game. They are awesome professionals and hopefully get everything they want from their time working on Natural Selection. I still have a relationship with many of the NS Devs (though I haven't talked to Nem in a while, blasted real life), and have talked with them about our project (ID). There has been nothing but best wishes from them regarding it (at least based on what was said to me).

We see a place in gamers hearts for both games (like competition in business), and hope both do really well and attract their own fans. Knowing that there's another game with a similar play-style should keep both teams hopping and the end result should be that you as a player win!

However, for a long time I've felt that the direction that NS was headed in terms of game length and reduction in strategy wasn't my cup of tea. This is important because while it didn't create the mod, it helped to push me to get involved in this one. The fact is, I wasn't the person who launched this into being, I was voted to lead it forward. A couple of NSArmslab folks IM'd me a long time ago (Dec. 2005) and asked if I wanted to help them with this idea they had for a new mod. I turned them down at first as my real life was about to get really hectic (birth of our second child) and I was enjoying my break from working hard on a mod. We continued talking and after hearing some of their thoughts, I softened my position to thinking about it and eventually accepted their offer. We setup some internal forums, and began discussing at a high-level what we wanted from a game. Basically since we were all NSPlayers the gameplay seemed to focus around melee vs. ranged and RTS/FPS style gameplay. But we didn't want to recreate NS for the Source engine (with the hope that the NS team would be doing that when they were able) so we started coming up with a few differences in terminology to start preparing ourselves that this is different than NS.

Being avid NSPlayers our mindset wandered (as does for many in our community) back to the "NS way". The addition of Brackhar shattered that for us, he came in and pushed the fact that we are not re-creating NS and that we need fresh new gameplay ideas that will take the game in a different direction. He's been talking with me about that for so long that natively now I don't work from an NS perspective instead choosing the path less traveled that is more unique.

So we came up with the concept of upgraded Resource Collectors to spawn the feral, relays, distinctive upgrade paths for the SNS while having shallow upgrade path for the feral, we started taking the base class concepts that were expected and have been working hard to change the way they are handled and make them unique.

While we were doing this, we needed a name and we tossed around several. None of them stuck until Brackhar (who had been talking to a friend) suggested Intelligent Design. My initial thoughts were 'Well, that certainly is the other side of the coin from Natural Selection but it has a really nice clean sound to it.' So it was talked about for a couple of weeks before finally being settled upon. We would be known as Intelligent Design. This was voted on before we started the project and since this discussion has occurred we voted on it again, both times overwhelmingly the name was voted to stay.

In current media 'intelligent design' and 'creationism/Darwinism' are buzzwords being used more frequently in our education and political systems as well as spiritual institutions. The very definition of intelligent design alludes to the theory that living things show signs of having been designed. ID supporters argue that living creatures and their biological systems are too complex to be accounted for using current theories of evolution and that a designer may be responsible for their complexity.

Extrapolating that out and applying it to the story line of the game we are making, and suddenly it makes a much better fit than one might initially think on several levels. There's the concept that the Feral were actually created by the SNS. They didn't evolve into being, but were instead formed by a "higher power" (the SNS). Or another way to look at it, the SNS team has a commander who has the power to outfit and guide them as he/she sees fit in a way 'Intelligently Designing' them for their struggles ahead. On the flip side the Feral have been 'Intelligently Designed' by the first Cluster to meet the needs of the attacking forces.


I've gotten a few "quick" questions, so I thought I'd post them with their answers here.

Is this game based off the NS Universe? No.

Will there be similar gameplay elements? Absolutely, NS really started this genre off, and it's on every devs favorite game list.

Are you trying to rip off Flayra? Not at all, our gameplay will be different and we are trying to have different goals than NS does currently (Longer games, more strategic decisions, etc)

C'mon really, isn't this just NS but with a few changes? Well, that's like saying NS is like StarCraft or AvP or Tremulous with a few changes, or Serious Sam is like Doom with a few changes. Almost all games do tie into something that was done before it, but hopefully make alterations and provide a new experience for the game player.