Natural-Selection posts

While Unknown Worlds announced they were going to move their upcoming first person shooter Natural Selection 2 over to Steam's client, this week they finally made the move to host their pre-order engine test build on Valve's PC game download service. While pre-orders for the game are still being taken on the game's official web site people who do will get an unlock key for Steam via email.

The engine test build has also been updates with features like the server browser now active along with some other minor features and bug fixes. There's no word yet on when an actual alpha build will be made available for pre-orders.

It began as a total conversion for Valve's original Half-Life game but the FPS-RTS hybrid mod Natural Selection has been in development for some time as a full-fledged retail game, Natural Selection 2. The sci-fi themed game is being worked on at the San Fransisco based Unknown Worlds Entertainment, founded by the the original mod's creator Charlie Cleveland.

Recently the development team made a major announcement, stating they were going to switch game engines. Originally planned as a stand alone game using Valve's Source engine (the same one used for Half-Life 2) Unknown Worlds has made the choice to develop Natural Selection 2 with their own in-house graphics engine. Because of this switch Big Download decided to check in with Cleveland to find out more about their plans for Natural Selection 2.