A post-apocalyptic game idea.

[Garfield_]

Here is a simple idea that i have. If anyone is interested in helping me out creating a mod out of it, please feel free to do so

This is an Waterworld, Mad Max and more inspired, possible modification.

I'll update this thread when I get new ideas.


Basic story

Our world as we knew it saw it's last days in 2008. A great nuclear war between the United States Of America and the terrorist network, al-Qaida had begun. The US goverment had been working on their secret nuclear facility on the polar ice for a decade. They knew that, if the enemy were to destroy the facility they would take the whole world with them, as the ice would melt and overflow our planet. Once the al-Qaida leader Usama Bin Laden was captured and executed we all thought the war was over. But we were wrong. On the execution day, 11 nuclear devices detonated near the North Pole.

Within a year, the earth would overflow with water and all resources to survive would be wasted in few months. Once all resources were out, we began to fight for our own survival. Soon people formed groups to destroy smaller groups and steal their boats, food and valuables. Everything to survive!

Gameplay

This non-titled game is a post-apocalyptic multiplayer mod for Half-Life 2, where players has an important role of the surviving groups. Each group has several boats loaded with out-dated weapons, such as machineguns, water mines and rockets.

The objectives are to capture all control points located on the map. Each control point is a floating base with mounted weapons and supplies. Some of these control points have special vehicles with more speed and gunpower.

To win the war your team has to take control of all control points, or capture more control points than the enemy once the time is out.

Features

Realistic damage:
Boat engines can brake if it gets hit by a bullet or explosion, more powerfull weapons can shoot through boats to make them sink. Mines and other explosives can not only destroy a boat but also throw it high in the air.

Special equipment etc:
In each floating control points, you'll find special equipment such as diving equipment, explosions, repair kits and more. In some of the control bases you'll also find Jetskis.

Speech commands:
As in many other games you can use the commands menu to call speech commands to your teammates.

Large boats:
Some larger boats can carry up to 6 players. Each player takes a role as a driver, gunner or repairer. These boats come with huge amounts of fire power.

Capture enemies:
Some boats or floating bases may have small prison like rooms. If an enemy is knocked of a boat, or just happens to be in the water you can capture him with fisihing gear and put him in prison. The more enemies you have in prison, the less you have to hunt down and kill. But the prisoners teammates can rescue him easily.

Note! None of the info above are final, it can and most likly will be modified/edited alot before the release, if there will be any. To create something like this will require alot of work and people with much time and talent.


If anyone founds this interesting and has much talent in game development please let me know. I've worked with many mod teams but none of these were what I thought and ended up as post-production projects. So if we start this, we're going to end it as a whole picture.

 

[Humidor]

This actually doesn't sound bad, but it will require a lot of work to make a vehicle based mod. Remember to keep it as simple as possible in terms of design. That's all I can say, good luck if you actually make this (and go for originality with art direction!)

 

[crackhead]

yeah this doesnt sound bad. check your tense on your posts.

 

[Garfield_]

What do you mean by " check your tense on your posts. " ?

 

[Sprite]

At times you use the past and at times the plu-perfect, but crackhead is just being picky.

Nice ideas you've got there, good luck.

 

[Garfield_]

Please use this thread to post ideas, suggestions and interests. Nothing else

 

[Crispy]

< Interest

I'd like to see inventive ship concepts like the one seen in Waterworld. Boats that are scrapped together from junk parts but have been made with technical precision with moving parts that alter the boat's profile. I'd like to see moving booms with a 'mind your head' HUD icon (players would have to duck or be knocked backwards for damage, possibly off the boat).

I'd like to see below decks cabins with limited storage space inventories and scavenger hunt gameplay where you keep everything just in case it comes in useful. I'd like to see trading between individuals and crews. I'd like to see clanplay where you begin on a floating fortress habitat and hitch rides to other places, finally deciding to join a 'clan' (crew) to pool your resources once you've acquired skills and belongings worthy of a captain's disposal.

I'd like to see dirty tactics employable, with crew members always having the opportunity to turn on their captains. I'd like to see real bounties placed on double-crossers with a news service that would let you know if that treacherous fiend ever got his punishment.

I'd like to see underwater explorable areas like coral reefs and shipwrecks. I'd like to see your lung capacity and swimming strength increase the more you practise it, and decrease if you spend too much time above water.

I'd like to see real weapons as very hard to come by and usually owned by wealthy merchants, large bands of pirates and local authorities. I'd like to see the ability to place any blunt object in the weapon slot for gruelling, survivalist encounters, with the possibility of using what little you have to defend what little you have amassed in this life.

I'd like to see certain well-protected trade routes, and I'd like to see bribes taken for fugitives seeking unlisted passage. I'd like to see a moral system thrown to the wind and let the players decide how ruthless or fair they wanna play.

 

[Garfield_]

Interesting ideas you have. I've imagined the boats just like you, made of rusted metal pieces with dirty out-dated weapons that could explode in any moment. What exactly could you offer to make this idea to a game ?

Another idea i have is possibility of keeping enemies in prison. If an enemy is knocked of a boat and in water, you can use some fishing equipment to capture him and take him to some rusty home made prison like room/place. Of course his teammates can rescue him, but the more prisoners your team captures, the less enemies to fight you have.

 

[crackhead]

1) i did post my opinion and 2) im not beeing picky it was just that your use of tense made it look unprofessional and i was just pointing it out. i wasnt beeing malicious.

 

[Pajari]

Vehicle-based mods for Half-Life 2 don't exactly have a robust history, and from the looks of it you lack someone to do the kind of in-depth coding required to make this mod work (unless you're the coder, in which case I'll readily eat my own words). Its certainly an interesting concept, though.

I think your concept would be easier executed in an engine with a focus on vehicles- Unreal Tournament, FarCry (even though the SDK is less than desirable, to be sure) or maybe even BattleField 2.

 

[Analognovelist]

Okay, there's ALOT wrong with that story idea you have there. I'm going to go ahead and get out my plausability stick and take a look at a few things.

Your first major problem is your concept of a north pole nuclear facility. This make absolutely no sense, whatsoever. Why would we travel that far outside of our sphere of influence and build a nuclear base. It would offer no benefit over our already extenstive and completely secret and protectable nuclear submarine fleet, while on the other had it would pose a ridiculous security risk. This idea is just completely bogus.

Next, To try to imagine Al Qaida having the means to perpetuate Nuclear WAR against the united states is somewhat ludicrous. First and foremost, terrorist regimes lack the resources to perpetuate actual nuclear war. This is because you need an actual missile launch system to have an actual war. Because of the limited mobility and difficulty of concealment of a complex nuclear missile launching system, for Al Qaida to come into control of sufficient nuclear resources to carry out such an attack... There's just no way. If that were a possibility, it would have already happened. One or two nukes is probably plausible, but they would be of the suitcase bomb variety, but 11? No conceivable way.

Next, the central premise of your story pretty much defies the laws of physics. If you look at the level of melting of Polar ice caps even now, This increased water output into the oceans dwarfs the melting that would be caused by even eleven nuclear missiles. I know that sounds like a big number and I know you think nukes do a lot of damage and they do, but when you look at the sheer volume of the polar ice caps and the sheer volumes of the oceans, eleven nukes would actually cause a negligible effect on world wide water levels, and thats not even taking into account the fact that water expands when it freezes, so that when you melt all that water, it actually takes up less space. To say that eleven nukes would raise water levels enough to cause a world wide catastrophe is just plain impossible. I would go back and try to find something that makes more sense.

 

[Garfield_]

It's not really supposed to make 100% sense. And weapons become smarter and more powerful as the technology increases. Having a nuclear facility on a polar ice cap is for sure a stupid and riskful idea, but what if the world we know now turned into something quite else in a decade and the US made their mistakes. As i mentioned before, nothing of these are anything final. Just some thoughts. Back to the ice, now if we'd say that this was year 2060 or 2460, its very possible that the expansion of the sun increases the temperature on earth with 50-200% this could very well cause the ice to melt into half-warm water, but would our race or any living animal or even bacteria be able to live in the warm atmosphere is unsure. This "mod" is not ment to be 100% realistic and storytelling. But we all need answers, why is that like that and how come we cant do that etc. So a stupid, ridiculous or whatever you call it might not be too bad for a game like this. Even if the story is never told in the game, its allways helpful for the developers.

 

[short recoil]

you want a post apocalyptic game set in the UK in the late 80's
No silly "global wars" just the cold war finished the "hot way"

 

[Garfield_]

Or the world could just be filled with water, without any history or anything that explains why

 

[Sprite]

you want a post apocalyptic game set in the UK in the late 80's
No silly "global wars" just the cold war finished the "hot way"

Any mod set in London would f'in rule!

 

[egoncalo]

Sounds like a cool idea, I like it!

 

[Garfield_]

Any mod set in Sweden would be crap, i hate games and movies that are set in our country

 

[crackhead]

set in cambden town!

 

[Crispy]

Forsaken is partly set in London.

Back to this idea, I think you do need a good story, but I also believe that the concept is open enough for the story not to be needed for production to take place. At this point you only need general ideas to base the concepts on, like: firearms are not commonplace, virtually all scrap is valuable, 90% of the surface of the Earth is covered by water, etc. The story can be written later by an imaginative person who feels inspired by the general idea.

What would I be able to offer this mod? I'd join the community and give constant feedback to ideas and further suggestions with the story, gameplay and mapping elements.

I do feel that this would be a tall order for the Source engine. You'd have to look at Windwaker (Zelda) to see how they got around the mapping, I only played it for a short while so I can't remember whether they used short draw distances or severe fogging or both. But you certainly wouldn't want it ending up with the background pop-up syndrome of certain games of the early-mid 90s -you'd want to keep the visuals smooth.

 

[Garfield_]

This idea surely fits more into a BF2 mod. But its still possible to make it in Source. I dont know alot about coding, but the current vehicle system in Source really sucks, when you drive, sometimes it feels like the player is left behind and the care is the only thing going and the steering is horrible. I wonder how Insurgency mod made this :>

 

[Pajari]

That's exactly the thing. Insurgency didn't do vehicles- or at least they don't plan to for their first release. Source's vehicle system is really hacky and was, I think, kind of tacked on at the end, and not even in a logica object-oriented way. The only mods that I've seens successfully change passenger/vehicle code are Empires, Fueled, and that game on the front page- Off Limits or something?

 

[Garfield_]

I wish the Valve guys made the vehicle system much better. There is only one other game that i think could fit for this kind of mod, FarCry. It has all this mod needs, graphics, physics and great looking water. But the bad thing is that this game isnt as popular as HL2 and BF2 :/

Damn you VALVE

 

[Crispy]

Talk to the Off-Limits team about vehicles with multiple interactive 'seatings'. Also I would love this game if it paid attention to detail, like actually teaching you nautical expressions and which knots to tie where and how to use the sails properly.

Maybe for your first engine test you should make a boat in a mapped 'water tank' to test the sail's response to wind direction.

Another thing is that you'd want to keep the speeds reasonably low to avoid problems with long-distance hit detection.

 

[Garfield_]

Talk to the Off-Limits team about vehicles with multiple interactive 'seatings'. Also I would love this game if it paid attention to detail, like actually teaching you nautical expressions and which knots to tie where and how to use the sails properly.

Maybe for your first engine test you should make a boat in a mapped 'water tank' to test the sail's response to wind direction.

Another thing is that you'd want to keep the speeds reasonably low to avoid problems with long-distance hit detection.

I never thought of boats with sails, only boats with propeller engines and some with old rusty V8's. Anyway using sailing boats is a great idea, but remember these boats will be very slow, so there must be something special about these to make them used in the game.

to avoid long-distance issues, each boat should not be too fast at regular driving, but they could have a turbo-boost that lasts for few seconds. Or we could just leave big boats with engines on the side and use only sailing boats to carry multiple players, jetskis could then be the solution for fast driving attacks etc.

Maybe for your first engine test you should make a boat in a mapped 'water tank' to test the sail's response to wind direction.

I think making a boat move by wind will require alot of coding, and im sure this wind feature is not used in the engine yet.
Me also thinks its much better to make sailing boats just like any other boat, except there is no visible engine. and its driven just like any other boat. GTA Vice City does not use wind to move boats.

 

[egoncalo]

Talk to the Off-Limits team about vehicles with multiple interactive 'seatings'. Also I would love this game if it paid attention to detail, like actually teaching you nautical expressions and which knots to tie where and how to use the sails properly.

Maybe for your first engine test you should make a boat in a mapped 'water tank' to test the sail's response to wind direction.

Another thing is that you'd want to keep the speeds reasonably low to avoid problems with long-distance hit detection.

Way Way Wayyyyyyyy to advanced. I realize it's good to give ideas, but these ideas are getting way too detailed. Don't put the cart before the horse. Working on the coding of that type of boat, and the game system alone is enough work. Those little details can come later, and if anything they should be noted for later use and pushed way way aside. That's the problem with mod teams today, they have illusions of grandeur and start getting involved in all kinds of unnecessary details. I say stick to the basics then worry about that stuff later. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Garfield_]

Yeah. Is there really any game where you can drive a boat with wind, except those Sea simulators

 

[Nagash]

have a massive fan on the back of the boat so it can blow the sails now why they decided to make a fan blow a sail instead of putting the fan in the water to give more speed, i dunno, thats your job to work out concepts and explainations to post-apoc technology

maybe you could make some sort of system to actually make a boat out of scrap. i dunno how that would translate into making it a saveable and upgradable object/vechile, but you could use something similar to how garrys mod does it with welding objects together, but more technical. Then you could do different things, like make your own shaped sails, or shaped propella blades to get better thrust in the water, maybe even design your own hover craft for bigger ships with heavy weaponary. Could even have row boats or pedal boats for silent running boats, and have a fog particle system to make areas where you can hide, unless someone is close by. Even have bounacy so that it judges how much weight a ship can have on it, adding an extra posibility of making subs

thats all very advanced coding stuff i'd bet though, but having component based ships would solve aspects of the game about boat destructability. You'd find people having multiple engines, and spare parts etc, just in case something blows up or stops working.

component based ships could also solve multiplayer vehicle problems as well, since people wouldn't be controlling one vehicle, they would be controling multiple components. Like an motor won't start unless someone switches it on manually, and a rudder won't turn unless someone moves it, etc. This would also open up some good coop gameplay, since ppl would need an actual crew to operate a large ship properly, maybe even a captain to dish out orders

Also it would be maybe good to have a workshop based map to make boats, thats basically like a scrapyard full of material, and future updates to the mod would add more items to the scrap yard. Then you can save your designs there and give to other ppl online. Would open up a new level of customisation and replayability to the mod, creating a large community for your mod, should it be done right. Could also have a point based system for items, and boats that can be used can only use a certain amount of points... just to stop everyone making a battleship if you wanna limit ppl on maps/servers.

overall, would make a good source mod imo, cos would help display the use of the psyhics, and opens up a new way of playing an online game, as well as opening up alternatives for clan/crew based gameplay. Please gimme a PM or something to lemme know how to contact you, since i wouldn't say no to helping you get this project off the ground, if there is anything that i can do to help

 

[Crispy]

I don't think the wind factor would be too difficult, actually. I'd love a coder's second opinion on this, but surely you could just think of the sail as an engine and the wind as a fixed constant. In VHE you'd drag a cube over an area (or over the surface of the water) and set the local properties for that 'zone', which would include windspeed and direction.

Now, in a position where it catches the maximum amount of 'wind' the boat will go at maximum speed. (Remember there is no physical manifestation of this, it is only a directional force as a set of values in an entity) As the sail is turned a calculation (taking into account the direction of the bow of the boat, the perpendicular to the sail, the direction of the wind, and the windforce and type of sail -the successful conversion of windforce to speed) would determine the speed of the boat.

A simpler calculation would use five 45' angles (270, 315, 0, 45, 90) to determine set increments of speed. In later versions you could try to implement a curve function to give a steady increase in speed as the sail harnesses more of the windforce, giving more control to the crew.

This said, motors would be more suitable for fast motion, but at a guess fuel would be highly sought after and only used in emergency situations. It would have a huge market price and pirates would raid other ships just to capture the fuel (as fuel theft could not be proven, whereas theft of a boat or murder are more punishable crimes).

 

[crackhead]

that sounds stupidly unneccercery. (i really must learn to spell that word) why not just have an engine. also i dont see alot of fun playability in a boat mod. if thats what this is to be. boat combat sounds pretty boring. so if im beeing ignorant its just i cant read these huge posts you keep making.

 

[Crispy]

Because an engine would need petrol or fire or methane propellant or some sort of combustible fuel which would be incredibly scarce if the apocolypse came and we suddenly had to start improvising our own methods of keeping warm, getting about and cooking food.

If you had a game where instead of fighting the skill was to actually outrun someone who outgunned you, I think you'd be surprised at how quickly the gaming public would latch onto it. Especially if the bigger boats needed a crew with teamwork.

Games are all about learning. In Pokémon we learnt that Electricity pwnz H2O, in Team Fortress Classic we learnt how to Conc-jump, in RTS games we learn how to manage our resources in a timely and efficient manner. Who's to say that gamers won't enjoy riding the waves to escape hostile players (a.k.a. Pirates) who will steal everything they hold dear to them? Who's to say that guns have to play the starring role in a multiplayer?

 

[crackhead]

In Pokémon we learnt that Electricity pwnz H2O

haha pokemons a kids program / game. and i think we all know that water conducts electricity.

Who's to say that guns have to play the starring role in a multiplayer?

no ones saying they do. i merely saying that a game based on sailing a boat is a pretty dull idea. i think the idea of the player beeing a pirate sounds quite cool though. like a post apoc pirate game.

 

[Garfield_]

These advanced features might sound cool, but im sure they wont last very long in these kinds of games. To solve the fuel issue, there could be big fuel tanks on each Control-station. Each boat would use its fuel from here, to refuel, the boat could just dock with the floating Control-station. And in time the fuel would be out. Now if your team has control of 4/5 Control-stations it means your enemy's fuel will not last long and your's will. But the game is not over, the enemy could use sailing boats, but itll be much more difficult for them. The team who has control of all stations will win :>

This cant be too advanced, or ?

 

[crackhead]

yeah thats starting to sound pretty cool. to simplyfy the sailing boat thing they could be drivable like normal but much slower and prehaps no mounted guns. if your going to have mounted guns on the boats. you could also do things like at the stations you can build boats like an rts type game you have to have gold to build them maybe. id certainly be interested in helping with this mod.

 

[Garfield_]

I think its best to have the sailingboats just like regular, but very slow with heavy weapons. We could balance the boats like having heavy weapons and room for many passangers with the slow sailing boat, lighter weapons for the half-fast motor boats that could carry 4 people or so. No weapons for the jetski since its used to get into enemy bases and from there you could just run around with a knife or maybe some guns. And to take control of enemy control-stations it would be interesting to go inside the base by foot and stand near a "flag" or something, instead of just being around the base with a boat, like in BF2

 

[crackhead]

yeah deffinetly a good idea. however that would suit better for a bf2 mod.

 

[Garfield_]

What is it that really makes this bad for HL2 ?

 

[crackhead]

i think mainly the scale of the map but for a water level it should be ok. also rather than flag you could have some other way to take control of a station and also maybe have mounted turrets.

 

[Crispy]

Well there's no reason why the boats have to be wind-powered and the concept can be simplified a lot. It really depends on the gameplay you're aiming for. I might bookmark this thread to come back to some of the ideas you sparked in me here, though.

[Edit] I just re-read the first post you made in this thread (properly) and it seems I just skimmed over the story and went in completely the opposite direction to what you were planning. The original idea was like water-based zone control and I somehow misconstrued that into a game with MMORPG qualities. Sorry about that.

 

[Garfield_]

Well there's no reason why the boats have to be wind-powered and the concept can be simplified a lot. It really depends on the gameplay you're aiming for. I might bookmark this thread to come back to some of the ideas you sparked in me here, though.

[Edit] I just re-read the first post you made in this thread (properly) and it seems I just skimmed over the story and went in completely the opposite direction to what you were planning. The original idea was like water-based zone control and I somehow misconstrued that into a game with MMORPG qualities. Sorry about that.

No dont be sorry, the posts you made inspired me as you may see in some of the posts with new ideas of mine ;D

But im still looking for someone to create this mod, im not experienced enough to do anything except story writing, gameplay ideas and webdesign.

 

[crackhead]

i think it could be zone controlled but also rts as i said like maybe you have to gather resources and constuct boats as they will surely get destroyed.