Off-Limits

[Ennui]

​

Click the above link for Off-Limit's fantastic alpha trailer. I figured making a little thread about OL would be nice because they get way, way less attention then they deserve and a little boost to their fan community would be nice.

The story in a nutshell: In a postapocalyptic world gone bad, humanity has nearly destroyed itself in a holocaust of their of devices in an attempt to annihilate an alien presence on the planet. The aliens are small, unintelligent, and few in number, and only attack when cornered, but there's one small problem. They are nearly invincible. Nuclear weapons, cluster bombs, projectile weapons - none of them can even hurt them. However, rail weaponry proved to be the savior of the human race. An experimental railgun killed an alien, and the world celebrated.

Fast forward 23 years. There are still a few aliens roaming the waste and rubble of the earth, and much hangs in the balance. It has been discovered that the aliens are merely a weapon unleashed upon us by a more intelligent race, and we have the technology to both locate and kill the remaining ones.

There are now two factions vying for control. The Vanguard, an organization formed by the world's governments as an agency to eliminate the aliens, possess railgun technology. The Rogues lack railguns but have the means to locate the aliens, and the two are in a state of war.

In each game of Off-Limits, the Vanguard start out with the Railgun but no locator, and the Rogues have a locator but no railgun. A single player is selected to play as the alien. The two teams must fight each other to get both the railgun and locator and then kill the alien; the alien must survive.

Head on over to the Off-Limits site: http://www.off-limits.be/ and register on the forums, pop in the irc channel (#off-limits on quakenet) and check out some of their fantastic map and model media.

One of the most advanced, talented mod teams out there, and they get very little recognition. Let's make it a little more

edit: also, i am aware of the news post, this is seperate!

 

[AmishSlayer]

Looks pretty good.

 

[Mr.Magnetichead]

Hmm not really that impressive. Doesn't really define itself enough for me to care about it tbh. It's early days though.

 

[63]

Hmm not really that impressive. Doesn't really define itself enough for me to care about it tbh. It's early days though.

My thoughts exactly. I don't really get a feel for what this game is about, on one hand they have this alien that they show in every media release, and then in this video we get wacky car chases :| Props to the team though, some neat stuff.

 

[Crispy]

This is the first time I've heard the reason behind the gameplay mechanic, that probably has a lot to do with why they don't get the recognition they deserve. Hardly anybody has a real feel for their 'universe'. I've been modwatching this ever since I saw a brilliant prop model shown in the modelling forum right here on HL2.net, but nothing's made me sit up and actually venture onto the site. Story's lacking imo, or if it's not that it's the hitherto timid attempts at coverage.

 

[keats]

We haven't put the focus on storytelling since we're a hardcore multiplayer mod concentrating on gameplay; MP gamers typically don't need/care for a background story. Unreal tournament games, quake III, counterstrike, ... all have a flimsy background story that serves only as an excuse for the games' setting, maps & models; we're in the same boat where we try in the first place to develop a new gameplay type. For those that prefer it we do have a story on our website though, and plan to expand this later; but since we're a small team (with only 2 people working daily and only a handful regularly), we're focusing on the game itself first.

I think the main reason for our lack of public so far is we haven't shown off the real Off Limits gameplay yet. Fully animating a custom rigged alien, perfecting wallwalking, etc takes time, but we're getting there. Not to mention in the meantime we've been very eclectic about gameplay elements we like which led to our own, original gameplay concept being run over a mixture of HL-based MP games (weapons/aiming/engine feel), BF-games (vehicle system & spawn/capture system), some undesigned AvP similarities (the wallwalking alien), and perhaps some CTF or VIP similarities. Seems like a lot, but I'm pretty confident we're succeeding in making a consistent, believable game of this mixture, and add enough of our own gameplay elements to define a new gameplay type. Besides, having a large audience before release takes some maintenance too, so it's not that big of a loss. Maybe the audience we get will be due to the quality of the mod when it's released, and not due to a hype-machine.

Thanks for trying to give us some PR ennui. Oh, there's one oops in your post: no team can have both the railgun and the radar at the same time... would make it a bit too easy

 

[Crispy]

Well if the gameplay is the selling point (as you'd expect with an MP mod), you should be mentioning the elements you are definitely going to have incorporated. You don't need to be specific, but I'm sure if you include the words 'wallwalking alien' in the introductory description paragraph of your media releases you'd have a lot more people interested.

Pick the points that will make your mod stand out and remember to remind people of these every time you post, this will ensure people can put a 'face' (or 'gameplay concept' in this case) to the name. Another thing might be to try and work a description of your gameplay mechanic into a tagline that ties it to your mod name. At the moment the mod name says nothing about the gameplay, but a well crafted tagline could connect the two.

(crappy) e.g. "Two teams. One alien. One mod: Off-Limits"