Radical Mod Ideas

[Tynan]

I've been modding for a long time now. I've played mods even longer. I'm beginning to get disillusioned by the increasing lack of originality in the modding community. This problem has been endemic for some time but it's becoming more and more pronounced as time goes on.

Many of these modders go the secure, unoriginal route because they're working towards getting a job in gaming. Fine, that's cool. The end result is still rather boring, however, even if the art is well done.

I'm looking for radical mod ideas. Something different. Something totally crazy. Something off the wall, restructuring 3D gameplay as we know it type wild. Something risky. ( Something doable in Source 7 or Unreal 2.0 ).

Don't talk to me about World War 2, or counterterrorism. It doesn't have to be combat. It doesn't have to involve guns. It doesn't even have to be competitive in nature.

If anyone has an idea, please write it here. Even if its not really formed. We'll develop them.

 

[Zet]

A 3D virtual reality chat world / "lite MMORPG" with the Source engine, with realtime speech synth and facial animation.

A skate/hoverboarding mod. I was messing around with sv_friction and sv_gravity in Quake some years ago and thinking about this kind of mod.

edit: Some elaboration on the chat world thing. It would just be kind of a regular, casual world with nothing in particular to do. But then again, it would have everything to do. Like a first-person multiplayer The Sims. You could have parties, meet people, keep in touch with friends like on IRC, maybe even have virtual sex

OK, that's far-fetched.

 

[Zet]

Or how about a chess mod? Just regular chess, but the pieces would be player-sized and you'd move them with the gravgun. And you could press a button to see a view from above, or there'd be a screen showing the above view somewhere in the map.

 

[StAtiC]

-Very few stealth based mods... try that.
-Try to make a good Racing mod. HLrally blowed major ass
-Try making an RTS
-RPG's would also be interesting
-We NEED more good multiplayer coop games...
Thats not very radicall, but I think a good stealth mod would be different. Make it multiplayer/coop too.

 

[Darkside55]

I wholeheartedly agree, Tynan. Just yesterday I was discussing with some friends in IRC that every mod that's coming out today is so formulaic it's like playing mad-libs.

"In ___________ (present day, 20xx, 3,000 years from now), there has been a catastrophe. Peace is threatened by ___________ (terrorism, opposing government, space aliens). The government of ___________ (Earth, nation, space colony) has ___________. You play a member of ___________ (special ops group, military organization). Use your arsenal of ___________ (present-day weaponry, futuristic versions of present-day weaponry, space lasers). This mod is going to be totally cool and awesome and is unlike ___________ (CS, DoD, 1 billion other mods)."

I've been writing up a design document for the past few weeks for an action-genre mod that focuses on hand-to-hand melee combat and hand-thrown projectiles. There are no guns. In fact, the only reason I label it as "action-genre" is because of the stunt system, but this isn't "deathmatch with dives," or "running around in circles trying to punch your enemy." It's got a lot of emphasis on stealth while moving around the maps, but the combat is incredibly fast and dynamic. The point of it is to look good.

I realize I'm being cryptic with what the mod is, but I don't really want to say anything in a forum post without the design document being completed. I feel that's half-assed to start going into detail and recruiting people for a team without everything written up. Feel free to PM me though and I'll discuss the basics of it with you, if that vague description above sounds interesting. It's not revolutionary, but it is innovative, and it's going to be a helluva lot of fun.

I've already mapped out the controls and movement abilities, skills, weaponry, gameplay types, sound, etc. There should be an extensive post in "Help Wanted and Offered" sometime soon.



Side note: Zet, a hoverboard mod would be slick. It'd have to be insanely fast though, like the game Wipeout. That'd be fun.

And I'd hang out in that "virtual world." Sounds cool. Source IRC...there's an idea.

 

[SimonomiS]

How about an Original Mod Mod? You play a mapper/modder on a quest to create an Original Mod!

 

[ButtHoleMcGee]

Two ideas (sadly, they are borderline retarded.)

YOU ARE THOR, THE BIGGEST BAD ASS SPACE VIKING EVER KNOWN IN THE GALAXY. YOU HAVE BEEN SENT FROM THE FUTURE FROM PLANET THOR, TO KICK MANKINDS ASS.

Sadly, they didn't send you any bad ass laser cannons or monster trucks with chainsaws attached to them. And sadly, they sent you to the 1600's.

Your time machine crashes into colonial America and into Plymouth rock.You look out side and see Pilgrims and Native Americans... and they look pissed. You take out your bad ass lightning axe and nuclear shurikens, and prepare to kick some major ass. Nothing will live, women, children, the elderly... they will feel the wrath of Thor.

Idea two:

YOU ARE ROAD REGLUATOR MICHEAL JONES. You are heavily depressed. How you got that way, no one cares, because you're not as important. It's the year 20x9, and the world has damn well blown it self up... especially your home. All that's left is the road and thousands of bad drivers. The population of earth has established a law, which states that any bad driver on the road, may be driven off the road. The Road regulators were then established. As a road regulator, you're job is to drive into bad drivers to make the roads safe, no matter the consequences. One time, this one 100 year old lady was driving really bad. So you turned on your sirens and rear ended her, sending her into a schoolbus full of nuns and created the biggest explosion you've ever seen in your life.

Rumor has it, that there is town that is still suitible for living. Last time I checked, living in your bad ass Delorean isn't all that great for living. You must look for your new home, while performing your duties as a road regulator. Be careful though, other regulators and drivers are willing to drive you off the road, for driving recklessly into other drivers.

You can't blame them, they're just trying to make the roads safe.

 

[Tynan]

Good stuff.

Darkside's madlib made me laugh pretty hard... because it's true.

To Darkside: If I were you I'd be looking to go a little more radical than that. I in fact spent more than a year working on my own mod with the same general idea that I could take combat and change it/pump it up. Ultimately it didn't work.

What's important here is that an original mod idea is now just window dressing. It is the actual gameplay structure.

Think of gameplay in abstract terms. Strip off all the graphics and theme and story because ultimately that stuff matters very little in this type of production. Thus CS would not be terrorists shooting at counterterrorists. It is hit cylinders which float around in levels projecting lines at each other that lower "damage" counters. You control one cylinder.

Considered in this way, substance over style, comparisons gain a different perspective. A new WW2 mod and a new Star Wars mod could be exactly the same game.

The original mod mod thing is funny. I wonder how one could implement that.

Thor is cool. Some nice mass destruction could be fun.

We need more of this stuff!

 

[ShinRa]

cough*SourceWorld*cough

 

[King John]

holy shit, i have the best idea ever!!!

a mod where you play as physist in a reasearch lab called, oh i dunno something crazy, black mesa? and one day you go to work and all hell breaks loose and youve got to save the world from thses badass aliens that invade your planet via portals, but it gets worse, not only do you have to fight off aliens, government soldiers dont like your butt either and try to blow it to smitherines.
The basic underline is that you ARE gordan freeman and you play as him and such.
it could be called, lets take a wild guess and see what happens, lets call it something crazy like... half-life

 

[Ownzed]

I know one - The Specialists....:sniper: Does anyone have ANY info if they are porting it to source or did they start? I need to know. One of my favorite hl mods.

 

[switch]

One idea that I have liked for a time is a mod based in the HL2 world (less effort needed in model making ect).

You play a headcrab. You can launch yourself at people, resistance fighters, combine ect. You can control the host you are latched on to, so it starts out you can only be a simple zombie, then as you latch onto better hosts you get to use more stuff such as a resistance fighters RPG. ect ect.

I just realise it might be like AVP even tho I havent played the game.

 

[dlandis72]

Remember Marble Madness for the NES? That game might be great fun with the physics of Source. How about a multiplayer pirate themed game where teams of pirates compete with other teams of pirates to reach hidden treasure in shipwrecks, caves, native voodoo temples, etc. They would need to follow old maps, clues, rumors, etc. and pass all kinds of team-based obstacles to reach the goal. This mod would be different because the pirates wouldn't want to fight with the other teams because while the teams were fighting, another team could be finding the treasure.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

no idea how this would work...but a Beat em up!

you could also do sports games, like tennis would be easy, cricket, water sports of sorts or a decent football mod nothing like the HL based one.

 

[Darkside55]

I know one - The Specialists....:sniper: Does anyone have ANY info if they are porting it to source or did they start? I need to know. One of my favorite hl mods.

They're not going to. Morfeo said no TS:Source. Reasons including the fact that he hasn't played HL2, that even though he isn't the head of the mod anymore he'd want to supervise, etc. So there's not going to be a TS:S, but the Redeemed Assassins team are doing some coding for The Opera 2 on HL2, last I heard. You might also want to check out Chitan: Hard Boiled Killers. They've got some media up on the Source engine.

Dlandis, marble madness rocked. I can't believe someone else remembered it.

Tynan, I see what you're saying about gameplay structure. I think I've got that covered though (it's not only deathmatch, so there won't be just cylinders projecting lines a hundred times per game at other cylinders). I like that analogy though; something to really consider when making a game. You seem very knowledgeable about mods; it'd be nice to have some input from you once I finish writing up everything.

P.S. I didn't get to say last post I checked out your maps/models. Pretty ballsy stuff; I really liked Lightfalls. Too bad I don't have UT 2k3/2k4, or I'd check it out.

 

[Zento]

Street Fighter II Hyper Online Tournament Mega Physics Fight 2005 SOURCE

"The Newer Challengers"

 

[Tynan]

Remakes and take-offs and spin-offs are the exact opposite of what I'm talking about when I say "Radical Mod Ideas". Radical in this context.means it hasn't been done before.

Street Fighter II Hyper Online Tournament Mega Physics Fight 2005 SOURCE

Interesting name. I'm trying to figure out exactly what this would be though.

Someone made a quite good Marble Madness mod for UT2004. I even played it, strangely enough.

I think I've got that covered though (it's not only deathmatch, so there won't be just cylinders projecting lines a hundred times per game at other cylinders).

I'll look at this doc when you're finished it if you want.

Don't overplan though. It's important to be fluid.

In case you didn't already know, here's a bit of advice: take all your time/effort requirement esitmates for each feature and multiply them by three. Five if you've never done a mod before. I'm absolutely serious.

You seem very knowledgeable about mods; it'd be nice to have some input from you once I finish writing up everything.

Thanks. You get that way when you've been modding for more than a quarter of your lifespan.

Now onto the radical mod ideas! Let's have some more, people.

Here's one: Build your own death machine. Players use physics objects and some sort of welding/assembly system to build a death machine from component parts. The machines then fight in some sort of arrangement. Think The Incredible Machine meets Unreal Tournament 2004. Components could include guns, rocket launchers, droppable bombs, wheels, jet propellers, gyro stablilizers, the works. This would be tough to make work online because youd have to hack deep into the physics system to make the death machines replicate as a single unit. Replicating the parts separate would anhillilate the bandwidth.

 

[Respawn]

Ok. This may sound daft, but how about.....

....a mod in an almost dungeonkeeper/rts style BUT you play both sides.

Think about it. You would never play an even match (even if you tried!!) you would always fall on one side of the fence.

Imagine setting up the obstacles for an attacking team, knowing when the opponent will come round the corner and watching the cinematic unrolling of your first sequenced ambush!!!

It would almost be like directing a movie...

It wouldnt have to be fps.....

Whaddya think? I'd love to get into modding. I have been High level programming for years and have always loved games. I am not especially arty (in fact, not at all!!) but i would stil like to help!! Dunno what i could do tho....:?

 

[Plug]

I agree tynan, the mod scene is pretty boring at the moment.

Except that space combat mod... now that's interesting!

Anyway, i'd really love to see some more innovation on basic gameplay... What i would really like to see is a team based game that really tries to keep it's team together, to the point of not giving individual players scores for kills unless they are with teammates or completing an objective they can only do alone.

I think super radical ideas are cool, but there's so much we can do with the basic foundations we have with teamplay which nobody has bothered to explore.

Me and a small team of friends are going to be re-making a mod we had previously made for halflife1. We were pretty succesful considering we had barely any plans or clear cut direction with it... but now we do, and it's really exciting. I can't wait to see how people play, and continue to craft this gameplay.

Yeah, i'm being really vague about it because i don't want to announce the mod yet

 

[Darkside55]

Here's another idea:

A mod where you don't directly fight your enemy, you set traps for them instead. Tripwires that trigger a contraption to shoot poison arrows, "digging" holes with fake floor textures over them, rigging a 1-ton weight to drop on someone's head when you cut a rope, etc. Imagine placing a trap hole down a long hallway that leads to a health pack. Your enemy sees it, runs over, and falls in while cursing you. Even if they manage to leap over the pit, the health pack's secretly a bomb anyway.

 

[Zet]

A Source filemanager. It's a room where you have files and folders and a trash can.

 

[Respawn]

A Source filemanager. It's a room where you have files and folders and a trash can.

Ooooh i like that one!!!! I wana try it! PM if you fancy it....

 

[Cons Himself]

An RPG in source would be ****ing good. Somebody should ****ing well do that. I mean, a proper RPG with layered conversations and classes and all that ****ing shit, you know what I mean?

 

[CombineSoldier]

A battlefield 1942 - type mod where it is in the medivel ages. A dont know exactly how this could work, but im sure it could be really cool. The Elites have muskets, which are extremly inaccurate and take 15 seconds to load

OR

A revolutinary war game exept it turned into the first world war! (it almost did in the real world anyway, this could be a what-if)

 

[Zet]

Oh yeah sure, they had muskets in medieval times, mmhmm...

 

[Para]

Original mod ideas?

How about one that tells a story of a normal person who has a wild imagination and the game itself won't have anything interesting in it, but the imagined parts are the real treat allowing the player to do...well, pretty much everything that can be imagined

I came up with this when I read the first post of this thread so this isn't very complicated or anything like that, I have several ideas but I'm not going to tell them since if I ever get to modding, I want to do at least one of those ideas myself

 

[EVIL]

heh, I aint going to share you my idea's! already rolling one of them into a game.

 

[CombineSoldier]

The late medival times, the beginning of the renisaunse

 

[VGJosh]

LoL! He asked for something original. Stealth games, RTSs, Racing, Chess, Chat rooms, RPGs, Co-op games are not original! Maybe if you explain what seperates your Co-op game from the rest it'd have merit but none of the ideas I've read are anything new. This thread isn't about mods you want. It's about creating something fresh.

Where did the creativity go?

 

[SimonomiS]

Just plain survival? Dumped on a remote island, use your wits and creativity to create anything and simply try to survive. Spend months creating a raft to swim out into the sea, set up a home and hunt for food, you can do anything that YOU can Id probably just make a fire to attract attention, and if that didnt work give up and get eaten by some cannibals.
OR
Your a manic schizophrenic, who frequently wakes up from blackouts near mutilated corpses, constantly cover up your murders from police, try to live a life normally without guilt, hunt down the people whove framed you if you honestly believe youve been framed, kill any witnesses, or convince them it wasnt you, how will you cope?

And if all else fails, make a mod where you play a droplet of water, and has to explore as ,much as you can, it could lead to anywhere really, oceans, inside people, drinks, across the world, imagine floating in the air as a cloud, then raining down someones coat, being shook off in their home, evaporating then condensing on their windows, no idea how it would end, or if theres even a target, its just an idea.

 

[Tynan]

Survival sounds interesting actually as a new sort of single player game. I suppose you could try to meld that into multi too, but it would have to be heavily abstracted because survival is a long ordeal and multiplayer games arent. Cool stuff.

 

[Mold]

i would like to see an underwater mod geared towards deap sea exploration. Maybe you could be a treasure hunter and explore sunken ships and lost cities. You would have a few weapons to defend yourself against sharks and mythical sea creatures. It would be a single player mod and your goal would be to find the secret treasures and sell it to the museums to buy yourself new equipment like exploration subs so you can go deaper. But the deaper you go the darker and more dangerous it gets. You'll have to fight off the biggest of sea monsters to get the good loot....like giant swimming headcrabs! muhuwaha. Put some claws on the strider and you have giant crabs. And you could probably use the gunship as some sort of whale with the way it looks and moves. Perhaps you get in an air pocket in one of the sunken ships and have to fight off zombies of the dead crew.

 

[nvrmor]

i want an ALYX: PERSONAL DIGITAL ASSISTANT
say a 320x240 window with alyx's head in it. she can be your personal assistant. using voice recognition software you can talk to her, have her check your email, play music, launch programs, games, run searches etc. with the text to speech software you could have her respond via keywords, have her read your email, make funny comments occasionally, read your im's to you, etc. shouldnt be too hard to make, but way above my level, if someone wants to run with it be my guest

 

[swampbug]

KataMARI!

Katamari Damaicy SOURCE MOD. roll a giant ball of garbage you collect around.


Roll over other players and collect thier dead bodys too. Whoever controls the ball of garbage is the KING baby... the KING!

1 vs 1. Who can get thier balls the biggest!


or


16 people.. one ball of garbage.

 

[ButtHoleMcGee]

Survival sounds interesting actually as a new sort of single player game. I suppose you could try to meld that into multi too, but it would have to be heavily abstracted because survival is a long ordeal and multiplayer games arent. Cool stuff.

How about survival against hunters? It's possible to combine the trap idea with survival instincts.

One player is the hunted, while a small group hunts you. You are limited to a melee weapon, but are plentiful in traps. Stuff like the old traptown had good traps (the huge container falling, and the swinging girder). The player needs to strategically place the traps while looking out for the hunters. The player will need to have good stealth skills and hearing ablilities to distance themselves from the hunters. The shadows would be a good place to hide for surprise kills.

You could consider having the player pick up a gun from a dead hunter, but that would remove the intensity as playing the hunted.

 

[Tynan]

Problem with the hunter/hunted thing is it's asymmetrical - everyone either wants to be or doesnt want to be the hunted. Plus you have a problem where - how can one player provide enough challenge against an entire team? It would be interesting if you could make it symmetrical somehow. I like the survival theme.

Perhaps we could look at a sort of food-chain type game that in some way simulates wild ecosystems. Predators hunt prey, and eat them, get food, you could throw in some human hunters, people could play humans or animals, predatory or prey. This needs a lot more thought.

The underwater idea is cool, there are good opportunities for beautiful landscapes in underwater settings. There's a lot you could do with the underwater first-person game which hasn't been done before. Most of it that I can think of requires the player to consume a lot of content, however, which means we need to make all that content. That's a good notion though.

As for the Alyx PDA - That would take several years to do I think.

 

[ne-waller]

I'd like to see someone make a better robot rage (top game on miniclip) -basically v simple robot wars type game on a 3d engine where collision detection diddnt suck. I was really impressed with the way you could upgrade your robot and spray it how you wanted but the variety of weapons and the limited nature of combat, as well as its randommness disappointed me.

this would rock in source.

or what about a rock and roll racing remake - that game was wicked.
as for properly original ideas...
what about "One Man and his Dog... :source"

you play the shepard, and must control your dog using the right click or siimilar to tell it where to go, then use left click to emit a farmers growl to scare sheep away from you. you could build up from one sheep to many, and perhaps more than one sheep dog. if the contempary theme is a little - well stupid then the "unique herding gameplay" could be crowbared into a number of scifi or fantasy environments. if a multi player component is required then two (or more) players could compete to heard the same flock of sheep into their trailers, kindof a crazy type of air hockey

I quite like the idea actually.
or you could have...
A decent attempt at a siege game, crossbows, catapults, ragdolling cows being catapulted into castles - how can you go wrong!
well maybe with small games being terrible and it turining into a very long winded game if the besieged arent gentlemanly about it - maybe having the doors opened after a set amount of time would even the score

evolution is as good as revolution though, and any number of bad games could be turned into good mods like spiderman (how the second game managed to be so much worse than the first I will never understand) or what about a new cannon fodder!!!

 

[rocklegendfm99]

I'm getting back into skateboarding,
so I just thought of something cool

Tony Hawk Source

 

[antichaos]

I don't think I've seen this anywhere before...

A Cat's Life. No, not another boring pet sim...here you actually play a cat. The gameplay would involve annoying your simulated 'owners' by doing all the usual cat stuff like clawing the furniture, tripping them up, eating their goldfish, jumping on them first thing in the morning, catching mice and leaving innards around or just being on the wrong side of the door. Of course you have to balance it with playing cute and cuddly enough so your owners still feed you and let you sleep in your favourite places. Then at night you go out and face the challenges of birds to catch, dogs to evade and other cats to fight. Night-vision and enhanced smell all come in handy, as does a cat's agility, allowing for some cool platform-type action. Any cat lover would want to play it.

The owner AI is the biggest challenge and would probably require a neural network rather than ordinary procedural AI, but it's by no means impossible.

 

[A2597]

one name:

M.C. Ecshler

nuff said.