Shadowrun MOD - An idea, need people.

[coax]

Some of you have probably played the Shadowrun RPG.
It is I think, a great game that can be so amazing once realized in 3D.
So, I will put up some ideas here, and anyone interested could give me an email, and we could try and get something going.

The Setting:
.........................................

Shadowrun takes place around 2070, some years ago the world experienced "the Awakening", where everything changed.
People realized the world wasn't what they thought, there was magic, the astral plane, elves, trolls and all sorts of mysterious and magical creatures.
But this isn't set in medieval ages, it's set in the future.
And with the future comes of course, the Matrix, a place where so called 'Deckers' log in(or 'jack in' as they call it) into a computer network as big as the internet, if not bigger, but they experience it with almost all senses. This means it's kind of like the movie, only more stylized.
In this future, evil big corporations run everything, and what the player will be playing are 'Shadowrunners'. These get jobs from 'Johnsons'.
Johnsons are corporate middlemen hired to hire shadowrunners to do the dirty work for the corps.(heh)
These shadowrunners are all different of course, some specialize in magic, others in physical strength and quickness, and others rely completely on computers and decks.

Classes and player characters:
............................................

Ok, so we have 4 classes, Mages, Deckers, Riggers and Adepts.

Mages: These are magical practicers, they have scrolls, spells and foci bonded items. Magic to them is based on formulas and practice.
They are weaker physically but can wield some kickass spells.
A player would spend time getting his mage character stronger mentally, raising intelligence stats and finding and buying spells to learn and use in combat.

Deckers: These are cyberpunks, drugged down computer hackers that spend way to much time 'jacked in'.
They use so called 'decks' to jack in.
These are small computers they put on their head that takes care of the sensory input.
These decks run programs, and it can be upgraded and customized.
The speed and levels of the programs loaded into the deck decides how well the decker can hack different sites.
Alot of the corps security systems are connected to the matrix also, so they can control guard robots and the likes from inside the matrix.

Riggers: are completely car crazed, they always need the latest engine improvement, newest hud for their car cpu, and/or newest car altogether.
More on these some other time.

Adepts: are the samurais/ninjas of this age. They strive for physical and mental peak, and many use drugs to reach higher limits.
They also use something called cyberware and bioware, which enhances either mental or physical abilites, more on this in the next chapter.

Cyberware and Bioware are cybernetic implants that can enhance and/or replace complete limbs and tissue.
They come in many variants, for example something called symbiotes are small cell like nanobots in the blood, that runs to a place you're hurt and heals you faster.
Titanium bone lacing makes you tougher generally to impact and ballistic attacks.

So how do we fit all this together?
Well, I know this is a very ambitious project, but I know it can be done with a good hard working team

For details and stuff email me at [email protected]
I figure we need around 2 coders, 2 skinners(photoshop artists), 2 animators/modelers(maybe you can do both good?) and I will attempt level design.

Thanks and I hope someone likes this idea.


ps, ideas and responses in this thread is also appreciated.

 

[Grey]

First this should be in "Help Wanted".

Second, great - a Shadowrun mod, but what are you going to do? Just order the others around? I'd do some work first, then start to recruit others.

 

[coax]

oh, sorry about that.. maybe i should repost it there..
I will be doing level design, but most importantly, i will be doing music and special effects. it's what im good at
i've never made a mod before, but i've done quite abit of music and "experimental" music

 

[HiroProtaganist]

the problem with a shadowrun mod is WotC LLC. is extremely gaureded of their intellectual proprty. they would shut this mod down as soon as they got wind of it. there are a lot of Cybepunk mods going right now maybe a few will survive and release. I'm sure there is going to be a lost of elements of Shadowrun in these mods.

 

[Cerberus]

hmm

There was actually a failed attempt to make a shadowrun mod for half-life, despite my best efforst I've been unable to contact them. I myself am a great fan of shadowrun, which is one of the reasons I started the 14 member mod team for the mod Corporate Anarchy. Given that cyberpunk itself is a huge genre, for now we only plan on cyberpunk and not having a fantasy element. One crucial part of shadowrun was the diversity in character design, a major aspect of corporate anarchy is a quick but flexible character design system. 6 traits, along with 20 various implants create a players character. Coaz, if you want I'll send you a copy of our 8 page game design doc(single space, small font). While our team is pretty much complete, we may have room for a shadowrun fan with good mapping skills. Corporate Anarchy

We want the mod to have high powered characters, so think of it as a shadowrun game with everyone playing full conversion sammies. On the plus side it means players can dual wield p90s.

 

[Grey]

Shadowrun always seemed cheap to me with the whole fantasy thing thrown in. I like the Talsorian Cyberpunk, and loved the Cybergeneration supplement they came out with. But any way yeah there's a few cyberpunk mods going for HL2 besides Cerebus's ...

Corporations - http://corporationsmod.com/

And the mod I'm part of - Neotokyo - Http://www.neotokyohq.com - which is cyberpunk anime , not straight cyberpunk. There's lots of love for Masamune Shirow on our team .

 

[coax]

Cerberus, I'm very interested in your MOD. This Shadowrun MOD of mine has been a big dream all the way back to 2000, when I started playing it.
So maybe, when you get the basics down, I could try and make some maps for you.. I have lots of ideas, and when I think about cyberpunk and all of that, my imagination just runs wild

So yeah, if you could send me that doc, I'd very much appreciate it.

 

[HiroProtaganist]

damn i feel old! Way back in 2000, now where did i put my walker? lousy alheizmers.

Yeah there are several cyberpunk mods though a lot of them should band together because there ideas are so similar that trying it would better for them to work to gether than try to compete for talen, and should they release; players.

 

[Grey]

I seriously doubt any banding together is going to happen, and for my team finding great talent hasn't been an issue so far. I look forward to competing for players

I'm old too Hiro... just turned 30 last month.

 

[Cerberus]

the various cyberpunk mods

there are quite a few cyberpunk mods, I think ours was the 2nd announced after entropy. There are alot of people out there that yearn for a good cyberpunk game, and many of them have different ideas of how an ideal cyberpunk game would be like. However cyberpunk HAS been done, however since the syndicate series cyberpunk has not been done WELL. There are two games every mod leader of every cyberpunk mod needs to study and understand.
Neocron and Public Enemy. Both have the cyberpunk setting, both are fps with some character development yet both have significant flaws. If any of the cyberpunk mods are to be succesful we must address the flaws of these two games, in hopes that we do not repeat similar mistakes.

The bottom line comes to this. Having cool cyberpunk weapons, and a cool cyberpunk map is not enough. The setting alone does not make a cyberpunk mod a good mod.

One of the neat things about cyberpunk is that an averge joe with enough cybernetic implants could become a death machine. If the cyberimplants are mundane, in that they just boost certain stats and can't really be USED, then implants have been reduced to being just another powerup. Some implants can just be stat boosters, but many of them must be usable and add more gameplay and tactics. Implants can be interesting and exciting without unbalancing the game, and the better the implants the greater the urge for players to advance their characters. An example of good powers that contribute to gameplay is natural selection, all 9 of the powers the aliens can get are all very diverse and interesting.

If you are designing a cyberpunk mod, please look at those two games I mentioned. I do not want anyone making similar mistakes.

 

[coax]

Well put.
I have my own idea too of course, but this can be adapted to any other projects that might cross my path

My inspiration comes mostly from the MUD called Awake 2062.
I was an imm there for some awhile, and built areas for them.
This helped me get my imagination going and making it fit in the cyberpunk 'genre'.

So yeah, I browsed around your website, and it seems you have a very nice start, and I can feel a professional result is easily achieved with your members.
Now just release the damn SDK already..

Well anyway, get me the doc already!

 

[HiroProtaganist]

syndicate was such a badass game. too bad syndicate wars flopped. i actually still play syndicate to this day. i have an old 233mhz machine solely to play that game (on newer machines everything moves so fast you can't tell what the hell is happening)

 

[Cerberus]

syndicate wars?

syndicate wars flopped? I thought they were both very good, though the graphic intro at the beginning of syndicate wars is definetly showing its age. Theres actually a syndicate mod for u2k3, but their kinda bogged down/stalled so I'm not sure if it may ever be released. Small team, but really nice guys. Life sometimes is more important then making a mod. Having 4 different sides makes for very interesting play. Sydnicate had:
neutral civilians
cops
enemy criminals
your criminals.

In that same vein, I wanted a mod that had not only two corporate teams that fight over mission objectives, but also a third small police force that hunts down both corporate teams. Having NPC civilians wander a map is great for atmosphere, and gives a population for the cops to protect. However having that many moving entities hogs serious bandwidth, so you either need to use few NPCs, have some clever programming, or both.

coax I'll send you the file tonight, I'm at my lab right now.

 

[coax]

cool

i remember playing syndicate, but it's so long ago i hardly remember how it was.
i do however, recall that it was really cool.

my p3 is prolly gonna run it 10x as fast though and i have no slow computer, so that's all in the past :\

 

[WhiteOni]

Hey. Thanks Grey for postin us here

As some guys of Corporate Anarchy said: "Let's turn HL2 into a cyberpunk platform"

 

[Grey]

Hey no problem WhiteOni your welcome

I'm sure all three of the mods mentioned will end up pretty damn different. Just a glance quick glance at the Corporate Anarchy faq -

CA will have vehicles but with no mounted weapons - NT will have a crap load of vehicles most armored and armed . We'll have maps that are vehicle heavy and some maps where there won't be any...

CA characters will not be anime-style - NT is all about anime I can't wait to show off what we have in the works right now...

Also from what I know about CA's gameplay in general there'll be big differences there as well.

I admit I know less about your mod but regardless I'll be sure to give both other mods a place on my hard drive .