Single Player Mod Idea

[Taliseian]

Wanted to just bounce this idea out to people. Its in the very beginning planning stages (ie I just came up with this a few minutes ago) so the complete storyline will be a bit more involved than this....

Who - Ordinary citizen caught up in the events

What - HL2 single player mod - storyline based

Where - City 17 and White Forest

When - During HL2

Why - After losing family and home, you strike back in the only way you can.

Basic Plot - Headcrab Rockets land near your farm/home, turning your friends and family into zombies. Then you find the Combine on the move and soldiers begin attacking your village. After repelling the Combine, you hear over the radio about the resistance and decide to make your way thru the forest to the nearest resistance hideout, along the way defeating more Combine.

After finally making to the resistance, you hear about Gordan Freeman and what he's doing, but find out that additional Combine forces are making a push to City 17 in order to stop him. The resistance cell you found then heads out in order to stop those forces from reaching Nova Prospekt, where Gordon and Alyx are currently heading to.

The ending is a final stand off in an isolated portion of Nova Prospekt, keeping the additional forces from overwhelming Gordon and Alyx.

As you can see, its very rough. For instance, would there really be people living outside of City 17? Would they be farming, living a somewhat normal life after the Seven Hour War?

My basic idea is that your an ordinary person caught up in the events surrounding Half Life 2 and after losing those close to you, your forced to pick up a weapon and help out. Sort of like "Red Dawn".

Ideas? Opinions?


T

 

[Crispy]

I have seen this exact 'headcrabs-turn-your-village-into-zombies-so you join-the-resistance' storyline posted before either here or on the Moddb. Is it because you watched Star Wars (A New Hope) last night on TV? Be honest.

 

[Taliseian]

Haven't watched SW in a long time.

Just wanted to mod something and this was an idea that came up.

But since this idea has been done before, I'll go back and try to come up with something different.

Thanks...


T

 

[Crispy]

It hasn't been done before, it's been put forward before, and by someone I very much doubt finished it. It's not a bad idea, so why not roll with it?

 

[Taliseian]

Ok then.....

How's this for a start.....

Opening Scenes
Its a warm spring day.

Opening credits roll over a few outdoor scenes, then a flyover of the village. Its a small village, maybe ten houses/buildings. End of opening credits goes thru open window into your bedroom where your waking up to start your day...

Scene 1 - Ordinary bedroom with a bed, table and chairs, couple of bookcases, wardrobes, small watercloset and shower.

You get up, look around your room, and head to the door.....but it doesn't open.

VO by younger brother - "Ha ha ha! That's what you get for not taking me fishing yesterday! Now lets see you get out of your room!!"

VO by mother - "Ivan! What did you do to your brother Sergei!"

*cue door clicking sounds*

VO by mother - "I'm sorry Sergei, it looks like 'Ivan the Terrible' is at it again. You'll have to climb out thru the attic. I'll open up the other end." "Ivan, your gonna get it this time...

*cue assorted chasing, VOs, etc*

Puzzle 1 - Exit Room

Simple climbing puzzle into attic.....then.....


T

 

[Crispy]

Here's a list of skills and assets you'd need just for that first scene.

Opening credits:
This you can handle yourself by finding the right information and tutorials.

Map flyover:
The flyover would be handled by the level designer in Hammer as would the waking up from the first-person view (there is a tutorial on this somewhere). You'd need a 'lying down' pose of your player character model, with maybe a 'sit up rub eyes' animation, and maybe a 'yawn' facial animation if you're going for a lot of detail. If it's just a HL2 civilian model then you wouldn't need to model a player character (which is one of the hardest things to model requiring lots of time and skill).

Scene 1:
Most of these props could and should probably be re-used from HL2. I suggest you leave the younger brother as unseen if possible, because there are no children character models in HL2 or CS or any Source mod I can think of that you might be able to re-use.

Voiceover:
Requires not only 2 voice actors, but actors with access to a good recording device and someone with audio editing software to get rid of any crappy background interference and clean up the audio (although you should probably leave the audio cleanup until you have all the sound done and the audio in-game and scripted).

Skills:
- recruitment/admin (for recruiting and organising the team with their jobs)
- level design (including moving camerawork and AI event scripting)
- character animation ('lying' pose for sure, 'sit up' cycle optional)
- sound design (voice audio)
- voice acting (young male and adult female)

I hope that puts things in perspective if you hadn't considered the scale of the project. I'd advise keeping things small and basic to begin with. So for example you'd begin by simply recording your own voice in crappy audio just to get the sounds in-game and have a rough indication of the length of time they take up (i.e. you fake a 'mother' and 'child' voice and read out the lines). This would give the level designer something to work with to create events and give your eventual sound designer and voice actors a working example. Keep to this method throughout and get your voice actors and sound designer in towards the end of the project, so you don't have to handle an extra 3 people early on in thr process when you're still worrying about design.