dscowboy
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- Jul 9, 2003
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Let me first say, I think the opportunities Half-Life 2 will provide to mod makers is tremendous, and I'm glad to see lots of people with initiative announcing their mods on this forum.
However, all the mod ideas seem to revolve around a somewhat limited, overused gameplay mechanism: shooting people/stuff. Just like every First Person perspective game on the market, all the mod ideas I've seen can be categorized into either shooting nazis, shooting communists, shooting aliens, or shooting nazi communist aliens who have teamed up with scruffy-looking arabs.
Personally, I'm more interested in new forms of gameplay. I've been shooting virtual terrorists/counter-terrorists/pedestrians for over 5 years now and it's starting to get a little monotonous. This is by no means meant to discourage those who are already persuing their gun-centric mod ideas. But when people talk about the game industry, they always complain about how similar games are, and how there's no innovation, it's over commercialized, and there's no room for independent developers to create new genres and new forms of gameplay. Well we ARE independent developers, and we're being given an (apparently) awesome set of tools with which to develop. I want this forum to be a place where we can discuss truely new, original ideas, and how those ideas might be implemented with the Source engine.
I'm going to list a few of my own thoughts here, please comment!
- The only game I've played involving good swordplay / melee action was Die By The Sword, and I found the controls very difficult to get used to. Surely there must be some interest in this kind of game. Imagine a multiplayer team game that plays like a scene from one of those old muskateer movies. Two teams battling in a tavern, people jumping off balconies, swining from chandeliers, barmaids running about, etc. Could the Source engine accurately portray sword vs sword interaction? Parries, dodges, overhand swings, weapons breaking, disarm moves, etc. There's a couple possible obstacles I've thought of: In the e3 movie, it's obvious that the crowbar's viewmodel animation plays the same way every time you use the crowbar. The crowbar doesn't stop if you hit a wall with it. Which means that if two players came at each other swinging crowbars, the crowbars would just pass right through each other (or at least they would look that way). For this type of game, we would need a way to turn off the viewmodel and display the physically simulated melee weapon swinging through the air and being affected by the things it struck (I know ericJ said the crowbar is simulated as a bar swining through the air, but the viewmodel definitely doesn't reflect this, at least in the pre-release movies). The other obstacle I thought of is that if players were allowed to swing their swords however they liked with their mouse, that could generate a lot of data that would have to be transmitted to all the other clients through the server. Not sure if this would be a problem or not.
- Another idea: why not a multiplayer team pirate game? People work together to load the cannons with gunpowder and ammunition, then aim and fire them while someone mans the rudder and others work the sails. The cannon operators would need to work together to coordinate broadsides, and to determine where to fire (at the water point to sink the ship, at the deck level to kill enemy crew, at the sails or masts to disable the ship, etc), and what kind of ammunition to use. Ships can ram each other, and eventually try to get close enough to extend a boarding plank, which comes back to melee combat again.
- As long as i'm on a hundreds-of-years ago theme, how about a castle siege game? Teams have to build siege engines out of wood beams and miscellaneous parts (if you can blow things apart with the Source engine in-game, can you connect different objects together?), then roll them aross the plain dividing the castle through a storm of arrows to try to knock each others walls down (modeled by the physics engine, of course), or climb over the walls, or break the doors, etc. Teams could build counter-siege equiptment too, meant to knock over siege towers and kill catapult operators.
There are endless possibilities. If I spend a lot of time working on a mod, I want it to be something truely unique. What are your thoughts?
However, all the mod ideas seem to revolve around a somewhat limited, overused gameplay mechanism: shooting people/stuff. Just like every First Person perspective game on the market, all the mod ideas I've seen can be categorized into either shooting nazis, shooting communists, shooting aliens, or shooting nazi communist aliens who have teamed up with scruffy-looking arabs.
Personally, I'm more interested in new forms of gameplay. I've been shooting virtual terrorists/counter-terrorists/pedestrians for over 5 years now and it's starting to get a little monotonous. This is by no means meant to discourage those who are already persuing their gun-centric mod ideas. But when people talk about the game industry, they always complain about how similar games are, and how there's no innovation, it's over commercialized, and there's no room for independent developers to create new genres and new forms of gameplay. Well we ARE independent developers, and we're being given an (apparently) awesome set of tools with which to develop. I want this forum to be a place where we can discuss truely new, original ideas, and how those ideas might be implemented with the Source engine.
I'm going to list a few of my own thoughts here, please comment!
- The only game I've played involving good swordplay / melee action was Die By The Sword, and I found the controls very difficult to get used to. Surely there must be some interest in this kind of game. Imagine a multiplayer team game that plays like a scene from one of those old muskateer movies. Two teams battling in a tavern, people jumping off balconies, swining from chandeliers, barmaids running about, etc. Could the Source engine accurately portray sword vs sword interaction? Parries, dodges, overhand swings, weapons breaking, disarm moves, etc. There's a couple possible obstacles I've thought of: In the e3 movie, it's obvious that the crowbar's viewmodel animation plays the same way every time you use the crowbar. The crowbar doesn't stop if you hit a wall with it. Which means that if two players came at each other swinging crowbars, the crowbars would just pass right through each other (or at least they would look that way). For this type of game, we would need a way to turn off the viewmodel and display the physically simulated melee weapon swinging through the air and being affected by the things it struck (I know ericJ said the crowbar is simulated as a bar swining through the air, but the viewmodel definitely doesn't reflect this, at least in the pre-release movies). The other obstacle I thought of is that if players were allowed to swing their swords however they liked with their mouse, that could generate a lot of data that would have to be transmitted to all the other clients through the server. Not sure if this would be a problem or not.
- Another idea: why not a multiplayer team pirate game? People work together to load the cannons with gunpowder and ammunition, then aim and fire them while someone mans the rudder and others work the sails. The cannon operators would need to work together to coordinate broadsides, and to determine where to fire (at the water point to sink the ship, at the deck level to kill enemy crew, at the sails or masts to disable the ship, etc), and what kind of ammunition to use. Ships can ram each other, and eventually try to get close enough to extend a boarding plank, which comes back to melee combat again.
- As long as i'm on a hundreds-of-years ago theme, how about a castle siege game? Teams have to build siege engines out of wood beams and miscellaneous parts (if you can blow things apart with the Source engine in-game, can you connect different objects together?), then roll them aross the plain dividing the castle through a storm of arrows to try to knock each others walls down (modeled by the physics engine, of course), or climb over the walls, or break the doors, etc. Teams could build counter-siege equiptment too, meant to knock over siege towers and kill catapult operators.
There are endless possibilities. If I spend a lot of time working on a mod, I want it to be something truely unique. What are your thoughts?