Mod Ideas/DownhillUT
DownhillUT - Bobsleing and Snowboarding meets Back To The Future meets Super Mario Kart meets UT2k3
Description
WARNING! Extensive description! Long Read!
Basic Idea
Everyone races down a mountain to be first to the bottom... while blowing each other up... on hoverboards or in small one man hovering bobsleds.
Scoring
While the race is a free-for-all to the finish, it actually counts on the best time. You can cut 2 seconds from your time by fragging somebody, and you can cut more off with stunts of different dificulty. Beng fragged will not add any time to your score, but will set you down in the same spot 2 seconds after you die.
Vehicles
Everyone either drives the Hoversled or the Hoverboard (player chooses which).
The Hoverboard is the faster of the two vehicles, but has no/very little armor and worse steering. It is the only vehicle that can pull off stunts other than flips, and it can also jump higher.
The Hoversled is the slower of the two vehicles, but has good armor and good handling. It is the only vehicle that can smash straight through static meshes (or if thats not possible, normal decorations). It handles landings slightly better too, but cannot pull off any stunts other than flips.
Controls
Up = Mini boosters. Used on level ground to get some momentum.
Down = Reverse mini boosters. Also known as brakes.
Strafe Left = Turn left
Strafe Right = Turn right
Crouch = Activate currently selected powerup
Fire = Fires your weapon
Alt fire = Fires your weapon in alternate fire mode
Jump = Jump (duh)
Weapon Up = Next Powerup
Weapon Down = Previous powerup
The Levels
All the levels are downhill ones, but dont have to be snow only, due to the fact that the vehicles hover, so you could have levels through a desert, down a long sunny stretch of grass, or even through very odd settings like the titanic, winding city streets, through the corridors of an ancient pyramid/temple, or some srange spaceship.
There would be a training level of course, with gates to stop you to explain the next area before setting the vehicle off again, showing the basic features of the game.
The Terrain
Start Line: An area of green textured ground where all the players spawn. There can only be one though.
Guidance fences: Come in 3 variations. The orange plastic stuff you get at the winter olympics, red forcefield beams, or a style of your choosing! These are simply walls which instead of crashing your vehicle, turn it towards the centre of the track. Found in the tutorial level for aiming your vehicle at the pause gates.
Pause gates: Blue boxes with a metal gate between them. Your vehicle pauses here in the tutorial mission to explain the next area. Could be found in other levels as an obsticle. Pause time varies according to what the level author chooses.
Kickers: Your standard jump pads, probably for catching items in the air, or bouncing over walls into shortcuts or super weapons.
Jump ramps: Handily marked in big blue (or red) letters saying the word JUMP, these are where you cut a second or two off your total time to give you the edge (and maybe even win the race). They can come in any shape colour or size, and my even be hidden down some shortcuts.
Red Inventory Boxes: These give you basic weapons, such as missiles or mines, one of the most common types of boxes.
Yellow Inventory Crates: These give you basic power-ups, such as speed boost or 1.5x damage, the other most common type of box.
Ghostly Inventory Crates: These give you power-ups only for the Hoverboard, such as higher jumping, and faster stunts.
Steel Inventory Crates: These give you power-ups only for the Hoversled, such as power ram or cutters.
Blue Inventory Crates: w00t! these give you the super weapons, such as the redeemer, or the leader-seeker. Super rare.
Green Inventory Crates:w00t! these give you the super power-ups, such as invincibility or quad damage. Super rare.
Gold inventory crates: These drop your total time by about 5 seconds. Quite rare.
Teleports: Your standard one way portal. Often used where you cant bounce over or break through something, or used at the end of a secret area to keep the location disclosed.
Trees/Cars/Logs/Statues/Low Walls: These block the Hoverboard, but can be broken by a Hoversled.
Trains: Watch out! These things can really ruin your day, because touching them –> fragged. Just look for the flashing red lights that tell you when the train's about to hit. Some other trains are so long, theyre there for the whole race, so use the nearby ramps!
Stop Watches: Pause your time for about 1.5 seconds. Very useful, but rare.
Water: Yo7ur vehicles float above water like it were solid ground, but if you fall into it from a height, you sink through, allowing you to land from very high up unharmed.
Finish line: Signified by the classic chequered area on the floor, these are where the race ends, but there are also three special varients of the finish line.
Floating finish line: signified by a floating chequered pattern portal in mid air, these are usually found floating over the normal finish, and give half a second off your finish time.
Distance finish line: similar to both the Normal finish and the floating finish. these are on the floor, but you have to jump into them, the further you jump into them, the more half-seconds are taken off your time. The zones are usually signified by diferent backround colours in the chequered area.
Super secret secret finish: these take two seconds off your time, but are ultra rare, and found in secret areas near the end of the run.
Weapons
Missiles: These are your run of the mill projectiles. Most abundant weapon in the game. Fire shoots one missile forward. Alt fire attaches two missiles to the sides of your vehicles for a mini speed boost.
Homing missiles: Same as the regular missiles, but with a bit more of a kick, and home in on the player in front. Fire launches one homing missile forwards. Alt fire is exactly the same as that of the regular misiles, but forces the player on a collision course with the player in front.
Mines: Drop and forget. these are a nice welcome gift for the people behind you. Fire drops a mine which hovers just above the usual height of the vehicles. Alt fire drops a mine that rolls slowly downhill until it hits a wall, or hits a vehicle.
Amp mines: Nice and explosive, other than that, they are exactly the same as normal mines.
EMP Mines: Blue and glowy. Same fire modes as the other mines, but when they hit a person, they explode with an EMP, shutting off the anti-grav thingys in the vehicles for 2.5 seconds.
Machine Guns: This is really just the assult rifle.
Super Weapons
Teh 'deemer: TEH 'DEMER! do i need to say any more?
Leader Seeker: An instant frag missile that seeks out the leader in both fire modes. Unfortunately, if you are the leader, its a suicide weapon.
Insta-gib: Teh insta gib rifle! do i need to say more?
Mini-gun: Machine guns but twice as powerfull.
Black hole launcher: have you ever messed around with the ChaosUT super weapons and came across the vortex launcher\? this could be a less buggy vesion of that. Fire launches a black hole missile, which upon impact, sucks in all nearby players. Alt fire drops a black hole mine.
Power-ups
1.5x damage: Multiplies the damage by 1.5. pretty nifty if you need to finish of someone further ahead. instant effect
Speed boost: Doubles your speed for 5 seconds. perfect for getting that extra bit of free time from a distance finish. trigger when you want
Force field: Gives you 75 armour, instant effect.
Translocator: The translocator, one shot only.
Super Power-ups
Invincibility: Invincibility for 30 seconds. Instant effect.
Quad Damage: Multiplies damage by 4. Instant effect.
NoS boost: Quadruples speed for 5 seconds. Trigger when you want.
Teleport Rifle: Instagib rifle except teleports you to the location of where it hit, one shot only
Hoversled Only Power-ups
Power Ram: Gives you the power to ram through anything destructible (including players) without loosing speed for 10 seconds. Instant effect.
Cutters: Adds razor blades to the sides of the Hoversled, allowing you to cause damage to players if you bump into them from the side. Stays on for 4 bumps. Instant effect.
Streamlining: Replaces the current shell of the Hoversled with a more streamlined version, incrasing your maximum speed. Lasts until the end of the race. Instant effect.
Hoverboard Only Power-Ups
Power hopper: Launches high pressure jets of air below the board, increasing jump height. Lasts for 3 jumps. Instant effect.
Improved control jets: Launches high pressure jets of air from the board in all directions allowing faster stunts. Lasts for one jump. Instant Effect.
Spin jets: Launches high pressure jets of air from the front nd aft sides of he board, allowing improved turning. Lasts until the race ends. Instant Effect.
Stunts
Forward Flip: Makes your vehicle flip over forwards in mid air. Both Vehicles. Takes 2 seconds off your time.
Back Flip: Makes your vehicle flip over backwards in mid air. Both Vehicles. Takes 2 seconds off your time.
Umm. Cant think of any more tricks. If anyone has that Tony Hawk's like snowboarding game, can they mail me some of the tricks and what they do?
Misc. Notes
All the weapons (except the machine gun) have a maximum one round.
The Machine Gun can fire for 5 seconds after the first bullet is fired
You can only hold one weapon at a time.
Inventory crates respawn 0.25 seconds after they are collected
Levels would be able to have more than one finishing area, and dont have to be in a straight line (un like most snowboarding games, which always have straight down tracks with minor turns.
By walls, any slope over 45 dgrees up from the current surface counts as a wall. 45 degrees or under counts as floor, so you could make loops and halfpipes.
Interested Scripters
Icedude (well, i'd be more of a mapper, cause i cant code to save my life)
Darkwarrior (Might be able to make some of the weapons)
Discussion
ZxAnPhOrIaN: WOW! This will be really cool! I look foreward to playing this mod!
ZxAnPhOrIaN: When the emp mines blows up, does it shut of the anit-grav things on the person who planted the bomb?
Icedude: No, mines dont affect the person who dropped them
ZxAnPhOrIaN: k.
ZxAnPhOrIaN: Have a cool effect with the cutters! You should have the cutters get damaged until it falls off.
Icedude: I got it! The staticmeshes that the hoversled can ram out of the way could be KActors, so instead of them being destroyed, they just get knocked out of the way!
Icedude: If you want to see what i mean, rent Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Gamecube (of you dont already own it) and play the first level for the heros, you'll see what i was thinking of
ProjectX: This looks cool, can't wait to see it, btw, the obvious tricks would be 360 degree turns, etc. and a mixture between a flip and a turn, you could have a sort of kick flip thing, i dunno, these are just brief ideas
Icedude: Maybe turning could be doneby turning the camear at the normal speed, and then the player turning around to face the same way as the camera (like in AirfightUT)
Piglet: Sounds a little like the hover race mod for Q1, could be cool but with a huge specification like that it's unlikely it will ever truly be made (sad but true) that said a simmilar but simpler mod along simmilar ideas may be more possible (say a hoverboard mutator or something)
Mosquito: Turning should be if you press a strafe key, it fires a revse thruster to the respective side, so for breaking you press both sides at once! that would be totally badass
Doodle77: Awesome idea, you might want to add a less crazy speed powerup type thing like in CarBall. also maybye an invisbilty powerup. you cant forget rolling as a trick , that could be done in a hoversled. would it always be downhill or would there be flat areas? how bout gravity mines, lay them after jumps and people just get pulled down so they cant do tricks.
