Mosquito/Notebook

This page is a kind of graveyard of ideas, since I dont have the time or resources to making any of them work i just put them here to die. Feel free to take anything you want. -Mosquito

Captains!

(Taken from an old discussion in one of foxpaws pages)

Mosquito: this is similar to one of my concepts, It nicknamed it "Captains of Honour" pretty much big ship combat (I mean juggernaughts and destroyer sizes) that are controlled similar to BF1942 but with z axis action, the idea was that there would be 1 flag ship, controlled by a Captain, and another player would control the bridge crew (assistance to the captain), then there would be smaller destroyers controlled by single players. The main flag ship would have a flight deck and any left over players would control the fighters, all ships are highly complex, with different systems and such that would need to be maintained by the captain or his crew, all ships are divided into 4 sections that have each there own health and systems assigned to them, the Commanders would have to not just kill the enemy ships, but keep there’s flying by rerouting power, assigning repair teams and prioritizing things, the ex:

The shields are divided onto 4 sides, each with individual hit points that can be distributed across the board, the forward shields are almost down and the enemy flagship is charging dead head, the commanding staff reroute power from navigation to shields, then forward all available power to forward shields, another destroyer flanks the ship and takes out the port shield, if one shield fails, the whole grid shutdown, all shields need to be reset (takes about 20 seconds) so the enemy fleet bombards the ship with full fire power, the captain takes all power from shields to weapons and thrusters (since they're not going to last the 20 seconds or so for the shield to reset) the more power systems have, the more effective they are, so weapons with only 20% power will do 20% damage, navigation with only 30% will be only 30% effective range of target finding, repairing staff with 70% power can repair things at 70% of maximum rate, etc. The ship loses its front section completely and navigation and forward shield generator is gone, two systems no functional, usually the ship has 400% power to distribute to systems, but with 3/4 sections operative, they have only 300% to give around, and any % used in the lost systems are frozen until its repaired... which can't be done in the field, so boom, those % points in Nav and forward shields are dead, now the enemy flag ship sends fighters to strafe the flight deck, now the ship cannot launch fighters anymore, and once all the deployed fighters run out of ammo they can't re supply. One of the enemy destroyers get behind the ship and fires a torpedo into the number 2 engine, and causing an explosion and the whole rear of the ship goes to 30% health and is smoking badly, the Captian, with the last of the dying ship puts full power to number 1 engine and charges the enemy flagship... smashing into it and blowing away the shield, losing the center section and finally MASSIVE EXPLOSION, The ship is gone and the enemy flagship is dead in the water.

Those 2 players that died now must way until reinforcements before they can get there own destroyers, but once the flag ship is destroyed by an enemy, it doesn't respawn.

Thats just the idea, seems really confusing, I guess all systems would be controlled by window tabs, each system page shows where it is on the ship, its status, and would have a bar graph that you can drag right to increase power, which takes from your reserves, or drag left to decrease power, which goes to power reserves that you can give to different systems, critical systems have backups or more then one, so on shields tab, you have sub tabs that include forward, left, right, rear and backup shields, or weapons tab includes all the different weapons on the ship, so you would give power to the weapons tab, then give that power to the different weapons onboard.

If you have 2 people controlling, then one is the captain and the other is the commander, the captain can control the movement of the ship, all its systems and weapons, were the commander can only control systems, if the captain is an idiot, the team can call a vote to kick him off, then the commander takes his place, if the captain feels the commander is a idiot, he can just boot him and fiend for himself.

With the smaller destroyers, there is only a captain but the systems are less complex. This is just some ideas, sorry to hijack your page, if you want I'll move this to my page.

Mosquito: I was thinking, in light of UT2k4, having all the different functions of the ship as different seats in a vehicle, like in onslaught.

1 being the captain’s chair (telling everyone what to do)

2 being helm (steering)

3 being engineering (managing power to all the systems and dispatching repair teams)

4 being Tactical (weapon control)

5 being communications and navigation (communicating with other ships, and finding your way around space and such

6 being flight deck control (doing, flight deck stuff)

So on a full crew, the ship would have 6 people on duty, but the ship, very stressfully mind you, be controls by a single person. Captain would only be used if most of the other positions were filled, and the captain would be able to lead the fleet, instead of running around the bridge trying to keep the damn ship space worthy.

Another idea is to have bot work with voice reg code, so the captain could go:

"Helm, set heading to 2-7-5, 3/4 speed and increase Z 2-0-0 meters: Engage"

And the bot would reply:

"Setting heading to 2-7-5, increasing speed to 3/4 and increasing Z 2-0-0 meters

The Hud would display the order on screen, so the player could correct the order before saying "Engage/Make it so/Mark" which..errr, makes it happen (sorry, I'm a little low on sleep so my word finding abilities are... bad) So if you say"

"Full stops and bring up about"

And the game reads it as

"Full stern and bring me a boot"

You can say "correction"

And restate the order.

Now wouldn't that be awesome.

Someone remind me to reformat this when I get up in the morning, its like it was written by a 4 year old with crayon.

Some Random game type idea I had for RO, someone might find it useful or something.

While sitting on the can I thought of this.

The Germans spawn at one end of the level which is a long twisting road going through any terrain (with choke points) and the Russians spawn randomly at one of the "checkpoints" and have 1 minute to set up an ambush with anti vehicle weapons, mines and of course, the mighty satchel charges. While they setup the Germans get into their vehicles which are:

2-4 Motorbikes with side pod thingy (technical speak lolz11)

1 The German officer car (containing the VIP)

1 Half track/truck (to carry any troops without a vehicle)

And possibly one tank support. (Depends on the map)

The VIP(s) would be an AI controlled bot which stays inside the car's backseat until its damaged immobilized or captured. (And will randomly swear and yell at the players because he’s an angry kraut)

The Russians job is to stop the escort and capture the officer. With the help of the satchel charges and mines they can create obstacles that the Germans much get around or remove.

ex.

-Karma telephone poles that can be knocked over/pushed away with a half-track-tank

-Landmines which can be removed by troops

-Karma ruins that can be knocked over (side of a house is a karma object that can be pushed over)

-etc.

Once the Russians time are up all the German vehicles start up and get moving. The Motorbikes job would be to scout out the road ahead, the half track would carry the support troops and the officer car would float somewhere in-between while the tank could brutally crush any and all resistance.

The Russians must get within x distance of the officer without any German players around him and he'll surrender and the Russians capture. Death of the officer means both teams lose. No/low reinforcements for anyone (depends on the map) so once the hold German team is dead the officer will come out and surrender on his own.

German players can use the standard bot commands to order the officer around

Hold

Freelance

the player must be standing near the officer.

The officer is armed with only a pistol (luger, mauser, etc) and wears an officer hat along with monocile and shiny boots. He will defend himself but not very a good shot.

They could be more officers as well (up to 3 can sit in the back of the car with multiple cars) and the Russians may only need to capture 2 of them, meaning if one is giving sass he's expendable (Germans would still lose if they killed an officer)

The Germans win by getting all or most (if there are multiple officers) to the other end of the level. Their could also be a time limit so the Germans wouldn't drive around at a turtle pace shooting every tree and inspecting every inch of road for mines.

Just using this page to hammer out the details of my design doc for Thievery: Working title.

Its a post modern concept of thieveryUT kind of gameplay.

please no discussion or editing of my page until I say I am done with it for the day.

Anything in italics are names for these concept actors/classes.

Patroling

Gameobjective actor (Locationmaster) that desiginates a location, area or object in the level in which when a bot is ordered to defend it will activate the asossiated AIscripted sequence to follow a set path of pathnodes, hold an area, activate something etc.

Keypad doors

A static mesh / mesh trigger (Keypadtrigger) (simplier for the mesh itself to be the actor instead of using a special trigger placed inside of a mesh/animation?) that calls events (for doors)

Lockatlvlzero=True/False

Lockatlvlone=True/False

Lockatlvltwo=True/False

Hackable=True/False

MinHacktime*=

Maxhacktime*=

guards can open any locked door.

 * A random amount of time taken to hack the door to unlock it

Elevator

A special mover/vehicle/actor (Elevatorcar)that moves to special elevatorfloornodes and opens its doors controlled via GUI menu actived by pressing use on the button panel. With multiple Floors and if elevatorfloornode tag is called it will call the elevator to itself.

Weapon Stances

Normal

The weapon is holstered (pistol) or lowered (rifle)

Guard can jump, climb, use objects, use their flashlight in this stance.

Shoulder

Clicking the secondary fire key brings up weapon to a shoulder firing position. Click again returns to normal.

If Guard presses use, is in midair, is climbing a ladder, uses flashlight or stops moving for 5 seconds then stance is reset or Normal.

Ironsight

Holding down the secondary fire key brings the weapon's ironsight up and increases accuracy. Releasing resets to Shoulder oor doing anything that would reset to shoulder to normal reset to normal.

Security levels

There are 3 basic security levels.

Zero: Nothing. All is clear.

Guards cannot sound the alarm unless:

Have seen the Thief at 70% or more visblity Within 512 unites of the thief
Caught the thief in their flashlight for one second. Within 512 units of the thief
major item stolen/missing/Destroyed (amount set by mapper)
Found an unconicious guard or dead body

Once a guard has seen the theif a ! appears over their head visble to all players aswell as the guard has a ! on his hud indicating he can sound the alarm at many of the alarmpanelstrigger around the level. If any other guards come within 160 units of the guard with the !, they also get a ! and can also sound the alarm. Once the alarm is sounded the level goes to level one. The ! is so the thief can dispose of any guards that are able to sound the alarm if he is seen. If a guard is knocked unconicous and wakes up, he loses his !.

(Maybe have a time limit of 30 seconds to the ! so if the thief can confuse the guard long enough he is scott free)

One: Security breach. All units to be on the lookout for anything.

SecurityWeaponlockers around the level are now usable to guards which upgrade with:

Upper body armour
Riot helmets
Larger flood flashlights.
Submachineguns or shotgun (set by mapper per locker)

Doors around the level lock and additional lights turn on.

Security terminals (not alarms) around the level can be hacked (time set by mapper) to lower the level and reset all the guards to default instantly.

Two: Under Attack. Call in the big guns. (Also known as "Thieves are fucked")

To go to level 2 only afew things must apply.

A set amount of guards are killed (set by mapper)
A set amount of major items are Stolen/missing/destroyed (set by mapper)

When level two is called from a security room with the parmameters are met SecurityForcespawn actors around the level spawn additional Riotbots (amount set by mapper) in full black riot gear with gaskmasks and shoulder mounted flashlights swarm the level in hunt of the thieves. These super bots are always at full alert and can see the thieves at 30% visiblity or more and have incredible aim and move in groups of 3 (one AI to control each group?) They are resisted to gas, tranquilizers and melee. Aswell for outdoor areas an AI controlled Riotattackhelicopter will patrol with a machinegun shooting anything it catches in its sweeping spotlight following a set path via AIscript with the FlyingPathNodes. Level two can only happen once and only lasts a set amount of time (by mapper). When the timer rounds out all Riotbots run to the nearest 'SecurityForcespawn actor and disappear or if they cannot reach one within 30 seconds they just disappear, when they are running away they do not engage thieves.

Riotattackhelicopter will stay even after the timer has run out and can only be removed by destroying it. (the mapper has to set in the AI script of the helicopter to land on a helipad after partolling so it can be destroyed with explosives)

Raptor Ball

Very much like bombing run, there are 2 teams, one ball and 2 scoring volumes. Players are Raptors, modified to rise alittle better. The Raptor's weapon is a mechanical talon. Holding Primary Closes the talon. When the talon is closed they player cannot pickup the ball. If the player closes their talon in proximity of another raptor they attach themselves, they can only be broken apart if they impact with something. When the player has the ball they press primary to launch it in whatever direction they are facing with some momentum transfer. if they reach max speed the ball then becomes a missile and when it impacts an enemy raptor it causes them to explode but still blocks the ball.

The ball is not effected by gravity for 5 seconds untouched, after that, it falls to the ground and has to be snatched up. If the ball is untouched for 30 seconds it resets.

Sweavo: hello. I was thunking about a big-ship game myself the other day. I was thinking that the players could run around the ships in normal UT2004 style - imagine running thru deck17 then hopping in an elevator to the bridge... The ships' controls and weapon systems are turrets like in UT. Not sure how the outside works though. I was thinking fighters would be vehicles. It'd be great to be able to knock out the shields to the opposing ship's docking bay, land your craft there, and Deathmatch your way to their bridge. Hmmm... maybe this is just a really bizarre ONS map idea...

Mosquito: Unfortunely the ship itself wouldn't be able to move around and would be static, it would make a neat AS-Mothership kind of assault level.

This page is a kind of graveyard of ideas, since I dont have the time or resources to making any of them work i just put them here to die. Feel free to take anything you want.

Foxpaw: Actually, there is a way you can achieve what was just suggested. I don't remember who it was, but a long while ago there was a couple of other people visiting the wiki working on space combat mods. The ability to meander around on a moving ship in my mod was implemented with the use of custom physics and such, (this has since been removed as it was using far too many resources for something that's just a gimmick, really) but someone else had implemented it using regular UT2003/UT2004 levels.

Basically, each ship had a BSP "inside" which was in the world somewhere, and every ship was isolated from the other ships. Then, there was a big "space" area which was isolated from all of the ship interior BSP. So each ship really existed in two places - one was a Karma vehicle flying around and doing stuff, and another was a regular BSP area that people could walk around in. This is alot like the turret controls on AS-Mothership - you are controlling a "vehicle" that is elsewhere, without actually being inside that vehicle. When you "leave" the vehicle, you are at the controls inside the mothership. If you wanted to make it really fancy, you could probrably use ScriptedTextures to draw on the "windows" of the interior of the ship, and maybe have damage to parts of the (external) ship be reflected in the "interior" area of the level. (the part that represents the interior of the ship)

This fellows implementation was very similar, the only real difference being that if you died while piloting a spaceship, your pawn was killed too.

This only works if you have a finite number of ships, and the interior layout of the ships is predetermined, neither of which could have been assumed in my case - but it worked in his case and it might work in yours.

Anyways, I hope that wasn't confusing. Let me know if you need clarification on how it was implemented.

Sweavo: Sounds cool. Similarly, I don't have teh skillz or teh time to do this. I'm making reasonable progress on fixing up turrets for ONS though... see Sweavo if that floats your boat. I was also thinking that abusing zoneportals might be a way to get the illusion of the inside being attached to the outside.

Graphik: I should think that a camera actor that projected it's output onto a surface like a Skybox would do the trick. I think it was Zxanphorian that got this working in UT200X.

Mosquito: man, this place is as old as time itself

2006 update

Mosquito: Man my spell and grammar is horrible.