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I had an idea.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by azelito on Sun Mar 13th at 6:22pm 2005

Mod topics tend to get really nasty but hear me out on this. I have yet not decided if I am to go for this and Im now asking for you to put some thought into it. Is it a good idea or not?
Anyone who have played Star Wars - Republic Commando will get the idea quite fast.
What I want to create is a multi-player mod for Half-Life 2 where each player gets his own squad containing 0-5 (set by server) NPCs. The players then battle against eachother as commanders of their group in game-modes such as roundbased deathmatch or king of the hill. The commander would control their squad with radio commands and mouse-pointing+button clicking. For example holding your mouse over a car and pressing the action key would have one of your soldiers (the one least active) run over there for cover shooting.
The NPCs would be as strong as a human player or maybe a bit stronger to make up for the less intelligence. The player who uses the best tactics win.

So, am I nuts or would this be one of the coolest things ever?
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Loco on Sun Mar 13th at 6:27pm 2005

That sounds damn cool to me, and would work nicely with source. The only problem is how it would work for more than two players at a time. It sounds great, but how would it work for say, a five or six player game?
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by satchmo on Sun Mar 13th at 6:34pm 2005

I can imagine that the NPC's would be a big resource drainer. The framerates might suffer greatly from that.

I noticed even after adding a gunship or strider, the framerate would drop for a single player map. I can't imagine what several squads of NPC's would do to performance.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by azelito on Sun Mar 13th at 6:35pm 2005

To Loco:
Well it would not work very good. You'd have to have big maps and smaller squad sizes the more players there are on server.
It would probably not be a big problem, the gameplay fits 2-4 players better anyway.

To satchmo:
The NPC controlling works well, without much framerate dropping, in HL2SP so I dont think it would be a problem. The idea would be to make the NPCs max polycount be lower than normal, that would solve some aswell.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by ding on Sun Mar 13th at 6:57pm 2005

Would be cool - Ever played "Full Spectrum Warrior"? There is a cool command-mode, too with point-and-click commands for your squad. It is very easy to use. I would prefer something like that.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Natus on Sun Mar 13th at 8:18pm 2005

it could be cool, and it could be even cooler with snarks.
but is there any coders around here that can do this kind of stuff?



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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by azelito on Sun Mar 13th at 8:24pm 2005

I dont think the coding would have to be so damn advanced but I didnt make this thread to look for team-members, I will do that later. smiley
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Crono on Sun Mar 13th at 8:25pm 2005

Freedom Fighters ... but more accurate and more teams ... except FF has bases you capture.
For some reason only the console versions have mutliplayer though [addsig]



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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Sun Mar 13th at 8:28pm 2005

Sounds cool to me, but I think it might just devolve into a giant bot m?l?e.

To prevent this, I think you ought to include a couple minutes of "planning time" at the beginning of each round where each commander can give pre-round orders on an overview map. This would add a good level of strategy geekiness that would make the game more intelligent, realistic, and playable. I also think you ought to make the human player significantly weaker than the NPCs so as to put more emphasis on tactical command.

You might also consider an "anywhere anytime" commanders view that brings you back to the overview command screen. It would be very useful but you'd have to be careful since I assume the death of the commander is the death of the squad and it would make you very vulnerable.

If this turns into a serious enterprise, I'm in. I'm just a mapper though... no coding goodness.

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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by azelito on Sun Mar 13th at 8:43pm 2005

To Crono:
Yes, like Freedom Fighters but better. You have to be able to control the units for real. I cant remember exactly how it was in FF but I remember I never really liked it.
In my main idea source for this, Republic Commando, you use five keys to control your teammates.
F1 - Search and destroy - Teammates go offensive. Would not be of that big use in this mod, although everything is questionable.
F2 - Form up - Makes team stay around commander. Sticking together is vital.
F3 - Secure position - Stand ground. Very useful, of course.
F4 - Recall - Teammates leave their placed positions in turrrets and behind cover and returns to commander.
F - Use key - Clicking F when crosshairs on cover gives last used teammate orders to cover behind it and shoot any incoming enemy. If you click a turret on distance, instead of jumping in yourself, it sets a teammate to that position.
These are the basic ideas I have at the moment for controlling the units.

To Tracer Bullet:
Hmm. These are some ideas that will have to go into consideration. The overview idea is cool but I was more of thinking that you'd plan while running. You see the enemy setting up a unit sentry behind a car to the left, you try to flank him on the right. Perhaps a better description of my thoughts are a squad inserted to a foreign area where they do what they can to stay alive and advance.
A lone unit would be helpless so staying in a group would be vital. When the soldiers have no objective they stick to the commander and if the commander gets too far away from a soldier, he retreats.
What you say about the player being a lot weaker is totally true though, not even a skilled killer should be able to bypass the idea of the game.

Sounds like theres a lot of positive feedback on this, I will now take into serious consideration of making this mod. And Tracer, if I get this running, youre a mapper for it.

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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Andrei on Sun Mar 13th at 9:05pm 2005

I was kinda thinking that the people of snarkpit could join forces and channel their efforts in a single direction : towards a snarkpit-crew mod. We've got some damn good mappers here, many know how to model aswell, and some even know how to code! So why work for someone else's mod, when you could work for OUR mod. It would be cool and would really unite the community, enforce the spirit of team-work and all that. Sure there would be irritations amongst members, but all teams have problems like that.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by thursday- on Sun Mar 13th at 9:21pm 2005

It's a viable idea. Has it's flaws but it would get me interested, as long as you decided to go away from the close linked Half-Life 2 theme and develop your own sort of sci-fi or other themed story.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by azelito on Sun Mar 13th at 9:31pm 2005

To thursday-:
You are truly correct. The rebel vs combine scenery wont do.
There is a mod for HL2 called Forsaken which has about the setting I would think cool for this mod. Here are two of their models:
http://moddb.com/images/cache/mods/35/3591/gallery/water_21622.jpg
http://moddb.com/images/cache/mods/35/3591/gallery/water_21625.jpg
Thats about the kind of setting Id be aiming for. Not as high-poly though since there will be up to 16 of them on screen at the same time. A commander and grunts.

Another random idea I just came up with is that the commander can pick up weapons lying around and then give them to his units. There are several ideas about weaponing systems floating around in my head atm:
Buying at beginning of each round?
Always one of each kind in the team (one rocketeer, one medic etc)?
Sending units to picking up a lying weapon by using the use key?
Hm hm.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Sun Mar 13th at 10:00pm 2005

With regard to command:

I was thinking of the "commanders view" as in addition to the on the fly first-person interface. That way you can set your initial orders in a precise way. Once you join battle however, you'd obviously have to give orders on the fly as the situation develops.

With regard to team equipment:

I was thinking you'd have several preset team equipment selections. For example you could have "Firepower", "Mobility", and "Combination", equipped squads. so that the commander can quickly select the equipment that fits his preferred style of play or the conditions of the scenario. You might also make these loadouts customizable through a separate utility (basically a buy-script generator). That way picky commanders could get exactly the loadouts they want without slowing things down in game and the inexperienced or impatient types could just pick one of the default squads.

The amount of equipment/people might be determined by a set amount of money (mapper or server determined). You could buy more soldiers if you skimp on equipment, or go for an armed-to-the-teeth few.

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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by OtZman on Sun Mar 13th at 10:08pm 2005

Perhaps let all soldiers be simple grunts from the beginning and then let the commander upgrade them before each round with money or credits earned some way.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Nickelplate on Sun Mar 13th at 10:17pm 2005

Did you all know that this was actually supposed to be a feature of HL2? there was "commander mode" that allowed you to direct your NPC's where you wanted them to go. It was single-player of course, but it's a good idea if u came up with it yourself, aze1337o.

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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Campaignjunkie on Sun Mar 13th at 11:03pm 2005

Sounds interesting. But from my impressions of the Republic Commando demo, you'll have to make it much more emergent in terms of squad actions (i.e. not just scripted places, here and there).

I think if you do intend to do some sort of mod like this, use the HL2 setting and assets. You'll want to focus on the gameplay and cool maps, not modeling/skinning/animating custom everything (especially since you'll need to generate normal maps and such, it'll take much longer). Lots of mods try to take the "blow your mind with our new unique visual brilliance" route, but tend to run out of "Steam" (ha) after a short while. Rebels vs. Combine is just fine, and there's already lots of code and models you can use.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Sun Mar 13th at 11:44pm 2005

I think CJ has the right idea, but I'd almost rather use DoD:S as the base rather than HL2. [addsig]



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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by azelito on Mon Mar 14th at 6:43am 2005

To Tracer Bullet:
Good ideas. Well have to investigate into the weaponing further.

To Nickelplate:
Aint that included in the game? I might just be fooling myself and mistaking for the alpha. In the alpha it was in.

To Campaignjunkie:
Of course, snazzy models would not be priority number one but since mappers and modelers usually arent the same guys you can have them working simultaneously (for example, I do not plan to make any maps for it).

Another idea I had would be for the commander to basicly just have a pistol and a pair of binoculars through which he could plan the moves on a bigger map. With this simple loadout he wouldnt be able to go into battle at all, and that sort of the point.
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 Re: I had an idea.
Posted by thursday- on Mon Mar 14th at 7:01am 2005

It seems like you really want to go forward with this idea. So stop press at the basics and find a coder
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