I had an idea.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I think there's an X-Box game called "Brothers in Arms: Road to...
blahblahblah" by Gearbox that features this kind of gameplay in a WWII
setting. Not sure. But if that's the case, you might want to grab a
copy and steal some ideas from them. :wink:

How about a hgrunt vs combine mod, the HL1 grunts wanting revenge for
being completly overlooked in HL2 :biggrin: ? Those would
be pretty interesting teams and it would be an
interesting TDM mod. HL1 weapons vs HL2 weapons sounds good too. Anyone
else like the idea?

Wouldn't take much coding at all tbh, as someone said, command mode already exists in HL2. Just needs some little jobs of code to patch it up good n' proper then your set.

Brothers in Arms is coming out on the PC in the next few weeks as well,
so you can still grab a copy without needing an xbox. Oh, and its meant
to be good as well, so you might get some enjoyment as well as research
out of it :smile:

brothers in arms looks well designed but its so bland in comparison to
cod. you can order your squads about in some clever ways sure, but
thats about as deep as it seems to go, there isnt much interaction from
things within the world. At least thats what I noticed from some movies
I watched ages ago.

thursday-:

Yes, I will get to it.

Andrei:

That sounds like an awful idea, no offence.

Myrk-:

Thats what I was thinking. Anyone fairly experienced with coding should be able to handle it without a problem.

I will see about bothering with Brothers In Arms. Im not sure Im
serious enough about this to buy a game just for research. But then
again it might be good. Ill try it out.

I guess it's a matter of personal testes :smile: .

Ok, Im most likely going to make this. The game will be set somewhere
around 2000-2060 or something. The style Ill be going for will be
special army squads. Now I have some questions:

Should I go for real weapon-style or experimental type?
Im planning to only have one of each kind of weapon such as: handgun,
SMG, assualt rifle, sniper rifle, heavy assualt weapon and maybe rpg
since youre never gonna use anything but the handgun yourself. Oh, grenades aswell.

Should it have a background story? "Why is this happening" or quite simply "This is happening"?

Any name suggestions? I was thinking along the lines of SQUAD or something but any ideas are welcome, really. SQUAD isnt very good.

Any suggestions for it is welcome and if anyone knows a coder who would
be able to help, make him holla at me. Im gonna be at the look-out for
one.

Perhaps make different weapons for different teams? One with
futuristic/experimental type weapons and one with the good old usual
stuff.

Perhaps a story like the one for NS would do? Just the basics about what's going on.

Two sets would mean more work and since there are going to be more than
two teams, probably only differenced by team colour, it wouldnt fit
that well.

The main problem is I dont know whats going on, theyre simply fighting
eachother. If anyones in the mood for writing some kind of story
though, be my guest.

Cool idea.

Also instead of just being assigned a squad, you chose from a lot of different NPCs, each having their own special skills and specialties, that would add some stratergy tp the game.