Mod Ideas
I agree that ongoing discussions will need to span multiple post and carry on forever. But I'd like to have just one post for now with Ideas for Mods that we can pursue, else everything will get lost in the jumble of brilliance that is Tentacle Monster Lair.
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posted by skaffen at 12/05/2004 01:32:00 pm
10 Comments:
Follow on from Stomps suggestion: Butchers (resembling a certain band we saw not long ago?), Godzillas and any other weird shit that would be fun to model. We can use them for deathmatch and also make a wack single player city of slaughter.
Akira rip-off neo-tokyo universe. Mentioned this to Stomp a little while ago. Use the atmosphere, generic characters and weapons from the film. Plus possibly the vehicles. Deathmatch models and a single player apocalyptic extranaganza. Bikes, hoverthingies and way too many cops and futuristic soldier dudes. Fuck the psyonics off, gimme a lazer rifle.
Bubblegum universe rip-off. Powersuits and heavy guns versus fucked up mutant boomers. Would need to be thrid-person and a cunt to make if we want to include the kung-fu moves...
The akira one I don't think has enough to draw on - I'd think about merging it with the Bubblegum one so you have one "world" with a shitload to draw from in terms of resource material. So you have knight sabers and their motor suits or whatever and bike gangs (clown gang etc) to choose from for players, boomers and other bike gangs for enemies (and cops, corp troops etc) and loads of ref material for the city and roads (Akira, jap comics, BGCrisis vids, BGC comics.)
The martial arts moves I don't think would be as hard as you'd think. Just establish what damage certain moves do, and I'll whip up the animated sequnces in Motionbuilder. You're not talking about Tekken type detail in terms of blocking etc, just rad moves doing certain damage. Give it flair in the moves so you do them to see them as much as the damage they dish out.
Do you want to do a silly mod first, or start with a mini-level in this Neo-Tokyo setting, which can be expanded on as we develop skills and a library of assets? 2nd option probably a good one, as anything we do adds to our hand for a big mod later.
- Could aim initially for a stretch of highway, with 2 characters. Nail that, get everything working, and in the background start thinking about what the next one will be.
DUDE!! We should end up doing a Motorball Mod, from Battle Angel Alita !!! You could set it up couldn't you, with a motorball that jumps around if you drop it, and scripts for counting laps etc? Something to think about. I would fucking love to do that, make every single motorball competitor from the whole series. Maybe after Neotokyo.
There's also that robot sumo event... That would be a cool mini-mod
To clarify:
I suggest our first mission be a highway level in Neotokyo, drawing from Akira, BGC and whatever else gives you the jollies (GITS, Appleseed etc.)
Characters:
2 characters to high detail, with bikes
For example
- Tetsu from Akira with his signature red jacket and bike. (He could find a caltrop whip, for throwing on the road to puncture tires. Also for whipping people's ass.)
- A clown biker, the big fat one on the huge bike
(I get to do the tummy dynamics haha. Bags he has a meatcleaver.) Could the bikes have nitro? Could you find nitro capsules, like you find ammo?
Setting:
Several blocks of fairly plain highway, maybe with a tunnel. Some debris, maybe an offramp leading up to an overpass which then spits you back onto the highway going the opposite direction. Crash barriers which you can drive through down the center lane - it would be cool if these smash and scatter slowing your speed and maybe doing some vehicle damage, but you can still keep going.
Gameplay:
- Could you have several objectives to choose from on the same map? Race, Duel, capture the flag?
- Skaffen the highway would still have a lot of scope for strong level design. Take into account sometimes you will be on foot, others on a vehicle. So block out stretches of highway with obstacles/whatever, but also more "detailed" areas for on foot (service tunnels?)
Execution:
I think the level design could be executed in layers, so we start by building the characters, vehicles and the basic highway with overpass & tunnel or whatever, but no small service tunnels or AI traffic etc yet.
- OK done we have one done - Race mission
Then we go in and detail it up for other missions.
Rationale:
To do this properly could realistically take 6 months. I think it's a reasobale achievable goal with a tangible attainable result, a better idea than a larger scale mod which we could start but run out of steam, working for 12 months chipping away at a big mod only to run out of steam when there's no end in sight.
This mini-mod would let us establish all the workflow, allow us to set a standard for ourselves and find our feet with the technical aspects, and focus and give it a bit of polish too.
By polish I mean:
Physics, traffic lights and AI traffic, detailed characters and vehicles, attention to detail on environment modeling and texturing (graffiti 8ball.)
The next mod would, believe me, be a lot faster/easier/smoother for us. So I think this would be a great exercise for starters.
The next mod after that could expand that highway into a larger scale Neotokyo level(s).
- The highway could be planned to be made from modular sections, so making the city later you can make large sections of standard highway by just slotting the bits together. Same with backdrop city geometry.
On a side note, with HL2 physics you could do wicked psionics surely? "Mana" type power bar, those spherical area effect mind blasts - this is going to be COOL.
Capture the Flag:
The "flag" is a card, if you get it back to "base" (like an ATM machine or something) you can activate the orbital laser from Akira and fry the other guy. Sweet! Cut to animated sequence which I make with no pants on...
Yes, I agree entirely.
Highway Duel is a great idea, as you said there's scope for people on foot, heaps of room for the bikes (which are an absolute must), and ideally suited to be modular sections for future mapping exploits.
I anticipate that the adding of psionics, though ideal for the engine and VERY much desirable, will need to wait as they'll be a complete cunt on top of everything else. It's like the game engine was built with psionics in mind (pun not intended), I'm just scared of the scope of figuring them out. Maybe v2?
So, I propose we aim down the path of initially building a one-on-one duel down a neo-tokyo highway with motorbikes, melee and handheld weapons. It's a basic, yet complete mod that's pretty much set up for a second, enhanced version, like saying 'to be continued...'
Highway Duel it is.
Definately great idea to start with simple stripped-down "v1." We can concentrate on getting it working and looking good. That will keep us busy for months. Finish 2 characters only initially, and two bikes.
So buildings are props only, play area is big long highway. It can be pretty plain initially, with detail added v2. Getting lights etc looking cool will be enough work.
Could you do a "Scrapyard" mod which works like this?
(Or "GUNM" or "GUN DREAM" - the literal translation on Battle Angel Alita)
You start as a dodgey cyborg, and get paid jobs then you upgrade your bits. Get into bar brawls etc. Fight rival gangs. Later you can try that robot arena duel they have televised, it's like on a giant sumo ring, on TV in pubs etc. You could get sponsorship and buy a huge sick crab body etc.
And later, mod up getting into Motorball.
As a Mod it would get a lot of attention, because James Cameron's feature (Battle Angel Alita) will be all over the media by the time we got anything fit to release.
What are the copyright issues with modding? Can you get away with it? Non-profit only right? *Insert wet fart noise*
:)
Walking home today I was thinking about the psi thing and how it could work in a sensible fashion, i.e. as a special ability that cannot be used often enough to make the weapons etc redundant. It would build up very slowly as a mana type thing, climbing faster when people fuck you up or you see people you know get killed etc. Once it's big enough you can wipe people out, or use it to pick up objects and throw them around a bit, do the screamy thing from Akira as an area effect, shit like that. If you wait longer you get more power when you use it, so you can throw around larger shit (I pictured a petrol truck :)) but then you gotta wait for it to juice up again.
All of these 'growth' ideas require extensive amounts of time in game and would thus only be suited to single-player mods, as no-one likes deathmatch rounds that last longer than a few minutes.
To get up to speed and figure out how we go working on this stuff I think we should stick to a multiplayer mod, avoiding the whole AI and extensive reprogramming issue for a little while.
But, the scrap-yard a fucking cool idea. Turns single player into a development campaign, as opposed to a tunnel-runner. Character growth, choice, alternate strategies as a result, it all adds up to one heck of a journey in digital love land. Like Deus-Ex and shit.
I suggest the following
Bad guys:
Fat Clown
Biker dude with Kiss facepaint? or a dude that looks like Lobo? Other
suggestions?
Good guys:
Tetsuo ripoff
Hot chick (I am not flexible on this, she must be a chick and she must
be hot. Alita reference material may be helpful)
4 bikes:
Clown beastie
something new
Akira red penis bike
something new
I guess this depends on how long the models and animation take for
them, but it'll probably take less time to design, model and animate
two dudes per team than it will for me to figure out the code for them
and the physics engine for the bikes.
As per the suggestions from yourself and Valve software, I'll probably
use basic mock-ups to test with, i.e one big flat piece of road with
no scenery and some low-low-low-poly models till I figure ou the code,
then it will be a simple case of substitution on the models and making
some spiffy levels.
We need to think about weapons too. Weapons for on the bikes and
weapons for melee combat. Only basic stuff req at this time I rekon,
two weapons each so four in total per character. Plus generics like
grenades.
I would like, if you guys are happy, to take on the weapon modelling
from your designs, it's a small enough component for me to do while
learning the tools and animation stuff. But I don't mind too much
sharing everything out.
I guess we should define a list of what we're making first round, then
assign each component so there's no overlap unless assistance is
requested.
As I predicted, posts are disappearing from memory in bottomless comments lists. Even though you told me you were making this post as you did it, it took me 4 hours of hitting refresh to realise you might have buried it here.
Anyway, all sooking aside, can you do heat-seeking (slow) missiles on the bikes? I am picturing ones which fly kind of spiralling through the air, don't know how easy that would be but we might as well aim high for an awesome mod. If you establish the motion path, then you can just have another line hanging off that, which revolves around the motion path as it moves towards the target. Then have the missile on the end of that 2nd line at right angles to the main path of motion. I think it would be doable, might require cheating with invisible placeholder objects.
I keep picturing a cybered-up Lara Croft, I don't know why. There must be something wrong with me. Anyway, Skaffen do you have any other ideas apart from Alita being reference? The Apple Geeks guys draw some great chicks, check the wallpapers section for a big tron version of a robot chick. (A lot of detail, something like that would be rad detailed up on the model with normal maps. Could have exposed robot bits like Shirow GITS art) Eightball might have to handle that concept art, I can't draw, let alone draw chicks.
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