The Mapcore Mod Team

    Quote from blackdog

    If you are going for the (sci-fi) adventure game, what about a situation where instead of having no people around, or them being dead, what if they are frozen in time? In case of a gameplay using the time forward/rewind you would have people walking and doing stuff when triggered. Could use for puzzles (like going through the underground gates) and lots of stuff.

    Still think that a kid as character would offer best opportunity for puzzles and non-violent gameplay.

    What if kid meets himself in the future?


    I fucking love this idea. Like the people are frozen and you move fast.


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    And solving problems!

    Happy the idea has been well received, just spitballing really. We can try to think this through with a bit more care and see if we can get something out of it, I'd be very happy to be able to give a contribution

    Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

    I have no desire to forgot about the shared doc and what we've been up too. However, I see that it's driving Source people away and Source is strong here. I would love to keep those people involved as well. So I was wondering, we have Black Mesa and there have been several attempts at recreating Opposing Force (with one still in the works) but no one every tried to recreate Blue Shift (as far as I know). If I'm not mistaken modders are allowed to use the assets created by the Black Mesa team. Blue Shift isn't that big (but still loads of work) but we are not obligated to do the entire thing. There would be no discussion about setting, story, etc. It would be a great way for the Source crowd to shine. We could assign a chapter or part of a chapter to mapper and people could work on their own (as recommended earlier). I think it's a win win situation. What do you guys think?


    I there is enough interest I'll split it into a separate topic - doc.


    If there's enough talent & interest, how about Blue Shift for Source & UE4?

    Putting this out there for consideration http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/wol…ess-is-more.php


    The most appealing idea discussed so far for me has been Blue Shift - a dual project for Source & UE4 feels best course & suit expertise and talent.


    One thing I'd like to add though.


    There is a L4D2 mod by Rayman1103, called somewhat unsurprisingly 'Rayman1103's Mutation Mod' http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…text=rayman1103


    Buried among them is one called Co-op versus (CVS) . If you're not familiar with it, it allows you to play as you would survivors in regular L4D2, but also as infected like in versus. Each map is played twice, the intention is swapping teams after each is played. However, you don't need 8 players and can set up your own server with friends to play thus avoiding the messiness of the hoi polloi. You can opt to play as survivors, split the teams 2/2 or as SI. As survivors, the mod plays something between advanced & expert, a lot faster with a little less damage from the infected, but a faster respawn rate for SI to make up the difference. Playing as SI is a gleeful exercise in tormenting survivor bots as they make their way to the safe room.


    It may not be for everyone, but my friends & I have come to play CVS as SI more than regular L4D2. Our option is to play with no tanks as we found it too easy to kill the survivors & also the rest of the team basically watch. Either way, if you can try it with some mates I suggest you stick with it and see how it feels. I suggest No Mercy as a go to campaign or Dark Parish to see how it plays on a modded campaign. Would love to know what people thought of it though, good or bad.


    The point is, as an alternative to making a regular campaign for survivors, is a CVS campaign an option potentially worth considering?

    So is anything happening in the team, haven't checked the document recently and I haven't had time to insert the time freeze idea.

    Quote from TheOnlyDoubleF

    We could use these people as in the memory remix sequences of Remember Me or as in Quantum Break

    I have just seen some gameplays of a remember Me, don't remember now the remix… but yeah, being frozen like in Quantum, but you actually can move items to your advantage, like in the Quicksilver sequence, seems cool at this stage.

    Only the DoubleF responded to the last shared doc. I had combined everyone's pitch into this:


    Sprony’s Pitch (a combination of everyone’s suggestions):


    You are a young engineer, travelling space towards your new job in helping set up a colony on a distant planet. You awake from hypersleep but you discover that ships systems are offline. Only parts of the ships run on backup power. The entire ships seems to be consumed by darkness. You are starting to get a bad feeling about this.


    You set out to find your locker so you can gear up. You’ll also need to find and activate your personal still unnamed robot assistant. After managing both it’s up to you to find out what happened, restore the ship and fight the darkness.


    Translated to gameplay this intro is meant to mimic that of Half Life. It’s non violent, first person and let’s you get accustomed to the world, movement, interacting and so on. Activating your robot is an important moment because he makes sure you are not alone and brings much needed comic relief. The real adventure starts here.


    The overall story is that an unknown organism, a black tar like substance, has taken over the ship, disabled it and consumed it in darkness. It’s up to player to defeat this darkness, rescue the remaining crew and continue the journey.


    Gameplay is based on 3 key elements:


    Exploration: Exploring the ship, reading PDA’s and in general finding out what happened. But also, find new gear, improve your current tool set so that you have more possibilities into solving puzzles.


    Puzzles: You need to restore a lot of systems to get the ship working again. To do this, the player needs to solve a wide variety of puzzles using his tools and his robot combined with agility for several platform segments.


    Combat: There will be no guns or extensive combat mechanics. The darkness however is an enemy you must battle. This uses the same principles as Alan Wake except you are not using guns but are constantly upgrading your flashlight instead to fight off the darkness. For instance, the darkness could have infected other crew members and have them turn on you or it could take control of large machinery and throw it at you, etc.


    The endgame would be to beat the darkness, restoring the last thing so that the ship is fully operational again, wake up your surviving crew members and continue your journey. We can find excuses why it’s impossible to wake everyone else up sooner and make up a reason why you alone did wake up (like, the darkness knocked something over, crashing your pod and starting the emergency sequence. Or, similar to Pandorum, have it so that it’s your crew rotation to wake up along side with your robot or have the robot wake you up, etc).


    Visuals:


    The environment is that of your typical sci fi horror flick. It oozes with dread and it must create suspense for the player when he ventures into the unknow. This suspense is the perfect excuse for your robot to take swings at all known horror cliches. Just like it was done in the Scream movies. It made fun of the genre but was in essence still a slasher flick. The big difference being that our robot has some serious issues which will hopefully cause a lot of comic relief.


    Every time you clear an area from the darkness the environment changes accordingly. It goes from dark to light. Again stressing out the difference between the two. The whole game keeps playing with these two opposites. Now the environment should give you a warm and safe feeling.


    Audience:


    This should have indy written all over it. It should be a small adventure that doesn’t take too long. The best example for this Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Perfect in length, beautiful story and great gameplay. Our target audience should be people who in general prefer indy titles, adventure and platform players.

    Hey ! I like that idea . Do you have an example of how the robot would be integrated into the puzzle solving bit (just asking because it can be a bit tricky to get right since it's going to be A.I. driven).


    So would "typical sci fi flick" mean... Dead Space type environment and could it be interesting to go for something a little more stylized (high detail stylized, Borderlands-ish) ?

    Quote from SuperDuperYeah

    Hey ! I like that idea . Do you have an example of how the robot would be integrated into the puzzle solving bit (just asking because it can be a bit tricky to get right since it's going to be A.I. driven).


    So would "typical sci fi flick" mean... Dead Space type environment and could it be interesting to go for something a little more stylized (high detail stylized, Borderlands-ish) ?


    Think Killzone: Shadowfall drone sequences. You can give it simple orders to hack. Something in that direction.


    Yes, Dead Space with twist is what I had in mind. Especially a big contrast between the dark and the light.


    Quote from D3ads

    Will there be a rogue AI on board that tries to kill you?


    This ain't System Shock

    I like the idea a lot! But. It seems a friggin huge project to tackle (in so few people).

    Just the robot part, to make it successful in the end, requires great writing and superlative voice acting. We would need an awful lot of lines.

    If this is where the effort is gonna go, I would isolate a small sequence and base mechanic and build it to see if it works, then take it from there.

    How much overtaken should the ship be? I'm thinking of how much the player would be supposed to "shoot", as I read this, I would expect to activate lights to clear environment, and the gun to stop the live enemies.

    Robot sounds great, to differentiate it from other examples and make it the most fun, I would have it:

    * follow the player with standard ai behaviour for normal traversing

    * follow simple, single waypoints (go there, idle or execute an action)

    * be controllable with a remote - creates more varied puzzles, increases exploration time (could even be that you need to retrieve its ai chips before making it fully working).

    Additionally be triggered for some scripted events. We could extrapolate some concepts like Asimov's robot laws (comic factor due to extremisation of scifi staples) and make it that for eg the robot welds a couple doors isolating the player in a very confined space, making it a puzzle to leave the area.

    At this stage I'd think that it's imperative that the player retrieves the robot as one of the first objectives, making the robot already independent and active doesn't seem right.

    Ps: I forgot to mention the biggest concern i have with this concept: the comical aspect.

    I thought the idea of doing a lighthearted game was encompassing: that the project would be fully comical, like Monkey Island; the way is shaping up makes me think that there are some comical accents (contained situations)… that we are missing something that would make the whole situation funny.

    Am I getting the whole concept wrong?

    I didn't had the time to reply about that PDA idea because I reached the thread just after sex.


    If the story is set in a future where mankind can travel through space I think that we have already connect our brain to computer or Google (if I might say). So I think the whole idea of a PDA is to me outdated. I think its the level designer's job to take care about environmental storytelling.

    Quote from blackdog

    Ps: I forgot to mention the biggest concern i have with this concept: the comical aspect.

    I thought the idea of doing a lighthearted game was encompassing: that the project would be fully comical, like Monkey Island; the way is shaping up makes me think that there are some comical accents (contained situations)… that we are missing something that would make the whole situation funny.

    Am I getting the whole concept wrong?


    The way I envisioned it is as a sort of lighter Monkey Island type environment stylistically (more flat shading/painterly textures) whereas the lighting, particles, and maybe some organic meshes address the more "darkness" aspect. I was thinking along the lines of Ico a little bit (although because its in space this might be a little more difficult to pull off due to possibly less contrasting/complimentary color palettes). As for the little robot helper that screws up on occasion -- I had a Wall-E type robot in mind (cute, cuddly, messes up a lot while just being good intentioned and trying to help, also has an affinity for collecting certain items).


    Okage: Shadow King might be another game to look at for some environment/artistic style directions as well.

    Cool Sigma, thanks for the additional info

    My concern is not so much the art, which with the talents here I'm sure it's possible to pull off whatever it's decided to be appropriate, but the core concept and situation.

    As I read the pitch, I'm just concerned that the comic relief will be through the robot, its dialogues and actions, which might be cool and could be pulled off brilliantly… it's just I thought that the way people were talking about it, they wanted to do something comic to the roots. To achieve that I feel there is something still missing. Also pitch makes me think bit too much to Dead Space/Alone In The Dark, which doesn't help. That's all

    We may need to find a gameplay mechanic that is sufficient to itself like the portal gun in Portal, so we can all see basic situation and iterate on that. Like this, everyone could have the same vision of the game and with could help each other more easily on our levels.

    Well I've started learning the unreal engine.


    First impression is : Wow!


    It's pretty amazing how much you can seem to do with blueprints. I'm having a bit of a challenge deciding what I should do in code and what I should do with blueprints.

    Quote from AlexM

    Well I've started learning the unreal engine.


    First impression is : Wow!


    It's pretty amazing how much you can seem to do with blueprints. I'm having a bit of a challenge deciding what I should do in code and what I should do with blueprints.


    The great part is you don't have to choose if you go the blueprints route (I think that's right but double check me) because it still allows for C++ coding.

    Quote from TheOnlyDoubleF

    We may need to find a gameplay mechanic that is sufficient to itself like the portal gun in Portal, so we can all see basic situation and iterate on that. Like this, everyone could have the same vision of the game and with could help each other more easily on our levels.

    Ye about that, to not feel like we are copying Alan Wake/Alone In The Dark I thought to propose a sort of electric/chemical gun to kill the alien matter, instead of light… but that would kill the whole nice concept of having to restore power to the ship and clear massive areas.

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