More Mod Ideas.

[Epifire]

This fell under the lines of discussion so I thought to post it here.

Just some ideas/questions to throw up in the air, like some of the other topics I had come up with before. So this time it's the concept of multiplayer mechs, and infantry battles combined. In simpler terms this would kinda be a cyber punk styled battlefield.

Ideas are centered around larger then life mechs that take use of the mid section of the map as their own personal arena. Meanwhile the infantry side of things would be able to traverse tunnels and secure bunkers to fight over objectives and assault points. The reason for the secured/indestructible bunkers is so that mechs don't own everyone. Of course this could also incorporate vantage points for infantry to battle the mechs (for the few and brave naturally).

The balancing and mech combat would be the hardest feat, as well as being tricky depending on how good your programming skills would be.

Questions reside along side of some of the technicalities. One of my main ideas was a built in detail scaling system. Theoretically the players on start could fill up the mech count and then the remaining players (by choice or not) would fight as infantry. Now an upside to the "once a mech always a mech" until respawn gives a distinct detail advantage for detail rendering.

Here's an example. Since you would spawn in a mech upon entering the cockpit you would then have a fancy detailed hud of your own, but also this could then trigger a detail cutoff for the smaller objects on the ground (only to the clients in the mechs). Meaning a big performance jump when you enter the mechs from that perspective. You could then render the closer objects with better detail and tone down the other objects of the map that are inaccessible or not within view to the mechs. This is just more black and white since I know LOD is used all the time this is just a very dependable instance where it could see much use.

I am not certain on these ideas as I know game engines vary from one to the next but that is why it's all up for discussion.

[Dives]

You just described Battlefield 2142.

[Epifire]

I know about Battlefield 2142, but I was just wondering what people thought about this in Source. When I was thinking mechs I was thinking kinda along these lines if this helps at all...

Concepts can make a difference that is just one idea.

[Jordash]

So the mechs are one team and the infantry are another?

Right now I don't understand the point, other than the infantry are trying to capture points and the mechs are trying to stop them. Your basic interest seems to be mech fights are cool, but it would interesting to fight them as infantry, maybe go back to this idea and branch a few ideas from there before deciding what you want.

It could be one person plays as a mech, hunting the humans, with different ways for them to defeat the mech but they need to work as a team. Maybe their weapons can only stun the mech, or the mech has smaller AI mechs on it's side, which it can control as a commander in some way.

Maybe the humans have to defend themselves from the mech assault and each team can have different strategies to defend or attack (rather than just a bullet fest).

Or it could even be a stealth game, the mechs are all AIs and the humans must sneak past them to get to a goal, which could even be their own mech vehicles to attack the AI mechs.

whatever you decide you have to make it your hook, multiplayer games are hard to release successfully, you need enough servers with enough people playing them to make it fun for everyone, if you don't achieve that, anyone who is interested in your game will fire it up only to find they are the only player and not be able to play.

PS I don't think detail rendering should be something you mention in your concept, or even fully consider it until you're optimising the mod, which would be when it's almost done.

[Epifire]

Suggestions and ideas are exactly what I was looking for. Since this isn't even a mod in the start yet I just wanted to hear other Source modder's opinions on the design factors and why this would or would not work. That is why I mentioned the detail rendering as a idea, as a lot of being thrown up on the table for this.

The over all design I had in mind before was a kind of setup where both teams had the same goal, and the same amount of mechs, and infantry to use. Both sides would fight for an objective (infantry could battle mechs if they used strategy). Now that I think about it there are a lot of things that could be changed, as well that AI could play a big roll in keeping a game afloat. I am happy to hear any and all suggestions regarding why you think this would or wouldn't be fun in concept.

If this did go into development my main focus was to keep the mechs/guns solid. To me a good game or mod has to have a solid play through and feel, otherwise it really isn't that fun to play (even if there are few guns or mechs). So lets just say I am willing to tackle this, with the help of some rather more experienced modders that know Source. I am not completely inexperienced in these areas, but I am willing to take much time to fill in the gaps, as I do have much time.

[Phott]

It could be one person plays as a mech, hunting the humans, with different ways for them to defeat the mech but they need to work as a team. Maybe their weapons can only stun the mech, or the mech has smaller AI mechs on it's side, which it can control as a commander in some way.

Or the mech team has one awesome mech with loads of guns on it, all are controlled by different players. So they are all in the same big mech.

The other team have to disable the mech by any means necessary, placing traps and using their weapons.

[Epifire]

It could be one person plays as a mech, hunting the humans, with different ways for them to defeat the mech but they need to work as a team. Maybe their weapons can only stun the mech, or the mech has smaller AI mechs on it's side, which it can control as a commander in some way.

Or the mech team has one awesome mech with loads of guns on it, all are controlled by different players. So they are all in the same big mech.

The other team have to disable the mech by any means necessary, placing traps and using their weapons.

If the mech was large enough you could make it a mobile spawn point for ground troops could you not? Would be interesting to have this super mech as the attacker, but it would certainly produce interesting game play.