New gametype idea - any UScript coders interested?

[DaveW]

After playing a bit of KeyCo-Op I came up with an idea for a new gametype/mutator style thing. The current title I have dubbed for it is Evolution, but that seems kinda obvious.

The idea is based around co-operative play, a group of players must defend a fortification from attack - but the enemies do not randomly spawn - they evolve from lesser species. So, at the start of a game - the enemies are all fish - accumulating in any vat of water they can find. The players can take the opportunity to fortify their main position or to destroy as much of the enemy as they can, which will slow down the evolution process. Fish turn into pupae, pupae turn into Skarrj etc.

When a species grows large enough they create a hive which will slowly reproduce more enemies to take over the fort. This will be defended by a greater enemy, the Queen. This must be killed to erradicate the species for good (though if lower species are left, they will evolve again).

Blockades such as concrete barriers can be placed around the world which can be picked up and dropped to slow enemies down. These will spawn throughout the map randomly as the game progresses (generally, as more species grow - you get more barriers). Weapons will be distributed as normal, but as species overrun the fort they will of course be harder to reach.

I am thinking of adding custom weapons into the game, I have a number of models from another project that can be used - only about 5 'extra' weapons in total but enough to make the game play more interesting. Trip mines are also a thought.


The issue here is that I am not a coder, I'm an artist. While I can provide weapons, additional skins and other models (blockades), I can't do any of the code required to get this to work. I have an idea of how it would work, however.

When a species reaches a set number, a 'countdown' begins. If the number remains high enough for a certain amount of time, then the next species evolves. Hopefully this would create a dynamic gameplay type, with multiple branches of evolution (so one species *could* evolve into 3 different enemies).


If any coders would be interested in helping me with this, let me know - just reply Any comments from players is appreciated too - this was just a thought but I think it could work.

Oh, also to show that I am at least a half capable artist here is a project I run for Deus Ex, New Vision.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

I like this idea, it's never been done before. Such a task should be relatively easy to accomplish and we can probably put it all in a single mutator for xCoop, rather than building an entirely new gametype but you'd obviously need new maps for it

[Spike]

Sounds fun.

[DaveW]

I like this idea, it's never been done before. Such a task should be relatively easy to accomplish and we can probably put it all in a single mutator for xCoop, rather than building an entirely new gametype but you'd obviously need new maps for it

I had a few ideas for existing maps that could be modified for it - Robert Wey's maps (Gotliebs Retreat, Camelot, Konosus etc.) would all do well for it. Edencaves might..can't remember a lot of Unreal maps though but there's plenty that would work as is.

Art question though, what's the maximum texture size Unreal Engine 1 supports? I'm used to working with 1.5 which supports up to 1024 but I'm not sure on Unreal's limitations.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

non s3tc is 1024x1024, s3tc is 2048x2048 iirc

[DaveW]

Ok then, I hope this works - here's the revolver (one 512X512, one 256X256):


I also have weapons I did for Deus Ex's HDTP project (i.e. high resolution versions of some of Deus Ex's guns) that we could use - but I can't show them yet because HDTP isn't released. I have two types of Rocket Launcher, and automatic shotgun, and a flamethrower.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

damn man.. good job.

I would love that revolver mesh in unreal

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

by the way.. before I start making a preliminary version of this.. what should we call it?

[DaveW]

Unreal : Contagion sounds fairly cool to me.

I had the idea for 3 seperate categories for enemies: Land, Air and Water.

Air would evolve from: Flies > Manta > Gasbag
Water would evolve from: Fish > Devilfish > Slith > Pupae > (Land)
Land would evolve from Water: Skaarj / Krall / Mercenary > Higher level

So then if you get fully infested, you have to fight back all the species.

Since each species will have it's own hive, air is a bit of a problem since the hive would be somewhere "off" the map. Maybe the queen acts as a mobile hive that you have to find and kill, as she occasionally flies about the map.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

Should the air creatures evolve as an offshoot of Pupae instead of into skaarj? Or just have the flies produce really slowly to offset that they'll be there the entire game?

Any more insights from anyone?

[DaveW]

Second, I think - so yeah, the air species develop slower. The air are sort of an 'unrelated' species to water and land, they're supposed to be more an 'annoyance'.

[[§Ŕ] ŤhěxĐâŕkśîđěŕ]

My two cents:

I think that DevilFish should evolve into Slith and Pupae, not into Slith and then into Pupae.

Or Slith directly into Skaarj, but in that case Skaarj would spawn Pupae every now and then.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

finished creating the base spawning code for the Water stuff

It works in game but it needs more fine tuning, the fish and things don't wander like i'd like to. The "barriers" aren't in yet so I cant make them want to destroy them or attack them. Also looks kind of funny since they just appear in the water lol

Gonna work on land next

[DaveW]

Awesome I'll start work on modelling some barriers then, I'll post the meshes up once I've made a decent amount.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

When you're making the barriers, can you make a roughly equvilant t3d brush file so I can try to give them brush collision instead of that crap ass cylinder collision? They have to be pretty basic low ish poly or else unreal rejects the collision, plus no one will actually see it, it will be totally invisible due to DT_Mesh

[DaveW]

I will try, not much experience with the Unreal engine really (like I said I worked on Deus Ex HDTP, but someone else did all the Unreal-y stuff for me).

Some barriers (barrel is a reskinned sludge barrel, just to look prettier):

[Pyro]

i removed my post cus your skinning quality easely outmatches mine, so my XM8 skin and the arms suck ass in comparison with yours.

but if your insterested.. here it is..

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3932/xm81.png
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/340/xm82.png
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3803/xm83.png
(1024x1024)
I was kinda stunned by your revolver and tought my rifle wouldnt stand a chance and would probably be rejected.
and, if you would like this rifle, would you pelase send me that arm set , so it matches?

or, ill will hand you the xm8 model and you make the skin for it, give it back to me, and ill animate it and import it.

Nevermind.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

ha, the barrel won't be a problem to make the collision for even myself. I'm just amazingly unskilled at mapping

Most of my time now is trying to figure out how to correctly make these pawns want to attack such things without going too hackery

Also not sure where to place the flying monster spawn point, maybe I can just give them a finite amount of spawns rather than an actual "hive" to come from, or possibly adjust the amount that spawn vs how well the players are doing with killing the other creatures

[DaveW]

Yeah I don't think the air could really have a hive, since it'd be off the map somewhere (like in Camelot, it would probably be in the cliffs - but then how would anyone get over there?). I'd say just make them randomly spawn in the sky, no one will really notice.

Edit:
The revolver is animated but I'm having some issues with getting the animations into Milkshape 3d for exporting (I animated using a very un-supported but nice program). I'll have a go at exporting some barriers.

Edit2:
See what you can do with this. Not sure if any of it'll work to be honest, but - there you go
I can't make T3D's because the only way I can see of doing it is having the model in the engine and building a brush over it - and I have no idea how big the model is going to be.

[Pyro]

Yeah I don't think the air could really have a hive, since it'd be off the map somewhere (like in Camelot, it would probably be in the cliffs - but then how would anyone get over there?). I'd say just make them randomly spawn in the sky, no one will really notice.

Edit:
The revolver is animated but I'm having some issues with getting the animations into Milkshape 3d for exporting (I animated using a very un-supported but nice program). I'll have a go at exporting some barriers.

Edit2:
See what you can do with this. Not sure if any of it'll work to be honest, but - there you go
I can't make T3D's because the only way I can see of doing it is having the model in the engine and building a brush over it - and I have no idea how big the model is going to be.

What program are you using? if its Maya or 3dsmax, get ActorX.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ActorX.htm ... %20Plugins

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/ActorX.htm ... %20Plugins

...its skeletal, right?
else, if you cant figure it out, you might want me to animate in 3ds max and give you PSK and PSA files.

Also, DXF is an alternative for T3D, since UED2.0 accepts them both as if they are the same.

[DaveW]

No, I have no idea how to animate in Max so I took the model out of it, brought it into Milkshape 3d for rigging, then a program called "CharacterFX" for animating. I've done it before for Unreal and it worked.

Unfortunately the animation looks very pretty in CharacterFX because it's interpolating some of the frames, so the gun smooths in and out of each position. When I bring it back into Milkshape3d it doesn't do that so the animations 'work' - but they look horribly robotic.

[Pyro]

i could try to do it in 3dsmax.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

That's really strange, I wonder why that is.

Going to import the barriers now and script some land creatures to destroy them, perhaps give them a list of "Prime Directives" like robocop

[DaveW]

Well the animation in CharacterFX is here:
Youtubes
Youtube chops the end of the video off unfortunately, but the gun drops from view (like how the Automag reloads).

It's not great but if you think you can animate similar to that (i.e. fairly non-robotic), you're welcome to try.

[[]KAOS[]Casey]

wow darn man.. thats some great animation

I see that's a skeletal mesh

227 supports skeletal meshes, so if you can export them as PSA/PSK correctly we can use those but we will need to use 227 instead, which won't necessarily be a bad thing, 227 doesn't have a lot of 227 only mods