New Mod Idea

[Fingernail]

I came up with a great mod idea with one of my friends today.

 

Now, obviously, now is NOT THE TIME to be thinking of new projects, especially considering the amount of time I already don't have to spend working on the Dark Mod as it is. I've got as full a plate as someone of my age can reasonably expect, so don't jump down my throat on that score. No, you know me. This isn't a fly-by-night idea. It's an idea I think has serious merit and one that I will seriously consider working on, in, say, a year's time or something.

 

Why else would I post it here?

 

It also depends on the right game to come out to make the concept work. That is, the right modding platform. I'm thinking UT 2007 might not be a bad goal, since it's got all the lol nextgen graphics going for it, plus the supposedly decent modability and inevitable popularity.

 

It's that or another Doom 3-related title like Quake Wars.

 

Well, you're still reading this for a reason, but I didn't want to blow it for say, 4 paragraphs. But I can only keep up this artificial suspense for so long. I guess I'm going to have to share my idea now.

 

It's a FPS team-based multiplayer medieval castle seige game, featuring multiple classes of attacker and defender, seige weaponry, boiling oil, etc.

 

Basically I think defending/attacking a medieval castle with an "army" on your side would be great fun from a first-person perspective, which I don't think has really ever been done yet.

 

So quite aside from this one thread, I'm going to box all my giddy excitement up and I won't even think about starting this until 2007.

 

Or rather, I would not object to someone else taking the idea and running with it, but I know that's not really how these things work. I mean, the Thief-redux concept was easy. Here, I guess I'd have to prove to other people that this concept could be fun.

[Subjective Effect]

Hmmm. Hmmm. If you mean a 2 round match, with teams playing attacker and defender I say yes. That would be fantastic. There are soooo many things you could do with this. And you could have loads of different map types with fixed or optional emplacements. Run with it, this can go places.

[Fingernail]

yeah, exactly.

 

Exactly.

[obscurus]

That sounds like a fairly simple mod of the basic assault mode in UT. Actually, if you did it with an engine that can handle a huge number of entities on screen at once, like the Serious Sam 2 engine, you could have collosal battles, where team members command units in an army. Hang on a minute, though - what you have described is being done here: http://projectoffset.com/game.html

[Fingernail]

nah, it'd be much more focused than that. Pure, preferably historic, castle or fortification-based seiges.

 

Could do city assaults too, I suppose.

[Subjective Effect]

If you had a dsictinct class system, points allocation for emplacements/engines and, impotantly, deformable and destructable scenery and buildings it would be a winner.

[Ishtvan]

Oh, oh, I call dibs on being one of the 20 guys swinging the battering ram at the door until they get hot oil poured on them!

[sparhawk]

Well, you're still reading this for a reason, but I didn't want to blow it for say, 4 paragraphs.

 

You really should stop nipping from that bottle under your desk. You are blathering for four pages already and then THIS?

 

It's a FPS team-based multiplayer medieval castle seige game, featuring multiple classes of attacker and defender, seige weaponry, boiling oil, etc.

 

You mean Stronghold?

 

So quite aside from this one thread, I'm going to box all my giddy excitement up and I won't even think about starting this until 2007.

 

I guess it could be fun. Don't know wether Stronghold has a multiplayer as I never played this. The biggest challenge is the gamemechanics. Obviously the defender has a big advatnage in a computer environment, that real defenders did not have. You can't starve them, which is one of the primary tactics when besieging a fortified castle.

 

Or rather, I would not object to someone else taking the idea and running with it, but I know that's not really how these things work. I mean, the Thief-redux concept was easy. Here, I guess I'd have to prove to other people that this concept could be fun.

 

I'm definitely out. I already have plans for a new game, which involves SciFi, robots and will be most likely done on Doom 3 (or maybe Quake 4) engine. I don't think I want to swtich to Unreal 2015 or something, because I already know Doom and this is a big advantage. And of course all the other advatnages that it has as well. The graphics of Unreal will sure be stunning, but that is not enough to create a good game.

[SneaksieDave]

Sounds a bit like Siege for Hexen2 (unofficial addon by Mike Gummelt at Raven) was supposed to be. I never played it, but I heard it was fun. And I'm sure it would be. They had catapults knocking down stone walls and everything, supposedly.

[obscurus]

...The biggest challenge is the gamemechanics. Obviously the defender has a big advatnage in a computer environment, that real defenders did not have. You can't starve them, which is one of the primary tactics when besieging a fortified castle....

 

 

Well, theres the rub, really. A realistic, pure mediaeval castle siege would take months to complete in real time. IIRC, some sieges in the Middle Ages took ages before the defenders ran out of food. I think you should kive the attackers an edge by letting them catapault rotting, anthrax infested animal carcasses into the defender's castle. Hey I just thought of a mod idea: Lob The Cow, where you get to hurl unsuspecting livestock at your enemy...

[Domarius]

Waiting isn't fun. I'd say - think of some other seige related element and bend the rules a bit so the defenders don't have the "no starving" advantage.

[obscurus]

Giving the attackers seige engines that would alow the attackers to breach the castle walls relatively quickly would be the only realistic way to balance the gameplay. That or allowing the attacking force to have greater numbers, or weapons/technology that enabled them to breach the castle walls easily (within reason of course).

 

Otherwise the game could go on indefinately if the defenders can't be starved out, or slowly poisoned (which is how real seiges worked). The other thing is to give the defenders a finite supply of weapons like arrows and boiling oil - in RL they would eventually run out and have no way of replenishing them, while the attackers would have a potentially limitless supply. In real-life seiges, the only way the defenders could hold out is if the attacking force had limited time, resources and/or manpower to wait until the defenders ran out of food/water/materials/weapons.

 

When the Romans beseiged fortified cities etc, they would often simply surround the fort, and then wait for everyone inside to die or give up. In the meantime, they would completely despoil the surrounding countryside and farmlands, so that even if the attackers did pull out, the defenders would have little to go back to when the seige was over.

[sparhawk]

Hey I just thought of a mod idea: Lob The Cow, where you get to hurl unsuspecting livestock at your enemy...

 

This sounds funny. Especially if you can grab everything in your gameworld, including other players.

[_Atti_]

http://www.taleworlds.com/

 

check this game out.. i tried only the demo version but its really fun..

Its an rpg based halfly on player skills and halfly on stat points, you can build an army for yourself and get into rather big battles...i guess there are sieges too in the full version..

[SneaksieDave]

Weird, what is this? It's not MMORPG, right? I've never heard of it, and if it's what I'm thinking/hoping it is (ongoing RPG/RTS mix?), it could be the first of this kind that I'd actually be interested in. Looking at the forums, they have a LOT of posts. Might have to look further into this...

 

Edit: this is becoming more and more interesting

[Fingernail]

Stronghold an FPS?

[sxotty]

http://www.taleworlds.com/

 

check this game out.. i tried only the demo version but its really fun..

Its an rpg based halfly on player skills and halfly on stat points, you can build an army for yourself and get into rather big battles...i guess there are sieges too in the full version..

It is quite a fun little waste of time, but there is no story and it gets kind of boring after a while. Still it really is a cool game the mounted fighting is awesome, the most unique coolest thing I have seen.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

I think it would be really fun to do a Western-themed game, maybe have it be more open ended ala 'GUN,' but properly open ended rather than restrictive and rather small as that game was. If it was from the FPS perspective, even better. Think "Oblivion" but set in the wild west.

[Maximius]

I think it would be really fun to do a Western-themed game, maybe have it be more open ended ala 'GUN,' but properly open ended rather than restrictive and rather small as that game was. If it was from the FPS perspective, even better. Think "Oblivion" but set in the wild west.

 

 

I would dearly love to see such a game, especially one influenced by the spaghetti westerns. BTW has anyone gave GUN a try?

[god_is_my_goldfish]

I did, it's nice, but rather lacking. It's actually less open-ended and free-form than GTA3 was, and on the PC it's waaay too easy to beat.

 

It's biggest issue is how limited it's scope seemed to be, I mean, the entire area of the game could have fit into just one of GTA3's three cities. The cities and the AI were also rather bland, with little to no reason to explore (not that there was anything there to explore anyhow). I'de say wait for it to become a bargain bin game before getting it.

[Darkness_Falls]

Sweet, I'm giving that Mount&Blade thing a try. I was reading the main page, and this part cracked me up:

Battles in Mount&Blade require a high degree of concentration and user involvement. A few powerful blows can take you down, and there is no such thing as a "healing potion", therefore you must stay alert and parry or dodge each and every blow.

The realism of a few powerful blows taking you down and there being no "healing potion" is an oDDity dream come true I wonder if oDDity made this game

[SneaksieDave]

Hey _Atti_, thanks again for the Mount & Blade link. Great little game there, I'm in for the long haul, gonna buy it. It's only .730 beta right now, but even the beta is fantastic (and completely free up to 6th lvl). The combat is some of the most addictive combat I can remember, ever, and... it's even on horseback!

 

FYI, it uses copy protection called "Themida" it seems. There's question on the boards about what it's like and how it works, and it looks like it's rather benign, not like starforce at all. It seems it installs one driver which checks processes running before M&B starts up, looking for hacker tools, and that's it. Uninstalling M&B removes the driver, so it looks good.

[Maximius]

I did, it's nice, but rather lacking. It's actually less open-ended and free-form than GTA3 was, and on the PC it's waaay too easy to beat.

 

It's biggest issue is how limited it's scope seemed to be, I mean, the entire area of the game could have fit into just one of GTA3's three cities. The cities and the AI were also rather bland, with little to no reason to explore (not that there was anything there to explore anyhow). I'de say wait for it to become a bargain bin game before getting it.

 

 

Damn, the GUN folks must be lying their asses off, they claim its huge, non-linear, full of side missions and alternative routes to completing missions. thanks for the scoop fish

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Damn, the GUN folks must be lying their asses off, they claim its huge, non-linear, full of side missions and alternative routes to completing missions. thanks for the scoop fish

 

Oh it has plenty of side missions, problem is, you only really gain money from them, which allows you to buy every bloody upgrade in the game at roughly 2/3 of the way through. After you have all the upgrades (some of which are pretty useless) there's absolutely no reason to keep going through side missions. What side missions there are get pretty old very quick. They give you "skill upgrades" as well, but those have no impact on the game at all.

 

It's interesting, what would have made this game etter is if they had actually slowed down the gameplay, so it wasn't always run and gun, and added some interactivity to the world. Hell in every town, there only three or four places to go, and what are they? Either a store or yet another side mission!

 

Overall expect a decent western action romp, in a GTA3-lite package.

[Maximius]

Thats too bad, it sounds a bit "consolized" to me. Bargain Bin. I probably would not finish it anyway. Every half ass boring game not only sucks in and of itself, it makes the next game similar in style or in this case setting that much more unlikely.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Maximius