It's time to ressurrect this. I have tried pulling content over from Bullet but that's a pain. Instead, here a list of the ideas, without accreditation.
My gut feeling is to keep as close to traditional pirates as possible, but to use the steampunk setting as
a) flavour and
b) an excuse for things that really don't fit in the 1600s Carribean.
i was more thinking that swimming was one of the downpoints to Battlefield Pirates, there are of course ways around this a character class that has rocket packs for example or the ability to actually swim under water (something i remember UT2 doing rather well).
Heres some ideas I've had for the mod let me know what you think
two playable sides Steam punk pirates and a Government/military/Police side
maybe have some NPC characters for the pirates to loot/rob and the police to protect
Steam punk pirates all their tech is scavanged its improvised out of other things as a result its a bit old and a touch unpredictable
it is more flexible they have more elaborate weapons and vehicles
military has more polished tech manufactured clean shiny sleek powerfull and a bit rigid it does what it was designed for no more maybe a strong victorian theme about them I'm thinking "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
npc's use fairly basic versions of the military stuff if they have any armaments they are minimal
the game world could be something along the lines of a selection of islands with maybe some settlements/fortifications and ports
with booty to be nabbed. Could also have a few npc ships with booty on board sailing about to allow for some ship boarding action
npc ships maybe easier to attack and get away from but a lot less booty ports harder to attack but more booty
Pirates goal is to attack settlements/ ships and nab the booty then escape to their pirate base (probably in a secret cave on an island shaped like a skull or some such )
military's goal is to stop the pirates they score points based on the number of pirates they kill or capture and pirate ships they sink booty they recover.
maybe could do another element with if pirates are captured they get put in jail and then the rest of the pirates have some set amount of time to break in a rescue them or some such.
I can see a selection of sea based vehicles maybe some land based ones too just to keep things interesting maybe a few flying vehicles girocopters steam jet packs etc.
Having differently equipped sides can cause all sorts of game balance issues.
I liek the idea of the ships having a degree of user customisation.
ie you could out fit the ship with a layer of ablative armor but it would slow the ship down and mean you couldn't use most of the guns.
or strip out all the guns to increase the speed
This would make the game a lot more varied... one round migh tbe Uber-armoured slow moving tankboats, next round lightning fast speedboats and choppers...
Perhaps have 2-4 alternative set ups for each vehicle (or less for the more obscure vehicles and more for the big boats).
Would need to avoid Transformer-Boats!!!
Hm. while it does sound cool several different size boats with several different "loadouts" sounds like a bit of a balance nightmare...
Byrnies right...there are 2 parts to game balancing. First one is making sure that the sides are balanced. Second one is making sure the parts within each team are equally useful.
Again, take a look at BF Pirates. How long before we were all running round with muskets? The weapon was clearly overpowered compared to other classes, effectively making them useless and un-used. Tweaking weapons to make them balanced is a hard job...look at the incremental changes that have happened along UT's history...the shock rifle has been reduced in power again and again, as have the rocket launcher and flak cannon, while things like the ripper were removed (replaced with Link Gun).
If you have symmettrical sides you avoid issue 1, but you still have issue 2 to deal with. With regard to ship layouts, if one build is "better" than others thats the only one that will be used. Again, as an example of this look at Guild Wars...the majority of parties follow a very templated layout...the "best" layout.
How about a boat that has a huge long range cannon on it no other weapons and no cargo capacity space for a pilot and a gunner (maybe a loader if we have them) weak and not particularly fast but designed to shell form range.
it is such a long range that it won't be able to see its target and will have to rely on a spotter (jet pack guy of petes idea of bloke with ballon) to see if its shots are hitting the target.
We did this one con when we played bf2 someone spotting for a mobile gun platform on shore shelling a aircraft carrier.
Hm.. like it. perhaps the following combos:
- Artillery boat. Weak, holds 2 only, medium speed, one biiig gun, high damage, slow rate of fire
- Fast ship. Medium hits, holds 4 only, fast. Couple of small guns... low damage high rate of fire
- Frigate. High hits, holds up to 6 (more?), medium speed. two medium guns per side, medium damage, medium ROF
- Baseship. Unsinkable but damageable in sections. very slow. holds many. 3 medium guns per side, medium rate of fire.
what do you reckon? The faster the ship, the less armoured it is and the smaller the crew you can take. The artillery is for long distance attacks... you really don't want the enemy near you. The firgate is the equivilant of the two-ballooner in AB. Slower than the little ships, but better armed and armoured. The baseship is as previously discusses... has damageable areas so you can slow it down, knock out some of the guns, etc. Dangerous if you get near it though.
yeah thats good
the speed armament and hitpoints trade off is good
do we want to make the base ship a spawn point as well
We'll also need a rowing boat of some sort.. medium speed, low hits, no guns, holds 2?
do we want to make the base ship a spawn point as well
Not sure you want to do that. It would make defense way too easy, as you would simply respawn on the main ship fully armed when killed. It also means that the fastest way to defense is to suicide.
Air Bucanneers used the gliders to deal with this issue. It gives an appreciable delay between death and re-staffing the main craft without having players staring at a game they are not doing anything in.
I'd say you do need a way of getting crew back onto ships, and the base ship in particular, but it should be a method of travel. You could perhaps use your pirate cannon for this? Have a land-base (inaccessible from boats, perhaps on a cliff) where players spawn, equip etc, then goto the cannon, pick a target boat and are aimed and launched at it, landing either on or very close to the boat. Or you could adda moicum of skill, and have a launch/parachute combo, where the pirate has to actually land on the boat by control.
Byrn wrote:
We'll also need a rowing boat of some sort.. medium speed, low hits, no guns, holds 2?
Why need? You're suggesting things like jet packs/gliders/balloons for personal transport...a small boat is probably not needed, and could lead to flag running abuse (it would be very hard to hit with cannon).
We could make it so that anything below a certain size is incapable of taking a chest on board. If they slow down the base ship they would sink anything much smaller.
Personally I'd rather have a rowing boat than flying vehicles. It's more in keeping with the "pirate" idea and it's a good deal easier to implement.
Adding flying vehicles is a big design decision, even if they're not well (or at all) armed, and I think it would be better to make decisions like that based on some concrete idea of what they bring to the game, not just a feeling that it would be cool.
Example: with a player controlled flying vehicle, it's just as easy to get to enemy ships as friendly ones. Is that what we want? It sounds like a formula for shipboard deathmatch to me. We could put anti-air guns on the ships, but then someone has to man them, or at least watch for incomming air targets; that's potentially a boring job and with a crew of about 4, do we want to introduce another thing someone needs to do on ship?
I'll reiterate that I think boarding should be a valid tactic, but not central, always-decisive or easy. Traditionally, naval boarding actions occur at extremely close range and usually only against disabled or seriously damaged ships. My feeling is that we should look to model that.
Once again I have deleted a nice big post...lets try and remember what I was waffling about.
OK...I reckon any small 1 man boat will just be used/abused as a taxi. Even more so if you implement wind-based movement and its exempt from it.
I reckon its a good idea for all the players to die on a sinking ship, be it drowning, sharks or magazine explosions. Its a suitable punishment for losing your ship, and also keeps squad coherency during respawns.
About respawns...there are in effect 2 ways you would want to spawn. Firstly get onto an already existing ship (use cannon or some other mechanism) (btw Skunty, I know you liked it, just felt the need to point out I wasn't really suggesting it as an idea initially, just as a way around what I percieved as a problem. If the ideas are actually good thats a bonus, but they have no thought added to them) or spawn a new ship. Probably the easiest way to do this would be for a player to choose to spawn a ship from a pool available to a team (for example 1 flagship, 2 "mediums", 3 "smalls"), then for a period of time this to be off the map but available to be spawned onto, before appearing on the upwind edge of the map. (you would need the ability to be able to respawn flagships in case it was taken off the game map by wind).
Aggro, my "vision" of flying vehicles is that they would be slow, and subject to many of the same movement limitations as boats. A small 1-man balloon with a fan for directional control. Going against the wind = very slow/stationary. Tacking into the wind is merely painfully slow, quartering a bit faster, and running with the wind probably about the same speed as a faster boat. Certainly not a high-speed infiltration machine. Also, whats the use getting onto an enemy boat if you cannot get off, and you are by yourself? Finally, you give a defense weapon against them (which wouldn't be hard...people hanging under balloons are not known for their endurance.). I got the idea from a book called "The Scar" by China Mieville...the balloonists were used as scouts and observers it in, and all got cheerfully butchered. I have another image of the guy on the balloon dropping grenades, which comes from Warhammers dwarven gyrocopter pilots.
I'm really not keen on fast, 1-man vehicles, but I'm all for 1-man suicide machines.
/addendum - just spotted the comment
Aggroboy wrote:
Traditionally, naval boarding actions occur at extremely close range and usually only against disabled or seriously damaged ships. My feeling is that we should look to model that.
I don't think this is a realistic mod everyones thinking about. We should be looking to take the "fun " aspects of real life, otherwise the game will involve 6 months of sailing with scurvy and banging your head on rafters. We should be actively encouraging players to get on top of each other...
Also, how does boarding action happen at any range other than extreme close range?
OK - that sounds fine to me. I was more worried about the gliders and jetpacks I've heard mentioned.
I think ABU demonstrated how much damage one man with a sword can do on a ship full of people focused on their job. It's pretty easy for one man you don't see comming to wipe out half of a 4 man crew before you even realise you're under attack. Obviously, if there's no fast/stealthy way to get a man onboard ship, that's less of an issue.
I still think we have the question of what baloons bring to the game. The might be a lot of fun, but if they tie up a quarter of your team, are certain death and offer no appreciable gain then people won't use them. Scouting would be cool, but we'd have to expicitally model the visibility advantages of altitude to make that work. I'd suggest just expanding the draw distance based on character altitude. That way the crows nest is a lot better than the deck, and a baloon is better again, but we don't have to faff with actually having waves or a curved map.
AggroBoy wrote:
The might be a lot of fun, but if they tie up a quarter of your team, are certain death and offer no appreciable gain then people won't use them.
You're joking, right?
I always use the Scorpion over the Manta in UT2K4, even though the Manta is waaaaay more effective. the reason being that the Scorpion is so much more fun. Its slower, and easier to hit while having about the same damage output and armour (both die to a single Avro). The Scorpion, however, shoots electronic bolas and can handbrake turn. Its just mad.
Make something fun and people will use it. Then they'll find uses for it. What you have to be careful about is abuse.
As for visibility, you don't need to do anything so complex, just make any level mist max out at a certain level, so things like crows nests/balloons are above it...
Waves...I was just about to ask if they were techincally feasible, as that would be really cool to have. Enough of this mill pond sea syndrome, you want a bit of swell...
I don't think jet packs will make for a stealthed attack
I would think they would be fairly short range they have only limited charge before you plumet out of the sky.
And to mitigate any stealtyness we could make them fairly noisy so any heavilly focused team will hear them coming which is fairly realistic I would suspect were it possible to build a steam powered jet pack it would be quite a noisy device.
For the pirate cannon perhaps we could have a mars lander style airbag for the landing pirate goes hurtlign through the air to roughly the co-ords of the base ship. before impact he is incased in inflatabling padding allowing him to bounce and then roll his way to the ship.
Steam Powered Jet Skis for the small vehicle
2 man no weapons
Can't carry the treasure.
Also is the water going to be lethal?
If so how quickly?
Battlefield is bad cos you survive too long in the water and can't suicide.
I suggest you could swim on the surface but have limited breath if you go under. (This gives you a suicide option.)
Carrying the treasure would make you sink
Can a ship run over a swimmer?
OK - so if they're nicely
OK - so if they're nicely short range I like that idea. So we know what we're talking about, I'm thinking 30' or so, is that what the sort of thing you were thinking? Actually, I really liked the idea of a charge up jump pack as well. Maybe we could make the alt-fire on the jetpack? You can either fly theire under control, but it's slowish and shorter range, or hurl yourself a big distance at speed, but risk landing more or less anywhere and taking falling damage? Smile
I imagine such a device would be noisy (as you say), and also generate huge plumes of steam (which could even be used strategically, if you're clever.)
In the interests of not sounding like a whingy naysayer, I also think the spawn-point auto-aim pirate cannon is a neat idea. Kindof like the gliders in ABU, but more direct and less prone to flying around aimlessly for hours. Could also give a strategic edge to recently spawned players, because they'll see more of the fight as they plummet seawards. I think the inflatable landing apparatus is a winner, too..
You've spoken of CTF and 'treasure chests', and there was mention of differing sides (probably difficult to balance initially) who could claim 'points' for various objectives...
But how about using something along the lines of the Counterstrike idea? You could have players earning booty (doubloons, pieces of eight, gold, treasure, whatever you want to call it) for a variety of actions - sinking ships; stealing treasure from towns, npcs, each other; digging up buried treasure (if they have time amid the crossfire - although this could encourage people onto land a bit too much); or simply clocked as 'bounty' when they kill another player.
This booty could then be spent on buying new kit - gaining access to bigger vessels, aircraft, jetpacks, cannon types, rowboats, personal armour/weapons, etc.
I like this idea
we could implement it somewhat in the way airbuccaners gives points to the whole team on a airship when they blow some one out of the sky and its weighted so that bigger crews and ships get more points.
You could get less points for smaller crews and less again for just one on one combat.
Maybe we could do a similar awards thing to air bucc where players get an award at the end of the round if they are the longest shot the fastest reloader etc.
Maybe rather than airbucc where it had no effect have it give you something tangable in the next round a weapons upgrade or stats boost or some such. Might have to make it so that you can't have the same awards two games in a row to prevent someone gaining the advantage and keeping it.
Waves are an interesting subject. There's not a great deal waves are going to do to affect vessels of this size - except the rowing boat and swimmers - but a looking-glass ocean can be very dull. I don't know if any of the local l33t programmers can come up with impressive fluid dynamics for minimal processor impact, but anyone who could would get my vote.
One thing waves would affect would be gunnery (if you want to get that detailed). Gunnery on these vessels often relied on the roll of the vessel to affect the aim. Firing on the upward roll allows you to put shot into the rigging and sails, and to strafe the deck; while firing on the downward roll allows targetting of the hull and causing major structural damage.
On the subject of water - and something that's been swept over in a couple of posts - what are the plans for swimming?
I think swimming should be a valid option, including diving for limited breath durations. This would allow you to put treasure in the water, attack ships from below and escape from a doomed ship. You can also include various diving power-ups and submersibles this way. You could also include hidden caves in cliff faces, with underwater entrances.
There are two aspects to waves. It's going to be really easy to get some form of roll on the ships. It'll be a bit harder to get actual visible waves on the surface of the sea. I can see a couple of issues:
1) the actual dynamics of it are probably fairly hard, especially if we want it to be realistic and variable. It might also be tricky to make the boats interact with the waves realistically (or at all.) I don't know how much of an issue this is in practice, since I haven't really looked at the algorithms involved. One thing I do know is that a pretty obscure (and poor) Gamecube game called Wave Race Blue Storm had pretty nice water simulation (incuding waves), and if a gamecube can do it, a modern gaming PC should be able to.
2) If there's some strategic use of waves then it's preferable to have them synced between the server and all the clients (rather than just rendered as eye-candy on a per-client basis) - that could be a headache if there's a lot of data to sync. We might be able to do some cleverness though: we could build the wave patterns into the maps and just have the server control the timing, or something...
I certainly think swiming should be valid, but someone suggested (and I'm inclined to agree) that it might be as well to not let people survive a sinking ship because a) it's a punishment for getting sunk and b) it keeps crews together: go down together, respawn together, get on the next ship together. It's how ABU works, and I always liked that mechanism. We could probably lose the landing in a swamp and being eaten by mushrooms though.
All my concerns about flying vehicles apply equally to submersibles; they need to be detectible and attackable, preferably without it being a full time job to do so. And there are balancing issues, but I'm sure we can address those.
I can see your point regarding keeping crews together but I still like the idea of being able to abandon ship just before it sinks, swimming to shore, swimming between vessels and the like. I'm not sure I have a resolution for that yet though - I'll think on it. Perhaps you could have a system whereby people can bail off a sinking ship but the moment it reaches a critical collapse point - the deck sinks beneath the waves, say (or the remaining splinters hit the water) - then anyone still aboard dies in the chaos...
You don't want people swimming all the time though, so touches such as no carrying treasure in the water and being killed by oncoming craft should slow people down. You could also veto weapon use in water - you try using a black powder weapon or a cutlass up to your neck in brine. Of course, there may be a simple steampunk or harpoon/spear option that might still work but is generally limited to attacking those in the water.
Bot supporters might also like to introduce natural hazards - sharks, giant squid, etc. But that's probably getting a little ahead of things. Overly complicated to add for little return.
I agree with the idea of aircraft and submersibles being detectable. The noisy idea was good - since most of the steampunk additions are going to be more powerful than traditional cutlass and pistol warfare it would be a nice feature that any use of it should be bloody obvious. That gives you a choice between powerful (either in damage or in movement) and obvious or weaker but more cunning.
That's kinda what I had in
That's kinda what I had in mind. Although, with the added option of actually claiming the ports - that would stop them being treasure farms but provide an extra base (respawn points, defensive cannons, repair/reload facilities). Each team would want to have bases, but also maintain a few treasure farms to keep the wealth coming. That would encourage them to expand their area - requiring a more effective defensive patrols and a successful expeditionary force - while stopping the other team from turning too many of the ports into their own bases, thus removing treasure farms from the map. Once all ports are claimed, the only option is to lay into the opposition for more treasure.
Muppet wrote:
I still like the idea of being able to abandon ship just before it sinks
Play Battlefield 2, then say that. Swimming is simply not fun. Its slow, and its boring. I would much rather die, and get back on a crewed ship.
If your answer is "include a suicide method" then you need to revisit that part of the game. Anywhere where the best answer is to ask the player to kill themselves, and you should probably just be killing them yourself.
I guess on a small scale (thinking 5v5 lan games here), that would mean 2/3 ports so no team would stand much of a chance holding all of them, but would easily be able to hold one if defended by the entire team.
Perhaps they could revert to being NPC held if left unattended for too long? That way the "pillage the natives" feel isn't lost after the first 5 mins (the first 5 mins of BF is generally like this as everyone scrambles to get to an unclaimed flag but from that point on theres no middle ground 1 team is winning the other losing [tickets]).
This game mode is starting to sound like battlefield to me. One of the problems with the pirate mod for me was that was that it put too much emphasis on controling strategic points, and not enough on buckling of swashes or on naval combat.
Maybe we can resolve that problem in other ways than a fundamental change in game mode, but we should at least consider trying to come up with some modes that focus the player's minds on the sort of thing we want the mod to be about.
I'm with Aggroboy here. Controlling land based ports is one of the things that we didn't like about BF pirates.
I aslo think we're in danger of amking this far too complicated... NPC ports require bot scripting, which at worst is difficult to code and at best is difficult to balance.
We need tor emember that in our LAN games we generally have a maximum of 6 per side.. enough to crew one big boat or a couple of smaller ones. Trying to hold multiple points on a large map needs a large team, which means many players or bots.
It sounds like we're also going towards some form of money/upgrades system, which is another thing to implement.
I'm not trying to jump up and down on your ideas, they are damn good. The thing is I think we're getting in far too deep for this stage...
I agree that swimming should suicide after a delay. Basically I'd like it to be possible to get back on a ship you've cunningly managed to fall off, but not travel any sizable distance...
Perhaps tie this into wave timings so that when you fall in each wave takes some health off (gradual drowning as waves drag you under)... although i really like the idea of an underwater mask (i think there IS one in one of the UT2 assault maps), doesn't need to be an indefinate ability to stay underwater perhaps just 1/4 dmg from waves or something, just so there is more than one way to board (otherwise repelling borders becomes a tad two dimensional)...
Sorry, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. I enjoy this sort of thing and tend to get carried away.
You could handle the multiple ports thing by providing a range of maps, only really introducing neutral ports in the bigger ones.
Swimming for a brief while would be good - that way you get to climb back onboard ships you've fallen off, or swim quickly to nearby shores, but crews that have ended up in the water after losing their ship will die quickly and all respawn at the same time.
Providing a power-up that allows you stay in the water indefinitely is a good idea. That way people who want to die and get on with it can do so, while those who fancy their chances and are prepared to slog it over to the nearest haven are at liberty to do so (unless they get run over by a sloop, of course).
I'll concede that much of this is probably a bit complicated initially. Why not just get two ships sailing about on an all-sea map and throwing cannon fire at one another, then worry about adding complicated objectives, gliders, pirate catapults and everything else.
Big ass post. Do I get a prize?
I think one of the things we
I think one of the things we will need to do is get our hands on UT3 and have a look at what the new system is capable of. With ut2k4 we had some idea from pre-existing mods how things worked and what was achievable. UT3 will probably be "all this and more!" but it's still a bit of an unknown quantity and we will lack the sort of installed support base you already have for UT2k4 until people get to grips with it.
I think it would be a good
I think it would be a good idea to start small and then build on it. A map with a couple of ships and water and then move forward. What do you think?
Sounds good, if it's as
Sounds good, if it's as counter intuative as the ut2k4 editor it will take some time to figure it out. So starting small and working up is good.
I have my copy of UT3 sat
I have my copy of UT3 sat next to me on the desk I'll probably try and take a look at it over the weekend. Mass effect should be showing up too though so I may be too busy drowning ;)
Bastard. COME ON AMAZON, GET
Bastard. COME ON AMAZON, GET A WIGGLE ON!
Ironically this is the one
Ironically this is the one that I just put on the default normal postage and Mass effect which is nowhere to be seen is the one I put extra cash on for next day both were supposedly shipped yesterday. I'll be asking for a refund if mass effect doesn't show up today.
I've just ordered UT3 from
I've just ordered UT3 from Play.com, should be arriving next week sometime, which will be handy, as I'm be warming down to the Grim, so should be ina bit more in the evenings...
I had a quick glance at the
I had a quick glance at the editor, it's just as opaque as the 2k4 one I hope there will be some guides and tutorials up because just pressing buttons at random didn't seem to help.
The limited edition has
The limited edition has about 20 hours of tutorial videos. I'm sure these will be "available" from certain sources...
UT3 landed on my desk. It's
UT3 landed on my desk. It's the limited edition one, so I have the tutorials on DVD. Just need a way of copying it.