Time to make some decisions?
 

The 'Engine' Thread has been going on for a long time now, however, very little progress has been made on it, mainly because we dont yet know exactly what is planned for creation (Its like trying to use a computer without a power cable :p)

So i've created this thread to ask.. 'What do we want in a First Person shooter?'

Please limit discussion here to the question, remember not to take into concideration graphics, sounds or any 'spangly' things, just the pure gameplay part of it :)

I'll give my answer as an example:

--
I like first person shooters to have a 'Go anywhere, Do Anything' attitude, with things like vehicals to make this possible, the game must involk teamplay for people to achieve their goals. The pace of the game should be determined based on how people play it (if a fast paced game is wanted, people can rush and 'get it over with' or can use a more tactical approach). Maybe a weapons system based on points rather than money, everyone starts off with X points (same for all players thruout the game) and they can decide what weaponary they want with that (obviously bigger guns require more points, so they wouldnt be able to get so much of the other important things, such as armour). Player 'waiting' should be limited, so that everyone can respawn (maybe, reinforcement style), i hate waiting around in CS :p

Other ideas welcome :)

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

yes i like the idea of "go anywhere do anything" makes me feel free and most of the time people will do fun things in the game and the game would be great because everyone is doing what they want :D

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Isn't it precisely the *frustration* of waiting in CS that makes the game so addictive ?

I believe the game should be tactical for the most. I'm not against "outdoors" engines like BF1942 provided the level is designed cleverly enough to always allow sneaking behind the enemy wherever I am and to provide several easy retreats whenever it is needed. The two teams must be attacking altogether, but they must be given a hard time at this. It should be very difficult to attack, less difficult to defend but easy to retreat and regroup into safety. Such a gameplay will enhance tactics because offensive and defensive players will meet in groups more often, like for example when falling back to a more secure position, and this will enable them to prepare team planned offensives more often. Grenades and explosives are the great forgotten of nowadays' FPS. I would fancy evolve in an environment where their use is facilitated and encouraged by design.

I'm not against the "go everywhere, do everything" feel either, but I believe it's rather pointless in a first person SHOOTER. If I want to drive cars and run into stuff, I play Carmageddon instead. If I want to drive planes, I play Red Baron or Flight Simulator. And while I'll be happily flying around bombing stuff when and where I can, what will my team be up to ? The vehicles and all these "exotic" features should be included only if we are CERTAIN they always enhance the tactical gameplay, and not if they distract from it. The problem with BF1942 is that while it's fun to drive miles inside my jeep up to the battlefield, the gigantism of the playground makes the terrain WAY to smooth : there's nowhere to prone, nowhere to hide but in a building, I can everywhere be seen from 500 meters ahead, and I'm prolly unable to outflank the enemy unless I take a 15 km runaround which enables me not to be seen, but also half the time makes me arrive after the battle.

The player controls should be intuitive, and there should not be too much of them. CS is a perfect example for this. The same keys may have different purpose given the situation the player is in (for example, crouch or prone). Any animation should be cancellable. For example, a player going prone must be able to jump on his feet without waiting for the "go prone" animation to finish. This is mandatory, else it's the bullet between the eyes which is warranted.

Realistic ballistics, immersive sound ambience, good quality weapon models, well-licked physics (may I quote The Specialists for all this ?) and *tactical* _teamplay_. This is the key.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

whatever you make........id like to be mapping for it.
cuz you guys just rule.
my 2 cents:

shooters are a dime a dozen and 2% of them are GOOD.

not many BF1942-like games.......we could go that route and fix what pmb said about the OPEN terrain using more topographic quality......its too flat anyway imho.

im for a better set-up on a 1942 concept......with a desert iraq/afgahnistan type of scenario......i was there.....why not re-live it :)
just need an engine that can handle LOD.
this is good......there are Mountain Units in armed forces all over the world...model this after thier type of mountain trail tactics for afgahnistan (jugoslavia even) :)

a slow TACTICAL shooter will be seriously boring(see Americas Army, damn well done......just boring to play after the first week of waiting 7 minutes to start the next round. theres no 7 minute wait in CS......i think it goes fast enough. UT is really fast, Quake is wicked.
but those deathmatch shooters are not my thing either,

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

I posted some of my ideas in the engine thread. It seems to me that the engine thread should now be broken up to separate out the different concepts.

Here's some of the posts on the topic of what the game should be like (hope I got most of them):

http://forums.bots-united.com/showpo...08&postcount=2
http://forums.bots-united.com/showpo...58&postcount=5
http://forums.bots-united.com/showpo...9&postcount=44
http://forums.bots-united.com/showpo...5&postcount=47

Ultimately, I'd like to see something similar to what SoUlFaThEr talks about - Iraq and/or Afghanistan conflicts. There's a lot of interest in these parts of the world due to the on-going conflicts. There are people who would love to fight it out on one side or the other. People could play the game just for for fun or to beat up on the people who disagree with their opinions about the legality, the ethics, the truth and the lies surrounding these wars.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

post #44 is a really kick ass idea!
only problem may be the time it takes to switch servers.....

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

I dont like the idea of 'Switching Servers' mainly due to the large number of servers all over the world, the idea of multiple teams with the ability to 'form alliances' is a good idea, but could make the game VERY unfair (5 people per team, 4 teams, 3 teams ally, its then 15vs5.. so it has its downsides :p

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Real life warfare is never fair! :D

Team stacking is a problem even on isolated servers. There's various methods available to help even the teams up, and the same methods could apply to a server grouping.

The idea of grouping servers together would be much more controlled than you may think. The formation of linked servers can be done based on a stable and similar ping (between all linked servers) to keep the game play performance similar across servers. That way when you go from server A to server B your ping will stay about the same. Also, server ops would have to authorise the links as a means to create a bigger game, otherwise there would be no way to keep meaningfull team scores, stats and so on. Effectively, you'd be playing on a coordinated and grouping of servers, who's server ops all agreed to the hook up. Of course ad-hoc links of servers can also be allowed between server ops who allow for it. The ping level tolerance, chosen maps, and so on would be left up to the individual server oporator. A server admin could simply choose to remain isolated (as we see now with games such as HL) or decide to join a group of servers, specifying the linking criteria.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

some interesting ideas, Personally, i'm not a fan of turning a FPS into a FPSRPG, cause essencially, that is what you are proposing. Potentially, this is an interesting and possibly enjoyable idea. btw, cant we have 1 server serving multiple maps at once? :p

I can picture it now.. one team retreating to another map, being chased by their opponants :p

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

im trying to imagine these TEAMS made up of single players.....from all over the place......not literally connected with each other, like in BF1942, where everyone is doing their thing on the same missions. go out, die...spawn somewhere...go out, die...spawn somewhere...die. its going to need rushed popularity to get some "clans" built.........who then fight against each other in organized ladders/leagues as we have all over the planet for a number of games.

hmmmmmm i think the server switching is a neat idea that will be hard to implement.....if somethings hard to figure out(for the end user)......many wont do it.....gamers are pretty lazy by nature :) (meant about Joe Smith making a server work properly for this scenario)

we need a :
a BF 1990 Rescue Kuwait (multi teamed(Brits, Germs, French etc.))
a BF 1995 Jugoslavian Mountain/City Fronts.
a BF 2002 Afgahnistan Mountain/City Raids.
a BF 2003 Iraq Attack (even sounds good, like the movie Araq Attack!).

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Great on the hyping guys, this is really a neat idea indeed, but consider this:
The idea of a boundary between servers is useful when it comes to halve the load on a particular server for large virtual worlds. However, while this can apply fine to a RPG game (climb up that mountain and by the other side of the mountain you land on another server), it'll be a furious headache for a FPS game, where interaction between servers must be *flawless*. Bullets and projectiles, mortars, vehicles, everything, must cross INSTANTLY the boundary from one server to another. Planes must be seen in the sky from a server's point of view while they are flying over the battlefield in another server. Players and military units must be in sight when players use their rifle's lens or any other zooming device.
Again, the idea to share the gaming field between servers is meant to halve the load. Here I'm afraid it won't halve anything but instead DOUBLE it.

And more than that I tend to agree (or a minima say nothing) on ideas as soon as I have the slightest feeling of how they can be implemented, but here I'm fucking clueless on how to do it.


The only feasible thing is the separation of the battlefield in several CLOSED areas! Example: take a train in Baghdad and you're in Bassorah. Or grab an APC with several of your teammates and it drives you automatically to another area of the city where the battle also rages on. Take a lift and you climb up 20 stages in a building which is taken in assault, and you land e.g on the highest part of it.
This is a very restrictive and very limited feature, and I'm not sure it's even worth it.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

this would need a decent hand-over strategy, e.g. you would need to connect to the next server in advance, before you leave the area of the old server you are on, so that your actions (still controled by the old server) would be known on the new server, and probably the new server must be able to relay information (you are hit/dead) via the client to the old server. i think server2server communication in this case would lead to mare problems than relaying information via the client.

cheers

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

I willl keep my preferences more general as i see some in-depth discussions going on already:

a team based game, for sure
perhaps even with more then 2 teams. GOOD vs BAD is already so known, it would be cool to have some more teams. Like, let me give you the Dune Universe, where you have 4 Houses which are all interested in 1 goal (planet) for the spice. Some houses ally together to get what they want, when they have it, the alliance is not really 'needed' and conflicts arise there too. I don't know how this should be done practicly in a game though.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

You definitely want a single-player mode with a good story btw. And thats where i can help, with the story and single-player aspect. Multiplayer would not be as easy for me due to my 56k connection >:(. You also want good AI with single-player vs. CPU maps like with CS bots ( ;) ). I have more thoughts but they are all mush right now o_O

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

As i've said before, maybe it would be wiser to find a way to have multiple maps running on 1 server?

obviously the server admins would have to decide how big the overall map would be allowed to be..

However, not all maps need to be loaded at once, only the maps North / South / East and West of the players location need to be loaded.

I've created a very simplistic image of what the erver would be doing. Red cells are 'No loaded' sections of the map, green are 'Loaded'

But i cant see this working too well with under 50 players :/

--
However, the 'implementation' of something like this is off topic :p

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

i am beginning to think thats just too much.......multiple maps multiple servers

sounding like a ping nightmare .....and who said with 50 players! think of your ping. nothing about changing from one server to the next is going to be "smooth".

i think we might be jumping up to an area we cant actually jump to.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

my point being, this would be nice, but when it comes to practicality, its not the best of things to do :p

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

The multi map/server talk is an interesting thought to consider, but not as a first version of the game - I agree it's too complex to start with as some of you guys are suggesting.

We should get back to deciding on the type of game to be supported, then select the game engine. The complex stuff can be decided on later.

I think we all agree on an FPS game

Should we allow vehicles + aircraft?

We won't consider support for multi maps+servers. Ok?

I like the idea of modeling a game after real world conflicts as far as the physics and weapons are concerned. We should see typical weapons depending on the conflicts, everything from car bombs, suicide bombs, IED's, RPG's, rusty AK-47's, hand genades, mortars, and the modern weapons typical of whatever nation (or nations) are doing the fighting. Agreeable?

Most if us come from a CS background, so we like a lot of action mixed in with skill based realism, we're not really into slow paced tedious games so the pace has to be a little faster than realism would dictate. Agreeable?

We could allow for a few standard realism settings, a selection of higher or lower realism could be set by the server operator. I always found that CS was either not realistic enough for some folks, or too realistic for others. New players would like the game to be easier, but experienced players like it to be as realistic as possible. A compromise will satisfy no one.

Unlike CS, I don't think we should support 250+ different settings, but we can support things such as instant respawn or not, FF on/off, etc.

Finally, the game can be structured in the same manner as the united bot, allowing a great deal of configurability and alteration of the original. Different versions or "mods" of the original game would be relatively easy to make, and improvements to the official version can be made by anyone with enough skills and time on their hands.

A component based game would also mean that we would not have to build everything ourselves all at once.

comments please

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

THAT makes sense to me. from beginning to the end of it. the instant respawn thing is suggesting that its more like BF than like CS or UT/Quake?

how do you see it being displayed ......first person, third? oh yes....... both! :)

also the respawn is giving me this feeling that its either
1. not directly team based
2. like BF where the team objective is on a much larger scale then just winning the "round"

all in all its sounds like it will be good :)
can we at least make sure we can use .map technology with the mapping part......that i can take my .map things and place them into the terrain LOD like.....(i did this for a MOD on the TORQUE engine until they showed me that they didnt want to work on it really...lazy...the mod is dead now)

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Actually when i am thinking of this, i'd almost say, wait for HL 2 to come out and lets create our own mod for it.. but thats just a very evil thought at the moment ;)

Anyway:

- team based (2 or more)
- round bases perhaps
- objectives
- 32 players (or more?) servers
- vehicles and the like are not really needed unless they are truly a 'key to success'.
- nice gfx (atleast better then HL 1 ;))
- teamplay should be encouraged. However, if someone has a sort of 'sniper role' in order to cover the team, it should also be awared. Somehow detect that it is helping its teammates
- definatly needs voice communication, would be super realistic if i could talk (not via radio) and only nearby players hear me (friends and enemies). WHen i use radio everybody can hear me, but with disturbtion or something
- use light effects, this brings in a whole new world of stealthly things

the biggest question is, what will it be? Will it be a CS like game? Or a CS like game with DOD elements? WIll it be a game in WW2 ? (i don't like that very much btw).

Somehow we have to make something we LIKE, i also want to stress out we should not try to be original in a way, because its about gameplay. Even when this game will look like many games nowadays, if its good, it will outrule the others.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

So far we have, BF+UT+CS+Theif 3, which all sounds excellent, although the main problem being that if we used physics we would have to use rag-doll (ugly and crap) instead of real-world (very cpu intensive, everything has a physic, e.g. a bricks density can determine if a building falls or not),

another problem being htat to have lighting work properlly there would have to be an enviromental identifiying engine, (i am outside i use light from sun/lamps, i am inside i use window light direction/shadow and lamp/bulb) which is very hard to code (as far as i have tried so far)

The next area of concern is the POV, i am looking left my body is looking ahead why do i kill you, it makes no sense, we need a Model/POV identifier so that if you are looking left your model says you are looking left (unlike cs, i am looking left yet my model says ahead, so my bullets get hs when they shouldnt)

apart from that it all sounds excellent

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

i said this one before and at least Botmeister agreed here:

i think it should stay as modern as possible......the recent world situations are the best platform for a game to attract attention...even if it takes 3 years to produce it.

a CS like game in the Middle East atmosphere.....desert towns.....dune regions......around oil refineries, weapons factories, remote terrorist training camps and and and......a Palace or 2 could get shot up too.....!!! Thats will be some nice looking mapping !!

I really like what Stephan said at the bottom of page 2 for the game properties. Ava3ar has a great few points too! Especially the lighting problems.....differentiating inside electrical light and outside environmental
ambience.

my question.....is the plan to go commercial with it.....or just a free thing?
the idea of getting Ogre suggest it will be something commercial.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

A quick note: The "respawn during rounds idea" is just for either "fun mode" or a training mode. It is not intended for serious play. I can say that about a game because I know some ppl take games like CS very seriously. The intention is to not create a compromise situation, but instead allow for perhaps 2 or more modes of operation which allow a server operator to decide what level of game play he wants on his server. The on-line players can then search a list of available servers for the type of game play they want. For league style competition play, the game will most likely always be the "official version" (rather than a mod) and would be played in the highest setting.

Now that I think of it, what I really wanted to say was that the game should be capable of simulating real world conflicts in general, not necessarily limited to Middle East conflicts. I mentioned conflicts in the ME because that's where most of the current attention is being focuses these days.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

ala pro mode

q3, or the recent discussion on the CS forums

good idea

So far its DC v CS v Theif 3, man this sounds f*in awesome

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

oh sure thats cool ! thats why i mentioned it too !!

those are just the ideas in my head right now... i also had Jugoslavia in my first idea post about topics for the game. Jugoslavian winter mountainous areas are going to be cool looking things too...snow capped mountains etc...
(drivable snowmobiles if we ever decide to use vehicles with this thing) i made drivable snowmobiles in one of my maps for CS...they were pretty cool as far as vehicles go in cs :P 9_9

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

did i say something wrong?? what happened?

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

i've been away for the past few days :p

Looks like things are coming along. Just a note or 2..
This game will be free, and open source. With maybe a closed source 'Anti-Cheat' module.

A couple of map ideas i've had (if they offend, i appologise in advance, the ideas were designed as an insight into what could be done.)

Terror on the Airlines: A senario where a plan has been taken over by terroists, the 'Good Guys' and maybe another teams start in seperate areas of the plane, their objective is simple, elimiate the terrorist threat. There would be a box or 2 of weapons stashed in the plane for people to grab. Maybe if we do it well enough, we can have the plane moving, and possibly people 'bad footing' themselves, making accuracy harder. maybe have some interesting effects for if a player 'shoots thru the hull' :D (We may be able to get away with a plane pilot trying to fly to a goal.. or.. more planes, with CTs trying to board, who knows :D)

War in Iraq: Another Terrorist / CT style map (with maybe other forces that can 'assist' one team or the other). Only in this map (and maybe others) there will be civilians, which could be programmed to riot against the team / player that kills the most of em :p

Like i say, those were based on real life events, which could provide a great foothole for the game. The recent "War on Terror" provides a large number of possible scenarios.

From what i've seen thou, people dont wanna 'respawn' during rounds, which imo limits us a lot. we cant have large maps, due to 1 on 1's (They will never find each other) meaning theres no need for any form of vehical. Unless theres a map type that does 'waypoints' when you reach one, your team respawns at it (in a 'push' fashion)but if you all die before reaching a waypoint, its game over.. *WATCH OUT FOR SNIPERS!*

Another thing i want, is life like damage. One thing i hate about CS, is that you can pound a player with about 3 pistol shots to the head (this is without helmet) and they still not die. Same with a knife. It will make tactical manuvouring more favoured, thus involking team play :)
Anyway, thats all i have to say for now :D

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Dont mean to ring back up the multiserver multi map topic. But it seems to me that it could be easily done with transition maps. the concept is if your going to move from one map to another there is an intermediate map that you must cross. This allows for the server to do what ever it needs to do ahead of time to make the required connections to make the operations as smooth as possible.

Another way of looking at it is .hack sign ( for those who dont know its a really kool anime that needs to be seen) like basically have telepotation points to different servers. even though this would ruin the real world feel of the game but the same scenarios could be used.

Finally, even though you dont want to have to think about it now it should still be put on the to do list for the game. for example it can be a feautre used in lans where you can generally garauntee low pings between servers. Or it could be enabled on servers in the same location to allow for different scenarios to be played out.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Maybe just a small mov of you sitting in the back of an APC while your computer loads the map? :P
Thing is, what happens, if Player1 changes map first, player2 goes in a second after, and player2 has a faster computer than player1? :P
They will be sat on the new server waiting for player1 to come thru ;p

I like how loads of ideas are being thown around, I've come up with an idea that may 'balance' the respawn problem.

Basically, its been said that if you respawn immediatly, it will reduce team play so, i propose this.

Reward Team players will a smaller wait time.

Player A is a sniper,
Player B is an assault dude.

If player B has been in a certain Diameter of player A for a certain ammount of time, and gets killed, its kinda obvious that player B was protecting the sniper. So set a default spawn time of (lets say..) 60secs.

If anyone dies doing things like protecting snipers, attacking goals with other players (Flags, outposts etc), just general team play, reduce their 'respawn wait' to 5secs. Therefor, any 'Rambo' or someone not involved with the team will have to wait a LOT longer than anyone else to spawn. Snipers with more than X kills on the trot near something like a base or a goal should also be concidered a 'team player' imo.

If we decide 'this is good' we need to lay out what makes a team player from a general moron :p (And the best ways to decide this :))

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Something i need to note about this, If the game becomes a success, PC Game magazines around the world will 'review' it.

PCGamer recently reviewed a game, which was pretty much identical to Counter-strike, it got 55%, it also got some seriously BAD comments because of it, The intro Reads:

Would i buy that game? no :P

We need to add some sorta 'originality' to the game, granted the fact people wont be paying for it is a plus, however, if it gets reviewed like that, we wont have any people playing either ;)

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

I've came to think about it but...

In definitive, aren't the game rules something we may want to worry last, after we get a rendering engine and physics system working, and convincing player movement physics ?

Once we get these we can build any sort of game on top of it, very fast.

Every FPS game starts out by developing a crude deathmatch. Team code and game rules get added later, if one thinks about it.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

*thinks about it..*
*Gets Headache*
I hate thinking :(

Anyway, i suppose to an extent, you are right.. but.. it would be VERY crude, no real weapons or player models, more like a bunch of skeletons running around. Its more a 'proof of concept' rather than a crude deathmatch game, once you can get more than one player into the game, spawn them, and have them all running around together, its THEN that you can start adding game rules. (You could always give them guns, and release it as 'skeleton deathmatch' :P). I Think from there, you add teams, then weapons. It seems more logical that way, rather than code a load of stuff for deathmatch, then have to change it all again for teamplay :p

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Yes, basicly we need:

- a rendering engine (taking care of rendering the world but also the entities)
- a good working entity system being able to spawn players and anything else needed. If possible something dynamic, so we can extend this easily.
- a physics system (not required, could be done later)

when these 3 are in, we can concern about game rules. I'd be more then happy to see some players run in a basic room together at first.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

I think the final decision on the main game engine has been decided, (Ogre, there havnt really been many others that offer the graphical support and abilities of it).

I agree on the entity system, seeing as this will be coded by us, anything will be possible at the end of the day.

When it comes to physics, i think we should concider this from the start rather than later, This way, we wont have to concider doing player animations before physics are implemented :)

On your last comment, once we see a couple of players running around in a room, we will be making serious progress :)

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Frosty is right: physics must come with the engine. It's a whole. Ogre doesn't feature any physics/collision system. Without physics players would be floating in the air through walls.

Ogre + ODE is the way to go. We'd have to investigate on the different collision plugins existing for Ogre.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

if i remember right, one of the ogre examples contains a minor implementaiont of ODE, throwing a ball at some bricks from a first person view.. maybe look into that a bit more :)

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Originality and realism? Ironsights. Modeled Iron sights preferably. As far as I know there is only one 'good' modern combat game to utilise the system, and thats a HL mod.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

can you please be slightly clearer, i have _NO_ idea what Ironsights are :P

thanks :)

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

Iron sights mean that there are NO crosshairs...your character moves fast with his weapon drawn, but shooting is extremely hard because you're firing without aiming. You hit the iron sights key, and it bring the gun up to eye level, so you can see the sight.

If you have UT2004, this was implemented in the Red Orchestra modification.

http://redorchestramod.gameservers.net/

At least, that's what I always thought they were.

Re: Time to make some decisions?
 

call of duty use a kind of ironsight..