Gezocht: talent voor een AvP-themed Total Conversion.

Alien versus Predator, wie heeft er niet genoten van de games die tot nu toe op de PC uitkwamen?

Waar de singleplayer garant stond voor flink wat sfeer en schrikreacties, liet de los bungelende en vooral ook verplichte kost aan multiplayer behoorlijk wat te wensen over. Het aantal spelers bijvoorbeeld (respectievelijk maximaal 8 en 16 spelers), of de balans (of eerder het ontbreken daarvan) en motivatie: beide spellen boden weinig meer dan een standaard quake-like fragfest.

Op een niet nader te noemen fan-forum hadden een jaar of wat geleden een aantal mensen waaronder ik het idee dan maar zelf het heft in handen te nemen. Fox zijn reputatie is niet zo heel goed bij de fans, omdat de dingen die voor hen geweldig zouden zijn door Fox vaak worden tegengehouden of zelfs gesloopt (gerucht gaat dat een leveldesigner van AvP2 op dat forum claimde dat de Fox-producer op een gegeven moment jump-pads ala Q3 in het spel wilde. Goodbye sfeer.)

Sfeer is voor een spel als AvP minstens zo belangrijk als gameplay, dus een grafische upgrade zou ook geen kwaad kunnen.
Toendertijd discussieerden we de mogelijkheden qua engines voor een AvP3, waar tot op heden totaal geen sprake van is, maar dat sloeg om naar het idee om een total conversion te maken op basis van de UT2003 engine. Tijd ging voorbij, het forum verwaterde en mensen toonden weinig enthousiasme.

Toen kwam er de periode van de Unreal Engine 3.0. Mijn kaken sloegen tegen de grond en geïnteresseerd volgde ik elke ontwikkeling ervan. Waar andere AvP fans bleven kwijlen over de Doom3 engine, droomde ik verder op een langere termijn.

De Unreal Engine WAS al ontzettend goed, maar met deze vooruitgang biedt het exact wat ik denk dat AvP nodig heeft: grotere levels met details, goede mod-support, goede multiplayer mogelijkheden en een bewezen solide basis voor diverse soorten games die allen goed gebruik maken van de mogelijkheden.

Maar zo'n total conversion kun je natuurlijk niet alleen maken, en zeker niet met mijn ervaring. (Die zijn tot dusver beperkt tot gameplay, concepting en andere triviale dingen, al wil ik wel het een en ander gaan aanleren).

Dus ben ik op zoek naar mensen die 1 of meer van deze taken aan denken te kunnen om samen de ultieme ervaring in het AvP universum te bouwen:
-Concept artists: gewone media, photoshop, 3dmax
-schrijvers
-level designers
-gameplay designers
-High-res modellers/real-time med-poly modellers (onder de 10K poly's)
-Texture artists

Verder is er nog niets zwart omlijnd, dus over alles valt nog te praten.

Ben je een Alien of Predator fan, en wil je graag meewerken aan deze total conversion, mail dan even met nol@home.nl, en stuur bij voorkeur ook wat van je werk mee. Leg uit waarom je mee wilt werken, wat je graag doet en wat je sterke en zwakke punten zijn.

Let wel, dit is een soortgelijk project als Duke Nukem forever: pure obsessieve liefde voor de franchise en een poging deze zoveel mogelijk eer aan te doen, al zou het lang duren.

De verdere opzet mail ik dan wel terug, ik hoop veel van jullie te horen.

Met vriendelijke groet,
Nol van Meegeren.

Denk je het ook eens op GoT te proberen

quote:

Geplaatst op dinsdag 02 augustus 2005 00:09
Door: dusty Moderator P&W

Werving zonder toestemming van de moderators (en die wordt zelden gegeven voor werving op GOT) mag niet.

Mijn got wat triest Nou, laat die knul lekker aan zijn leuter aaien...

Ruwe schets voor design document:
– Introduction

Ever since the invention of first person shooters both Alien and Predator fans cried for a first person version of their favourite films, so they could re-live their experience with the creatures…

The Aliens versus Predator concept was reason enough to implement an Alien skull in the second Predator film, as a nod that the Idea could be defined more before making a movie from the totally new concept.

In 1999, the concept proved to be a good one for videogames, as Fox Interactive released Aliens versus Predator as a thrilling PC first person shooter. Being a smash hit, the sequel was being made and released as well.

However, the fans of the films and the fans of the game always found the games flawing, AvP1 for lacking the right pacing and having near horrible multiplayer support… Plus that the license lent itself more for a realistic approach than the fast fragfest AvP was… With AvP2 some of the issues were handled very well, but it was still far from perfect…

Over at AvPnews.com, at the AvP3 forums, we were talking about possible engines for an eventual and logic sequel for the second game, and at some point we addressed the Unreal Technology. While being a great tool for many developers, it lacks the cutting edge of untested games such as Far Cry, Doom3 and Half Life 2, but the best thing about it’s engine is that it already has been tested in both Single Player (Unreal2, Splinter Cell) as Multi Player (Unreal Tournament 2003/4 and America’s Army) plus it has some great Editing software that allows gamers/artists to create content themselves and that really adds up to the longevity of the game.

We soon wanted the very latest for the 3rd instalment of the popular franchise (what else would we, fans, like to see than the best?), but the Unreal technology discussion caused a discussion… Since the games Unreal2 and Unreal Tournament 2003 came with the tools, and the Unreal Development Network is publicly available, we could make our own game with the technology to make our own take on the concept AvP. Till the moment another discussion about having Predator, Marine and Alien models in UT2003 that idea was still just an idea, now, it was getting more and more serious.

Our idea is to re-create the intense atmosphere of both the games and films in a multiplayer based total conversion, with a higher degree of realism and with the currently most versatile and released engine base to support high polygon characters, high resolution textures, low latency netcoding, flexible level support, drivable vehicles, dynamic lighting and the currently superior physics.

2- Goals

Our first goal is to proof that the atmosphere of the AvP films can be made within the Unreal Engine, and thus to provide a(n) (movie) accurate depiction of characters, architecture and weaponry. Generally that means a more realistic approach than in previous AvP titles. Note that no coding has been done in this phase

Second goal is to implement the things that make AvP what it defines it from the other games: the unique weapons, tracking devices, vision modes and wall walking for the aliens. This might be the very hardest part to implement.

Third goal/phase is to create more immersive Gameplay through objective based Multiplayer missions and fine-tuning the Gameplay as a whole…

Fourth goal, and that is if the MOD gets enough feedback, is to keep making extra levels and features, giving it a longer lifetime.

3- Rule Set

3.1 Overall rules

The overall pace is slower than players are used to… Walking is really slow, running is more a sort of jogging and if you want to go really fast you can only last 20-30 seconds…

This is a thing that makes the game more realistic, as you really rely on your skills and intellect in order to survive.

Taking the humans as a reference (100%) in all matters I indicate what all the abilities will be like…


3.2 Health:

Humans 100%
Aliens 120%
Predators 130%

Humans are fairly weak as you can see, but that weakness is compensated by the enormous firepower and technical support they have.

Although Aliens rely on stealth and quick yet devastating strikes, they are still pretty vulnerable when it comes to long range combat. To compensate that, Aliens have 120% of the human’s health.

Predators are though crackers, having a high body mass and being around 2 meters and 15 centimetres, these fellows are pure survivors, and have 130% of the human’s health.

Health is divided over the body parts, when a body part reaches the 0 health level the player dies…

3.3 Armour:

Humans 100% (50% covered, 200% damage resistant) Deflecting 50% of the damage
Aliens 90% (100% covered, 90% damage resistant) Deflecting 45% of the damage
Predators 95% (25% covered, 380% damage resistant) Deflecting 47% of the damage

Again using the humans as the standard, we see that the other races are somewhat weaker when it comes to armour. The concept behind it is that armour is no longer a pickup, and it protects the players from start to the end… Armour gives an overall protection benefit, and is no longer the shield you have to deplete before you can actually kill another player. Being specified to certain body areas, the armour still has room for weak spots (in concept, not too sure how this can be achieved, but this has been done in unreal 2, where bullets ricochet of the Skaarj’s wrist blades)

Aliens have armour that covers them completely, but once being weakened their health goes down quite rapidly.

Marines (humans) have most of their armour on their torso, as their torso holds their most vital organs. The helmet protects both head and neck, shin guards protects their legs when running and climbing in an indoor-outdoor combat zone.

Predators only have armour on the most essential spots such as the heart zone, thighs (so they can keep walking when being shot at), back, shins and crotch. This gives them more movement freedom and still provides excellent protection to those regions.


3.4 Speeds

The general speed configuration would be much like this one:

Humans 100%
Aliens 150%
Predators 120%
This extends to all walking manoeuvres for all races.

There would be three steps of walking speeds: slow walk, fast walk and short sprint…

The slow walk is perfect for room-by-room scanning and clearing; the fast walk is for making steady progress and being both very manoeuvrable and being moderate swift at the same time. The newcomer is the sprint, which allows you to run at 150% of your fast walking speed, but it also has a restriction of 30-40 seconds to use (having an extra key pressed to activate sprint). After a sprint there is a period of 15 seconds to regain stamina.

Taking the Fast Walk as reference the configuration of these 3 steps would look like this:

Slow Walk 70%
Fast Walk 100%
Sprint 150%

This configuration extends to all species.

3.5 Weapons: range and accuracy

In this part we will talk about the basic weapons that are in the game to provide a range of its properties.

Aliens

The aliens basically only have 2 weapons: claws and a tail. Both can be equally deadly, but it takes skill to use.

Claws
Being a melee warrior, the aliens have to come up and close for a kill.
Hit and run attacks seem to work best, so the aliens have to be able to kill an opponent quite fast. About 2 hit's a second fast. Each hit would inflict a damage of 12.5 points (making a marine kill take 4 seconds or 8 hits). The armour isn’t an issue here as the attack inflicts pressure and cuts instead of direct impacts.

The range is about one meter, the horizontal spread is about 80 degrees, and vertical spread is about 35 degrees. (A squished elliptical attack-cone)

Tail
The tail is a weapon that inflicts 30 points of damage, but is affected by the amount of armour that the opponent wears


Predators

Predators have the following weapons:

Wrist blades
Spear
Sync gun (AKA Shoulder canon)
Wrist dart
Disc
Net gun

This rather restricted number of weapons is cause of the goal to stay true to the films

Wrist blades
Wrist blades are rather slow yet powerful melee weapons, perfect for a quick ambush strike on Marine characters to remain unseen…

The primary fire has a rate of once per second, and inflicts a damage of 15 points per hit. The secondary fire has a rate of once per 2 seconds and inflicts a damage of 23 points per hit.

Armour is bypassed by 40% (initial armour minus 40% that is)

The range is about one meter, the horizontal spread is about 80 degrees, and vertical spread is about 35 degrees. (A squished elliptical attack-cone)

Spear
The spear primarily is a stabbing and slashing weapon, but can be thrown too with the secondary fire. Armour is useless against it.

Stabbing and slashing inflicts 33 points of damage in a range of 60 degrees in height and 70 degrees in width and 2 meters in depth.

Throwing has a pinpoint accuracy, yet with a slight arc over the thrown course.
Impact causes death to all species.

Sync gun AKA Shoulder Canon
The sync gun system has the benefit of auto locking to visually acquired opponents, and only leave the player to choose from the targets.

The targeting will take 1 to 2 seconds to lock on, depending how the opponent is moving. The target is predicted rather than having a plasma bolt chases the target, so in the HUD it would seem that the canon is aiming slightly before the moving target when in motion and it would just aim at the target when standing still.

Armour has a 20% effect on it.

The range is up to “infinity”, yet the tracking is limited to about 60 meters in order to balance it… Its aiming cone is 180 degrees in both length and width.
There’s no limit to its use, yet the gun only is allowed to fire in a rate of once per 1.5 seconds uncharged.

The more charged a bolt it, the slower… Slowest speed will be around 50% of the maximum speed.

Uncharged shots take about 20 points per hit, a charged shot takes up to 150 points

Wrist dart
Being a rail gun type of weapon, the wrist dart has a rather high impact and causes death instantly when hit in the head. Otherwise it’ll cause 25 points of damage per dart.

Impact on armour would disable its protecting characteristics, resulting in an overall loss of protection.

Disc
The disc would acquire the target much like the sync gun. The main difference is that the disc is capable of manoeuvring in mid-air. That manoeuvring is limited to a 30-degree angle from its original path. Disks are loaded with an electric charge and cuts through any armour type. Large characters like the queen can survive attacks, smaller units die instantly.

The Net gun

The net gun is a fun story: the weapon wraps your opponent to the wall or floor, depending on how the character is falling… From moment of impact on the opponent can’t do anything but hope he gets out soon enough… The player who utilise this weapon and players who see the opponent being hit see that opponent falling with Karma physics, as they are pushed away by the net. Depending on this physics system the person will hit a wall (and gets stuck to it instantly) or a floor (and gets stuck to that instantly).

The Aliens Claws and Marine Gerber Knives will need some time to cut themselves out. Marines need about 7 seconds, Aliens about 3 seconds…




The Marine

Marines have the following weapons at their disposal:

Gerber knife
Handgun
Pulse rifle
Flamethrower
Smart gun
Motion-tracker
Welder
Hacking device

Gerber knife

The knife is primary a tool. As a weapon it’s near useless, as it doesn’t do much damage in a short period of time. It’s being used for cutting free from nets, opening panels and cut through wires of defence mechanisms…

Handgun

The handgun is a last resort weapon and inflicts 7 points of damage but has a reduced fire-rate and accuracy. A clip holds 9 bullets, the gun is semi-automatic; every click is a bullet. The accuracy is about 80% for 15 meters, and 60% beyond that.

Pulse rifle

The Pulse rifle inflicts a damage of 10 points and fires at a rate of 4 shots per second. The secondary fire shoots a grenade in a slight arc (depending on gravity and angle), which inflicts 100 points of damage on direct impact and up to 60 points in a blast radius of 3 meters. Clips hold 95 bullets, since the maximum of 99 can cause more jamming… Accuracy is 80% in all cases.

Flamethrower

The flamethrower spews an impressive 20 meters of fire, which roasts opponents in a matter of 5 seconds. Fatal to those who get hit, but because of its obviousness easier to avoid. Handy for quick cleaning operations and for anti-personnel back-up.


Smart-gun

The smart gun helps you aim more accurate and track down opponents. The gun tracks everything visible and moving that is in sight of the player, but the gun only points out the targets with overdrawn tags and will only help you aim within a 5 meter radius of the target. Its accuracy is about 95%, as the automated target tracker ensures that your aim is right.

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