Dynamic Infestation - Dynamic Hives

Sheepe

<div class="IPBDescription">Insert something catchy here</div>Okay, so after hearing of dynamic infestation, the first thing I thought of was hives. And how frustrating it is that there are always 3 hives and they are always in the same places. However I was thinking that with dynamic infestation, you could take hives to an entirely new level.

Instead of 3 constant locations. You could have several areas around the map that are marked (invisibly) with things such as "Heat" (Ex: Reactor), "Water"(ex: Leaky pipes), and "Nutrients"(Ex: Soil/ore/whatever). And in these places, infestation would have a tendency to spring up, more so if more conditions are met (see the 3^). This would mean you could have up to 8 or 9 hive locations. And the hives could have a variable growth rate relative to the conditions.

I know I suck at explaining, but hang with me for a moment.
Okay:
- Leaky Pipes Near a Refinery/Engines/Hot thinger: Water and Heat conditions met. Meaning a hive can be placed here but won't grow as fast as possible.
- Green House: Best possible location, Heat, Water, and Nutrients are available, allowing hives to grow at max rate, and causing infestation to popup unless marines have built directly inside the place.
- Random Hallway: Nothing, you aren't building a hive here, every (Unless the mapper has dynamics in place to allow a condition to be supplied, ex: breaking pipes, pile of onos dung, whatever.)

Get the drift? I hope so...

-Sheepe

Mr. Epic

I see what you mean, I think it could be taken a step further though. Hives *almost* everywhere that they will fit, but they will get regen bonuses if they are built next to some kind of external influence that benefits the growing hive ergo your pipes/etc...

Nobody has mentioned anything so radical concerning hives as of late iirc, what do others think?

Mouse

The thought of trying to make a map with dynamic hive locations in mind scares me. One thing to keep in mind is that a hive room is more than just the hive itself, it also comes with 16 spawn points, which all take up space.
Then even with that out of the way, you still have to try and balance the map; trying to make sure that marines can't camp the hives, that onos have enough space to move about, etc. etc. etc.

In short, utterly unfeasible.

Sheepe

Hmmmm... I guess I sorta assumed that the spawn points came along with the hive... so then how do those damn IPs do it?

-Sheepe

Kouji_San

simple, at round start and local player first spawn. All players get a spawnpoint located at the marine start, 16 info_team_start(Team one) placed by mappers

Once the IPs are finished, the players ingame spawn on the IPs. I think newly joining players still initially spawn at one of the info_team_start(Team one) locations, they are also used for the Distress Beacon

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A hive is still a team_hive and 16 info_team_start(Team two)

Now unless a hive comes included with a random spawnloaction generations system. It won't be possible to do this. And like Mouse said, it would be a balancing nightmare. Imaging trying to balance not 3 but 8 or more areas for movement/siege locations/defendability/attackability/walking distances etc...

Sheepe

Well, I was thinking a random spawn point generator could work well (maybe when its compiled?). But I don't know programming or any of that well enough to speculate very well on it... (Sphere around hive, X number of spawns in it, X units from any surface?)

Also, they wouldn't necessarily need to be balanced. Some hives would be better than others, but just because you can't hold that one, doesn't mean its game over. Thats the main idea of this, sorta.

-Sheepe

Buzzou

in regards to the 16 spawn points that need to be near a hive, i think this is one of the first things they need to fix in ns2, its just not realistic having an alien materialize 5m from a hive, ready to go. either keep these points, and make eggs slowly form out of the infestation (this was mentioned in another thread), or make it so the hive "gives birth" to the aliens, or lays the eggs. i can just imagine the animation of a hive squeesing out an egg/alien....

Kouji_San

It would need to lay about 16 eggs from which aliens randomly spawn. If it would just lay an egg for each player spawning during a game, it would make spawncamping pretty easy... Same goes if the alien eggs are hatched close together near the hive :/

The hive then either needs to be mobile inside it's hive room to do this. It would be pretty cool to see it refreshing eggs from which players have spawned. But as I said, spawncamping has to be kept in check...

NEX9

weather i agree or disagree is etehr here nore there, how ever a grid of say 1000 spawn points can be drawn up droped onto map cut the exsess ones out move thseo that clip walsl into rooms a tad

now have codeing that basicly ativates spawn points X distance from hive, you may not even need to cut or move cliped points as you could prolly code it to detect this, i do not know what effect it would have on any engine but its most likely possable

i think when a hive is build it should do some sort of reactive exsplotion of dynamic infestation, randomly tiny chunks of dynamic infestation get flung all which way effected by gravity and once attached to there new surface begin to unfold and spread in their perticular manner

now as we can see from the dynamic infestation video is spreads in meshes of about 64X64 now i am pritty sure you could code each mess to have the ability for a egg like bubblaling sack of hidden alien grow out of itand sawn if required or triggered, basicly hive has a set distance and can randomly detect all linked infestation with in X distance and randomly selects a mess to spawn said respawning alien out of it could very well have a few dumbies up and running, even dumbbie eggs popping ocationaly, obiously the infestaion would be spart and not create a egg under a chamber but again prolly rather hard to do, tho effective as hives would have less spawn lcoations for at least the first minute of its exsistance, also MCing from hive ot hive could also have the same effect as in you instantly exsplode out of a pree backed bubbaling mess of bacterium

to the lesser exstend still leave in the original current said spawn points but have hive rooms enclosed in a bigger slow moveing hive say like a ground based titain from battle feild 2142

or again keep non moveing stationary 16 spawn points but one would assume each spawn points would quikely be envloped in infestation so improve the current egging animation make it grow out of the ground like a mess then pop and look all messy, if done right it would apear the eggs are growing out of the infestaion

apon useing hive or mc in my opinion since thre is no teleport as such, one would asume these structures decomiple your bacterum genetics thru consumption, they then send that code via hive sight the new location recives said bacterium code then processdes to tell a half bubbled egg to rebuild said creature

the additional back drop to the story line as it why aliens just cant keep cloneing their bacterium genetic traits is cos as it stands ther is plenty of bacterium its amount grows with res how ever it requrie bacterium from a non infinate pool to create a stead flow it grows with space and with resources, how ever it cant deplete its self so much that it cant sustain its self, bacterium is only lost if its ordered to down grade its malecular structure into a flora like substance with no offical thinking just a pure single perpose, e.g chambers, how ever bacterium with acctual thinking acctual life forms that bacterium never really dies as such, it sheads its excess forms so advanced life forms then breaks down and slinks back to its hive to regen before rebuilding its self again

come to make a suggestion and gets into fan fic, thats bad

Sheepe

Erm... what? I'm not entirely sure what you siad there...

Still, I think this is an idea worth persueing...

-Sheepe

pSyk0mAn

Flayra told in one interview that he wants to move away from the current hive situation.

I like the idea of hives and different startlocations for one team, so I hope they won't change too much.
As Mouse said, dynamic hives add some issues,
but how about just more possible hive rooms, thus the aliens have to worry less about hives and more about res-game.
Moreover moving away from the current hive concept could result in unlocked chambers, yeehaw <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />

Oh, and just ignore nex, if you don't want to get headache while reading.
Since he hasn't listen to anyone telling him about this awful way of writing, ignoring him seems the only way to mayby change something.