Doing More with Dynamic Infestation
RuBy
Join Date: 2002-12-12 Member: 10732Members
Join Date: 2002-12-12 Member: 10732Members
Dynamic infestation is one of the features everyone seems excited about, for the very persuasive reason that it benefits both cosmetics and gameplay. If NS2 is to be the first FPS to tackle this concept, let's also make it the best.
In this topic I would like us to try and brainstorm how the basic concept of dynamic infestation can be improved upon. I'll try to keep this post up to date and categorize some of the ideas we come up with, in order to best deliver the power of our imagination to the devteam.
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Here are a couple of ideas to get us started:
As the game progresses areas that are infested will grow outwards, but what if they also became more luxuriant with time? Perhaps fungus-like structures (think ns_origin) could grow, and gradually develop in well infested areas. Vines might begin to dangle from the ceilings; bulbous pockets of gas could burgeon and be released, almost as if the walls were breathing. A green haze would begin to form in the most humid and contaminated areas. Structures that shoot minimal amounts of spores or spikes could possibly grow out of the infestation, and have an active role to play.
Mappers could choose "points of germination" in order to make these structures grow in a visually attractive and organic way, without necessarily losing the randomness of infestation. A great example would be the Atmospheric Processing room of ns_bast, where the largest mushrooms/plants/structures might develop under that humid spot of light.
From a marine point of view, it would add to the tension if the sound of your own heartbeat becomes noticeable when you enter infested areas. Condensation might form on your visor as you move into the lushest areas. The sound of computers and mechanical parts would become muffled under the goop.
Perhaps the commander could lock off certain areas, or have his marines activate a cleaning cycle within a certain corridor in order to purge the infestation. Of course if it had grown enough to block the doors open, the marines might have to go in with flame-throwers. This would add more opportunities to deny certain areas on both sides.
In this topic I would like us to try and brainstorm how the basic concept of dynamic infestation can be improved upon. I'll try to keep this post up to date and categorize some of the ideas we come up with, in order to best deliver the power of our imagination to the devteam.
--------------------------------------------
Here are a couple of ideas to get us started:
As the game progresses areas that are infested will grow outwards, but what if they also became more luxuriant with time? Perhaps fungus-like structures (think ns_origin) could grow, and gradually develop in well infested areas. Vines might begin to dangle from the ceilings; bulbous pockets of gas could burgeon and be released, almost as if the walls were breathing. A green haze would begin to form in the most humid and contaminated areas. Structures that shoot minimal amounts of spores or spikes could possibly grow out of the infestation, and have an active role to play.
Mappers could choose "points of germination" in order to make these structures grow in a visually attractive and organic way, without necessarily losing the randomness of infestation. A great example would be the Atmospheric Processing room of ns_bast, where the largest mushrooms/plants/structures might develop under that humid spot of light.
From a marine point of view, it would add to the tension if the sound of your own heartbeat becomes noticeable when you enter infested areas. Condensation might form on your visor as you move into the lushest areas. The sound of computers and mechanical parts would become muffled under the goop.
Perhaps the commander could lock off certain areas, or have his marines activate a cleaning cycle within a certain corridor in order to purge the infestation. Of course if it had grown enough to block the doors open, the marines might have to go in with flame-throwers. This would add more opportunities to deny certain areas on both sides.
Comments
Each team could have a bonus of some kind when being in their "home-field", this could be passive and perhaps do better in the long run then short term.
Flame thrower could be especially effective against bacteria, gorge bilebomb/other splash against nanites.
Bacteria could swallow or disable lights when passing over them, lights reactivate when bacteria retreats from em.
Chamber/structure abilities work better in the home-field. Scan could have slightly longer range, MT updates faster, commander can see aliens on top-down view.
SoF updates faster, longer range on all ability structures, overall better hive-mind sense.
Structures built in bacteria could make a hole in the center of structure placement which then slowly retracts until the area around it is free from bacteria. Vice-versa for nanites.
Passable/unpassable areas may depend on which micro-mass is around it (ladder cannot be accessed, bacteria has grown over it). Also applicable to weld points.
TSA Nanite VS Kharaa Infestation
How about a hacking/repairing/rebuild game needed by the marines to fight back the Dynamic Infestation, to assist the Commander? A engineer class of weapons of sorts, like a more dedicated welder/scanner/personal digital assistant (think the Resident Evil 1 movie, where the guy has that computer on his arm to access stuff).
How about a growing, improving, and for lack of a better word "terra-forming" game needed by the kharaa to spread the Dynamic Infestation, perhaps an advanced form of the gorge?
As well as it could slow the walking speed of marines, esp if there were tangly vines hang from the ceiling. I read somewhere that the Infestation could also be used to seize a machine to work, say a TF and turrents, the infestation would cut the power, until some marine tosses say a ''Nanade'' Grenade with nanites, or flames the place down. Mmm, really looking forward to where this could lead. And I think Svenpa really got something there!
Disabling complete machines sounds interesting, it would make marines worry more about their "locked down" hives if that now would be a viable tactic in NS2 , even if there are no kharaa around (regular burning/destruction of the bacteria)! The bacteria might unnoticed crawl its way to the TF or PG, disabling them and allowing a greater chance of Kharaa comeback.
Anywhere a gorge tosses a slimebomb, infestation coats the area, feeding on the nutrition spread on the floor/walls. I'm imagining this weapon firing maybe 1/3 as fast as bilebomb does now, so you'd have to be sure to aim. The infestation from one shot swells to full radius in about 4-5 seconds, but then dies off if left alone in about 10. As long as the gorge maintains his slime farm, he can keep an area infested.
If you hit marine buildings directly, they become coated with infestation, and it slowly digests them, keeping itself alive till the building crumbles at which point the infestation spreads. Welders/flamethrowers would stop it of course.
Keep them comming, im enjoying hearing them all!
Although my advice is to not get too far fetched which happens frequently. Which brings me to the question, are you having game testers? To get the feel of the game and give advice on it?
-Matt.
A good start is probably asking the devs how much dynamic infestation there can be without performance concerns; how quickly it can grow/die off without going over whatever budget they have for network traffic or load on the server.
I'm aleady playing NS2 with these ideas in my imagination~
Keep 'em coming! I LOVE reading these! =D
FEED MEE!!
This could also be used to stop marines camping near hives (darn gl campers!!), like if they stayed still for too long the infestation (THING) would start to react and "attack" the marines by infecting them, maybe consuming or corrupting them. How cool would THAT be?? =D
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The gorge's bilebomb could be replaced with a slimebomb, if you will.
Anywhere a gorge tosses a slimebomb, infestation coats the area, feeding on the nutrition spread on the floor/walls. I'm imagining this weapon firing maybe 1/3 as fast as bilebomb does now, so you'd have to be sure to aim. The infestation from one shot swells to full radius in about 4-5 seconds, but then dies off if left alone in about 10. As long as the gorge maintains his slime farm, he can keep an area infested.
If you hit marine buildings directly, they become coated with infestation, and it slowly digests them, keeping itself alive till the building crumbles at which point the infestation spreads. Welders/flamethrowers would stop it of course.
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Could you imagine the Gorge parties!? I would be slimebombing everything!
It sounds like some people are push DI to a whole new level, kinda sounds like territories with the ideas of the Nanotechnology fighting the Kharaa spores. Spores: "Ahhh man! The cops R ere! Get off our turf yo' mother f***ers!" Nanites: "Right lads! Take um down town!" Spores: “Ah man! Ah man! Ah man! I ain’t dun nothin’ wrong officer!” Nanites: “Your trespassing on TSA ground.”
I really want to see rooms and things shutting down from the DI, maybe even the gravity control in the whole ship/space station going out when a room certain is lost <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
One question: would it be possible to relocate if a room was filled with DI? I mean I have seen moments when like one or two marines have relocated, bringing the whole team back from near extinction. But if there was DI all over the place would a team have destroy the DI and then build stuff, which would take more time and stop things like this happening, or would it be possible to just build a CC and DI would slowly die around it?
Or maybe there are special turrets/structures that deal with the DI. So a commander could spend time building defensive walls that if kept alive would stop the growth of DI. Maybe a lazer wall nanite grid that crosses the floor. Then I imagine when the DI reaches that wall/structure/turret it stops, maybe moving upwards instead or never getting close enough to grow. These things might get damaged slowly over time from the DI but not as badly as a regular structure?
This way the marines might literally have to clear rooms and build these anti-DI/defensive structures in them.
In maps where marines are loosing quite badly there might just be small islands around nodes and where these special turrets/walls have been built.
I imagine these “walls” would appear to be like holograms to the marines, things can pass through them but the DI can’t get past. Dunno how the aliens would be effected by this? I personally picture them as being able to pass through them as well, maybe taking a small bit of damage, like 5 or 10 points of damage. I also imagine that these things would be cheaper than other turrets as you would need quite a lot of them to block off hallways and huge sections of a map. This would literally create boarder lines. Which the aliens could bite down and if the marines push forward they could easily recycle them as they build new ones closer to the hives.
For the commander, I can see him being able to place these things and see connecting lines where the laser wall (or whatever you want to call it) will be placed. Maybe he can select the routes the walls will connect in between the turrets. There would also be a limit as to how far away another turret can go, say like you need at least 2 for every wall and it takes 2 for a corridor and 3 for a wide corridor, you might need 6 to 8 to surround an entire marine start, if everything is close together.
What do you think?
Here’s another idea, what about if DI was literally dropped by walking aliens. Like spores would be “picked up” at hives and just “fall off” as they walked along. A player wouldn’t literally have to go and collect a bunch of spores, but instead it would happen like it does in nature, spores get attached to us and other animals all the time then dropped somewhere else. This should happen in the game. Say where ever loads of players move, the game should make DI appear along those routes and also the bigger the alien, the more spores it holds and the easier the DI is put down. This would allow a load (like the whole team) of skulks to rush marine start and for them to have a long line of DI behind them, or a few Onos to walk along and for them to create the same effect. I still think the DI should be stronger nearer a healthy hive. That and not all the aliens are going to get to the marine start, meaning those who die along the route would just leave their spores where they lie.
This would make marines (both experienced and noobs) realise where the main alien routes are and perhaps to be a little more weary of those areas or take other routes. It would also be a good indicator of which vents are being used by the Kharaa and where marines should watch out for. I don’t think spores should be dropped when an alien is standing still, so if a player stays in the same place for a long period of time they wouldn’t build a giant clump of DI around them and it would still require many aliens to carry the DI around the level. I picture it this way, each alien is a paint brush (bare with me on this) it puts down a very, almost invisible colour (Spores/Infestation) on the page (the hallway/map/whatever) and over time the layers of colour build up and become the DI. The larger the brush (Onos big, skulk small) the more paint it carries, the darker the colour, the more DI, simple.
<b>What do you think of those ideas?</b>
The turrets would be like the stompers from Half-Life 2, sending shockwaves through the ground which would keep the infestation away, I also like the idea with the hologram walls, but how about a lerks primal scream (or something, just saying =D) would be able to make it flicker? =) like theres a marine building something behind the wall in a dull corridor with a pipe leaking steam, feeling safe and all, and then all of a sudden a scream is heard, the wall flickers and a skulk or two leafs out of the darkness and....you get what I mean! xD
The idea with the spores is good aswell, I don't think that it should stay unless new were added often, and maybe if marines decided to walk that way, the DI could maybe start turning red'ish letting the aliens know when someone passed by or something. =D
to INKEDOUT:
The turrets would be like the stompers from Half-Life 2, sending shockwaves through the ground which would keep the infestation away, I also like the idea with the hologram walls, but how about a lerks primal scream (or something, just saying =D) would be able to make it flicker? =) like theres a marine building something behind the wall in a dull corridor with a pipe leaking steam, feeling safe and all, and then all of a sudden a scream is heard, the wall flickers and a skulk or two leafs out of the darkness and....you get what I mean! xD
The idea with the spores is good aswell, I don't think that it should stay unless new were added often, and maybe if marines decided to walk that way, the DI could maybe start turning red'ish letting the aliens know when someone passed by or something. =D
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Yeah the flickering idea is a nice one. Maybe this could happen when a alien goes through, even a clocked one <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> Marine: "There is something in here with us!!" **Random shooting as marines get attacked by cloaked skulks**
I also really like the idea of the DI changing colour as it dies off. Maybe it starts off green and goes more yellow as marines pass over it (there is already yellow bits in NS) then red then maybe becomes a purplish gunk like that described in Six Days in Sanjii and finally it disappears. This would give something back to the story, something that isn't really explained in it.
I don’t know if this would be possible. But would be a cool way to have the DI fade away again. Perhaps if its shot or burned it could just shrivel up into the purplish gunk with areas surrounding the damaged areas becoming red and yellow.
Not as much as aliens, but still =D
As for spreading the infestation, having a working 'spore system' versus just the innate spread through the aliens themselves doesn't seem like such a huge leap. I'd rather see the primary growth of infestation go to the gorge. For example, if the slime ball move gets taken in, the Gorge could have a whole arsenal dedicated to spreading the infestation, i.e. hives, RTs, Chambers, then when they're not building or just waiting for res, they can start slime balling and spreading the infestation.
However, i think if this kind of spreading was available then marines would defenetly need a limited but easy to acces type of counter-measure. Flame-thrower seems like the Heavy duty mass destruction of infestation, where as grenades and welders maybe? would be able to still clear infestation at a smaller scale. For example, 3 marines walk into a hallway that just recenetly has been infested, and have a few options, A. Choose another route B. Go back to base for a flame thrower C. Toss a couple nades or weld a small temporary path to get to the other side.
Gameplay for aliens- Aliens gain benefits like being more silent when walking on infestation, increases speed, Rooms encased in infestation impair effectiveness of Motion Tracking
Gameplay for marines- Infestation corrodes marine armor/structures and devours them whole if left alone for too long, marines have to cooporate in infested areas in order to get the job done.
Corruption chambers should be the moxt expensive chamber and it should allow Aliens to quickly spread infestation. =)
and if two or more were places next to eachother, the range and speed of the towers should be better =D
yep.
This would make alien controlled areas, like hives become thick with DI and look correct, and the DI would then be spread outwards through the natural travelling process of alien players. It would also allow gorges to build chambers which would fuel the DI and make places that were filled with OCs and what not, clearer to the marines as they approached, and increase the fear factor.
<!--coloro:#00BFFF--><span style="color:#00BFFF"><!--/coloro-->“Commander, there’s some green gunk on the floor here, should I go around the corner and investigate?â€<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--coloro:#000080--><span style="color:#000080"><!--/coloro-->“Negative Marine! Wait for your squad."<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--coloro:#00BFFF--><span style="color:#00BFFF"><!--/coloro-->“Nah don’t worry Com, I’ll be fine, they’ll probably just be some MC there...â€<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--coloro:#000080--><span style="color:#000080"><!--/coloro-->“Negative Marine! Wait for your squad.â€<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--coloro:#00BFFF--><span style="color:#00BFFF"><!--/coloro-->“Commander, I’m dead, the OCs got me... ...why didn’t you tell me...â€<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--coloro:#000080--><span style="color:#000080"><!--/coloro-->“N008!â€<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
These ideas get me really excited too! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> But I must say that BCSeph has got a point here. That's the way NS works: Marines are countering things all the time. So there's really no need for nanites. Instead stuff like flamers, welders, grenades, turrets (like stompers in HL2) and electrified TFs and RTs would destroy and keep away infestation. And what it comes to spreading it, hives would spread the most, some other structures but less than hives and maybe Gorge's spit or, Scuzball's idea, slimebomb or maybe both. All this reminds me of a PC-game serie called Disciples.