NS2 Map/mod idea: Halls of Darkness
Toumal
Join Date: 2010-05-02 Member: 71591Members
Join Date: 2010-05-02 Member: 71591Members
<div class="IPBDescription">A new map idea similar to what Siege did in NS1</div>I have an idea for a map/mod that would go really well with NS2's lighting and shadows.
Halls of Darkness starts with aliens and marines separated by several locked doors, similar to Siege in NS1. <b>Both starting locations are the only lit areas on the map, the rest is shrouded in darkness.</b>
Both teams are given a certain time to evolve/research certain upgrades. After some time the doors open and marines begin their trek through darkness. Marines have to walk though large corridors similar to the "Mines of Moria" in LOTR, with their flashlights and EXO-headlights being the only thing that shines into the darkness. Aliens must team up and pounce the marines from the shadows.
The hallways are very big, with pillars and obstructions giving aliens plenty of room to hide. Again, think about how the heros in LOTR walked through the dark halls of the Mines of Moria, with pillars allowing the orcs to crawl around and hide or even attack from above. Here's a minecraft-made recreation, though in this mod it would have to be completely dark to be effective:
<img src="http://cdn.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/screenshot/1124/20110619_122550_100922.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Now the thing is: The marines are unable to respawn while outside their starting location. In fact, a door opens that allows the aliens to attack the initial IPs, and the marines basically lose their starting base as part of the game. Their only chance is to face the darkness, and walk through it.
At certain checkpoints, marines can open a door to a "saferoom" that lights up when used, can be locked from the inside, and provides the marines with temporary respawn capabilities. Variants of the game could have the marines start out with 0 tech, and each time they reach a saferoom they receive some more upgrades, eventually culminating in jetpacks and EXOs. Or they could be given some time to research exo and then have the saferooms just provide a place to heal up/rearm and respawn.
If saferooms are too far apart, non-vanishing ammopacks could be scattered on the way to not have the marines run out of ammo. Perhaps ammo lying on the floor near a corpse...
If the marines get through the darkness, they reach the alien hives and win the game by destroying them. Some maps could have the marines activate a pre-built base that gives them the required edge to quickly obliberate the hives, perhaps prebuilt arcs could be in a closed-off room nearby, something like that. Aliens could try a last stand but basically once the marines are through the darkness, it's supposed to be VERY hard for aliens to prevent them from destroying the hives.
The core idea is to let the NS2 engine do the thing it does best: Realtime lighting. We'd turn this graphical feature into a true and defining gameplay element in this mode. Just like in Lord of the Rings, aliens would prey on marines from the shadows, and marines would have to move as a coordinated group, weldering themselves, covering all angles, their flashlights slicing through the utter and sometimes moist darkness...
What do you think?
Halls of Darkness starts with aliens and marines separated by several locked doors, similar to Siege in NS1. <b>Both starting locations are the only lit areas on the map, the rest is shrouded in darkness.</b>
Both teams are given a certain time to evolve/research certain upgrades. After some time the doors open and marines begin their trek through darkness. Marines have to walk though large corridors similar to the "Mines of Moria" in LOTR, with their flashlights and EXO-headlights being the only thing that shines into the darkness. Aliens must team up and pounce the marines from the shadows.
The hallways are very big, with pillars and obstructions giving aliens plenty of room to hide. Again, think about how the heros in LOTR walked through the dark halls of the Mines of Moria, with pillars allowing the orcs to crawl around and hide or even attack from above. Here's a minecraft-made recreation, though in this mod it would have to be completely dark to be effective:
<img src="http://cdn.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/screenshot/1124/20110619_122550_100922.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Now the thing is: The marines are unable to respawn while outside their starting location. In fact, a door opens that allows the aliens to attack the initial IPs, and the marines basically lose their starting base as part of the game. Their only chance is to face the darkness, and walk through it.
At certain checkpoints, marines can open a door to a "saferoom" that lights up when used, can be locked from the inside, and provides the marines with temporary respawn capabilities. Variants of the game could have the marines start out with 0 tech, and each time they reach a saferoom they receive some more upgrades, eventually culminating in jetpacks and EXOs. Or they could be given some time to research exo and then have the saferooms just provide a place to heal up/rearm and respawn.
If saferooms are too far apart, non-vanishing ammopacks could be scattered on the way to not have the marines run out of ammo. Perhaps ammo lying on the floor near a corpse...
If the marines get through the darkness, they reach the alien hives and win the game by destroying them. Some maps could have the marines activate a pre-built base that gives them the required edge to quickly obliberate the hives, perhaps prebuilt arcs could be in a closed-off room nearby, something like that. Aliens could try a last stand but basically once the marines are through the darkness, it's supposed to be VERY hard for aliens to prevent them from destroying the hives.
The core idea is to let the NS2 engine do the thing it does best: Realtime lighting. We'd turn this graphical feature into a true and defining gameplay element in this mode. Just like in Lord of the Rings, aliens would prey on marines from the shadows, and marines would have to move as a coordinated group, weldering themselves, covering all angles, their flashlights slicing through the utter and sometimes moist darkness...
What do you think?
Comments
I must have missed the part of LOTR with the Kharaa decimating the hobbits.
*Sigh* Those extended cuts.
That said, I love the idea. Go forth and do a year of diligent work to bring it to life!
you might have trouble making locked doors though since there aren't really any advanced entities like with the HL1 engine (not yet anyway) but you could make each location biased towards each team so that they don't go into until ready.
Checkpoint by checkpoint clearance, simulating a real TSF entry and then approaching the hive.
6 claws up!
Checkpoint by checkpoint clearance, simulating a real TSF entry and then approaching the hive.
6 claws up!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, I thought about it and it could even be done in a way that has the marines repair power nodes as they progress, successively lighting up the hallways and corridors. But they should be fairly big corridors with lots of room for aliens to set up ambushes, and lots of cover.
The only problem I see right now is what schkorpio mentioned: the apparent lack of movable entities. Does anyone have an idea for how to do walls or doors that are controlled by script?
Having marines start with certain tech is not a problem, that's something that can be scripted fairly easily. If doors are not possible yet, then the maps would have to be laid out so that aliens need a certain time to reach the marine spawn and kill their IPs. It would also mean that we cannot have checkpoints with lockable doors, which isn't really required, but would certainly be immensely cool. Imagine closing the door right before an onos... ;)
The question is how to influence alien spawn so that they spawn at the farthest point first, then after the IPs are destroyed, somewhere near where the marines are. Perhaps a good comparison could be Left4Dead, where the survivors trek through the map while the infected players spawn somewhere in the vincinity, depending on how far the survivors are at the moment.
A big question remains: Who and where is the commander? Is it one player who hops into an indestructible command chair at start? Is there no commander at all, and the checkpoint IPs are all pre-built and just need to be activated by repairing a powernode? If so, how do we prevent the aliens from destroying those IPs? Or are all IPs indestructible as long as they are unpowered so they can lay dormant until the marines arrive an activate them? Maybe we could have this for the base near the end as well, everything is unpowered but indestructible, and the act of powering up the base makes them destructible...
Hmm. Lots of balancing questions there.