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DDI looking for help for Rock Raiders 2 (Rock Raiders inspired title)


StewartG
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Monster idea: Crystal crawlers, they look like regular crystals but the color is a bit off... if you come too close they will walk to a raider and explode.

(I have that one in LRR- special ops)

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LEGO Rock Raiders had the feature of every life form on the planet posing as some kind of threat the moment it arrives. Perhaps a passive monster that doesn't actively assault anyone and just wanders the cavern. It only is a threat when it is attacked, and releases resources when it's defeated. It give the player a nice choice of how to play.

It's never an objective, it's an option.

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Concerning making the new game in question open-source: Why not open the code but keep the assets proprietary? That way, people are free to download the code (and only the code) and mod to their heart's content, but getting the whole official game requires paying for the proprietary assets.

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Perhaps a passive monster that doesn't actively assault anyone and just wanders the cavern. It only is a threat when it is attacked, and releases resources when it's defeated.

Cirevam and I have come up with many monster ideas like this, or just completely passive, during the development of our mods. It would be nice for just general wildlife to exist, and maybe even reproduce and grow, to give a feeling of life in the world. Possibly "plants" (not powered by sunlight of course) and fungus too, and maybe things in/under the water/lava/ground if such depth is developed. Maybe you could even harvest some of the plants/animals/fungus for your men to eat, or maybe you have to set up a farm of some sort or at least collect things for someone to set up a farm for your men to eat off of, and some of the foods you grow can give them more energy than silly sandwiches (maybe there's a mushroom that superpowers them for a short time, it should look like amanita).

There could possibly even be non-wildlife entities, like other miners or a civilization/alien race mining (more on this later) with technology and weapons. If they're enemies, it might even be possible to hijack their equipment and use it yourself, like in Crystalien Conflict, or barter with them for their assistance to reach your goal (or maybe even the other way around). Maybe you can even capture some wildlife as pets or for experiments, or figure out how to get the monsters (golems?) to work for you.

Also, complex monster design. Opposite example: like how rockworms, or anything train-like, are impossible in LRR due to how all units are basically a single point with a model built around that point (this can apply to vehicles too).

Stewart: "I like lava monsters. Lego would not let us make the monsters too scary or do much damage, now we are freed up should we go for meaner monsters?" (I understand this to be that LEGO may have not wanted to to be too hard).

Absolutely. For the challenge bit, I think everyone feels that the monsters are pathetically easy for the most part. Mods have made it better, but due to AI hardcode Slimy Slugs are still more of a threat than monsters since you can always kill a monster to get stolen resources back. Meanwhile, things like bats have fake difficulty due to the stupid scare thing, but removing that makes them just scenery (I know I was saying earlier how more passive wildlife is good, but still).

It was also frustrating how monsters always deal a hardcoded damage to entities. Even the non-hardcoded parts were universal for that monster. Depending on their strength, weaknesses and element (if they have one), they should do different damage to different units, because the different units (vehicles, buildings, raiders) should have different defenses, weaknesses and invulnerabilities to the attack methods and elements dished out by wildlife and natural forces. In a more in-depth development, the different individuals of a species could be randomized in size, build and power, so you could spawn, say, three lava monsters, but one is smaller than the others, and one is faster, the other much stronger but not able to use fire-based attacks as well as the other two,

I know it seems odd for this type of game, but their could even be mini-bosses or full bosses. The mini-bosses could just be extra-strong individuals of a species (going off of what I said just above about randomizing), or maybe a leader of a group of creatures who has more powers (or stronger weapons, if it's from an intelligent species). The major bosses could be parts in the story, maybe just super-powerful creatures/machines or a cunning and intelligent being manipulating things.

As for how scary, of course. Again, monsters in LRR aren't a threat. Either by appearance or power or even sheer number traveling in a group (imagine a hundred rock monsters charging you) they should be more threatening by far. Not everything should be like that, of course, and looks can be deceiving to make it even more shocking in the end. There should be some development of the backstories of things like the monsters (like that theory we have based on the book HADU that either the monsters were intelligent or they were created as golems for an intelligent race that once lived on the planet), or just things so that we feel like the wildlife is made of actual living things and not just things to kill for fun. The Rock Raiders originally didn't want to harm the monsters, and only shot them out of defense. That should be the case here.

Or, you can choose to be the more sadistic team commander and shoot every creature in sight. You don't necessarily have to be a good guy in this game, just the protagonist. You can make and set your own morals for you and your team, and it will determine your outcome - choosing a more "evil" approach wouldn't give you a bad ending, nor would you be certain to be successful if you chose a more "heroic" method (I'm not sure how you define good and evil for a team of deep miners, but I'm sure it can be done). The outcome depends on your approach, and your morals are just how you chose to get to your destination. I'm so hungry I could eat an octagon. Of course, it might cause conflict if you decide to kill intelligent beings for your own gain - though allying with them could cause another group of beings to become your enemies, hence how your morals don't set in stone your success. Maybe you don't even know which choice is which, and you just do what you think you should do - which could be anything, and could lead to anything. You could think the planet's environment is important and want to leave the creatures in peace - that could lead to them attacking you, or helping you, or lead to your failure by not wanting to hurt the environment, depending on what you do when and to whom. You could say that the wildlife is in the way of a more important objective and destroy everything to mine - you could succeed, or get attacked by animals or beings, or destroy yourself by mining wildly and causing a cave-in. It all depends.

What Alcom said about it being an option and not an objection - that should be a big focus too. Your leader or whoever the characters are here just gives you an objective, and how you complete it is your choice (moral system?), or you could possibly do other things that would complete an objective not given that would cancel your first (secret objectives). Or just bonus objectives that don't help towards your current mission but might help towards the future - which reminds me, what you do in a mission should build up over time, not like how collecting a lot of ore in a level in LRR meant nothing when you got to another level and had to get more ore.

Edit: Jamesster just suggested a Super Mario 64 approach - multiple objectives on a map (however that's defined) where more than one is mandatory, and what you did to the map in the first objective will be saved and show in the second objective (if there's an earthquake, there should be some code that takes what you did and applies the quake effects, not just lazily throwing rocks around and changing walls). This of course goes along with the bonus objectives and secret/disobedient objectives. Again, what objective you chose to do and ignore determines the future levels.

There should also be much more complex objectives than collecting crystals. As I said earlier, maybe you collect plants or capture animals for science or farming or social needs, or clear a cave of monsters or drain a lake for mining or dam up a flooded river so another team can mine, or set up or destroy stuff or save a lost team or any number of possibilities. Some missions might be timed, some could be infinite but things could go wrong if you wait too long, which then might bring moral choices back.

Anyway, those are just some foundation ideas I have. I don't want to suggest anything about the actual content so that everyone can creatively throw ideas around, but I do want to suggest the structure of how the game works. Hopefully I've said at least a few useful things here.

Sorry if anything here is kind of poorly-worded or not understandable, I just threw things down as I thought of them.

Monster idea: Crystal crawlers, they look like regular crystals but the color is a bit off... if you come too close they will walk to a raider and explode.

This reminds me of that monster I made that is covered/fused with Energy Crystals, but merged with a Creeper.

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Monster idea: Crystal crawlers, they look like regular crystals but the color is a bit off... if you come too close they will walk to a raider and explode.

This reminds me of that monster I made that is covered/fused with Energy Crystals, but merged with a Creeper.

Well, mine doesnt look like that...

9dA7V.jpg?1

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What would be the biological purpose of a creature like that? Self-defense resulting in your own death doesn't work well, unless it's to defend a larger group of your kind.

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Me: "An issue we faced with modding LRR was (as previously mentioned) that it's not particularly affordable to the average Joe, which therefore meant that next to no-one is creating new models for any of their mods. Then the programs that can do the conversion between the formats, still cost around $50 or more (such a Milkshape 3D)."

Stewart: "This is a huge help in our production run, however we could perhaps create a conversion program, from another less expensive modeler, which 3d modeler packages should we go for?"

What you should have is a propriety format, and then have a program which can convert a bunch of formats (such as .obj+.mtl, .lwo, .3ds and so on) to the one the game uses. That way everyone can use their favourite program (I much prefer 3DS Max to anything else). Everything else can be created with free applications such as Audacity for audio and The Gimp for graphics. That said, you need to change the animated image format to .gif, because it's significantly easier to use.

Me: "I'll give an example: You start the game for the first time, the game retrieves the resolution of the monitor and sets the game's resolution to match. This resolution is then written to file, which is then read by the game every time it starts. This means that, if 2 years later and larger resolutions come along the settings file can be changed to also support that resolution without the game needing an update."

Stewart: "Our latest code, checks for system for the available screen resolutions and then works at the highest resolution"

Good. Will we also get newer features like MSAA/CSAA, Anisotropic Filtering and Vertical Sync?

Me: "I have managed to get LRR to run at 1024x768 by changing stuff in the CFG, but the darn right menu can't be moved so it sits in the middle of the screen"

Stewart: "we are now set up for more varied resolutions, so the HUD menus are all definable, in new code you will be able to position them anywhere."

Much appreciated. Can we create new menus and HUD elements as well?

Me: *paragraph on types of multiplayer such as Direct connection, Central servers and player servers*

Stewart: "This area we have not developed, we have functionality from DIrectX but we will have to do some specific programming or license a library to do all of this"

See below.

Me: "As for multiplayer modes. Here's some ideas to just throw out there: - Drill together to achieve one goal - Some sort of player vs. player mode (who can achieve the goal first) - Rogue player(s) mode, a player controls the monsters or natural elements in an effort to destroy the other players progress? - Race mode, who can drill their way to a point first? - Sandbox mode, drill, build and chat to your heart's content - Base defence, protect your base(s) from waves of monsters."

Stewart: "Sure no problem with these, more ideas welcome"

Cyrem done taken all my ideas. That annoys me. A cooperative campaign would be nice. Also, a mode where you have actual races between vehicles would also be nice.

Me: "Monster Suggestions - Rock Monster is a must :) - Small fast monster that hides in the dark and attacks things that walk into unlit tunnels. - A monster that emerges from lava pools (this is a good reason to stop lava erosion)."

Stewart: "I like lava monsters. Lego would not let us make the monsters to scary or do much damage, now we are freed up should we go for meaner monsters?" (I understand this to be that LEGO may have not wanted to to be too hard).

Oh definitely.

Stewart would also like more feedback based on experience with LRR (modding and play) and more monster ideas.

The .cfg, or whatever you end up using for configuration, needs more organisation. The whitespace bonanza is ridiculous at times. Obviously, the amounts of hardcode make things quite impossible at times.

I really want an extended First Person mode. That was my favourite bit. You should be able to interact with the environment, such as enter vehicles and buildings, pickup materials and carry them back. Furthermore, something I really want is the ability to create in-game cutscenes (not just movies). That means NERPS has to also be extended to include camera and animation commands, as well as the ability to light up any element of the HUD, check to see if a player has reinforced certain or a certain amount of walls or anything else. Driving and flying physics should be improved, because that way we can have races in dump trucks. More weaponry for dealing with monsters, and the ability to mod in new types of weapons, would be nice.

The tutorials need to be extended to cover features like ore refining, reinforcing walls, repairing buildings, recharging crystals, using lazers and everything else that I never new existed in the game until I signed up here and read about them. For that matter, every feature in the game should get equal exposure, so, for example, different monsters shouldn't just appear in one or two missions.

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.gif

No.

I was going to say the same thing, .gif is horribly limited. A custom format is fine, provided there is a converter supplied.

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.gif

No.

I was going to say the same thing, .gif is horribly limited. A custom format is fine, provided there is a converter supplied.

I was just saying words. Someone decide something.

What we really need is an SDK. Also, the map. I would like the ability to make scenery and have much more biomes/types of walls/floors with the ability to define how they effect characters walking around and into them, and if they can be drilled. If I could really have my way, I would have the ability to create the map in a 3D Modeler and make parts destructable so you can drill it and such.

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.gif

No.

I was going to say the same thing, .gif is horribly limited. A custom format is fine, provided there is a converter supplied.

The skype chat agrees that a folder/zip of PNG images as frames would work better. A consolidated format would mean that there probably has to be a special program made, or at least a lib to generate/decompile them.
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If I could really have my way, I would have the ability to create the map in a 3D Modeler and make parts destructable so you can drill it and such.

Bad idea, you've pretty much denied everyone who does not have a 3D modelling program or not good at modelling from making levels.

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If I could really have my way, I would have the ability to create the map in a 3D Modeler and make parts destructable so you can drill it and such.

Bad idea, you've pretty much denied everyone who does not have a 3D modelling program or not good at modelling from making levels.

Who says we can't use both methods? Also, are you aware of GMax, the 100% free modeling application?

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If I could really have my way, I would have the ability to create the map in a 3D Modeler and make parts destructable so you can drill it and such.

Bad idea, you've pretty much denied everyone who does not have a 3D modelling program or not good at modelling from making levels.

Who says we can't use both methods? Also, are you aware of GMax, the 100% free modeling application?

Dual loading system would be a waste of time. Keep the file format simple and open.

They may be free, but people don't want to spend time learning such programs.

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If I could really have my way, I would have the ability to create the map in a 3D Modeler and make parts destructable so you can drill it and such.

Bad idea, you've pretty much denied everyone who does not have a 3D modelling program or not good at modelling from making levels.

Who says we can't use both methods? Also, are you aware of GMax, the 100% free modeling application?

Dual loading system would be a waste of time. Keep the file format simple and open.

Bah humbug. Then at least have my other suggestions for scenery and expanded biomes/wall types and non-hardcoded properties.

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Bah humbug. Then at least have my other suggestions for scenery and expanded biomes/wall types and non-hardcoded properties.

I believe this is already planned.

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[6:44:18 PM] Doc: Basically, make it easy for EVERYONE to make the game

If nothing else, this is the ONE THING that matters for us as RRU. We need to be able to mod the game. Anyone who joins needs to be able to mod the game, whether it's through familiar and accessible file formats or an SDK. If we hit dead ends like we do with LRR, everyone will suffer.

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Also, want to implement boo by-traps. Stuff like walls that shoot arrows/suck people in, floors that shoot out fire, spiderwebs which trap people, trap floors, quicksand and pools of water that suck people in and so on.

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Who says we can't use both methods?

It would be a lot easier to achieve this effect through a task that renders the cavern in a certain way to give it the appearance of not being blocky, sort of like what the PS1 LRR does.

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Who says we can't use both methods?

It would be a lot easier to achieve this effect through a task that renders the cavern in a certain way to give it the appearance of not being blocky, sort of like what the PS1 LRR does.

Yeah, but the reason I wanted this is so I could remake places from other games using their original world mesh.

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If the units used in mapping are small enough which they probably won't be and the rendering was done correctly which it probably won't be you could get something at least similar.

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Also, want to implement booby-traps. Stuff like walls that shoot arrows/suck people in, floors that shoot out fire, spiderwebs which trap people, trap floors, quicksand and pools of water that suck people in and so on.

This would be done with scriptable objects, similar to how NERPS works, but with less derp of course.
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I just re-read and realized

floors that shoot out fire

So basically geysers/lava plumes from the PS1 game.

edit because

[7:26:39 PM] IceHusky: ah

[7:26:49 PM] IceHusky: ...so like freeroam

[7:26:51 PM] IceHusky: lol

[7:26:58 PM] TheDoctor: Eh

[7:26:59 PM] TheDoctor: No

[7:27:10 PM] IceHusky: terraria?

[7:27:48 PM] TheDoctor: No...

[7:28:46 PM] Lair of Rockwhales: like a game where an old guy tells you stuff to do for their ship and there's a plot of some sort but it's all big and open and you can do whatever you want not limited to building a laser and destroying your own ship and creating an empire

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  • Cyrem changed the title to DDI looking for help for Rock Raiders 2 (Rock Raiders inspired title)
  • lol username unpinned this topic
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