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Author Topic: Everon Cartel  (Read 22209 times)

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Waterman

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #30 on: 26 Aug 2002, 19:48:05 »
You could also use my island if you would like? ???
You can download the beta at my site...
http://www.freewebs.com/watermansofpsite/index.htm

It has a few rivers, large towns, farm(s) (Made 1 at the moment) and some cool bases... 8)
Go to the WRPedit section also to view my island under the WATERMANS island thread. ;)

Also Phaedens island would be a good addition.... :)

Waterman.

Kaliyuga

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #31 on: 26 Aug 2002, 21:01:29 »
See.. I knew I forgot somebody.....  ;D ;D

@SEAL84: Haven't seen 'XXX' yet, but that scene sounds cool anyways  ;D  And of course anyone trying to skim from our profits will be dealt with appropriately  ;D Give em a Colombian Necktie... LOL   :P


@Waterman: Thanks for the offer... but I already have one or two islands that are being worked on for this.. I am interested in seeing Fox's Map however, because even if I don't use it per se.. It will give me some good ideas for making my own farmlands...  ;D

@LCD:   Plan B is on a need to know basis  ::)   ;D
Also.. about the whole 7 or 8 objectives thing.. I'm saying like in OSALKA   ;) ;D where there are alot of objectives, but only a few of those need to be completed in order to finish the mission.... it adds to the replayability... optional tasks and secondary objectives and such... maybe some hidden ones you might or might not stumble upon
« Last Edit: 26 Aug 2002, 21:04:32 by Kaliyuga »

Offline LCD

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #32 on: 26 Aug 2002, 22:22:35 »
KA ??? Dats new  ;)  ;D ;D - nywayz i got da Plan B discription  :P good plan  ;)  ;D

u need 2 c da next mision in da OSA series - it have mor objectives dan in OSAL - KA  ;)  ;D

LCD OUT
"guess being the community has downsides .." - cheetah
Help Perfecting Da Next Best Thing - O-Team Beta

Rubble_Maker

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #33 on: 27 Aug 2002, 17:23:23 »
Ok, in general I dont like "Mafia"-like games where you're the bad guys, but this deifinetely sounds like fun coz it involves a lot of *really* advanced scripting. The ideas you've come up
with so far sound more like an advanture than a FPS, so you'll need dozens of custom scripts to tweak the AI.

One aspect of mission design I always felt is neglected by most designers is to set up a realistic enviroment. Just shooting ppl is boring, and we all have seen the built-in
animations and AI behaviour a coupla thousand times... so what needs is something new.
What really helps is atmosphere. Make this guy (player character) have a girlfriend, and also make him live somewhere, in a small house where he has some nice guns at his disposal and a nice car.
Now that girl will have some scripted AI, and she will randomly do things, like talk to the  player if he's around, or drive to the next store etc pp. Maybe you could even make a mission
where she gets captured by another cartel...

You'll definetely need an interface to talk with ppl. This could be made like in those good old adventure games, where you walk up close to someone, and a bunch of phrases pops up that you can choose from.

Also script some AI for the local residents. They should hang around, or drive in their cars, or go for a walk, chat, etc pp - everything is triggered randomly by some smart script. When
they feal threatened, i.e. if they see how you get out your big shotgun right in front of them, they'll call the police, or run away or something. Ok, so you need:

* a police station
* some gamelogics on the map which mark positions where a resident could call the police
  (open buildigns, phone booth etc).
* an AI script for da police

About that personality thing for non-player units... this will require really advanced scripting. Check out my tute on AI scripting and fuzzy logic in the Advanced Editing forum
to see what I have in mind ;)

For the cutscenes you can use my GT script; I can tell you how to use it no prob. Basically it moves a camera along a curved path, so things look a bit more spectacular than they normally would. Also you can rip off the voice generator script from the ST16MPenetration mission and use it for the local residants so they have a chat randomly.

When you script the AI, use lots of global vars to store various states for each unit, so you can query stuff like "has this guy spotted the player" or "is an enemy unit around this place".
Using these states, each unit makes its decisions using a simple pseudo fuzzy logic where you basically just have a bunch of options, and you weight the importance of the different unit states to make a decision. Also you need a script which keeps track of how close the units are to each other to draw conclusions from that information .Otherwise you need to put up with the stupid build-in AI; well you prolly know what I mean: the player shoots some guy, and the guy next to him wont get his lazy ass off even if his friend's guts are slattered all over him ;)

Before you start scripting the AI, make a list of available data that the units can draw from.
Example:

*how close is the player?
*did he see the player?
*did the player see him?
*did someone open fire in his general direction? (I wrote a nice script for my SPM "The Prey"
that I can send you; it detects if someone has opened fire. Using the "getdir" command you
can query the general direction in which a unit has fired).

This is only an example and you can prolly come up with more like these. Then when you have a
complete list, make a script which keeps track of this information and saves it in an array.
At mission start, the script is executed for all units, and each of them gets his own array
to save the state data. The script could also run at different frequencies for each unit to
reflect different levels of awareness.

Also you gotta mark specific regions on the map that the AI can use for specific tactics, like
waylaying the player or hiding. These could be trees, bushes or buildings. For the latter ones, use the new "inspect ID" editor feature in Res, and make a list with the IDs for all (enterable) buildings on the map. If the AI script decides that a specific unit should hide, you simply traverse the list and pick a building which is close enuff.

There's a lot of other neat stuff you could do with such a script, like make a list of all cars
on the map, and make the AI dudes use them occasionally. For example, when some enemy unit spottes
the player, the AI script chooses from one of these options:

1. Attack (condition: enuff allied units around OR enuff units in player squad are dead already. Use
   a simple ratio here)
2. Hide (condition: same as above, just negate them)
   -if possible, pick a building from list which is close enuff)
3. Surrender (condition: same as above, but only if the ratio is high enuff so that the unit is
   definetely outnumbered and wouldn't stand a chance anyway)
4. Run away (condition: same as above; use random to decide which one to pick. Coordinates for
  DoMove are obtained by simply making a vector from one of the enemy units to the player, then
  inverse and scale it)
5. Drive away (condition: same as above AND a car has been found which is close enuff AND
   distance to car is within a certain limit which depends on the distance between player
   and unit, i.e. how much time there's left to get into the car).
6. do nothing (condition: player hasn't drawn his weapon yet or hasn't opened fire yet)

For a more realistic effect, I'd give only handguns to the player in most missions. Most of the
time he'd have to be stealthy and try not to be suspicious to residents or the police. So he
only carries a handgun or maybe a Scorpion).





Ok I hope I could show ya that its definetely possible to do something special with AI scripts and make this campaign a outstanding one :)
Only drawback is that it takes an aweful lot of time to script and debug that stuff ;)


Oh, and one more thing: Make sure you properly plan your missions before you even think about working on it! I suggest you make a list of scripts that you need for your mission, and then you make some beta-versions of them and you debug them on plain Desert Island, with no other crap around that only confuses you. Then when you're 100% sure that the script works as it should, you put it into your mission. Tell ya, it saves you hours of work if you seperate things for betatesting! Thats one of my experiences from working on STMPenetration, which is a pretty complex mission and took quite some time to finish ;)




Kaliyuga

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #34 on: 27 Aug 2002, 18:45:17 »
WOW  :wow:  thanks for the tons of great input Rubble Maker.. I'm on my way out the door to classes right now, but I'll digest all that info later...  ;D ;D

As far as the gamelogic/phonebooth thing goes, pure  genious... don't know how it slipped by all of us for this long..  :P  

I will check out this whole "fuzzy logic" thing you're talking about also ..


But thanks again for all the input, I know your experience on the STM6 mission is invaluable to anyone planning such an ambitious undertaking....  

We are going to draw out a rough plot line before starting any mission... the only thing that might have to come later are any add-ons we decide to use.. (I.E. police units that are not finished yet)


« Last Edit: 27 Aug 2002, 18:50:16 by Kaliyuga »

Offline LCD

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #35 on: 27 Aug 2002, 22:01:05 »
We did say dat we wil give em personality scriptin right? dis thin dat Rubble_Maker said is personality scriptin (part of it)  ;D but i dont think we can nd need 2 put 2 much trigers/scripts in dat mision cuz somtimes weaker comps wil start lagin  ;)  ;D

LCD OUT
"guess being the community has downsides .." - cheetah
Help Perfecting Da Next Best Thing - O-Team Beta

asmodeus

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #36 on: 27 Aug 2002, 23:34:42 »
Hey there Rubble_Maker!!  WOW and thanks!!     :o

Yes, I think what we are going to need for this campaign is a delicate mixture of advanced scripting/triggers and limiting such things to keep the lag and save times down.   ;)   ;D

I love your ideas Rubble_Maker and have no doubt we will be glad and honored to use your scripts and ideas!    :D

This is exactly the route we are taking, we plan on having an environment that is always changing and very random.  It will definately be non-linear and I agree with you that the player will have to start with hand guns!   ;D

What we will end up doing is setting a "minimum system requirement" for the campaign.  After all, what we have planned won't really be able to be completed with too slow of a computer...   :-\   We shall have to see how it goes though..  Since we are going to use custom Islands, some of them are not as large as say, Malden.  This will help a lot with the lagging probs, I hope.   :D

Asmo out.  Time to go to work.   :-\    ;D

Offline LCD

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #37 on: 28 Aug 2002, 00:15:57 »
i thinked a litl bout da AI scriptin (didnt read da TUT cuz of me beign lazy  ;)) buti have a Idea we r usin OFP engine so we should use it @ da best way we can - so if we want ppl runin away just set deir allowfleeing on haigher value - its always da best thing 2 b simple  ;) so if we want lets say 5 ppl have da ability 2 run away in cars we script em (not every1 can steal a car right ?) nd a;ll da oders we can just write in deir init

this allowfleeing 0.8 or anything else nd save us scriptin (cpu takin nd just da thinkin dat iw wil take us 2 write it  ;)  ;D)


LCD OUT
"guess being the community has downsides .." - cheetah
Help Perfecting Da Next Best Thing - O-Team Beta

hiddenfox

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #38 on: 28 Aug 2002, 01:05:43 »
how about even moving part of the campaign to the mideast.

poppy farms, and escaping US military involment in the region with your cash crops. seems like fun to me.

anyway about the farm island it IS still a work in progress but im going to finish up a couple more farms before i send it to you.

probably in the next day or two

Kaliyuga

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #39 on: 28 Aug 2002, 07:54:59 »
Well... While I was in class today I started to sketch out a possible plot tree for the campaign.... I think I'll actually have more time to work on this part of it now that I am back in school.. LOL  ;D  

@ Rubble Maker: A few men in dark business suits decided to pay me a visit today, and they convinced me :help: to tell you that this mod has absolutely nothing to do with the "Mafia" , in fact there is no such thing as this alleged "Mafia".
 I want to ensure you that we are in fact all members in good standing of the International Order of Smugglers and Dealers , Local Chapter 420. And if there were such a thing as a "Mafia" we would neither advocate or condemn this alleged "Mafia"

Now.. on to business then...  your ideas blow my mind :wow: you need to go make yer own game and then hire me  ;D

Quote
Also you can rip off the voice generator script from the ST16MPenetration mission and use it for the local residants so they have a chat randomly.
Send it on over.. my e-mail is somewhere down there on this thread  ;D
Quote
*did someone open fire in his general direction? (I wrote a nice script for my SPM "The Prey"
that I can send you; it detects if someone has opened fire. Using the "getdir" command you
can query the general direction in which a unit has fired).
Send that too ;D
Send me anything you want including the kitchen sink.. yer a fookin genious M8 ;D :cheers:

@HiddenFox: This mission will be taking place partly on Everon (Or some other custom island that starts with an 'E'???)  and partly on a Custom Island that is yet to be named , which I should be working on right now  ;D.
I think I might just have to name the damn thing while I'm at it .....
No huge rush on that island ....I know what a pain it can be to create a proper one ;)

@LCD: Allow fleeing is definately something that will come into play as well, and anything that involves less thinking is good... LOL  :P  ... but does allow fleeing 1 make them automatically flee no matter what the circumstance?

Umm that's about it for now I guess... So.. I'll keep you updated.. and when I have  a rough plot tree lined out I'll post some tidbits from it for your thoughts ...

:toocool:

Offline LCD

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #40 on: 28 Aug 2002, 08:52:04 »
stil not sleepin  ::) :P

dont think so but allow fleeing wil make em flee wen outnumbered or wen man is kiled from deir group  :P

u dont want em fleein from da start of da mis right ? b4 dey c u  ::)?

nywayz i think i can do som AI scriptin nd it shouldnt b much of a prob  ;)  ;D

bout da island thingy - y not doin it on mor dan 1 island ? we can always take over 1  ;D

LCD OUT
"guess being the community has downsides .." - cheetah
Help Perfecting Da Next Best Thing - O-Team Beta

Kaliyuga

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #41 on: 28 Aug 2002, 10:26:24 »
Well.. here's what I was thinking plot wise.. this is just a rough draft of course....

*The Cartel is well established already... you however are just starting to be associated with them... I haven't quite worked out how you come to be a member yet.

*The island the Cartel is based on is an autonomous country, which has up until this point largely ignored our presence due to bribes and such... Our Cartel serves as sort of a waypoint for large drug shipments from Asia as well as our own plantation of high grade Marijuana, and a small designer drug lab.
*Now.. either due to the finding of some natural resource, or some other such reason... trade related is what I'm leaning towards at least for now.. another country steps in and wants the cartels out before they will give whatever the deal is... you get the picture.. this part is all subject to change..

*So.. faced with pressure, the local law enforcement decides to arrest a few people... try and get some informants , that sort of thing... I think there will be a guy in there that turns informant and you have to assassinate for the cartel.... ;D

*Finally there is a raid... you must fight off before finally retreating to another part of the island temporarily .. the Decision is made to send an advance recon squad to the base of the rival cartel .. (custom Island I am working on) which then leads to a full scale invasion... (not militarily mind you.... but more like small mercenary squads )

*Once control of the island has been established,more missions will follow... but I haven't thought that out too far yet...

*Now.. as this as going on the player character is going about his missions which all tie into the main plot somehow.. of course there will be a subplot for the player.. some more personal things ..... stuff like that... but I am imagining a fairly quick rise through the ranks

*Perhaps you unknowingly do a favor to the Cartel and are offered a few small jobs ... or maybe some sort of family involvement? Any ideas on how the player would come to be involved would be great .... throw em out there.. I'll listen to anything.. LOL ...  ;D  

Oh.. something else I forgot to mention earlier... Rubble Maker, when you talk about the dialog options coming up when you approach certain characters in game.. I'm assuming you mean via the action menu? or some other way I haven't thought of yet?

Offline LCD

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #42 on: 28 Aug 2002, 10:52:40 »
here is idea - u save da cartel leader from assasinaton accidantly  :o  (mybe u dont know him nd c som1 trin 2 kil him so as a honest citisen u get ur pistol nd kil da assasian) - wicj is y da boss start 2 like u nd u join his cartel nd raisin in da ranks cuz da bos like u  :o :wow:

bout da trade related thing - here is anoder idea - dey find a resource (patrol/uranium) nd its in our turf  ;D

nd da misions after we flee nd capture da oder cartel - lets say go 2 da country dat want us out of our island nd kil som ppl mybe even take deir president as hostage  ;D nd den after dat we get back into our island nd kil da president nd every1 else who wanted us out of da island  ;D

LCD OUT
"guess being the community has downsides .." - cheetah
Help Perfecting Da Next Best Thing - O-Team Beta

Rubble_Maker

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #43 on: 28 Aug 2002, 12:00:16 »


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Offline LCD

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Re:Everon Cartel
« Reply #44 on: 28 Aug 2002, 14:55:55 »


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« Last Edit: 28 Aug 2002, 15:53:47 by LCD »
"guess being the community has downsides .." - cheetah
Help Perfecting Da Next Best Thing - O-Team Beta