A Deus Ex style conspiracy mission/campaign

[Morglor9]

Another idea that i'm gonna throw out.

basically, your a high ranking official in the Nogova army/police force (using Deadmeat's addons). You find out about a terrible conspiracy in the armed forces to overthrough the government. The player must decide whether to go along with it, or fight to stop it. either way contains risks: if you go with it, there is the risk of being exposed as a traitor, and executed. if you fight against it, you're looking at an uphill battle against a seemingly undefeatable enemy. the player must choose allies, and choose them wisely. i'm thinking about the ultimate OFP non-linear storyline.

Is anyone even interested in seeing this campaign happen?

[Morglor9]

So i take it there is absolutely no interest in seeing this happen.

[Planck]

You are of course dreaming if you expect many responses in little more than an hour.


Planck

[Morglor9]

just an hour? must have lost track of time. thought it was longer than that. i hate mornings...

[bluehand]

It's an intriguing idea.  I love Deus Ex, and played it right through several times.  But...

DX doesn't really give you a choice of which side to join.  You can choose your equipment, and your route through each mission, but the underlying story is firmly on rails.  And for a good reason.

Imagine, mission 1, you get directed to bust some smugglers, you go to the house, find the incriminating documents implicating the government.  Mission 2 you get sent to a bar where the guerrillas are reputed to hang out.  You use action menus to talk to some folk.  Do you arrest them or ask to join?  Mission 3 - there have to be a couple of these.  Mission 3a - as a member of the resistance, you steal guns from the police station.  OR Mission 3b as a loyal policeman you raid the resistance HQ and arrest / kill as many as possible.  Either way the mission designer has to make 2 missions, but the player only gets to play 1.  The more choices the campaign introduces, the worse it gets.  Eventually the player gets to mission 7 - the final battle, but by now it's mission 7e, and the designer has had to build 19 missions to get you there, followed by at least 4 ending movies (res/police win/lose).

Unless the missions are so good that a player will go straight back to the beginning to try it a different way, most of the designer's work will be wasted.  :'(

[Morglor9]

nice to see another DX lover out there. have you tried any of the mods?

[Morglor9]

I think i would make this the same way as DX: one campaign, player goes through all missions. but there will be enough options to make for different play experiences.

[bluehand]

I haven't tried DX mods - but that's drifting off topic ever so slightly.

You could certainly vary the player's approach to a mission: if you take the sniper rifle you can also have 1 airstrike, if you take the HK then 1 section of black ops will follow you, etc...

Might even be possible to build it into the mission, so at the start your CO talks about the mission, gives you action menu choices to decide how you want to do it, you choose and tell him, and that's the way it goes.  That kind of choice might well tempt players to try the mission again on a different approach.

[Fragorl]

I feel compelled to post simply because of mention of Deus Ex (1), which is one of THE best games ever (rivals operation flashpoint even ;D). The same sort of feel might be translatable to ofp, simply because, when you think about it, Deus Ex did not offer really divergent plot progressions, but it tricked you into thinking that it did. There were maybe at most 3 places in the entire game where the story took a twist, and even then it didn't change the overall structure of the game. In fact, 1985 shows more of an alternate progression than Deus Ex, and it only had one divergance (after montignac/the other mission). This feature of branching possibilities is such a good one, it's a shame it's not used more. Or maybe it is, and I don't get out enough

On the other hand, the reason people don't make this style of mission is because half the missions probably don't end up getting played

Imagine, mission 1, you get directed to bust some smugglers, you go to the house, find the incriminating documents implicating the government.  Mission 2 you get sent to a bar where the guerrillas are reputed to hang out.  You use action menus to talk to some folk.  Do you arrest them or ask to join?  Mission 3 - there have to be a couple of these.  Mission 3a - as a member of the resistance, you steal guns from the police station.  OR Mission 3b as a loyal policeman you raid the resistance HQ and arrest / kill as many as possible.  Either way the mission designer has to make 2 missions, but the player only gets to play 1.  The more choices the campaign introduces, the worse it gets.  Eventually the player gets to mission 7 - the final battle, but by now it's mission 7e, and the designer has had to build 19 missions to get you there, followed by at least 4 ending movies (res/police win/lose).

Unless the missions are so good that a player will go straight back to the beginning to try it a different way, most of the designer's work will be wasted.  :'(

I would really like to see something like this, but it would represent a lot of work.

By the way, IMO Invisible War took Deus Ex's good name and trampled it into the mud. What do you think.

[Morglor9]

haven't actually played Invisible war, but i heard it was crap. Apparently warren spector only oversaw the creation, where for DX1 he actually wrote the story. but this is getting off topic a bit.

my problem with using the action menu to tell your CO wat ur gonna do (like in the resistance mission where u steal the tanks) you don't have the ability to change that method on the fly. when i played DX, i would usually sneak in with a scoped stealth pistol, then, as i neared the objective i'd usually turn on ballistic protection and go terminator on the bad guys. (Not that i'd try to script augs into OFP, i'm planning on making the campaign modern). I do like the airstrike idea, although not new to OFP, i think it would have been very handy in DX1, and in an OFP DX style campaign.

i'm thinking the only mission with different "branches" going off of it will be the second last one. that way there will be 2 or 3 end missions, each with a win and lose outro (although they may end up short and leave the player hanging. this is following in the spirit of DX1, as anyone would know if they've completed the game.)

[Fragorl]

Yes. But even so, it all took place on the same map(s), it was just what you decided to do that determined the ending. So maybe that would make the mission-maker's life a bit easier.

[Morglor9]

agreed. making many missions when most players would only play one (I saved before the end of DX, so i could see every ending...) which would make it a waste of time and effort on my part.

I'm also thinking of making the campaign so that when you load a mission, all the briefing says is "talk to your CO" or something, then it's updated (as in DX) via real-time briefing.

[Morglor9]

ok, i'm working on the first (training) mission. i feel training is necessary because i plan to incorporate various items that aren't in normal OFP(keypads, hacking computers...)

[Morglor9]

training's taking longer than expected. does anyone know of a good editor extra training complex that i could use?

[Fragorl]

It depends whetether you want to make a deus ex-style mission or whether you want to recreate deus ex itself. The latter will be impossible (ok - never say that - very difficult); ofp has problems with even the simplest of indoor environments - Deus Ex was all but entirely based indoors.

Deus ex was all about cities, government agencies, conspiratories, artificial intelligences and such - and of course it took place all over the world. So it wouldn't make sense to have it on any of the BIS maps; they're all rural with no big urban areas, and there's just no excuse for it. On the other hand, there are some great maps out there with really large cities, decent-sized military bases and all the other facilities that would make this mission work. The only problem is, they've got biiiiiig file sizes, and this would instantly put many people off. But I think the trade off might be worth it, to preserve the feel of the game.

Anyhow, i'm not actually sure that that's even what you were getting at when you said

does anyone know of a good editor extra training complex that i could use?

but the point is a valid one none the less.

[Morglor9]

what i meant was if anyone knows of a good put together complex that i could use for training. "editor extra" is one of the download sections at ofp.gamezone.cz. you download the mission file where someone has created a base or something, copy and paste it into your mission. but that's 100% off topic.

i like what you said about changing the island. does anyone know of any that would work well for this? i was thinking of New Ocean Island. i guess the Nogova police force could work as the New Ocean Police force, as none of their stuff says "Nogova" on it.

This campaign is made to be like deus ex in terms of feel and atmosphere, not a total reproduction. as i have already said, i don't intend to script augmentations into OFP for use by the player.

[Fragorl]

Well, here is a thread; looks like people are discussing pretty much the same thing in terms of islands.

I have a few islands which ofpwatch downloaded for me, that i haven't had a chance to look at yet but will in time. One is City Harbour Island, which is afk a modification of gaia, the other is [STO] strike island - plus there is this one they're discussing in that thread.

[Morglor9]

i'm using Ocean Island now, it is small but as you may remember, the DX mission areas were tiny.

[Fragorl]

Ah!~ but keep in mind that levels in Dx were, well, i guess 'multi-tiered' is as good a description as any. Example: one of the early missions, in hell's kitchen. The actual area contained in the mission was no more than a couple of city blocks, but there was a hotel, a clinic, several enterable buildings some with several stories, the streets, the sewer tunnels, part of a subway, storage rooms, an underground bar.... there was a LOT packed into a relatively small space.

It wouldn't be the same if you restricted the player to the equivalent area in ofp. Since there is not really any way you can expect that AI to cope on the second story of a building, for example, most if not all npc interactions would have to take place on the ground level, otherwise you'll have loons getting stuck inside walls, running off rooftops, et cetera. This would result in 'cramming' of npc s within a small space. In addition, the player movement speed in ofp is faster than dx. What do I mean by this? Well, the time it takes you to run the length of a building is about half a second in ofp. There is nothing meaningful you can have or do that involves a long time being spent inside a building, because of this. And, of course, even the most detailed large buildings in ofp are really not that detailed inside.

So, you'll really need to spread the mission areas out a lot more. I'm not saying do away with city areas and buildings altogether, but you will probably need to keep the action outdoors mostly. Obviously.

Also- re augmentations. If it were possible, I don't think augmentations would be a bad thing to include at all. However as you say they would be quite difficult to script

[Morglor9]

some augs would be easy to script (like first aid and ballistic protection) but others wouldn't be, and then there's also the problem of bioelectricity. i don't have any idea how someone would script that. add the fact that OFP doesn't have many futuristic addons, so the technology for augs would be out of place for c.1999. over all i think the main idea will be a different type of story that would be new to the OFP community and a higher level of interaction with characters.

about the buildings, i think most action will take place on the streets of the city where the campaign will be set, rather than in the buildings. there are numerous threads running about AI patrols in buildings, so that may unlock some secrets that i could use.

[Fragorl]

Well, if you do decide to retain the concept of augs as a possibility, I have some ideas for:

o Ballistic protection (not involving hit or dammaged EH's, or even the getdammage command)
o Targeting/optical enhancement
o Aggressive defense (will work along the same lines as ballistic protection)

Less likely but still possible:
o SpyDrone
o Cloak
o Radar transparency

Easy (only been done a million times):
o Regen

Others would be more difficult: Microfibral muscle, Speed enhancement etc. But they may be unneccesary.

Just throwing ideas up in the air; it sounds as though you have largely planned this already. Also, I should mention I'd be happy to offer mission making assistance/join the team if you would like

[Morglor9]

excellent on the aug ideas. I take it you have some background knowledge in scripting. yes, i do have most of the campaign planned out (roughly). There are still kinks that need to be worked out and motives to be created in more depth, but i pretty much have it. I'm still thinking about the addition of augs, but i believe i could say that the campaign is set in, say, 2025. Thus, no one will have too much trouble believing that there would be augs.
Anyway, i basically need to decide on units and weapons. i keeping with DX, there will most likely be one assault rifle, one sniper rifle, one shotgun, etc., etc. I have no idea what to use for the different sided units, aside from the nogova police pack.
Thanks for the offer to help, but let's not dwell on that anymore, or a moderator will come in screaming recruitment .

[Fragorl]

... and a flamethrower, plasma gun, ps20, nanosword, riot prod etc. Although that's probably getting too futuristic. The plasmagun, ps20 and melee weapns you can probably do without, but you could certainly include a flamethrower. There is at least one good model for that (IMO the config and scripting can be greatly improved however). But of course, if you want unique weapons, you'll need a modeler.

Addons, though, touchy subject. As has been said in other threads, people love them - but never include them in missions. Moreover they're disinclined to download missions which are addon-intensive. On the other hand, it's more acceptable to include one or two smallish addons if you're making a campaign, since people aren't spending hours downloading the addons for a 10 minute mission.

[Morglor9]

that's why the only addons i'm planing on using are the Nogova police pack, and Ocean Island. other than that i'm thinking BIS guns and such, and small addons that most people should have like EU 1.02 and such. I think most people won't find that too unreasonable, for a campaign. not like i'm asking people to download FDF (great mod, but its 475MB or something!) just for a 10 minute mission, as you say.