Unvanquished Forum

Ok, so I'm pretty sure most of you know about the 3rd Team Mod, so I'm just going to put some ideas out there on how this could work in Unvanquished.

In a research lab near the far off backwaters of the galaxy, near the dawn of the new age of space travel, one scientist was playing with nanoparticles late at night. He discovered that, when energized with electricity, he was able to make these particles change shape. Spurred on by this discovery, he soon created a myriad array of shapes and forms. They were able to pull energy from their surroundings to move by themselves; but they still needed a source of electricity to change form.

One fateful day, he decided to show the universe what his discoveries could do. However, instead of rejoicing at the sight of these new miracle nanoworkers who could infinitely increase the pleasure of their lives, the people of his planet formed into a raging mob, fearful that the robots would replace them all. As he fled to his laboratory, the embittered scientist was able to command his robots one last thing before the horde got to him.

"Kill Them All."

Several centuries after his dying words, a small outpost went suddenly quiet. A team was sent to investigate, but they too befell the same fate. Command dismissed it as a rogue bunch of aliens, and sent an army after it equipped with the latest technology. This time they did not disappear without a trace. One of the soldiers had attached a small camera to his battlesuit. What it broadcast back was a scene of pure carnage as swarms of creatures mercilessly destroyed the last humans. Not one made it out alive.

Backstory aside, what we have here are robots that can take many forms, but only with a supply of electricity. They may use external weapons, like humans, or use natural abilities, like aliens. They are relatively immune to energy attacks, but vulnerable to impact attacks. (*.5, *1.5, respectively).

They start out with something reactor-like that provides power to their structures. They may change form when they are within 1000 units of the reactor, or 500 of a repeater. Their spawn equivalent is the extruder, which spits out some nano-goo. They have an armory-like thing, which lets them get guns and such; they may also change form near it. They also have a medistation-type thing, which restores lost goo.

Defensive Structures:

S1:
Light Turret (1/2 hp of normal, 2 speed [Both turning and firing], 1/2 damage, 1/2 range)
Trapper (Think Bear Trap) Has around 200 hp, costs 4 bp
S3:
Heavy Turret (2 hp, 1/2 speed, 2 damage, 2 range)

Forms:

Non-Weapon:

Builder (s1): 10 game unit sphere. Weapon: reactor-sized zap. Hp: 5. Moves slower than humans, so it must kill fast, or use teamwork.

Snake (s1): (think http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/ ... kebot5.jpg) Can wallwalk, moves about .75 the speed of a dretch on flat surfaces, .5 while wallwalking. Bites stuff like a dretch.

Adv Snake (s2): Carries a grenade that deals 100 damage with a 3 second fuse; may be replaced at armory or reactor/repeater

Rammer (s1): (Think one of the ones attacking ziggy in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IaRs48c_Vw&feature=plcp) Main attack is ramming; moves at the speed of a dretch. Cannot strafe. Has large enough wheels so that it can climb stairs.

Spinner (s1 (maybe s2)): (Think the spinning one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifBLBYwxe2Q&feature=plcp) Lifts skirt when not spinning in order to climb stairs.

Adv Spinner (s2/3 (see above)): Carries an EMP weapon which completely disables human structures for 5 seconds, and alien for 3 (Electricity is bad for animals as well as machines)

Weapon-using:

Weapons come in two sizes; small and large. Small takes 1 hardpoint, and large takes 2.

MiniTank (Base Class): (think http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... dienst.jpg) 1 hardpoint.

Adv. Rammer: Has 2 hardpoints

Tank; has 3 hardpoints

         \
       ___\______
      /   ^    \_]======]  <-- 2 hardpoints here
 ____[##########\_____
/ ___________________ \    <-- 1 hardpoint here
\/{oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo}\/
  \o%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%o/
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Weapons:

Small (s1): Machinegun, Circular Saw, Laser Gun
Large (s2, except rocket (s3)): Chaingun, Flamer, Rocket (Like lucifer cannon, but has a fixed amount of damage, travels faster, and has a 5 second reload time)

As far as I can tell, the original modification was just the human team with different textures. While I'm flattered that you'd try to come up with a more complex idea, it's full of problems:

• First, I hope you do realize that if we somehow did this, we'd be starting entirely from scratch. We don't have concept art for this. We'd have to recruit a new batch of modelers just to work on a third team. We'd have to do an enormous amount of coding just to implement it.

• Even if we somehow did have the capability to implement this, this looks like it would be horrendously difficult to balance properly. Adding a third team means you have to double the balance considerations for each team, including the third one. There are six total interactions involved, instead of just two from earlier.

• Thematically, how does this make sense? How do shape-shifting nano-particles fit into a game between human marines and biological aliens, even if they exist in the technology of the setting? If they can consume everything, why don't they just eat the map?

If you want to make this into a mod of your own, go ahead. However, this really probably would not make it into the main game.

No. We should start up a project called Unvanquished and make it the most promising third race mod yet. We could call the new team the Daemons and they could use magic and swords and stuff.

kharnov wrote:

• Thematically, how does this make sense? How do shape-shifting nano-particles fit into a game between human marines and biological aliens, even if they exist in the technology of the setting? If they can consume everything, why don't they just eat the map?

1: It adds depth to the game; 3 factions make a game much more interesting in campaign, especially because you can't do a straight good vs. evil plot.

2: Because they can't consume everything. Get those cliches out of your head.

@1+2 How do you think trem started out? Now is the time to change stuff, and experiment. You have a bunch of modelers, and some coders to beat. All you have to do is make some mockups without animations, and code the classes. Yes, I know how much work that would be, but it's the same as when trem was young. Once you're done reworking the main models, work could start on the robots; and it would move forward from there.

The main reason Rotacak didn't want to implement more than a humans clone was because he did not have the modeling skills needed to do it. You guys have modelers. It's definitely workable.

You don't seem to get the amount of effort involved behind each model. You have to get a concept for it, and then you have to start the physical model. Then you unwrap it, and after that you texture it, and then you try to lower the polycount to something that won't give you single digit framerates if you look at it. After that, you rig it, and once that's done, you have to animate it for each movement, including giving the model a skeleton. Once that's all complete, you actually have to get it in-game, which may involve some coding at certain points. We currently have to do this for every single old model.

Now, depth is another issue. How does your idea provide depth? To me, it feels completely artificial. It's like making changes just for the sake of making changes. I understand that people want new content, and so do we. However, there's a difference between experimenting with a new feature and just blindly making changes. While you've tried to make your idea a bit more complex than previous suggestions, it still isn't a complete package of proposals that we can work off of. It's just a group of things that sounds cool. Now, what do you feel a tank would add to the game? Why should we add robots? The answer should not be solely for the sake of experimenting with the ideas. Instead, you should be giving us a reason as to why they make sense with the game.

Even then, you shouldn't feel discouraged. I understand that it probably feels like we're constantly shooting down your ideas. However, think from our perspective. It's in the best interest of the game to remain relatively stable, adding in changes that make sense and add to the feel of the project. Otherwise, what sort of game do you get? A third team is too much to add at once, and would provide an extremely unbalanced gameplay experience for the first few implementations, even if it manages to be evened out later. If someone was to connect and play through this, why would they find it fun? Why would it be fun to walk down a hallway as a human or a dretch only to encounter a tank out of nowhere? How does that make sense in the game's aesthetic? Then you'd have to go through with balancing everything out. The tank suddenly becomes much less powerful, and then looks absolutely ridiculous. Why even add it in the first place?

Some ideas just don't work, and I think this is one of them.

double the balance, double the fun! :D

I wish I knew how to make models. =p All I need is a tutorial, and a program and I can blow out some models probably. Unless it's very complicated, and Kharnov nice Unvstats. =]

BigFluffyUnicorn wrote:

I wish I knew how to make models. =p All I need is a tutorial, and a program and I can blow out some models probably. Unless it's very complicated, and Kharnov nice Unvstats. =]

Man actually there is a program, it is called Blender, an it´s free, just google-it and WOALLA!

BigFluffyUnicorn wrote:

I wish I knew how to make models. =p All I need is a tutorial, and a program and I can blow out some models probably. Unless it's very complicated, and Kharnov nice Unvstats. =]

http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/