New Mod to Promote Team Play/Role Playing

Thu Mar 13, 2003 11:11 am by barFly

Hi people,

I am looking for a team of people that would help me to start making a mod that promotes Team Play/Role Playing. I have played around on some multiplayer servers and I have seen that people seem to go on missions alone and try to get money alone etc. (Before someone flames me and says… I play with others etc… I’m not saying that nobody is playing in groups… just the most are not).I have been kicking around in my head and would like to lay them on ya’ll to see what you think.

What I have in my head is a completely new universe. 2-4 Factions that start on opposite sides of the universe and try to make money to colonize planets, build trade lanes, base, weapons etc. Each faction will have a home planet and 1-2 planets that they control.
While some members of the faction earn money by trading between the planets other members will explore the system that they are in finding jumpholes etc. When the Faction finds a jumphole they could leave it open and use it to explore the new system. If they find later that they need to control the jumphole they can build a jump gate that they control. Reasons to build a jumpgate would be to control trade that goes through the gate. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Just to give you an idea I have tried to create a short description of what I think that the game flow would be like with some ideas to get around the shortcomings of the freelancer engine.

Choosing a faction:
The players would all start on the same planet. In space there would be 2-4 jumpgates (ex: jumpgate1=liberty navy, jumpgate2=some other faction… get my drift?). The user would leave the planet and go through the jump gate in order to choose his faction. The jumpgates would lead to the home planet of the faction. The jumpgates would be one-way so no one could go back to the planet and go through another gate to attack the home base of an enemy faction.

I have more ideas on how to run this but I would like to get a team together before I go on. As you can see from this brief description this mod will be a lot of work. If you would like to help out just let me know what you can do. I am not picky… the only thing that I ask is that you are constructive and open to ideas from others. This mod need everything from programmers, web designers etc.

I would like to follow this schedule:
Time to get the team together – 2 weeks
Preplanning – 2-3 weeks
First systems done – 1 month
Alpha test and Beta tests – 1 month
Game Server start

All right… that’s all for now.

If you intressed just reply here or write me an e-mail.

barFly

Thu Mar 13, 2003 6:15 pm by Nemonack

Hi, this seems interesting, however, are you sure this is going to be possible. If you have good ideas on how to code all this in the game then I am happy to contribute in any way I can.

If you prefer communicating via email:
[email protected]

Fri Mar 14, 2003 7:52 am by MightyMidget

Not to rain on your parade, but doing what you suggest would mean changing the whole structure of the game, and many many things which are hard-coded, unfortunately because there is no sdk, and open support for this kind of modding, it is not really possible. However if your a coding whiz and think you can crack/understand the hard-coded stuff.. then you just need to scrounge up a few people to help you, and you could probly do it given a significant amount of effort... my advice however is to look for a game with similar aspects already built in.

Fri Mar 14, 2003 2:19 pm by barFly

@Nemonack

>Hi, this seems interesting, however, are you sure this is going to be possible?

No I am not sure that this is all going to be possible but I am willing to give it a try. I'll be sending you an e-mail some time this weekend with how I plan to work some of this stuff out.

@MightyMidget

>Not to rain on your parade, but doing what you suggest would mean changing >the whole structure of the game, and many many things which are hard-coded, >unfortunately because there is no sdk, and open support for this kind of >modding, it is not really possible.

Right on... I understand that but IMHO there are workarounds for everything...
I'll use the example for the post above:

>The players would all start on the same planet.

Thats hardcoded... everyone starts on Manhatten.

>In space there would be 2-4 >jumpgates (ex: jumpgate1=liberty navy, >jumpgate2=some other faction… get my drift?). The user would leave the >planet and go through the jump gate in order to choose his faction.

This is also possible... almost.

You can add objects to systems in the .ini file, 4 jumpgates are not that hard. Also adding who controls them is not that hard.(sidenote: I still have figured out if "faction A" controls the jumpgate will they let "player 1" go through the gate if he has a bad rep with "faction A". Does anyone know the answer to this?) I also think that we can control the level of the player that can go through the gate but I have to test this still.

So what would have to take place(if the sidenote above = true) the player would have to be able choose the faction that he wants to join. As far as it stands now I don't think that we have any control to let the player some how select this.

Possible work around:
We have the abilty to edit missions so... we create 2-4 EASY missions, each of these missions are from a different faction. The player completes the mission and recives enough money to advace him to Level 2 and gets his faction rating set to full from the faction that he did the mission for. For all other factions he/she would get negetive ratings.

So, in theroy, what do we have now...
A level 2 player that has good ratings with the faction of his choice.
A jumpgate that lets only lets level 2 players with a good rating to the faction that controls it... I think that the rest is clear...

>The jumpgates would lead to the home planet of the faction. The jumpgates >would be one-way so no one could go back to the planet and go through another >gate to attack the home base of an enemy faction.

Lock the jumpgate on the other end. Nobody goes through.

So... thats just an idea... I'm not saying that it works but if I get it to work will you think about providing a server to run the mod on or doing something for the team?

Also, can't never could, nothing personal. I don't know you.

barFly

Fri Mar 14, 2003 6:53 pm by MightyMidget

Well, good luck to you. It is possible to do somthing similar i suppose, i'm not sure i know enough to say one way or another, but either way it will be a lot of effort, and you'll need quite a few people to help out. I agree though having a can't do attitude about somthing will never get it done, having a can do attitude on the other hand will get you much farther. So long as you know what your getting yourself into, go for it, i'm sure its possible to do somthing similar to what you were thinking with a LOT of effort. lol. Good Luck.

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