Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: rsaxvc on April 06, 2009, 12:44:42 pm
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So, I had this idea for how to lay out different campaigns.
First, we split the game into Eras. ( Rise of the Empire, Galactic Civil War, ... )
For each Era, we display a map of the galaxy, with different campaigns visible. Example attached ( the main campaign needs to be split into many smaller ones)
After certain campaigns are played through, we remove those from the map, and add whatever they unlock.
Advantages:
If we want, we can go back and add an entire Era later ( prequel or that Vong BS )
Disadvantages:
How do we implement empire/rebel? I imagine a lot of people want a 'rebel campaign' and an 'imperial campaign'
[attachment deleted by evil Tolwyn]
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Looking at the map actual brought a question to mind...
If Tantive IV picked up the Death Star plans passing by Toprawa on the Hydian Way, basically a hop skip and a jump from Yavin or at least on the way to the Core Worlds, WTF was it doing at the ass end of the Corellian Run getting pounced on by the Devastator?
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Flying by Tatooine before Galactic maps were thought up by EU people?
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It could be done similar to the Ender's Shadow series of books, where you just take up the story from another perspective, in this case on the other side of fight though. It could be a recurring character, or even someone who's never even mentioned in the first story but who witnesses those events somehow in their own story. It could be random TIE Fighter pilot X who only got to the fights in time to clean up the messes you left behind.
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So how will the storyline go? Will you guys be creating your own little plot?
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Just to throw something out there you could have the player character start as an Imperial Pilot. Naive and full of patriotic piss and vinegar. He goes through the Imp Academy, gets tasked with hunting pirates/terrorists, customs etc. The type of missions where the Empire is maintaining law in order in the galaxy. Eventually he gets disenfranchised with the Empire, possible a mix of some morally questionable missions and his homeworld getting brought to heel. At some point he defects to the Rebellion and starts that campaign.
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That brings memories back...I had the Italian version of it on a spacial SW magazine. Although I did not remember all the content of the page, I do remember that thing about the Empire finding safe routes passing through the center of the galaxy.
In any case, :yes: for that. It's a nice map to base things on. :)
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Just to throw something out there you could have the player character start as an Imperial Pilot. Naive and full of patriotic piss and vinegar. He goes through the Imp Academy, gets tasked with hunting pirates/terrorists, customs etc. The type of missions where the Empire is maintaining law in order in the galaxy. Eventually he gets disenfranchised with the Empire, possible a mix of some morally questionable missions and his homeworld getting brought to heel. At some point he defects to the Rebellion and starts that campaign.
Which is the story for about half the star wars stuff out there. :doubt:
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my thought that was that this would be the container for all sorts of things. I didn't want to lay down my own plot/missions.
We could start off with the film plots (4-6) broken into individual blocks.
From there you can implement the extended universe wherever possible.
Each major campaign should be a self-contained subplot, and should be playable independent of other campaigns.
Example Campaigns(all have their own timelines, all have their own map):
New Sith Wars
Invasion of Naboo
Clone Wars
Galactic Civil War
Each mini-campaign should be a set of almost self-contained missions. I was thinking something like 3-5 missions. For example:
'Killing the DeathStar' would involve missions to hijack supplies, destroy a fuel convoy, take out fighter wings, and eventually the final mission.
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Just to throw something out there you could have the player character start as an Imperial Pilot. Naive and full of patriotic piss and vinegar. He goes through the Imp Academy, gets tasked with hunting pirates/terrorists, customs etc. The type of missions where the Empire is maintaining law in order in the galaxy. Eventually he gets disenfranchised with the Empire, possible a mix of some morally questionable missions and his homeworld getting brought to heel. At some point he defects to the Rebellion and starts that campaign.
Which is the story for about half the star wars stuff out there. :doubt:
mkay the player character, in attempt to impress his rich liberal girlfriend whom he is infatuated with joins the Rebel Alliance. His aptitude for piloting and leadership soon lands him a relatively important position in the local Rebel Cell's hierarchy. Eventually he comes to understand his girlfriend is a whinny hippie flake, after which he realizes the entire operation's aims at equality and spreading the wealth are not going to be advantageous to his standard of living. Armed with the clarity that the Empire's suppression of xenos and tight control of civil liberties actually benefit him the player begins colluding with local Imperial forces to bring down the rebel cell and defect to the Empire. After successfully brining down the local Rebel Cell in a savage and bloody act of betrayal the player receives a commission in the Imperial Navy. Again proving his worth as a pilot the player catches the eye of Imperial Intelligence who then use him as a successful deep cover agent infiltrating criminal syndicates, traitorous elements of the fleet and the Rebel Alliance. After many years as an extremely successful counter insurgent the player retires and lives off his ridiculously large pension in his villa on some nice beach planet in the Imperial Remnant.
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mkay the player character, in attempt to impress his rich liberal girlfriend whom he is infatuated with joins the Rebel Alliance. His aptitude for piloting and leadership soon lands him a relatively important position in the local Rebel Cell's hierarchy. Eventually he comes to understand his girlfriend is a whinny hippie flake, after which he realizes the entire operation's aims at equality and spreading the wealth are not going to be advantageous to his standard of living. Armed with the clarity that the Empire's suppression of xenos and tight control of civil liberties actually benefit him the player begins colluding with local Imperial forces to bring down the rebel cell and defect to the Empire. After successfully brining down the local Rebel Cell in a savage and bloody act of betrayal the player receives a commission in the Imperial Navy. Again proving his worth as a pilot the player catches the eye of Imperial Intelligence who then use him as a successful deep cover agent infiltrating criminal syndicates, traitorous elements of the fleet and the Rebel Alliance. After many years as an extremely successful counter insurgent the player retires and lives off his ridiculously large pension in his villa on some nice beach planet in the Imperial Remnant.
:yes2:
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Add an affair or two, and i'm happy.
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mkay the player character, in attempt to impress his rich liberal girlfriend whom he is infatuated with joins the Rebel Alliance. His aptitude for piloting and leadership soon lands him a relatively important position in the local Rebel Cell's hierarchy. Eventually he comes to understand his girlfriend is a whinny hippie flake, after which he realizes the entire operation's aims at equality and spreading the wealth are not going to be advantageous to his standard of living. Armed with the clarity that the Empire's suppression of xenos and tight control of civil liberties actually benefit him the player begins colluding with local Imperial forces to bring down the rebel cell and defect to the Empire. After successfully brining down the local Rebel Cell in a savage and bloody act of betrayal the player receives a commission in the Imperial Navy. Again proving his worth as a pilot the player catches the eye of Imperial Intelligence who then use him as a successful deep cover agent infiltrating criminal syndicates, traitorous elements of the fleet and the Rebel Alliance. After many years as an extremely successful counter insurgent the player retires and lives off his ridiculously large pension in his villa on some nice beach planet in the Imperial Remnant.
:yes2:
:yes2:++
I want to play this...
...so badly.
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To the question of being able to play one side or the other and in which time line. There is a painfully easy answer. The plot ideas listed above all have merit and could be implemented. The easier way to do this is on the log in screen you can pick what era. This takes you to the load screen for that time period. Then you pick which side you wish to fly for at that moment. Similar to toggling reb/imp in XvT.
The beauty of this is you can play all the content on a single pilot record. The initial log in screen can even have you stats as a total sum of everything you have done regardless of side or time period.
Take that one step further and you can have a button to take that same pilot record with the same stats into multiplayer. XvT had this type of thing listed in there base stats screen. You could see what players (by rank and ship) you have destroyed (and what fragged you) just as easily as you could what computer controlled craft by type.
It was fairly seamless for the player. This is one thing that I really enjoyed about XvT that XWA I felt was missing. You could not combine the single versus multi.
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I was wondering if we could actually have the player play two characters, an imperial, and a rebel, through the game. This way the player gets to play the good parts of both sides, in the same timeline. I do worry it might get confusing for the player to play a rebel campaign, then an imperial one.
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Sorry, man. Freespace doesn't like it if you use one pilot record for everything. You get the weirdest problems.
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Any specifics on what's wrong with that?
Also, and more importantly, does this campaign menu seem like a good idea worth looking into? Or something useless that wouldn't add anything to the game?
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Personally I like the idea.
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It doesn't work well with changing campaigns, you tend to lose your progress I think. Same with changing mods, since for one, that usually involves changing campaigns. So I tend to create a new pilot per mod. If there were a lot of campaigns I might even do it by that.
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mkay the player character, in attempt to impress his rich liberal girlfriend whom he is infatuated with joins the Rebel Alliance. His aptitude for piloting and leadership soon lands him a relatively important position in the local Rebel Cell's hierarchy. Eventually he comes to understand his girlfriend is a whinny hippie flake, after which he realizes the entire operation's aims at equality and spreading the wealth are not going to be advantageous to his standard of living. Armed with the clarity that the Empire's suppression of xenos and tight control of civil liberties actually benefit him the player begins colluding with local Imperial forces to bring down the rebel cell and defect to the Empire. After successfully brining down the local Rebel Cell in a savage and bloody act of betrayal the player receives a commission in the Imperial Navy. Again proving his worth as a pilot the player catches the eye of Imperial Intelligence who then use him as a successful deep cover agent infiltrating criminal syndicates, traitorous elements of the fleet and the Rebel Alliance. After many years as an extremely successful counter insurgent the player retires and lives off his ridiculously large pension in his villa on some nice beach planet in the Imperial Remnant.
:yes2:
:yes2:++
I want to play this...
...so badly.
hell.yes :yes: :yes: :yes:Add an affair or two, and i'm happy.
why only 2?
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mkay the player character, in attempt to impress his rich liberal girlfriend whom he is infatuated with joins the Rebel Alliance. His aptitude for piloting and leadership soon lands him a relatively important position in the local Rebel Cell's hierarchy. Eventually he comes to understand his girlfriend is a whinny hippie flake, after which he realizes the entire operation's aims at equality and spreading the wealth are not going to be advantageous to his standard of living. Armed with the clarity that the Empire's suppression of xenos and tight control of civil liberties actually benefit him the player begins colluding with local Imperial forces to bring down the rebel cell and defect to the Empire. After successfully brining down the local Rebel Cell in a savage and bloody act of betrayal the player receives a commission in the Imperial Navy. Again proving his worth as a pilot the player catches the eye of Imperial Intelligence who then use him as a successful deep cover agent infiltrating criminal syndicates, traitorous elements of the fleet and the Rebel Alliance. After many years as an extremely successful counter insurgent the player retires and lives off his ridiculously large pension in his villa on some nice beach planet in the Imperial Remnant.
:yes2:
:yes2:++
I want to play this...
...so badly.
hell.yes :yes: :yes: :yes:Add an affair or two, and i'm happy.
why only 2?
i was talking in hundreds. And I want those in cutscenes, not just dialogue
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Ok really that stops. Getting a bit off topic methinks.
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Ok.
And really, it doesn't matter if you have everything on one pilot file or not. It's not like the achievements actually mean anything. I could fred a mission right now that would promote me to admiral just by warping out.
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Just to throw something out there you could have the player character start as an Imperial Pilot. Naive and full of patriotic piss and vinegar. He goes through the Imp Academy, gets tasked with hunting pirates/terrorists, customs etc. The type of missions where the Empire is maintaining law in order in the galaxy. Eventually he gets disenfranchised with the Empire, possible a mix of some morally questionable missions and his homeworld getting brought to heel. At some point he defects to the Rebellion and starts that campaign.
Which is the story for about half the star wars stuff out there. :doubt:
mkay the player character, in attempt to impress his rich liberal girlfriend whom he is infatuated with joins the Rebel Alliance. His aptitude for piloting and leadership soon lands him a relatively important position in the local Rebel Cell's hierarchy. Eventually he comes to understand his girlfriend is a whinny hippie flake, after which he realizes the entire operation's aims at equality and spreading the wealth are not going to be advantageous to his standard of living. Armed with the clarity that the Empire's suppression of xenos and tight control of civil liberties actually benefit him the player begins colluding with local Imperial forces to bring down the rebel cell and defect to the Empire. After successfully brining down the local Rebel Cell in a savage and bloody act of betrayal the player receives a commission in the Imperial Navy. Again proving his worth as a pilot the player catches the eye of Imperial Intelligence who then use him as a successful deep cover agent infiltrating criminal syndicates, traitorous elements of the fleet and the Rebel Alliance. After many years as an extremely successful counter insurgent the player retires and lives off his ridiculously large pension in his villa on some nice beach planet in the Imperial Remnant.
Success! :yes:
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What about considering Diaspora as a good example? What about multiple releases?
Each release VP would have all the new textures, missions and models to the play the new campaigns. The "Assault on Naboo" expansion might have at least two campaigns (Drone/Naboo point of view) plus the new stuff needed to play those campaigns. :)
I was wondering if we could actually have the player play two characters, an imperial, and a rebel, through the game. This way the player gets to play the good parts of both sides, in the same timeline. I do worry it might get confusing for the player to play a rebel campaign, then an imperial one.
Sorry, man. Freespace doesn't like it if you use one pilot record for everything. You get the weirdest problems.
Any specifics on what's wrong with that?
Also, and more importantly, does this campaign menu seem like a good idea worth looking into? Or something useless that wouldn't add anything to the game?
It doesn't work well with changing campaigns, you tend to lose your progress I think. Same with changing mods, since for one, that usually involves changing campaigns. So I tend to create a new pilot per mod. If there were a lot of campaigns I might even do it by that.
I might have misunderstood rsaxvc, but I think he was refering to a "super partes" player. In other words, we may have something like this:
Mission 1: As Rebel pilot - Protect a convoy
Mission 2: As Imperial pilot (clone?) - Destroy the convoy
Mission 3: As Rebel pilot - Strike an Imperial warship
Mission 4: As Imperial pilot (drone?) - Protect the escape pods of the destroyed warship
...and so on. This kind of campaign development has good and bad characteristics, but it's up to the FotG team to decide. :)
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The "Assault on Naboo expansion"?
I don't remember saying we were gonna even come close to touching that particular battle
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The "Assault on Naboo expansion"?
I don't remember saying we were gonna even come close to touching that particular battle
You stole my idea!
Though that one guy making a Naboo Fighter probably lead to an understandable misunderstanding.
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The "Assault on Naboo expansion"?
I don't remember saying we were gonna even come close to touching that particular battle
That was an example...also, I thought you will add some ships from the EU sooner or later?
Invasion of Naboo
Rsaxvc didn't exclude it...it may be a good campaign afterall. :)
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It was one battle...
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Ha, that galaxy map: That's quite funny: :lol:
So close, and yet so far to the renegade legion universe... ;)
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It was one battle...
I remember some games about the EU showing good surface battles during the Invasion of Naboo. You may consider adding them if surfaces and gravity will be fully implemented. :)
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I'd sooner add the Hoth crawler battle than Naboo...
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You need to have working ground war machines for that...
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And we'd need that for your idea of the ground battles of Naboo as well. If we can get a reasonable ground simulation, then I'm pretty sure we'd do Hoth rather than make some stuff up about Naboo.
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Sorry, I did not mean ground battles as the one seen in The Phantom Menace - I meant battles involving space craft taking place near the surface of a planet or satellite. Speaking of the Invasion of Naboo, it should be doable - the drones had space-to-surface troop transports and such.
I think there could be enough stuff for a minicampaign.
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Hokay, so here's the driving idea behind the campaign map:
Follow the cannon StarWars timeline, later we can go back and do the prequel, later we can release an expansion.
Make the player play both sides of the story, but how do we pick? We make them play the winning side of each campaign.
How is the plot flow managed? In the StarWars universe, there's a lot of events that happen around the same time, but all happen before something else.
For example:
Campaign A unlocks: B,C,D
B+C unlock E
D + E unlock F
I'll draw out an example chart, but basically, the Empire and Rebellion have a lot more going on than is in the movies. Even 'TIE Fighter' went and helped quell a civil war. We can structure the campaigns like this so that the player has a lot of choice in how they play through, except that they'll always end up with the same ending/Blowing up DS2. (Or we can continue on)
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rsaxvc, remember this.
canon vs. cannon
canon: accepted by developers or creators as a legitimate plot or plot element
cannon: what the smiley-face on the right is holding. -------> :beamz:
Important: the next one who uses cannon instead of canon will suffer the following fate: :beamz:
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:(
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Did someone mention a cannon?
(http://swc.fs2downloads.com/media/cannon2.jpg)
Also RWP, your sig is missing 'boom'.
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Changed my sig. Happy, chief? BTW, by 'cannon' I mean someone misspelling 'canon'.
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I know, that's why I put up a picture of the 'cannon', to highlight more clearly the difference. The little smiley faces, while heeee-larious, don't make a big enough statement :)
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Too true.
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Hokay, so here's my driving idea behind the big galaxy map, although it may not be doable within limitations of the game framework.
Each Bubblything is a campaign
Each Box is a mission.
I've fleshed out a couple of campaigns, but you should get the idea. The goal is to let the player have some non-linear choose-your-own adventure time, but everyone is going to get the same ending, and same missions.
As the player completes campaigns, the big galaxy map will change to reflect the available campaigns and their locations.
[attachment deleted by evil Tolwyn]
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You do realize that, to do that, we'll need a ****load of ships. Currently, we'd be happy to release any sort of mission.
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I know. This would require a ton of fighters, bespin, DS1, DS2, and many more.
It would also make a huge game ( about 40 missions, assuming we add no more campaigns)
Maybe it's a bit of a pipe dream, but I bet it would be pretty cool.
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It is definitely something that probably warrants a chapter-style release.
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Did the Civil War in Tion actually happen? I have a campaign layout I'm working on centreing in there, and I don't want step on any canon toes (or Cannon toes, because then I'd get shot :D).
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Short answer: No, its all fictional.
Long answer: I made up the campaigns for the galaxy map
The flowchart, however, is all from wookiepedia.
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So is this good? Is this bad? Should I FRED up one of the smaller campaigns with dummy missions? Give it up and play solitaire?
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FRED them with what ships?
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As I am constantly reminding people of this, I might as well do so again:
Fate of the Galaxy, at this point, has none of the following:
1) Completed models or effects
2) Game Balance
3) Usable tabling or a consistent flight model or game feel
4) Really any basis to begin FREDing with.
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Shouldn't the team focus on the main campaigns and leave the others to fans? :)
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Let's get something to play with first, then discuss the shoulds, the shouldn'ts, the musts and mustn'ts.
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The balancing and tabling has been improving behind the scenes, there's been quite a bit accomplished recently since SVN was set up. Some new code features are being worked on, and hopefully these will allow us to at least get some decent tables ready for the ships and weapons.