[Turnsky]

this might see life yet in another FPS engine... will half-life 2 be moddable?

[Jetmech Jr.]

I hope to god so...You just had to show all this stuff, didn't you Ace? There I was, just browsing through the Forums, completely ignorant about anything involving FS:FPS. "Huh? Whats that?" Then you release this script and whet my appetite...

[Hollewanderer]

Interesting. Very interesting. I would personally change it a bit, but that's just personal preference [I can elaborate].
HL2 is certainly the best possible platform for FS:FPS.

Can we somehow get GTA Marine models out of Volition? Source engine seems to be capable enough to let us use them in unchanged form.
Yeah, yeah, I'm dreaming.

[jdjtcagle]

Not really...

[Plasma]

Originally posted by Hollewanderer
Interesting. Very interesting. I would personally change it a bit, but that's just personal preference [I can elaborate].
HL2 is certainly the best possible platform for FS:FPS.

By all means, do elaborate.

Also given all the crap Valve has put the gaming community through I would rather (personal opinion) see such a project embrace the Doom 3 engine instead.

[aldo_14]

Source is the newest engine, is probably what he means

How well can the Doom3 engine actually handle large outdoor environments & vehicles, though?

[Hollewanderer]

Originally posted by Plasma


By all means, do elaborate.

Also given all the crap Valve has put the gaming community through I would rather (personal opinion) see such a project embrace the Doom 3 engine instead.

Ok.

I would change it so that it would encompass:
-the T-V war. Basically, the first part would stay the same.
-the Great War and the internal conflict within GTI that has finally caused:
-the proper GTI rebellion that the player will fight against.

It looks to me that FS:FPS was originally to be set in earlier stages of T-V war, and that just wouldn't fit with the Shivan begin in one of the facilities. The very reason for GTI rebellion was, IIRC, live Shivan subjects, research on Shivans etc... a captured Shivan before the Great War has even started would be a strange idea, and Shivans would not cooperate with GTI, based on all we know about them. So, in the timeline it would follow Silent Threat, with a large T-V War part as introduction. You could also fit Bosh into it. Maybe an easter egg?
Those are just cosmetic changes in timeline, and, as I said, based more on a personal opinion than anything. They have little influence on gameplay, as no missions would be thrown out.

I would also add one mission, an attack on Vasudan planet where player lands behind enemy lines to support the friendly units. At that point, he could stumble upon enemy GTI operatives and their shadowy plans, or fight only Vasudans. Just an additional mission to hone your covert ops skills before things start to get tough, and for some eyecandy, too. [deploying from capships in orbit. Could be very useful for POTDs and screenshots showing off how cool the mod is]

As I said, it is just a matter of taste, as all of those are fairly insignificant. [well, maybe except the new mission] I would be perfectly happy with the storyline staying as it is, I just think that Shivans would make more sense during the GTI rebellion. You could have Taranis capture mission, too.

And Id is pulling far more **** than Valve has ever pulled. After they, for no reason at all, eliminated coop in Doom 3 for PC and left it in on X-box version, I lost all respect for them. Valve may do some pretty bad things, yes, but they don't throw out interesting features for no reason at all.
Besides, HL2 will have larger modding community, and it is always helpful when making a mod. After all, all of the HL modders will jump to HL2, and Doom 3 will have to gain a modding community by itself, without any previous one ready to jump in.
And Doom 3 engine can't handle large outdoor environments for it's life, and that is a BIG problem.

[Jetmech Jr.]

Originally posted by Hollewanderer

 After they, for no reason at all, eliminated coop in Doom 3 for PC and left it in on X-box version, I lost all respect for them.  

They did what?
.
..
...

[Hollewanderer]

Originally posted by Jetmech Jr.


They did what?
.
..
...

Yeah. I don't remember what article it was in, unfortunately, so I can't provide the link.

[Jetmech Jr.]

betcha Gates paid em off...
j/k

[Hollewanderer]

Error! Error! I have the quote now!

Read this thread

As I said, completly no reason at all.

[aldo_14]

I was under the impression they were never developing co-op for the PC, it was alsways going to be an X-box exclusive.

NB:  i read that the single player of Doom 3 may be incredibly short.  Apparently, a journalist was invited to play through the enitre game - when asked how long it would take, he was told he'd be finished by lunchtime......

[Jetmech Jr.]

On the PC version, it was always conceived of as a purely single-player experience. The whole, "you're alone in your room and all the lights are turned out." It's an experience where we want you to be afraid to get up and turn the lights off because you're alone. Whereas, because the console market is different, because people like to play together. Now, we won't have the ability to do split-screen, but the console consumer is more, "Hey, we love co-op" and it's all supported within the Xbox with Xbox Live and System Link. It made a lot more sense for us when we were designing [the game] to include that feature, [which] was never considered to be a critical feature for the PC [version], given that our goal from the start with the PC version was to make it the best single-player game that id had ever made.

The reasoning behind that eludes me...
How they came to that conclusion will forever be a mystery to me

[Gloriano]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I was under the impression they were never developing co-op for the PC, it was alsways going to be an X-box exclusive.

Yeah you right co-op planned only for XBOX

[Hollewanderer]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I was under the impression they were never developing co-op for the PC, it was alsways going to be an X-box exclusive.

NB:  i read that the single player of Doom 3 may be incredibly short.  Apparently, a journalist was invited to play through the enitre game - when asked how long it would take, he was told he'd be finished by lunchtime......

Yeah, and it's still dumb, because they are working on it anyways. They could add it to PC version, too. It certainly wouldn't hurt or be hard to do, and would make the game better.

And I can't believe that it will be that short. Hell, that would make it shorter than the original Doom games, AFAIK! I can download multiple HL mods that are longer.

[aldo_14]

If you look at this;

GN: Last question. There's co-op offline and online for Xbox, but not for the PC. I doubt it could be a technical concern, so what's the reasoning for that?

Todd: That's a good question. The Xbox version, because it's in contemporaneous development with the PC. When it was started, basically was conceived as a console implementation of what we're trying to do on the PC, as opposed to a port where they take whatever we do on the PC and "boom" slap it on the Xbox. The Xbox version was designed from the ground up to support co-operative play over System Link and Xbox Live. There [were] some changes, concessions, considerations that had to be made from a lot of different standpoints in terms of stuff as mundane as how narrow the hallways are to the ability of the AI of the enemies to focus on one versus two players -- because it's no fun to play the co-op guy that the world seems to ignore -- to how the narrative of single-player story is told.

On the PC version, it was always conceived of as a purely single-player experience. The whole, "you're alone in your room and all the lights are turned out." It's an experience where we want you to be afraid to get up and turn the lights off because you're alone. Whereas, because the console market is different, because people like to play together. Now, we won't have the ability to do split-screen, but the console consumer is more, "Hey, we love co-op" and it's all supported within the Xbox with Xbox Live and System Link. It made a lot more sense for us when we were designing [the game] to include that feature, [which] was never considered to be a critical feature for the PC [version], given that our goal from the start with the PC version was to make it the best single-player game that id had ever made.

Then does that mean that Xbox single player will be nowhere near as scary as on the Pc, because the games been designed for co-op play?  and if so, wasn;t the whole point of 'new' Doom to be scariness? (because the engine can't chuck around hundreds of beasties any more)

[Hollewanderer]

Originally posted by aldo_14
If you look at this;


Then does that mean that Xbox single player will be nowhere near as scary as on the Pc, because the games been designed for co-op play?  and if so, wasn;t the whole point of 'new' Doom to be scariness? (because the engine can't chuck around hundreds of beasties any more)

They could just port the coop from X-box, including modified maps, and do the same for single-player from PC. You'll have X-box coop maps on both platforms, and PC single player maps for both platforms. Neither will include any additional job, except the porting itself, and would combine the best of the both worlds. But nooooo...

And I would say that yes, if coop uses the single player maps, [and not slightly tweaked versions] it won't be as scary as the PC version.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Hollewanderer


They could just port the coop from X-box, including modified maps, and do the same for single-player from PC. You'll have X-box coop maps on both platforms, and PC single player maps for both platforms. Neither will include any additional job, except the porting itself, and would combine the best of the both worlds. But nooooo...

And I would say that yes, if coop uses the single player maps, [and not slightly tweaked versions] it won't be as scary as the PC version.

not necesarrily - it's implied in the earlier quote that the X-box version uses different AI routines,  i.e. that a Pc coop version would cause issues with the AI focusing on only one player and ignoring the other.    Porting AI code would probably have some issues, as the X-box has a different architecture to a windows PC (i.e. different chip architecture, as well as different memory bus setup, etc).

Of course, there's an issue there as to how this AI will affect the single player on X-box.... X-box is les spowerful than a PC (even allowing for architecture / Os differences, I think the brute force of most Pc chips, etc, outweights it), so does that mean the x-box AI is more simplistic in some way?    i.e. are we talking something which is almost a Serious-Sam like situation?

(and how complex is Doom 3 AI, anyways?  i.e. can a zombie - or any enemy - do anything other than just walk and groan?)

[Ace]

Originally posted by Hollewanderer
I would change it so that it would encompass:
-the T-V war. Basically, the first part would stay the same.
-the Great War and the internal conflict within GTI that has finally caused:
-the proper GTI rebellion that the player will fight against.

It looks to me that FS:FPS was originally to be set in earlier stages of T-V war, and that just wouldn't fit with the Shivan begin in one of the facilities. The very reason for GTI rebellion was, IIRC, live Shivan subjects, research on Shivans etc... a captured Shivan before the Great War has even started would be a strange idea, and Shivans would not cooperate with GTI, based on all we know about them. So, in the timeline it would follow Silent Threat, with a large T-V War part as introduction. You could also fit Bosh into it. Maybe an easter egg?
Those are just cosmetic changes in timeline, and, as I said, based more on a personal opinion than anything. They have little influence on gameplay, as no missions would be thrown out.

I would also add one mission, an attack on Vasudan planet where player lands behind enemy lines to support the friendly units. At that point, he could stumble upon enemy GTI operatives and their shadowy plans, or fight only Vasudans. Just an additional mission to hone your covert ops skills before things start to get tough, and for some eyecandy, too. [deploying from capships in orbit. Could be very useful for POTDs and screenshots showing off how cool the mod is]

As I said, it is just a matter of taste, as all of those are fairly insignificant. [well, maybe except the new mission] I would be perfectly happy with the storyline staying as it is, I just think that Shivans would make more sense during the GTI rebellion. You could have Taranis capture mission, too.

In Silent Threat it is mentioned that the GTI had knowledge of and was (most likely, artistic liscense here as the Hades was very advanced and would require decades of intensive research) conducting experiments with Shivan technologies and specimen before the Great War occured.

Plasma expanded on this in his fanfiction Phantom, and that was used for the basis of most of FS:FPS' plot.

Having a campaign occur over a larger timeline would require a non-linear narrative, moving back and forth through time via related events ala the movie Pulp Fiction. Or would require an episodic campaign that would, feel disjointed or would require a lot more missions to do for the proper effect.

Also fighting multiple Shivans would have made them seem like standard villains. We did not want to cheapen the Shivans, we wanted them to be terrifying. So the whole V-T war GTI experiments gone wrong worked out for the best.

[Hollewanderer]

Originally posted by Ace


In Silent Threat it is mentioned that the GTI had knowledge of and was (most likely, artistic liscense here as the Hades was very advanced and would require decades of intensive research) conducting experiments with Shivan technologies and specimen before the Great War occured.

Plasma expanded on this in his fanfiction Phantom, and that was used for the basis of most of FS:FPS' plot.

Having a campaign occur over a larger timeline would require a non-linear narrative, moving back and forth through time via related events ala the movie Pulp Fiction. Or would require an episodic campaign that would, feel disjointed or would require a lot more missions to do for the proper effect.

Also fighting multiple Shivans would have made them seem like standard villains. We did not want to cheapen the Shivans, we wanted them to be terrifying. So the whole V-T war GTI experiments gone wrong worked out for the best.

Ahhhh... I haven't played ST for years. Sorry for the mistake.
Yes, in that case, it could be the best option.
And do you have the link to this fanfiction? I would be interested in reading it.
Actually, multiple Shivans could very well be VERY menacing enemy. Do you know about Gargs [or Gargantuas] from Half-Life? You fought 3 in the original game, and they are one of the most memorable FPS enemies that I know. It's more of a matter of scaring the player to death by showing that one is nearby and that it wants player DEAD than having one in the whole game. Gargs, for example, were nearly invincible and you had to use trick tactics to take down two of them, as brute firepower simply did not work [Gargs were bulletproof, just like Shivans, so you couldn't shoot one to death without tons of explosives]. You could do some Shivan encounters without cheapening them, it would just require proper balancing of the player's arsenal and some good mapping. [forcing player to use his brain to get away from one, and not giving him the weapons to kill it] But yes, now when I think about it, Taranis capture may not be the best level idea.