Padded Room Productions
Presents
Battle Plague
Drew Linderman, David Markham, Michael Pisarsky, Raymond Whiting
Description
General - Team-based multiplayer First Person Shooter based on the Halflife 2 engine. Our game will focus on capture-the-flag gameplay where
your objective is to defend your flag all the while attempting to steal the
other teams flag. We will be focusing on making a strategic and teamoriented experience all the while keeping with the excitement that
traditional shooters offer.
What Seperates Battle Plague - Battle Plague will separate itself from other
games in that it will have a very original and fun gameplay style. None of
the gameplay elements are particularly original, however combined they
will bring a very exciting and original feel to Battle Plague.
You can think of Battle Plague as having the tense gameplay of
Counter-strike, but removing the frustration of waiting on death and also
adding various strategic and team-oriented elements.
Battle Plague will have moderate-paced gameplay in which you
must think about your movements, it will bring in various strategy elements
that force players to use their heads to achieve victory, and it will force
players to work as a team to achieve victory, all the while the game will
be rapidly changing, situations will change at a very fast pace.
Typical multiplayer games boil down to having ninja-fast reflexes
and an itchy trigger/mouse finger. The popular mod counter-strike is the
perfect example of this. The best Counter-strike players are the ones that
are able to get a headshot the fastest, there is very little variation. We
want Battle Plague’s action to be frantic, however with the strategy
elements we will introduce it will require more than split-second accuracy
to achieve victory. Every weapon and ability has its strengths and
weaknesses; you will need to know how to counter what the enemy is
doing to gain an advantage. This element will be similar to the mod
Firearms.
Another thing that many multiplayer games do is allow the player to
move at extremely fast speeds and take a great deal of damage without
any repercussions. The game play in these games turns into constant
circle strafing and people just running head-on into battle. We feel that
something more in line with Counter-strike’s hyper-realistic damage model
would be more suiting for us. However even Counter-strike allows you to
move at very fast speeds and turns into big strafe wars. By slowing players
down and having damage actually hinder the player’s movement and
accuracy we will force players to move in ways more in line with what
they would on a real battlefield. Players will find that the best way to
navigate our urban, debris filled maps will be working as a team flanking
the enemy and running from one piece of debris to another while
teammates provide cover fire.
Various games have used strategic elements such as Team Fortress
Classic and Tribes which both used a class system which allowed players
to choose their role in a fight. This allowed players to choose the way they
fought and allowed them to play the game differently if they chose to.
These games also used the capture-the-flag style of game play to create
very basic teamwork. The teamwork in these games left something to be
desired at times. Teamwork typically consisted of having defenders and
attackers, and maybe even having a few people actually fighting
alongside each other. We will design our maps and weapons/abilities
around forcing the ENTIRE team to work together, not just a few people.
There will be no way in Battle Plague for a single person to steal the
enemies’ flag, instead you will have to work as a team and get a strong
presence in the enemies’ base before you can achieve victory, this hasn’t
been done in many games in the past.
We will have a class system to start with and these different classes
will be forced to work together. No one class will overpower another, and
all the classes rely on each other. When we have enough content we will
allow players to make hybrid classes and further customize the way they
play the game however they will still need to work as a team just the same
and will rely on other players to achieve victory.
Engine - The Half-life 2 engine is a cutting edge 3D engine that has an
advanced physics engine. The engine has various features that we will be
taking advantage of including a robust network code. The Half-life 2
engine is a FPS engine by design so we won't have to spend our time
working on non-game related code such as network code, collision
detection, etc.
The Half-life 2 engine will allow us to make a much more complex and
modern game than we could if we started everything from scratch. If we
decided to make a game engine we would have had to spend most the
semester just to get the a very simple engine running, not to mention this
would be no where near as powerful as what Half-life 2 offers us. We also
didn’t want to spend the bulk of our time on artwork so the Half-life 2
engine was a perfect fit again because it allows us to use some pre-made
character models and textures. This allows us to spend our time coding
our game, making maps, and making some basic artwork (weapon
models).
We also felt that working with an engine would be more in-line with
what we would do in the actual industry. Very few developers actually
make graphics engines, most take pre-made engines and make their
games using them. Making a simple 2d or 3d engine would be useless
compared to what you would actually do in the gaming industry.
Half-life 2 limitations
Bugs/limited SDK - The Half-life 2 SDK is what allows us to modify Half-life 2.
It comes with a map editor, model animator, a few sample maps, all the
half-life 2 textures, as well as parts of the code that can be modified and
turned into custom dll files. The SDK is however in a very basic state, it does
NOT allow you to remake Counter-Strike Source, Half-life 2, or even Halflife 2 Deathmatch at the press of the button. For those who don’t know
Counter-strike Source and Half-life 2 Deathmatch are the multiplayer
portion of half-life 2, however since they essentially are absent from the
SDK we cannot use any part of them in our game, at least not without a
great deal of work to recreate them. This leaves us with the Half-life 2
single-player SDK and a very basic bug filled multiplayer SDK to work with.
When you compile the multiplayer SDK for the first time all you get is a very
simple no-frills multiplayer map with a couple weapons from counter-strike
source, one character model, and a TON of bugs.
Anything beyond this very simple bug-filled mod has to be recreated from
scratch. Certain portions of Half-life 2, including character models,
weapon models, and various parts of code can be ripped from the
game, however this still takes a great deal of time and wouldn’t be too
much faster than just making them from scratch. Attempting to recreate
something like Counter-strike Source would take the entire semester given
what we have.
Since we are not however, trying to remake Counter-strike Source, or Halflife 2 Deathmatch, we feel this lack of pre-made multiplayer content will
not be too harmful to our cause. There will still be various bugs we will
have to work out, but since most of our coding was going to have to be
original anyway, the lack of an all out multiplayer SDK will not be a big
deal.
Uncommented Code- The SDK has very limited comments and
documentation. Whether these comments were removed or just didn’t
exist in the source code is not known, however because of this there is no
one holding your hand walking you through the code like you might think.
The code is all very cryptic as you would expect a large program to be
and has little documentation to tell you how to do things, this leaves us
with finding things out on our own. We feel that dealing with this type of
SDK will allow us to advance our skills a great deal more than something
like 3d Game Studio where anything you would want to do is all carefully
documented.
Complexity – The Half-life 2 engine is the most advanced engine on the
market and because of such, it requires a great deal of work to do
anything with it. Things that would be very simple in a 2D game become
mind-numbingly tedious attempting to do in Half-life 2. Things such as
maps and models must be very highly detailed or they are not only
wasting the advanced features of the engine, but they will look awkward
juxtaposed in the highly detailed engine. Coding for Half-life 2 is about as
advanced as you can get, forcing you to code in C++ and deal with all
the technicalities that a program this massive contains. We feel this extra
work is more than worth it, and we feel our talents would be going to
waste if we were to spend our time making a simple 2d or 3d game.
Gameplay
Gameplay Objectives - Will be Capture the Flag, where there are 2 teams
each team has a base with a flag inside. The objective of the game is to
infiltrate the enemy base and steal their flag and return it back to your
base, at which point the round is complete. After each round, players
spawn back at their base with the flags reset and begin anew, somewhat
like a boxing match or soccer game. There will be a “cap limit” as in the
winner of the overall game will be the team that captures the flag
enough times to reach the cap limit.
In addition to capturing the flag, a team can win the round by
exhausting the other team’s tickets by killing them. Each team starts with a
set number of tickets and every time someone on your team dies, you
lose a ticket, when you run out of tickets your team loses. This is similar to
the system Battlefield 1942 uses and will make sure the rounds don’t turn
into a big stalemate.
Buy Menu/Classes - Players will have the ability to choose what class they
want and in more advanced versions they can choose hybrid classes. For
choosing a hybrid class the player is actually given a buy menu where
they can choose a weapon layout/abilities based on their personal
preference, within the money restrictions that we set. All players start with
the same amount of money and weapon/ability costs are balanced to
allow players to play as with a variety of different strategies. Even when
we start allowing for hybrid classes we will still have default classes/layouts
for new players. Each class/layout will have its strengths and weaknesses
and will rely on the other classes to win the game.
Gameplay - M.U.S.C.S.O
 Moderate paced – The game will have fairly realistic damage.
Firefights will typically last 2-5 seconds. This does not mean that you
will only last for 2-5, this means that when bullets start flying, typically
someone will die in 2-5 seconds. You cannot go running out in the
open or you will be killed almost instantly, you must work as a team
and plan your movements.
 Urban combat - The gameplay takes place in city setting. Debris is
scattered throughout the levels and there are rarely large open
areas.
 Semi-realistic - Players last only slightly longer than they would in real
life, but they don’t appear invincible like typical action games like
Quake. Taking damage will also slow down their movement and
mess up their accuracy.
 Cover based - Players are rewarded for using cover by not being
killed within seconds. Because we are restricting the
movement/turning speed of players, as well as players becoming
"stunned" when they are hit, players will not be able to charge head
on into the enemy and expect to survive. Players must use debris
and other objects to flank and get good positions on their enemy.
 Squad-Oriented - Players cannot expect to capture the flag alone,
they must fight alongside their teammates and assist them where
needed in order to survive. The maps will be designed so there are 2
or so choke points in the middle of the map, players are forced to
go through these choke points in order to reach enemy base. The
team who can take control of the choke points will typically win the
game. Also the maps will be designed so the flags are fairly easy to
defend, this forces the attacking team to have a strong force
around the flag before they have any hope of taking it.
Universe - Universe is set in nitty-gritty future set in a not too distant
alternate future. Looks similar to the Warhammer: Dawn of War.
Story - It was 1997 when Norway developed the Organic Replication
Device, a device able to bring deceased humans back to life. In their
greed Norway sold the powerful device to every military on earth and
sealed the fate of humanity. Militaries became invincible, wars waged on
and on, and earth turned into one giant battlefield.
Losing all sense of time after so many replications, these warriors are now
cursed to fight on for eternity, never understanding what they are fighting
for, never knowing anything but war. The few sane humans left in the
world describe these warriors as being diseased, bred for war with no
hope, no cure for their affliction. The world has been taken over by a
plague of epic proportions, a battle plague of sorts.
Classes:
These are the default classes that new players can
choose from in our Goal level of development:
Medic: SMG, Medkit, Light armor. Main role is to keep his squad alive. He is
equipped with a decent weapon so he can hold his own, but his light armor
prevents him from doing anything too aggressive.
Scout: Handgun, Speed boost, Pain tolerance, Light armor. Best for capturing the
flag, very agile and good at escaping fights. Can hold his own at times but would
prefer to flank and avoid head
on battles.
Assault: Rifle, medium armor. A basic damage dealer, good all around. Has good
range and is probably the best all-around fighter in heated battles.
Heavy: Minigun, heavy armor. Very powerful but slow moving damage dealer. A
well placed heavy can annihilate an entire team, however he is hard to
maneuver and susceptible to people flanking him. Needs good backup to be
effective.
Engineer: Railgun, Turret, Spanner, light armor. His best weapon is his turret. Best
as a defender, but also effective on the frontlines with his ability to fix armor.
Special Weapons: Flamethrower, Det. Pack, medium armor. Excellent in specific
situations. Flamethrower makes him very powerful if he can get in close range.
Det. Pack can be triggered at any time for a VERY powerful explosion, however
he can only drop the det. pack where he is standing. Good for defense but can
also be very effective on the frontlines if used correctly.
All players have the option to pick and choose various weapons and abilities from any
class within the amount of money they start out with. This allows players to create "hybrid"
classes such as an Assault who can choose to give up some of his armor for better
weaponry, or a Scout who gives up some of his special abilities for more armor.
Tools
Half-life 2 - Half-life 2 has an SDK released which allows us to change the
code to our liking. It also has a map editor to easily make maps, and
various other tools to assist us in making our game. We chose to use Halflife 2 because it is the most advanced engine available and has a great
deal of resources to assist us in making our game.
Discreet 3D Studio Max - A powerful 3d modeling program that we will use
to model weapons. We chose 3D Studio Max because it is very powerful
and popular software so there are lots of tutorials around to help us learn
the software so we can spend most our time working on the game rather
than learning the tools.
Adobe Photoshop - Used for random image/texture creation and editing.
We will be using this to make our textures and other images we want. We
are using Photoshop because many of our group members are
accustomed to it and it is the most powerful image editing software
available.
Sonic Foundry Soundforge - Used to create/edit our custom sound effects,
voice acting, and music. We are using it because group members are
accustomed to it and it does all that we would want to do.
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Edition - Used to compile custom source
code. We are using this because it is the only software that can compile
Half-life 2 source code.
Platforms - Windows. We chose this because it is the only platform Half-life
2 runs on currently and their aren't many tools for other platforms to make
games.
Development Levels
Minimum:
-A very simple test map: Just allows characters to move around, nothing
fancy.
-Functional multiplayer: Players can create or connect to an already
running server. Walk around and see other players. They will be able to kill
other players, on death player just respawns. Ticket, Buy Menu, and
rounds, and CTF not implemented at this level.
-A few Half-life 2 weapons ported to our game: Shotgun, Machine gun,
and grenade ported from Half-life 2 to test out game.
-Character models from Half-life 2: We will use character models from
Half-life 2 because they fit with our universe and it will be too tedious for us
to make custom models and will not enhance the game at all. All
characters will have the same character model and skin at this point.
-Sounds from Half-life 2: We will port our sounds from half-life 2 at this point
just to have a working game.
Low:
-Custom map, partially detailed: Will have the main parts finished so the
gameplay in the map will be able to be tested, however it doesn't need
to be all that detailed at this point.
-CTF implemented: We will have flags that are able to be captured in our
map's bases
-Functional in multiplayer: Players can create or connect to an already
running server. Walk around and see other players. They will be able to kill
other players, on death player just respawn. Ticket, Buy Menu, and rounds
not implemented yet.
-Character models from Half-life 2: We will use character models from
Half-life 2 because they fit with our universe and it will be too tedious for us
to make custom models and will not enhance the game at all. All
characters will have the same character model and skin at this point.
-5 weapons to choose from of different types: Mostly ported from Half-life
2 with modified code to fit our game.
-Sounds from Half-life 2: We will port our sounds from half-life 2 at this point
just to have a working game.
Goal:
-Custom map, fully detailed: Map will be essentially completed at this
point, maybe with a few parts that could be made more detailed but
nothing that would hurt gameplay.
-Functional in multiplayer: Players can create or connect to an already
running server. Walk around and see other players. They will be able to kill
other players, on death player just respawns. Ticket system not
implemented yet.
-Character models from Half-life 2: We will use character models from
Half-life 2 because they fit with our universe and it will be too tedious for us
to make custom models and will not enhance the game at all. All
characters will have the same character model with different skins at this
point.
-CTF implemented: We will have flags that are able to be captured in our
map's bases
-Rounds implemented
-Fully working scoreboard: Displays Frag count, Time limit, Ping, Captures
-A buy menu and working money system
-Enough weapons and abilities to have 5 classes outfitted with the bareminimum gear
-A few custom weapon models.
-Sounds from Half-life 2
High:
-2-3 working fully detailed: Map will be completed at this point, fully
tested, wit nothing that could be improved upon.
-Functional in multiplayer: Players can create or connect to an already
running server. Walk around and see other players. Plays out with death
tickets and rounds.
-Character models from Half-life 2: We will use character models from
Half-life 2 because they fit with our universe and it will be too tedious for us
to make custom models and will not enhance the game at all. All
characters will have the same character model with different skins at this
point.
-CTF implemented: We will have flags that are able to be captured in our
map's bases
-Rounds implemented
-Fully working scoreboard: Displays Frag count, Time limit, Ping, Captures
-A buy menu and advanced economic system: This includes the standard
money that everyone starts out with, but also ways to earn more money
throughout the game
-Enough weapons and abilities to have 5 classes outfitted with a fully
flushed out and balanced choice of weapons/abilities.
-Quite a few custom weapon models.
-Damage taken causes trouble aiming, moving, and turning. This adds a
great deal to the pacing of the gameplay and forces players to think
about their movements rather than just charge head-on.
-Players spawn in waves and there is a set ticket limit
-Server able to set win conditions and various settings
-Larger weapons have slower turning speed than smaller weapons
Extras:
-Custom character models
-Other gameplay modes implemented besides CTF
-Fully functional armor/damage type system
-Custom sound effects
-Custom voices
-Custom music
-Location specific damage that causes problems such as reduced
movement speed/turning ability. Players more vulnerable in back to
promote flanking maneuvers.
-Equipment stations that allow you to change your weapon loadout on
the fly at specific areas. Possibly some destructible to add a new strategy.
-Ammo Box. Box to pick up ammo on the field. Possibly destructible and
possible that players can have the ability to place these where they want.
Tasks
Drew Linderman - Weapon Modeler/Skinner
Dave Markham - General Coder/Sounds/Music
Mike Pisarsky - Mapper
Raymond Whiting - Weapon Coder/Map Producer
Timeline
Minimum - January 20
Low - February 22
Goal - When alpha is due
High - When project is due
Extras - After project is due
Screenshot of Early Map Design
Example of a similar menu system to one we are envisioning