Malcain

Passionate modders required for ongoing development of survival mod

4 posts in this topic

Goal: Reshaping the original idea of BreakingPoint mod.
Quite a lot of work has already been done solo by myself, but I feel the need for more modders to be able to implement the vision I'm working on in a reasonable time.
I will describe game-design elements one-by-one, so you get the basic understanding on the mod's vision and if you want to work on implementation.
(It's a wall of text, and if you are familiar with BP mod, you will see a lot of already known features, however the way and how much they are used will differ quite a lot):


Multiplayer balance, immersion, and known-issues:

KOS: KOS is mitigated by faction system, as players have to identify the player before shooting. Players who want to go full-defence and are bad at identification of friendlies have an option to craft tranquilizer ammo.
Gamma-abuse and nighttime: Nighttime is enabled, however nights are set in a way to have enough ambient moonlight, making gamma-abuse a questionable option. Besides that, ingame gamma option have been removed. If we won't be satisfied with these solutions: there is an anti gamma-abuse countermeasure for dark nights, but I personally question if pitch-black nights shall be enabled. Currently the nights provide enough light to see and stop thoughts of gamma-abusing.
Dynamic weather: From storms to valley fog to sandstorms. The weather is dynamic. I have set up a scripted way to mitigate all arma 3 weather bugs which exist in multiplayer, including cloud overcast problems(that moment when it's raining with clear skies, no more)
3rd person vs 1st person: A long-known issue which splits the community. Plans are to address it via custom 3rd person view mod called "CineCam", which is WIP by Zooloo75.
No atmosphere & nothing to do: Most crusial issue, which is in progress to be addressed. Goal is to take some suitable SP elements and make them work in MP, some progress has already been done, but a lot more to come, you will see a few examples below.
Updated visuals: Some visual fixes will come around, I have already spoken about night illumination, another example is fix for gradient sky full of ugly noticeble stripes - no more. There are much attention going towards visual quality during the whole 24-hour circle(time is accellerated, but not too much).
Single-player content in multiplayer:  There is an enomours amount of open-sourced and free to use content in arma3, problem is: it works only for SP missions and has very limited use.
My goal is to save the time whenever it's possible and instead of trying to recreate the bycicle, further improve provided content and recode it to work in multiplayer.
As a side note: if someone wants and is able to provide simple ways of storytelling (small books and letters come to mind), it could be a great addition.

Survival:
- Eat&drink system is based upon crafting&looting. Not too hardcore and unrealistic when you have to drink&eat every 5 mins. However finding eat&drink will require either looting or crafting up to player's tastes.
If you are lazy to craft, survive and store the gear, you'll have to spend quite a lot of time on looting and exploration and vica versa.
- Desease: Mod already has very simple and basic desease feature, it may be enhanced by visual effects and various ways of curing, but that's a low priority atm. Since the mod already features a playable zombie class (still needs some polishing too), desease may be enhanced by a way of player slowly becoming a zombie, however that's also not my priority atm, hence why I'm looking for modders.
- Medical system is simple but feels well. There is no reason to make medical system too complicated, but it may be enhanced by crafting system requiring players to craft different types of medical supplies in order to heal different types of damage/deseases. It will have the same "eat&drink" formula: either spend time to craft the supply, or seek and explore relying on luck to find med supply that demands your needs.
- BP mod already has quite a lot of custom effects to different kinds of wounds.

Sandbox/living world:
- Player-to-Player(PTP) interactions and Player-to-AI(PTA) interactions. Sandbox is based on these two core game-design mechanics, both will enhance each other instead of one becoming dominant over another. How it's done:
1. No human-based AI. All AI are either anomalies(zombies/ghosts to name an already working few) or environment-based (hostile feral dogs/sandstorms/volcano eruptions as examples), as well as tamable dogs and horses (also already working. but needs polishing). Reason to avoid human AI: It destroys immersion and kill PTP, as AI cannot behave like real humans. AI become predictable over time(quite fast) and don't really add replayability, also they are simply boring in most known solutions. We don't need the ones who look like human, but behave like toy-puppets. 
2. Ecomomics:
*Trading is based on barter deals between players(PTP). Which means there is no money as we know and no toy-puppet traders(remember, no human-based AI). Deals are done between players at their own risk!
While basic global chat is disabled, friendly factions have their own faction-specific global chat, which helps PTP interaction(yes, you still have to be cautious about some "friendlies").
*All gear/craftables can be stored in: Havens, hidden stashes, vehicles. Nothing is 100% safe though, and have it's own updsides vs downsides:

Spoiler

Havens are modified lockable houses which already exist on terrain. It solves an issue of big dildo bases in the middle of the map ignoring physics and common sense, usually turning the game and the map into ugly-looking minecraft and destroying immersion. Havens are inaccessible to other players but are exposed and can be raided via use of explosives (you have to destroy the house in order to access it).
However there is a countermeasure to haven raids called haven reinforcement - haven owners can secure their haven for quite some time, depending on reinforcement level. Havens are based around end-game crafting, as they have different kind of useful inner furniture, e.g. storing guns, fuel, water, cooking meat on a stove(which will be very useful for player once we manage to balance survival elements).
(Haven raiding helps to get rid of too much gear hoarding, as quite a lot of the  gear will be naturally destroyed by explosion, once the haven got raided).
Stashes are another way to store gear, they are opposite to havens: extremely hard to notice and find if hidden well, but have no safe-mechanism. Their camo appearance depends on the faction you play. There are different kinds of stashes, some can look exactly like a terrain element, such stash blueprints are quite rare though
Vehicles are just a temporary way to store anything, as their only safe mechanism will be lockable garages(WIP), and they are quite easy to find even if hidden well.


*All gear is acquired by looting, crafting and leveling up your faction class. In order to loot and craft players will have to explore and visit different areas of the map, where they will often have to deal with PTA threats.  Some places are semi-static, some are dynamic and won't appear at the same place: The goal is to mitigate the problem of same static hotspots leaving other parts of the map dead (it also fixes the problem of games becoming a pvp deathmatch around the same places as player population will be spread around the map and meeting another player is a rare unexpected event you have to keep in mind, not a pvp boredom).

RP/RPG:
RPG&RP is based on faction system. There are no server rules for player behaviour.  Mechanic is simple yet effective: Killing your faction or friendly faction costs you point loss, eventually making you a traitor with no perks and only drawbacks. There are 3 hostile faction sides and 6 classes to choose from(besides zombie class).
Leveling system of some classes is based around 70/30 PTA-to-PTP mechanic, other classes 30/70 PTA-to-PTP, rest are in between both mechanics: ~50/50. Players can choose class based on what kind of gameplay they are interested in. PTP interaction progress is based upon capture the point, cooperation&PVP. PTA progress is based upon crafting, survival & clearing the anomalies.
Example of PTP interaction and RP-PVP:
Let's take "Capture the gas station" event as an example: Capturing the point is based upon cooperation of players in order take control of a specific useful area. As gas pumps are broken by default, in order to get the fuel you'll have to fix the pumps(take control of gas-station). Once the control is taken, the gas-station will only be usable by the faction that established it. For a limited amount of time or until the pumps become dry.
Example of PTA and RP-PVE:
Solo player makes his way into a mystic deseased area, where military trials have been taking place long time ago. He needs ammo, he needs gear, and he wants to clear that area. Needless to say, he will never get out alive.
Group of 4 players make their way into the same area after a while. They need ammo, they need gear, and they will have to fight and deal with the unknown..
Example of PTA and RP-PVE meeting PTP and RP-PVP:
3 out of 4 eventually make their way out alive, and if they're lucky, with some rare stuff. They're eager to meet with their dead party mate. They become uncautious. Right at this moment, two hostile faction players driving towards their area in a car - they have refueled at their faction's gas-station and are seeking for troubles..

Ballistics and Sounds:
- One of the most underestimated fields in arma. BP mod featured it's own gun sounds back in the days, and while they sounded good, they didn't really reflect how shots and bullets sound depending on different ranges. It is a problem known in both vanilla arma, other games, and all kind of mods, including known JSRS mod. Quite some work has been done recoding a vast asset of soundshaders. Most noticeble are suppressor sound change, as suppressors don't really silence the gunshot in real life. I won't dig into details, but expect guns to sound as close to how they supposed to, as possible, with a lot of attention to sound difference at different ranges.
- Overall ballistics and damage system will be further polished to take into account neck hits and other body areas hits which are ignored by vanilla arma3 damage system, causing unrealistic damage behaviour in some cases, especially when the target wears protection like vests (Helmets are not within the game as they make faction class identification a lot harder to do).
- Ambient music. Some places will have ambient soundtrack, usually the mystic ones. It'll be quet enough to not distract player from the game, but noticeble enough to reflect atmosphere of such places. Keep in mind, It won't be possible to turn it off, which is done on purpose to bring fair gameplay while enhancing atmosphere of specific place.

Map:
I will not go too much into details on the map as I don't work on creating new terrain. Mod will use the most suitable, interesting and fresh map the arma 3 community can provide. No specific map yet, but there are some quite creative terrains in the work. We will make sure it's not small, suits the post-apoc environment and have top-design. If needed, we got some expirience with map's editing, but I feel that creating a mod-specific terrain is a waste of resources, even though it's one of the most important parts of game-design.

Ok, this has already become a wall-of-text (and I haven't even finished yet..). If you are an expirienced modder and  got interested in the project, feel free to contact me.
If you got a bunch of ideas, but have never been into modding or coding, please don't waste your time. Ideas part is easy, their implementation is another story.
Reason to post on Exile forums: Exile is quite similar and I feel that described kind of community is hanging around here. I apologise if I break any rules, but I feel that Arma3 survival sandbox needs some fresh elements to stop stagnation. Thanks for attention.

Edited by Malcain

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

@Malcain -

"...Reason to post on Exile forums: Exile is quite similar..." - You are correct.  You are a COMPETITOR.  While I have not the authority nor ability to do such, if it was up to me, your post would be REMOVED and you would be WARNED that if you posted such again, you would be BANNED.

Rule #4:  "...should not cointain links and advertisement...".  (Their typo, not mine - 'cointain')

See:  https://exile.majormittens.co.uk/rules

While this applies to signatures, why would that be wrong but advertising in the body of the post be ok?  IT WOULD NOT BE.

 

You are ADVERTISING a 'product' which would be in DIRECT COMPETITION with Exile BY YOUR OWN WORDS.

You should REMOVE your post IMMEDIATELY.

So you know, I find nothing wrong with your idea, rather, you posting it HERE.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Advertisement
10 hours ago, kuplion said:

Whilst that sounds like a great concept, it's absolutely derivative and I'm really not sure what is to be gained by posting it here.

I have removed the link to website.
Was just looking for modders with a similar vision. However, feel free to delete the topic, as I think I have already found some souls with similar view on BIS forum.

Edited by Malcain

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Advertisement

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.