User:Jksgoten/Campaign Experiment

This is jksgoten's experimental campaign project page.

**Project Goals**

Realism

-Heavy focus on using melee weapons

-VERY few guns

-Found guns have limited ammo(usually one clip)

-Barricading of doors/windows

-Exploring map to find items(weapons, ammo, healthkits, barricade materials)

-Realistic placing of items

Nonlinearity

-No distinct path to follow

-Exploration rewarded as well as punished

-Multiple saferooms

-Dynamic map

New Features

-Barricade creation system

-Injured Players have a chance of turning into Infected

-Nonsurvivor NPCs

-Dynamic map

-Cinematic moments

Changes to Infected

-Mix of slow and fast common

-Common killed only by headshots

-Less special infected

-Witch startled MUCH faster

-Epic Tank

Gameplay

-Scarcity of time and multiple goals encourage splitting up

-Scarcity of weapons encourages teams to stick close together

-Exploration highly rewarded

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**Realism**

Melee Weapons

NEEDED: Weapons that destroy themselves after a certain amount of uses

Players are stripped of their pistols and equipped with melee weapons at the beginning of the map.

Ideally, I want to make tables and chairs breakable and you would pick up pieces of wood for melee weapons. And these would break after a certain amount of hits. Finding stronger, longer lasting melee weapons would be one goal for the survivors, but can always create more by destroying props. However I'm unsure if it's possible to make melee weapons that break after a certain amount of use.

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Weapons

NEEDED: Weapons that start with only one clip and Ammo piles with limited supply

Weapons are found very rarely. Ideally, all players will have primary weapons only by maybe level 4.

Found weapons will only have one clip in them. Meant to be used out of desperation, not all the time.

There is a script for L4D1 that changes the amount of ammo in each clip. I believe somewhere there is something I can change to make guns carry less total ammo through use of either a script or plugin.

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Placement

Cabinets, dressers, fridges open to contain items. Houses must be extensively searched.

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Nonlinearity

Multiple Saferooms

NEEDED: Further testing and tweaking of Director AI

I made a simple map that had two different checkpoints. Although the bots did not work properly, after killing them and entering each safe room separately, I successfully changed levels to two different maps.

However the Director, I'm sure, will not function properly without a single escape route(or so I think). I will either need to figure out a way to control the Director, or perhaps take the Director out of the picture completely and set up my own random spawns(This would take a LOT of work to make maps nonredundant).

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Dynamic Map

NEEDED: How to use global entities and their limitations

What is meant by "Dynamic" map is a map that will:

1. Be different each play through. For example, sometimes a tanker has exploded and blocks a street, or an entire building will be located somewhere else(This will be a noteable change as supplies will be found in certain places like hospitals and stores).

2. Changes during gameplay. For example, a tanker crashes into a building and blocks a previously accessible pathway. Buildings fall apart, catwalks fall, etc...

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**New Features**

Barricades

NEEDED: Everything

There is a mod that enables the user to place a wide variety of objects anywhere they want in the map. I may tweak this a bit if breakable barricades can be constructed as well as a way to limit how many barricades can be made based on found materials.

If that fails to work out, I may just make planks of would collectible using the gas cans model. However, this would require a lot of work for each entryway.

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Survivor Turns Infected

NEEDED: Figure out the more delicate details of creating scripts that can do this

May or may not incorporate this. What I want is to create a situation where a player will know hes going to turn into an infected soon, and has to make the choice of either telling his teammates so they can kill him before he turns, or waiting until he turns and trying to kill his teammates. The idea is, if his teammates kill him, he will never come back unless they have a defib(very limited). This means that player will not be able to do anything for a long time. But if he decides to wait and become an infected, he can continue playing by killing the survivors.

I believe this is possible. I saw a script that was able to force players to change to the infected side.

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NPCs

NEEDED: Figure out how to do this

May or may not incorporate this. Computer AIs can be found that will either be hostile or friendly. I believe I saw a script that was able to create NPCs, but I'm unsure. I'm also equally unsure if NPC's can be created that will shoot the players.

I thought it may be interesting to have a crazed gun store owner that shoots at you if you come near his store. but if you get in or kill him there are guns and ammo and what not.

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Dynamic Map

Going along with what was said before, I want the map to be just as dangerous to the players as the actual infected. For example, roofs that fall down, cars that might explode if set on fire, catwalks that can fall, and anything else I can think of.

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Cinematic Moments

By this, I hope to create some moments that are staged. And I know it's against general policy to create set in stone moments. But there's a lot of really cool things you can do that just won't happen randomly. Some moments I want to create, for example, are a long catwalk that is

**Infected Changes**

Common

NEEDED: Look at scripts to figure out how to do this

Might make them slower to accommodate use of melee weapons. I either want a mix of fast and slow infected, or they become gradually faster and faster as the game progresses. I'm thinking a mix of fast and slow may not be possible.

I also want them to only be killed by headshots, like zombies are supposed to be killed.

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Special

I think I might leave specials alone. People might complain that having only melee weapons makes special infect very hard to fight. But they're pretty easy to fight if the survivors stick close together and act quickly. The only real problems I could see are boomers, chargers, and smokers. Chargers aren't so bad, it just kinda sucks that when they are disoriented after charging and hitting a wall, they can still hit you. Smokers shouldn't be so bad either, it's part of the challenge. And boomers, well, it encourages teamwork, having one person kill the boomer and then the others protect him.

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Witch

NEEDED: Look at scripts to figure out how to do this

I think the witch is ridiculously easy to avoid. So I want her to become startled faster by those walking around her, and almost instantly if a flashlight is shown on her.

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Epic Tank

NEEDED: Look at scripts to figure out how to do this Tank becomes more of an epic boss that early on(the first four levels), you just have to run away from and build barricades to slow it down. Will appear in and out of levels depending on what's going on. Then in the finale, you fight him. He will have a lot more health. Possibly moves faster, and cannot incap on one hit.