Shadow : Source Announced.

sparhawk on 17/4/2006 at 09:55

Quote Posted by Raven

The only problem is that the dark mod is not out yet and isn't going to be for a long time...

It's not out for public yes. Simply because it is still in development. That doesn't mean that it is inaccessible though.

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and they seem to have an uber secretive approach to the design/programming of the mod and so one would have to become part of the elite dark mod club and earn trust and presumably perform funny rituals involving trouser legs, hand shakes and turning you unbelievably opinionate and arrogant before you could get started on such a project, or even to begin thinking about it.

The only thing required is that you show us that you can do some stuff and stick to your commitment. If you read other forums, devoted to Doom 3 development, you may have noticed that we are not THAT secretive, just because we want to have some room for the devs. We have already enough opinions, and having just hangers on in the forum, doesn't exactly promote the productivity. Funnily enough, other mods use the same approach, I wonder why. Last time I looked it was not as if you could just register to T2X and get everything handed over just like that. Or any other FM for that matter.

@Kurgan: I don't really see the point of a coo-op with story. The big multiplayer games have stories right. But nobody really plays it for the story (or are ther people doing that?). Most people play it because it is fun to play multiplayer. I played GuildWars, which has a story. You know what thappens? You watch the story the first time. But you don't stop playing the maps. So if you help some noob to gain some higher level you replay the story again and again. It just becomes boring, because if there is some new member in the party, you have to watch the full movie over and over. Unless you are planning to create cutscenes (which I doubt because it is really a lot of work), what would your story offer? Some readables, and that's it. Players who will repeatedly play the maps in teams, will already know the readables so they wont bother anymore. If you really throw in some good cutscenes, then they will be interesting the first time, and annoying after that. If you don't have a good team, the cutscenes will be mostly emberassing though. I have seen some trailers that were done in an unprofessional way and they are ok if you look at them like that. But if you have to look at them again and again they are even more annoying. Heck, even in Guildwars they become annoying to watch, because if you look at them again you start to look at the details, and to be frank, they were technically not THAT good to make me watch them over again. So you should really think on what you want to focus on and what it means. Doing a story or doing a multiplayer.

And one finaly personal note. :) No matter how good your mod is, I will not play it because it needs HL2 which includes Steam.

Domarius on 17/4/2006 at 15:20

You have the wrong idea.

Me and my two bros play co-op games all the time. The point that we are all playing for the first time and sharing the new experience together.

sparhawk on 17/4/2006 at 16:12

Not sure whom you are replying to. If it was me. That was my point. Sharing it the first time is ok and fun. After that it will get bothersome (not the game but the story).

SubJeff on 17/4/2006 at 17:21

I wholeheartedly disagree.

Co-op play of a mission that is designed for that purpose will have replayable qualities that a single player mission can never have. There might be areas that require close co-operation to pass and since you either play Thief No1 or Thief No2 that's already one replay that could be quite different from your first run through.

And might I remind you that people play Alien Swarm again and again and that is only MP Co-op.

sparhawk on 17/4/2006 at 19:13

I didn't mean that co-op will become boring, I mean that that a story, that is part of that co-op, will become boring. I played GuildWars several times, especially some maps I liked, but it was pretty boring to watch the storyelements again and again.

Kurgan on 17/4/2006 at 20:53

Quote Posted by sparhawk

I don't really see the point of a co-op with story. The big multiplayer games have stories right. But nobody really plays it for the story (or are there people doing that?). Most people play it because it is fun to play multiplayer.

You're serious, aren't you? Wow. By any chance have you ever heard of a really cool game called Thief? :)

Of course people play it for the story. When I get together with friends to watch a movie, we don't drop the tape off somewhere to have it edited down to just the combat scenes and/or highlights. We're there to get into the story, the mystery, together. And no, the big MP games don't have stories, at least not in the sense that we've been yakking about here. That's like comparing Faust to Where's Waldo. A flimsy pretense so that lots of people can run around and gain levels/points and wealth versus an immersive, plot-driven, semi-interactive storyline, chock-full of mystery and suspense... the idea that the two could be spoken of in the same breath, as the same thing --I'm having heart palpatations just thinking about it.

Now, to be fair, sure, there are people that just want to enjoy a lighthearted session of gaming with friends, and not get into the big narratives. I used to enjoy playing Delta Force and Deus Ex MP, just to interact with others and goof off. It has its place in the scheme of things, but no way is it the same thing as true coop. Just last night I was looking at the info on F.E.A.R. and thinking it sounded really cool. I was talking on the phone with a friend, and we both wanted to see if we could play it together. We spotted the multiplayer blurb, but then got disappointed when below that it had the same phrase almost all the games have these days: "Multiplayer support! For Deathmatch and Capture the Flag!" Argh. Can't actually play the full game via multiplayer.

Anyway, yes, you betcha, we may be inexplicably outnumbered for some bizarre reason, but there are plenty of people out there that would like multiplayer to actually mean multiple players for the full game, cooperatively, and not just "versus" style using edited, scaled-down maps from the game. One of the coolest things I've ever seen, --and I wish I had them--, was about six or seven years ago. Someone had taken some of the missions from Deus Ex and converted them to MP. Not just the maps, but somehow they'd managed to keep them as-is, with the full story running, just as in the normal game when playing solo. I came into it and instead of having "the other team" shooting at me, I got to watch other people playing out the actual mission (the game was already underway when I arrived). If I could fire-up Thief, and have a friend join me for the campaign, that would be the coolest possible gaming experience, at least to me. :)

demagogue on 18/4/2006 at 02:14

One thing I've associated with MP gaming to deal with these issues is the idea of episodic storytelling. So instead of one epic story/playing area it can be broken up more episodically, with the story evolving over time, so the narrative doesn't just collapse after the first playing and become irrelevant to playing.

The analogy to think of is like TV. You know 90% of Seinfeld was filmed in the same 2 or 3 apartments, but the story kept situationally evolving, so the same locations stayed fresh for literally 100s of episodes. (Maybe this is an idea more for commercial developers than mod teams, but maybe there are smaller steps that could work well for mods too).

There's a lot more to say here, but I don't have the time now. I've heard suggestions of different techniques to do this sort of thing, but generally speaking it would be something of a paradigm shift in videogaming. (You can tell I've been reading those Spector articles advertised in the Gaming forum). I for one hope it happens, though. A running interactive story across years of episodes sounds awesome!

Domarius on 18/4/2006 at 03:36

@Spar - Well you didn't say "Sharing it the first time is ok and fun." the first time around, you said "I don't really see the point of co-op with story" and go on to explain how boring it is to see the same thing over and over, so naturally I was explaining the "first time" aspect to you.

A reply like Kurgan's most recent one should be expected when you say something like that.

Gestalt on 18/4/2006 at 05:39

Kurgan: I've heard that the more recent Splinter Cell games have special co-op campaigns, or at least the latest one does. You can play System Shock 2 co-op as well, if you didn't already know.

sparhawk on 18/4/2006 at 08:10

Quote Posted by Kurgan

You're serious, aren't you? Wow. By any chance have you ever heard of a really cool game called Thief? :)

Last time I played Thief it was a SINGLE PLAYER. No Co-op there.

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Of course people play it for the story.

Thief != MP

No point in responding to the other stuff you wrote, because apaprently you didn't even read or respond to what I wrote.

Just to repeat it. Multiplayer games are usually played because of the fun that multiplayer provides. I didn't even mention any distinction of co-op or deathmatch, because for the definition of a MP game it doesn't matter. An MP game is a game where multiple people can play at the same time the same game together. Wether it is against each other or WITh each other is beside the point for the definition of multiplayer. My point was, that a story based in a multiplayer game, will became boring, because MP and SP games are totally different in design and motivation. Of course if you play a MP with story the first time, it will be interesting (depending on the story), but this experience is more comparable to a SP where some of the AI is taken over by humans instead. A true MP game will gain fun by repetedly playing it and this is where the story will become a burden. SP games are designed to be played once, MP are designed to be played multiple times. And even though you can play SP games multiple times, that does't change what I said, because the game will always be the same. I know that games exist with multiple endings, but the majority of the gameflow is still the same and these branches don't change much in my opinion. Notice that I DON'T touch on replayvalue, even though I say that SP are designed to be played once. It's similar with a joke. Some you can hear multiple times and some don't, but they are still one time events overall.