Battlefield: Wing commander - would it work?

[Bremmon]

Speaking of "End Run", another map idea:

Tarawa, destroyer and crusier start at the jump point at one side of the map, Kilrathi orbital facilities in the middle, a Kilrathi heavy carrier on the other side. The Confed player has to land enough marines on the orbital facility to destroy it and then escape back to the jump point.

The Kilrathi player has to ensure that the facilities are not destroyed and, if they are, that the Tarawa does not escape.

Could be different in that the Kilrathi will want to rush in light and medium fighters at first to take out transports while the Confed player will want to rush in, land the transports, destroy the station and then have to run.

 

[AD]

Wow, those are great ideas!!

I suppose that would make the bomber/fighter battle more exciting, I just wonder if weak players though would be upset at having to wait until the end of the game to respawn, especially if a carrier battle takes up to thirty minutes. I suppose you could just respawn and take a flak cannon on the carrier, or would everyone be alright with getting to watch the action after dying?

With the limited bombers too, I think it would be spectacular to have it so that when they are going into "lock on mode" the tone from WC2 can be heard over the radio frequencies that the targetted capital ship knows a bomber is trying to launch a torp (just like in "End Run" with the Tarawa). Could be some thrilling game play there when the cap ships signals that it's about to take a torp unless the fighters come to it's aid.

Also from this, I suppose the Broadsword bombers also have three turret spots - that might be a good respawn option.

Yeah... waiting could be an issue. I supposed you could experiment with possibly respawning fighters a certain number of times. (I think the Tiger's claw is supposed to have around 90 fighters which would allow each fighter to respawn twice. before all the ships are used up) Alternately have limited respawns on bombers and unlimited fighter respawns. I do like the turret gunner idea. Heavy fighters possibly have turret gunners too. But I think you would get to a point where you run out of places to put people. I think we'd need to see how long a match lasts. In arena, 16 player capship battles can last for mere minutes, whereas more dedicated team playes with a strong defense end up with a longer overall match time (though in an uneven match they will trounce theit opponents quickly)

 

[Shaggy]

My plan for the Reaver\Source mod was to kick it off with a mission to retake a carrier, hijacked by Mandarins, on its way to Repleetah. The assault shuttle gets tore up boarding the carrier and quickly the squad is wiped out leaving you to battle on your own. This point was largely due to the Build engine's limited ability to implement squadmates and just remained into my Source plans. After having triggered the carrier's selfdestruct you escape, if you can call it that, to Repleetah. You then have to battle through the Kilrathi lines to an airbase being used to evacuate casualties to escape the planet. At this point the Build story sort of stopped because that was as far as I had developed the Marine Force Recon storyline, that I had carried over to the Source plan.

Once I had started laying down my Source engine plans I added to my plans a supposed milk run mission were you are placed in charge of base security on Pax 7 during the "demolitions" tests Vagabond spoke of in WC3 during this section you run missions trying to quell riots and hunt down the leaders of a local protest\terrorist group opposed to the testing, while balancing the use of lethal or nonlethal force against the civilians and destroying the career of the General in charge of the tests.

The eventual second episode would put the character on the run from the General's vengeance.

The Source version, and even the Build version to some extent, was meant to be really story driven with plenty of voice work and what not. There would also be a broad range of Terran and Kilrathi weapons, both movie and game versions, not to mention lethal and nonlethal systems. I also wanted to try to implement a branching mission structure to, if it was possible. So if all you did was gun down the rioters then the next mob would come better armed and more dangerous to the point where you would miss out on the General's secrets because you would be dealing with the mobs.

But like I said, I want to learn how to make maps within Source before I start recruiting because without mapping skills all I can really do is write a script and layout the ideas and a plan.

 

[AD]

But like I said, I want to learn how to make maps within Source before I start recruiting because without mapping skills all I can really do is write a script and layout the ideas and a plan.

Yeah, the first thing I want to do is build a basic multiplayer map for either deathmatch or CS. A single player campaign could be built off of it. But at the very least you gain a significant insight into modding source and can release something in "relative" short order, with fewer team members.

 

[Shaggy]

Also if all my help dries up I can at least try to finish the maps on my own, even without the more advanced stuff like faceposer animations and expositional dialogue.

 

[BrynS]

Wow, it's pretty neat to hear that serious consideration and work has been put into a Wing Commander-based FPS in the past.

I personally wouldn't mind whatever form it took: whether a heavily-scripted shooter (e.g. Call of Duty series, Half Life 2), a more free-form variant such as Far Cry (think Hans Kruger raising hell on Fawcett's World using CryEngine 2! ) or something in the Battlefield vein. Another alternative to the Battlefield formula which could possibly work well for a Wing Commander version would be the phased objectives approach of Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, where each side has to complete a specific objective before moving onto the next section of the map; the gameplay also tends to vary for both sides with each new phase.

So for a WC game that might mean the Confed side first destroying all the turrets on a enemy carrier, while the Kilrathi players defend by operating/repairing the turrets and flying fighters as phase one. Phase two would involve Confed escorting a marine shuttle into the launch bay while the Kilrathi defend. Phase three would involve planting explosives in the torpedo storage bay two levels up, etc. The advantage of this approach over the normal Battlefield approach in my experience anyway, is that it tends to prevent aimless spamming of key vehicles/aircraft, e.g. bombers in BF2 [I can just imagine it now: you start off on the deck of the Tiger's Claw with two Rapiers, two Broadswords and one shuttle and everyone wants to fly and (then crash) the Broadsword ] and encourages players to work as a team to tackle the objectives.

Yeah, It had some scale issues, so I needed to start from scratch. But I built a good knowledge of how it works and stuff so I was kind of hoping to restart it someday. What I did do was promising though and I still know how to edit the titles and I've integrated WC sounds with it and stuff... But this time I need to plan the map out on paper a little better first.

The videos clips and images showing the imported fighters on the flight deck did look very promising. How much of the carrier internals did you model altogether? I recall seeing the flight deck and fighter bays, flight control and a tunnel running underneath the flight deck.

 

[AD]

The videos clips and images showing the imported fighters on the flight deck did look very promising. How much of the carrier internals did you model altogether? I recall seeing the flight deck and fighter bays, flight control and a tunnel running underneath the flight deck.

I had a roughed in map room and briefing room that I don't think was seen, as well as various access corridors and a lift that would have looked like the WC3 one but I hadn't got it working. There was also a corridor on the other side of the flight deck with what would have been a mess hall or something for the mechanics but it was just an empty room at that point. Part of the problem was the scale of the flight deck itself especially once there were fighters in it. Partly it wasn't wide enough and possibly even long enough. The height was about right but it was going to be a lot of work to fix and I decided it would almost go as fast to start from scratch and then I lost some of the files. If I can get the source SDK to actually work again I might get back into it.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I was personally hoping you might incorporate some of the rooms described in the novel -- like the separate squadron briefing rooms whose locations are described.

 

[AD]

I was personally hoping you might incorporate some of the rooms described in the novel -- like the separate squadron briefing rooms whose locations are described.

If I get back to it I certainly would. I hadn't read the novel at the point when I was working on it actively.

 

[Houkiboshi]

This is great... I'd love to see the WC Battlefield work one day...

It sounds great... But, can it be done?

As for AD's proyect, I was loocking forward to it, and I am still

 

[Mace]

Do it right and translate battlefield mechanics and game rules into a WC mod then?

- Both sides start off, having a carrier, numerous points to waist, like in BF, when the score reaches zero, the other side wins.
-You take a role (bomber/fighter/interceptor/refueling shuttle) and take out the appropiate ship.
- The carrier, turrets, etc. are auto-controlled.. unless you step into them by taking this role.
- Your carrier only has a limited number of fighters, which are split up into squadrons, dividing the fighter type(e.g. no way to launch 104 broadswords off of a bengal.)

Some extra editions this game/mod could add;
- As you eject, a wingman could come and pick you up, or an enemy could tractor you in, and then you could choose between suicide or defection, with a friendly pickup allowing you to regain points, a suicide would cost your team points, and a defection would transfer points from one side to the other.
- If you go all-out on an enemy carrier, and destroy it, respawning is over for the enemy, you wipe out the remains and win.
-If you loose all fighters, and have only the carrier left, you can always try to make a last stand ramming the enemy carrier with the team controlling the helm and all turrets