dim3 Forum

Having decided that dim3 networking might not be good enough for an exclusively multiplayer game for some time I decided I wanted to start work a singleplayer game while slowly continuing work on Solid Security. My first idea was far beyond the capabilities of dim3, but I downsized it bit by bit, and after coming up with a story that I planned to use for something quite different everything suddenly came together to create Mutant Island. I've already started work and written many pages in my dev document. I've got fairly complete plans for four levels, which is probably all there will be.

The game will take place in a fictional universe I invented. It is also the setting of a book I'm writing. A quick rundown is that there are two countries, Morfair and Brinstar, who are at war with each other and have been for some years. Technology is only marginally futuristic. The main advances are in the relm of engines and propellent, producing new types of aircraft and decreasing the size and weight of ammunition.


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Mutant Island
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Play as a sergeant in a team of Morfair infantry sent to investigate the mysterious 'Mutant Island', suspected to be a secret base used by Brinstar.

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Intro:
One week ago one of our dropships carrying a platoon of infantry was attacked by two Brinstar interceptors and shot down over the so called 'Mutant Island' it crash landed and they managed one communication that indicated a good number of survivors. We hired two mercenaries to take a boat to the island and bring them home. Only one mercenary and two soldiers came back. Their story was incoherent and now they won't talk at all, seeing that nobody believes them. The gist of it is they claim they were attacked by 'monsters' who slaughtered most of the crash survivors and one of the mercenaries. Naturally we don't think much of their story, it makes sense that only two people might have survived the crash and they made up a story. Even so that doesn't quite explain the missing mercenary, something definitely happened to those men. We've decided to covertly send two platoons of troopers to the island by boat to investigate. Brinstar might be up to something over there and is using the 'Mutant Island' thing as a cover for some devious plan of their own. The troopers job will be to explore the island and find out what really happened to the crash survivors.

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Mutant Island is a type of horror mystery action shooter. You must fight off mysterious enemies while at the same time trying to solve the mystery of Mutant Island. Clues can be things such as computer chips, notes, and memo's which you can pick up and read, or just some part of the scenery that gives you a hint.


Weapons list:

MBR-23, A battle rifle with single and fully automatic fire modes. Single allows you to place your shots better, automatic has a slow rate of fire and a lot of recoil but can take a target down much faster. 30 round magazine.

SG-30, a compact stockless submachine gun firing 38 caliber pistol ammunition. It has a short barrel and a large magazine so it is inaccurate, but very effective at close range. 45 round magazine.

R-9, a powerful semi automatic rifle with a scope. The bullets pack a lot of punch and it is very accurate. But only has a 20 round magazine

Tac Fury-38, a simple and reliable 38 caliber pistol issued to all branches of the Morfair armed forces and popular all over the world. 13 round magazine.

Grenade, a high explosive device with a two layer metal casing designed to fragment on detonation. Large blast radius and highly lethal. 3 second timer.


I've already modeled the MBR-23 and SG-30, I was going to texture them but I decided to see what you guys think first.









Yes they're quite simple, these are the cheapest, most basic weapons Morfair uses, they're produced by the thousands, nothing fancy. I already have sounds for them too. I hope to have this project playable much sooner than Solid Security. Only real cogs in the works are the voice acting and the allies. It'll be interesting since at least two characters need to talk. I'll also doubtless have fun with the allies, I'd like the player to have a squad of troops who follow you, and are transferred from one level to the next depending on how many (if any) survive. Maybe I can get ccccc to help with that eh?

Sounds good.
I wish you luck!

One thing: The name Brinstar is already used in Metroid.

Durandalski Wrote:'Mutant Island', suspected to be a secret base

Sounds pretty suspicious to me...

Wow that's a good story! I'll be interested to see more about it.

the assault rifle is good, low poly but has just enough detail.
the pistol..... give it some more detail.

cool idea, good luck working on your game

Cool! Sounds intriguing . Where will the levels take place? Outdoors?

Durandalski, you mean with the number of enemies living effecting further levels? Sure, whenever you're writing that part PM me and I'll show you how I do that type thing .

I'm keeping things as low poly as possible, levels are mostly outdoors in the jungle so there's going to be plenty to slow things down already. I did a quick test using pass through segments to simulate grass and underbrush, it looks awsome in the dark map, but for some reason there's odd behavior when walking through it.

I have improved the SMG, I made it narrower, modified a few other things, and UV mapped it. Maybe I'll find time to texture it tommorow.



ccccc- Enemies will need to be able to spawn in infinate numbers until a scripted event tells them to stop, but I figure that can't be too hard. What I was talking about was having a set number of availible allies, say five. If you lose two by the end of the level at the start of the next level you should only have three instead of five. If you lose them all they stay dead in the next level, ect. I'm really not even sure where to start to do that.

Now that is a good story.

The thing that you are trying to do with your allies is clever too. Remember Halo and the number of times that sargeant Johnson died?

It's actually really easy EXCEPT-Brian needs to make it so global variables are saved and carried between maps, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they do either. If they're saved, then all you have to do is make a global var in the course script and when an allie dies it --s from the global var .

For the infinite thing, make an object that can drop enemies, that should work, though I haven't tried the dropping thing yet .

For the Variables between maps youcan use the data.add(...); thing I think.

Chainfist: Thats what I'm talking about :P. I want to know if dim3 saves global variables and if they are transfered from map to map . In fact, I'll ask Brian right now.