Killing Floor Single-Player

[Doomest]

Of course as many of us know we lack Single-Player campaigns. This thought has been on of emphasis in my mind. I think that some of the mappers, modelers, ect. should all get our creative heads together and think up a new SP mode and storyline. I've been thinking this one should be totally original and not a remake of Alex's SP maps (Though they were awesome as hell) But I think we should have a more emphasis on player's freedom, characters, and a solid story. I'm willing to get started on a short draft of a storyline if anyone wants to see. This will also let us see what happens when we put alot of brain matter and goo (ymmm) together. Anyone up for this

[kyben]

Yes, the team is working on a SP campaign that is original and not so much like Alex's 1.0 SP. Uwasawaya is currently working out the storyline.

[Abyx]

Doomest, why do you think I'm learning how to 3D model? Someone's gotta make static meshes for SP,

[zynthetic]

So any interest in pulling in talent from the unreal sp community? It would be an advantage to have someone who knows how to use obscure functions of UEd that have been made obsolete by the mp only 2k4.

[Doomest]

I'll throw in any ideas, and help mapping if anyone wants

[mrmedic]

divide said:

obscure functions of UEd that have been made obsolete by the mp only 2k4.

Matinee! Woo!

[zynthetic]

Granted someone made camera tools for UT, Epic introduced manitee was w/ 2k4. I meant more overall sp design/flow, complex triggers/events and scripted AI.

[Dastard]

I think that there are three things that I feel would benefit the SP greatly:
1: A level system. I think the code for one is still in the game code somewhere, it popped up during the early 2.0 betas, and was removed 'cause in so far as I know Alex didn't have the time to dedicate himself to coming up with balanced abilities for an MP level system. A level system would help extend the life of the SP campaign, as you can go back and play it with a different level build and it would be a unique gameplay experience.

2: Potentially separate level paths. Maybe if instead of doing an objective in a map one way you did it a different maybe harder way, you would get rewarded with a different level. Maybe instead of going through the sewers, you killed a couple of fleshpounds to get a key to a certain gate, and you would go through a forest type level instead of the sewers.

Usawa and I talked about doing KFSP as an open ended campaign, and we both concluded that, while cool, making a worldspace where you can go to any level in any order would be hard to pull off, both code and plot-wise. However, doing slightly branched levels would be an easier undertaking, so long as they both ended up leading you to the final level, so maybe following the forest path you would end up at biotics lab, but maybe with a weapon that you otherwise wouldn't get going through sewers.

3: Retain an anonymous player identity. This one should be a bit of a no brainer, but still, needs to be said. It's easier to put yourself into a game if the player identity is what you want it to be, and it's easier to feel those emotions that horror games aim to instill in you if you've actually put yourself into the game. It's sort of a subconsciencious thing, but it still needs to be said.

[el'PiX]

Dastard,


Interesting views.

From bottom up,
Number 3, I have more or less already brought up. It's one of those very important parts of the gameplay, definetly.

Number 2, will be put into concideration.

Now, the first suggestion I don't like too much.
There's already one too many rpg-style mods and mutators out there to make me sick more than once.

[Dastard]

Not so much giving you abilities, but a set of subtle bonuses. I know that a lot of rpg style things go a bit over the top, but if you make it very simple in so far as abilities it could go a long way.

Say, for instance you had 3 skills or so: Dexterity, Power and Intelligence. A point in each would give a slight bonus for certain things. For instance, a point in intelligence would make welding and completing objective type things go 5% faster, and you would heal 5% more, a point in power would give you 5% more melee damage, 5% more health, and 5% more weight you can carry, and a point in Dexterity would give you 5% faster overall run speed, 5% faster weapon switch/reload speed, and 5% less runspeed loss when damaged.

Each subsequent point would make the point boost you get ever so slightly worse, based on the last input. Maybe it would be (bonus given)=4/5(last bonus given) So if your last point gave you 5%, the next point would give you 4%. The next point after that would give you 3.2%. The next one after that would give you 3/5ths of 3.2% (too lazy to do the math. , it's around 2).

This way, while you could get some good bonuses, after a while it would become less and less of a bonus, putting a sort of a cap on how much you can put into something. You could also potentially make the enemies scale with level, so that you're always challenged.

I know that playing with UTRPG can get mostly just stupid after a while, but that's mostly because the abilities aren't very well thought out. If it were sweet and simple, it would work out well in my opinion. And also this would be for singleplayer, so MP wouldn't be heavily unbalanced for new players.

Even if we were to have the level system in KFMP, we could either:
A) force it to wipe after each map, so everyone has a chance that joins at the start of the map

or

B) Devise a threat/caution system where people who are of high level who are doing the most damage get the most threat from higher power specimens, but lower power specimens such as clots and what not go after lower level characters. It would be something like

(threat)=[(damage done in past 10 seconds)-(damage taken in past 10 seconds)]*[(players level)/(average of everyone on server's level)]-(Caution)

and

(Caution)=[(Amount of damage taken from player)*(amount of life left/amount of life total)]*(average level of players)*(level of monster)

So if we have a clot (assuming it's health is 100, which it isn't, but I can't be buggered to get the real value), which would be a level 1 monster, with 50% of it's health gone being shot at by a level 10 player who has done 30 damage to it, and it has done 40 damage to the player, and the average player level of the server is 5, since he's playing with a level 1 person, the math would be:

[(30-40)(10/5)]-[(30*0.5)*5*1]=(-10*2)-(15*5)=(-20)-(75)=-95

The threat for the level 10 character would be -95, which would be (hopefully, if my math is right) less than the threat of a level 1 character, which is what we want, since we would rather send things that have a chance of killing a level 10 character going after the level 10 character, and give the level 1 character a chance to level up on enemies that they can kill.

For more than 2 people, there would be a list of characters that it would go after, and specimens would only generate a list of people who are in the zone it's in and the adjacent 2-3 zones. Specimens would always go after players they can path to that have the highest threat.

If we adjust the monsters strength of attacks based on who it's going after, we would (again, hopefully) have a game that's fun to play for both low level new joiners and high level returning players. The things that we would need to figure out to make this work would be:
*Monster levels that would make the math work
*Simple enough of a level up interface so that people would not get confused
*Ways to make sure that enemies stick to the target that their going for and don't get "confused" and constantly are switching between 3 targets. Maybe make it so that you can't actively level up in game; All experience points are granted at the ends of waves.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, and:
*A wavespawning system that would dynamically spawn critters of a certain array of enemies

[Alex]

Dastard. That is the most Convoluted idea i've ever heard lodged in the most Convoluted block of text that i've ever not fully read.

[Grim]

How about.....The first person the specimen sees......It goes after?


If you have a system where, (Alex, you need to change your location information, it's starting to bug me) say, four gorefleshes see a level "ten" and start going after it, all the other people on the server would ditch that level ten and run off to a safer spot, which would really start ruining gameplay for higher skilled people, because having a team full of idiots who ditch you, and weld the doors behind you while you're actually doing work till you run out of ammo, turn to run, and find a metal door welded to 100% strength behind you. With the system that makes more skilled things go after the more skilled people, it'd just make them bait, and public servers where people just run around and kill, would be even worse due to it.



another problem would be, it'd cause a bit of exploiting possible. I mean, even now, I may see seven clots all in a group heading towards another player, and all I have to do, is run infront of them, and start axing or shelling out, and it takes them a bit to figure out that I'm infront of them, blocking them, and damaging them more then the player retreating or whatever. If theres a mathamatical problem where they are set to constantly go after a higher player, you could do this a lot more, or even take a lower end player, and just stand at a door so they get stuck, trying to go for the guy behind him, and continue to just shoot them that way.

[Doomest]

I was going to say that but I was aiming more for a extremely detailed story.

One cool scene I was thinking of, is after you get knocked out but something your vision is blurry at first then refocuses. You see a clot staring back at you and it look around you and then opens it moths and does a zombie moan then you see your character's hand hit it with the Handcannon's barrel.

[darkonxy]

this may sound stuipid but why not convert the 1.0 sp maps into 2.0 sp maps
and then improve it from there

[Abyx]

Because 1.0's story is different from 2.0's.