Matrix Mod (Counterstrike-like) Thread

Here's the brief:

Matrix-themed mod for two teams of human players.
Team-based, objective-based gameplay.

Human team:
One operator, up to six players jacked in.

Computer team:
Four agents

Gameplay:
Humans work to secure an objective (i.e. destroy a target, speak to a renegade program, etc.) before the agents kill them all or make this infeasible. (i.e. kill the person of interest)

Human team:
Jack in at a hardline chosen by the human operator. The human operator can see the entire map from multiple cameras which he can take control of and move without clipping. (i.e. ghost through walls) The operator serves as eyes and ears for humans in the game and activates hardlines to allow players to jack in and out. (Jacking out restores health and allows the human to be redeployed from another hardline with a fresh loadout.)

Human players choose a loadout of weapons, ammunition, etc. Each time they jack in they get a certain amount of health and adrenaline. Adrenaline, when used, allows human players to run faster than agents, do crazy matrix stunts like wallrunning, etc. It recharges very slowly. When a human loses all health they die. There is no respawn.

Agent team:
Agent players cycle through NPCs (random order, no control just view through their eyes) and are able to possess one at any time to fight the human players. An agent cannot un-possess a host unless killed. Agents cannot be hit by bullets, but they freeze in place and blur to dodge the bullet when they are fired upon. Agents take less damage than humans from melee combat, but will not blur while executing a melee attack. (Humans would have to work together to kill an agent.) When an agent dies it sits out for a certain amount of time, then returns to cycling through NPCs. Agents are limited to pistol weapons with unlimited ammunition. Same adrenaline system as humans.

NPCs:
Wander about day-to-day life not really doing much. Police and SWAT and etc. become hostile as soon as players enter an off-limits area, draw a weapon within visual range, etc. (Only the offending player and allies within a certain radius become hostile to police.)

Possible objectives:
Contact a renegade program for information and escape. (At least one player has to jack out.)
Destroy a target. (Hack a computer console, plant explosives, etc.)

Obviously creating a very engaging bullet-time or melee system is out of the question since that would entail ridiculous amounts of Dev effort, so let's stick to the basic shooter gameplay and add that jazz in later if there's time and interest. Melee should just work like a knife in counterstrike or whatever, but maybe fancy up the animations to look like kicks and punches. Blocking system later perhaps?

We'll want an engine that does most of the work for us and supports easy modding, so Source seems like an obvious choice, but I'll defer to the will of the majority. The adrenaline system seems like something best left to later releases (maybe include it only for sprinting and extra long jumps early on).

Edited by: serrath

Do you have any skills in game development? If you need a writer let me know!

My programming experience is mostly random less-than-helpful languages, but I've got a strong Java background. (PLT Scheme, MATLAB, GML, and x86 Assembly aren't exactly helpful here.) I've got six years experience developing arcade games, nothing very exciting, and certainly nothing this large. By writer do you mean storyboard or code?

Edited by: serrath

Love the idea of the operators. I'm interested in the gameplay mechanics you have in mind for any PC operators. Can they affect other aspects of the environment? It seems like much of their gameplay (controlling non-clip floating cameras) parallels the functions of a game's spectator mode. Other than establishing hardlines, what fun, useful things would an operator be able to do?

Operators give them access to weapons, cars, and pretty much anything else needed for the mission. They are in seemingly constant communication with any jacked-in teammates, and give them a dynamic overview of the evolving situation (agents coming? Police?).

Maybe they can unlock doors in order to aid the team, or divert power to shut off security systems. Translating these actions into fun intuitive gameplay seems difficult. I'd imagine one might implement this by using a cheesy, oversimplified minigame to simulate the act of hacking into the matrix, which would in reality be extremely complex and require a tremendous amount of skill and computer/coding know-how.

So ultimately, Is it possible to deepen the gameplay of an Operator, and if so, how?

I'd love to help. I'm pursuing a career in concept art and game design, and I love collaborative brainstorming and solving problems. I'd also like to work directly with a programmer (that way I can firmly establish what exactly they do in my mind, rather than seeing all programming work as magic spun by computer sorcerers ). Do you have a specific place or way you want to discuss and develop the game (email, website, chatroom)?

Nice....
give me a pm if you need any images or pic editing

I'll keep this post short since it's kinda late over here.

1) Unbalanced amount of players in each team is a big no-no design wise. I would recommend 4+1 in each team instead. Human team: 4 plugged in, 1 operator. Machine team: 4 agents, 1 overseer

2) You need to give the gameplay a lot more thought than that. Summarizing it to one sentence wont cut it. What game modes will it be? What will be the objective for each team in each game mode? How will scoring be sorted out? (read: how can each team win?) What makes each game mode interesting? What will make the game stand out?

3) Design problem: What happens when the "operator" player disconnects?No offense but your idea is like a swiss cheese right now. You need to give this A LOT more thought before even starting working on a simple prototype.

No offense but your idea is like a swiss cheese right now - just like 99% of the other mod idea -threads I see around here (and always have seen since I joined). You need to give this A LOT more thought before even starting working on a simple prototype. Read a GDD (game design document) and you will get a good overview of what bases you need to cover.

EDIT:
If I were to design a Matrix mod, I would make it three teams and make the game more "open world"-ish. The teams would be "Red pills" (humans), Agents and Monsters. As you might know, "Monsters" are obsolete programs from older versions of the Matrix, currently in hiding. Two theories is that they are former anti-virus software (much like the agents) or simply that they are anarchist programs from the machine world. "Vampires", "werewolves" and the twins are all examples of "monsters".

Edited by: Nightshade

Also make one Architect and smith for the agent team...
And of course a Neo for the Red pills... (the player should be random)

This is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for, thanks guys! Let me address everyone's concerns individually so I don't miss anything. (And if I do, just ask again and I'll be sure to take care of that.)

@glutymax: The operator's going to be busy guiding the players around the agents, since the Agents are more powerful. The key aspect of the gameplay here is to make the players feel like hackers jacked into the matrix. "When you see an Agent, you do what we do: you run." With that in mind, the maps will have to be designed so that the operator is in constant communication with the player to get them away from the agent. Agents will need good visibility and humans will need multiple escape routes, but not free roam. (i.e. an open city gives them too many places to hide, but a plain alley gives you no chance to evade an agent). I'm definitely looking for input because I need ideas and the core gameplay isn't play-tested so nothing is set in stone. Hit me up by email at serrath@gmail.com

@ ssj613: Absolutely! That's not going to be until much later in production when there's actually something to show, but I'd really like for this to look pretty, so offer greatly appreciated!

@Niteshade: Okay, you bring up a lot of excellent points, so I'll try to address them individually.
1) The gameplay is going to be asymmetric by necessity sort of the way Counter-Strike is. I want players to feel like the hackers (the sense of urgency, the need for cooperation to effect an escape, etc) and I want the players to feel like Agents (scanning, hunting, eliminating). There are a lot of different ways to go about this, but since the Agents are on defensive, it seems very important to have there be fewer of them. They're more powerful, they respawn, etc. Again, we're not play-tested yet so this is more of a guess than a fit.

As far as giving the agents an overseer, instead of having them randomly pan through NPCs, I'm kicking around the idea of sticking them in a room like the Architect's where there are a bunch of TV screens that watch NPCs (in first or third person). The screens would constantly cycle through the NPCs and Agents would "use" a screen to spawn in that NPC. I'm not sure if this is going to be feasible of if it'd be too much of a strain on the engine, but you definitely have a good point; they need better attention. A "map" of NPCs for agents to choose from is also something I'm thinking about, where NPCs are blue on the map normally and red when they see a player with a weapon drawn, jacking in/out, etc. I'm really open to ideas here, but I'm pretty biased against the idea of giving Agents an Architect. I want this to be more like the movies where an NPC has to see something suspicious and the Agent pops in there.

2) Absolutely, the problem is until the project's a little more mature the gameplay isn't finalized. A lot of details need to be addressed and I'm trying to tap people for ideas. For instance, when you have to talk to a program to obtain information, is that information passed to everyone in the room when they talk to the NPC, or just the player speaking to the NPC? Is that information transferable? If a player talks to the NPC and is killed before he can jack out, do the Agents win, or are other players allowed to try to go back, get the info, and complete the mission?

I'm familiar with Game Design Docs, I've written and reviewed my share. That said, I'm intentionally vague because I haven't got the ideas all by myself; I need to fill out my team and I want more people's input. I'm getting into the Source engine and figuring out how to do what I want, not implementing half-baked ideas (you're absolutely right, that'd be folly). I need to talk to a mapper; they know gameplay. They know how to control gameplay, they know the limits of what they can and can't do to make players feel a certain way. As a coder, I can control the balance between the teams, but the mapper is going to really decide how it gets played. There's a reason the classic CS maps got remade for Source. Once I've got a mapper dedicated to the project you can expect a much more definitive picture of what's going to happen. For now, just watch the first Matrix movie, watch the action sequences (Trinity trying to escape the Agent in the beginning, Neo and Trinity in the lobby, Neo and Trinity defeating the Agent on the rooftop, and multiple Agents chasing Neo in the end while he's running for the hardline.)

@ssj614 again:
Smith & Neo first: I have no plans to include an Architect, Smith, or Neo. I'm hoping to find an artist who can create original-looking characters that we can give appropriate names and fit into the Matrix IP without appropriating anything from them we don't have to for gameplay.

Architect for agent team: Giving the agents an architect would make the operator pointless. The idea behind the agents is that they can appear anywhere at any time to attack the characters, but they're limited by the rules of the Matrix; they can know what the people in the farm know, but it's never given them the keen edge that an operator has. (Think "They're in the walls!" from the original Matrix film.) They have to hunt the players down. They're stronger, faster, and have unlimited lives. The human players' only advantage is in numbers and their operator.

Neo & Smith again: The focus here isn't bullet-time or kung-fu; in fact, they're not even in the plan. Smith and Neo being "superpowers" sort of wrecked the entire dynamic for The Matrix series. The sequels sucked because there were always more Smiths out there and Neo could always fly away; their fights were pointless. The real shining point of the series wasn't Neo and "the one" or the prophecy, it was the universe they set it up in. The human hackers fighting against the machines; they jack into the matrix, carry out guerrilla warfare, and try to escape with their lives.

@Niteshade's edit: I would LOVE to have a monster faction for renegade programs, I'm just not sure I could make it work. That said, given the time and artist I would love to sneak some of these guys in as NPCs near the end of the production cycle. (Humans have cops, maybe the Agents have to go through some Werewolves if they want to kill the renegade program the player seeks.) It's definitely worth experimenting with in the gameplay after implementation with NPCs. (Again, providing I have an artist and enough testers with enough time to really work out how that should work.) Hell, at the end I'm (being very, very optimistic here) hoping we might sneak in a bullet-time and kung-fu stunt system, how nice would it be to add a ghost/werewolf/vampire ability system on top of that? Again, these are shiny things I'd dream of doing at the very end, not goals I've thought out how to implement! The core gameplay is the priority, bullet-time, stunts, and monsters are a pipe dream.

Edited by: serrath

1.Before loading any map there should be a construct for about 30 seconds where they load all there weapons
2.Are u planning to add more weapons ?
3.Adrenaline allows us to wallrun so is it going to show the animation or just a man walking on a wall?

@ssj614:
1) Players will be able to jack in/jack out at will any time they reach a hardline and the operator rings it for them. Jacking out puts them in the loading construct, where they are able to purchase guns, restore their health, and jack in at will to the last activated hardline. I'd like to throw dozens of phones in the map and randomize which ones are hardlines (give it like six or something), make that visible only to the operator. Then he has to guide players to the hardline, ring the line, etc. Agents would, of course, be able to destroy hardlines by shooting them.

2) Absolutely. We're going to need guns. A lot of guns. I just need artists for it. I plan on having different kinds of guns for different roles. Spray SMGs to slow the agents down while they dodge bullets so you can cover your escape. Pistols for close-range precision shots to kill an agent if he's performing a melee attack on your friend. (They can't dodge while executing a melee attack, remember.) Assault rifles and shotguns for dealing with NPC police/SWAT. There had better be lots of guns, or this isn't the Matrix.

3) Really depends on the artist/animator I can get my hands on. If I can't get someone to make it look real I'm not going to half-ass it. The adrenaline system is initially going to be limited to sprinting, then we'll expand on that when I've got an skinner/modeler/animator. I've also got a design sketched up for a melee combat system that's a little bit more elegant than the one in HL2 (taking turns smacking each other with a crowbar isn't exactly very exciting), but that's going to depend again on my animator. The core gameplay is the priority. These things are just a little flash on top.

Edited by: serrath

So hows it going??

This is a great idea. Having a larger human team than the agent team should work fine, provided the agents are sufficiently beefier and the server lets excess humans spectate if there aren't enough peeps on team agent. Think zombie panic source.

The only real issue is the gun play. If agents can dodge all guns when not in melee does that make guns useless? I suggest the use of a regenerating energy bar that decreases as the agent's 'dodge' bullets. Once it runs out they've exhausted their ability to rewrite physics and they take hits. Then again dodging should be an activated ability that way ambushing agents becomes a viable way of engaging them and winning (plays into the stealth mechanic among NPCs i mention later). Humans should have a more traditional health system; hits = damage, with either little durability and slow regeneration if any. Alternatively you could just give agents the ability to activate bullet time while the humans cannot.

Oh and how will you prevent human players from just slaughtering NPCs to prevent them spawning agents? I suggest that you have humans have the ability to 'act' as NPCs in public areas, making NPCs a resource to both humans and agent players. Or just place them far away from hotzones on the map. Alternatively you could make all agent spawn able NPCs SWAT and police forces. Problem solved.

Maps will have to be sufficently big an no linear to make the best use of you mechanics. Normally I'd suggest you use the Source engine for this, but since you want lots of NPCs and melee mechanics I suggest using one of the Unreal engines. Also Max Payne 3 just came out. They have a great system in place for bullet time you may want to check out.

Seriously man, I'd say you've struck gold here. 99% of the game ideas posted here are generic or are poorly constituted stories ideas that belong in the room 101 for bad fan-fiction. This is gold mate.

And check out this mod:
Moddb.com
it was the "original" Matrix mod for HL, I remember that at the time models looked absolutely amazing.

Yeah i remember that mod.
It was awesome.

I've got a much steadier schedule and I'm ready to try this mod again. Contact me if you're interested.

Edited by: serrath

Meh... these days I'd rather play a coop game that makes players actually work together.

Edited by: General_Hoohah

@Hoohah: That's the idea. All of the gameplay in this mod is motivated specifically to make the action sequences play out like in The Matrix. I'm not hijacking concepts to make a fanboy fapfest, I'm trying to recreate the feeling you get when Neo goes to see the Oracle. Teamwork is a MUST. Don't believe me? Read on.

Hackers have to cooperate with the Operator to find their objective, jack in/jack out, and evade Agents. The Operator knows where the objective is and can find a path there; hackers rely on his guidance and support.

Combat between Hackers and Agents is motivated so that a solo Hacker is toast. When confronted by an Agent, the Hackers have to either work together to fight him, or run. Agents blur when hit by bullets, and can overpower a Hacker in melee. The Hacker can run away and occasionally fire at the Agent (thus forcing him to stop and blur, slowing him down), and with some assistance from the Operator, may be able to locate a hardline to jack out. Alternatively, if there are multiple Hackers nearby, one can engage the Agent in melee to provide the other Hacker with a clear shot at the Agent, or both can work together to overpower the Agent in melee. Because Agents respawn, it's usually in the Hackers' best interest to escape/evade.

A lone Hacker stands no chance against an Agent; this means the Hackers have to stick together and work with their Operator to evade Agents, just like in the movie.

Agents don't have an Operator; they spectate random NPC hosts and have to coordinate with each other to track down and eliminate the Hackers. Once an Agent spawns into an NPC, he can't de-spawn; he has to be killed to pick another host (and there will be a short delay before he can do so), this means that spawning prematurely can severely limit his mobility on larger maps.

While the premise of this mod is an objective similar to Counter-Strike, the actual gameplay (and cooperation necessary) should play out much more like the Versus mode of Left 4 Dead. (Except without the floaty, cartoony feeling.) The goal is to get you into the Matrix, and get the thrill you had the first time you watched Neo going to the Oracle, and the team trying to get back out.

Sounds interesting, if you can make this work I'll try it.

Just do me a favor and stay away from linear and multiple choice linear game play. I can't stand that crap. If say, you have a map of a city with above and below ground routes that all intersect with each other, give each individual part of every route its own pros and cons. For instance, lower and higher concentrations of agents, faster and slower routes, some have closer and farther apart areas to get to a phone, tighter vs more open spaces, more obstacles vs less obstacles, more lighting vs dark areas, etc, etc, etc, etc. This gives players the option to choose areas that suite their individual play style and gives a better replay value. Also, never let any area of a level play the same way every time. I hate games that do that. It gets repetitive and predictable which is never fun. Some way to randomize things like obstacles, which doors are open or locked, which phones are working or broken, where you run into agents, etc. And I don't just mean a choice of a couple randomizations, make it truly random.

And if there are skills you're character can learn in the game, make it feel as natural as possible. Instead of some ridged menu of skills and stats, though I'm sure you choose most of the main skills you want to learn (like martial arts and guns), make the rest feel natural. Do something enough, you get better at it.

Edited by: General_Hoohah

@Hoohah:

I'm not sure how to organize this, so I apologize for the jumble of thoughts:

1) I hate the way that Counter-Strike always centers around the same two or three chokepoints with people crouching with guns; I'll do everything I can to keep that from happening.

2) I love the idea of doors being open/locked to change the flow of known areas. If I can come up with an elegant way of making sure this means the objective is never behind a locked door, that's definitely going in.

3) Sewers sound fantastic, especially in conjunction with the locked door/dynamic obstacle idea you voiced before; they could be a stealthy way to sneak to your objective without being sighted, or a dead-end deathtrap because you run the risk that the manhole you want to exit through will be sealed.

My previous vision:

Level Design:
Levels should include narrow alleys, wide streets, vertical terrain (such as fire escapes), areas with many hiding places (such as apartments), wide open areas with many NPCs (such as plazas), policed areas/secure buildings, and these different sorts of terrain should be interwoven rather than kept separate.

Many phones should be present on the map, a random selection of which (within reason, i.e. not too close to the objective) should be hardlines. The number should be variable (within a certain range, but not the same; my first instinct is to use a normal distribution, but playtesting is the only way to be sure). I'd like to do this through the entity for the phone, give it a random chance of being a viable hardline (with an executive control to ensure that this doesn't wander outside of a certain range), rather than some script that assigns 10 hardlines each game. Depending on the success of this, I'd also like to make it so that Agents can destroy hardlines.

There should be enough random objectives at enough random places that the Redpills cannot re-use specific plans, and the Agents cannot pinpoint the location of Redpills' objective until the Redpills are very close to it.

Focus should be first on making the levels as large as the engine permits and on tweaking them to provide the right kind of gameplay. After that's been accomplished, I hope to track down a highly skilled mapper to tweak the visuals, sound, lighting, etc to convey the proper tone.

Skills/Progression:
Each scenario will be a standalone setup. All guns should be available from the onset, no buy system as in Counter-Strike. I'd like to avoid all RPG elements, including skill/level progression systems.

It may be reasonable to assign the highest-scoring Redpill to be the Operator, or to allow Redpills to vote on their Operator at the beginning of each round.

Glad to hear you're going to do that to keep things interesting and random.

I certainly understand your apprehension to RPG elements. I know its a lot of coding, but it can add a lot of depth to the game. Done right, each player can be unique with their own style of play, strengths, and weaknesses, without some invasive or confusing skill system. This also increases replay value and can make the game even less predictable.

My objection to RPG elements is actually gameplay; the coding isn't particularly intimidating, it's very little dipping-into-more-things-I-don't-know-about-the-Source-engine and a lot of coding-my-own-backend-for-managing-statistics, which is something I'm very comfortable with. Math and physics are my forte; this Source engine is the new variable.

The issue with RPG elements, as I see them, is that they lock you into a set role. I don't want to limit someone to a few ways to play once they're jacked in. Don't like your weapon loadout? Get to a hardline, jack out, and grab the right guns for the situation in the loading construct. Obviously, there's a cost to doing this; it ties up the Operator, slows down the mission, etc.

The limit to your abilities in the game shouldn't be a level or skill point number, it should be your mind. Given the time (and a skillful animator), I'd like to implement a kung-fu system with some depth (think Chivalry, except fast instead of slow and unforgiving), and throw in some subtle curveballs to even the playing field between melee and gunfights. (For instance, if you dive with a gun out, you might land flat on your stomach, but with your hands out you'd come into a roll and be able to continue your motion.)

That sort of depth is really tertiary, and I don't want to talk too much about it, because that's not what the mod is about. It's about re-creating the feeling you got the first time you watched The Matrix as soon as you saw the deja vu moment with the cat. Once the high level gameplay is in and it works, it's something I think is fun to play and that other people can enjoy, then hopefully I'll be able to draw some highly talented animators with the obscene amount of time on their hands necessary to add some extra depth.

I won't rule out an RPG skill system, simply because there isn't a game like this yet, and there's no way to know if that would be a boon or a bane, but my personal experience with skill systems (even in games that did a bangup job of it, like Deus Ex: The Conspiracy) has left a bad taste in my mouth.

I should mention that I intend to release all source code, models, assets, etc. used in the mod in their entirety once it's complete and stable, so anyone who would like to will be able to include such a system. (If the author of some content does not wish to release that content for free use, however, I have to respect their wishes, and there may be some small gaps in what is released.) My experience with the Source engine is that the documentation is rather incomplete, and the community is fantastic; having more source code out there seems like the best way to help other projects get going. (And who knows, maybe someone will fix my bugs?)

Edited by: serrath

I like your thoughts and plans for this mod, and I was thinking along those same lines as well... but I think on a different page. I was actually thinking of something light and nonrestrictive, a soft touch of RPG elements. Simply keep doing something and your character gets better at it. And that doesn't mean you can't learn another skill or an entirely different skill. Even if a skill is downloaded into your brain there's a difference between understanding and knowing it, and your ability to perform it flawlessly and confidence in your abilities which comes with practice and time. No skill systems, no points, no skill trees, no levels, or menu systems. Just do something a few times and, "Hey, I'm getting the hang of this". And thats it. Eventually just learn as many skills as you want. (This also gets people hooked *wink*). And maybe for some added difficulty, if your character doesn't do something for a long time he/she starts to get rusty at it and needs to practice a bit and it comes back, but of course faster than when they first learned it.

As a personal favor, if the characters have voices can you add a nice female posh voice? I love that.

Edited by: General_Hoohah

Rather than implementing an artificial system to make their character ready or rusty at a skill, I'd rather the gameplay had such depth that players had to focus one aspect or another, just like real life. (Though I'm sure there are people who are expert martial artists, expert shooters, and tactical geniuses, it'll take a lot of work to master all those skills. I want the game to be similarly difficult to master.)

I'll see what I can do about the female posh voice, I've got someone in mind, but she doesn't like to acknowledge that she's British, so it might be a tough sell. (If you want to see this happen, refer more modders to me to help out! I'm all on my own for now. Specifically, coders and animators would be helpful at this point.)

I get what you're saying, I hope it turns out well. And why wouldn't this person want to admit she's british? The posh British accent is hot! My (cheating) ex was posh.

I've drawn up a working roadmap for the project. Anyone who would like to contribute, please let me know. I'm only looking for people to contribute to the present build. If you are interested in helping, but there is nothing in the present build that you can contribute to, please drop me your contact info and a quick summary of your skills, and I'll get back to you as soon as there's work for you.
(You can reach me via email: serrath@gmail.com)

Project Roadmap <-- Link

I've been accepted into a grad school, and won't have much time come August. I can get the main gameplay nailed down this summer, but it's certainly not worth it if this mod isn't going anywhere. This brings us here:

I NEED help for this mod to happen. I can devote a lot of time to this project now, but it's not enough time to create a finished product. I want to help see this through, but I need some people to step forward and make it happen. If you want to play this mod, grab an experienced modder you know and shoot him the link.

Edited by: serrath