Warriors of Hyrule is a Half Life 2 modification running on the source engine and is based on the game “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”. The Idea is to convert the original singleplayer to a multiplayer game.
The mod consists of 2 types of gameplay: deathmatch and cooperative. Deathmatch gives you the thrill to battle against each other. The cooperative version on the other hand gives you the opportunity to play with others – battling the environment, for example dungeon puzzles, monsters and bosses.
Each map type lets the player unlock and collect items. The player stats are stored on an external SQL-database server.
In our game, player and camera movement were adapted from the original as much as possible. The player can choose different attributes he/she wishes the character to have: sex, hair and eye color.
Unlike the original game, selecting, using and equipping items are easily done without stopping the game flow. By simply pressing a button, your inventory interface will pop up and you can instantly select your items to use or equip them.
We use a subversion repository to keep version control and share work and information with the others.
The main communication methods to keep in touch with the project leader are Steam, ICQ and MSN.
As far as the plans for the first milestone goes, ill provide the milestone document:
Milestone wrote:
Warriors of Hyrule: Milestone 1
Summary
The first milestone's goal is to make the basic gameplay and complete the visual assets like interface's. Giving us a basic and complete playable game, where in the future we only need to add content and minor gameplay changes like coopritive mode.
This milestone will have the complete movment, fighting, camera and interface, aswell as the deathmatch gameplay and the first map.
Movment and Camera
Considering this game is a multiplayer one, we need to match its camera and movment style to something simialer to the original game but fun and easy to use in a multiplayer game.
The player movment is put together of the following:
Normal Mode
- Running Forward
- Forward Roll
- Hoping Backwards
- Moving Left and Right
Focus Mode
- Jumping Left/Right
- Forward Jump Attack
- Backflip
Players will be able to turn there character by moving there mouse back and forth. The reson that ive decided to leave out the "plattformer" camera/movment like the original game is, is because this will make it hard for players to see things behind them and correctly aim at something to attack it.
The camera will adjust its own Z position (up/down). Aswell as automaticly zoom in and out if the player moves closer to the camera by walking backwards. The camera will be fixed behind the player, allways looking into the direction the player is aiming at.
When focus mode is activ, there are 2 differnt kinds of focus. The target focus and empty focus.
The target focus is where the camera and player aim automaticly at a target in range and are locked onto that target, meaning you can no longer move sideways with your mouse, but dance around the target with the arrow keys.
The empty focus also disables the turning with mouse and has the camera and player aiming directly forward, keeping the same angle of when first pressing the focus key.
Apart from thies camera modes, where you are able to controll your character and fight, there is a third mode.
The first person free roam camera. By the press of a button the camera will zoom in to the player and player movment will be disabled. Now you can look up and down, left and right with the mouse.
This is also the first person shooting mode for later on when you have a bow or slingshot ect..
The keys for thies action are the following:
- Focus: Hold Shift
- Forward/Hoping Back: W S
- Forward Roll: W + Space
- Backflip/Sidejumps: Shift + W/A/S/D -> Space
- Zoom into first person toggle: X
You can allways change your keybindings in the options.
Fighting/Combat System
The combat system is going to be matched pretty much 1:1 to the original.
This explination will only be about the sword and shield. Considering thos are the only 2 combat items for the first milestone.
When the player attacks, no matter how with his sword, the players movment/momentum will be redouced to a minimum and return to normal when running again.
When a attack is done like a normal sword slash, the player will slide forward a little.
The spin attack is executed by holding the attack button from anywhere inbetween 1.5-4 sec, the longer the player holds the button the more mana is used and more damage is inflicted. If mana is availalbe, the player will do 2 spins, with magical damage boost. If mana is not available the player will do 1 spin at a normal damage rate.
The attack has a deminishing return break after 3 spam attacks. This would be spamming the left mouse button, this results in 2 slashes from right to left and 1 longer slash from left to right. After the 3 attacks have been done, the player will be unable to swing his sword again for another 0.2-0.4 sec. This value will be determined in the testing phase. This little break will not effect movment or blocking.
The player can block by holding his right mouse button. He will automaticly block everything that is in a -45° to 45° cone infront of him, attacks from the top cannot be blocked with the deku shield. When blocking the player is grounded and cannot move untill no longer blocking.
The activ block mode is done while in focus mode, here the player can walk in the 4 directions while holding his shield up. The block will break if the player tries to jump or attack.
Overall, the player will recieve a little recoil when his shield is hit, pushing him backwards the same amount the attacking player slides forward when attacking.
Thies are the following attack keys:
- Forward Jump Slash: Shift + W -> LeftClick
- Normal Attack: Leftclick
- Spin attack: Hold Leftclick from 1-4 seconds
- Short jabs: Leftclick while right mouse button is being held
Character Selection and interface
There will be 2 Characters to choose from. A Male and Female child themed on the triforce parts "Courage".
Thies characters are selectable by choosing a card with there image on it.
After selecting the character, you are able to define the hair and eye color of your character, as well as save or load thies colors.
Item selection and interface
To open up the item selection screen, the player will hold Q, or the assigned key if changed. The selection screen will stay open as long as this key is pressed, once released, the screen will disapear again.
This method is fast and wont stop the gameflow, considering the player is still able to move while the screen is open.
There will be 3 item placeholders where the selected items are displayed and accessable by pressing the hotkeys: 1, 2 or 3.
To assign a item to one of thies placeholders, the player must hold 1, 2 or 3 and click on the item he wants to assign thos hotkeys too.
Equipment like the Kokiri Sword and Deku Shield are allways on the player by default. When selecting one of the items that are in the item placeholders, the player will automaticly shelf his sword and shield and draw or use the item he wanted to.
Items like deku nuts are instantly used when pressing there hotkey, switching from the sword and shield to the deku nut, automaticly throwing it and switching back.
Items like bombs are held over the players head untill thrown, after the item has been thrown the player will switch back to his sword and shield.
Items like deku sticks are held by the player when selected, to switch back to sword and shield, the player will have to press the hotkey of the deku stick again.
To use items like a bow or slingshot, the player will select them like the other items, if focus mode is not active, the camera will switch to first person mode and the player will be able to aim and shoot, alltho not being able to move. If focus mode is activ, the camera stays in the focus mode and the player will auto aim at the target he is focused on, or if no target is focued, aim forward. To go back to sword and shield, the player must press the item again like with the deku stick.
Thies items will be implemented in the next milestones as well as there selection and usage message, as for the first milestone, we will only support the kokiri sword and dekushield.
Player interface
There player interface will display the hearts and rubees. To regain health while playing, the player can walk over hearts that are spawned on the map.
This same rule applies to rubies, if walking over a rubee the player will pickup the rubee.
The map: Kokiri Forest
The first map of this game will be the kokiri forest. The playable game modes like deathmatch or coopritive are dependent on the map the player is on.
The kokiri forest is a deathmatch map.
On the deathmatch gameplayer, players fight against players, with minor or no monsters on the map.
Findable/Unlockable items on this map will be the Kokiri Sword and Deku Shield.
Players that first enter the world will have a branch and cheap piece of wood. Both of thies items break/get destroyed.
The branch will get destroyed after dealing 10 hits.
The wood shield will get destroyed after being hit 10 times.
To unlock the Kokiri sword, the player must go into the maze and open the chest in the end.
To unlock the Dekushield, the player must gather 40 rubees. If the player has 40 rubees and has not unlocked the deku shield yet, a button/text will appear allowing the player to spend his 40 rubees and unlocking the desku shield.
On maps, items like rubees, hearts and ammunition are found by killing monsters or players, walking through special bushes or destroying rocks or bushes.
Entering the world
We will be using a background as a menu background.
This menu is active when first starting up the game.
The background map will be selectable by the player by defining the map he wishes to use as a background.
Meaning that each map will need to have entitys or a predefined waypoints added to them, so the camera will smoothly go inbetween thies waypoints, observing the empty map while listing the the title theme.
Overall Music
There will be 3 songs for the first milestone, the main theme. Wich is played in the menu and while loading into the world, the character selection screen theme, wich will be equivelent to the menu music of the original game and the map theme, wich will be the kokiri forest theme.
Producation Plans
The production of this milestone will take longer than the ones to follow. This is because we need to make the base system of this game, wich takes longer considering we are making everything from scratch. I hope the producation of the first milestone doesnt take longer than 3 - 3 1/2 months. As the time of me posting this thread, the milestone has been in producation for about 4-5 weeks.
After this milestone is complete we will all take a break for about 1-2 weeks, during this time I will provide the game client to the svn, meaning the team members will be able to play what we did. I will also hire game testers to test are milestone and gameplay. This testing phase will be happening during thies 1-2 weeks. After the testing phase is complete we will change/adjust/fix bugs and features untill it looks like we want it to. This will probaly take another 1-2 weeks.
After the first milestone is complete and the testing phase is over, we will be making this game public on moddb.com.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN THE GAME IS RELEASED
The game will be released after the "child phase" of the game is finished, this means the game content up to the point before link pulls out the master sword and turns into a grown up.
Now many of you might be thinking this mod could be shut down due to copyright infragments with Nintendo.
After contacting Nintendo and discussing this project with the legalcy department we have come to an unofficial agreement.
There e-mail was long and complicated and I needed a consultant to fully understand everything they wrote, but basicly what they said was, that they cannot give us a official document or contract allowing us to develop this because the source engine is licenced to Valve, and doing a official agreement or contract with them would become troublesom with the source engine SDK end user agreement licence. But they see no reson to forbit or shut us down during or after the production of this mod.
So basicly they are giving us a unofficial "ok". Wich are team is very happy about.
Now there is allways need for more Artists and Programmers, if you are skilled in a field and want to help us, we are more than happy to look at your previouse work and see if we have use for you, even if your field of skill is not listed on the "Out team is looking for" list.
