Marines of War Thread - ID Tech 4 Modders

So, after my Quake 4 Reborn V2 mod is released (in a few weeks) I think I'm going to move on to a bigger and better project: Marines of War. First question I'd like to ask you is "Have you ever played Gears of War?". If you have, it'd help a lot with understanding what this mod will be like. My basic idea is to make a third-person cover-based shooter out of Quake 4. The story and maps design will stay the same, but the gameplay will be 100% different. The whole mod is based off the hope that the 3rd person Matthew Kane model supports all the animations your team-mates have. Some new animations/features that I hope to be available are:

Rifle-bashing with your weapon, all npcs have this, including Strogg, so it's only fair. The most likely button for this is "f" and the flashlight will be a harder to reach key like "g".

Taking cover against a wall, used for firing around corners while hiding behind a pillar or against a wall, you can see some enemies and all team-mates doing this throughout the game. You can use this cover if the surface is clipped at least 74 (I think thats the minimum for the AI) units vertically, just like the games AI. You would probably press "q" to take/leave cover.

Taking cover behind a low object, such as static boxes. Same principle as the other method of cover, but you shoot over it. Hopefully I'll be able to use the same key (q), but if not, I'll use "e". I think it requires at least 48 units of vertical clipping to work.

Getting critically injured, after you reach 1 health you won't die, but fall down lie there doing the marine's "grief" animation and hopefully I'll add in some kind of blood effect. Notarget will probably be toggled on to stop you from being easily finished off, unless this prevents your allies from finding you. If a team-mate gets to you in 20 seconds and revives you, then you'll be fine. I may make it so the team-mate must be a medic to do this, as I plan on having regenerating health. The same thing can happen to your friendly team-mates, and the revive key will probably be the use button, probably "e", unless that's used for the cover system.

Holding right mouse with any weapon will set your FOV between 80-70, depending on the gun and display a crosshair. Clicking middle mouse while displaying the crosshair will zoom in if your weapon has a scope. This feature may or may not get in to the mod, depending on how it goes.

Holding shift will allow you to sprint. I hope to find a way to limit the sprint time.

Critically injured enemines and death-blow moves are an addition I'd love to have, but they would require new anims and coding so we'll see. One I could possibly do is what the marine does to the grunt after you get out of your drop pod (he shoots a single machingun bullet into the grunts head).

No HUD unless you hold right-mouse and the injured screen. I'm thinking of red around the edges of your screen that slowly creeps in as you take more damage until your screen turns red, then you are knocked to the ground.

Cringing, if you take 50 damage or more in 2 seconds or less, I want to play the marine's cringing animation. This feature would make you play more tactically and help enhance realism.

The mod will probably be running Quake 4 Reborn V2 as well to help add more realism as well. This isn't going to Red Orchestra for realism, but it's going to be a lot more realistic than vanilla Quake 4.

Stroggified Kane is going to present problems as I will need new anims for the Tacticals, an option is skipping the storggification, but I'd rather not dent the story like that if possible.

Weapon swapping, this one's something I really want, but don't see happening without a skilled coder on the mod team. I was thinking you always have your Blaster, but can have two main weapons as well. The use key "e" would be used to swap your current weapon or pick up new ones (if you're at the start of the game).

Regenerating health, but perhaps only to 50 or 75 percent to make the game harder and give medics a reason for being there.

There's more features I'd like, but that small essay above is plenty for now. I don't know if this mod'll ever happen, but if I can get a skilled coder and possibly an animator, I think we'd make a good team and the chance of this mod being release and not sucking would go up drastically. With an animator to help out with the new animations, a coder to add in the new features and me to playtest and make up crazy new ideas, I think this mod could work and really bring a lot of people something new, yet Strogg related to their Quake 4. If no one signs up, I'll do my best solo, as usual, but I think it's time I got a mod team and did something besides tweaking .def files. Hope to see you on the modding battlefield,

Adam

Wow, I don't know how I didn't ever notice this thread :/

So, I take it this idea would be done as a new gameplay style mod more then a Total Conversion (Still using the Q4 story, but with these play changes)? If so, it sounds like an interesting idea. I wasn't really a fan of gears myself, but its overall game mechanics were fun. I don't know how far the .def files go in Idtech4 but couldnt a lot of this be done using only them? aside from linking the new animations and the cover system it sounds like (from what I understand of def files) its possible. I mean, health regen, no hud, weapon tweaks, rifle bash (just use the flashlight melee info and attach it to an alt fire for guns?). The weapon swapping sounds like it wouldnt be too hard either even if it came down to code, you would just restrict weapons to a set limit, like how the game wont give two copies of the same gun, just only allow for two guns...

Well its something I'm putting aside until I get a coder who can help with the weapon-swapping and cover system. Also, MIRV takes priority over it. However, if I ever DO get the chance, I will definitly start work on this mod.