M.I.R.V. Thread - ID Tech 4 Modders

I have had some ideas for a total conversion mod for ET: QW. It would be based on 2 main factions fighting over ideologies, like during the Cold War. Please read it and tell me what you think. The 2 teams would be the Coalition, a group of three alliances fighting a common enemy, the Global Unity Front, or GUF, who are attempting to take over the world and create a single currency, langauge and ideology: communism.

This game will hopefully focus on INTENSE realism. I think there will need to be hundreds of animations. Everything from picking yourself up off the ground to carrying a fellow marine to safety. I will also hopefully be able to remove the standard FPS run-and-gun lone wolf deal and make many benifits to running with a team and playing like you would in a real battle.

I will need help with this project, especially with modeling and animations, as I am used to the .x format and have no real experience with .md5. If no one comes forward, I'm screwed.

The GUF would replace the Stroggs, while the GDF would hopefully be replaced by one of the three alliances, depending on the maps location, forming the Coalition. The three alliances are: The NAUM (North American United Military) which includes Canada and USA, WEAF (Western European Armed Forces) and the Australians.

The NAUM classes and their loadouts are below:

Commander: Gets to play god while the troops fight it out. The commander looks down at the battlefield and can call in support of various kinds. He even does critical things like call in new troops when needed. A good commander is key to success on the battlefield. However, the Commander is immobile. While he can see whats going on from afar, things happening indoors are out of his control. Using colored smoke flares, troops can easily pin-point the location support is needed, whether it be an airstrike, a supply crate, or some sandbags for cover.

Infantryman: K-Bar combat knife, Glock 22, A main weapon: (G36C AR, M249 LMG, M72 LAW Anti-Tank RL), 2 M67 Frag nades and a red signal flare smoke grenade (can be used to call in support from the commander).

To be continued later

Edited by: Slayer_2

Seems like an interesting concept, reminds me of games like Battlefield 2, capturing points, a player controlled commander to give support etc. The biggest thing though that I can think of would be keeping the commander role interesting. if they are bound to an rts style view you would need to make sure they have enough stuff to keep it interesting... I know other mods have done this kind of rts hybrid stuff, but I don't play online so I cant really comment there, but having played Battlefield 2, the commander role definitly gets old just being on the map spending a lot of time waiting until you can call the next airstrike, supply drop etc. but with a good balance I could see this as a worth while mod that I would try out.

This is assuming the commander plays this kind of support role, and not some more elaborate base building kind of role, but I dont know how that would work out either... I'd offer to help out but I just started idtech 4 modding so I dont know how to do much yet, and I cant model.

Edited by: madgernader

I knew someone would say BF2

but honestly, it's not going to be much like BF2 except for the fact that its modern and multiplayer-based. There will be no capturing points and fighting through a pre-programmed series of objectives. You only have 3 objectives:

1: survive
2: prevent the enemy ICBM from launching
3: launch your own ICBM

To clarify more on the Commander idea: they'll get to sit up in the sky looking down on the battle. They can zoom into a area of interest and move sount, north, east or west, but cannot tilt the camera or enter indoor areas or get closer than 20 or so feet above the ground. They can call in things such as: artillery strikes, airstrikes, ammo boxes, medic stations, supplies, vehicles, mounted weapons and defences such as turret bunkers, anti-air emplacements and sandbags. Thats only a few of the items as well. It will be a much more demanding job then in BF2 and you won't have to worry about getting shot at either. There will be a slew of buildings and deployables to choose from to help fortify your ICMB launch area. There will also be no "regerating delays". If you have the points you can buy it, all you have to wait for is for the plane to deliver it to the battle field.

Also, this game will not be balanced in the the average sense, say like ET: QW where all the classes/weapons act pretty much the same. The simple truth of the matter is if you go off by yourself into a combat area, you will die, quickly. Snipers may be the exception to this rule, but they should always have a spotter. The troops need a good Commander and the Commander is nothing without troops.

Honestly, I don't expect anyone to help me with this mod, but I'm not starting official work on it yet anyhow. I'm going to finish all the projects I am currently working on first. I also had another idea: "Will" pretty much like a karma system from Fallout 3, but more detailed. Kills lose you 1 will, team kills 10 will and losing 50 will, a similar idea applies for gaining will. This idea is to prevent... stat oriented people to focus less on killing the enemy and more on stopping the nuke from launching. Gaining will allows you to get more Commander points, take a position from someone with lower will than yourself and other benifits. I may drop this idea, but I'd like a sort of XP system more focused on completing objectives for REAL benifits in-game instead of shiny, but fake, medals.

Anyhow, I'll stop ranting for now, tell me what you think of the new ideas.

I see what you mean, the big issue with your 3 part game play plan is how would players launch/stop the ICBM from launching? especially if you don't have control points, because I could see control points working nicely if they are set up in more of a UT04 style (cant think of the game mode offhand) where it isn't freestanding points but linked support points and by controlling them your side has more commander options or automatic anti-air encampment kind of things under your control. So that if you wanted, the ICBMs and the overall game play would be independent of the capture points but by controlling them it would tip the battlefield in your sides favor.

As for the "Will" system, I like the base idea, but I don't know about a kill resulting in losing a point, if you wanted to use it to stop stat padding just make kills not give you anything, team kills make you lose some, same with losing, while winning or stopping an ICBM give points like you said. That way people will still defend themselves instead of just ignoring enemies kind of thing. For this system if you did do it, would it be a persistwnt system (like BF2 or CoD4) or campaign based like stock ETQW ranks n stuff?

On another note, part one of your gameplay plan was "Survive" do you mean this as a limited life type thing, or pushing the ICBM as the only way to win and so you need to stop their launch and survive?

Well there would be no territories or capture points. Any such thing would have to be enforced in the real life way, with superiour firepower and a good defense. To launch the ICBM, all you need is to get the Commander to call in an ICBM truck, then fuel the ICBM and set it's target co-ordinates. After that all it takes is a short 30-second launch sequence and the missile launches. If there is an enemy anti-air gun emplacement nearby, the ICMB may be destroyed before it accelerates out of the area. To stop the enemy ICMB from launching, all you need to do is disable the enemy ICBM truck before it successfully. launches an ICMB. The whole thing will take about 5 minutes from deployment on the battle field to the ICMB leaving the atmosphere. I know it seems a little... quick of a game, but if the game ever gets made, I'll make sure that most games with players who are even in skill last at least 30 minutes.

I wanted Will (may be renamed to Morale) to be more realistic. In real life, if you killed someone face-to-face, you probably wouldn't feel good or even neutral about it. I will probably remove the loss of will/moral for killing an enemy due to the fact that it may cause people to avoid combat and just hide in their bases stat-whoring. Stats will hopefully be persistent no matter the gametype or whether its online or not (if there are bots, which I doubt). The condition of your morale will only be visible on the "Awards" screen and you will be able to gain real life medals for certain acts such as carrying a wounded friend to a medic for healing or dying in a charge up a beach against machineguns. They'll be easy to aquire, but will require you to do something very difficult in real life and are only awarded for teamplay-based actions.

Well your Commander/team starts with a certain amount of points. It may be called money or something, but back to the point. The Commander has to call in the reinforcements and they cost points. Lets say you start with 1,000,000 points. 1,000 might be the cost of a Humvee, and a single soldier costs 50 points. So to respawn, you must wait until the commander calls in reinforcements, the plane arives (about 30 seconds) and then you're alive again. You could be waiting minutes, and your respawning is costing your team points that could be spent elsewhere. The plane will also take 100 points in fuel and you'll have to replace it if it is told to fly over a dangerous zone and gets shot down, which could cost a few thousand. If your team runs out of points, then you lose. This is the other way a game could go, turning into a big team deathmatch, which could take a while as 1,000,000 points could buy 20,000 soldiers.

Sounds good, only other thing I can think you would need to monitor/watch out for would be making sure the commander role doesn't just not spawn more troops. I could see some people being royal jerks and being a sides commander and just not letting them respawn, so you would definitely want at least a mutiny system or some other fine tuning to ensure that people can still spawn if their commander isn't paying attention to troop counts. Also on that note, if the commander could buy reinforcements in bulk would be a good idea aswell, so at the start of the round he after everyone spawns he buys 30 more troop spawns to come out in two waves kind of thing so the commander doesnt need to just stay on that menu the entire game.

Well, there will be a vote system. It will be much superiour to the ET: QW one, which blows. You will be able to demote people from positions, and not just commander. If a vote is called and over 50% of the voters say yes, the player is demoted to a standard infantryman. Since there are limits on classes, this will also help stop noobs from snatching the sniper rifle and running off to close-quarters combat, or something similar. You'll gain 1 Morale point for voting and lose 10 per demotion.

As for respawning, you won't "buy" individual soldiers, but just click the "respawn" button in the bottom right corner of the screen and everything is a go as long as you have the points. The only time respawning will take more than a click is when you call in the Airborne, then the plane needs drop co-ordinates.

Makes sense, Sounds like a very interesting project that I would definitely install ETQW to play.

On another note, what does M.I.R.V. stand for?

I'm glad to hear it. But for your information, the ID Tech 4 engine is being released under the GPL License soon, probably way before this mod gets done. If this becomes so, you won't need ET: QW installed, as all the textures/effects/models are going to be different. Hence my usage of the term "total conversion"

If you can think of any other issues with M.I.R.V., please post them, I love bouncing ideas around.

M.I.R.V. stands for two things, the technical and real-life term: Multiple Indepedent Re-entry Vehicle (a ICMB that launches multiple nuclear warheads) or my version: Multiplayer Intense Realism Video-Game.

very nice use of acronym. I knew about idtech 4 going open source but is that going to include the mega textures and overall improved outdoor/open area rendering or is it going to be the base doom 3 version of the engine? That's the real question...

Honestly once I found out about it going open source thats when I started really looking into how to map/mod with it.

Thanks, I'm not going to lie, it took me days to think up.

Well I'm torn between the base Quake 4 engine or the ET: QW one. I want ragdoll, weapon brass and the stability/familiarty of the Quake 4 engine, but ET: QW is the game that is most similar to M.I.R.V. and it is better suited for outdoors and multiplay. I can hope that use of megatextures is allowed.

I'm glad to see we have a new addition to the small community of ID Tech 4 modders

Its fun being here.

Radiant is way easier then it seemed the dozen other times I had just opened it up and was just confused. Once you actually get some tutorials it isn't that bad, that and its nice coming from using Hammer/Source as most of the entity names are the same or very similar, and the basics of the editors are very similar (largely brush based, vs Unreals dependency on models)

Glad to hear it. I just hope the community grows a bit.

Radiant is certainly awesome. I'm working on a Quake 2 mission-pack right now and I love radiants simplicity. The only hard part is keeping it fresh.

Well, I put up a group for MIRV, now its time to recruit some people.