Lylat's Last Stand mod for Alien Swarm

There you go :
Starfox-online.net

We don't have our own forums, too much hassle.
The info on the first page is extremely old. I need to update it, but I got so much crap to do already..

This will come in two parts, because moddb is evil..
Well, its hard to tell how it will end up like. When we get the pre-alpha done, I can guarantee you that the next release won't play/handle the same way. That's part of our development strategy.

We use the classic "Release a little, often"(often is relative) and we'll shape the game based on player feedback. That means the first release might be a buggy frustrating mess but we'll try to address that.

And I really don't like how when we talk about a feature of a mod everybody expects it to be and looks perfect, but from our own POV its not as fancy and perfect as it sounds. Hype is bad.

Anyways, sorry about the rant, I suppose I can say a couple of things about it.

Its 3rd person / over the shoulder. We'd really like to add things like using enemy as shield / making a silent takedown, a little like MGS does, but the code for that still isn't written. We don't plan on using regenerating health or ammo. We'll use a classic pickup system.

We'd also like to have a ledge grabbing / climbing system, similar to MGS, Overgrowth and etc.. We got a basic implementation, but we still have unsolved problems. Such as locking the boxes we use to check for ledges to the character model and not the character's "eyes" as they say in source.

And the biggest problem is mostly how to proceed with animations. I heard we should use IK for making the character grab the ledge, but when we climb, do we move the player entity or we just let the animation run and teleport the player at the right position.. And IK is very poorly documented on the VDC..

As for the gameplay, we want to make it a little more than a simple shoot-em up, like a certain game beginning by "***" was :P (Just kidding, not hating)
We hope to make it a good and healthy mix of platformer / shooter / "stealth" / general action.

Moreover, we've agreed since the beginning not to make SF do many on-foot missions. Mostly given that, the plot line we chose (the comics) is not leaving us much room for that, and also because its seen really negatively in the community at this point.. But we'll still try to plug in some ground missions here and there.

To refine the on-foot gameplay a little more, and making it more than a gimmick or afterthought, most of the ground missions will be played as a CDF soldier. Yes, an OC. Oooh scary! And there's a bunch of others too ! Though you won't see them really hang around Starfox. *waits for people to grab pitchforks and torches*

(not directed at samaxus12 but in general. And yes, its not everybody that's like that. So now that I'm politically correct, lets move on.. )

Anyways, if OCs aren't your thing, just skip the CDF campaign.
I just had to poke some fun at that while we're at it :P

And, I'd like to add that we're really interested in hearing ideas and suggestions, especially on improving gameplay, since we never made a game before.
Just be sure when you have an idea to have at least a hint of the answers to the "What?", "How?", "Why?", and the "Is it relevant to us?".

We're on it. But, I rarely post concept on moddb, because their gallery system is just ... and won't allow to have, like a separate gallery for concept and one for work in progress, or one for screenshots...

But on the mod thread in the Starfox-Online forums under the "General Starfox" section, we relatively regularly post concept art. I think its easier to get feedback from a small community, because most won't stay silent and actually give some feedback.

As for the OCs, well, they're not author surrogates, or fursonas or something. It does feel creepily like they have some random traits from me which I never intended giving them. But, I've heard its kinda usual for authors to do that without actually wanting to..

Anyhow, like I said rest assured you're not going to see a depressive, anxious, half-insane, anthropomorphic animal as a character ;)

Also, I have been working on that post for the SFO forums I mentioned earlier, but, we've made some changes recently and I'll have to show the old version of the 3D models. Along with the concept art, though, some characters are going to, or have changed from the concept art.

Well, Marc isn't a professional composer, but he's doing pretty good IMO.

And honestly I still do have some issues with some of the soundtrack, but I think he's not really all that interested in my suggestions. But I can't really complain, since its very nice of him to do all this for us !

Though, he might be more receptive to exterior feedback. You should leave him comments on his youtube, his moddb account, or on the mod thread on SFO.

Yeah, and OCs also allow us more freedom than we'd have with SF characters. Its also our backup plan so to speak. The big N answered us with a really confusing letter back when we asked them about making the mod. So, in case of overzealous legal department lawyers(Which I warn that I'd make any correspondence and docs public) forcing us to drop SF stuff(even if I never found any trademarks on the sf chars in the us trademark repo(though mario and co does)), we'd have a "consolation prize" in the form of our original custom assets and chars. Those are crazy times, and we gotta make backup plans..

Weapons are pretty varied, we got: assault rifles, pistols, light machine guns, snipers, rocket launchers, grenades, melee weapons, sub-machine guns. We're also planning in addition to the usual blaster type weapons, to have other types of weapons. Railguns, maybe firearms if we can make them politically correct, a big maybe on lasers(no lasers and blasters aren't the same thing).

As for the CDF soldier, we're still fixing a few things about his 3d model. And it strayed quite a bit from the concept art. But, I'm working on a huge post on the sfo forums, I should post this or next week. I'll include a pic of him in it. Hopefully by then it should be mostly ready.

Yep, that's what I meant.
And the reason is, that, someone once made a very good point that the snes starfox universe was in the future, but not such a distant future, compared to us.

I think I actually read that in an author comment on the Starfox : Phoenix from the ashes fanfic..

We could assume maybe technology evolved differently. And maybe its not been so long since firearms have been phased out.
And given that the CDF are poorly equipped and rather small, keeping that kind of weapon for training new recruits and such would be relatively logical, to keep the modern weaponry where its most needed.

Also, armors made to resist energy weapons usually have poor protection against projectiles in other sci-fi universes such as battletech and others.

Therefore, projectile weapons might be effective against certain enemies.

Its mostly because, we'd like to have some rock/paper/scissors kind of gunplay. A little like Mass Effect, but maybe not exactly the same way. And most likely not implemented as well..

Though, this is still open for debate, and we dropped most of the firearms, and kept only one at this point, its a futuristic multi-caliber assault rifle. As in, it can adjust to a few various ammunition calibers on the fly.

We'll see. I can't tell when people will be available to do some work.. Its not like we're paid and on a deadline !