HL2 Mod: Battles Through Time (BTTMOD) Thread

THROUGH THE AGES FPS-RTS ON THE BATTLEFIELD 2 ENGINE

YES, ON THE BATTLEFIELD 2 ENGINE. NOT HALF-LIFE 2 AS BEFORE.

Overview:
This mod will bring the world of Rise of Nations, Civ III, Empire Earth, and other through-the-ages RTS games, to the first person, multiplayer battlefield.

Basic Concept Version: 0.8

Next steps:
Concept Art
Concept interactive Flash Tech-tree

Basic Features:

*Through-the-ages combat and technology
Similar to the tech tree in Civilisation III, but simplified for an immediate grasp by players. The team travels through 5 Ages: the Classical Age (Greeks, Romans etc.), the Medieval Age, Gunpowder Age, World War Two, to the Modern Age.

*RTS-esque maps
Maps designated to categories such as 'Himalayas','Open Field', 'Arena' etc. for intensly different styles of play.

*Selectively democratic play.
As in the mod Science and Industry, players can vote for which buildings to build, which advancements to research, and whom should be the commanders. If this is all too much for the team to focus on, or if the elected commander/s bears more in common to Saddamn Hussein than to Abraham Lincoln, a commander/commanders can become dictators with total control over all aspects of the team, including being able to force players to move into battle and perhaps their deaths.

*Era-based combat
Each age teams will have a selection of purely miltary classes -

Three Infantry classes:
Infantry units spawn fully equipped. Players can choose to pass through a barracks to receive one AI soldier buddy identical to him ala Half Life 2 friendlys.

- A light infantryman (good for ranged battles vs other infantry, bad vs cavalry, tanks, typically equipped with a Bow and Arrow or longrifle) ,
- a medium infantryman (typically equipped with a throwing spear and a melee weapon)
- a heavy infantryman (slow but with more HP than light infantry, good vs cavalry and tanks, typically equipped with a pike)

Four Cavalry/Tank classes
All players spawn as one of four ground soldier classes and must pass through a stable/war factory to gain a Horse or armoured machine, or board another player's. The player cannot use infantry weapons whilst on a tank/horse.

- Ranged Cavalry (The fastest ground units, but have little HP and will not survive melee (hand-to-hand) combat.
- Light Cavalry/Tank (Fast moving ground units, good vs slower, light troops)
- Heavy Cavalry/Tank (The unit with the most HP, able to roll through ranks of light infantry with ease)
- Transport (Able to hold many soldiers, transport them quickly to the front, and repair, resupply and regenerate nearby units.) Basically a supply cart. Usable only by engineers

Engineer
- Only class able to fly Aeroplanes, or move transports, other classes can board planes but only as gunners etc.
Engineers are the only class which can use siege weapons such as catapults, cannons, and powerful artillery.
Engineers are able to mount scout horses or Drone Spy Planes (UAV's), which are the fastest ground and air units available.

*Buildings
A headquarters, barracks, stable, outpost (complete with AI defenders)

*Power Zones
- Players receive double HP and unlimited ammo when inside their team's power zone. A power zone is a small amount of land surrounding a team's original base to even out unfair games in which one team is always defending, on the brink of collapse. Teams which are doing better in-game will receive a larger power zone but overall they are too small to be useful offensively. Commanders can only build inside a power zone.

*Extensive command options
- Two players are able to take up the role of birds-eye commander, to prevent one commander going AFK, lacking knowledge etc. They will be voted in by other players or can seize power by being the most effective soldier on the team.

*Historical Play
Commanders can order players to dig trenches for better defenses, muskets will be worthless when not standing still and will reload slowly, arrows will have a distance curve, amongst other historical accuracies. Each age will bring in a distinctly different visual theme.

*Simple resource system
To keep the game simple and combat oriented (eg fun) the resource system will be based on kills and occupying Strategic Points on the map (Four on each map)Killing another Infantryman will bring you 1 point, killing a cavalryman will bring 3 points, and killing a scout will bring 4. Training an AI soldier to accompany you will cost one point, training a horse will cost 3 points, advancing an age will cost 60 points, buildings will cost 15 points, and various other researchable technologies will cost 20 points.

*Nations
The team can select nations to begin with by vote, such as America (Not strictly historically correct, I know), Britain, Germany, China, France, Japan, Zulu etc. Each team obviously will look different to eachother, and have other advantages/disadvatages.

Stricken Ideas:
*Randomised maps, just like in any RTS game.
Just vote for the type of map you want (Team Islands, Himalayan Mountains, Super Continent etc.), and the server will generate the random map based on previous play experiences to come up with a corresponding seed map for the player's computer to load.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About Me:
I am a Student living in Melbourne Australia.

I know this sounds like a huge undertaking - the number of models needed would be quite high. I could bring Weapon Modelling and mapping skills as well as general documentation to the mod.

Any comments on this concept?

Edited by (in order): sickre, sickre, sickre, sickre, sickre, sickre, sickre, sickre

*Randomised maps, just like in any RTS game.
Just vote for the type of map you want (Team Islands, Himalayan Mountains, Super Continent etc.), and the server will generate the random map based on previous play experiences to come up with a corresponding seed map for the player's computer to load.

Im nearly sure that HL2 bsp maps aren't THAT flexible...

No, I was thinking not, the alternative of having many simple maps being assigned a seed number and then simply selecting the number at random would probably take up too much disk space anyway.
Solution: Create more detailed and better quality maps by 'hand' and group them into the categories detailed above.

If you want randomized maps, just create a program to do it, then have it compile to bsp for the map loads. Then HL2 just needs to cache it and then the server can load it. You'd want to make a faster-working rad and vis though. They take a while with HL2 lighting. (You need very good coders with extensive C++ skills for this)

Any other comments? Bad Ideas? Good ideas?

You know, it's pretty hard to write a program that makes random maps, compiles, vises and lits them on air... also just imagine the loading times

i dont know how long you would want a game to last, but it will take some beta testing, but the way you have the resource system layed out i think it would move really fast, that might be what you want. also i might have missed it when reading but what is the final objective? what are we fighting for? to kill off everyone from the other team(s), so there would be no respawns, or capturing an object, first to a certain number of points. what is the point. For the ideas you have i think it could be fun to play. I know you said for the resources that you did it for immediate grasp, but personally id prefer it to be harder and take some learning and some skill to play. With how you wrote it all you have to be good at is killing. Best team to kill early gets the points and upgrades. i think of rts as having more strategy involved. just my thoughts. gl with the mod.

Mantis wrote: the way you have the resource system layed out i think it would move really fast, that might be what you want. also i might have missed it when reading but what is the final objective? what are we fighting for? to kill off everyone from the other team(s), so there would be no respawns, or capturing an object, first to a certain number of points. what is the point.

I have mentioned a headquarters in the buildings but you are correct that I have not explicitly stated the objective: to destroy the opposing team's Headquarters and Base. I guess this is quite simple really, as territorial victories and the such were possible in Rise of Nations etc. It could possibly change with further concept development.

Mantis wrote:
For the ideas you have i think it could be fun to play. I know you said for the resources that you did it for immediate grasp, but personally id prefer it to be harder and take some learning and some skill to play. With how you wrote it all you have to be good at is killing. Best team to kill early gets the points and upgrades. i think of rts as having more strategy involved.

I agree with you entirely. The resource system in-game would primarily be dealt with by Commanders and experienced players anyway, apart from players simply buying individual add-ons from buildings.

The kill system would probably be sufficient for buying vehicles etc. Otherwise a seperate systems for ages and techs would be needed, yes.

It is the long Weekend in Australia so I will post some conceptual images (tech tree, units, etc) soon.

Edited by (in order): sickre, sickre

These are simple unit lists. Flash-versions may come soon.
LI, MI, HI = Light Infantry, Medium etc.
LI, MC, HC = Light Cavalry, Medium Cavalry etc.

Apologies for pushing the page out!

Edited by: sickre

looks like some good ideas, are there going to be more classes added later? are there going to be any flying classes, like maybe a guy with strap on wings for the middle ages or something.

Conceptual Tech Trees:

An RTS with ragdoll...could be interesting. You ahve done your homework and made a pretty nice first impression, good luck with this.

I thought the idea of Total War came into development with the US Civil War, when William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant conducted such a maneuver with the South Conferedate states.

STOP MISPELLING MISSILE MAN

Edited by: leilei

Apologies. I will replace those tables with some more hi-tech, eg. a Flash 7 document.
Can this forum display Flash or can you only link to flash documents?

ur mod idea is very interesting. i've always like to play the civ games.

i think you should fix the title because when i read it i thought it was about battling through time as in going back forward and back changing the future and stuff.

you said the maps are like RTS, but is the game itself going to be an RTS?

this is a great idea, would involve a lotta hard work. a lotta of the physics in the HL2 engine would happen in this mod then would it? units wont be using the grav gun to shoot things around etc.

problem is that the pace of the game is very slow. since you start out in the stone age and work your way up to the future. the gameplay will be slow.

really nice idea.

Hp-P00nst3r wrote:
i think you should fix the title because when i read it i thought it was about battling through time as in going back forward and back changing the future and stuff.

Yes, I was originally think of "Reign of Nations" or something that would be similar to existing RTS games.

Hp-P00nst3r wrote:
you said the maps are like RTS, but is the game itself going to be an RTS?

It would be similar to Savage:Battle for Newerth of even Natural Selection gameplay. Basically no Single Player RTS.

Hp-P00nst3r wrote:
A lotta of the physics in the HL2 engine would happen in this mod then would it? units wont be using the grav gun to shoot things around etc.

The mod would use physics similar in the way that CS:Source uses them, eg. explosions basically. The collapse of buildings could be pretty cool in Source though!

Hp-P00nst3r wrote:
problem is that the pace of the game is very slow. since you start out in the stone age and work your way up to the future. the gameplay will be slow.

I disagree. Each age has a complete set of units and weapons to use, however fighting for command of one resource will be too simple and slow-paced. In games like CivIII, players must fight for resources like oil, coal, rubber and horses to be able to build horsemen, tanks etc.
The game would become more exciting if players fought for resource areas such as horses, oil, etc. that allowed the building of specific units and weapons.

What do you guys think of weapon selection similar to Counter-Strike:Source? There wouldn't be a huge selection for each age, just simple daggers etc. as sidearms, bows, swords etc. for each age. The amount of resources under the team's control dictates which weapons a player can buy, and they could do this during respawn time.

This is becoming almost too complex to explain via text. Luckily I have 60mb of Webspace storage lying around. However, complexity could easily be handled by this mod due to the role of commanders. I would imagine a good game to have approximately 32-40 players in the server, Source can support many more though. I will definitely get some concept flash MX work going to better explain selectable weapons, resource points, map layout and buildings, amongst others. Expect this within the week.

Edited by: sickre

on average, how long will the games take?
how many players per game?

Hp-P00nst3r wrote: on average, how long will the games take?
how many players per game?

About 32-40 players in the game, plus some AI soldiers (which can be limited by the server) The Source engine can handle more players, the only restriction would be the server.
Playing an entire game from Classical to Modern Ages, or even earlier (Stone to Future ages?) would not be quick.

A future adn earlier age would be a very definite option. Researchable technologies that expand the HUD and communications throughout all ages could also be very important. The establishment of an officer class (4 or so players on each team) to coordinate a team in-game rather than over a map display would be interesting also.
It may seem all quite complex, but new players could easily be given directions by commanders or officers - just follow the arrow display on the map to achieve basic gameplay objectives.

Weapons and models for each age would be almost equal to other mods alltogether, so approximately 30 minutes per age = 2-3 hours from begginning to end. It would be important for players to have fun no matter what age they join the server in.

Any suggestions thus far?

Edited by (in order): sickre, sickre, sickre, sickre

lol you expect people to be able to run 40 players + bots on their pcs?

since the games will take long, players will just come and go, and they won't know the outcome. it's not a bad thing, they'll have fun and own ppl during the time age they join, just that they wont know the outcome of the war.

personally, i prefer modern to future style fighting, could servers be able to choose what age they start in?

having like an objective selection like in Age of Empires would be nice, set max ages and select technologies and such. the thing i like about rts though is having games take a long time. its part of the strategy to me.

embers. wrote: lol you expect people to be able to run 40 players + bots on their pcs?

People can't run 40 player CS:Source?

Hp-P00nst3r wrote: since the games will take long, players will just come and go, and they won't know the outcome. it's not a bad thing, they'll have fun and own ppl during the time age they join, just that they wont know the outcome of the war.

One team could defeat another within one age. Getting from the earliest age to the latest age would take 2-3 hours. Just like a MMORPG, a player should be able to join a game no matter whether the opponent is about to be completely destroyed, and still enjoy themselves. There would be some kind of mega-tech at the last age, and whoever builds it first can unleash total destruction on the opposing team and win the game. However, an organised team could send in groups of catapults in the Classical age, and destroy the other team's base and win the round.

This may lead to the problem of games never advancing past the first few ages to one team's domination. A solution may be to advance both teams to the next age after a finished round.

Hp-P00nst3r wrote:
personally, i prefer modern to future style fighting, could servers be able to choose what age they start in?

Yes. The aim would be for all ages to be self contained.

this will turn out to be a great mod if it is made.

how much of a difference will there be between the ages. will one age have a really big advantage over the others so its too lopsided. good planning so far