Plan for Minako

Our head programer left the project yesterday, saddly. Real life concerns (school and making enough money to eat) were just not leaving him time to work on the project. We wish him all the best. We are, however, left without a programing staff and are in desperate need now. A bit about the project....

Natural Selection, our FPS project is currently seeking additional people to join. It's being done as a final project for my game design degree here at Cogswell in Sunnyvale, CA. Our design is already settled on and we have a small staff, but are looking to expand. People with all skills are welcome (obviously, some skills are needed more than others.) We're doing our modeling and animation in Lightwave, and prefer to stay all in one package, but we'll be flexible as needed.

The game is set on Earth, some fifty years into the future. Cybernetics has been discovered and adapted en masse, to the point that it's redefined militaries in as signifigant a way as gunpowder did centuries ago. Infantry are no longer expendable troops, each now has easily the power to take on any modern tank. They've in a few short years gained power over nearly the entire world. Only a few humans oppose them. They feel the path for humanity to progress is not through insertion of technology into themselves, but through inner discovery. They've managed to discover their own internal energy and how to harness it in some limited ways. A select few have managed to even learn to transfer their soul energy to others, allowing themselves to possess others anywhere in the world to turn the tide of battle in their favor.

Basically, the gameplay is going to be humans with speed on their side versus cyborgs who love big weapons that have oodles of spalsh damage. Players will play 'generic' style soldiers and select two or three weapons at the start of the game and always will spawn with them. Players can change weapons in the game at weapons stations in their base if they're willing to 'buy' them. Points for a team are stored in a 'bank', players can't spand more than the ammount of points they've earned for their team. Any points spend are deducted from the team total. Also, at the start of the match ,teams can elect to spend points in advance (they'll start with a negative team total) to buy special characters. Special characters will appear as an item in the home base, touch it and you become that character (mesh and all that changes.) Special characters will have powers well above and beyond normal characters. They're meant to be the super hero types (not in look, in effect) that can turn the tide of battle for their side. Obviosuly, killing one is a lot more points that if you just shoot Johnny Soldier too. Gameplay is a combination of gameplay types that should create an objective based style of gameplay. Players will have to capture and hold two points to do something like open a door or extend a bridge to get at a target to destroy for points. Also, teams can score points by traditional capture the flag style gameplay (I love CTF, even if it is everywhere.) When a team scores enough points, a door in their base opens with a bomb. A player has to take the bomb into the enemy base, set it and it goes *boom*, winning the map for that team.

Natural Selection's gameplay is also designed to extend beyond just one map. When we play FPS games, we always have our map list that we play. Our favorite maps we know, we love to play all the time, and we think we're not alone in this behavior. Natural Selection will have what we call the War System. Wars will consist of a pre-packeaged set of maps with one team ultimatelly winning the entire War. After a map, the next one will be selected based on who won. As the war progressed, the maps will be increasingly unfair. Losing teams will have more and more advantages, as they are being pushed back to their home base. The maps will be set up in a tree like structure, obviously. To win a war, a team has to win the final map in one of the branches of the tree.

The programing task list we have at this point is this:
Scripted events
Events for Capturing
Events for Bombing
Events for Destroying
Events for Dominating
Point System
Points for killing players
Points for killing special characters
Points for completing objectives
Flight / Jetpack
HUD (ammo counter, health and energy bars, etc)
Inventory (2-3 weapons at a time only)
Weapon selection before a map
Weapon selection during a map
Location based damage
War system
Special character possession
HUD Navigation Aid
Special character powers (fast dash, short range LOS teleport, telekinetic push)

We're talking with someone to design us a web stie at the moment, so any information, model pictures or anything aren't available without asking at the moment. But that should be rectified soon. Anyone interested in the project, with questions or who wishes to join should mail me at minako@asia.com

Thanks

Minako


PS - I know there's a halflife mod of the same name, at this point we're not at all concerned with this. If we need to change the name, we can do that later. We need to develop a product first.