SP Storyline Concepts

by geartrooper2 on 05/11/2009 05:31, 65 messages, last message: 05/25/2009 07:15, 34901 views, last view: 05/18/2024 21:42

Here is the place to post ideas for the storyline of the SP Campaign. I have a few of my own;


Castle Defense; Fixit and/or Snout are subject to waves of attack and must defend a mapmodel which the ai have been programmed to attack. The mapmodel has a fixed amount of hitpoints and once destroyed, the game is lost. This concept can closely be attributed to tower defense, where the waves of attack increase in difficulty. Perhaps there even could be barriers with hitpoints which the ai must fight through until reaching the final area. Winning might be impossible, the ultimate end being to post high scores of just how far along you withheld the attacking waves.


Trap Dungeon;
Player must navigate through increasingly difficult levels of traps while fending off attacking monsters, a la Indiana Jones.

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#1: ..

by SheeEttin on 05/11/2009 05:39

Stealth: Spy-style, get in, do something, get out, all without being noticed and/or killed.

Destroy: see Castle Defense. Same concept, but monsters & player swapped.

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#2: ..

by Maxime -Max of S2D- Lebled on 05/11/2009 06:38

You kill stuff. The end.

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#3: Side Quest

by tentus_ on 05/11/2009 07:18

It would be fun to have a side quest or "bonus area" which would have a slightly different gameplay mechanic. (I am framing this idea this way because I know that no one else is going to be particularly eager to pick it up).

You wander a bit off the beat track and find yourself in the remnants of an old port city. The buildings are made of crumbling stone and weathered wood, organized in a strict grid that was forcefully constructed on top of a crescent bay. Bits of rusty machinery dot the harbor, and are connected by long lines of worn but functional tubes and cables.

It falls to the player to decipher the old safety pictograms and try to get some of the old machinery working again without killing themselves. They must first unlock the windmills that lie to the north and south of the bay. Once turning, the player must find their way to the semi-underground waterworks of the city, which have been diverted directly into the ocean. Redirecting the water back into the city system provides access to restricted machinery by means of swimming up the aqueduct towers to the cranes at their tops. Gross misuse of the cranes allows the player to bash a locked building open. Inside the supply building, the player must carefully cannibalize equipment that they're *pretty sure* isn't active for copper. That copper lets them wire the existing power grid up to old docking machinery, finally allowing them to push an old ship into the ocean, where it can be boarded for fun and profit.

:D

Obviously, the idea ignores enormous engine limitations (how would we get the cranes to smash open a building, for example). A lot of it could be done with little tricks with what we've got right now, but without 10 second movies to show what's going on, it could be an entirely incomprehensible sidequest. So I'm just kind of throwing that out, to see what people make of it. Lots of the ideas for this are being directly lifted from ICO and Riven, which have game styles I've been enjoying far too much recently.

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#4: Re: Side Quest

by SephoD on 05/11/2009 09:36, refers to #3

Love all the ideas, especially Tentus's (big Riven fan myself :)

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#5: Assault

by Megagun_ on 05/11/2009 20:44

Here's an idea that has been brewing in my mind for a while...

A colony on the Moon has been overrun by aliens, and a large army of your race (be it Snouts, fixits, or something new) is waging a war inside the corridors of the colony against the alien bugs (think small, headcrab-size things, like the Dretches from Tremulous). However, after a while it becomes blatantly clear by the death count that your race is losing, and a special team -YOU and a few others- is being sent to put an end to this mess!

Shortly after entering the base, the ceiling caves in and you're found cut off from your team. They'll go on without you, and you head off to try and team up with them again, but the ruined colony isn't helping you, and neither is the battle being fought by your large army, which causes several minor disasters. Worse of all, Command just notifies you that the ceiling cavein was being caused by the first stage of a last-resort bombing of the base by some United Nations-esque organisation! Luckily, after Command verbally kicked their asses, they'll give you and your team 15 minutes (or some other arbitrary number) to complete your mission somehow, and the rest of the army the same time limit to get the hell out of the colony (scared bastards!) before big blasts tear down the entire colony apart!

Command nearly continuously talks to you and your team through the radio, to update you on recent developments, and to keep making it clear to you that there's a timelimit here. They soon make it clear to you that whatever you're going to do, you ought to go down into the depths of the base, as that seems to be where the aliens originate from.

Most of that is just to scare you off, though. There really isn't a timelimit (or it's really generous and keeps getting postponed). It's all just to get your adrenaline pumping. So is the heavy use of scripted events, the ammount of mutilated bodies on the floor that cannot be explained (the only aliens you ever see are tiny bugs, how can that body have a huge gash in it!?) and the fact that you've only really got a pistol, and there are almost no enemies in sight (screw with the player! no enemies in sight for ages and then BAM a few enemies right there and they're going to kill you! maybe).. It's all just to screw with you...

With scripted events, I mean collapsing stuff, members of your race running away or shooting at things that can only be heard (the base is 'convenient' in that it has lots of corridors with lots of windows and rooms with locked doors, so you can see the rest of the big army doing their stuff, but can't actually get to them, and you shouldn't -especially at the start- never see the 'big aliens', only hear them)...

Then at one point in the game, you enter a computer room, break into the system to see if you can perhaps get to learn something, and find out what REALLY happened at the base. Eventually, you manage to find out a video of a scientist explaining things...

Scientists had found out a way to create a portal to another world, and set foot upon that world, finding a wild variety creatures. A rich ecosystem. They researched in silence, tried to make sense of it all, and eventually began trying to breed the creatures and meddle with their genes. Slowly, they started 'developing' creatures. Some for labour, others to create an army. The creatures didn't seem to mind, until one day, all hell broke loose and what seemed like the entire world suddenly attacked the scientists. It didn't take long for the combined efforts of the aliens to penetrate the portal and make a foothold in the colony on the Moon, from where they started to attack, almost as if lead by something far more powerful than mere human minds (but whatever that is isn't explained, and Overminds/hives are getting rather cliche, so no hiveminds! :P).

If you have seen 'Serenity', and in particular a scene where.. things are being explained.. then this is the style that this 'explanation' should also follow. Most scientists suddenly are embarrassed at what they did, and they feel kind of sorry for the creatures, or at least understand what it is that they are doing, and why they do it.

The scientist on the video then begins to tell 'the camera' about a plan setup by the last few survivors to enter the portal and blow up the reactor on the tiny colony on the Alien world, to completely shut off the portal system. Too bad they appeared to have failed rather miserably.. :)

Command tells the rest of your team about all this recent development, and eventually finds a way to reunite you with the rest of the team. Unfortunately, as you're nearly there, something kills them all, or at least, Command loses contact with them.

A few corners later, you find the dead mutilated bodies of your teammates, and as you get closer to them, suddenly a door opens, some others close, and a huge alien charges at you. It doesn't hurt you at all or at least shouldn't kill you, and the way the campaign is cleverly scripted (read: lots of locked doors but one and you make it for the 'obvious exit'. :D) you enter a small room and lock the damned door...

From there on, you enter the ducts of the base, kill a few aliens, avoid the huge aliens, make it to the portal, shut down the reactor, and then start running back to the Moon, trying to escape the original colony. And guess what, things start getting worse and worse as the portal being suddenly shut down causes the reactor on the Moon colony to overload and start disintegrating! And with that, things go to hell and start to fall apart or malfunction, and then there is the damned air force, too, which still wants to bomb the place down 'for good measure'.

Either way, as you run to escape the colony, backup reactors boot up, emergency scenarios start to run, and doors seem to randomly open and close, opening new areas to run through for you, and ofcourse a few more scripted events (yay for running away from aliens, and finding a few survivors in toilets that try to make a run for it and get mauled: http://mooses.nl/sauer/roar.avi).. Oh, and random audio recordings get played as you escape the facility, including screams, science talk, and recordings of scientists arguing about ethics and if they should really be doing all this stuff to the creatures on the portal's other side...

Eventually, you manage to escape the colony, and not a second too late, since the entire thing gets blown to nothingness moments afterwards. You get thrown across the lunar surface, black out, and get picked up by members of your race. Then some generic ending. Perhaps a nod to Half-Life's "G-Man" here would be nice. Whatever the ending is, it should be thought provoking and interesting...

...aaand that's pretty much it! Wow, that was a pretty large post.

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#6: One big game or a number of episodes

by rknigh21 on 05/11/2009 21:20

Hi All

A few points

1) Will this be one big game or a series of shorter “episodes” that collectively make up a bigger game.

The latter might work well as a team effort. Also big complex things rarely get finished. As a collection of smaller episodes playabel stuff would be finished much quicker. If it goes well we could add more episodes if not just have a shorter game.

2) How much moding will be practical on the engine.

Regards Robin

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#7: Re: ..

by )FC($k!llz_ on 05/11/2009 22:17, refers to #2

lol so original. reminds me of aard.

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#8: ..

by Hooded_Sniper on 05/11/2009 23:22

I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of stealth element in a campaign/sp map. I think something like Lost though is going in the right direction. Just having a massive single player map with checkpoints and lots of cube script.

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#9: ..

by Midnight Walker on 05/12/2009 04:59

Megagun_'sfirst scenario sounds AWESOME if there's a way to implement it.

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#10: Message censored by administrator

by Younes on 05/12/2009 09:17

#11: ..

by geartrooper2 on 05/12/2009 12:07

excellent ideas. keep them coming.

Currently possibility of code is being pursued and what can come of it play-wise.

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#12: ..

by Redon on 05/12/2009 16:39

What geartrooper posted first doesn't sound like a storyline to me, at least it's not what i know as a storyline :P It sounds more like a game concept, and not a reason why the monsters are attacking, and what they are searching for ;)

Actually I think the idea of this thread is cool, but imo the people who have to create all the stuff afterwards should have some freedom to make/change parts the story :)
But aside from that, I really like Megaguns idea! If we have the good enough sounds/models etc to create an authentic atmosphere, then I'd like to give it a try. best, if it would be some kind of sequel to Lost ;P

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#13: ..

by geartrooper2 on 05/12/2009 16:54

Ok, I will go along with Megagun's story concept. We still have to wait for Quin and Deathguppie's input as far as it being the concrete idea.

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#14: I;ve got one!

by Nixot on 05/12/2009 17:44

One day, a big explosion happened for no reason in your giant scifi base. Then, monsters appeared. Then, floating boxes of ammo appeared. Then, guns appeared. And now, kill the monsters! EDN

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#15: Re: ..

by JadeMatrix on 05/12/2009 19:16, refers to #13

Shall I start sketching maps if they approve? Apparently Megagun has quite a few ideas already, so I'll go beg him for tidbits or something.

Desperately trying to please,
JadeMatrix

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#16: ..

by Younes on 05/12/2009 19:45

Ok...i see..when you say something they don\'t want to be said you get censored...hmm...

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#17: ..

by geartrooper2 on 05/12/2009 19:48

JadeMatrix;

I suggest we get a forum going for this project so we can conspire in private, delegate tasks, and keep tabs on who is doing what so we are all on the same page. But most of all so the project will be fresh and new to the players. If you will, I ask this to be your first job.

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#18: Re: ..

by JadeMatrix on 05/12/2009 21:07, refers to #17

What, the obtaining of the forum?

I just have this fear of a world takeover my the millions of mini-forums out there. Is there another Cube site with a forum we can appropriate a section of?

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#19: Re: ..

by SheeEttin on 05/12/2009 21:13, refers to #16

No, saying excessively stupid things gets you censored. "the map should have enough space"? Really?

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#20: ..

by geartrooper2 on 05/12/2009 21:14

possibly bloodfrontier, but we'll have to ask quin.

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