There's been discussion about this previously but I'd like to take the idea more in depth. What do you think about a single player / story system for Nexuiz? What I'm talking about is a gametype in which the player goes through a series of maps and all bots play the role of 'monsters', the only goal being for the player to complete missions and reach a certain area to advance to the next map.

I heard people say this could be accomplished by making a singleplayer campaign listing assault maps, but I don't believe that can be anything close to a real single player system. This is my list of reasons as to why and what I believe a SP system would need to include:

1 - Single player is not a match. The architecture of the current gametypes is for players to fight each other while completing sport-like objectives, while in single player the objective is to advance from point A to point B while fighting characters on the way. The scoreboard for instance displays how many players there are, how many frags you have done, etc. which in SP it would need to be different. The player would have to start the map from the beginning when dieing, not just respawn like nothing happened... and no "You have fragged X" message when you kill a monster. I also don't see health regeneration belonging in single player.

2 - Biggest issue of them all: The current bot system does not allow any gametype to be used as single player. The only way one could poorly simulate a singleplayer map would be an assault map containing one player start for the real player and several other starts only for bots. And since the player is to be all alone against monsters like in most SP stories, the cvar bot_vs_human needs to be settemp-ed for each level too. Second problem is that bots are spawned randomly so you can't place a certain bot in a certain point on the map, nor can they be given different start weapons, health or skills (eg: a guardian guarding a door with the shotgun and another with the uzi). Imho no map can be truly called single player when bots are spawned randomly and are not individually configurable.

A second bot system would be needed for singleplayer, in which every monster bot is placed as an entity on the map. The normal bots can remain as they are while bots spawned by a monster entity are monster bots which have totally different rules. The entity would have all bot characteristics as keys, such as:

- bot_model - Points to the .zym model of the character to use.
- skin - The skin.
- pants_color
- shirt_color
- name - Name of the bot... can be "Guardian" if it's guarding a gate.
- health - How many hit points this bot is spawned with, separate from a normal player's health cvars.
- damage / skill - Damage overrider, to offset how much damage the bot can do from the current weapon's damage, allowing different bots to be stronger and bosses to be the much powerful then anyone else.
- pickup - If the bot should be allowed to pick up new weapons or health / armor, or if only to use what its given at spawn time.
- weapons - The weapons the bot spawns with, completely separate from g_start_weapon_X cvars which are for players. Would probably default to "laser, shotgun" and one can also empty it to leave a bot unarmed by default.
- respawn - How many times the bot may respawn. If 0 the bot is dead forever once its killed, and higher numbers would be how many times the bot respawns after death (one can set it to 10 to have to defeat 10 soldiers in a room). -1 would be an infinite spawner.
- team - If the bot is an ally or enemy of the player.
- follow - In case the bot is not an enemy, it follows the player everywhere after the player approaches it. eg: freeing a prisoner who then follows you everywhere and helps you.

There could probably be more, such as monster bots dropping special items upon death. Bot entities could also trigger events once all bot spawns are defeated, such as defeating a guard for a door to open. Another crucial possibility would be virtual teams, the player belonging to team 1 so a bot can be either an ally if team 1 too, or if not be an enemy to you and other bots who are from different teams.

3 - A feature which is always good in single player is a dialogue system. When the player approaches a bot which is not an enemy, he could press an action key and a message is printed on the screen. Dialogues could contain whole discussions of the form "me: clicked the bot - bot: answering! - me: answering back" (like in old console games ). A further addon could be players given many choices of answers (such as yes or no) in dialogues, each answer triggering a different event.

4 - A single player system almost always has the ability to load another map when reaching a certain point in the current map, while keeping all of your weapons and other items you are carrying through. Such a system would also need to include a save game ability, save and load anywhere. The system in the classic Unreal is a perfect example of what I mean. This can be replaced by the current campaign system, but a system to freely travel back and forth between maps with savegame ability included would be much better.

I know that's an annoying list of big features and all, but I wanted to say my 2 cents and hear what others think of this. Since I player the old Unreal I've been thinking about writing my own game stories in a system which would correctly allow going through maps and facing configured enemies in each point. I shall try to see if I can start by copying a current gametype into something else, then if I can create entities that can spawn monster bots. But yeah... is this possible to do, and is it wanted by other players as well?

I agree entirely. I am willing to help in this in whatever way I can. The other thread has gone silent for the moment, I was waiting for Flying Steel to post up his finished plotline.

MirceaKitsune wrote:Since I player the old Unreal I've been thinking about writing my own game stories in a system which would correctly allow going through maps and facing configured enemies in each point. I shall try to see if I can start by copying a current gametype into something else, then if I can create entities that can spawn monster bots. But yeah... is this possible to do, and is it wanted by other players as well?

same goes for quake 1 and 2. this is propably the easiest way to make a story.
darkplaces is a quake engine so there could be the option for monster entities, you'll only need a ai script.
i would support it that way

Yes, there is code for monster entities in Nexuiz, but I don't think it was used before :p

MirceaKitsune wrote:I also don't see health regeneration belonging in single player.

There you are wrong. Many many new games have this thing instead of actual health numbers. You are hurt by enemy fire, wait a few seconds and your health will regenerate to full. Nexuiz just uses it in a different manner. There was also another game which you had to stab you with something in order to gain full health, after using that you would have to wait a little in order for it to cool down so you could use it again.

Health regeneration is great, much better than health pickups IMO.
Armor pickups I don't mind.

Seen a similar thread but thought that was about making a story for the current campaign. I thought Nexuiz would still have some parts of SP code given it started from Quake... maybe enabling the entity could bring the monster spawners back if they're still compatible?

Another thought: Allowing many players (as well as the -normal- bots) to play together, so many players start at the map's starting point and go through it together. Next map could be loaded when either one of the players reaches the ending point or when everyone does But individual SP maps should be allowed to disable it imo, or just limit the number of players.

MirceaKitsune wrote:Another thought: Allowing many players (as well as the -normal- bots) to play together, so many players start at the map's starting point and go through it together. Next map could be loaded when either one of the players reaches the ending point or when everyone does But individual SP maps should be allowed to disable it imo, or just limit the number of players.

should be possible since its similar to quake

but are we still talking about a single player for nexuiz or a new game?

cortez wrote:but are we still talking about a single player for nexuiz or a new game?

Singleplayer for Nexuiz of course. At least what I'm hoping for... wouldn't see any reason to split Nexuiz in two games for singleplayer, I think that would be a big mistake.

Singleplayer for nexuiz.

I think he is more referring to a co-op style of play with multiple players going through the campaign.

Yeah, co-op is a better word. A gametype like any single player course (Quake's, Unreal's) but with many players able to play at the same time rather then just one locally. Just an idea, a SP mode could live without that

Looks like Flying Steel got some more of his plotline up:

http://forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=5130

Last post.

Oh and as a suggestion, to make co-op more squad based and interesting why not implement the class based mutator for it.

MirceaKitsune wrote:1 - Single player is not a match. The architecture of the current gametypes is for players to fight each other while completing sport-like objectives, while in single player the objective is to advance from point A to point B while fighting characters on the way. The scoreboard for instance displays how many players there are, how many frags you have done, etc. which in SP it would need to be different. The player would have to start the map from the beginning when dieing, not just respawn like nothing happened... and no "You have fragged X" message when you kill a monster. I also don't see health regeneration belonging in single player.

On the contrary, that would make for an incredibly old school, incredibly boring campaign, imo. Moving from point A to B, micro mananaging health packs and tripping over 'monster spawns' and then having to restart the whole damn map when you die, would just be uber dull.

What you want is a mixture of objectives (survival, assault, onslaught) and AI opponents (some monsters, some bots), which change from one level to the next along with game rules (like low gravity here, vampire there and character classes there).

2 - Biggest issue of them all: The current bot system does not allow any gametype to be used as single player. The only way one could poorly simulate a singleplayer map would be an assault map containing one player start for the real player and several other starts only for bots. And since the player is to be all alone against monsters like in most SP stories, the cvar bot_vs_human needs to be settemp-ed for each level too.

Again, having the player alone the entire campaign is extremely outdated and boring. He should have alone levels and squad levels.

Second problem is that bots are spawned randomly so you can't place a certain bot in a certain point on the map, nor can they be given different start weapons, health or skills (eg: a guardian guarding a door with the shotgun and another with the uzi). Imho no map can be truly called single player when bots are spawned randomly and are not individually configurable.

Like I mentioned in one of these threads, we could use a specialized bot spawn system, one that gives you control of the quantity and timing or trigger of spawns in a particular location. That would help alot.

A second bot system would be needed for singleplayer, in which every monster bot is placed as an entity on the map. The normal bots can remain as they are while bots spawned by a monster entity are monster bots which have totally different rules. The entity would have all bot characteristics as keys, such as:

- bot_model - Points to the .zym model of the character to use.
- skin - The skin.
- pants_color
- shirt_color
- name - Name of the bot... can be "Guardian" if it's guarding a gate.
- health - How many hit points this bot is spawned with, separate from a normal player's health cvars.
- damage / skill - Damage overrider, to offset how much damage the bot can do from the current weapon's damage, allowing different bots to be stronger and bosses to be the much powerful then anyone else.
- pickup - If the bot should be allowed to pick up new weapons or health / armor, or if only to use what its given at spawn time.
- weapons - The weapons the bot spawns with, completely separate from g_start_weapon_X cvars which are for players. Would probably default to "laser, shotgun" and one can also empty it to leave a bot unarmed by default.
- respawn - How many times the bot may respawn. If 0 the bot is dead forever once its killed, and higher numbers would be how many times the bot respawns after death (one can set it to 10 to have to defeat 10 soldiers in a room). -1 would be an infinite spawner.
- team - If the bot is an ally or enemy of the player.
- follow - In case the bot is not an enemy, it follows the player everywhere after the player approaches it. eg: freeing a prisoner who then follows you everywhere and helps you.

No, we should use the character class system for bots, as well as the player on alot of levels. We shouldn't duplicate code work.

There could probably be more, such as monster bots dropping special items upon death. Bot entities could also trigger events once all bot spawns are defeated, such as defeating a guard for a door to open. Another crucial possibility would be virtual teams, the player belonging to team 1 so a bot can be either an ally if team 1 too, or if not be an enemy to you and other bots who are from different teams.

What would be the difference between one team and two teams on the same side though?

b]3 -[/b] A feature which is always good in single player is a dialogue system. When the player approaches a bot which is not an enemy, he could press an action key and a message is printed on the screen. Dialogues could contain whole discussions of the form "me: clicked the bot - bot: answering! - me: answering back" (like in old console games ). A further addon could be players given many choices of answers (such as yes or no) in dialogues, each answer triggering a different event.

That could be helpful, but as long as we have somekind of "cutscene" even if it is just text to start with, we can advance the plot. One thing that would be useful though is to have custom audio/message triggers, so that when the player reaches a certain point or something happens in the level, it triggers a text message and an audio clip.

4 - A single player system almost always has the ability to load another map when reaching a certain point in the current map, while keeping all of your weapons and other items you are carrying through. Such a system would also need to include a save game ability, save and load anywhere. The system in the classic Unreal is a perfect example of what I mean. This can be replaced by the current campaign system, but a system to freely travel back and forth between maps with savegame ability included would be much better.

Checkpoints that just saved your progress through the level would work well enough too, if that is less work.

I know that's an annoying list of big features and all, but I wanted to say my 2 cents and hear what others think of this. Since I player the old Unreal I've been thinking about writing my own game stories in a system which would correctly allow going through maps and facing configured enemies in each point. I shall try to see if I can start by copying a current gametype into something else, then if I can create entities that can spawn monster bots. But yeah... is this possible to do, and is it wanted by other players as well?

Some new features specialized for a campaign mode would be very helpful, but must be mixed with gametypes, mutators and features of the wider game to mix things up from what would otherwise just be a late '90s era slogfest campaign.

Specifically:

1) Cutscenes or textscenes and triggered in-game special audio clips to advance the story.

2) Quantity limitable, triggered bot spawns.

3) A checkpoint or more advanced in-level save system.

Sepelio wrote:Oh and as a suggestion, to make co-op more squad based and interesting why not implement the class based mutator for it.

BTW, I am building the 3D character models that will fit that purpose. 12 planned, 3 started. Squad based combat and character classes I have been planning to use use on many levels spread throughout the campaign.

I agree with Flying Steel, but maybe it would be best if these were a choice on each map (eg: if dieing in that level means you start from the beginning, how many player teams there are). Some like the oldskool way where the player is all alone fighting monsters and finishes when reaching the last map... I think it would be fair to support all ways if possible. That would also allow squad levels then alone levels like you said

Domination has dom_team for specifying such properties... maybe single player could have sp_team where one could choose how many teams there are, if players start all over again when they die, if to use a scoreboard, etc. That would allow any style of story to be created.

In any case I think monster bots would be the base characters one would face on such map, but as you said by using entities that spawn configured bots in each spot (what I meant by a "second bot system", more correct would be a second bot -spawning- system but without showing monsters on the scoreboard imo). Checkpoints would be great, probably even better then savegames if they would work.

I'm all for it.

MirceaKitsune wrote:I agree with Flying Steel, but maybe it would be best if these were a choice on each map (eg: if dieing in that level means you start from the beginning, how many player teams there are). Some like the oldskool way where the player is all alone fighting monsters and finishes when reaching the last map... I think it would be fair to support all ways if possible. That would also allow squad levels then alone levels like you said

Domination has dom_team for specifying such properties... maybe single player could have sp_team where one could choose how many teams there are, if players start all over again when they die, if to use a scoreboard, etc. That would allow any style of story to be created.

Yeah.

In any case I think monster bots would be the base characters one would face on such map, but as you said by using entities that spawn configured bots in each spot (what I meant by a "second bot system", more correct would be a second bot -spawning- system but without showing monsters on the scoreboard imo).

Yes that's a good catch, the scoreboard should not show any other stats beyond the player's. It could also show the level objective(s) instead, that would be very helpful.

Checkpoints would be great, probably even better then savegames if they would work

Either would be enough.

Checkpoints could be simpler to implement, if they were just a counter much like the level counter Nexuiz currently uses for its campaign. This tracks only the last checkpoint the player triggered, not how much armor and ammo he has and all of those details, instead each checkpoint defines those things.

A full intra-level savegame feature that stores all that information could be good to have, but also could require alot more code work to implement, I think.

Things to keep in mind for Single Player:

1. Scripted Events - An event system is probably needed to trigger scripted actions that are used to tell stories (earthquakes, destruction of items, Flybys of Jets, etc). You want certain things to happen at certain times...

2. Obviously a beginning and an ending to a level

3. How to handle death (checkpoints, starting level over, etc)

4. Cut Scenes (either through playing video, or In-Engine)

5. Enemy models that are larger or smaller than player models - this is actually a subtle change, but would make a big impact. We are all used to seeing models roughly the same size...imagine walking in on a 3 story tall mech or swarms of beetles.

6. Doors, Elevators, Vehicles, movements other than walking. This adds variety to gameplay

7. Enemies focus on tactics, cover, working with other enemies - instead of twitch response and running in guns blazing...

8. Enemies have distinctly different strategies - some are distance fighters, others do melee damage, others use stealth, etc....a variety in the way you are attacked....

9. Weapons distribution - typically you start out with weaker weapons an slowly acquire larger ones.

10. Weapons are designed around enemy weaknesses - certain weapons work better with certain enemies

I'm sure there are many more....

A single player game type that would work well with Nexuiz and would be easier to implement quickly would be something similar to Serious Sam. SS has various closed arenas which spawn huge amounts of enemies that you must survive. Once you clear a certain space, a door opens and you move on to the next arena. Co-op works well with this type of game, and you can build suspense by starting with smaller arenas and working your way up to larger ones. SS is also a *great* example of how enemies with different attack movements add variety - there are the bombers that run right at you and self destruct, the galloping skeletons that leap, turn, then leap again, the frogs that move in swarms, the bulls that run very fast but can't turn very well, the massive Mechs, and the simple soldiers. None of the AI for these is very complex, but add them all together in different combinations and it results in some fantastic gameplay....

All good points h3dge. Nice first post.

Indeed, +1 h3dge

As for the cutscene system, best would be an in-engine one imo. It would likely be both easier to implement and to work with. Recording a video to play when reaching a point in the map would be a lot of work for the mapper, and modifying something in the map would require the video to be remade as well. Just snapping the camera in another spot as bots walk through or a door opens would be perfect I think.

Some of these events already work with current triggers, but SP would need more. Another type of trigger I was planning to bring up on the dev tracker is a cvar changing trigger, which would be useful for both SP and the current gametypes in Nexuiz. When someone touches that trigger, a server cvar can be changed to another value. That can do a lot... gravity triggers, enabling / disabling some mutators from switches...

MirceaKitsune wrote:As for the cutscene system, best would be an in-engine one imo. It would likely be both easier to implement and to work with. Recording a video to play when reaching a point in the map would be a lot of work for the mapper, and modifying something in the map would require the video to be remade as well. Just snapping the camera in another spot as bots walk through or a door opens would be perfect I think.

The limitation of that method is you don't have very interesting camera control or character animations unless you add alot of support for them. When you use pre-rendered cutscenes, all techniques available in the content creator are available for use in cutscenes, because they are ultimately exported as simple raster images in the end anyway.

Not saying this is a better way to go though, just filling out the pros and cons.

(BTW, I believe UFO:AI is based on the Quake engine like Nexuiz is and it recently added somekind of cutscene support)

Some of these events already work with current triggers, but SP would need more. Another type of trigger I was planning to bring up on the dev tracker is a cvar changing trigger, which would be useful for both SP and the current gametypes in Nexuiz. When someone touches that trigger, a server cvar can be changed to another value. That can do a lot... gravity triggers, enabling / disabling some mutators from switches...

There's definitely some interesting things that could be done with that.

When you say triggers, that includes timed triggers too right?

UFO:AI has indeed added cutscene support I heard about this a month or two ago.

My idea for cutscenes was simply to have short machinima style videos.

why not do both? use pre-rendered for major, between-level cutscenes where a lot of unique animations are needed and use in-engine cutscenes for in-level cutscenes..

Would cutscenes not involve an incredible amount of modeling and animation to make it look right? We don't have too many modelers afaik.

I'm very much willing to work on maps for this SP mode, it sounds like a lot of fun.

MC SE7EN wrote:why not do both? use pre-rendered for major, between-level cutscenes where a lot of unique animations are needed and use in-engine cutscenes for in-level cutscenes..

We could, there have been games that did it that way.

It would just mean that two separate features would have to be built and debugged. That will take more time and support. So initially we'd have one at best, which brings us to the question of which is the priority.

PinkRobot wrote:Would cutscenes not involve an incredible amount of modeling and animation to make it look right? We don't have too many modelers afaik.

It would be work, but on the other hand we don't know how much coder support we'd get either.

A simple realtime cutscene method like MirceaKitsune suggested or like that the two Battlezone PC games primarily used is probably what would be used here as well, at least at first. In short, static cams and chase cams for visuals, with the voice dialogue going back and forth delivery most of the story.

I'm very much willing to work on maps for this SP mode, it sounds like a lot of fun.

Cool.

In my opinion bot ai is not the biggest issue here, all these changes can be added somewhat easily. This is all about having a good story and good maps and make the whole experience consistent.
Aside of bots there are some greats units made by tZork, and some (probably unused) monsters code, I think it would be great to have these to fight with.

mand1nga wrote:In my opinion bot ai is not the biggest issue here, all these changes can be added somewhat easily.

Some more advanced ally bot code could help though, like code that makes them always try to stay within a certain distance from the player (or do that when the player tells them to follow him) or be able to play the Assault and Race gametypes.

This is all about having a good story and good maps and make the whole experience consistent.

Agreed, those are major elements.

Aside of bots there are some greats units made by tZork, and some (probably unused) monsters code, I think it would be great to have these to fight with.

Agreed, we should definitely use the hell out of tZork's vehicle code and Psychcf's character class code.

The way I see it, there are 3 independent parts for a SP system. 1: The entities which can spawn special bots on a map, 2: The trigger which can load another map while keeping each player's health and weapons through, 3: The Singleplayer gametype together with a checkpoint / savegame system.

Imo each part could be done individually, since a monster spawner, map navigation and new gametype are not constrained to one another. No one says a mapper can't use monsters in CTF if they really want to, or make an Assault level where everyone is taken to another map at the press of a button.

Sadly I'm leaving for the rest of summer and will be away for two months, and since I don't have a fast connection on my laptop I can't use SVN and code there I'll see if I can edit a few player models and make some monsters however.

MirceaKitsune wrote:2: The trigger which can load another map while keeping each player's health and weapons through

I disagree with this one, not only is that not a requirement, but I think the campaign would be alot more fun and alot easier to balance without it.

More fun because the player doesn't have to worry about running out of ammo for the next level or hoarding it.

More easily balanced because then we don't have adjust difficulty for both the player having no ammo and the player having almost all the ammo he could have saved up from all the previous levels up to that point.

So I think we're actually better off without a carry over system.

No one says a mapper can't use monsters in CTF if they really want to

That's actually an extremely cool idea in its own right.

Flying Steel wrote:

MirceaKitsune wrote:2: The trigger which can load another map while keeping each player's health and weapons through

I disagree with this one, not only is that not a requirement, but I think the campaign would be alot more fun and alot easier to balance without it.

More fun because the player doesn't have to worry about running out of ammo for the next level or hoarding it.

More easily balanced because then we don't have adjust difficulty for both the player having no ammo and the player having almost all the ammo he could have saved up from all the previous levels up to that point.

So I think we're actually better off without a carry over system.

No one says a mapper can't use monsters in CTF if they really want to

That's actually an extremely cool idea in its own right.

for the carry-over system, heres what i say (ive seen this done in a lot of other games)


*If you go from one level to the next with no break (your character moves from one area to another without returning to any kind of base to restock), you carry over your ammo/weapons.

*If you go back to your base/headquarters/whatever between missions, you restock and start with your default weapon with the default ammo.


Make sense? Im kinda tired right now, so idk if i made that clear.. imo that way is more realistic..

i think we need a whole separate board to discuss this whole project..