Star Wars: Draconis Rising (Half-Life 2 Mod)

If you want a break from PlanetSide or T:V for 20 mins, you might want to read about my mod now on the HL2 engine, Star Wars: Draconis Rising, currently looking for a site host:

http://www.hl2fallout.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6112

 

Since these areas of the forums are private and mostly confidential, I've decided to add a little more information here about how the Crystal Experience System will work in the mod, and how it will affect gameplay. Please be aware that I don't want this to be on the HL2Fallout Forums for now (as it may change as the mod progresses), and the modteam will be the only others to see the information, until I make a press release about it:


As I said before, there will be three levels of gameplay for players. Now since this was designed to be a game rather than a mod, it was meant that the three levels were equal to the number of moves someone could do in a sequence. Unfortunately for the start of this project there won’t be the opportunity to explore this feature, so that has been changed, for the time being, to Crystal Experience Level = amount of damage inflicted to enemies/players.

Each level will also determine how much Force Energy players have to utilise over time to commit to the Sentinel MK1’s lightsaber-abilities. For example, the Force Powers in JK2 and JK3 worked on the principle of how much the player stored in terms of their MANA. This will be the same for the Forcerifle, however… none of the players will be able to channel the majority of this energy into their abilities, unless they have this weapon in their inventory. The reason for this is because the Forcerifle will be tied directly into the programming of the game’s physics system, and one will not work without the other.

As it is in singleplayer, players will have to pick this weapon up in multiplayer before using the full advantage of their skills, as it won’t be in the stored inventory when they spawn/respawn. The experience system has been designed to continuously keep track of your performance in multiplayer, and then provide these in the form of points and achievements in your record. For instance, when your skill reaches a certain stage, you will be given the opportunity to either change which Elemental Crystal(s) you have, or upgrade the experience level of one or more of them to a higher capacity, increasing the power of your attacks.

Bear in mind, though, that if you change which Elemental Crystal(s) you possess, you will only deduct the points gained to make the change, but also lose all your experience in them to accommodate the new ones. Basically this means in order to get them back you will have to make other sacrifices to re-learn them, but this is so that people can pick and choose which styles of gameplay they prefer as the different combinations will determine for individual players what they like/dislike. If you also have an Ancient Elemental, the change also may or may not deactivate these abilities, or allow you to switch to its counter-balance in gameplay to explore the divergence in skills you can have.

The simplest example of this process has already been shown in Sony PlanetSide, with the usage of their Certification system.


You may notice there is no mention of the word 'Lightsaber' in the extract from my Design Document, but there is the word 'Forcerifle'... this is a little clue to how part of the signature-weapon will appear in the mod, just for you.

 

Some may have seen this image before on DeviantArt.com:



On October 29th in a huge update, exclusively on HL2Fallout.net... you will see EVERYTHING that has changed!

 

The three renders for my new lightsaber have been posted, but, they are not the final version I have promised due to talks I am having with LucasArts.

 

Now because a couple of people on the team asked why LucasArts were making me hold back on Star Wars: Draconis Rising's development I am posting it here, on the private area. I couldn't really talk about it to general fans of Star Wars cuz it was a legal issue, but I can say it if you promise not to post it anywhere, at least not until it is announced publicly through them. Also I thought that this issue was resolved with them a few months ago, but obviously it wasn't.

Yes, this is a Star Wars mod, however its creation has caused a small wrinkle in the corporate areas of their company because of it's concepts and storyline.

Basically this is what the deal is: a couple of years ago when LucasFilm were making The Phantom Menace movie, they were a little concerned about the timeline regarding the Jedi and the Sith, due to the history brought about by Knights of The Old Repuclic. If you remember most of that story, you may recall a section about where the Old Republic was almost 6,000 years old, and there was a large degree of unrest and cival war, but, the origins of the Force and the Mediclorians wasn't covered right away... so they started working on that, too, during Attack of The Clones filming.

Part of this discussion between them and me started when SWDR was still a mod on Jedi Academy's engine, but it wasn't until my recent post about what I planned to do for multiplayer on these forums that they got a little concerned, and decided this was far more of an issue than they had anticipated. I sent a portion of my idea off to them for both the storyline and gameplay, and this is where we had our problem... while they have only partially admitted this to me, some of their ideas for 'the beginning' are identical (or better) the their own . This includes my lightsaber idea, which is similar in parts to their list of things to keep it Star Wars-based. They have also agreed on my move to change my design over to SOURCE, as the principles I thought of for gameplay wouldn't have been possible otherwise in the gameplan they had.

In a nutshell, they will be allowing me to do this as a mod for now, but only under a contract with them to share copyright-issues with them, so they can make it a game in the future if they wish. This mod is on hold, however, as I was kicked from PHB as a result of this attempt to resurrect my mod, and I would prefer to work on that until release as it is a great project, and my contract with LucasArts isn't going anywhere. I have also given this info to them, and they are ok with my decision.

 

A number of things...

Ok here's a recap of what will be happening:

First, there will now be 12 new weapons instead of the 16 planned-list. This also includes a "drop weapon" function key since the player won't be able to carry more than one of each type of projectile weapon (i.e., pistol or rifle) at a time. The reasons for this are that 16 were too many, and the project has to accomodate the inclusion of other items the player(s) can use.

Second, there will be armour types in the project that can integrate a Sentinel directly into their weapon-systems. While the very first instance of several armour-types will appear in the opening cutscene, the SP campaign will only have one playable form of this armour, as it is essentially an avatar for the player (much like a battlesuit). It is planned to have more than this type available in multiplayer in the future, but this will most-likely appear in an update after the project's initial release.

Third, since it began there have been plans to make the multiplayer parts of the project 16-player (8 players per team), however, if enough people are interested when this is explored in more detail, we may make MP content entirely massively-online.

At the moment there are a half-dozen reasons why this may be difficult, but when we make an official announcement about it, a poll will be added so we can get some community feedback.

Band affiliation: Though it has already been stated that a song from the band Kidney Thieves (Zerospace explicit edition) will appear in the project, there are now ideas to have some entirely new songs specially commissioned for Draconis Rising by them and Hayley Westenra, as part of the final soundtrack.

Finally, work on the actual development in an engine will begin in July-2005... and it will still be in the SOURCE Engine.

 

A Final Decision:
In light of there being only miniscule similarities between Draconis Rising and the Star Wars universe (including the final version of the "Sentinel MK1 Prototype" model), it has been decided that all these references be removed, and development work be finalised as an independant project. Overall rights to the development of this Interllectual Product will be integrated into the publishing authority of Dementia7 Studios LLC, with discussions to conclude on or before end-March 2005.

At present, it has been determined that this project's development will proceed the completion of the D7 Peacemaker: Nightfall video game, based in the SOURCE Engine... an official site for that project will be available shortly.


An identical statement to this one has been announced on the main Help Wanted area of the HL Fallout Forums. Another project I wrote is also being integrated with D7 Studios, based in the Mechassault universe and on MA2's Xbox-architecture... that project has been registered and is codenamed "Mechassault 3: Neuroverse".

 

Okie, LucasArts were none too pleased that I would make this an independant game, as much of the designs were similar to what they talked with me before. Since much more of the armour-technology I have created integrates the Veloran Sentinel MK1 into its weaponry, I am faced with two options:

1) LucasArts can attempt to make a claim that Draconis Rising is their property and I run the risk of them getting me in a lawsuit, if I attempt to use the design as I originally wrote it in Jedi Academy for a game similar to theirs;

2) I can strip away all of the stuff that actually made it resemble a Lightsaber, and integrate it into my ideas for Warhammer 40,000: The Tiadein Chronicles.
​

As with the principles of Draconis Rising, much of the ideas stemmed from my WH40K game initially, as I tried to see if I could branch off something that didn't belong in there at the time. After I finished the script for WH40KTTC: Legacy of Evil, however, some parts of the storyline have a partially "biblical" sense to them among many of the races that I took fiction from in order to make the idea work.


It's really up to me what I do, but since a couple of you have read my stuff for both Draconis Rising and The Tiadein Chronicles, I wondered what your opinions are on the subject. Please post your comments.