Warhammer 40,000: The Tiadein Chronicles

In a word, yes.

 

you'll probably see the SDK in December.

 

An idea to combat player-camping

I want everybody's opinion on this before I suggest it to Lionhead...

We're doing some preliminary ideas for the MMO-side of the system that handles multiplayer, and I've been thinking of a fair-yet-costly way of people being able to loot other players' corpses without a price, as well as to avoid inventory and spawn camping. In a small way, this would tie-in directly with the means to which a player could purchase and/or upgrade inventory items. In the system we are planning, every time you earn experience points, you can either opt to adjust your aptitudes/skills with them, or convert them into credits (money).

Ok here's how it will work (some of this you see in WoW, but some of this would be new). Imagine for a moment that after a person(s) are slain in combat, their bodies each have an invisible, 3-metre radius around them - these would be equal to 5 metres in the real world. During this time, the body itself has a countdown as to how long before it completely spawns out of the gameworld, which works by the body and armour slowly decomposing - usually 45 seconds - but this can be completely overidden if:

1. The player's corpse is obstructed (i.e. a destroyed vehicle is over the mesh),
2. If the player decides to recover their inventory with the Teleport (requires a fee of Credits - dependant on how much was in last inventory)

If the first option happens or the player fails to have this ability due to their experience level, the player's inventory ceases to exist forever, and they will have to collect it again from the beginning. If, however, the player manages to recover their inventory before the time expires, it is returned to their "locker" (don't know what we'll be having for this yet).

If you have one enemy player, the player's new "self" or a friendly from the squad/outfit in this radius looting the corpse, the number of experience points lost is set to zero. When there are two people are in the radius, the counter raises to 2XP. Now, here's where it gets interesting. If there are three people in this radius, the number doubles to 4XP, if there are four it doubles to 8XP, and so on. On the other hand, if there are only friendlies in this radius, the counter would stay at 0XP.

On top of this, the XP currently set gradually deducts this amount from each player for every 10 seconds of game-time... and basically you can see where this is going! This method of punishment would also happen regardless of whether your enemies were all on their own, in a squad, or part of an enemy outfit, so a lot people wouldn't be able to spawn or inventory-camp you and your friends bodies without losing an amount of Character Party-numbered experience.

In essence, it would be entirely up to players whether or not they wanted to loot your body, they would just have to abide by the "looting rules" that are set by us, and only withing this 45-second time limit. Finally, though, this would set a standard in gameplay to newbies and veterans alike who were looking to earn something for nothing.

COMMENTS WELCOME !!!

 

At the moment we're just sort of collecting ideas to see what we can do with the engine, but my mandatory plan was to have a single-player storyline around a group of voiceactors, which is updated as Chapters through the use of expansion packs... and it still is.

The multiplayer, though, will be COMPLETELY ONLINE, with the use of an MMO system. Other than WoW, the only game this will compare a little bit to Neocron. There will be armies that will be updated as time goes on (some of which wil come in the expansions), and my plan was to always to make the multiplayer gameworld integrate directly with the singleplayer so that, maybe, some of the "Chronicles" story will show up as multiplayer events.

We're not really sure how we'll be doing quests just yet - other than the exploratory ones - but XP will be implemented similarly to the Merit Commendations when the game ships, and there will be "dungeon-based" outfit garrisons (or Firebases as they are known) for squads/outfits to train up on VR weapon-ranges, as well as deploy certain vehicle types from when they have been awarded partivular base-upgrades from events.

And before anyone asks... yes, there will eventually be Titans in the game (but not right now)!

 

What we'll probably be doing is having a system that stores all the information on a character in a log on the servers. This log will include their character name, list of XP and credits, the levels at which their skills are, how many times they have looted a corpse and how long items have remained in their inventory from a drop. If the item(s) in question have been sent to another team/outfitmate within a 5-minute period, this mark will be added to a list that will be reviewed for all players on a monthly basis.

If it has been performed for this low-level player a certain amount of times on that list (say 30 for now), both the group of that player and those who looted the body for that sole purpose will have a 10% drop in their level of XP. If it happens again it will be a higher, 25% strip-warning of their XP. The third warning - before actual permanent bannings of their individual accounts - will be a 14-day ban of playing time, with a compassionate freeze of the periodical payment required during their billing period. This is so that they can either choose to cancel their account, or continue playing provided they understand the rules are adhered to.

After a year's playing on these accounts, the blacklists will be reset in the event it was simply because they were new players to the game. A backup record on those players will be kept, however, to keep track of previous offenders in the event it instantly begins after the blacklist has been cleared... then an automatic 14-day warning ban will occur prior to a permanent ban.

A similar idea may be implemented to protect friendly squadmates, if the player in question has repeatedly broken the rules at least 10 times over a 3-month period.

I'm sure that somewhere down the line determined people will find some way around it, but there will be a lot of players (besides us) who don't appreciate buying a new game, so they can just be intimidated out of playing it by hackers and such, and I think that those in that category will find the playing-experience much more enjoyable in the long run.

Should anybody want to chat with me about these ideas, I'm mostly in the WoW-Alliance channels on TS every day...

 

I know some of you were a little confused, if not concerned about how the XP system will work (now I've gotten the all-clear), so here it is in all it's entirety:

 

Info on the horror-series that will rival F.E.A.R...

I haven't spoken about the game in a while, so I might as well talk about where I stand.

As a couple of you know, I will soon (8 weeks) be wrapping up my course in College, and will be looking for a full-time job somewhere. I was going to do a Bachelors Degree in Games Development at Full Sailin Florida, but my parents have said no.

In short, there is probably only one way I will ever get The Tiadein Chronicles developed in precisely the way I want it. So, I will be getting an Artist/Designer position at a certain developer (if I can) after I graduate. Now I won't be telling you which one, you have to guess, and then I'll say whether it's right or not


In any case, it will be 6 months before I earn enough respect with them before I can about my game-idea... plenty of time to work on Chapter 2 by then.

 

Come on guys, guessing the developer isn't that difficult.

 

Let me put it this way, they've both been fairly known in the game industry over the last 10 months (it will be a joint-project between two developers)...