Lets do some campaign

Okay, this is my project, and probably will be until the end. Next year I have to do project to pass the universities. Im study "Art of New Media" so this project must have "artistic vision". Becouse i love making video games I decided to make cool mod, with story for cool game... yes, you know what game
So, a campaign, in mod, for PA ... this will be a challenge. Remember, however, that I will do it alone, and the project must be able to be done by one person.

All paintings here was made on ipad mini in SketchBook when i was in bus, becouse i don't have time now in home to sit and work on this. I want to think about this project, so this sketches are quite nice thing. I will update this everytime i have something new, so this topic is something like "storehouse" of my ideas. And sorry for compresion on images (stupid apple!)

I want to give the player the possibility to decide what is more interesting for him. Main story of galaxy, story of our commander or just fight. Everyone have his own fraction, his own story, his own commander. But we are not the only commander in galaxy, there is many of them and each represents different ideals, other people's attitudes. But do not want to talk about it now, I still thinking about it.

Intro, animations and cutscenes. I want to make them like in homeworld. Good paintings, simple, but expressive animations. Cutscenes in homeworld are slow and mysterious. I want to make it more dynamic, much more dynamic, "more explosion and more guns"
For this who dont know homeworld
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29yv2g-FrS8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX3O8fzUgGI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pMT_Q5dNxM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8noYfwaAO1I

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INTRO



FIRST GAMEPLAY - TUTORIAL PART 1
i want to show how good commander is in battle, and teach player controls, fight and simple controls of units.


CUTSCENE - END OF TUTORIAL PART 1
But commander is not importal, and you can lose very easly. For now no "storyboard", but this will be animation where our commander is killed. But he is repaired after many years - dont know how do this exacly to be a reliable. Maybe broken engi or creazy nanobots from commander arm.

TODO

FIRST GAMEPLAY - TUTORIAL PART 2
Commander is broken, memory core and many other systems are damaged. He dont have shematics for buildings. You walk on old battlefield, all covered by vegetation. You find some simple buildings there and you capture them. (radar, mex, gen, wall and fab). And after that you find some units - engies, small tanks etc. Now you can build this units, and try to use them to get to the Gate (or something)


GALATCIC MAP - TUTORIAL PART 3
Now we have got a map of galaxy. Sometimes player can decide here wher to go now, and sometimes it will depend on what he did in last world.


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p.s. Sorry for english and ugly paintings
p.s.2 neutrino, you didn't replied to my emails!

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So what I'm gathering is you want to try and make an in-depth story line for PA? If so that's awesome and I would definatley try it.

:shock: Awesome!

Stop making me feel lazy, Im doing a simular(ish) degree...
But best of luck for the project, it looks like a lot of work your siging you self up for.

I have a thought - Is a campaign really the best way to train the player? Or should perhaps a separation be made between the "Campaign" (Story mode) and "Challenge Mode" (training).


Secondly, I would really like to see a 'reverse time' button, similar to games like Defense Grid, where the player has the opportunity at any time to reverse and do something over.

This would allow for a much more demanding campaign, especially one where timed events can become a factor. Deliver 100 tanks to the loading area to assault the next area - if you don't, you only get the 84 you managed to build.

1) Your first tutorial is too intense. Too many concepts happen at once.
2) How does the Comm get damaged in battle, but not completely obliterated as a matter of course?
3) Shouldn't a planet blow up?


A good first tutorial should teach the very first basics of camera and unit control. A simple and straight forward mission would work best(short and sweet is a bonus). There's nothing wrong with having a few obstacles and some eye candy along the way, but it's a good idea to introduce the game with only the Commander(since that's like, the Avatar). Everything else merely serves as the backdrop for learning unit control, the lathe, cloaking, and the uber gun.

After having all that fun, a very narrow escape leaves you starting the real campaign.

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Check out how some other RTS games did their first missions. The WC3 Orc Campaign pretty much started with Hero control, building a couple of grunts, and a-moving across the map. The Comm is a lot more complex, certainly having enough features to demand an entire mission all its own!

pretty neat,

Well a while ago I made a thread about what tools we'd need to make our own single player campaigns.
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40970

Actually when I see a game with a huge multiplayer component, I really enjoy the single player campaigns that are actually secretly just giant tutorials. For example in StarCraft 2 where the secret to beating every level was "Build a ton of whatever unit they just unlocked bro" or those few levels in the original Starsiege Tribes.

The one point where I really noticed this was playing one of those "Battlefield: Bad Company" games. You couldn't play skirmish against the AI, so you had to learn how stuff works in the single player campaign. But they never put you in a helicopter. So the only way to learn how to fly one was in the multiplayer smashing into buildings, killing passengers, and generally being an airborne burden to your team.

Great stuff this, but you didn't need to put it in the Backer's Lounge surely?

This is great! I would like to know how much of this Uber can give us.

To intensive, maybe. I can add more com-only fight in point 1. I want make this like in moba, tanks are fighting automaticly, spawning behind the map or in bases, and we can walk forwart and shoot them with support of ally tanks. After that we will get our own tanks, and we can practise units control to destroy small base.
In point 3 we will get more tanks (maybe something other too) and we can attack bigger armies and defences.

First part of tutotiral is to show this basics of unit control, and show the most cool thing in this game - robots, tanks and explosions, to attract players.

Secound tutorial is to start from begining. Now you have more time, no fight at beginning, and you can lern eco, how to build, capture, and reclaim.

I wanted to make this by defeat. Our commander was destroyed, show that if com is dead we lose. But something happened there. Maybe broken engie, who repaired com after many years, or some nanobots.

There is also another way - retrospection. Before com was defeated level will end. And next scene is many years before, when acu is not upgraded, dont have to much schematics. During the game we will have to go through galaxy and at the end of game we will get to this place again. Game will end depending on what we did the whole game. You can die, you can win, you can escape, you can activate cloack, you can use your upgrade on Uber Canon. I know that there will be no upgrades in PA, but its quite simple to add this in campaing (i think...)

Again - are you campaigning (telling a story?) or are you training the player?

Forcing your story to bend around odd training elements generally, imho, takes something away from the campaign. Especially in a storyline where it's like 'Oh btw you're an elite robot intelligence that's been in combat for 5,000 years. Please let me remind you how to MOVE'

I'd personally much much prefer seeing a menu system that goes

TRAINING
-> Basics
-> Advanced Topics
CHALLENGE MAPS
-> Economy
-> Commander warfare
-> Time attack.
-> Tower Defense
CAMPAIGN
-> Chapter 1

.. and so on.

But the Commander isn't really a... MOBA thing. It's not a hero, it doesn't march forth in battle with the tanks, it doesn't lead the charge. It is the KING chess piece, and when the KING is in danger then nothing else matters. The mission fundamentally fails to get that point across(charging an enemy base?), and yet it is the most important lesson in the game.

Things like building a base, developing economy, managing armies, etc. are all very good lessons to have. But those are problems for another tutorial, one where the goals are simple and distractions are minimal(such as being in the middle of nowhere). The first lesson is taking care of the Comm, and knowing what the Comm can do to take care of itself.

Supcom commanders are more like a combination of a king and queen, not just a king.

If its anything like supcom, front line commanders will be a valid useable strategy, so saying that its the wrong way to play isent realy true (Unless you have some information about "PA commanders being completely different from Supcom commanders and cant be used on the front lines" that i dont have).

Supcom Comms were also very heavily lopsided in favor of offense early on. What was it, the power of 20 tanks and the engineering strength of 2 engies? There's not much choice in how to use that.

Anyway.

Behold, a prologue mission. Since the Comm does a little bit of everything, it seems a good idea to introduce all the major mechanics through it. Just follow the numbers, the mission basically follows a "Z" shape.

1) The first part (1-5) teaches camera, moving, and some lathe abilities. How do you get there? I dunno. But an ally is there and he'll tell you what to do. A scary wave of enemy units causes you to fall back on the choke.

2) The second part (6-8) is a very quick "hold the line" scenario (no more than 5 mins). It mostly serves to tie things together and use all your Comm's lathe abilities to support the base. After the ally dies (OMG asteroid!), the final stretch begins.

3) The final stretch (9-18?) teaches the specific Comm abilities in a world gone mad. A few obstacles are set up, and the Comm uses its powers to blast through them. Resources are basically unlimited from the dead ally, but there is no base building or shared control. The mission is clearly doomed, and the only goal is to escape.

- While both metal and energy are introduced, they aren't really used. There's no player built base and no economy, other than the extractors/gens/LLTs he has to build for a few objectives. Resources are provided by learning how to reclaim and from the Comm's resource generator, with the ally giving more as needed. Actual base building is for the next mission.

Note that there are no less than two cataclysmic events in this prologue. It's important to get off to a good start!

I suppose some of the later mssions could also include mission gimmics to teach the player to be flexable with their stratigy and to use diffrent tactics is diffrent situations.

Like a mission in a system that has recently been fought over but no longer has any deposits, relying on what you can reclaim to get metal (Resource management, recycling the battlefield)

like that?

I like your pictures, shows what is going to happen and a nice storyboard.

Like others say, you should, as some (if not the very first) mission, teach how to control and protect the Commander, which upgrades he can have and so forth.

Then go to economy, basebuilding and adjency bonusses.

Probably some teaching about Point Defences and how to reclaim destroyed units to gain a temporary income of mass.

Im so waiting for this, sounds and looks great :>

I like having people think about making a campaign.
I'm thinking about a storyline for a PA commander/faction myself but I have found a few problems ^^

My main problem is why?
The armies are self replicating weapons presumably build by organic life and they have one directive. Kill all the other things (probably the other organic life and their self replicating weapons) and as far as Uber has told us they succeeded with half of that (all the organics are gone only machines left).
How do you motivate any kind of storyline beyond 'go there, kill everything'?
I think the armies in PA are probably quite stupid and all the units have only tactical knowledge about how to win the current battle. The commander is probably the smartest unit overseeing the whole campaign and having enough foresight to not lose the longtime goal: the destruction of all the other self replicating weapons.
so has the commander access to the knowledge of his organic ancestors and also at least some own free will? from what Uber tells us probably not. so motivating a campaign/storyline is really hard here. the galactic war concept is with what we know so far probably the one thing that comes closest to what would actually happen if self replicating machines with the directive to destroy all the others would be the last ones left in the galaxy...

just some thoughts that i came across while thinking about how you could create a cool story. I have a beginning of a story nonetheless but it makes some assumptions about the commander and their freedom of choice that don't seem to be current uber canon

Maybe you can shed some light on your storyline motivation so that i get a fresh view on the topic

Nice project of yours though
Yellow

If there is any story it has to be like TA, all about the tactics and stratigy of the war.

Missions based on cornering and killing the enemy, not "We need to save the children!".


If any campaign was to begin I would think it would be your commander walking off of a production line while the base is under attack, leading the player to either leave the world and it's remaining defenders or to fight on the front line and recapture the rest of the planet before moving on.