[CONCEPT ART] New Gametype - Invasion

[Heir-Apparent]

Hi guys, I'm Nathe or some of you may remember me as Nathem. Always on the VCTF and Warfare Official Epic servers, the Aussie guy with 300 ping and even with this slight annoyance you still all wanted me on your team because I'm awesome.

Anyway, I should firstly say before introducing my idea for a new gametype, I don't want to mislead you guys as to giving this thread the prefix of Concept Art.
I have a clear visual idea but I can't draw, but I am paying my girlfriend with massages to draw ideas for me, she is a freak artist, and I will post them asap.


Introducing Invasion.


So the idea came about after surfing the UT4 Vehicle discussions and one particular thread by the man himself, Gooba.

So in short Gooba has created a benchmark for all vehicles that UT4 should follow. His work is nothing short of amazing.
His vehicle, called the 'Venom' got me thinking of what I could do with it.

Go have a quick look here then come back -> https://forums.unrealtournament.com/...on-New-Vehicle


So, Invasion.

I imagine myself being able to climb insane cliffs with this thing. Climb up 100 meters, grappled to the edge and looking out across as far as I can see and being able to zoom in as far as I wish.
So you may be getting the idea so far with my idea being named Invasion and being able to sit in this wicked vehicle on a cliff face.

I would be able to see the incoming armies.

You read correct, I said armies.

Ok, as far as the rest of the details go, I'm hoping that I can get more feedback and opinion on because there are multiple ways this could work but I am going with what I believe would be the most enjoyable.


My thinking is there would only be 1 team, everyone is on the same team.

"huh? who do we fight?"

Well, the AI that the boys at Epic have created is second to none.

Your team would be holding a fortress, I will get my girlfriend to draw a snapshot, and there would be waves of AI, they obviously come in easy waves at first and by the end of it, they come in vehicles and bigger guns and lots of them, it would be chaos, insanity and well, an Invasion.




Soooo what's the point?

Time.
Post the best time. A quick game is always a good game. But, in this case, obviously the more skilled the team, the higher the time posted.

This creates a bar to be set and loads of potential for competition.

So we would want to have the waves coming in decent after about 5 minutes. It will obviously require a lot of testing to get a good rhythm and balance for the strength of each wave and this is where imagination kicks in.

Simplicity is key as to how the game ends.
Bots cannot cross a boundary, that's it.
1 bot crosses the line, End Time.

I wish I could draw what's in my head, give me a couple of days and we'll post something, but as I mentioned up the top regarding Gooba's Venom, I imagine myself grappled to the cliff face, 100m up and being able to see the Invasion on the horizon approaching.

From here there are very simple rules coupled with a beautiful giant open landscape with disaster and certain death coming, but an awesome fortress covered in crazy vehicles, turrets, artillery, snipers you name you're gonna need it type of stuff.
Makes for loads of fun, competition, points, strategy and eventual chaos.
Also I think having no end will create a hunger to see how chaotic it can become.
AI waves with vehicles themselves, possible random redeemers that need shooting down, eventual AI flying vehicles, the list is endless as to how the waves can be structured and they should be tailored to each map or as this gametype requires, an environment.

The game ends, say, 16 minutes is a decent time and 30 is really good, 45 is pro and an hour is a team of the worlds elite.
You got sooo many stats, headshots, eagle eyes, monster kills, and end game the team has time to review, discuss tactics while loading next map.

There are infinite imaginable worlds and scenes because it's simple, a fortress in any environment.
Open spaces creates fun for snipers, pockets of trees or other geo features create different routes and cover for the AI.

Not only is any scene/world imaginable possible but also any type of invasion.
Different maps are different worlds, different species use different vehicles, it's only limited by imagination.
I think of the Unreal universe and I'm running with the vibe that Gooba's Venom has given me.
I wanna be able to climb a cliff with it and shoot sniper laser from it at AI a mile away, eventually I will have to climb down because the waves are stronger and the team has to pull together, holding the line.

With the complexity of AI these days, they will more than suffice in being a fun and challenging enemy.

OR

Maybe it could be teams, Invaders vs Protectors and then swap turns after Invaders cross.
In this case, Invaders would still need help from waves of bots.

The point is you wanna have an awesome fortress that is capable of receiving and giving lots of damage to stop massive waves.
That's where the fun is at, monster kills and god likes.

Do the players respawn?

I would say definitely, yes. But spawn from a base further back from the line so it takes a healthy 10 seconds to get back at your post or whatever your favorite cannon/spot is.




So if you have read this far I hope you like it, it sounds fun in my head.
As I said, I will get some drawings up when we can and see if I can get the words in the form of an image.

In terms of the rules and potential, it's of course all open to being dissected and analysed. It should be.

Thank you.

[SpaceOracle]

1) Way too much faffing about, get to the point like me

2) Invasion is a thing in UT2k4, and it's bound to come back as a standard mode pending overhaul because to be honest it was pretty boring even with loads of mutators and mods.

[Handepsilon]

OR

Maybe it could be teams, Invaders vs Protectors and then swap turns after Invaders cross.
In this case, Invaders would still need help from waves of bots.

Sounds like Assault...

[Hunterman]

1) Way too much faffing about, get to the point like me

2) Invasion is a thing in UT2k4, and it's bound to come back as a standard mode pending overhaul because to be honest it was pretty boring even with loads of mutators and mods.

Invasion was pretty fun if you know how to do it right with the Waves, maybe make it so that it's easier for non-coders to make their own monsters, like a template from the default ones and branch off into their own, maybe do the wave system like GOW3 Horde in the sense that every game has a different type of waves like one game has more ranged beasts than the other game that has melee hax.

[Heir-Apparent]

How embarrassing, I honestly thought I was being original lol
I never played UT2k4 too much, it just didn't feel right so I kept playing 99 then jumped over to UT3.



So after watching a couple of youtube vids, checking out UT2k4 Invasion, that is not at all what I am thinking of.

The fortresses I am thinking is nothing like what I just saw.

I imagine massive open spaces, as I described, I wanna zoom in a mile.

And the basic concept for a fortress would be like the gap the soldiers hold in the movie 300 and Helms Deep in LOTR.
So it creates a bottle neck for the waves and they are coming from 1 direction, massive waves, so as the later waves get bigger, stronger and more complex the team has to pull together and combine their fire power rather than comfortably picking of the first wave with snipes from a mile away.

Everything is in an outside environment, I would only have the spawn grounds maybe have an internal base with weapons/ammo/health.

Obviously if the AI have straight lines and predictable paths it will become stale, but I'm sure there can be complexity to the point where the AI and following waves can make adjustments based on how the team is structured.

ie if everyone is sniping the waves send appropriate counter snipers or if everyone is sitting in an artillery vehicle the AI sends air strikes

Also the fact that it's impossible to finish and there is no end would create a hunger to improve on times for each map.

[Heir-Apparent]

Also something else to give it some spice.

Have scenes in the distance of Alien ships falling from the sky, dropping off the hordes.

[SpaceOracle]

So Invasion with ONS maps?

[Heir-Apparent]

Sort of, I imagine some maps where the fortress would be backed up against a wall, others where the 'line' would be narrow and others where the 'line' could be over a wider space.
Another point should be that we are defending a city or some kind of epic futuristic suburbia behind us, depends on the level creator and what they envision as well.
But like I said, if we could replicate the epic scenes in the most popular epic movies, such as the Helms Deep war scene, within an Unreal universe, with super futuristic and creative weapons that are possible with the Unreal Engine and Unreal universe aliens/species invading, then that would make for some fun game play imo.

[Heir-Apparent]

And it's impossible to win.

An hour should be almost impossible, with no glitches either.
So the AI gotta be insane by the end of it and thousands of them.

[Hunterman]

Yeaaaa nope, sorry but I kinda like my Ut2k4 Invasion and all that enemies will **** up your FPS, Just keep it like UT2004.

If you want to make it like a defend something just do it like this.

[Heir-Apparent]

well that looks extremely boring compared to what I envision.

This is waaay too industrial, an invasion should be a freaking actual invasion, not weird creatures running into a bad indoors base.

It's gotta be huge and outdoors, we gotta defend the world, we defending a city at least or something jeez.

FPS shouldn't be an issue with PC's being crazy powerful these days. Even with the numbers I'm thinking.

I want something real, an actual alien invasion, how would future humans defend a city when faced with incoming waves of thousands/endless aliens, progressively waves getting more hardcore and intense.
This is what I want.

[Wail]

Thousands of independent enemy AIs is probably unrealistic unless most of them are just faked backdrop that's not doing anything important. PCs aren't that powerful, and AI isn't free.

You have a cool vision but it's way ahead of where this game is right now. The name of the game is working up in small steps.

[RPGWiZ4RD]

I've played Invasion in UT3 on WAR-Torlan (and some DM maps), was quite fun. :P

It was more fun on the big open map warfare Torlan map compared to the small DM maps. Especially when you have bunch of flying creatures appearing out of the blue and you grab raptor.

Ideally I can see maps like Torlan working best for Invasion or better yet, you'd have a map shaped roughly like a large hill in the middle of the map with a base on the top of it with bunch of vehicles and some towers, turrets etc.

Then you'd place important vehicles further away from the base so you're forced to go elsewhere if you want to grab them.

[Heir-Apparent]

Maps wouldn't even have to be as big as Torlan but in terms of being an open world, yes.

Having the backdrops as alien ships falling from the sky in the horizon would work too.

The waves only need to be concentrated at the 'gate' of the city, for example.

Surely our FPS could handle a final wave of 100 and maybe 20 vehicles? That combined with the backdrop evolving as time passes could make an illusion that it's thousands and tens of thousands.

[Hunterman]

Maps wouldn't even have to be as big as Torlan but in terms of being an open world, yes.

Having the backdrops as alien ships falling from the sky in the horizon would work too.

The waves only need to be concentrated at the 'gate' of the city, for example.

Surely our FPS could handle a final wave of 100 and maybe 20 vehicles? That combined with the backdrop evolving as time passes could make an illusion that it's thousands and tens of thousands.

Nope most low-end PCs would Croak at that amount, you have vision but you lack actual reasoning that we can do all of this.

Regular Invasion and Defense invasion is as good as you can come by.