I want to create a multiplayer game in which the player''s tactic is the most important thing to ''winning''. I''m tired of playing FPS where your tactic has very LITTLE influence and your ability to aim precicely and quickly is all that matters. Likewise, I''m tired of RTS in which your ability to micromanage and multitask is more important than your strategy. If you can''t tell, I''m not very good at aiming and I''m not any better at multitasking. I can do higher-level micromanagement and I''m awesome at battle tactics, but those don''t count for much in most games. I need assistance coming up with ideas of how to make this game. How could I make tactics important? I''ve come up with a few ideas, but I find it would be extremely hard to implement them well. I need other people''s ideas on what kind of game could be made such that tactics are important. I''d prefer that the game be 3d, but as I currently can''t find much information on ''indoor'' engines (such as portal or bsp), it would have to be an outdoor game, heightmap-style (though I can generate bezier patches from heightmaps so it wouldnt look too polygonal. Using the bezier patches helps generate different levels of detail at different distances also). I''ve intentionally left the ''requirements'' quite broad so that somebody wont get stuck into my point of view and look for a solution from there. I''ve tried that and it didn''t work so well =-) "I believe; therefore, it is." -True Perception

Well, I could make a plug here for all the Tom Clancy games Swat3 is good too. And the original Hidden and Dangerous was clunky, but you had to make lots of correct tactical choices. Operation Flashpoint as well is excellent.

So I think these games have already been made. I think the trick to tactical considerations has really only been in the "terrorist" scenarios. And frankly, that''s boring. I''m tired of the, "you are part of the most elite special forces/counter terrorist organization known to mankind...and your mission is to take out....blah blah blah". The game that''s come closest to a tactical warfare simulator is Operation Flashpoint. I think that''s where the untapped potential of gaming is.

First there was deathmatching, then there was team based game play. Then there was team based kill the terrorists. But that''s all there is. Other than Flashpoint (and to a degree Ghost REcon), no game really covers a non-special forces type of warfare. That''s what I really want to see. Did you play Medal of Honor? The beach scene was amazing solely because of the illusion that there were so many other people playing and trying to make the same tactical choices. I''d really like to see a warfare tactical game that DOESN''T showcase an elite 4-6man team infiltrating behind enemy lines. A squad can be 6-10 men, but it can be a part of a larger group...and still have many tactical considerations. I hope someone makes a game like this soon.

Well, while I appreciate your reasons for keeping things 'broad', I think you need to decide what sort of game you are planning to create. RTS? FPS? WYCTSTGLSOOTCRS*? Or perhaps a battlezonesque merging of the genres?

*Whatever You Call Those Squad Tactics Games Like Spec Ops Or Rainbow Six


[edited by - Sandman on April 9, 2002 8:19:32 AM]

I think I want it to be an FPS, but thats only because that is where I feel it could best be made. I want it to be multiplayer, and really, it would be nice if I could make it massively multiplayer with huge worlds randomly generated (hieghtmaps make for easy world generation, could even use simple tiles for it =-). IMHO, Rainbow Six was not a good game at all. Well, the game might have been ok, but I didnt like spending hours planning and then playing for 5 minutes in multiplayer. I want a realtime tactical game. There should be no separate planning stage. Also, I would like to implement some kind of rank system, where at first each player controls only one unit, and as you advance in rank you gain the ability to tell other people what to do so that you can coordinate attacks. The higher the rank, the larger number of troops one can command (each troop being controlled by another human player), and with more troops, larger areas can be taken. I''m thinking that a large-scale combat simulator would be exactly what I need. I would implement things like treaties, non-aggression pacts, etc into the game, but the game itself wouldn''t enforce them in any way, so it could be just like real life where you can break a treaty whenever you feel like it, even tho often it wouldnt be a very smart move =-)
I guess my real problem is with gameplay details. I know basically what I want, but anytime I refine the gameplay to details I get carried away and then dissapointed because I don''t think I could implement it. For example, I think it would almost be neccessary to allow the player to press up against a wall in hopes of not being seen. Not just moving up against it but ''laying'' against it. In order to do that I would have to implement a realtime dynamic skeletal system, which some games have done but so far only when the character dies and flops around, rolling down stairs for example. If the big companies can''t do it, does that mean its not computationally feasable, or is there some other reason they didnt do it? I think my whole animation system would be based of bones, ''joint forces'', strength of the joint, and strength of the bone. I want to make it as realistic as possible, but I see that no other games come close to what I want (I havent played Operation Flashpoint) and I wonder why. Also, there is the problem of interface. I could make it simple like many games where you can move, look, use, and shoot, but I dont think that would be enough for a combat simulator since there is a lot more you can do irl than that.


"I believe; therefore, it is." -True Perception
"The Requested Information Is Unknown Or Classified" -Anonymous

I just played the Operation Flashpoint demo, and I didn''t even get to the game before I COULDN''T STAND it anymore. The animations are choppy, the graphics engine doesnt properly handle a taskbar set to autohide so it flickers, and during the ''briefing'' or whatever it is, the graphics were VERY choppy. I have a good graphics card and have NEVER had a game run choppy, so either the engine is far more advanced than any other out there, or the engine is extremely unoptimized and has many bugs. Either way, I''ll never know if its anything like what I had in mind.


"I believe; therefore, it is." -True Perception
"The Requested Information Is Unknown Or Classified" -Anonymous

Too bad you couldn''t get Operation Flashpoint to run well on your system. When I had a WinMe system, it ran great, when I switched it to Win2000, I had the exact same problems you did. And I have a AthlonXP 1600, with a Radeon8500 and 384MB of DDR DRAM, so I know it''s got to do something with W2K (and yup, I put Service pack 2, tried all the drivers for the 8500, and have OpFlash 1.4).

It''s a really good game developed by ex-Czech soldiers, so the feel for the game is very good. What I really loved about OpFlash was the ability to have about 40 people fighting it out in a battle. In one mission, there are two squads of American solders (about 16men) going up against about a platoon of Russian soldiers in a tiny hamlet (all in all about 30-40 Russian soldiers). It was like being in a much larger battle, but unlike MOH''s scripted scenes in which the NPC''s don''t really contribute too much to the fighting, in OpFlash, everyone does something.

You''re right though, the models in OpFlash sucked and the graphics level looks about as good as something made in 1999 (although the terrain isn''t too bad), but the gameplay is about the best there is for a thinking man''s shooter. The only reason I sort of liked Ghost Recon better was that in the latter parts of OpFlash, you play in vehicles....which just isn''t my thing. I loved the infantry fights, but I hated the vehicle missions. The other nice thing about both GR and OpFlash is the distance at which battles took place. Unlike corridor fights that take place at virtually point blank range, I took out quite a few Russian soldiers at about 150m with an M16.

Tactics in real life come in two categories: Those that increase your chances of hitting the enemy, and those that decrease the chance of your enemy hitting you.

Increase the value of hitting and you increase the value of good tactics. The typical way of doing this is to decrease the human-tank-like damage soaking abilities of typical games. Compare, for example, Firearms against Team Fortress Classic. One head shot in either game takes out the enemy. One shot to the chest with a .50 takes out anybody but the most heavily armored soldier in Firearms. Several sniper shots are necessary to kill a Heavy Weapons Guy if none hit in the head in TFC. A typical M16 or g36e takes 10 or so shots at random, or about 3 to the head(most players have a helmet). A typical Soldier takes 4 rockets to kill in TFC. To heal in Firearms, one needs to find a medic, and they can only heal you 25% per life. Once you''ve been healed, you can''t be healed again.(AFAICT) If you take more than 10% damage at a time, you start to bleed, and you need bandages to stop this, which can get rare if you''ve taken several hits, and they also take time to apply. In TFC, healing comes automatically with ammo reloading.

After about the third respawn, a Firearms player learns to take cover, hug the walls to avoid being seen as he''s approaching, ambush players by hiding behind doors and such(NOT camping!). Only after playing firearms did I apply these concepts to TFC.

Tactics involving multiple people are harder to encourage, but the same idea should work on an individual level.

Flarelocke: I agree and I''m glad somebody thinks the same way I do. I was thinking to make it more like Day of Defeat thoough, where three shots with any rifle will kill you, maybe 4-5 with a pistol if all the shots hit in the foot. Another thing I was thinking of doing would be to make something simmilar to an ''aimbot'' built-in, so aiming itself isnt as important as pointing the gun in the general direction of the enemy. I would make it slowly move your aim toward the enemy closes to the crosshair, so that perfect aim is good, but you can manage without it as long as you can aim in the direction of the enemy you want to hit. I think I might also make the HUD have no information about health or armor (or possibly a crude representation that isnt always 100% accurate, such as a life bar that has 5 segments, but a bar can represent anywhere from 15% health to 25%, chosen randomly so that on a hit of 20 damage, you might lose 1 bar, but you might not because it could count for 15 health or maybe it counts for 25).

I''ve also thought about making kevlar armor that becomes less and less effective as it ''breaks''. For example, at 100% armor, the armor would absorb 80% of the damage and you take only 10% of the damage. 10% would be ''absorbed''. At 50% armor, 20% damage goes to armor, 3% damage is absorbed, and the rest (77%) goes to your health.

I might make headshots count the same as any shot, and make all shots have a highly random damage range to ''simulate'' hitting a vital organ or the bullet bouncing around inside, etc. Some weapons would puncture and come out the other side, but they can still hit a something important so they have a good random range. Others don''t have enough force to exit and instead bounce inside the victim and cause much more internal damage. Again, a good reason for a large random range.


"I believe; therefore, it is." -True Perception
"The Requested Information Is Unknown Or Classified" -Anonymous

What about this, a fps/strategy game (one shot to the head kills, basically like rainbow 6) think about it, each person has a job, there are builders/infantry, enginers, heavy weapons people, and people who can drive vehicles/airplanes. You start with nothing, but money and resources, the money and resources keep coming over time so there is no need to go out and gather resources. Engineers pick where buildings will be built such as radar towers,(once a radar tower is up everybody within its radius has a radar, but it cant pick up people, vehicles, or planes under stealth) the builders construct it the more people working on it the faster its up. Also build things like machine shops, runways, and factories to make better weapons, parachutes, etc..

Heavy weapons people will be able to fire surface to air missles, rockets, mortars, etc.. vehicle people can drive tanks, fly planes, drive jeeps, ect.. builders/infantry will be givin weapons depending on what factories the engineers built, they can ride in jeeps, trucks, and fire the weapons mounted on them, they can ride in planes, fire mounted guns on it parachute out ect. The surface to air missles can shoot down the planes.

So if one team builds a base with not many surface to air missle launch pads, the other team can send like 10 planes over with paratroops in them and keep dropping troops in their base. Everybody is a person a huge multiplayer first person strategy game. Tell me what you think would work and wouldnt, I know games like ww2 online didnt work to well but this wouldnt be that big about the size of a strategy game map.