How would you port Left4Dead gameplay to ArmA without featuring zombies?

[-)rStrangelove 0]

I'm currently replaying L4D in MP, actually forgot how much fun it is.

I love the feeling anything can come from anywhere at you at anytime. You have to stay together, but without getting into the line of fire of anybody. You have to pay attention to each other because some ppl might get pinned down and need help. You also have to pay attention to your environment: don't shoot special cars to trigger alarms, place fuel canisters in paths where enemy movement will be bottlenecked, try to reach higher places to get a better overview.

It's one of the best coop games with a great atmosphere. Could we archieve something like that in an ArmA online coop session?

I was thinking, here are my ideas:

SCENARIO

You are scattered in an out of control environment. Terrorists have overthrown the regular government of Sahrani and triggered a civil war. Members of the government party have fled the capital and american advisors have been ordered to leave the country. You and a few american soldiers have been left behind in the chaos.

GOAL

Like in L4D the goal is to reach a safe escape zone (airport, harbor). These might be overrun by terrorists now but upon contacting your folks with COM towers there extraction teams should arrive within 10mins from a carrier off the coast.

START

We could use random start zones so unlike in L4D players first need to figure out where they are. Start zones are not controlled by terrors, but don't hold any usuable equipment either. You just have a normal rifle and a few mags.

Since not all players will be in the same places they can use markers to figure out where everyone is. So the first taks might be to bring the team together.

LIMITED RESOURCES

Vehicles are needed, also better weapons, ammo, fuel, repairs, medical treatment and finally somewhere to rest (scripted periods of tiredness?).

Problems:

- roads might be safe to travel, but most resources will be in the cities. Cities are full of terros.

- local civilians might know where to find resources but most of them are trapped within the cities. Armed checkpoints hold them in place. If you can free civilians they might have valuable information for you.

- alerted cities might send out waves of armed vehicles to your last known position, so it's best to keep moving. Stay too long in a location might get you surrounded and killed.

RESPAWNS

Like in L4D dead players respawn in a nearby safe zone but they are trapped and need to be freed by other players. This could be accomplished by placing the respawning players into a surrounded city, along with trapped civilians. There are no weapons around. The lost player could provide information about the surrounded forces to the other players coming to his aid, or might try to sneak out of the city undetected. A car might also come in handy to drive someone over. ;)

START KITS (scripted)

Something useful to enforce more coop are different capabilities of player kits, like in BF2. Kits might also make sense in this scenario:

- MEDIC can build medic tent and a fireplace to get some rest (scripted)

- ENGINEER can lay down/detect/disarm mines and find hidden support crates via a sensor beacon.

- MG GUNNER can build ammo crates and sandbags/mounted MGs?

- RECON can reveal enemy vehicles from a distance (without actually seeing them)

- OFFICER can get infos from captured terrorists. These will reveal locations of trapped civilians, enemy checkpoints, ammo caches.

RANDOM START RESOURCES

Something that could encourage coop teamwork would be to give each player a resource at this start location which he cannot really use just on his own. Players will want to discuss what everyone has to offer, what is needed and where:

- weapon crate (better rifles but no ammo)

- ammo crate (can also reammo vehicles)

- a light vehicle for travelling (low on fuel)

- fuel truck

- an armed light vehicle for firesupport (low on ammo)

- repairtruck

RANDOM ENEMIES

Terrors patrol around cities to keep them in their control. Once alerted to player presence they call in vehicles. If players enter the cities single terrorists might be spawned anywhere at anytime. Mines will be placed randomly (won't be triggered by enemy vehicles). Outside the cities checkpoints & mines are spawned near the roads to hinder player vehicle movements. Farms and other remote buildings may be clear or spit out groups of terrors when players get near. There is no safety until the players reach the escape zone.

THE END

Upon clearing the escape zone from terrors a player can trigger an SOS signal at a local COM tower. Like in L4D it takes some minutes until extraction is possible, with waves of enemies coming in until all players are either safely aboard or dead.

What do you guys think? Got other ideas? :)

[fincuan 0]

Sounds like a great plan, and by the look of it entierly doable with scripting. Why leave out the zombies though? We already have such unit as an addon for Arma, even if we can't get the different types as in L4D. For those of us who don't play L4D zombie smacking would provide a nice change from the usual terrorist- or SLA-smacking :)

[HOPEnSPIRIT 10]

This is one thing I havent seen in ArmA is game types from other games being ported, I have just started getting my group back together for ArmA II and we will be taking a look at game types.

[Kyle_K_ski 1]

Wow!

This is an excellent idea!

My hope is that not only does it become a reality for ArmA II, but also for those of us left behind with "just" ol' ArmA.

[-)rStrangelove 0]

Thx Kyle,

actually i was thinking it would be best to develop it in ArmA first. I can't do it on my own though and when looking at the answers i get the feeling the idea isn't very popular. ;) Nvrmind

[5133p39 16]

Wow!

This is an excellent idea!

My hope is that not only does it become a reality for ArmA II, but also for those of us left behind with "just" ol' ArmA.

I second that!

Its geting too silent around ArmA1, and that is scary for people like us who got no HW for ArmA2 (for example, i am traveling very often, so the only option for me is to play on laptop, and i haven't yet seen a laptop which can run ArmA2 in some playable FPS and without frequent CTDs).

// but this is little offtopic

)rStrangelove;1285840']I'm currently replaying L4D in MP' date=' actually forgot how much fun it is....[/quote']

This sounds very good, i am sure such scenario would bring us many hours of fun, and i really hope it won't end only on a paper.

And here are my suggestions:

1. "Rebel militia"

I wouldn't call them terrorists, but i would rather use the term "rebel militia" (it's not that important, but in my opinion it better fits this scenario).

2. Dynamic/random rebel movements

The major cities should be all occupated by the rebels, but the smaller villages should be occupated randomly, and there should be some random (but sensible)

rebels movements between the cities and villages (including the unoccupated) and to all other "points of interest".

3. Mission goals

The primary goal would be of course to make radio connection with allied forces and resulting successful extraction, but there should be more

secondary goals which might help to achieve the primary goal, or on the contrary, might make things more complicated depending on successful

completion of these secondary goals.

For example:

- 1. Get to the old base to search for radio equipment and try to contact your people

Depending on how fast you get there AND on random rebel movements, it could happen the player reaches the base after or during the time it is raided

by the rebels, which results in most of the equipment taken or senselesly destroyed.

At the mission start it should set which of the equipment is working and which is out of order.

Even if the rebels raided the base, they may not have taken or break all of the equipment.

outcome 1: Radio equipment is not working.

Activate goal #2.

outcome 2: Radio contact was made, players received coordinates and time of first extraction.

Random chance that none of the communication, or it's first or second part was overheard by the rebels.

If first part was overheard, then the rebels will send some soldiers to capture the players in the base (but the players will not get any indication

of what is happening, and the number of rebels sent, should depend on the number of players present in the radio base: more players => more rebels sent).

If the second part was overheard, then the location and time of extraction has been compromised and rebels will be waiting there, but again, players

won't get any indication of that fact - they will find out only after they reach the extraction point.

Activate goal #4.

- 2. Make it to the near long-range transmitter to see if it is operational and the electric generator is running

Players wasn't able to make radio contact during goal #1. It doesn't matter if the base was raided or not, players aren't electronic engineers,

so they can't tell if the equipment which was not taken is broken in the inside, or if there is some problem on the receiving side.

On mission start, the transmitter and generator (separately) were randomly set as working, or out of order.

outcome 1: Transimtter is in working condition, but generator was OFF and players switched it ON.

Activate goal #3.

outcome 2: Transimtter is out of order.

Activate goal #5.

- 3. Go back to the base to try the radio equipment again.

Available only after successful completion of goal #2.

outcome 1: Radio equipment works, players received coordinates and time of first extraction.

Random chance that none of the communication, or it's first or second part was overheard by the rebels.

If first part was overheard, then the rebels will send some soldiers to capture the players in the base (but the players will not get any indication

of what is happening, and the number of rebels sent, should depend on the number of players present in the radio base: more players => more rebels sent).

If the second part was overheard, then the location and time of extraction has been compromised and rebels will be waiting there, but again, players

won't get any indication of that fact - they will find out only after they reach the extraction point.

Activate goal #4.

- 4. Make it to the first extraction point

Available only after successful radio contact during goal #1, or goal #3.

possibility 1: Rebels overheard 1st part of the radio communication, and players got in fight with rebels who were sent to capture them.

Players cannot risk the probability that rebels have overheard the whole communication and are waiting at the extraction point.

Players must fight off the rebels, and find new means of communication with the allied forces.

Activate goal #5.

possibility 2: Rebels overheard 2nd part of the radio communication, and players were ambushed by rebels at the extraction point.

The extraction cannot be realized, players must fight their way from the rebels ambush, and find new means of communication with the allied forces.

Activate goal #5.

- 5. Find new means of communication with the allied forces

You have to go into some randomly choosen city (swarming with rebels), to meet with a former DJ of recently closed radio Sahrani,

who was previously known for running his own illegal radio station which later became the now closed radio Sahrani.

It is possible he still keeps his old equipment for sentimental reasons.

He is not expecting you, and you don't know exactly where to find him, but you know how his car looks like and that is how you find him.

It is recommended to enter the city after late night hours between 2 and 3 o'clock when most of the rebels are dead drunk or sleeping.

outcome 1: Players were all killed during the city search.

Mission failed.

outcome 2: Players have made contact with the radio Sahrani DJ.

Activate goal #6.

- 6. Find the DJ's cottage and use the radio equipment there to contact base.

The DJ gave players his keys to his old cottage (again, random location deep in the woods), where he keeps his old radio equipment.

Also there was a random chance that somebody seen players talking to the DJ, and if yes, then the whole rebel militia is looking for them,

although the rebels don't know where the players are headed next, but all Sahrani will be swarming with patrols and search parties.

...i think that is enough for an example.

There could be much more happening during the players movement across the island, like random fighting of rebels with remains of government soldiers,

rebels raiding villages, and other dynamic things and hidden optional goals like you mentioned in "PROBLEMS".

4. Scripted tiredness

Some time ago i was also thinking about implementing this feature and i failed to find plausible solution, but here is what i was thinking about.

First of all, i wouldn't add just the tiredness, but also the thirst. But lets see about the tiredness first.

The tiredness:

I don't think you can create believable effect just by activating the tiredness after X game hours or less (like 20 minutes)

- with minutes it will quickly become annoying, and it will break the gameplay.

- with hours it will happen so scarcely that it won't pays of to implement such thing.

The only rule of activation, which comes to my mind, is to activate the tiredness after reaching some goal or checkpoint,

which basically means that finding some safe place to rest and getting rid of the tiredness will become another goal - not some random action.

So it only makes sense to incorporate this directly into the mission plan.

For example:

after reaching point Alfa (preferably random place) to see if he can find some means of communication there, tell the player

he is exhausted and needs to rest, but he can't stay there because it is not safe (the rebels are not there yet, but soon they may be).

It is up to the player where he go, but when he gets there, the place must satisfy few conditions to be used as a resting place:

- no enemies in the near vicinity (like 750m radius?), and no killing of any possible enemies near the place (it could draw in more enemies)

- not in a village or town (you want to avoid locals for the time being, some may be rebel sympathizers or worse)

- must hold no value for enemies (avoid gas stations, etc., nor the churches where the rebels might come in searching for local pastor to do some religionbased or ethnic "cleansing")

- should be near source of water, or the player has to bring enough water with him (would be nice to make an addon of a canteen, bigger canyster, or bottled water in form of simple

"magazine" slot item, or it can be just scripted).

Without enough water, the game should allow player to rest, but the player will receive some handicap (more on this later).

- must be a defendable place (meaning there has to be some building, even a small shed, or few walls to give some protection. This is not for some kind of realism,

but to make this goal appropriately difficult, otherwise the player could rest practically anywhere which would render this feature pointless).

I think that is enough to make it almost annoying :-)

Negative effects of tiredness:

What happens when you are tired? You have difficulties with keeping your eyes open.

So the same should happen to the players, and it's fairly easy to do.

First it can start as short random blackouts, which should slowly become more frequent, and in the end

the player would be forced to ground like he fallen asleep and his movement disabled.

(imagine this happens when you are driving your precious fragile car)

This condition could last for quite amount of time, during which the player might be spectating other players to ease the boringness of the situation.

Only medic could break the player's sleep.

...but i am not sure about the frozen sleeping part - it could be REALLY annoying.

5. The thirst

Player's thirst could be calculated from the weather conditions and how fast is he moving, or maybe even from how much time he spends on the sun.

All this can be done with one script which would periodically (each second?) make some conditions checks:

- if the player is in a vehicle, then it should skip any other condition checks and increase the thirst just a very tiny little bit, because he isn't moving by himself so much,

and most of the vehicles are covered so we can say he is in a shade (although it can be very hot in a vehicle without aircondition, but lets ignore that).

- if the player is NOT in a shade, increase a "not_in_shade" coefficient.

To find out if the player is in shade, we can check for near buildings, get their bounding box, from the time of day we get the position of the sun, and then we can estimate

if some of the near buildings produces shade over the player position.

- get the player's speed

- finally increase the thirst: _thirst = _thirst + _not_in_shade * _speed;

Of course the script and formula is only an example, it can be more or less complicated.

Drink water to get rid of thirst:

Player could use some action like "Drink", which would decrease the values of WATER_AVAILABLE and PLAYER_THIRST variables.

The variables should be of course local to each of the MP players, and in case of inventory based water canteen addon (a magazine/gear item simulating a water bottle in players

inventory) it would have to be little more complicated, because it would need to track the amount of water in particular containers (a player could pick up more than just one

bottle of water).

This would add another kind-of-a-goal into the game, because players would have to think about where they are going, if they have enough water,

if they can find it there or somewhere else, etc., careful planning would may become essential.

Negative effects of thirst:

Unfortunately, there are not many ways in ArmA to simulate the negative effects of thirst.

First option is to increasingly damage player.

- it wont have a real noticeable effect unless the player is hit, and the resulting combination of damage from thirst and from hit will kill him,

or unless the player is enough damaged so he can only crawl.

- medics, medic tents, and all other possible forms of healing, would remove the thirs effect, but that in fact does make sense.

We can assume a medic could have some water with him, and that it should be possible to find water in medic tents, etc.

So this shouldn't bother us.

So this is not ideal, but it could work - the question is, whether this feature pays up for all the additional scripting needed to implement it.

Another option is to manifest the thirs in form of some visual impairing effects, like occasional blackouts, or blurry vision, etc., but i don't

like that much because it does make even less sense than the first option.

That is all i have for now, and now when i am reading it again, it seems i have strayed from your intended path of mission concept,

but maybe it could serve as a little inspiration anyway.

I like the idea of unit specializations (START KITS) and RANDOM START RESOURCES - i am sure it would encourage the teamwork like you mentioned.

Edited July 7, 2009 by 5133p39

[Deathstruck 375]

....

Hey wait a minute, aren't you that guy who made the excellent Yomie addon ? Get back to work, I want to see them in ArmA 2:D

[Kyle_K_ski 1]

The idea of integrating exhaustion, and even more importantly in my opinion, THIRST, are excellent.

The thing with exhaustion is that it CAN be negated by adrenaline buildup due to feeling the TERROR of being threatened with death.

But thirst?

The effects of dehydration will NOT go away. Many of the firsthand accounts of war that I've read almost always mention how critical water was for those in combat. Yeah, this is an aspect of combat and life that needs to be integrated.

I think that as a "reward" to the players that some kind of air support be made available to them as they struggle to find safe passage from the area. Plus, imagine how cool it would be to see one's odds of survival being very bleak because of hordes of enemies and then "FFFFRRMPPHHH! FFFFFFFFRRRRMMPHHHHH!!!" they're torn to shreds in a dust cloud from air support.

Yup!

[5133p39 16]

Hey wait a minute, aren't you that guy who made the excellent Yomie addon ? Get back to work, I want to see them in ArmA 2:D

Guilty as charged :)

Unfortunately, my crappy laptop can't run ArmA2, so for the time being i am stuck with ArmA1, and i also haven't got much time, so i don't know when i will finish the new version of Yomies (and if i do, then it will be for ArmA1 - that is until the HW performance of ArmA2 is not improved [when i run it on the lowest possible of all settings, i get 10-30 FPS and then it also looks MUCH uglier than ArmA1 where i can get average of 45 FPS in heavy combat]).

...but that is for another discussion (feel free to PM me, or post in the Yomies thread).

[TurokGMT 0]

This is shaping up to be a fine ideas thread - an alternative gamemode with long lasting mission objectives (but not so long that JIP players are left stranded or unsure what to do) would be excellent.

The only real contenders out there are EVO, DOM and Chenarus Life (if anyone actually can figure out what you need to get on their server, dear god that's a closed mod community).

[madrussian 347]

Some good ideas floating around here! I love the idea of starting the player off at a random location. Should also have the extraction occur at a random location as well.

Here are a few more ideas for such a game mode (some may be mentioned already):

1. Respawn System: Players start off with one life each, but may locate and group up with other ai escapees, which players could take over as, in the event that they die. When players are dead and there are no ai escapees to take overs as, the enter spectator mode until the other players find another ai escapee. If all players are killed and no ai backup... game-over.

2. Give it a turn based element, ala the Total War series. I've got some good ideas in this department. A fairly advanced thing to implement, but it would add a great deal, and make hunger a real possibility.

3. For the fatigue (whether from lack of food, lack of water, or injury), just use a tweaked anim config, and adjust the speeds downward appropriately. It wouldn't be too tough to get multiple stages of speed degredation. Also, I just figured out how to eliminate sprinting, which could add an additional option to the mix. IMO, such a system is a necessity, if zombies are to be used. Otherwise, the player can just run circles around the undead all the time and won't really be in any danger as far as bring caught/eaten. If the player can get tired on the other hand, food/water suddenly becomes a huge priority!

4. Based on the chosen scenerio, why not have an ongoing struggle in the background, with small groups of resistance fighters launching hit-and-run attacks. Would add a lot of ambience and unpredictability. Would kind of need a reason though why finding these good guys wouldn't mean rescue.

5. Couple of additonal ways to escape - Someone friendly to you prepositions a hidden boat (like the inflatable motor boat). Or escape by plane (with help).

6. While I like most of the ideas presented in this thread, imo "kits" don't fit this scenerio at all. (Plus I have always hated "kits" to begin with. :p ) Better to randomly start the player off with very little, such as randomly giving them just a handgun, shotgun, or nothing. And very little food/water. Then he has the opportunity to scavange weapons and other items from the fallen! This adds a whole new dynamic!

Edited July 7, 2009 by MadRussian