Development > Design

Storyline, tech tree, general content design

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BTAxis:
This thread is outdated and none of it is applicable to the current development. It's kept here only for archival purposes.

--Winter


Okay. It's a good thing UFO:AI is in development, and it's getting better all the time. But there's not much going on with the actual game design. With "game", I mean here the content; things like the storyline, the tech tree, weapons, equipment, enemies. If this stuff doesn't appear sooner or later, we'll end up with a working game engine, but with nothing more running on that engine than a demo. A few weapons, a few aliens, but not a full-fledged UFO game.

So, what needs to be done?
- Storyline. Who are the aliens? Where do they come from? What sort of technology do they have? Why are they attacking Earth? How can they be defeated?
- Tech tree. Closely related to the storyline, the player has to find out the answers to the questions above through research. So there need to be research topics, requirements, etc.
- Enemies. As far as I know there are two types of aliens (correct me if I'm wrong here, people). I think we need six or seven or so, some of which will appear later in the game. For this we need models.
- Equipment. What exists now is basic human weaponry (rifles, pistols, grenades), some early tachyon/laser weaponry and some early alien weaponry. Those last two weapon types in particular need to be expanded, and don't forget balancing of all the weapons. Also, there should probably some additional stuff like smoke grenades (if and when support for them is added), mines/traps, stun weaponry, deployable turrets, you name it.
- More maps. What we have now is pretty good, but you can never have enough maps.
- Things I haven't thought of in this post. Feel free to brainstorm with me.

So, this needs to be done. I can take a shot at creating a storyline myself, although it's doubtful i'll come up with something original and useful. I'm no modeller, though, so we should start recruiting some.

EDIT by hoherer
This thread has been splitted into several sub-topic/threads. You might want to see there for more recent information:
Design: Storyline
Design: Tech tree
Design: Equipment
Design: UFOs
Design: Aliens

There are more threads though, but these are the main ones.
EDIT end

Hoehrer:
I've written a short prolog some time ago. It had to be removed recently 'cause it made the game crash in the current form, but the text is still available in the old revision:
http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/ufoai/ufoai/trunk/base/ufos/seq_intro.ufo?view=markup&pathrev=381

Nothing fancy, but i think it's a good introduction for the player.

TODOs:
* Make it work again without crashing (using no newlines would be a hassle though IMO)
* extend the text to make it a seamless introduction into the "build your first base and do other stuff" phase of the game.


Werner

BTAxis:
I've written up some tentative stuff:
Aliens
UFOs
Basic storyline

Note that half of this is totally made up, and the other half is implicit. But it's a start.

Hoehrer:
i like it so far... maybe the only thing i'm a bit unsure about is the fact that out organization (whatever it's called right now) has very little equipment/personell given that the whole world is financing it
I think we could do it two ways:

* As i've written in my first draft of the prolog a crisis-ridden world (poor countries) would be a better start ... where there is not enough money there is no euipment/etc.. and the aliens have better luck infiltrating a shaken country/world

* The second possibility would be to make our organization only the speedy task-force which mostly handles the faster ufos and special cases of aline-attacks like terror sites. But local armies/air-forces are fighting the aliens where they _can_ as well. ... which is not often (since they are not flexible enough), but would be cool as a 'news report' on the side.

EDIT: There surely are more possibilities and we could even combine multiple.
Werner

BTAxis:
Anything is possible. What I wrote is pretty damn inconsistent with what's in the UFOpaedia right now, anyway. As long as it works, I suppose.

The way I see it, "X-COM" is an elite organization, so they only recruit the very best soldiers there are. They also only emply brilliant scientist. They'd have to be to be able to crack alien technology in a matter of weeks. So that's how I'd explain the small staff roll.

In a "poor" world, there would not be a basis for an organization like X-COM. In a crisis-ridden world, you don't get universities that churn out scientists. Also, there'd be nothing much to protect from the aliens if the world was in ruin anyway. It would make saving the earth feel a bit pointless, IMO.

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