Ground Assault: PDJ project proposal, artist seeking programmer et al.

Monday, March 3, 2014 - 23:17

The Interstellar Mining Consortium based on Bathos has detected energy signatures from a planet just outside of the current frontier. Telescopic analysis suggests that this planet is being colonized by sapient aliens and that it is potentially rich in minerals. Tsargis, our team has been hired by the IMC to recon this planet. You are to assess the planet to determine its strategic and commercial value to the IMC and, if necessary, take actions to ensure no further alien colonization will take place there. As you know, the majority of our resources are allocated toward fighting the Carc. You will have to scavenge for supplies on-site.

I've been working on a lot of vehicles lately and trying to imagine how they would fit together in a game, and now that PDJ is a thing, it dawned on me: procedural tank shoot-em-up death labyrinth! (or FTL meets Steel Storm meets Warzone 2100) I'm willing to do all of the 3D assets necessary. Someone else is needed for coding and making it all work.

You (the player, as the mercenary named Tsargis) start out with a loadout screen where you can pick a vehicle chassis and various weapons and accessories. Your company's transport ship lands on the surface of the planet and you begin your mission. My skimmer model, for example, has a pair of forward mounts for sensors or small guns; a pair of medium mounts that can hold booster engines, heavy missiles, mini-rocket pods, or large guns; and a pair of big thrusters that could potentially be swapped out for more advanced ones. With the exception of thruster upgrades, all of these assets already exist, and many more can be made fairly easily. In addition to missiles and direct-fire weapons like these, maybe drones could also be deployed for various purposes.

For how this loadout screen might look, SPAZ demonstrates: http://spacepiratesandzombies.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Modules

Once you have your vehicle set up, you set off across the surface, encountering various battles as you go. Instead of one-on-one, you can fight squads of human infantry and their vehicles in a more shoot-em-up style. It might look something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isZ_YtE6D70

As you defeat enemies and raid caches, you can potentially find salvageable weapons, systems, and ammo, or scrap to be used as currency for upgrades. You can swap out the weapons and systems that you have, and have storage space for maybe one alternate loadout or a few spare parts onboard your vehicle and much more space aboard the transport.

How does this fit into the idea of a PDL? The world need not be vast, but having it procedurally generated (or shuffled from pre-made parts) and procedurally populated with enemies (who can be modular like you) would add variety and make the playthrough different every time. The game could be divided into levels, so there are various mobs throughout the level, with mini-bosses mixed in, and potentially a boss at the end. Retreat is an option, but you'd better have enough scrap for repairs before you try again. You could also go pick on some smaller mobs for a while.

The transport can't fly everywhere with reckless abandon because it might get shot down, but it can land in certain suitable areas after you've cleared out the defenses. Although there is permadeath, these landing sites serve as checkpoints in a sense because you can visit your transport for repairs (using what scrap you have scavenged) and refits. The terrain of the planet is volcanic, with the various fights primarily happening in basins, craters, and calderas connected by canyons. At some point through the "campaign", you could lose access to your transport. This could mean going through an underground area, or having the transport captured or destroyed. The transport could potentially also be used as a fast-travel system to revisit areas you've already cleared.

As I mentioned, I'm willing to make plenty of 3D art for this, but here are some assets that already exist to speed things along:

Player character:
http://opengameart.org/content/modular-alien-skimmer-vehicle
http://opengameart.org/content/fembot
http://opengameart.org/content/evil-cyborg
http://opengameart.org/content/rigged-textured-reptile

Player drones:
http://opengameart.org/content/spider-spy-drone-0
http://opengameart.org/content/sap-1-sapper-bot-mark-1
http://opengameart.org/content/ba-2-blast-all-bot-mark-2
http://opengameart.org/content/sentry-2-sentry-bot-mark-2
http://opengameart.org/content/spiderbot-10

Terrain assets:
http://opengameart.org/content/volcano-lava-floor
http://opengameart.org/content/molten-rock-like-thing
http://opengameart.org/content/3d-rock-tileset
http://opengameart.org/content/environmental-and-props

Mini-bosses:
http://opengameart.org/content/mech
http://opengameart.org/content/mcu-43-gryphon-mech
http://opengameart.org/content/floating-tank
http://opengameart.org/content/unfinished-mech-sketch
http://opengameart.org/content/mobile-turret

Bosses:
http://opengameart.org/content/sci-fi-light-tank
http://opengameart.org/content/thb-5j-thunderbird

Turrets:
http://opengameart.org/content/yet-one-more-turret
http://opengameart.org/content/turret-reviwed
http://opengameart.org/content/turret
http://opengameart.org/content/a-turret-again
http://opengameart.org/content/heavy-turret

Music:
http://opengameart.org/content/attack-music-futuristic-pop
http://opengameart.org/content/planet-man-music-futuristic-hip-hop
http://opengameart.org/content/streetsound-music-futuristic
http://opengameart.org/content/poss-cypherfunk-music-futuristic
http://opengameart.org/content/echelon-music-futuristic
http://opengameart.org/content/bone-remains
http://opengameart.org/content/amiga-was-better
http://opengameart.org/users/clearside
http://opengameart.org/content/fight-them-until-we-cant

GUI:
http://opengameart.org/content/health-and-mana-bars
http://opengameart.org/content/some-hud-elements-icons-and-crosshairs
http://opengameart.org/content/simple-shooter-icons

Misc:
http://opengameart.org/content/starship-corvette
http://opengameart.org/content/space-transport
http://opengameart.org/content/sci-fi-prop-set
http://opengameart.org/content/sci-fi-spaceship-ver-10
http://opengameart.org/content/harvester-spaceship-low-poly

johndh

joined 14 years 2 months ago

Saturday, March 8, 2014 - 06:56

I found someone to do the coding, so this should be good to go. Anyone else who wants to follow the development or contribute can do so here https://github.com/johndh/PDJ

Thanks.

foz

joined 10 years 9 months ago

Monday, March 17, 2014 - 08:25

How did your project go?

William.Thompsonj

joined 11 years 6 months ago

Monday, March 17, 2014 - 10:53

@foz

I'm currious to see the results too.

@johndh

Any news?

Danimal

joined 14 years 5 months ago

Monday, March 17, 2014 - 14:28

I got hooked to Spaz awhile ago, so im also looking at this game development

johndh

joined 14 years 2 months ago

Monday, March 17, 2014 - 20:41

Alas, it had to fall by the wayside. So far, you can drive around a somewhat monotonous landscape, and the turrets turn, but we managed to get neither the procedural, the death, nor the labyrinth parts included. As a side note, working with someone who lives on the opposite side of the planet plays Hell with communication. I'm not sure if my programmer wants to continue the project or not. If not, I think I'll experiment with the Blender Game Engine and see if I can get something working that way.

Danimal

joined 14 years 5 months ago

Tuesday, March 18, 2014 - 05:59

i always recomend unity3d for noob coders, believe me, just having do drag and drop objects and java scripts makes your developer life a lot easier