New type of deathmatch concept

[Guest GBJackson]

Have any of you played a Citadel game in Legend's "Wheel of Time?"

For those of you who have not, let me tell you a little about it:

You and your team start in your citadel (base) where you must place your team's seals and traps and troops to guard them. When all teams are ready, the game begins

Members of each team must infiltrate the enemy and attempt to collect the seals and return them to their citadel. The team to capture all seals wins.

It is rather like Capture the Flag, except you get to modify your base by placing traps and troops.

Now, with the 3D nature of wheel of time, and the bandwidth issues involved, citadel maps are usually relatively small, and there are limits to how many of each trap and troop that can be placed.

But the nature of DOOM, which is by definition fast and furious, with hundreds of monsters and such, it should be possible to have large maps with the potential for placing large quantities of weapons and soldiers. Here's the proposed layout:

Maps will consist of 3 zones:

Zone1 - Team 1's fortress

Zone2 - Team 2's fortress

Zone3 - The battlefield. This area would be relatively open, and would be where the more intense weapons and ammo would spawn. This area would be the killing field between the opposing teams' bases. This area would be off limits during the deployment phase of the game.

Deployment Phase:

When the deathmatch begins, the doors to both bases are sealed with two locked doors, one behind the other. players start inside the bases. they begin with X amount of deployment points. These points would be handled like ammo, decreased whenever something is deployed, and increasing as frags are scored

Every deployable thing (weapon, ammo, powerup, etc.) would have a deployment cost. Getable things would cost the most, as they would immediately aid the player who deploys them, and so should not be able to be used several times in a row. A medpack can be deployed in emergency situations at an astronomical deployment cost, while troops and traps can be placed for only a few deployment points.

Deployment limitation sector types:

A pre-game option would be to determine where people can deploy things:

A - In their own base only
B - In their base and in the arena/battlefield only
C - In their own base, In the arena, AND in the enemy's base.

Imagine returning to base to find an enemy's remote machine gun positioned at the main entrance.

How deployment can be done:

Set all deployable items to use the zero [0] key. selected as toggle. Instead of your hands, you see a translucent version of the thing you are about to deploy. by pressing the fire button, the thing is placed about a chainsaw's range in front of you. Some sort of subroutine like the one that prevents a pain elemental from spawning lost souls inside walls or in the void will have to be applied to make sure that deployed items do not get stuck or are inaccessable to players.

How to win a battle:

Find and destroy the enemy base's main reactor. This reactor will be a shootable thing with a very high number of hitpoints, to make it very hard to destroy. When the reactor is destroyed, a door in your base is opened which is the end level button. Return to base and throw the switch.

How deployed things behave:

Troops and traps are to be "friendly" to teams they are deployed by.

Deployed getable things are usable by anyone.

Some special things:

1 - Main Reactor: What must be destroyed in order to win the match

2 - Radio: Pre-deployed in bases. wapon 1 toggle. Player calls for backup. Current deployment points doubled. Does not respawn. Cannot be deployed.

3 - Battle Tank: Slow moving, heavy armored troop thing. Deployable in battlefield only (except when battlefield deployment is disabled. Fires three rockets like the cyberdemon. Deplyment cost 100. Deployment yield 50. Classificatio trap

4 - Field medic: Revives fallen friendly deployed troops and "burries" fallen enemy troops. By burrying enemy troops, their bodies are removed from the game and cannot be revived. Deployment cost 150. Deployment yield 75. Classification troop

5 - Field engineer: Repairs disabled friendly traps. and removes disabled enemy traps from the game, preventing them from being repaired. Deployment Cost 150. Deployment yield 75. Classification Troop

6 - Base engineer: Repairs disabled friendly power generators. Deploys only in friendly base. Deployment cost 500. Deployment yield 250 Calssification Troop

7 - Spy: Randomly wanders enemy base, adding information to deployer's automap. enemy troops seen by spy will be tracked. This does not include enemy players. Looks like an enemy soldier. Does not attack anyone. Deployment Cost 110. Deployment yield 55.

Monsters:

This is mainly a deathmatch game with AI controlled support for both teams. However, if the map designer desires, Standard DOOM monsters can be placed in the battlefield/arena zone. Monsters respawn. They cannot be deployed by players. Archvile will respawn fallen monsters as always, and will "eat" dead human soldiers, removing them from the game so they cannot be revived.

A third "monster" base may be designed into the map as well, and would add another competative layer to the game: to see who can destroy the hellgate first. The Hellgate would be just like the power generator in human bases, except that if destroyed, monsters will all vaporize, leaving the player teams to battle themselves.


What do you guys think? Would any of you play a deathmatch game like this?

If you would like to help make it happen, Contact me at jaxndoom@aol.com

[Jon]

Sounds really cool! Could be good for low-player dm's too, with as low as 1on1 and handicaps for 2on1 teams, etc.

[DiSTuRBeD]

Cool, but if there's more than two players, the challange of getting back to your own base to hit the button and win would be a little easy (if a player is allready in the base)

[Guest GBJackson]

You could be right about that. Any suggestions as to an alternative?

[Guest GBJackson]

Teppic said:

Sounds really cool! Could be good for low-player dm's too, with as low as 1on1 and handicaps for 2on1 teams, etc.

You know, That's an idea.

In Wheel of time, there were different Citadel maps for different numbers of players. Some are designed for two teams, others three, and some for four. The more teams there were, the fewer total players per team.

However, as was pointed out above, in a 2 player game, a second player waiting back at base to throw the end-match switch as soon as the other player takes out the generator would be the making of an exploit.

So, if the players plan to have more than one player on a side, perhaps team levels could be designed. A team level would require a cooperative effort to end the match. perhaps a switch must be thrown in a different room in the friendly base by one player to open a door which a team mate must go through to throw the end-level switch. This will make sure that both team members must be back at base to score a victory.

[NiGHTMARE]

Or you could make it so that destroying the generator spawns a key or something.

[Guest GBJackson]

That, too... :)

I suppose the system can be altered so that anytime a player is killed the game checks to see if he's carrying the enemy's victory key. If he is, when killed, he drops it and it can be picked up by any player. This way, unless the enemy can repair his generator, he can hold onto the key and must be killed in order for it to be taken again.

If the end match switch is locked and can only be activated with the victory key, in the event that the enemy's generator is repaired, the game will remove the key when the player tries to use it.

Throwing the switch will cause the game to check if the opponant's generator is present. If it's disabled, the match ends. If it has been repaired, the key is removed from player's inventory, and the message "The enemy has repaired their generator. It must be disabled again" could be posted.

Thoughts?

[NiGHTMARE]

Sounds good :) What with this, Smash DM and Skull Tag, it seems that Doom is finally getting some proper mods rather than just megawads, PCs and TCs.

[Guest GBJackson]

Well, it won't be a mod until a coder vollunteers to see just what can be done to the DOOM sources to make it happen. Any takers?