Changing the focus

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Chicago

After a period of debate, we've decided to change the focus of the UETF Chronicles. Instead of concentrating wholly on the story of the UETF and the Wrath, we are opening up the UETF universe to a whole new set of stories and campaigns that will be told as seperate chapters but not in any chronological order. The focus of the gameplay will remain the same, but the possible expanse of campaigns will be greatly enlarged.

Chapters may include battling rogue UEM elements or even a return back to the planet HAVEN. We feel that this will enhance the replayability of the UETF Chronicles and allow players to have a new experience every time they log on.

To achieve this end, we are focusing less on custom maps and instead on tools that will allow our mod team and third party groups to generate campaigns with ease. First, we will provide several gametypes that can be applied to existing UT2004 maps (i.e. Generator Defense on CTF maps, Attrition on DOM maps). Each map will be the setting of a mission. Users can customize the briefing, the difficulty and the type of enemies that will appear on a given mission. Once a mission is created, it can be added to a campaign, which consists of several missions strung together. We may even add support for branching campaigns based on the success or failure of a mission.

So reload your weapons and prepare for a whole new UETF universe. We hope you're as excited as we are to begin exploring the new possibilities it holds. We'd also like to hear your feedback-is this good, bad, interesting? Are you interested in creating your own campaigns? What tools would you as a player like to see? Let us know!

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 17

I like this idea. It offers much more diversity in battles if more than just the Wrath are possible enemies to fight during missions.

Perhaps some missions could feature an alliance between certain enemies (ie, Wrath and Havians join forces to achieve a certain goal) where UETF forces need to overcome all enemies involved to complete objectives.

As for custom maps. A few would be neat to play on, maybe featuring key battles for the UETF or something. But aside from those few, being able to play on any 2k4 map would indeed offer more replayability since there are loads of custom maps already available with more showing up all the time.

Focusing less on including many custom maps also means there is more time available for working on the coding aspects and such and ironing things out.

I'd certainly be interested in being able to create my own campaigns, as that would offer an excellent level of customizability and replayability. What sort of features would the campaign editor feature? Obviously chaining maps together for the campaign, but what about more specific features like customizable mission parameters? That would probably take a lot of work, but it would be interesting to be able to play all kinds of missions on any given map or even combine a couple mission types into one, such as a combination of Generator Defense and securing a certain area (by having enough troops in one area for a certain amount of time, etc).

Apart from that, what about an in-game tweaker for enemies and weapons where you tweak things like fire rate and damage for weapons and hit points and weapon types for enemies? That would take replayability to an even higher level and offer all kinds of options for enemies.

Thoughts?

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Chicago

Perhaps some missions could feature an alliance between certain enemies (ie, Wrath and Havians join forces to achieve a certain goal) where UETF forces need to overcome all enemies involved to complete objectives.

This would be easy to accomplish (You would be able to select from the entire set of enemies, so any enemies that we've created could be used in a mission).

I'd certainly be interested in being able to create my own campaigns, as that would offer an excellent level of customizability and replayability. What sort of features would the campaign editor feature?
Obviously chaining maps together for the campaign, but what about more specific features like customizable mission parameters? That would probably take a lot of work, but it would be interesting to be able to play all kinds of missions on any given map or even combine a couple mission types into one, such as a combination of Generator Defense and securing a certain area (by having enough troops in one area for a certain amount of time, etc).

Right now we're planning to allow you to choose allies, enemies, mission briefings, difficulty level and chaining. It may be possible to add flexible objectives but for now we're just allowing missions on the provided gametypes.

Apart from that, what about an in-game tweaker for enemies and weapons where you tweak things like fire rate and damage for weapons and hit points and weapon types for enemies? That would take replayability to an even higher level and offer all kinds of options for enemies.

Not planning any tweaks for enemies as yet-hopefully the range of enemies will give users enough content to create a variety of missions. Hopefully we can add support for customized weapons though-we've been brainstorming a couple ways this could be done, but it won't be a feature in the next release yet.

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 17

Any news on these new features yet?

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Chicago

Still working on them. Graduation, new job + moving has really used up most of my time recently but hopefully I'll get some good work time in during the next couple months. The other reason that there's been a standstill on UETF news is I'm currently developing another experience in the UETF universe. I'm keeping it under wraps right now, but it's not using any unreal technology but uses most of the elements from the current UETF story. We're hoping to show a beta version of this at the futureplay conference in October (www.futureplay.org).

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Chicago

So based on a couple new events (no longer qualifying for the student category at futureplay, and the IGF opening up a mod category for their event) I'm back to crunching on the new version of Chronicles.

On top of the changes already announced in the above post, we're working a system expand marine NPC development. Depending on how you assign your marines, they will develop into different kinds of soldiers.

We are also doing a pretty big overhaul of the class system. For the first time since FEBA, we will officially be completely re-defining and re-naming the classes. They will now be primarily be defined by their optimum weapon range, as follows:

Fade - Long Range (Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Laser Rifle)

Ranger (formerly Commando) - Medium Range (Assault Rifle, Gyrojet Gun, TAG cannon)

Grunt (formerly Engineer) - Close Range (SAW(formerly AST), flechette rifle and echo controller).

Weapons are also being re-done to match the changes. The following changes are planned:

AST - conversion to SAW. It will no longer be deployable in turret form (turrets will probably return as deployables).

Flechette Rifle - Number of flechettes per shot increased. Spread increased. DMG lowered.

ECHO rifle - no longer functions as energy weapon. Primary fire will deploy an echo. Secondary fire will use ammo to repair any nearby echos. Multiple echos(number yet to be determined) may be deployed.

ECHOs adjusted - less hit points, and much shorter range on plasma cannon (close to melee range).

The upgrade trees are also being re-worked. Hopefully we can get in multiple trees for each weapon.

Finally-specials will be changed as well. Each class will only have 1 activatable special. However, you will be able to select which special to take. We're also creating new specials to match the new classes. Explicit special combos will be removed.

The goals of these changes are primarily to 1) refine the teamwork aspects: giving each class has a more clearly defined role with a more unified weapon set, and 2) to allow for more replayability by providing a larger range of player options. This is a major change in the gameplay of UETF but we are confident it will provide you with a better gaming experience.