this mod idea

[Owen]

The Cleaners

I am a cleaner it’s what I do. There’s only one way to clean some things, and the best way I know for those kinds is through killing. If you were to ask me if I was happy with my line of work I wouldn’t be able to answer you, because I’m not even sure if I’m doing it right.

The Cleaners is a new mod taking advantage of the most talked about gaming engine available at this time, “Source”.
The mod itself revolves around the character that everybody calls Shadow, which you gain the ability to play in the Single Player campaigns.
The campaigns are what Shadow would call work, but for the sake of it, they are just jobs in which you will run, shoot, maim, stab, and poison your way through a load of mean old syndicate men who had it coming.
The maps will feature beautifully a sculpted dark and dreary neopunkistic future where most things will go unnoticed for the right price.
Weapons are one of the key factors of the mod. But sometimes the fact that there is such a wide variety will just open your eyes to what you’re best at. Be it spray and pray with a fast ROF gun, or taking people out from behind with steel wire, a lot of the weapons will require a certain amount of skill in order to use them.
With the ability to handle a weapon like a god, you will also need to move well. The mod will use various combos in order to perform special actions. Such things as diving, rolling, crawling, sneaking, shimmying, abseiling, climbing, and much more. You will have to use all the movement abilities in any mission, because at the end of the day there’s 2 ways to go about it, like a silent killer, or all out and murder everything in sight.
Along with the fact that the mod will feature a vast array of weapons and items, there will also be several controllable vehicles that can be used to complete a job. From cars to mechs, these vehicles will all be easy to control, and will all have some kind of useable weapon, even if it’s driving into people.
At times between all the killing and such, you will have to play Shadow when not working, in his home and around his local area. Completing secondary missions like this will open your eyes to the world in which the mod is based, and in turn a look at what a real hit man lives like.
Along with the single player campaign, there will also be a vast range of different multiplayer modes of play. Along with the standard DM and TDM, there will also be RP (Role Play) and Co Op.
The Role Play will feature all the abilities of the mod itself, but will be a sort of sub mod, in which you will have to go about everyday life in city sized maps with 63 other players in order to proceed in life. Be it money, family, or even just to be a bad ass.
The Co Op feature will be just that, co-operative play. You will be sent on missions with a team of up to 8 people where you have to work together to kill a heavily guarded target in the dreary and futuristic world of “The cleaners”.


Well... what do you all think?

[That Annoying Kid]

kinda like hitman on source?

It sure sounds like it would be fun to play, start working on it!  :lol:

I would be down for a game where stealth is one of the primary options, and since you stated you can either go stealth or balls to the wall I guess you could just be the best of both worlds and run and gun when necessary otherwise just operate out of shadows

[Owen]

i'd say hitman on source... but it's really like a true hybrid of that and SC2. I've been looking for such a game where i can play both ideas of stealth and brutality, but came up null. So this is the alternative. As of yet i've had no offers with help, but it's early days.

[Geminosity]

Wellll... I'd rename your main character for a start XD

It's better to have a char with just their real name (leon) or if you're going for that more comic feel I guess shadow would be ok but I'd go for something more interesting/different (Jack 'the cadillac' Tenrec... fabby stuff ^^ ).

Outside of being picky I'd say it sounds a little ambitious especially as the description is a bit vague.  You need some mechanics worked out like exactly how do players improve their RPG chars?  Is the city where you do the lil rpg skits like a lobby/hub where all the missions start from and players meet up?  How does the game handle 8 people going on a mission when there's 64 people on the map?  Does it put the 8 on their own listen server or are we relying on there being other dedicated servers here?  How will you balance out the fact that everyone will fight over any mechs you put in? ^~

Before you need a team you really need a solid design first.  It helps stave off the infamous 'feature creep' (where you just keep adding new ideas and end up never finishing the silly thing) and helps show potential team members not only exactly what you're after but that you've seriously thought it through and in great detail =3

Also as for boasting things like 'beautifully sculpted' or whatever I suggest you make sure you get the models made first.  Flowery language and hype is nice and all but it's a bit like pointing a gun at your foot and pulling the trigger, hoping the chamber is empty =P

[Owen]

hmm... pesky you are gem.

The name as it may seem is a place holder, i've just put Shadow for the moment. At some point he'll probably get a name with a code number

Within the RPG mode, it's not about improving your char, because you can't really. Improvement is based upon how you feel you're improving your skills. It's not about points or abilities, it's about the ability to walk around in a mod with guns, and RP out life as say i don't know, an illegal arms dealer. There are no set missions in RPG, just a big city with purchacable buildings and businesses, as you earn money doing either a job in a building, or through the self employment route (Tailors would make custom models, Photographers would take photos). When you get enough money, you can buy items and weapons to make life easier. For protection, or just because they're good to have around. Things like cell phones enable global map comms, other than just being able to talk to somebody 5 meters infront of you.

As for the 8 players. THAT is an entirely diff gameplay mode. That aspect would be on specific CoOp servers not RP servers. There would be a max of 8 players allowed on the CoOp server that has been set up, and they would complete missions as a team.

as for the final two comments, I leave your opinion of how i go about things at the back of my mind. I'll do it this way because i can, it's all about advertising it, you have to get people to want to HELP.

[Geminosity]

Ah okies!

So what's the advantage of purchasing buildings exactly?  How do you buy them?  Have you got any ideas to what level of customisation the characters will have and how you'll go about doing it on a technical level?  Are you aware of the map size limits of the HL2 engine in which you want to build these huge cities?  Are you using NPCs to help fufil roles and point the player in directions or do you have something else in mind?
How do you propose businesses will work?  Is it just a magic income or do you have to do anything?  Being a business do you need to hire thugs/workers?  How does a player go about running their business? etc.

As for the whole 'getting a team'; there's no point in spreading glory about something that hasn't even started because while it might grab you some team members to begin with chances are they won't hang around when they realise it's still a hazy idea rather than a solid plan and those are the few that join because they didn't realise from the onset =P

The coop idea is probably quite do-able, but the RPG one sounds a bit too much like you've got an idea but you've not checked the limits of the tools you're working with.  Course I could be wrong after all source is all spangly and new but I still have severe doubts...

Sorry to sound so harsh and stuff but I used to be a regular on stuff like wavelength a long time back and I've seen many a mod plan vanish before it even starts due to lack of refinement and detail =3

[Owen]

well... there's an RPG mod similar to my idea on HL, if you cared to listen to me on IRC like 1,000,000 times you would have noticed that there are many plugin mods that run such a system that it would be easy to reproduce and advance upon in HL2. You ARE being harsh, considering we've yet to hear about your "idea" for a mod. I think you should just learn to be a little more trusting in others and their ideas Gem. I fail to see the logic in putting me down when i'm trying hard.

[lolfighter]

I'm sorry, but I'll have to agree with Gem here: If you want this to work, you need to have it well thought out. For every mod that is a success (and we're not even talking huge successes like NS here, we're talking the smaller mods like Pirates vs. Vikings vs. Knights), you have nineteen that fail. And every one of those nineteen mod teams believed in the success of their mod.

And you'll need to be able to take the critique, too. When somebody goes poking holes in your concept, you need to be able to rebuke them immediately. When Gem goes "what about this, and this, and this and this and this? And this sounds hard to implement, how are you planning to do that?", you need to be able to give some answers in return (assuming you care about pimping your game). Simply asking people to trust you when they don't have much to base that trust on won't cut it, I'm afraid. If Flayra, a year before NS 1.0 was released had told people that NS was going to be a really great game, people would have given him the inevitable question: Why?
You need to have an answer ready to that question. "Trust me" just doesn't cut it. If we had known you for a lifetime, and knew that you get things like these done, then maybe we would trust you. But you're a relative stranger to us. I for one have known you for two months, tops.

Gem may sound harsh, but IS trying to help you. Seek to answer those questions, not dismiss them. It'll help you make sure that your idea is solid.

Of course, WE are not the ones you have to answer these questions to. If you wish, you can take comfort in that. But at some point, when you have a team around you, somebody else will be asking those same questions (if they really care about the game, that is - you risk just getting a crap team if you're not careful), and they won't take "trust me" for an answer - keep them hanging and they'll bail out on you.

So think about it: The more solid and fledged out your concept is now, the less holes will be poked in it later on, and the less you will have to fight for the faith of your team.

[Geminosity]

owen I've got more mod ideas than I can shake a stick at and I've tinkered in actually implementing 4 of them in the past*.  I think most people are sick of hearing about what ideas I'm working over in my silly lil head XD

As for the rest, I'm not putting you down at all silly.  I'm merely putting across that I don't see enough detail to your design; as fighter said I'm being cruel to be kind.  I'm just asking questions you seriously need to have answers for if you want to have a good chance of success.  
I might often be caught saying that I didn't learn anything in my 4 years of doing a games course in university but it's not entirely true; I made some mods and with a team we even built a game or two.  I'm not saying I know exactly what I'm talking about but I'm just trying to share the benefits of my experience here =3

By the way; saying you're trying hard you've actually made me kinda curious... what role are you fufilling in your team anyways and what work have you started? =o





*My first full mod; Squad Zero, went kablooie when my harddrive died losing 4 years of electronic work... I was too disheartened and shocked to start again from scratch (backups? what're backups?)
My 2D platform game fell foul to my irritation at how dated the HL engine was especially due to aesthetic limitations ^^;
Later I gave HL another shot to brush up on my HL coding knowledge for the oncoming release of HL2 but snark farmer just ended up unfinished as I didn't think the original idea was as fun as I thought it'd have been and UT2k4 was out (though I did giggle myself silly at something that happened to bacon during a playtest :lol: )
Viral Fear I actually pretty much finished a basic version of but didn't tie up because I didn't want it compared to zombie panic... not to mention not enough people had UT2k4 to make me want to continue =o