Hyperion saboteur

[M0RT]

Hyperion saboteur
The Hyperion misjumps and finds itself in uncharted space sector. Players, playing as the crew of hyperion, are trying to return back. Some of them, however, are secret agents, working for Dominion, and are trying to sabotage the ship.

• Game Basics Each of 4 -12 players is playing a single crew member. There are ~20 avaiable characters (unique), divided to 4 classes (soldiers, engineers, IT personell and scientists). Each of those classes has a specific role onboard hyperion, and they are all necessary for success (although most characters can fulfill roles of other classes when needed, with lower efficiency). Each time a player dies, he choses a new character to play with. If he can't chose (all characters are already dead or played by someone else), the crew of the hyperion loses.
  
• Saboteurs At the beginning of the game, random players are chosen as saboteurs (depending on number of players, there can be multiple saboteurs). Their goal is to stop hyperion from returning home. They can plant explosives, kill crew members, disable devices, blame other players... Saboteurs don't choose another crew member, they are rather respawn at enemy command, where they can command dominion forces or join them personally in attacks.
  
• Ship Systems
  • Air pressure The ship is divided into rooms and corridors, connected by airlocks. If a hull breach occurs, the entire room is depressurized. Such room is uninhabitable without space suit, and needs to be repaired and repressurized immidiatelly. The oxygen reserves are limited.
    Screenshots

    

    
    You can see doors sealed, as the pressure has dropped too low. I am trying to get away from that area, but I don't have authorization to operate airlocks.
  • Explosives There are many different types of explosives avaiable onboard hyperion (frag grenades, EMP charges, ....). All explosives must be equipped with a fuse (there are 3 types of fuses - each can be combined with any explosive), allowing players to turn explosives in proximity mines, or remote-controlled detonators.
    Screenshots

    

    
    Placing a bomb with a time fuse.

    
  • Computers Ship as big as hyperion has an advanced inner computer network. Each player is assigned into some user groups (depedning on his character), which have different access rights to ship systems. If you have proper access rights, you can take control of devices remotely, restrict other players from accessing certain systems, use turrets...
    Screenshots

    

    
    The access right setup screen.
  • Logs Many of your actions onboard the ship are logged. It is the IT personell's responsibility to manage them and check for suspicious activities. Logs of course can be cleared, if one has access rights, to mask past actions.
• Enemy The main issue of the crew won't be the saboteur, but enemy units, coming from space, or random events happening on the ship. Important part of the game is space and board combat, where mostly soldiers fight for ship's safety. In space, players will pilot Wraiths and on land, they will use a variety of weapons and suits. Of course it is possible to deal with attackers in some other way, like trapping them in airlock and dumping the air, or planting mines.
• Hyperspace jump In order to win the game, Hyperion must jump through hyperspace couple times. (Each of these jumps will take 5-10 minutes to prepare, 5 jumps required, so the game will take between 30 and 60 minutes.) Jumping to hyperspace leaves everything outside the ship behind, even other players in wraiths!

Progress: Explosives and Air pressure done, terrain done (although more devices will be added(item shops/sentry turrets...), computers almost done, logs have some basic functionality. There are a couple weapons, working ammunition system, enemies board the ship, hyperspace jump works.
Alpha version is published on EU for testing (victory conditions are not yet working, so it's not playable). It is unlocked, you can take a look at whatever systems I made.

I have started a video preview series of the game's systems, here is the first:

 

[Tleno]

Oh cool, nice to see some progress with your project!
Well I think I'll go test the latest version...

 

[Rispetto]

Sounds fun
Hope to see it in the NA servers eventually.

 

[Tleno]

I even think you could ask Mort to let you host map on NA if you really want...

 

[M0RT]

Well I think the map is far from any release version, but if anyone wanted to see the progress, it would be possible.

 

[Tleno]

Yes, yes.
I actually already enjoy sandboxing with the map. It's pretty fun to dehermetize the whole place.
Though gameplay is pretty complicated, you should like... adding more hints and other useful information, simple enough for even a Dotard to understand...

Also, the command console dies instead of getting disabled.
And in game begining menu the Hyperion AI player can be removed, enabling adding some player instead of computer player...

 

[M0RT]

Yeah air pressure is fun... I noticed that the ship's inner design isn't very good, if you lose starboard corridor and the oxygen tanks, there are no more airlocks all the way to the bridge...

Hints and help is on the way, I just need to find a nice way to include them.
Command console fixed (if you meant the navigation console (the one on bridge) )

Lobby: The "Remove player" option is there, but it doesn't actually remove the AI (at least not for me), also you shouldn't be able to add any more AIs. These new lobby settings are pretty cool (although I am surprised no one is using them, not even blizzard in their maps)

EDIT: Also, I might have set the bloom settings too high, fixed in next version.

 

[Tleno]

You could like try and separate the main coridor into two with extra airlock...

 

[M0RT]

New version is up, I have also uploaded it here, if you are on some other server and want to try it out.
I have done some minor fixes, added medbay and hero skill system (don't get too excited, "skill system" in this case means that "skills" are required to perform certain actions, and the character starts with a set of them. For example, to use medbay you need to be medic), and finally created the access rights system. Each network has it's own set of access rights, that can be granted to certain groups.

Tip for testing: Select the second IT guy, he starts in top-right hangar. Some of the characters start in unfinished areas of the ship.... you won't play them for long. Also, each IT member has rights to modify all access rights, so you can grant yourself access to anything (although all rights should work in the system, only login and airlock rights are linked to the "game world")

 

[Tleno]

May I ask if repair system is done?

Medbay looks pretty cool.
Wait so now there will be some limitations what you can/can't use? Didn't you like say that everything will be useable by most of classes, but less efficient?
I mean that this would require lots of teamwork andwith random people joining most of time this would be tricky, so this would be quite an impact on map popularity and fun.

You should do some less impacting on gameplay limitations, like at medbay everyone can use the standart heal, but not surgery or those painkillers or whatever.

 

[M0RT]

Repair is basically done. What is missing are bonuses for engineers, and science vessel. Also, I was planning some crane in the starboard rear hangar, for more efficient wraith repair.

Yeah it's true I said that everyone should be able to do everything, and it would be actually better that way, so I will be going back to that. The difference should be noticable, so that everyone will stick to his job, and do the other stuff only in emergency. I think it could make players feel more useful.
The only thing I don't know is how to make a pilot give bonuses to the wraith he's sitting in.

 

[Tleno]

Repair is basically done. What is missing are bonuses for engineers, and science vessel. Also, I was planning some crane in the starboard rear hangar, for more efficient wraith repair.

Yeah it's true I said that everyone should be able to do everything, and it would be actually better that way, so I will be going back to that. The difference should be noticable, so that everyone will stick to his job, and do the other stuff only in emergency. I think it could make players feel more useful.
The only thing I don't know is how to make a pilot give bonuses to the wraith he's sitting in.

Maybe you could do that with trrigers? Like if Wraith loads unit that belongs to group "Pilots", give it some kind of bhavior or something.
If it unloads the unit, remove the behavior.

 

[M0RT]

Well I wanted to avoid unnecessary triggers, there are already 3 pages full of them...
I found a solution with data editor, but I also found a strange bug:

bug

I use "Load Transport behavior" field of the transport ability. When this is a behavior that changes owner, it correctly gives you control of the Wraith when you get it, but when you leave, you lose control of the that was inside (there were no changes affecting this unit entire time). Also, it still appears to be yours (tooltips says your name, but the unit belongs to another player).

Anyway, I will release a new version shortly, the terrain on the entire ship is done now, air pressure should work everywhere, also hyperspace jump shouldn't tear the ship apart.

Progress update: Enemies board and attack ship from inside, Access Rights setup is done (groups have correct rights), and I started work on new system, power. There is a reactor that produces energy, and power distribution grid. But so far only devices that use energy are engines (but they use it up quite well).

 

[Grey Nightmare]

This is pretty sweet, very unique at least, good job.
Did you give up on 'get rid of the sh*t'?

 

[Tleno]

Well yeah, that map's gamneplay was kinda too raw and not really fun...

 

[M0RT]

Yes, it was too hectic. I really liked the scrap technology from auction, but the game itself wasn't working too well.

 

[Tleno]

Yeah well proably one day you'l find better use for auction, prisioneer and other similar systems... hey, actually you could just upload those as separate systems on THW for others to use on their maps!
I mean the gameplay was too... rudimentary, but systems are really useful.

 

[M0RT]

I just published a new version, mostly to fix what patch 1.3 has broken (unit info panel is still broken).

Also there are some minor additions, e.g. medical supplies box with portable medkits.

 

[Tleno]

Wait, so it's playable again? Excelent!
Are you going to actually like fasten up the repair speed for walls and stuff? Or at least make it this way:
-You can repair with no wrench, just with spareparts.
-Wrench increases the repair speed.
-SCV suit/vehicle further increases repair speed, alllowing to repair nearly momentarily and carry extra spareparts, but requires research and provides sight range limitations.
-Mule modules. after research you'll be able to activate these, and they'll be located in all the most immportant rooms, such as bridge, engine room and reactor. So it will repair all the damage dealt to room walls with mules, but it requires spare parts and can be easily brokken with few shots.

Also I was thinking, why not make the players be able to choose how much hyper-jumps they should do at begining?

 

[M0RT]

I want to keep the wrench requirement for repairs, as it doesn't allow to repair and have weapon equipped at the same time. I will try increasing the repair speed, let's see how that works out. I am planning to add some other sort of wrench for IT personell, that doesn't use spare parts, but can only repair electronics (terminals, power relays...)
SCV suit would be possible (Is SCV a robot or a vehicle by lore?), but the extra spare parts could be a problem, handling ability charges is pretty complicated.
Mules - I am planning something like this for "critical" rooms, but it's low on priority list.

Hyper-jumps - the number of jumps you need to do affects the gameplay deeply, I fear it's going to be hard to balance as it is (All supplies would have to be adjusted - medical, ammo, parts, reactor fuel, number of avaiable crew members...). Perhaps one day...

Btw. just published another fix, Info panel and minimap are almost working.

 

[Tleno]

SCV... now by lore it is supposed to be a vehicle and to be twice bigger than marines and stuff like that... but practically ingame it turns out to be more of a heavy suit for repair and stuff...
Hmm, what about Fusion Torch, unable to repair electronics, but capable of repairing walls and requiring you to carry some kind of batteries or portable reactor to power?

 

[M0RT]

Fusion Torch: I would like to keep the requirement of Parts for most repairs, as that makes Parts basically a new resource you need to take care of. (and of course, a new sabotage oportunity)

I think I published version with cpmpltetely fixed UI, now I am working on space combat and saboteur gameplay (after beeing revealed). It's a complex job, so that's why there were no updates for a while.

 

[Tleno]

Okay, that explains a lot... anyways, maybe you shouldn't limit the item ammounts and instead make it work like in warcraft 3, you know, items respawn in shops after some time... current item limitation system could make game bit too hard for newbies...

 

[M0RT]

The idea for items was that weak items will be avaiable in larger quantities (regular suits, handguns, lead bullets), while rare items will be strongly limited (gauss rifle, rocket launcher...). Also items will drop on death. This should make basic items avaiable at almost all times (except for extreme situations), while rare items beeing unique (The current limitations really are pretty strict, I will increase the amount for common items).

This also leaves space for salvage, which is partially done (you may have noticed "salvageable ships" appearing sometimes). You will be able to scavange resource items (ammo, reactor fuel, medical supplies, wraith ammo, parts...) and sometimes rare items from ships in space, if you manage to fly them inside and repair them.

 

[Tleno]

Maybe regular items should be unlimited, and rare and powerful only "craftable" using the scrap salvaging?

 

[M0RT]

I am thinking there could be 3 classes. Unlimited regular (handguns, wrenches, maybe even basic ammo), limited regular (rifles, commando suit, explosives) and unique, obtainable in salvage.

Btw. I just did huge remake of saboteur control/space combat, and I am preparing a combat trailer (that's all people want to see in trailers anyway...). Hopefully it will draw some attention. The new version is up, the logs also almost work (messages aren't deleted yet and not much events are beeing logged). I hope I will reach playable version, so I could start some more intensive testing on bnet.

 

[Rispetto]

Is this hosted on NA servers yet?
I'd be willing to do so, the gameplay looks awesome!
Pretty much scraps my map btw. You've made more progress lmao.
If you're interested throw me a pm.

 

[Tleno]

Well currently the map doesn't even have the gameplay systems complete, just some of ship systems... but you can't win or loose the game, currently.

 

[M0RT]

Actually winning and losing works already (I just forgot to remove that statement from first post ), all three possible scenarios (5 jumps to win as crew, kill crew/blow up reactor for saboteurs). There are other things that need to be finished for playable version though (most pressing issue is that saboteurs currently don't have anything to do after they die, also the space combat doesn't really work right now). I have a lot of work currently (the end of the semester is near, lot of homework and stuff), so the development is really slow.

I have't yet hosted it on NA, but since it is already semi-playable, it could be done. I updated the first post with the current EU-bnet-version, for anyone who isn't on EU server.

 

[Tleno]

You know, lately I played your map all over and I tough... it could need a lot of overhauling to become at least someway enjoyable. I'll begin with the most immportant.

1. Picking characters: That's a cool system, but maybe instead of it you change it to some window where you pick your perks and you can choose, like shall we say, +1 to engineering and +2 to military plus additional perk like Pilot. This could allow to customize characters more and would be much easier.
2. Remove the access system. you know, the thing that you may set what classes are allowed to do what. That's a really cool function and I see something like this first time in any mod or game, but it's too overcomplicated and unneceseary, I mean people may start abusing the system and just block each other from the functions.
3. Some special room for respawns instead of respawning in different spots. Or just make few small "rooms" where dominion doesn't enter youcan pick in which to respawn at begining of game or after death.
4. Dominion troops. See, the saboteur has a menu button which starts blinking or whatever when he dies. when he clicks on it, he gets to choose which location the dropship should board, where should the landed troops go to and possibly even what kind of units the sqaud should consist of...
5. The console minimap. See, it should be on all the time when you control the console, and there you could pick between engineering, security and such objects shown... of course this would depend from character stats.
6. Scrap in space and asteroids are expendable, but when you make a hyperspace jump, you appear in new location and there are more scrap and for some time there are no Dominion forces and the dominion reinforcement for saboteur are unaviable for some time, and then after some ime Dominion surround your cruiser again and they even get more forces.

 

[M0RT]

Thanks for the suggestions.

1. It would be possible, but it would be much harder to create a balanced team (for players). Right now, you just need to make sure there is a character of each class and done... Also, it allows saboteurs to win by killing the crew. If players would create characters, this wouldn't be possible (or there would have to be a counter, which wouldn't look good). It would be better for veteran players, but more confusing to new players.
2. Yes, it is much more complicated than I expected it to be. On the other hand, if players don't understand it, and don't use it, it gives everyone access rights that he needs to do his job.
3. Right, this is a pretty serious problem, dying right after respawing... I'll add several respawn rooms, and players will be placed in random safe room after death.

4. I haven't done much work on revealed saboteur part so far. The current idea I would like to implement is that dominion forces will come in "packages", every 30 seconds. After 3 packages, dominion fleet will jump to hyperion. There will always be a choice of several packages, each one consisting of a dominion force and hyperion help (for example, the saboteur will have to choose between "2 vikings and a dropship" and "4 vikings, 2 dropships and 2 salvageable ships for hyperion"). He will either stay in command and somehow
control the fleet, or jump on any dropship in depot and join the assault personally (he can already do that, but without items)

5. This could work, although already there are like 15 different map objects... it would take up a lot of space. I will think about it, it would require a lot of changes in code.

6. This is how it works right now, isn't it? (or atleast it should, unless there are some bugs) The fleet gathers in the preparation area, then jumps to your location, and when you jumo away, it moves back to the preparation area.

I am planning a big overhaul of the space combat, as right now it doesn't really work. Ships will no longer encircle hyperion, they will spawn at very front and fly to back hangars. There will be manually controlable cannons at front, and sometimes friendly ships will appear besides hyperion and provide resources (fuel, ammo), unless they are shot down by dominion.

 

[Tleno]

I just checked it agaion with another player and, well, sometimes spacebar doesn't work. Also, when you die and respawn, player 1's camera is moved, no matter which player died.
Also, though the player I played with is a mapper (Creator of Moonlords map), profesional melee player (I mean, he has a dark voice portrait, that's like lots of wins!), he still had a lot of trouble with the gameplay... actually, I think there are less than six people (Including me and Mort) who understand the entire game.

I mean, of course this is very early version, but.. I think it migh need an entire reworking of the gameplay, interface and all the systems... of course then I would rather recommend abandoning Hyperion Saboteur and starting Hyperion Saboteur II instead. Currently I have no time for explaining the entire suggestion of how gameplay should look (By the way, if you'll agree on my idea, I ight help you with terrain. Yes, I mean terrain, no more destructible walls).
So later, when I'll return home and will have time, I'll tell you the overall suggestion, okay?

 

[M0RT]

Dude, if you knew how much work i put into this... I can't just discard it and start anew. I am still hoping that when it's done, it will be much simpler for new players. You just grab a gun and run towards battle, then go repair the damage... all the stuff with access rights, airlocks, even reactor, everything works fine on it's own (until someone starts to sabotage it), and mostly players worry just about fighting the enemy. That's how I would like the game to look like in the end.

And yes, no one understands the entire game, but again, that shouldn't be needed to play it. Not even the saboteur needs to understand the game, he can just put bombs everywhere and hope to get away with it.

And what's wrong with the walls? I mean, usually in spaceship maps you have terrain done through cliffs, which imho doesn't look any better. How would you imagine a better terrain?

 

[Tleno]

Well, in my suggestion there would be cliffs (Except for some parts), I mean, the monotonic walls do look booring and imagine what pain in ass it would be to repair an entire room with walls destroyed....

Alright thrn, I wasn't sure if you're going to leave it as it is or you would decide to start a new project, but since you want to continue with this one, alright then, I'll keep giving feedback instead of suggesting a complete overhaul.

Oh, first of all, a bug report:
-You can't have that gauss rifle (Other weapons too, possibly, haven't tryed with them) or whatever it's called in your backpack, only the lighter firearms. That's kinda uncomftable, I mean, when you have to repair stuff, you have to drop a gun, take the wrench, repair stuff, and then put the wrench back and take the gun. That's irritating.
-There's something funny with those ammo stashes. See, when they appear in your area of vision, they scale-down a bit more than they looked before you revealed them. You know, just a minor graphics bug.
-Airlock doors sometimes refuse to open up even when destroyed. I mean, I am in room with low oxigen (but the breach is repaired, so the oxigen is somewhat stable despite beeing so low it damages my character), there is an airlock, I set it to increase air pressure, then I destroy the door so it would open up, but instead it refuses to open even when it's damaged, so I break few walls to connect the oxigenless corridor with the airlock and hey, pressure goes back to normal and the gate finally opens up when the pressure is fine... weird :O. Oh, and it happen with me when I was in that bridge coridor and the airlock was the one to med-bay.
-Maybe you noticed this, but aircrafts can go trough destroyed walls and doors.

Now some feedback.
-You have that floating text over concoles, and the junk to cover yourself with has intormation tooltip when you scroll on it. As I recall in campaing there were some info tooltips that appeared when you had your mouse on that unit. You could immplement that in your map. I mean, something like "Come close and select the unit to take items from Ammo Stash/Supplies", "Right-click on console to open it up" or "Right-click on door to control it". This would be more conventional that the trriger-based floating text. You should do that with dropped items, too.
-Map. Miminap, to be exact. Something to not get lost in the ship, since newbies don't get what is where and they need some time...
-Again, talking about friendlyness to new players and just players, you should like add some error messages or tooltip into color red, saying why you can't do a sertain action. Like "Out of spareparts. Find Supply pile and get more spareparts."
-You should make separate inventory slots for tools and weapons. so you could repair without having to switch the gun with wrench. If you think that would be kinda wrong to carry a gun and screw at same time, you can decrease the weapon accuracy and add a Scope or some other weapon equipment that can be used on when in the tool slot. See, then you could hold aweapon and tool at same time, but without the scope the weapon would be much more inacurate.
-Talking about guns, you could like make some more diversity between different types except for efficiency, I mean like change basic weapon into "Blaster" and weken it, but make it not require any ammo, then middle weapon could be Assault rifle and be able to use all types of ammo, including AP, while the strongest one could be called "machinegun" and altrough beeing the strongest it could like not be able to shoot AP bullets, I mean the machinegun with these would be an overkill, it would make an enormouse damage to the hull! Talking about guns, you should probably change no siut and empty hands toolltip icons to something more suiting, like no weapons to Weapons free (Abilities - Terran) and no suit to Colonist wireframe (Like I did on my map).

Well, it seems it's all I wanted to say for now then...

 

[M0RT]

Thank you very much, I'll try to respond to everything:

Rifles: The original idea was for engineers to carry around handgun (that's why it fits in pouches), while soldiers use rifles (all "big" weapons are unaccessible for non-soldiers). I have no idea if soldiers will be repairing ship commonly (I still haven't played a single game), so if this is goign to be an issue. I realize that any operations with inventory are totally uncomfortable, as it is very small and hard to manipulate
Ammo stashes: Thanks for reporting, it's propably some actor problem... I will look into this.
Doors: I just did a quick fix, maybe it helped, i'll need to test it (although this never happened to me)
aircrafts: Yes, I noticed. Starcraft has only a single pathing layer (even warcraft had two), and I can't figure out what to do with it. I hope i'll come up with something soon.

The console description was basically an experiment with text actor (it's not trigger) and automatic disable, but the tooltip is better, I'll certainly add more tooltips.
Map: Yes, not only it's hard to navigate for new players, even I have problems when inside the ship, as I have no idea what is going on. Maybe I'll add the minimap toggle to player (I am planning a new left-panel overhaul, this could be a part of it)
Alerts: That would be great, but I don't know how to do it... The problem is that ability charges are used for great deal of things, I would need one for repair, one for ammo and maybe some others.
Tool slot: Will do after I see the game (although soldiers already have weaker repair, maybe it's not necessary to make it uncomfortable as well)
Weapons: The original idea was to distinquish weapons by 4 parameters (strength, speed, range and precision), however I haven't yet found out how to create range and precision. Limiting ammo types seems like a good idea, and easy to implement.

 

[Tleno]

Oh, and something I wanted to say in the previous post, but forgot. The crew member's main objective.
See, instead of having to hypper-jump few times, whihc is kinda weird, you have to repair the key systems of the ship and then launch the engines.
See, on Hyperion, there are some units/buildings (Like shall we say some electronics or pipework... erm.. units. well you know, all those shipboard thingies). Some amount of them at begining of game are randomly chosen to be "Broken" and players have to repair them all. They should be marked on minimaps and possibly marked ingame in some way, too, by the way. So see, once one of these is repaired, it cannot be damaged again (elseway saboteur could be like really, really annoying). Once all of these are repaired you have to:
1. Repair the reactor and engines and protect them, since they may be sabotaged and boken again.
2. Recapture the bridge and protect it for some time until the warp-jump will be activated (You win once you activate it once).
Now see, the thing is that at begining all the players would have to split up to cover an entire area and quickly repair the whole thing, whihch would make them vulnerable to saboteur. At the second part it gets harder because you have to protect three places at same time. Oh, and I'm not sure about the power system then, probably you would have to power up the engines and maybe some wap-drive systems before the second phase begining, too. This would mean that you would have to repair the electronics, too... This would be more fun and engineering would be more immportant as not just repairing the damage, but also as key to victory. Plus since every time the parts that require repair are different, it should add more unpredictability to the game.