Missions
Mission Generator
The mission generator is going to be a massive part of the game, player generated content will be a large portion of gameplay for other players, as such we need to give the players a professional level tool. Every mission is based on a grid, you start by placing a briefing block, this will describe the mission overview and allow the player to talk to an NPC about the mission. Next you’ll want to add a conversation block, conversation blocks can have multiple exit routes, you should always add a reject mission exit point otherwise players cannot turn down the mission once they talk to the NPC. From each exit point you can add script code to setup the mission parameters (for example you may choose to use stealth or head on in a mission) from here you’ll be adding more conversation blocks (either with the original NPC or new NPCs) and encounter blocks.
Encounter Blocks
This is where the systems power comes in, an encounter is setup as one of three environments Space, Station or Ground, you choose the structure you want the encounter to take place in for Station and Ground. You can then use blocks to create whatever layout you like inside (or outside) place spawn areas, set the faction of those spawns, add interactive items (like terminals, NPCs, containers) and add triggers, Factions can be set to one of 5 different hostility levels, Cooperative,Friendly,Indifferent,Truce or Hostile.
Cooperative spawns will help you fight and follow you once encountered.
Friendly spawns will help fight any enemies you encounter.
Indifferent will not attack you and are primarily used for NPCs, they cannot be attacked or attack you back.
Truce will not be hostile unless you attack one, at which point all spawns of that faction will become hostile
Hostile will attack you on sight.
Scripting can be used to change the hostility level of spawns at any time, for instance your mission might be to rescue hostages from a prison, assuming you managed to get in without fighting, once you rescue the hostages they could be set to cooperative (so they’ll follow you) and the guards switched to hostile so you’ll have to fight your way out.
As you can see, using this system you can setup complex encounters that can be made to proceed differently depending on how the player plays the mission, mission flags persist throughout the mission, allowing the player to feel like their decisions really do effect the entire mission.
There will be limits on how many blocks you can place in a mission, but it will be a generous amount so that you can create long missions.
Epic and Elite Missions
Taking Epic missions to the next level is always difficult, the idea behind the epic and elite mission sets is that every players missions are different, when a player is created some initial data is created to start their epic mission, at some point in the future the system will offer the player the first part of his epic mission, NPCs will be generated just for his epic mission, so will objectives and missions, depending on how the player proceeds through his missions will determine how the mission turns out, it will not be possible to fail your epic, but if you dont do well it could take a lot longer to unlock. The Elite missions pickup later after completing the Epic missions, the Elite missions will also be the players introduction to The Players, he’ll be working for people who can make a real difference in the galaxy.
The Players
The Players are a new and unique idea for ATF, in the ATF universe there are groups of people who have influence over the politics of the universe, called The Players, these are made up of members of all three factions and major outsiders, split roughly into groups every player has his or her opinion on the other Players, they’ll try to either help or hinder them using the players as their pawns, you’ll first encount The Players during your Elite Missions, from then on you’ll develop relationships with various Players from all sides. You’ll be offered jobs to do, such as intelligence gathering, collecting resources, delivering packages or even killing other Players, the world of intergalactic politics awaits the players as they advance in the game and the players can make a difference.
The Players will be run from a seperate machine specifically designed to run the players, therefore the main servers dont have to try and do the complex AI required to run these as well are run the entire game. They connect to the game much like a normal player would and access information about the current state of the game from the server, each Player is a distinct entity and everything it knows comes from it’s own connection to the server, sharing of information between Players is entirely at the AIs discretion, including lying to other Players.