Project: Squad
| Project Started: |
22nd September, 2011 |
Last Update: |
17th December, 2011 |
| Project Owner: |
 Muz |
Project Members: |
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| Project Type: |
Shooter management |
Project Progress: |
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Mission system
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Posted 27th Sep 11, by Muz
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My first approach to missions was to have a few preset missions that you could choose from. But those were rather bland and arbitrary, just different battle backgrounds. With a game like this, the missions are just backdrops. I might as well just have a blank frame with some stuff. If I was going to do missions, I'd have to do them right or not at all.
One of the goals I have for this game is high replayability. I thought that since I'm procedurally generating characters in this game, why not do the same and procedurally generate missions? Give a player a random set of missions, and their early choice of mission will unlock similar other ones.
I had a few 'themes' at first, but it'd just split up the work too much. I wanted to settle on just one theme. I had the following goals in mind for the mission system:
- A lawless setting. Somewhere where huge weapons like miniguns and rockets made sense. Something where you could just break stuff and not care. So, no playing police.
- I wanted loads and loads of 'soft' cover. Things that you could hide behind and blow up. I was going for some guerrilla jungle/mountain setting at first, but rocks/trees are boring. So, my only choice is an urban landscape.
- I wanted a 'dungeon crawl' like system. Dungeons are pretty much the ideal for procedurally generated backgrounds. A completely open world sucks, the player is confused by the choices. A completely linear world sucks, the player is not allowed to choose anything. Dungeons give a feeling of exploration, all while guiding the player into traps, monsters, plot hooks, and treasure, and making them believe that it was from their own actions, when it was all pre-planned.
- I wanted to keep the missions as a background, not the foreground. I love strategy games. I'm tempted to just turn it into a strategy game ala UFO Afterlight, with research, resource collection, rival factions, conquering/defending spots, etc.
But that's not the focus here. The missions are to be kept simple and stupid. If I wanted to make a strategy game out of it, that'd be another sequel. This game's missions will be Mafia Wars level of simple. You can just click something, don't think too hard about it, and if you click the wrong button, you won't lose the game. Well, you might, but you won't regret pressing that button.
- Optionally, I want the story to develop according to the actions of the players.
So, from all this, the easiest choice seems to be a lawless urban place. I've decided to make it a broken down war torn city.
This is a game about squads, so you get some kind of base. The purpose of this base is just to boost your ego. It's a visual score thing. Eventually you get to take over cooler locations, like large houses, warehouses, police stations, shops, gang fortresses and move your base there. Various ornaments you pick up from missions will be at your base, maybe a poster from the slums, a bar stool from a bar, a clothed restaurant table, a broken police car.
The best part of a base is that you get to use it! Piss off enough people and you'll get raided. Then you get to watch the ornaments you collected get blown up 
I've decided to use an overhead map of the city, where you click on missions you like. Think of each building/location like a dungeon. The 'dungeon level' is how many times you go through it. If you feel like you're not doing too well on a mission, you can tell your squad to withdraw.. though if you get through the whole mission, you pull out whatever treasure is generated there.
The Slums will be like a low level item/squad member grind spot. Most fights are melee, and you'll find a few people who join you early on, though to prevent grinding, you'll get no recruits or XP later on. Richer residential areas will bring in better members. Many will be owned by gangs, you'll have to hit them to gain high quality recruits.
Shoplots will gain you most of your income early. They're well defended treasure coves, you can either loot them or hit them up for protection money. The city shops and mall will provide very nice income if 'conquered', but many are under the protection of other local gangs...
The missions will revolve around building a power base. Civil structures like town hall, police stations will give you more reputation. Once you maintain 75% of the power in town, you basically own the place and win.
There will be some boss fights too once you reach the later missions in a location.
And like with dungeons, kill a guy with a nice weapon and you keep the weapon. Though the game is permadeath, no loading, so it's not as straightforward as it seems. If your guys manage to cripple instead of killing, you might even be able to recruit.
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