Dev. Journal: Ihmhi (2009-01-08)

[FF_Team]

I thought it was high time that I wrote out one o' these dev jernal thingies.

Being the P.R. guy can really suck sometimes. My job is poorly defined, but the basics of it are to work with community involvement, try to keep the front page fresh, and try to work out deals to get the game into the headlines. Basically, I have to keep FF in the spotlight and keep the community involved and interested in playing.

This means my job as a dev is probably one of the most ambiguous and difficult to gauge success on. Why are more people playing - is it because of a video we released, word of mouth, or just a fluke? And if it was something we DID do, how can we repeat it for future success?

The most aggravating thing of all is all the stuff I've seen. Every dev and tester has seen what amounts to probably half a dozen or so maps in the works and on their way ready to release for some future patch, but it would sort of ruin the surprise to tell you all about it. But what the hey, I can bring out some info on what *is* in the works without revealing too much.

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Team Hunted:
Each side has a civvy and is trying to take out the opposing civvy while protecting their own. It's sorta like CTF, but the flag can run around and beat you with an umbrella.

Point... holding?
Point capture? Holding? Er, uh, basically there's a cap point that you just have to physically touch. There are 2-3 variants of this in various stages of completition with maps scaled for 8 players all the way up to maps scaled where you could play comfortably with a full server. This gameplay style (and the variants) is Green Mushy's love child and it will probably serve to be a fun but basic style of gameplay.

Reverse Flagrun-ish?
Yeah, this is hard to do without giving away map names, and I sure as Hell can't describe the gameplay accurately in a few words. A variant of the above, everyone on one team tries to capture one of four points located at one area. While the points are still contested, a timer is counting down. The timer runs out, and the cap points are reset to uncaptured. Conversely, if all four points are captured, well - the offense scores some.

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Please remember that I can't honestly say when any of the playstyles above will come out - they will out when they will out. They might also change a little or a lot from how I've described them here - everything is subject to balance testing and tweaking.

There are other ideas being worked out by mappers all the time in various stages of completion. The ones I've mentioned here are the ones that are being worked on the most and have the most promise for being fun.

A lot of our newer maps make use of round timers, either in halves or the more popular quarters. So an OvD map might have the Blue team playing Offense for 10 minutes and then Defense for 10 minutes - or it might be Offense for 5, Defense for 5, Offense for 5, Defense for 5. This style of switching up O and D has survived months of playtesting and has proved to be a great balancing factor in the game. Having a strong offense won't count for much if you don't have a good defense as well when the Defense half or quarter comes up.

Another shift that has been happening behind the scenes is trying to move away from the standard CTF play of the olden QTF and TFC days. We are by no means abandoning CTF wholesale, nor are we going to be changing existing maps irreversibly - rather, we're trying to have a shift towards OvD. Maps can still be CTF and OvD at the same time - for example, sections of a base could be closed off, and the defender's base would be completely open. Using the round system explained above, each team could dedicate themselves wholly to offense or defense. We've learned a lot from the pickup community, and we believe that this sort of gameplay style will be succesful even on small servers.

But hey, let's say you like standard CTF and don't want to play the OvD sort. Good news - another thing we've been developing is the ability to have multiple Luas for one map. This way, people could say, play Team Deathmatch on 2fort without any concern about flags, or play OvD CTF on Dropdown if there's only a few people on the server. It'd be really cool if this switch could be made while the game is live, but that's something that would probably be implemented far, far down the road - if we could figure out how to do it at all.

I've tried to give you guys some clues as to how things are going, but please remember that we are constantly shortstaffed. We could always use more programmers, mappers, texture artists - if you think you can make a worthwhile contribution to the game, then speak up! If we can use you, we sure as Hell will be glad to put your ass to work.

I hope you've all appreciate this edition of "Ihmhi tries to tell you guys about what the Hell we're working on without revealing too much". Stay tuned for next time, which is whenever the Hell I can think up something interesting to write.

In the meantime, keep your eyes open. 2.2 is nearing completion (how soon until it's done, I can't say). We have some interesting things in the pipeline for both the game and the P.R. front, and we're all very excited to reveal the surprises we have in store.