Aliens vs Marines Tactical FPS (Revamp)

This is the old post, I'll soon be creating a new one because the game was revamped. Currently, the newest updates are at the bottom of the page.

Spoiler

Hello everyone! Allow me to introduce you to my latest project, as of right now it doesn't have a name, as I've only been working on it for around 11 hours now (at the time I'm making this).

This project is basically a 5v5, team based tactical aliens-vs-marines multiplayer FPS.

Wall of text inside the spoiler, explaining this idea. I suggest you read to understand that this is not my idea.

Spoiler

This game is HUGELY inspired (you could even call it stealing...I guess) by a Unity game that was never finished, AlienCS: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wip-aliencs-tactical-muliplayer-fps-with-aliens.270863/ . The game I'm making is basically a clone of Alien CS because well, AlienCS was cancelled/was stopped being worked on out of the blue. The last post by the creator of Alien CS was in August of 2015, and both of the messages I've sent him addressing AlienCS and what happened to it have not been responded to.

So until I get a reply (if ever), I will keep developing this game. If the developer of AlienCS contacts me and wants me to stop, I will stop. I hope everyone understands that I don't want to a be a douche and steal someone's idea, and the real reason I'm developing this is because AlienCS is still to this day one of my favorite indie games that has ever been worked on.

Anyways, now that that is over with, I will show you all the first update video and planned features for the future.

Update videos:

Spoiler

Update 1:

Update 2:

Gameplay videos!

Spoiler

1v1 play test:

Here's some of the features I have planned (I don't want to spoil all of them, since I've got quite a few cool one's!):

- Different classes with different uses

For instance, your team should always have at least one person running the Solider class, as he is the most powerful and good for clearing out rooms. He comes packed with grenades and an assault rife, both can be upgraded. There's also the medic (self explanatory), Technician, and the Engineer. The last 2 I won't talk about right now because they will be one of the coolest features in the game.

The aliens also have 5 different classes which all have different uses.

- Level intractable-ability

Unlike some shooters, I'd like to bring some stuff new to the table which will actually TURN the tables in game. I like to call these "level specifics". Basically, each level has different, well, "specific" feature that changes the way the game works if executed properly. Sprinklers, some levels have these, some don't; sprinklers hurt certain aliens and can be activated by the Marine's after turning on the power in the level. CCTV, cameras are hidden around the map and can be viewed via the 9-screen display in the security room. The only way to view the cameras however, is to turn the power on in the level. Aliens can also destroy these cameras, so be careful!

-Team Cooperative-ness and strategic thinking

I want to make sure teams work together and don't go being a lone wolf, which is why everything does extremely large amounts of damage. It will most likely be balanced further in the future, but for now it does quite a bit per hit. Aliens do between 13-25 damage per hit, and you can imagine getting attacked by multiple of these things will result in a quick death. For Marines it depends on the weapon, the assault rifle does between 15-25 damage per hit, so potentially a 4-6 hit kill to an alien. Health also does not regenerate. Non-regenerative health along with the large amounts of damage forces teams to go in groups of 2-3 rather than going alone. It will always be a bad idea to go alone, especially with the eerie atmosphere, the only light being your flash light, and the chilling feeling of knowing that an alien could literally be around the corner behind an object, or hanging on the ceiling waiting to ambush you--or multiple waiting to do said ambush.

If you have any suggestions, please do leave them in the comments! I'll also be taking any criticism as long as it's constructive and not "I hate this game" or "This game looks bad", as I will be ignoring those comments.

More updates to come!

 

No need for that - the 'idea' isn't original to Aliencs. He was "borrowing" it from another source, anyway - ideas aren't IP.
Since the game was never released - it's unfortunate - but seems like it's really a bunch of documented concepts for someone to develop further.
Can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

Very true, I didn't think about that. I guess if anything the dev would be happy to see that his idea was carried on.

 

@Whiteleaf
if u want i can send u the alien model i did for inko, havent heard from him in ages, so i think he wont mind

 

That'd be cool! You can send it to me although I won't be using it yet until i have an the other features implemented.

 

Hey, everyone! So I lied about not making art until I had most of the game features in...

Basically earlier today I finished the menu, so now you can customize your name, join rooms, and create rooms. More will come on that in the next video.

But after that I was a little worn out mentally by scripting, and kinda stressed out (since I had coded for like 3 1/2 hours straight). So I decided to work on some art, or just a piece of art. I made the assault rifle, most likely will be remade in the future.



Some notes about this model:

By far my most detailed model, and the coolest looking. My first ever self-made normal maps, took awhile but they came out quite nice. Usually I use the default Unity normal map option, but that doesn't always work; this time I used a plug in GIMP to create detailed ones which looked how I wanted them to. Another thing, all of the textures except 1 were made by me, the handle texture came from one my dads guns, the barrel as well, and the mag texture. I can't find any good free gun textures online as it is, so sometimes you just got to make your own! The only one that isn't mine is the background of the normal. It's a plaster texture from CGTextures. I also spent near 7 hours on this weapon, longest time it's taken me for any weapon.

I'm hoping to post the new update video tonight to showcase all of the new features (more than 5)! I also have a lot of footage of me and my friends playing, so I might compile a 5-10 minute video or so of us playing.

So I guess sometime within the week I'll create FPS arms and animate the assault rifle, then make the pistol (only 2 weapons right now). Then the shot gun, automatic pistol, and then the alien fps arms. Eventually I'll make full player models.

 

Moral of the story - it takes nearly 7 hours of fun art creation to recover from 3.5 hours of mentally draining coding. .
Nice job.

 

Haha I guess so, thanks.

 

ok pm me when u r further in development then. good luck

 

Second update video is up! It's now in the updates spoiler of the main post.

 

I'm the other way around... I would rather code than model or animate. Maybe it's because my models are terrible.

@Whiteline Also a suggestion for making people go in groups is adding passive perks that stack in a small surrounding area. This way a team of 4 might be able to get a damage boost or a defense boost alot higher than a single person. The new video looks cool, ima check that out now.

 

That's a great idea! I'll remember that.

 

Finally some cool stuff! Your dreams to mess around with a flamethrower have become reality, play with some flames whilst burning aliens to a crisp!

 

Inkoognito, the creator of Alien CS just replied to one of my messages! He says he's glad that this project was carried on!! It gave me a TON of motivation to continue this!

And considering I haven't worked on this project in like 2 days, time to fix some annoying bugs and get a fully working demo up!

 

Gameplay video is up!

 

HUGE thread bump if I've seen one. Basically, if you could tell I stopped this game; I mostly got bored and moved on to other multiplayer projects, but now I'm back--and hopefully for good.

From this point I've worked on the game for nearly 20 hours now, and have some good progress within that time. I completely restarted the project as when I made this, it was my third multiplayer and my code was sloppy, unoptimized and there were a lot of bugs that shouldn't of been in there.

A list of what I've accomplished within the timeline of 17/18 hours:

-Basic networking, connecting to Photon servers.
-Player health/respawning
-100% working weapon system, pickup up weapons, switching weapons, shooting, sounds (networked), and animations.
-Basic map and some baked lighting, along with light probes (not really interesting but it looks quite good and is 1000x faster than realtime lights)
-FPS arms, textured, rigged and animated. Basic gun model

Here, have a preview image of some of the equipment I'll be adding:



Work light, along with the basic gun and fps arms. Dynamic crosshair as well that corresponds to the guns current accuracy. Changes when walking, crouching, running and aiming.

Here, have a small progress video:

This next part is going to be a wall of text so be prepared when you open the spoiler.

Spoiler

I'm going to show you a lot of the features I want to add, and the good thing about this is that I can come back here if I forget one of them.

Aliens

I'd like to either add custom alien classes, or custom "attachments" for aliens. Here's what I was thinking:

When you spawn as an alien, you spawn in your 'nest' or 'hive' (Basically just a nasty looking area, look up Natural Selection 2 alien nest to get an idea of what I mean), when you spawn in there are certain pod areas where you get into and inject yourself with specific DNA/bacteria that would enhance and weaken your alien. For instance, if you wanted to be faster but also wanted your thermal vision to be a bit better, you'd get into a pod that upped your speed value and after that hop into a pod that strengthened your thermal vision. These, of course would come with down sides but I have yet to think of those. Each type of DNA/bacteria would also have some sort of effect on your vision, whether it be a green tinted screen, blurred/stretched corners, waves, etc.

If I had custom classes, each alien would have it's own special ability. One would be able to eliminate all electricity in an area for some time, another would have mixed thermal/wall hacks (basically, see through walls whilst having thermal vision), one would be extremely powerful but be slow and would have weird color differentiation (each color would invert itself or something), one would be able to spit fire and light up areas ONLY for aliens (I would handle this by either layer masks or selective RPC'ing), etc, etc.

Marines

For Marines, they're just going to be normal, but with a twist. Everything on the marine is customizable, his armor camo, ALL of his gun attachments (so you can have a silencer and a flashlight/optic on your assault rifle/shotgun), vision type (night vision, thermal, normal w/ dual flashlights, etc), custom light (instead of a flashlight you could have a 360* light that illuminates areas pretty well. Useful for you and your teammates in certain areas), change his specialty (he could be super silent and make no movement noise, or he could handle guns better so they have less accuracy/spread, he could also get supplies off of fallen teammates, or he could be faster than his other teammates), and the one that requires most choice, you can change his role (engineer to repair/build standalone equipment, medic to revive teammates and heal them, solider for ammo or something, and another class which will probably have to do with heavy arms).

I'd also only allow 1-2 pieces of certain equipment per team so all of the Marines don't have thermal vision and equipment, but I'd have to balance it out somehow. I'd also make it so it would force players to ONLY have 2 special types of equipment per class, so they can't have 12372378 thermal vision modifiers--on one guy.

I would like to try to make this game a bit realistic, because having flash lights that go 5 ft aren't fun--but neither are ones that go 500 ft because they don't bring any challenge. The guns will also be fairly realistic, insane recoil so you can't spray and pray, they will also bring weight with them so you go slower.

Level Features

(I think I mentioned having these in a previous post)

Every level is going to have a few features specific to that level, so on one level you could have controllable lights, turrets and destroy certain parts of the map to block off entrances/exits, and on another you could have prebuilt equipment, huge generators so you don't have to power them, and motion censors that way you know where aliens are coming from, and another one you could have full control over all of the security cameras in the level that way you can view corridors/large rooms. However, aliens can destroy the cameras/generators/lights/turrets, and you can repair them but it will take a considerable amount of time and you have to be watching out for aliens at the same time.

Weapons

I'm hoping to have at least 20-30 weapons in the game overall. I'm thinking Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Pistols, Special (crossbow, flamethrower, etc), Sub-Machine Guns and maybe Sniper Rifles.

Each will have it's own special trait to it, that way each are unique to each other and you don't feel like you're always using the same weapon. I also want them to be hard to control like Counter Strike, as I want the game to require skill and not a held down mouse button. The recoil will most likely increase drastically if you spray for too long as well as the
spread.

That's all I have for right now, I'll report back with some more progress within the week.

 

Last night I really didn't feel like coding, so I just made a ton of art assets. I made around 10+ in total.

Here's a quick teaser for the cafeteria area of the first level:



Still needs more detail but I'm really happy with it. There's 2 more parts of the first map I've decorated so far, but I'm not gonna show those yet.

In that picture you can also see the new secondary--the Keith 11. Basically just a spin off of the Beretta M9, and this one even has the magazine on the outside of it! This gun is complete with it's own animations and sounds, as well.

Today I'm going to script a bit though, see if I can get the alien working.

 

Hey everyone, recently I haven't found a ton of time to work on the game, but I was able to make this sub-machine gun concept in about 20 minutes:



Borrows aspects from the UMP-45, ACR, and the AS VAL. This gun will by default have a built in suppressor so there's no need to purchase on for it.