Deathmatch + Cooperative = Uncooperative/Competitive

Non-technical talk about multiplayer and singleplayer gameplay and game design.
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SusanMDK
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Deathmatch + Cooperative = Uncooperative/Competitive

Post by SusanMDK »

Last night I thought of a new game mode. Initially started from the idea of combining Deathmatch and Cooperative. Then I thought the name could be Uncooperative or Competitive. Well, the game mode is not just Deathmatch with monsters. It is like Cooperative, but everyone's racing to the end, trying to get more monsters killed, collect more powerups, keys, items than the other players.. and to kill other players. Players get score from all these. It could also have a team variation.

Level doesn't end immediately when the first player reaches the exit. It will just activate some timer and allow other players to get to the exit too, or get more kills and stuff. The first to reach the exit can also return to do all that. The levels would need a par time. Reaching exit before the par time will give bonus score. First, second and third gets some bonus score too. It will also have a base score, so the fourth one who reached the exit after par time would still get some score.

I think the levels could also have some pie, cookies, cake or whatever stuff that gives score. These items wouldn't respawn or stay there for everyone to pickup (like weapons, etc). Only the first one to get the pie will get the score. edit: the score from these items will be calculated when the level ends...

Killing other players would give score based on what weapon was used to kill and what weapon the other one had. The dead player would respawn to the start of the level or maybe some respawn checkpoint. Killing another player would take some random item (including pie) from the killed and spawn it as a pickup. I think it might feel a bit too unfair to get all his possessions. So the killed player keeps everything else he had collected so far. Of course killing someone enough times will give you all of his items.

Killing monsters could give score similar to players. What weapon was used against it and what monster it was. I think just hitting a monster or player could give some score too. Then a frag stealer won't get all the score, he would just get the score from the final hit (gib the monster/player for some bonus), which could have a bit more score than non fatal hits.

When the level ends, the highest scoring player wins. Then go to the next level. The level ends when everyone has reached exit or when the level end timer is zero.

Anyone done this kind of thing in a game or mod? Personally I think it sounds like fun and I'm going to do it for my mod.
zbang!
Teiman
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Re: Deathmatch + Cooperative = Uncooperative/Competitive

Post by Teiman »

Interesting.

Multiplayer with monsters is not explored enough.

You can make so monsters respawn. This will give always something to do. You can also make so people gains "powers" that are dropped from monsters, like health regeneration, ammo regeneration and the like.

You can make that if a dude touch the end, a countdown start, and any kill made by that dude, count double.

It may also be fun to place traps on the levels. For more evil carnage. Mines and the like.

I may even give powers randowmly to the player with less score.
Anything is possible.

With CSQC you can repurpose the GUI to have the name of the other players or his health, or points or something like that.
Downsider
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Post by Downsider »

Sounds like Zelda: The Four Swords.
leileilol
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Post by leileilol »

sounds like battletoads, which you'll never beat in 2p anyway due to the racing level, and in 1991 it was your best home console fighting game anyway.
i should not be here
gnounc
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Post by gnounc »

sounds sweet...so long as you absolutely dont get points for killing the other players. Weapons? sure Items? sure. But if you get points for killing the other players, then it quickly just becomes standard deathmatch. You should also set a pretty strict par, and have anybody that didnt make it to the end before par fail and get zero points.

THEN it would be awesome
Downsider
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Post by Downsider »

leileilol wrote:sounds like battletoads, which you'll never beat in 2p anyway due to the racing level, and in 1991 it was your best home console fighting game anyway.
Me and my sister got to the worms :(
frag.machine
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Re: Deathmatch + Cooperative = Uncooperative/Competitive

Post by frag.machine »

jim wrote:Last night I thought of a new game mode. Initially started from the idea of combining Deathmatch and Cooperative. Then I thought the name could be Uncooperative or Competitive. Well, the game mode is not just Deathmatch with monsters. It is like Cooperative, but everyone's racing to the end, trying to get more monsters killed, collect more powerups, keys, items than the other players.. and to kill other players. Players get score from all these. It could also have a team variation.

And what if, instead simply killing other team players, you were able to hinder their actions and thus prevent them to kill more monsters/collect more items/whatever ? Let's say, every player in both teams could receive a non-lethal gun or attack mode to use against the other team players - you could freeze, stun, shrink, temporarily disable its weapons, etc. AND, to prevent things becoming pure deathmatch, killing someone in the other team actually could inflict some penalty, thus people is forced to focus in surpass the others without killing them. Make the non-lethal weapons and the kill penalty randomic and you'll have a very cool mod.
I know FrikaC made a cgi-bin version of the quakec interpreter once and wrote part of his website in QuakeC :) (LordHavoc)
Spike
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Post by Spike »

firing rockets into other players to throw them into lava/slime would be pretty effective at hindering them. Especially if you get points for every X seconds of delaying them.
SusanMDK
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Post by SusanMDK »

Yea, I guess it could turn into a deathmatch then.. If there aren't any specific nonlethal weapons, then the normal weapons could be nonlethal against other players? Different weapons would have different effects.. something like you just described.

The power idea is also good. I've thought of having some perks too. I'll have to think some good ones then.
zbang!
gnounc
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Post by gnounc »

Allright! Love where this is going, hope something materializes
Teiman
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Post by Teiman »

as others say, everything d-evolve into deathmach if you let players attack each another.
SusanMDK
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Post by SusanMDK »

Yea, I encountered that behaviour when I was hosting a public Serious Sam coop server.. but occassionally it was funny when someone accidently blow up another player with some explosives... That was also funny when I played Quake in lan coop with a friend.. but then we didn't purposefully start to hunt each other or plot revenge. It was just a funny moment and then we continued the game.
zbang!
qbism
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Post by qbism »

Replying to an old-ish topic here, but I'm having similar thoughts.

Was playing coop with a friend last weekend w/ FF on (accidentally at first), and it devolved into DM as others have mentioned. But then we decided it would be a race. The only thing that mattered was who got to the exit first. That made it more of an interesting mix. It reminded me of treasure-hunter movies like Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, The Mummy, etc. etc.

Some strategies:
1. Leave monsters alive as obstacles. Waken certain monsters to block paths.

2. When in the lead, but low health, stop and camp instead of fighting more monsters.

3. Some plats can be left in the 'wrong' position to slow down rivals.

I'd be surprised if there aren't existing similar mods. Hard to figure out what to search for.
Team Xlink
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Post by Team Xlink »

I like this idea.

Like everyone else said, placing emphasis on killing other players would turn it into a deathmatch, but if there was no way to slow the players down it would be a race, which can also ruin it if your so far behind.

The idea that killing other players would give a negative penalty would work great, provided you find the correct balance to make killing the enemy a last resort, but not unthinkable.

I know when I play cooperative games, there is usually a point where we start to goof off and kill each other, this usually happens when we start to get bored.
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