IOT Developmental Thread

[Ahigin]

This looks pretty cool and I'd be interested in playing.

What's an Oz?

That's how the survivors name the physics-defying powers that twist the world. Some theorize that the anomalies of the Oz are caused by the destruction of one of the alien ships that, apparently, loomed over the planet while the old civilization still stood. Everyone felt threatened, somebody lost the nerve and nuked several spaceship. The aliens retreated, but the planet was permanently hurt: the nuclear winter caused an irreversible global cooling, and the remnants of the broken spaceships got disseminated across the globe, twisting the physical laws as they fell. Now, they're also causing plenty of mutations among the local flora, fauna, and, well, humans. Collectively, this mind-boggling phenomenon is known as the Oz.

 

[Zappericus]

HALF - LIFE
Dreλms of Cheese and Revolution

_________________________________________________________________________________________________​

INTRODUCTION
With the release of Half-Life: Alyx and me being painfully unable to play it with my soviet-era computer, I present my own product out of spite. DCR is a dystopian rebel sandbox inspired by EQ's "New York Under Siege" and "BOTWAWKI", taking place within an alternate timeline of Valve's Half-Life universe where the critical canonical events of Half-Life 2 never transpired.

Defying the tyrannical dictatorship of the Universal Union and their corrupt loyalist regime as the leader of a Resistance Faction, players will initially start out with a few angry boys, a home base and some humble equipment across the sector, and will have to act by means of careful planning, subterfuge, sabotage, and luck outright until what was once a moldy basement cellar holding a few malnourished factory workers has been forged into an organized network of stocked outposts and bases containing an army of hardened warriors able to rally the downtrodden masses into open revolt through their actions.

STORY
In 2012 an ill-fated experiment at the Black Mesa Research Facility triggered a cataclysmic event known as the Resonance Cascade, engulfing Earth in spacial tears (later to be dubbed "portal storms") acting as gateways between here and the Xen borderworld dimension. As various extraterrestrial species, flora and even chunks of landmasses were being teleported all over a panicked humanity, an interdimensional empire of incalculable size known as the Combine invaded by manipulating the tears and letting their overwhelming forces slip through.

The ensuing conflict became the iconic "Seven Hour War" and resulted in the slaughter of two-thirds of the global human population as well as Earth's complete surrender and annexation into the Combine's dominion. Following thereafter came the rise of the Universal Union, a proxy government of human collaborators installed to solidify and uphold the status quo.

Cue our alternate timeline.

The lambda resistance in city seventeen was smothered in its infancy with the death of Eli Vance and the fate of humanity's long awaited savior Gordon Freeman remains unknown since the events of the Black Mesa incident. With complete global dominion and with seemingly no further opposition to their occupation the Combine have turned away from Earth to pursue more lucrative endeavours, leaving direct control into the hands of the Universal Union.

The year is now 2026 and we're taken to the former state of Florida, now designated "Sector One."

FINAL NOTES & FEATURES
Although defeating the Universal Union in Sector One is ultimately the goal of the game, players are free to operate as they please and at their own discretion within the boundaries of the game's rules and mechanics. Creativity will always be welcomed. Whether you’ll be a humanitarian maintaining a series of growing refugee camps out in the lawless outlands, a former regime administrator-turned-revolutionary seeking to bring down the oppressors from within, or a sly criminal kingpin supplying arms to rebel cells one day and setting them up the next just for double paychecks, is up to you.

The game features:

• Various playstyles that suit individual tastes as the player faces off against the Half-Life series' most iconic antagonist, bands of roaming outlaws, Xen wildlife and potentially even other players.
• Two distinct worlds for players to start out from. The wild and untamed Outlands, outside the Union's constant surveillance but crawling with all sorts of hazards, or the walled and bleak Union settlements under the bootheel of a global superpower and all of its sinister agencies. Choosing one does not explicitly exclude the other and both provide unique opportunities and challenges.
  
• Dynamic faction progression. Given time, players can grow from simple bands of muddy nobodies into a real and present threat through establishing outposts, safe havens and even their own resource gathering and manufacturing capabilities - shifting the focus of simply surviving into the ability to make real change.
  
• Exploration of a changed and alien Florida as the southern state's exposure to Xen's exotic flora and various foreign species during the portal storms has irreversibly changed the land. Anyone outside of the safety provided by the sector's regime will therefore need to learn and adapt if they wish to survive.
  
• A detailed game map (using Google My Maps) providing information on everything from player assets, Union facilities, infrastructure and unique areas to allow players a more visual gaming experience.
  
• Headcrabs.

 

[Ahigin]

So, I did the hardest part of work for my Icerust game (Mad Max strategy in the nuclear winter).

And the hardest part is also the most fun feature of the game: vehicle designer.

While I'm still putting together the map and the faction spreadsheet, I need your help testing it!
Plus, I want you to just go crazy and have fun. Share some vehicles you're proud of. Consider it a preparation for the actual game.

To access it, go here and navigate to Players' Design Bureau. (Don't edit any formulas, please - just play with the dropdowns and vehicle names.)

First, I'd like you to do positive testing (making sure things that should work, work):
- Put together several "conservative" vehicles that make sense. See if the game stats look reasonable. If not, let me know.
- Put together some outrageous post-apocalyptic vehicles that still should make sense in the post-apocalyptic world. Need inspiration? Watch Mad Max. Again, do their stats make sense?
- Just try to make an overpowered vehicle. Can you do it? Is there a way to make something that has no weak sides (e.g., cheap, fast, indestructable, powerful)? I hope not, because I'm trying to make the game interesting for all players.

Secondly, let's do some negative testing (building something that just shouldn't exist):
- Make a vehicle that just doesn't realistically make sense, even given the extravagance of post-apocalyptic auto design.
- Make a vehicle that should work, but for some reason doesn't (components don't fit into the Dimensions/Weaponry Slots, or some stats go into the negative, etc.)
- If you're a QA genius, go ahead and find errors in my formulas (no, I don't expect you to do that - but hey, if you do, I'll be grateful).

P.S. I made A LOT of edits and additions to the ruleset. Check it out. It has pictures.

 

[Ailedhoo]

Ask me in the right thread and I might deign to answer.

Apologies Thor: will keep to mechanics in the development.

This of course would be for a future project as I am currently busy but this has been inspired by ecological considerations. The thought came also when noting a video on how global warming was presented in works and how contrasting Civ games came to Alpha Centauri. At any rate you are one who notably expressed wish for ecology to be considered. Of course this would take time but there are potential intrigues from such brainstorms.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

What exactly are you asking from me?

 

[Ailedhoo]

How to set it so it is part of the framework and not a... extra or topping as it were.

Of course cartography is going to handy for the elements of sea levels, as a example.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Spoiler :

5char​

 

[JohannaK]

Interest. Two questions.

#1: What is the idea?
#2: Why the godforsaken Pyrenean border that seems to pretend the Pyrenees do not exist?

 

[Lord of Elves]

Interest. Two questions.

#1: What is the idea?
#2: Why the godforsaken Pyrenean border that seems to pretend the Pyrenees do not exist?

1. No particular idea. I started free-balling this a little over a year ago and came back to it recently. It's just a mash-up of alt-historical ideas and tropes that seemed neat at the time.

Some highlights ... the Mongol world, nominally headed by the Great Yuan, A.K.A. Blue Horde, and comprised of the Ilkhanate, Astrakhan, the Khanate of Slavonia and the Khanate of the Cumans (what you might assume is Lithuania). I did some asking around earlier in this thread and people advised me it'd be cool if the Great Yuan was a Manichaean state. The state or popular religions of the other khanates are debatable to me. These states form a cultural bloc, but are divided between the Great Yuan and the Ilkhanate in terms of their political loyalties.

Aquitaine recently broke off from the Angevin Empire and controls Brazil. Not-Canada contests the Angevin throne. Japan and Korea as dueling colonial powers in the style of OTL Britain and France.

2. I guess apparently it's a mistake

 

[Immaculate]

Nice to see you around again LoE. It's been a while.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Nice to see you around again LoE. It's been a while.

You flatter me. I am just a postmodern slug. Thank you

 

[JohannaK]

So the time period is 18th Century? What goes on in India and Southeast Asia?

 

[Lord of Elves]

So the time period is 18th Century? What goes on in India and Southeast Asia?

I was thinking the year of the map was 1830. I'm embarrassed to say I'm just not knowledgeable enough of southeast Asian history to come up with a plausible or interesting background for those polities. I was kind of hoping that someone else would. It was my intention to create a 19th century geopolitical situation with the familiar European players but a variety of Asian powers as well, so I picture them as competent and viable state entities, if a little battered by colonialism, but I just don't have the chops to give them life myself without more extensive research.

 

[JohannaK]

I'm most perplexed by poor elongated China and the big blob to its south. Those need work.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I'm most perplexed by poor elongated China and the big blob to its south. Those need work.

I like the Chinese borders. That's a not-Song Dynasty that is a buffer state between the Great Yuan and the Siamese. I'll concede Tibet's border with the Great Yuan and the not-Song could use some touching up but with some exceptions I'm very proud of this map, it's the best free-handing I've ever done and I think it looks pretty.

 

[JohannaK]

I like the Chinese borders. That's a not-Song Dynasty that is a buffer state between the Great Yuan and the Siamese. I'll concede Tibet's border with the Great Yuan and the not-Song could use some touching up but with some exceptions I'm very proud of this map, it's the best free-handing I've ever done and I think it looks pretty.

If China could hear you...

 

[Tee Kay]

I was thinking the year of the map was 1830. I'm embarrassed to say I'm just not knowledgeable enough of southeast Asian history to come up with a plausible or interesting background for those polities. I was kind of hoping that someone else would. It was my intention to create a 19th century geopolitical situation with the familiar European players but a variety of Asian powers as well, so I picture them as competent and viable state entities, if a little battered by colonialism, but I just don't have the chops to give them life myself without more extensive research.

I can do a more plausible SE Asia (*emphasis on the "more" and not "plausible"). What is Siam on this map? The green blob?

 

[JohannaK]

From the Yangzi to Rangun, apparently.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I can do a more plausible SE Asia (*emphasis on the "more" and not "plausible"). What is Siam on this map? The green blob?

Yeah so my thinking is that because of the strength and duration of Mongol rule in China and across Eurasia, Han culture and society moves southward generally and the state in Siam is a "Siamese" empire ruled by a Han Chinese dynasty that considers itself to be kinda like, "the real China," in the style of OTL Taiwan, but with a more serious and longstanding claim to that title and a developing disinterest in land claims to the north. This state's priorities are shifting down the peninsula and into the Indian subcontinent, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific; it particularly resents the presence of the Visigoths in Malaysia, which had previously been city-states, kingdoms and fiefs under its influence. There may be a revanchist faction within its body politic that would like to see the policy shift back to challenging the other pretenders to the Mandate of Heaven, the not-Song and whatever is happening on the southeastern coast, and pushing the foreigners out, but it is waning in power and influence.

I toyed around with the borders some more.

 

[JohannaK]

V-Visigoths? Oh, Spain. Spain is the Visigoths? Huhmm... So no Muslim Iberia or Reconquista either.

I think the chief questions in China are

1. What's up with the Fujian and Guangdong (southern coast)?
2. What stopped the Mongols from reaching the Yangzi?
3. How is the Middle Kingdom even holding together?