What do you think of, expect, want in Shootmania?

[AngelFred]

I understand you trackmaniack. I was talking about the idea of pjw not yours. You you're talking about skins like in CS:S. You want some xm8 to replace your ak-47? Go download it, put it at the good place and all with change (sound, textures, moves with the gun(reload, taking it,etc.)) except the stats of the gun. Like the skins in CS:S. This is very cool and simple this way too. And if you can choose the skin you want for every gun IN the game like the cars in TM, this would be WONDERFUL!!! . And you just have to put it where you want and after you choose the skin you want in-game. Like a mix of CS:S with the TM way to choose skin.

[Trackmaniack]

Right. The problem we're having here, I think, is one of terminology. What you guys are calling "skins" I would call a "model'. I would call all those things on TM-Carpark "Models". Except for the paintjobs that only affect the 7 base cars. I call those "Skins." So when I'm talking about changing stuff I mean just what you said, Fred, you can change everything, except the base stats of the gun. So I think we're all in agreement, we're just all stupid cuz we're coming at the same thing with different terminologies. so peace, love, and happy racin!

[AngelFred]

Nice one Trackmaniack We're all talking about the same things so we're all in harmony xD Peace and merry christmas and happy new year all!

[TorbenX]

I really expect several game modus like they have in several other FPS-games. So not only the regular Deathmatch or Siege, but also Capture the Flag, Last Man Standing and those others things.

I also think there will be a variety of weapons divided in classes. So you have to choose a class before heading into the battlefield. I think you also can customize your character completely, from skin color to the color of it's armor, just like you can paint your car in Trackmania from front to back.

Oh yeah, and I don't expect there will be blood in the game. Nadeo wants to link the games by using Maniaplanet (if I am wrong about this, sorry...reading in English remains difficult), so younger players from Trackmania will also get to know from Questmania and Shootmania. And if it must be for everyone, then why add blood?

(sorry for my possible bad english, grammar, and explanation of some of my 'reasons and expections'.)

[xzbobzx]

OK then, my view of how shootmania would work.

- Building

The building part of shootmania can be divided into two parts, one part for building the map, the other for the blocks.

-- Map

The map building is rather straight forward, its just like in trackmania, placing blocks in a grid.
But the ground can be modified, like the way you create mountains in RCT3.
That way you can also color the ground with different textures.
Also you have a selection of trees that can be placed anywhere independent from the grid.

You have a basic selection of blocks when you first start playing.

-- Blocks

This is what i have been thinking of a pretty long time, but i came up with a solution.
When building blocks you start with a 1x1 grid in which you can build a block, this grid can be resized anyway you want.

Then you can start making structures.
I was thinking of some sort of the sims way of building, making walls and giving them a texture, then placing doors and such.

Then for the furniture, you start with a small selection of furniture(ish) parts, like barrels and planks of wood, also a TMUF car .
You can place these anyway you want to, and we're going to do that with a Drag&Tilt tool.
This tool consist of drag arrows (arrows that point to X,Y,Z,-X,-Y and -Z) ones you click and hold those arrows, you can drag the furniture in that direction.
Then the Tilt tool is something like this:

The red part is the furniture, the yellow parts show the ways you can tilt it, and the black things are the handles.
With a tool like this you can move it in any way you want and place it anywhere you want.

Now i said you start with a small selection of furniture, indeed, cause we are going to use maniaplanet to buy them with our planets we earned while fighting.
Nadeo creates all these furniture things and makes new ones all the time.
Also with our planets we can buy textures for our walls, and for our character and guns.
Therefor we can also sell textures for characters and guns. (walls i don't know if its possible)
Also blocks in their entirety can be sold/bought.

Also players can add triggers for any maniascripts they want to add, this is the same for the map.

Ok, having this part done we're moving on to our character.

- Character

Our character, or avatar as i would like to call it, is the most important thing of shootmania.
People recognize you by it, and its a way to show off your virtual wealth.

Because, we can dress our avatars any way we want!
Nadeo makes all the clothing for them (the models), including hats, boots or even glasses, which we can buy.
Then people can retexture all those items, and again sell their textures on maniaplanet.

Also loads of facial features can be created using (again lolz) a sims like character editor, giving us the opportunity to really create anyone we want.
Hair can also be uploaded over time by Nadeo, but we can color it ourselves, we don't need hair textures...
Also we have the ability to choose if we want a male or a female avatar, but that's too odd.

But with all these people having different looks, isn't it real hard to keep team mates from enemies?
No, red team walks on a red shadow thing, and blue team on a blue shadow thing.
Also when we aim at people we can instantly see if they're red or blue team.
And people that don't like this can always create special avatars for their maps, so everyone on the same team looks the same, or they can choose to give all red players a red hat, and the blue players a blue hat, whatever they want.
BUT the creator of the map must have these pieces of clothing bought/unlocked, cause you can't just give all teams a 2 million planets hat while you're a poor guy that's only walking around in a paper bag.

Now over to the gameplay

- Gameplay

Different modes can be played, or even created using maniascripts, its up to the builder to explain these different modes.

You spawn in a spawnblock at the beginning of a match with the guns you chose for your character.
Player can not collide with each other just like in trackmania.
Players can carry 3 weapons they pick themselves, one primary and two secondary.
Also they have to ability to call in an air strike after a preset number of kills, this is option though, and up to the creator whether to put in or not.
Players aim with their mouse and walk with wasd, they shoot with the left mouse button and shoot secondary weapons with right mouse button.
Players can use the scroll thing on their mouse to switch between secondary weapon one and two.
When a player has a flag he/she can not use their secondary weapon.
When players are out of ammo they can go to a reload station, which are mostly near the spawn.

To win planets players must kill a player, easy.
When the players team wins he/she gets a preset amount of planets, this preset is up to Nadeo, to prevent milkers.
Also players can enter tournaments in which they can win more planets than in normal matches.
People can put bounties on other players heads, and the player who kills the wanted player gets the amount the bounty was.

Now, this was rather simple, now to the last part, weapons.

- Weapons

Weapons are very important, they can make the difference of somebody ragequitting and smashing in their pc or having that same person host a massive party.
Nadeo has a selection of weapons made when they launch the game, but make more time after time.
People start with a basic rifle and grenades.
People can buy weapons on maniaplanet only from Nadeo, but retextures from all players.
A rocket launcher costs more than a simple six shooter, but that is plain logic.
People can buy upgrades to improve reload speed, damage, ammo slots and accuracy.
The builders of maps can also choose to give players weapons they want, just like the team clothing.
Again, the builder must have these weapons himself.
Where you can change your avatar you can also pick primary and two secondary weapons.



Well, i guess that's about it then, tell me if i missed something.

[xzbobzx]

Hurr, people are so amazed by my post that they jump out of their window before they can reply...

[seeba]

Well, I rather think that they're knocked out by the simple fact that you wrote nearly 1.1k words, that are about 5k characters (depending on whether you count spaces or not... 5k without, 6k including spaces)

I've just give it a short readthrough, and i have to admit, i like the idea of a splitted editor.
Did I understand you correctly, that you're talking about an editor for the map, and another one (also usable by the player) for creating objects like houses, walls, trees, cars and so on..?

That would sound really nice to me...
Also your comparision to sims is well chosen, the building editor of sims fits in my opinion very good in the type of editor that would be appropriate for shootmania.

[xzbobzx]

Yea, one editor for the map, and one for the blocks.

[hugocool]

OK then, my view of how shootmania would work.

- Building

The building part of shootmania can be divided into two parts, one part for building the map, the other for the blocks.

-- Map

The map building is rather straight forward, its just like in trackmania, placing blocks in a grid.
But the ground can be modified, like the way you create mountains in RCT3.
That way you can also color the ground with different textures.
Also you have a selection of trees that can be placed anywhere independent from the grid.

You have a basic selection of blocks when you first start playing.

-- Blocks

This is what i have been thinking of a pretty long time, but i came up with a solution.
When building blocks you start with a 1x1 grid in which you can build a block, this grid can be resized anyway you want.

Then you can start making structures.
I was thinking of some sort of the sims way of building, making walls and giving them a texture, then placing doors and such.

Then for the furniture, you start with a small selection of furniture(ish) parts, like barrels and planks of wood, also a TMUF car .
You can place these anyway you want to, and we're going to do that with a Drag&Tilt tool.
This tool consist of drag arrows (arrows that point to X,Y,Z,-X,-Y and -Z) ones you click and hold those arrows, you can drag the furniture in that direction.
Then the Tilt tool is something like this:

The red part is the furniture, the yellow parts show the ways you can tilt it, and the black things are the handles.
With a tool like this you can move it in any way you want and place it anywhere you want.

Now i said you start with a small selection of furniture, indeed, cause we are going to use maniaplanet to buy them with our planets we earned while fighting.
Nadeo creates all these furniture things and makes new ones all the time.
Also with our planets we can buy textures for our walls, and for our character and guns.
Therefor we can also sell textures for characters and guns. (walls i don't know if its possible)
Also blocks in their entirety can be sold/bought.

Also players can add triggers for any maniascripts they want to add, this is the same for the map.

Ok, having this part done we're moving on to our character.

- Character

Our character, or avatar as i would like to call it, is the most important thing of shootmania.
People recognize you by it, and its a way to show off your virtual wealth.

Because, we can dress our avatars any way we want!
Nadeo makes all the clothing for them (the models), including hats, boots or even glasses, which we can buy.
Then people can retexture all those items, and again sell their textures on maniaplanet.

Also loads of facial features can be created using (again lolz) a sims like character editor, giving us the opportunity to really create anyone we want.
Hair can also be uploaded over time by Nadeo, but we can color it ourselves, we don't need hair textures...
Also we have the ability to choose if we want a male or a female avatar, but that's too odd.

But with all these people having different looks, isn't it real hard to keep team mates from enemies?
No, red team walks on a red shadow thing, and blue team on a blue shadow thing.
Also when we aim at people we can instantly see if they're red or blue team.
And people that don't like this can always create special avatars for their maps, so everyone on the same team looks the same, or they can choose to give all red players a red hat, and the blue players a blue hat, whatever they want.
BUT the creator of the map must have these pieces of clothing bought/unlocked, cause you can't just give all teams a 2 million planets hat while you're a poor guy that's only walking around in a paper bag.

Now over to the gameplay

- Gameplay

Different modes can be played, or even created using maniascripts, its up to the builder to explain these different modes.

You spawn in a spawnblock at the beginning of a match with the guns you chose for your character.
Player can not collide with each other just like in trackmania.
Players can carry 3 weapons they pick themselves, one primary and two secondary.
Also they have to ability to call in an air strike after a preset number of kills, this is option though, and up to the creator whether to put in or not.
Players aim with their mouse and walk with wasd, they shoot with the left mouse button and shoot secondary weapons with right mouse button.
Players can use the scroll thing on their mouse to switch between secondary weapon one and two.
When a player has a flag he/she can not use their secondary weapon.
When players are out of ammo they can go to a reload station, which are mostly near the spawn.

To win planets players must kill a player, easy.
When the players team wins he/she gets a preset amount of planets, this preset is up to Nadeo, to prevent milkers.
Also players can enter tournaments in which they can win more planets than in normal matches.
People can put bounties on other players heads, and the player who kills the wanted player gets the amount the bounty was.

Now, this was rather simple, now to the last part, weapons.

- Weapons

Weapons are very important, they can make the difference of somebody ragequitting and smashing in their pc or having that same person host a massive party.
Nadeo has a selection of weapons made when they launch the game, but make more time after time.
People start with a basic rifle and grenades.
People can buy weapons on maniaplanet only from Nadeo, but retextures from all players.
A rocket launcher costs more than a simple six shooter, but that is plain logic.
People can buy upgrades to improve reload speed, damage, ammo slots and accuracy.
The builders of maps can also choose to give players weapons they want, just like the team clothing.
Again, the builder must have these weapons himself.
Where you can change your avatar you can also pick primary and two secondary weapons.



Well, i guess that's about it then, tell me if i missed something.

^ The script for Shootmania

[xzbobzx]

Lol, i wonder if they've already started working on Shootmania.