Thievery combined with Real-Time-Strategy

[The_Dan]

Heres another idea that you'll hate me for suggesting but I'll say it anyway:

-A gametype where all thieves are pitted against an unseen overlord that controls all mechanised components and gives direct orders to AI-only guards.

This would require slightly more sophisticated maps, with sufficient traps and interactive components to give overlords extensive (but not total) control.


The overlord would be a human player (although an AI could take that role in offline play), who would view the level through modified watchers (which would only act as remote cameras and not have any AI control) and activate traps via a HUD menu. However, watchers would still be vulnerale to damage/water and traps could be tampered with.
Therefore, AI guards would have to be dispatched to areas to keep the place maintained, and to investigate areas where a thief was last spotted.

This would be a relatively easy task against one thief, since that thief could be constantly followed by the overlord; hence a team of thieves would be working together to win the map.


I reckon this idea has potential, and isn't as impossible to script as you may suspect. However, it would be far from a trivial task and so I'm just poking around to see what community interest there is.

I'm not saying that I could script it myself, but it'd be one to investigate.


So, go on, amaze me and say something nice about this idea

[SNAFU]

So... a sort of Natural Thievery? :grin:

Sounds interesting, but methinks it would be quite a challenge to make it fun for players on both sides, much less code it all and make the levels...

[Master-Builder]

Kinda like Natural Selection?
Anyway, It would probaly have to be map specific...
But i could see some kind of "Hi-tech" mansion featuring a... security office, where a player could play this "overlord" from.

[Nachimir]

One guard player.. very interesting. This would cater to people's desire to play thief most of the time, but I bet it'd require some fairly kickass AI to augment it.

The master could be a technological overlord, or a mage.

[SiLeNt_NiGhT]

The_Dan wrote:

So, go on, amaze me and say something nice about this idea

Sounds Cool!!!
So your saying the 'Overlord' sees all?... (kinda like a security panel with monitors displaying each room and hall so the place can be surveyed by one player? Or so the Overlord could switch between each view throughout the mansion, or whatever, then dispatch an AI to a troubled location?)

Would make a great level!!!

[modetwo]

DeusEx anyone!?


:wink:

[Lurox]

That's just like an idea me and GulloneFox had this morning.

In the guard team, there's that guard captain who can issue orders and prepare the defense. He could come in-game as a guard anytime, of course.

[The_Dan]

One guard player.. very interesting. This would cater to people's desire to play thief most of the time, but I bet it'd require some fairly kickass AI to augment it.

Not really that much improvement needed for guard AI. The two most important changes would be:

-Patrol orders could be modified to "Go to location X and investigate"

-AI would notice broken equipment and could be told to go over and repair it, in the same why that they notice doused torches and hold a flare against them while they relight it (We could do with this in the AI anyway, pretty please Joel)

[The_Dan]

That's just like an idea me and GulloneFox had this morning.

In the guard team, there's that guard captain who can issue orders and prepare the defense. He could come in-game as a guard anytime, of course.

Dungeon Keeper was the inspiration for this idea, as you may have guessed

[Nachimir]

-Patrol orders could be modified to "Go to location X and investigate"

-AI would notice broken equipment

I think it's a really cool idea!

Dungeon Keeper was the inspiration for this idea, as you may have guessed

First game that crossed my mind

[SNAFU]

DeusEx anyone!?


:wink:

I don't see a very strong relationship. Pardon me for my ignorance, but might I ask how this idea reminds you of Deus Ex?

[Stakhanov]

A mage could watch over his fellow guards... and drop healing spells or magic bolts when needed. To balance this thieves might have common sight (since they have a blood bond or something) to coordinate attacks. Or they might become completely ninja and walk on walls...

I think Natural Thievery sounds good

[Yenzarill]

Sounds Interesting.

It'd definatly give thievery a lot more playability, adding such a different game type.

[Oie]

This kind of reminds me of Tribes where you could have a commander that directed the troops. I got to thinking about the same thing when I started on another mutator the other day. My mutator is basically an improved sketch map that, when you are a guard, makes your AI teammates names on the map red when they have spotted a thief and yellow when they are alerted. I figure this doesn't give the guard team any unfair advantage because human teammates give feedback anyway so why not let AI do the same thing.

[Curunir]

Sounds like a great idea, would be lots of fun. Maybe it would be best to have it on certain maps that were made for it only.