Night of the Living Dead

[Shadowstar]

I had a thought for a cool mutator that we could add to Chaos. I have to admit it's based on several UT1 mods, as well as an idea I had some time ago for a new gametype, but the basic idea is that sometimes when a player dies, instead of going into ragdoll mode, we use a "canned" death animation (so the corpse doesn't slide off to somewhere strange), and then after about 5 seconds, the corpse turns into a randomly selected undead monster. If the player was killed by ERDW or Ion blast, then the corpse turns into a ghost or skeleton. If the player died from anything else, it will be a vampire or a zombie. Each kind of undead has special properties and can only be destroyed one particular way. For instance, zombies can only be destroyed by fire, and will use whatever weapon the dead player was using. If you "kill" them with anything else, they will fall down for 5 seconds and then get back up. Vampires are intelligent undead, so have very good AI. Vampires have unlimited max health, which starts at 100, but it is constantly draining away. Vampires can jump higher than players, but are otherwise the same speed. If a Vampire gets close enough to a player, it will grab them and kill them instantly, taking whatever health and shields they had and adding it thier own health. If a Vampire becomes lit by a sunlight actor, it acts like napalm and will increase thier burn duration, as well as doing lots of damage to them. Vampires will not take any damage from any weapon other than the crossbow, but any arrow will work. They are not effected by poison, but can catch fire and take normal damage from fire. Vampires will also be destroyed if any weapon that can cause a headshot hits thier head. Skeletons can only be destroyed by explosions, but skeletons jump alot and are faster. Plus skeletons automatically spawn with whatever melee weapon the dead player was using, or a randomly generated melee weapon otherwise. Ghosts are completely invisible but create a bluish lightsource wherever they go. All projectiles pass through them and they cannot be destroyed, but will fade away after a random time between 2-5 minutes. They can pass through players, doing damage. If a ghost kills a player, it turns them into a skeleton.

There is one powerup item available in this mutator which will randomly spawn, but is quite rare (it can also be deactivated in the mutator settings). It's the Necronomicon (from Army of Darkness) and will make all undead monsters in the level loyal to the player, so they will not attack the player. In Invasion, this will work on ALL monsters, however, it puts the player who has the Necronomicon on a seperate team, turning everyone against that player. The Necronomicon allows a player to control monster pawns, however the player cannot control individual monters. The player can issue general orders using the bot commands menu, but can only send to "all", and this will go to all monsters currently on the map. Also, any kills the monsters gets go to the player's score. When a player has the Necronomicon, they can't use any weapons except for melee weapons. Instead, the Necronomicon fills all of thier weapon slots, with a different spell in each slot. Each spell uses mana for ammo, which slowly regenerates over time. The spells are as follows:

2, Primary Fire: "Leech" - This spell will directly transfer life from whatever the bolt hits back into the player. This works for monsters too, so the player can sacrifice his own monsters for the sake of his health.

2, Alt Fire: "Zap" - Fires a lightning gun bolt out of the player's hand. A basic attack spell. Good for headshots.

3, Primary Fire: "Raise Dead" - Emits a beam from the player's hand which will cause an undead monster to raise up out of the ground, but will cost the player one kill (and will not work if they have no kills), and 10 health.

3, Alt Fire: "Nether" - Turns all fluid volumes in the level into Nether, a powerful substance that sucks the life out of the good and the living and enhances the life of evil and undead. Liquid volumes in the level will cause damage to players, but give monsters life, and can do so over thier normal maximum. Also, the player with the Necronomicon can gain life from the nether. Does not change the appearance of the water though. Any player that dies in nether will spawn an undead monster.

4, Primary Fire: "Recharge" - Will drain the life (or unlife) from any monster, converting it into mana for the player. This will quickly kill monsters, and each monster will only be able to give the player a little mana, but enough for it to be an effective way to regain mana in an emergency.

4, Alt Fire: "Sap" - This beam drains the shields from a player and converts it into mana for the caster.

5, Primary Fire: "Unholy Aid" - This spell creates a beam which gives life to a monster until they are up to thier normal maximum of life.

5, Alt Fire: "Power Surge" - This drains mana quickly, and health as well (but not as quickly), but will double the remaining life of all monsters, and cause them to do double damage for as long as the button is held.

6, Primary Fire: "Fly" - Causes the player to float upwards while held, essentially allowing them to fly as if with a jetpack. Useful with a gravbelt.

6, Alt Fire: "Unholy Sheath" - Generates shield points for the player. Drains mana quickly.

7, Primary Fire: "Rain of Fire" - Causes napalm explosions across all surfaces marked as Fake Backdrop at a rate of 1 per 2 seconds.

7, Alt Fire: "Rot Gas" - When fired at a monster, this will cause them to start producing poison clouds every second for 2 minutes.

8, Primary Fire: "Solar Eclipse" - Must be fired into a FakeBackdrop. Deactivates all Sunlight actors in the level for 6 minutes. Vampires will flourish in outdoor maps during this time.

8, Alt Fire: "Darkness" - Produces a ball of darkness which produces a redeemer-sized explosion on impact that does no damage, but will deactivate any non-sunlight lights within its blast radius, for 6 minutes. The blast radius goes through walls. Since monsters are not effected by darkness, this will give monsters an advantage over the players.

Ok I'll stop here...
There I go again, posting these big huge ideas and making for massive reads. I could probably go on all day about this idea, but I don't even know if anyone will like it yet, so I'll hold off for now. Sorry about that, hopefully this idea is worth the time it takes to read!

[Zambini]

"Unholy Sheath" - Gives the player 150 shields, but costs alot of mana.

Hmm.. I used one of those on holiday in Spain once. Didn't give me 150 shields, though...

Sounds like an interesting idea. Would there be an option for dead players to play as the undead (and by killing living players become ressurected), with the last player standing the winner?

[Shadowstar]

I made a few changes to some of the spells, so you may want to re-read them again. Hopefully it balances a little better now.

I suppose it would be possible to allow dead players to spawn as an undead when this mutator was active, just for kicks. Thier kills should be scored seperately from thier regular frags, though.

[Zambini]

So it's kind of like a hunter mod if you use the Necro? Might work better as an improved version of Invasion with all the players fighting the shambling hordes, or possibly competing in teams to see who can bag the most monster kills within the time limit.

[Shadowstar]

One idea might be to either create a new invasion gametype or modify the existing invasion gametype to include the undead monster types in the wave config. That way, you could add undead monsters to the waves, or you could remove all the other monsters and use only undead monsters for a real Army of Darkness kind of game...

Imagine watching a horde of skeletons with axes and swords advancing on you! And then using the Chaos melee combat system to fight them off! Course, we'd have to make it so skeletons could be killed by melee weapons.

[thegreywolfe]

Sounds cool, very chaotic.



Ok, what are you waiting for, start coding.

[Zachariah]

Sounds(or should i say reads???) freekin awesome , but not like something that fits in with the theme being used in this mod(no offence). shadowstar , mebbe you should try suggesting this around some different forums , along with this one , to increase the chances of it gettin used , cuz this is one that id kill to see ingame.

heh the ghost model could be the playermodel with the derez effect turned on

[Zambini]

With no disrespect to Pepito, but I feel that this kind of game is very much in keeping with the chaotic ideal. Maybe a few tweaks here and there, but generally speaking this is the best thing that chaos could do with the Invasion gametype. If chopping up zombies isn't chaotic, what is?

[DJPaul2]

This entirely bites, IMO of course.

The dynamic of introducing a gametype that adds zombies to the game as players die is a touch odd, as you'll have players killing other players, and players slaying zombies.

[Bruce9950]

it almost sounds like a mod in itself.I like the vampires and the undead and the different things needed to kill them but spells and things like that might be too much,There is already a lot going on

[Falco]

Sounds like a nifty idea for a mod, but if I understand what you're suggesting, our buddies that make CUT2 would have a whole other thing that they'd have to work on.

[Shadowstar]

Not if most of the code already exists in the game for other features. It would just be a matter of stringing it all together in a new way. For instance, the rot gas spell would borrow code from the poison grenade. It produces the same kind of gas clouds, but only one cloud at a time and at a much reduced rate, and lasts longer. The rain of fire spell just makes napalm explosions in the sky. The undead monsters are just invasion pawns with new models. Most of the code is already there.

[elpollodiablo]

maybe a smear the queer type game.
remember how in quake the zombies would only die if blown up? maybe you just have to explode the zombies and vampires. i remember this one mod where one person was the saint and everyone else was sinners. maybe when the necromancer dies the book is dropped and everyone has to try to get it.

[thegreywolfe]

Ah hell, give me a big room, a flame thrower (or napalm grenade), and a whorde of invasion style zombies and I would be a happy man. I think a chaos gametype for invasion. Hordes of undead, napalm, crossbows, axes, vortexs and cutter's. Very chaotic, and it would be more than just new weapon types.

[Shadowstar]

Oh yeah...

Since the beginning of time, Man has dreamed of fighting the Army of Darkness, let's bring it to the masses!