Lost Secrets of Na Pali (Total Conversion)

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FXD|Shadow

Mad Man, really
Hy everyone !

Introduction
My team and me are creating a huge UT99 Total Conversion (SP/MP). The core is the final outbreaking conflict between Skaarjs and Humans. LSoNP (Short for Lost Secrets of Na Pali) plays around 200 years after the timelime Unreal was following. You find yourself as a major on a USM Ship, beeing send to an accidental location at an anomaly (you only know off the accident not the anomaly). What you'll find there is another ship (a skaarj ship) and after some while a totally mysterious starship coming out of the anomaly and destroying both (the skarrj and usm) ship. You escape together with a soldier to the Planet Na Pali and have to inform the earth govermnent about the try of the skaarj (see the story) to invade the earth.

That's the base short form of the story. Now let's go to gameplay..

Gameplay and other stuff
Let me say that the missions will be very different, while you're on Na Pali you mostly (the first 1/6 of the game) experience a more typically Unreal-Feeling, but there'll be additions, elements like infiltrating enemy bases and/or defending bases (those will be optimized for coop gaming) are also planed. The time after leaving Na Pali will then be really role-playing game, you've to find out why the USM are setting up bases on Na Pali, why the Skaarj have such massive new technology (synthetical growing lifeforms, time vortex) and so on, for that reason you can travel between 20-25 Planetsystems and interact with the (intelligent) lifeforms on them. Like trading stuff or speaking with NPCs. There'll be also vehicles (yes!) included used for special missions like Space Fighting or Wheel fighting (like in Halo). New inventory, items and also weapons are included (around 30 weapons, some from unreal, some from ut99 and the new ones like flame thrower, tesla rifle, grenades). There'll be a day/night change and you can eat/drink to power up your health and condition, a skill system is included, spell system (you can learn casting spells on na pali). Also a new hud, menu and an own exe is included. The main story the player follows will be explained and shown in many many Cut-Scences (for example showing a massive Space Battle..) like interluding and linking between the locations or other things and missions (landing on a new planet, what's you next mission etc.).
Creatures/Cultrures that will be used:
- Skaarj (even their Homeworld, imagine somekind of the machine city as seen in matrix)
- Mercenary (Skaarj's hardest enemies, you'll explore a meteor base of them)
- Nalis of course (everything similar as in Unreal and quite more..)
- the Krall (their abolished slavery lying on their nation by fighting a bloody war against the Skaarj)
- the Drakh (the same evil guys as in Unreal II)
- the other 20 new races (with own behaviour and technologies)
- a huge palette of misc. creatures like native beeings on planets (birds, insects etc.)

Locations:
- Skaarj Prime (like the machine city in matrix)
- Earth (like courosant in Star Wars)
- Krall Prime (a huge, mostly forrest, swamp planet)
- Na Pali (similar to earth in the middleage)
- Mercenary Outpost (a comet base)
- Drakh Collective (we think that they organise similar to the Borg in Star Trek, most locations will be some smaller outposts)
- Human and Skaarj Outposts (on Moons, Comets, other Planets)
more to come !

"How is the game directly build off ? How will you design a mission currently, explain with a example.."

Well, thing on Na Pali will contain around 10-15 Levels, 1/3 will be trumbling around, collecting infos, 2/3 will be infiltrating bases (together with nalis, lol !), fighting, and typically sp levels (but not so senseless **** as in Jediknight 2, on the Doomgiver and the stuff with activating the communication..). The other 5/6 part of the game will be far different from the unreal style, when you're back on earth then you go first to the USM Head Quarter give the information, then you can go around the city, go to your home, until you get the next mission objective. We will do it so, that you can choose between multiple mission objectives, so if you don't like one, you do the other first...
All in all it will be a colored mixture of Unreal, Unreal II (the better parts XD ), some of Deus Ex, Horror Elements, a lot of Sci Fi and also Fantasy stuff.

"How will the game end ?"
That's still in mind-storming process, but we think to offer multiple endings and content that is unlocked by finishing a master quest.

Technical

Making an ambitious huge mod for an 8 year old engine WITHOUT any actual graphic/sound technology means that it would be in some case.. time wasting, coz not many will play it, so we decided to really (and I mean really..) power up the engine with the following:

- Dolby Digital Sounds (to really use the vectorized sound output of the engine)
- Lensflares
- Dynamic Coronas
- Semi Physic Engine (providing some more possibilities then the standard one)
- Mp3/Ogg Support
- High Res Textures (S3TC) up to 4096x4096 Pixel
- Software Bloom, Sprite Beams
- Projectors
- Distance Fog
- Skin Illumination (glowing Eyes, Details Maps on Meshes etc.)
- Hardware Bloom, Motion Blur, Radial Blur
- better Terrain, also Foliage, Trees, Gras
- Footstep Sounds and material relative events
- Level Memorizing System
- own Particlesystem
- nearly all ol' creatures will get a face lift (more polys, better skins)

AI

That will be a really interesting point, most games NPCs are stupid. The enemy sees you and will kill you by all costs.. without thinking. I don't say that we'll use totally clever oponnents, but we try to really improve the AI. Just let me say an example:
you see 2 Skaarj Officer, 3 Brute at an entrance to a Skaarj Outpost. The one skaarj officer you probably take down by a head-shot.. in Unreal the other guys instantly know you're location running to you.. our guys are different, the second officer activates the auto cannons, and orders the brutes to be warned of enemies, the officer himself will now send an extra team..
Other example:
You're in a fight, man vs. skaarj, you're heavy wounded and try to run away and hide, but you leave a blood trail (I give you 2 seconds to think of the situation) yes.. the skaarj will follow the blood trail..


Vehicles

All types of vehicles are planed and will be used: Air, Water, Land.

Such as: Tank, buggy, many spaceships, even alien vessels !
Often a mission is created so that not all parts of a level are passable by a vehicle, you have to unlock a part, while the other defend their position.


Misc. Stuff

Months ago we were working together with another team of a similar mod, called Unreal - Skaarj Unleashed (USU). Unfortunately this ambitious project rests in peace now, because USU didn't have enough team members. Nearly all of them joined our team to finish at least 1 project, both parties were interested in, so comes that we're now a team of 15 all working together not on a mod, not on a game... on a dream, LSoNP won't be just a mod to be played, I think for each or let's say many people will it be a simple outstending experience (we hope so^^).
We're also supported with Music by the following Bands:
- Symbiontic
- Karma
- Natyrlich Tr00
There'll maybe more to come...

Links

simply type "LSoNP" or "Lost Secrets of Na Pali" in google, or..

LSoNP Homepage (Ger/Eng)
LSoNP's Profile at ModDB
USU/LSoNP Threads at UnrealED-Forum.de (Ger)
Some news about LSoNP (Eng)
Beyond Unreal LSoNP Profile



Enough **** said, Pics..

LSoNP_Blend4.jpg

Shiny Lamp (Sprite Beams)

LSoNP_Texes_Tehevilcastlefloor.jpg

High Res Textures Example

LSoNP_TreeGen_EarlyAlpha1.jpg

new Trees

TehParticleTechVideo_BetaShot1.jpg

Preview Shot of the Movie

water_38035.jpg

Foliage

water_37908.jpg

Behemoth with Skin Overlayer

water_35485.jpg

(Akimbo) Assault Rifles

LSoNP_DistanceFog3.jpg

Distance Fog

Emitter Examples

LSoNP_Emitters_Explo.jpg

LSoNP_Emitters_Smoke2.jpg

LSoNP_Emitters_SparksA.jpg
 
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Nahand

!!! God Of Random !1?
Oct 24, 2003
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... *cheers* =) Seems [VERY] ambitious (we already knew that from UnrealSP), but i surely wish you guys succeed :tup: ...
 

Exus Tecius

like diamonds in the sky
Sep 24, 2003
1,839
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36
Visit site
hey
i love the akimbo assaultrifles(fnp90).
i just hope that this project wont end up in smoke like other promising sp mods.
i wish you good luck and look forward to play this wonderful lookin sp mod.
cheers
 
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Nahand

!!! God Of Random !1?
Oct 24, 2003
1,018
0
0
PT
... about those Akimbo AssRiflestm, can you work the model so that it positions nearer the player POV? If you compare it with the AutoMag for example, you'll notice that the rifles and holding arms are more in player POV than AutoMag's. And they look kinda "streched" that way :/ (if you know what i mean)...
 

Predcaliber

One Day I'l Beat Lauke
Jun 17, 2003
1,165
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The Netherlands
www.predcaliber.com
It looks really nice, its really wonderfull to see people like you are still involving in creating new things, and not just only have the ideas, but are really working on it too.


I wish you all the best while making it, and I am very curious how it will be :)
 

War_Master

Member
May 27, 2005
702
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I like every aspect of your MOD so far. The enhancement of the graphics into UT99 is something I always wondered about, if it could be done or not to make it look like 2k4 a bit. The introduction of the Unreal2 monsters is something that amazes me a lot... did you remodel all the U2 stuff for this mod into UT99? Well, that would be excellent no matter how. The Emitters system, will it slow down performance like any of the custom made ones we've seen before or it will work as smooth as in 2k4? I hope it doesnt affect much in slow machines though. That would be the biggest change yet.

I also have a few questions about it:

Are we going to be able to make custom Maps, Mods, etc for it?... I mean building levels in the editor with the same graphic capability and the other enhancements.

Does (SP/MP) mean it is a SinglePlayer and MultiPlayer mod?... what I mean is if it will have other Gametypes included to take advantage of its excellence as well for people to share it ONLINE.

Will the new monsters be as ScriptePawns or under a new class?

Will we be allowed to use the new monsters into other mods if possible?

The new weapons like the UT_Eightball, will it have the SmokeTrail and a RocketSmokeRing from 2k4 since it has an Emitter System?... as well as the other weapons.

Will we be able to use Mutators from the mutators list built in UT99?... so that people can mod for it if it is allow to. :)

Will the new monsters be Imported as the Unreal/UT Mesh system?... same as weapons, pick-ups, deco, etc since in U2 are made of StaticMesh Animations... now how'd you converted that???


That's what I wonder so far for the reason that I like Co-Op mods like MonsterHunt but its design is really limited. If your MOD will have online playability as close or better than MonsterHunt then you just might get most of its community or even more. There still isnt anything about 2k4 that I like but the graphics and engine and I believe all of us that still view this here do to. Well, I am waiting desperately to see the results into a mod that I can code and map for without any problems since Emitters and the other enhancements were added to it. Thanks for giving us a new hope and I wish you the best of LUCK to all of you working on it as well as your new upcoming community.


I hope I dont offend anybody by asking too much but I'm just curious to know if I can finally move to a better MOD like yours seems to be.