i've been thinking a bit about how the source engine has the ability to show off different facial animations, and thought "how could this help out ns2?". its easy enough to say that when shooting, a marine should look angry/scared, and on guard when they are not. but this is only two stances and is basically polish.

what i've thought about is emotions, or rather the grades of emotions that you have in a life-and-death situation. which basically comes very close to morale. when you are in no direct threat, but still in a hot-zone, you are focused on the task ahead. when you are bloody and carved to pieces and basically hanging by a thread, you are pretty much desperate and not thinking logically.

basically i figured that this could be interpreted with a sort of energy-bar that goes as a soldiers morale.

1. A soldiers morale starts around 100(maybe more depending on variables), and slowly drains down to the soldiers health-level when injured by accident, quickly when injured by enemies.
2. When a soldier observes enemies, the morale meter starts to drain. killing enemies quickly boost the morale, losing comrades within a certain radius quickly drains it.
3. When low on morale, other nearby marines with higher morale will cause your morale meter to start regaining morale up to their level.
4. enemies can reduce your morale by their very presence. if they can avoid getting shot but still stay in sight or in hearing range, they can scare the morale out of the marine.
5. in the right scenarios, in a group of marines or in a heavily fortified base, the upper levels of your morale is heightened. being in a choke-point with good defenses and 2-4 other marines would easily double your morale roof.
6. when a marine is low on morale, he could perhaps temporarily increase his morale with a 'rally' call. this would most likely take a long time to recharge, but it would cause the marine to regain his senses, partially at least. naturally, if a marine has low health, the morale will start to drain again.

but what the hell would morale be good for? well that depends on how much you want it to affect the game. basically i would say there are at least 3 grades of morale, optimally 4.

• (Grade 0: +130, optimal/encouraged: you are in a group of other marines or in a situation of imminent victory.)
• Grade 1: 100-75, standard/cautious: the marine looks serious and in control of himself.
• Grade 2: 74-25, moderate/skeptical: the marine has the looks of a person who knows he is in way over his head, and is more likely to forget doctrine.
• grade 3: 24-1, severe/panic: the marine is fighting for his life, and looks like a wild beast trying to find a way to survive.

the list has a basic explanation of how what would happen animation-wise. gameplay-wise this system can be used in many ways. the field i personally think it will have the most effect for both sides is in sound-discipline, and i will focus on that right now.

• when a marine is in grade 1, the sound-discipline is perfect. he does not make any unwanted sounds beyond footsteps, he can easily hear aliens and the aliens cannot easily camouflage their ambush. when the marine has visual contact with enemies, he does not do anything stupid.
• when a marine is in grade 2, he starts to get nervous and have probably gotten a bit of damage to worry about. relatively heavy breathing of the kind that you would have after or during a proper adrenaline-kick/jog would be proficient. when the marine comes in visual contact with enemies, he might become even more scared, but it should just increase the sound of his breathing. fast movements on the mouse should create sound of weapon and equipment being pulled about(think action/thriller movie).
• when a marine is in grade 3, he is practically hyperventilating. he is barely alive and probably all alone. much of the same as in grade two, but when in visual with enemy, the marine screams his lungs out and is probably a dead man walking.
• if a marine is in grade 0, he is confident in himself, but as we all know hubris is not good for you. the main differences on this and the others would perhaps be that he gives off a small laugh as he spots enemies, shooting at them with glee.

i've also thought about having different reload times and precision on weapons depending on morale, but i think it might be hard to balance it in the same way as the things mentioned above. different abilities from the different teams would affect how morale is drained and regained too. a commander might upgrade marines with anti-depressants or whatever you would call "don't die screaming"-pills, the aliens might upgrade their units to spread horror better, give them the ability to blood-curdling screams through the hallways.

probably forgot something(stuff like different rally calls depending on grade of morality and the likes), but I'm off to see a movie. i think this should cover the basics of how i think it could work though. let me hear what people think about it.

morale and things like it, i personally feel are too role playing like for a fast-paced arcadey multiplayer fps. simulating fear or shock, or other things like blood on the screen, dizzyness, poison etc are just annoying. i'm playing and i'm not particularly fearful. nervousness and anxiety already affect the player; walking around by yourself and hearing a lot of aliens nearby means you keep checking vents and doors, or the pressure of competitive games.

For RPG games, this would perhaps add a dimension, but NS2 is going to be scary enough on it's own, like N_3 already states. Good post though.

the changing facial expressions is a cool idea but i dont think we need to see a bar or have to be cowardly to aviod changing our noise out put. Besides most rines have a very low life expectancy so it could be very disadvantagous to rines who can survive a reasonable period of time if they suffer from moral problems and the reenforments dont.

But i would like to look round at rines with different expressions that varied with the situation but this is purly aesthetic and would only influence game immersion rather than game play

I really like the idea, and if its not kept on the down-low i'm absolutely sure that it will be implemented in a game such as GRAW, Rainbow Six etc (squad based combat)... UWE Should look into this, and perhaps pioneer it (as they did with the Commander Mode).

It could use a little tweaking, but if it has a very small affect on accuracy, speed (sprint that charlie didn't want a bar for?) and build-times (if scared a marine would fumble with delicate machinery)... not enough to ruin the game, but to add another level to it.

the facial expressions sounds really good as well, and with the HL2 face-poser should be super-easy, surely?

morale is in this context not directly affecting how effective you are at shooting, which i know would piss people off easily. i sure hope not that NS2 will be arcadey than battlefield(if anything i was planning to start a thread that asks how long people like their games to be and if it would have been possible to modify that serverside)

on the topic of simulating fear and shock i understand your opinion, but i love getting the beejebuz scared out of me, be it multiplayer action or singleplayer story . i do agree that blood on the screen and other visually impairing effects are annoying, but the sound is something that i believe doesn't effect your ability to aim and shoot, but still plays a vital part of how you act. for me its important that the feeling of the game is great.
i am using alot of inspiration from what i've seen of left4dead in this topic, as that is in my opinion a fine example of how tension/dread/shock deepens the game.
when an alien starts making noises, you should be on the look-out because they would optimally be relatively close. then again, if some aliens are actively terrorizing you with upgrades that makes them harder to get to, that could get annoying in the long run. But scanning is handy in those situations. but yeah, 'this' shouldn't be so distracting that marines use half the game hunting terrors.



hmm, theres nothing like "scary enough" . for me, this would be a polish to the game. to hear marines in the room next-door screaming out right before they abruptly fall silent is something i would look forward for, both from the scared-to-death angle of the marines and the "muahahahaha" angle of the aliens.

on the topic of rpg's getting more out of this. what kinda rpg's are you thinking about then? personally i don't see how a rpg like neverwinter-nights would get alot more than more sound-effects out of it. Though hearing your enemies scream right before they die would be cool, but it wouldnt have the same punching effect as in an fps.
If you played mgs3 and got the machinegun, did you try to fire over 20 rounds with it? Snake goes into a battlecry and he goes Rambo, but it really makes firing that machinegun epic. i'm not going for a direct copy of that, but some minor scripting here and some minor sound effects there really makes all the difference.

thanks for saying its good though, i'll do my best not defending myself to death.



the bar might be unnecessary, could be enough with a number somewhere just to let you know where you are at. then again morale is a fickle thing, perhaps no Hud on it at all would work out.
Its true that people would become less gung-ho with a morale system that allows the aliens to localize them easier when between a rock and a hard place, but if people want to be gung-ho, have sound discipline really mattered for them in the first place? the way i see it, you won't hear the breathing as easily as you would hear the guy walking. If you are walking you are making more noise than when standing still, though still breathing. i kinda got into it in the first post, but the "rally"-button that would allow you to regain parts of your morale would be very handy in those situations where you are trying to be quiet, but don't have the morale at that time to do so.
for example, hiding around a corner you hear an alien come by, you are breathing heavily and trying to hide, so you push the rally button. since you are standing still you don't say anything(or crouching, who knows) and you stop breathing heavily as you try to control yourself.
would make for an interesting situation

on the topic of life expectancy. marines who live longer than others would most of the time have regained their health. that would cause regaining of morale as well and he would be as good as new. also if he drops by some base or meets some other marine he would regain his morale alot faster, encouraging defense and going back to base for some ammo and coffee.

i expect that the devs are planning some sort of system to make character emotions a part of the immersion. the meaning behind this topic was that i thought it would be cool to combine it into something else aswell.


another thing that might use this system; if they are going to add orders and commands and the likes that you got for example in the battlefield series, it would have been fascinating to see the voices reflecting the marine's state of morale. a marine with very low morale would practically beg for support over the radio while a marine part of a kick-butt group would practically laugh into the radio or just go "ey, i think i got one here, join me for a barbeque!"


to sum things up. i agree that it should not be a vital part of the game. i don't really want to see it affect vision and aim of weapons. i think the core idea here is that it would affect your characters face and perhaps your characters sound-levels. the sound is mostly immersion but it would also affect gameplay partially(breathing would be alot more audible by yourself than the enemy, so its mostly causing you trouble ). if you live long and have good health but in enemy territories, you shouldn't be up by 100 but you shouldn't be down by 25 either.

anyway, i got to go to bed, if i missed something or ignored something someone said i blame tiredness.

Neat idea. My first reaction is that it might work best to distill this down to a couple little flavorful effects instead of a whole system:

- When a group of marines kills a lone alien, a couple cheer and play special animations because they feel so tough
- When a marine is by himself and hears/sees a big alien, randomly play heavy breathing

Awesome idea! Who knows how much work this would require, but I loved the effect in some of the games I have played. I think it was Call of Cthuhlu or something where your guy would limb and start breathing heavy after being hurt. I don't remember, but danm it would be GREAT even if the facial expressions and voices changes depending on the situation.

If you were in a group or got a kill your guy would be like "That's right! Daddies got something for ya!", then if you were alone and for whatever reason said something, it would be like "ah damn, this can't be good", or even just a rare episode of heavy breathing. HL2 has facial expressions and heads move to follow other people already, so that's probably an easy thing to include. Nothing would be better...

I gotta say, of all the ideas so far, this is by far the best. I don't imagine it would modify the game mechanics at all either, just add depth.

So uh, where do the voice actors sign up?

This is a great idea! I know from Team Fortress 2 it works incredibly well in First Person Shooters. With some tweeks, it could easily boost tension...

Any ideas on what a Kharaa would have in the way of morale and facial expressions?

hrmm, possibly if it was only cosmetic/audio effects. i still like how the marines are in ns1, always professional, straight-faced and fearless. As for marines saying things, if people use the mic a lot then thats better than auto-taunts.

And sometimes it;s worse. Much, much worse. *sigh* But good point. If everyone had a mic it would be perfect, but that won't happen. It is also just an option, so if you were bothered by it, you could just turn the option for "auto taunts playing" off I imagine. I would love to leave them in place as long as it didn't play every time I killed someone. Maybe only rarely when by yourself, and if you were in a group and the game detected more then one person shot the enemy [fighting together], you would get a special animation/taunt every now and then.

I would hope that it was tweaked so when you are playing a frag fest game, or NS combat, you were not constantly giving youself away and spamming the game with "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby", "yeah baby"..... Maybe then more the team works together, the better the taunt. If one guy gets a kill, then you very rarely hear him say something. Then the more people work together to kill an enemy, or the more kills one player gets back to back without dying, the better they get, and they will slightly increase in times heard.

This is just a working idea:

1. one guy kills enemy - 1 action/taunt per 50 kills - no animation

2. two guys kill enemy resulting in enemy death - guy who gets the kill gets one action/taunt per 40 kills and does funny animation [blowing smoke away from barrel, or alien would watch the marine die in agony or something]

3. two or more guys, get more then one kill, back to back - they both get one taunt per 30 kills and get great animation [alien dies in a cool way, bloody, explosion of guts everywhere, depending on weapon used, marine dies is a very messy horrifying way]

4. exesive carnage by either side detected by the game [one guy getting more then 5 kills without dying] - every 3 times this happens, the game would give the player an awesome taunt and animation, also maybe the player would auto catalyst [overide by game] despite marine upgrades and/or hive # - Aliens would go into a frenzy animation and get MC boost on top of wherever it is at that moment, and marine would get auto catalyst with maybe the attention of the commander on him using a beacon or some sort [sound played to others is teammate over the mic saying "good god Johnson, slow down man, you ain't leaving anything for us!" or something to that effect.

So the more people work together, or the more one guy gets back to back kills, the more likely he/she will hear and see something cool. Plus, it still can be spread out so it doesn't happen all the time.

I'd like it to be based on a spree, maybe randomized. Every consecutive kill should increase your chance of saying something cool. Maybe also implement a limit - you can only taunt once every 3/4 kills to prevent spamming.

If you knife a lerk/fade/pronos you should ALWAYS hear an awesome taunt, something along the lines of: "I'M DOMINING"

Oh hell yes! Knife and parasite kills deserve something special, definitely. Not only is it embarassing, but it's funny as hell. I have only knife killed a fade or lerk a couple times, but damn it was sweet!

This moral idea is in my oppinion totally crap....
sorry but the players moral should stay at the player o.O
i mean if there 2 onos running around me im scared really... running away instead of shooting them, hiding whatever...
this meter would be a nice idea for bots or something

well the taunt idea or the breathing will increase this moral/fear. so the bar is not needed. maybe the screen starts shaking if 2onos or more running nearby.

But i would like to see something temperature based. turrets getting hot so they cant shoot after while anymore. same with sieges maybe ?
in a cool room lifeform movementspeed is decreased same to marines except HA.
Many structures or lifeforms increase temperature in rooms so aliens got a speed and attackspeed advantage etc.
what do you think about that idea?

i could see this working for aliens too with their assortments of sounds, they could have special facial or body animations to go with the communication sound.

ie- chuckle sound- a skulks mouth could slightly curl into a grin and its eyes squint slightly as its head shakes sligthly as it chuckles.

charge sound- skulks jump up a few centimeters off their front legs, like a mid rear. onoses could toss their heads and roar.

i think adding animation/facial expressions could add more bloom into ns2, i like the idea of seeing a marine saying "you dont see that every day.. thank god" and scratching his head and his lips talking to what he is saying..

i would love to see it implemented on both sides, for enjoyment, and for more communication.

we wont have aliens wondering what sound your making anymore when they see your head bowing down in a pitiful begging manner to be healed, and marines will react to a marine who is waving to follow yelling "follow me this way!"

ps: i would love to see more sounds to be played like the following if this was implimented..
- alien growling "they lower their head in a snaking manner and growl"
- marine threatening "cursing or cussing at that damned chicken alien who just healed ! DAMN THEM NOOBS!! *shakes iron fist*"
- alien whimper "i could see gorges doing this alot to be cute to get away from marines LOL!"
- marine complaint "why the hell should i do this, its player do this, player do that, all that com does is sit on his fat bum and make orders.."
- alien sing "simple tune they make,, aliens would be horrible singers, but maybe a little jig animation would help to show they are infact singing and not dying"
- marine sing "HAMSTER DANCE DEEDEEDODDA"

more communications!!!!

hmm, this is turning into another long reply, i'll try to keep it short and to the point.



1. Nothing wrong with coming up with critique. i would agree that the morale system if overdone would be crappy, but it seems to me that you assume that this would be a sort of tabletop-40k game morale system where you lose control over the marine when the morale goes down. thats not the case and never was supposed to be.
when you come into a situation where "in real life" you would have a sort of audible reaction. this kinda 'morale-pool' would reflect what kind of audible reactions your marine has to a given situation. you are still in full control, but your noise output is being partially controlled by the variables around you.

2. Hmm, not completely with you on this one. are you using the word taunt in the same context as i am using the word "rally"? if so I'm with you, and yes, depending on how easy its for people to get healed, the rally would easily reload your morale. but thats not a bad thing. besides, a 'rally' function wouldn't have effect more than lets say, once per minute or 30 seconds and probably wouldn't fill up more than 50% of your current maximum pool. so you won't be running around re-rallying all the time.
i think i said later on in my second post that you don't need or should have a bar akin to the energy-bars of the aliens, but a minor number in a corner somewhere would be handy.

3. don't see the direct connection to this thread on the turrets, since they aren't really affected by morale. movement speed of aliens and the likes are also a bit outside this field. what you are saying about heat and cold has in earlier games been reflected earlier by speed upgrades from the different buildings that the aliens got. But with the new dynamic infestation it would be possible that rooms infested are more easily maneuvered by Kharaa.
make a new thread on it, so that one can focus on that specific topic.





your first reaction is a good one, but as Einstein says when i open up a wikipedia article on the topic of the KISS principle: "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

the system doesn't need to be the worlds most advanced, but there should definitely be a system. there should be guards that makes sure that not every marine in the vicinity starts blabbering at the same time as the others, and there should be guards that stops people from repeating sounds all the time.

this system would in my opinion enhance the realism of the sound-effects, and make it feel more real. it can probably be simplified and better written, as i am not a linguistic genius. but it shouldn't be made too simple.
if i was to put this into one sentence, i would probably write it something like this:

"audible reactions from marines would be split into 4 categories, and a variable going from around 100 to zero would choose which group the sound-effects are taken from."



anyway, i am writing too much in my replies, i barely manage to read them myself. should be more active and reply while the posts are fresh. but its hard considering timezones

ah what the heck a few more.

hehe, thanks for that. i do my best at thinking things through properly before i post them.
i do hope that they get access to a couple of voice-actors. But i also hope they get some professional support on recording and voice-acting, because cheesy vocals would be abysmal. i don't know if its universal, but i prefer Japanese language on my anime because it kicks the posterior of the English ones.



Hmm, so team-fortress 2 also got that stuff. Hmm, have to buy the orange box it seems. it seems that alot of source-based games on the horizon is doing this, so hopefully NS2 won't be the pariah there .

tweaking is vital, this is not a well-written design document, i just wrote for about 45 minutes the stuff that i have been doodling on a paper. the idea i got in my head have probably not come out the same way onto the keyboard, and then your personalities have come and assimilated that data and interpreted it in your own ways. some see things that i haven't seen and point that out, while others focus on things that might not be a big problem. Also considering English being my secondary language, there are bound to be some things that i've failed to communicate.




having special sound-effects in a specific situation is probably quite possible. a taunt function could also easily be put into the different morale categories, and so when you are on a roll you could get a bonus to the morale pool that makes your taunts much more dynamic. having special sound effects for embarrassing kills is also fun stuff though.

so many replies, so much text... better be more on guard now

theyr morale would go down too with near alien taunts (evil laughs)
and it would go up by smoking cigarrettes(make it go along with a taunt)
hehehe xD

As cool as this idea is, throwing too many variables into a game = pain. Plus, trying to emulate pain/fear usually ends poorly, with the exception of explosive ringing and bluriness in more "realistic" games like CoD4 or Battlefield.

this is a very cool idea - you could also make a global value - if the marine team is winning (defined by certain parameters) they look confident, disciplened etc

when they are constantly getting butchered, their faces start to look worried and show more aggression when shooting weapons etc.

edit- it would be very subtle and not gaming changing. but also its a selling point.

I was initially going to say that this doesn't fit in Natural-Selection because it's a game, not a movie.

Then I thought about selecting my troops in Incubation, and how red-hp characters would have this really atmospheric "...yeah?.." in kind of a raspy, dying-ish voice. It was pretty cool, although it's still debatable whether it would be good.

I think that whatever you do, the longer the game progresses, the less frequent "cheers" should become, as 1) it doesn't make sense atmospherically to cheer after your 25th dominated skulk, and 2) it would honestly get annoying to have people cheering around you every time you kill something in a sci-fi horror anything.

Maybe it could be a clientside element, and would be a factor of how long the player was playing in this session, that way it would more closely match the player's level of desensitization to killing skulks, etc.

It makes sense to have it clientside (and able to be toggled on and off) because if some people (marines) were more cool and collected, or if they simply were less outgoing, they might be more likely to avoid cheering at all. It fits with the atmospheric element as well as giving players more control- which is almost never a bad thing.

I love dom's idea of having a spree-based mechanic that would increase your chance to taunt if you had it on.

Radix brings up a good point about atmosphere. I would enjoy the atmosphere elements such as cheers or facial expressions, but messing up my gameplay is not something I like.

As it stands, sometimes the characters are a little stoic and not very interesting animation wise. Sure it was the HL1 engine and you didn't have a giant budget to blow on animations (unlike say CoD4 which has wicked animations), but there are times it would be nice to feel a bit more attached to your character and the others around you.

The auto-taunt has been suggested before, and I still kinda like it. Of course, it's not very practical for sneaking purposes, but give us the option to turn it on for more casual games and I'm sure we'll use it. Either that or it is always post battle, at which point all the gunfire and biting has given your position away anyways. But still, a silent stoic I won't yell option would be nice. I'm a sucker for letting the players customize their games.

It's a shame I was away for a week an missed this topic earlier, now most of what I was going to say has been said already. :-\


Great topic though! It is a bit more towards a RPG than the RTS & FPS, but perhaps there is a way... which I saw somebody else mention, but not expand upon:


Facial expressions.


Why?

• It doesn't impact first person gameplay negatively for the affected player with low morale (which a damage reduction, dizziness, etc. could) in a way that the player can't really control
• It doesn't interfere with competitive play. (nothing would be more annoying than being unable to complete your objective and die easily simply because your were penalized for having low morale when your yourself knew your were completely unafraid and capable of completing that objective)
• It creates immersion for your teammates in a nice, subtle way. Much like when you go on a killing spree or get shot in TF, but without the annoying / distracting voice sounds.

(this idea on morale %) + (the effect of morale being a subtle 3rd person effect on facial expression) = vote yes

x5 i don't know if your post is for or against using morale as a gameplay element, but please don't.

Morale is a good idea, and should be an atmospheric element- but it should end there- giving any objectives or abilities based on morale doesn't fit first-person gameplay at all and in my opinion, a client should be able to control the median mood of his or her marine, and even turn off mood based taunts if they so desired.

Depends on what you are calling gameplay. I think we are on the same page though given what you wrote about it being an atmospheric element (aka. an immersion factor).

For me gameplay elements are typically separate from immersion as it affects how the combat "feels". I would be against having reduced damage in FPS gameplay when your morale is low for the same reason you just posted: "a client should be able to control the median mood of his or her marine" Why? Because it is first person. You aren't controlling the character like in a RPG, you are the character. (ok, well some people "are" their RPG characters as well; maybe that's not the best wording but hopefully I'm getting my point across)

What my post should have been getting across what that I'm for having it being some your teammates see, but you don't.

Still confused Radix?