Firstly, big cheers to Pasik for allowing us to play RWR at this stage of development! I am impressed with just how well this plays along with your vision of where you want it to go. It's one of those games I didn't know that I wanted to play, until I played it - then I loved it!

Anyway, I digress. I came across this through the RPS site, and quite a few people are saying Cannon Fodder! Since Pasik seems very open to the idea of modding, I'm sure that someone will incorporate CF style into RWR at some stage, but I also wondered if it was worth in the meantime thinking about some of the CF mechanics and discussing their merits (or not!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Fodder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ob73lgvE0M

If nothing else, I do like the idea of keeping the game weaponry simple. There is much talk about gun choices etc - I just hope game balancing won't be an issue. I also loved the CF idea of keeping a sense of who your squad members were and the efforts of replaying missions in an attempt to take certain strong members further. Point being, I love the current minimal UI, and CF did a good job on keeping things simple. Maybe there are elements worth considering.

This is all from memory from at least 10 years ago so please chip in if you remember better!

Movement
Left click - move to that position
Right click - shoot
Left + Right click - grenade or rocket depending on which box collected.

Comment: current system works for me and Pasik has mentioned key re-mapping so everyone happy.

Squad Selection

Select/Deselect members as required.
Comment: Actually, this could work quite well. Lets say you are entitled to 4 AI members, but you have the option to turn 2 away for your stealth mission or keep members to a minimum for your suicide raid.

Upgrades

More kills (or missions completed?) resulted in promotion plus further gun range/faster rate of fire and accuracy. No gun selection.
Ammo boxes - when picked up, gone. Either rockets or grenades.
Rank shown by stripes above character

Vehicles
Tanks
Helicopters
Turrets

Can't remember how ammo worked.

Huts - kept producing enemies until hut destroyed.

Some bits in there that may work. On the other hand Pasik seems to be doing a great job already so please feel free to disregard!
Cheers,
Ade!

No skidoo? =(

Ammo worked like this: shoot for infinity forever. Except for hand grenades and bazookas.

Ammo boxes would explode if shot.

Bunkers would spawn enemies just like huts do, except they can only be destroyed using bazookas, or was it tanks/turrets?

Squad members would all shoot at the area the squad leader was shooting. I think there was an engine limitation, since having one soldier shoot by himself fired as many bullets as a squad of 4 guys. A better way would be to have the squad leader fire where you point while other squadmates fired at other enemies.

You cannot shoot while swimming, but you can shoot in shallow water.

Bazooka enemies are jerks and fire as many damn rockets as they please.

Get stuck on the corners and edges of things and get killed because you can't move.

And more!

_________________
Ozymandias, King of kings, God of Caves, Wizard.

Squad selection will come. Just like you said ade_mcc, stealth ops pretty much requires it.

Hijacking this thread for a bit, I don't want to start a new thread for every idea that pops into my head...

I can't remember if Cannon Fodder worked so that if you died, control switched to the next guy in the squad? Something like this might be nice in RWR too, as I find it pretty boring running back into the thick of it after each and every death (which happen *quite* often and suddenly, if you're even a bit unlucky).

So basically, instead of the view moving to the closest spawn base when player dies, the view and character control would just move to the nearest(?) character on the same squad(?) (or team?). Player rank should probably transfer too, but not equipment(?)

This could lower the amount of running a lot, and consequently raise the amount of proper action.

It could be made a choice too (after dying, you could select to control the next guy or spawn at base).

I know what you are saying, but it might also take away something that the game has that could be a little unique in war gaming.

Getting killed easily and having to run the way back to the action after being killed makes the life of the soldier you have all the more important and should teach you to not take unnecessary risks and instead approach the area with caution, and more importantly, gives you a high level of satisfaction from the simple element of staying alive or when you get on a kill streak. Consequently, it also encourages you to come up with new approaches when again arriving to the ongoing battle zone, maybe try to push your way through the side this time, maybe there's more cover and so forth.

Getting killed in the game is similar in concept to getting killed in Super Meat Boy or games like it. You just "restart the level" by going back to start and try again. And, it's not supposed to be easy to win battles. Extra hardness comes from "dynamic levels" in this game, you never know in which spot you'll hit against the enemy.

Allowing to take control of the next guy, you'd just get your whole attack party killed. If not, then you shouldn't have needed the feature anyway.

Certain bases in the current map are still too distant from each other, changing that would ease up the pain of running. E.g. when you fight in Town for the other side of it, the comeback distance is just fine if the fighting happens on the border or not your side of town so that you'll respawn on your side of town. But e.g. West trench vs Center trench, there's just a little bit too much distance I think.

Jeeps could also bring some variety to moving around, but it's not like the implementation would've even got started yet.

I would argue the main activity and primary source of fun is combat, and therefore the amount of combat should be maximized. Running from a spawn base is, to me, just a dead moment that I could definitely live without.

Punishing player from failing is a core mechanic from the old (ancient) time of games, and there's a reason it's been dwindling down for a decade or so. Sure, it adds tension to the game, and if tension is wanted, why not punish even more? That would be even more tension, wouldn't it? It's not hard to see how this would turn against itself really fast. I haven't played Super Meat Boy, but in "die a lot" games getting back to the action takes typically just a second or two.

And, it just so happens, I totally advocate for giving the player the option to get the whole squad killed! That should absolutely be made possible. I think it'd be much better to give the option of getting everyone killed to the player than to taking the player away from the action, and then after a dozen or so seconds boredom reveal that yep, AI got everyone killed.

It should be remembered that player would all the time have the option to retreat with what's left of his squad if he considered the losses are mounting and now is not the moment to waste soldiers.

My view on what's fun certainly seems unorthodox, these days No wonder I'm finding it pretty damn hard to find good games anymore.

Nope, the feature won't be added, it would totally ruin the game.

I might add it as a cheat though, how does that sound?

You should call them "Optional game mechanics", that sounds better.

..then I'd actually need to pay attention that the cheat is functioning in every new release.

No, I don't want the game to work so that you can move this guy with this team here and then change to this guy (after getting killed or not) over here and go there and so on, that's for RTS games. You can't just go on stealing soldiers from the AI that it has brought up to the battle area. The AI ideally shouldn't differ in any way from other players in an online setting, they are your bot buddies, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended that you could steal soldiers from your human buddies on the network either. No, you need to find another "vessel" that's unoccupied at the respawn point, there's your guy you'll be controlling next.

Jason9mm, you must joking with the punishment argument, of course there's a line somewhere Try applying the same logic in the opposite direction, making the game easier, giving stuff free to the player, how about respawning on the same spot where you got killed, would that make the game better? It would be convenient for the player, but if that's wanted, there are Lego games where you just smash boxes and go forward and follow HUD icons, you have endless amount of lives and you respawn at the same location you died or nearest possible. Easy, no stress, always progressing, highly entertaining, absolutely. I think I've bought all of those games and played them from end-to-end with my wife I wouldn't play RWR with my wife, I'm pretty sure.

There you go, it has been done to the very extreme and it has proven successful. Taking it to the other extreme would not be successful at all. There are ultra hard games, but in those the ruthless game mechanics are typically accompanied by a very fast retry option, so in effect dying only halts your advancement, it doesn't really throw you backwards. In essence it's very similar to not dying at all; you get to advance as soon as you manage to conquer whatever the obstacle was. If you die, you get to retry (almost) instantly without being thrown to some faraway location.

The "switching character upon dying" has also been done quite a bit, and I've never found any issues with it. In at least one Battlefield game you were able to switch to a friendly AI character even without dying, and it worked pretty nicely too.

And I really do think it'd be perfectly sound to give the player the option to keep pressing the attack until to the very last man in his squad, if the player considered the gains worth it. If the player thinks it's better to halt the attack and wait for reinforcements, or even retreat, he'd be free to do that too. Wasn't it like this in Cannon Fodder, and it was surely a terrific game. Another way to think about it is that the squadmembers are the players "lives", and when the player runs out, it's "game over" and restart at a spawn point. Doing it like this might even allow for even more deadly and tense action, as the player wouldn't be thrown out of the fight from the very first lucky shot.

Personally, it's also quite anticlimactic and annoying to me that I don't get to see how the attack (or defence) ends if I die just as the deciding moments are about to happen. Or, sure, you get to see it, on the map on your way back to the action from the spawn base, or not respawning at all to keep the view at the action. But it's not nearly as satisfying or dramatic as witnessing it happen right there on the main view (and of course it's even better if you can participate in the fight all the way to the end).

Now, I'm not suggesting actually implementing the Lego design principles, nor changing the spawn mechanics if it doesn't sound fun or if other issues would arise. I'm just looking for ways to lessen the dead moments when you're just travelling somewhere or waiting for something. I feel like they are needless interruptions in how the game flows. There are many other ways to counter that too, and I'd really like to see some of them to be explored, even if it is simply by shortening the travelling distances or making travelling faster somehow.