Paranoia
Info:
First thing, Ankhel is not canceled, just delayed. I got some problems with Nifty Gui and “smooth animations”. Further is my level system not satisfying. Therefore I cannibalized the project. Paranoia is with other words a smaller version of the big picture.
Story:
My ship, the Battle cruiser “Arche 13” was on its way home, when an accident happened.
The crew was in a good mood, happy to see their families soon. I was invited to take a drink with the crew.
The ship suffered minor damage (we were so wrong) in the battle around a colonist station, where some space pirates thought they could handle. Therefore nobody was prepared, when the red lights turned on and the alarm howled.
At first the main engine failed and the ship was thrown out of hyper space. Then a fire started, which destroyed some of our equipment. Lucky enough no casualties, or unlucky, depending on whether we can get some oxygen the next few hours. Our only chance was an old outpost, where some colonists used to live. Not anymore! Soon we got a problem ourselves!
Captain
Description:
In this multiplayer game 64 players try to repair the ship. There is just one obstacle. One of you is a parasite. And this is where the fun starts.
Players can choose between different classes with different perks. The engineer and the technician can repair the ship, while the medic and the scientist “do science” and the soldier and security guard do, what they can do best, nothing(or turn things to nothingness). Most players start without a weapon, just the security guard starts with a handgun, soldiers get their “full heavy assault armor thing” at defcon 3. The rest of you, pick whatever weapon you can get your hands on.
To give humanity a fair chance, you have 5 defcon levels. The worse the situation, the higher the defcon level. Higher defcon lvl gives you free access to weapons and armors. Of course a skilled parasite wouldn’t show up till it’s too late, meaning you cannot raise the defcon lvl.
The parasite can swap his appearance. As human, it has all traits of his human character, as parasite it’s pretty strong.
Players best shot is to catch the parasite off guard in his human form. The parasite form requires a group to kill. You can sabotage the players efforts, infect them or spread a deadly virus. To evolve you need genetic material. Fresh is best, so why not take some bites? xD
Its the simple game, that makes it so complex! And its players!
What are you going to do, if two players shot each other? Hell, you have no idea, who is the real parasite!
Or are you going to kill each person you meet, because you can make a lucky hit and kill the parasite? Or someone took the last antidote! Well, bad luck, he doesn’t need it anymore!
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Guns defend people against people with smaller guns.
If any questions, pls feel free to ask!
Screen shot:
Recruiting:
Can always need some help
Sounds like fun and it looks really good.
I’m very curious as to how the 64 multiplayer will work. Is that the required amount of people for a balanced, fun match?
And with regards to your recruiting, you’d be wise to leave some hints to what kind of contributions you’re looking for.
Its more a technical question. Is jME able to support 64 people in one multiplayer game?
Balancing is something, that can only be done, when the game is finished xD.
Out of experience, yes the game balance itself.
More people means, more people are trying to kill each other.
Less people means, less food for the parasite and therefore hunting gets more challenging.
You don’t have to start a game with 64 people. People can join the game anytime.
If a player get killed by the parasite, he is dead, yes, but not out of the game. He joins the drone force of the parasite.
If the parasite has no drones, the player gets a mechanical drone from the player’s side. A drone is not dangerous on its own, but you can collect points (by hurting people or destroying something). Or they can start hunting as group. The parasite can look at this points and reward the drone with upgrades(or eat it).
Players have also the possibility to revive other players.
With the right technology, a player is recreated inside a tank. As soon as the building process is completed, the next dead drone joins the player force as human once again. Of course, the parasite can infect the tanks, which means players get more trouble that they already have. Joining players are taken in this cycle.
Drones have no way of telling, who the parasite is, unless it has taken parasite form (which means his name doesn’t appear anymore). Even if you know, who it is, its pretty difficult to convince other players. xD
Contributions I’am looking for:
Nifty GUI:
Nifty GUI gives me a headache! Basic things I can do, still it would be nice to have someone, who knows Nifty GUI, or loves to play around with it. MY BIGGEST HEADACHE!!!
Music:
GameDev.net is the solution xD. Honest on this side you find more musicians than programmers.
Meshes:
Any kind of mesh or texture is useful! Please no ogre files! I cannot open them with maya! (yes, i use ogre inside jME)
Server&Network:
Adding features to the server, like a control interface, or …
Level design:
Don’t mind if someone has a good idea!
Character & Weapon design:
Armors and weapons for characters are appreciated. I already have the basic human meshes with bones, so if anyone wants to create an armor, just ask!
Jme is able to have 64 players of course.
My current plan is to have up to 300 per server and first performance tests indicate that this will work without problems.
I have a working prototype of a synchronization system for SpiderMonkey. It works very well in FPS/avatar style games. 
Ok here is a short teaser!
Should give you the right vibe about this game xD
Attention!
Please use 1024x768 and FSync for best results!
Its nearly 100MB!
Download:
http://www.file-upload.net/download-2978538/Paranoia.jar.html
I tried the teaser but … well it has 1400 objects and an animation of a corridor.
It looks cool but for some reason I can’t start the game. Since you said the resolution should be 1024x768 i thought that there might have been a menu on the lower right but it wasn’t there.
Well looks promising so far (even if I can’t do much yet, however i think that 1900x1200 looks way better
I didn’t activate the game play yet, since it crashes as soon as i activate physics.
By weekend I should have fixed that!
1024x768 → the menu is sized for 1024x768. I will implement an auto-resize function!
Hey about that multiplayer joining and exit.
What if you have some “sleeping capsules” and when you join a game you wake up in your capsule?
You could see from inside and have the menus like “What do I do for living? Do I repair? Do I know something technical?”
And then the capsule opens and here you are!
And for disconnecting you could announce the player X has fainted and players must “recover” the body because the parasite can infect it or something.
I will check this project out and see if I can help
Not a bad idea!
Sleeping capsules are included, since you need them to slow down the virus effect if you caught it. But now that you mentioned it, why not making more out of it. xD
At the begin you can select 3 Profiles (+1 Alien Profile), which are created before the game starts! That way everyone starts at the same time.
Well, my biggest problem is the physic error i get, when i use my own models!
Normen is helping me to fix that problem. xD
Otherwise it looks not too bad.
Update 1.00.02
http://www.2shared.com/file/m7fK5QiU/Paranoia_v10002.html
Ok, this version is my newest stable version. You can walk, jump and climb on the tank now. Shooting is possible, yes, but honest, it looks more like throwing grenades. The level is not included, since loading the level crashes the physic engine.
I will fix that in the next update.
Again nearly 100 Mb! I will try to keep that level.
Trivia Edit:
The game loads two times! The game misses a loading screen, therefore it looks like the game is freezing.
The ship you see is the “Arche”.
I welcome ideas and helpful suggestions. 
At the moment I’m looking for a gun shot soundtrack (revolver).
Update 1.00.05
Lots of changes.
Most important fact, it’s stable again (version 1.00.04 worked only 8 from 10 times)
I won’t release this version, since I want to surprise you with the next version!
Update 1.00.07
Includes now a functioning map editor
Update 1.00.08
XeroEngine got a few upgrades, previous bugs terminated
XeroEngine is now GNU v3
Project is now available via SVN
checkout http://paranoia.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
I hope this helps the community and gives people some fresh ideas and solutions.
The project requires a working jME3 workspace. Feel free to ask any questions!