Question All renegade mods don't have single player campaigns, but why?

[gammelon]

All mods hosted here don't have any single player campaigns and maybe it's because of technical difficulties or it's just not worth creating a new and different single player campaign.

[MechanicalThighs]

I'm sure that''s exactly it. I've had this question before myself, but once you realize how much work it would be, you see that it's never going to be worth it, especially considering the most popular component is the multiplayer. It's why Renegade X never did anything else with Black Dawn, I imagine; too much work for no payoff. Much better to focus all your efforts into the part that you know everyone will play.

[ChopBam]

Hi gammelon, welcome! Great question.

MechanicalThighs has it right. If we were to use those creative juices, we would rather put them toward special multiplayer objective maps like Seamist in A Path Beyond. That way, everyone can experience the "missions" together! Hope this is helpful.

[gammelon]

I understand, but I also have another question. Is the Renegade campaign hard-coded to not be edited in anyway?

[Pushwall]

AR is replacing Renegade's tutorial map with their own one, so it should be technically possible to edit the rest of the campaign too, it's just that... well... take a look at how many people were on the credits for Renegade and then look at our teams. A new full-blown singleplayer campaign (not just one map) is a lot more work than fixing up existing multiplayer, so it's definitely not something our small teams can do, especially with all our other commitments.

[Threve]

On 8/18/2019 at 12:57 PM, gammelon said:

All mods hosted here don't have any single player campaigns and maybe it's because of technical difficulties or it's just not worth creating a new and different single player campaign.

Just wayyyyyyyyyy to much shit along with little benefit. To make a campaign you have to

1. Write out the storyboard and see if it will follow the original game by copy or be a completely new story.

2. Make, texture and develop scripts for new models/things that will be unique to help tell the story. 

3. Make the map itself and also play test it through alot to ensure there isn't a game breaking pause or crash.

4. To continue the story you'd have to then make multiple maps or have one large massive map (not recommended due to lag depending on how advanced you get and texture loading elements).

5. Get the Hype started and keep up morale to see it through even through it's for a specific audience (Not alot of people play this game as before.. Furthermore alot of people just play online instead).

6. Record new sounds, voice audio and acting depending on how deep you want your story to go and feel. Possibly make cutscenes depending on how detailed you want. Can be skipped to save time but really completes the single player campaign feel.

7. Rally people to help test, build with you and keep it up which is very difficult.

8. A big thing is making the campaign actually playable. The problem with Renegade is the AI just typically runs straight at you.. alot of reviews on Renegade single player said that it was dry, you could tell WestWood had never made an FPS before and the AI was just lackluster compared to other games. This unfortunately is still true as it's just how the game is hardcoded. You can't exactly make this game like F.E.A.R. AI where they could duck. shoot, move to cover and fire behind walls along with communicate with each other. While yes it would be a single player campaign at the end of the day it would just be a reskinned version of the renegade campaign because the AI doesn't and cannot offer anything new. The only thing new you'd be getting is running around to different locations shooting dumb AI in a Soviet Tesla Tank or defending a location from Soviet Rifle Soldiers. While cool in practice and thought despite this handicap it still would be what... You just play the mission and you're done. That's it. 

With such a small team compared to the original Westwood studios W3DHub is focusing on the multiplayer because that is where this game really shines. 

 

The closest i've ever seen to a user made campaign would have to be Jerad and his "Colony Z142" something something map. It basically was a port of Halo into Renegade where you had to mount an assault unto a mining facility and do a bunch of shit like fight an end boss and kill aliens. Bear Hunt is also a great example of a single player campaign mission or something that has come close. Join IA and ask for these maps and i'll put them on for you to try if you'd like!

[KTFF]

While they are not part of w3d.. have you played SLA Mutant co-op? That's single / multi campaign.

[gammelon]

1 hour ago, KTFF said:

While they are not part of w3d.. have you played SLA Mutant co-op?

Yes.

[Einstein]

Mission maps and co-op maps are about as close as you're going to get to a campaign around here. I personally would love for all the different projects to have their own spin on their inspiring game's SP campaign. But it would take years of effort to produce, by which point, you and I might be the only ones left to play them....

[wolf]

There once was a mod called Sole Survivor for Renegade which had a pretty nice single player campaign.
 

 

[Veyrdite]

@wolf: Thankyou, I think I saw this mod many years ago and have not been able to find it since.  By memory it hates scripts, so I'll need to put it on a vanilla install.  :D

Obelisk of ...dark?

Edited September 7, 2019 by Veyrdite

[Raap]

I'm a bit late here but let me clarify the main issues with singleplayer.

1. There is no technical limitation. We can do singleplayer, we can do a whole lot of whatever we want, since we control the full engine codebase. Yes, some things are hard coded, but if someone has both the time and motivation, there isn't technically much stopping us from doing something.
2. Why we've not seen singleplayer content in released projects yet, is simply because most of us as developers/designers do not feel much for it. Most of us prefer working on multiplayer games because of the replayability and social aspects. 

But no, to re-iterate, right now I could make a singleplayer mission if I wanted to (I'd just have to check up on a few things). But I lack the time and have no motivation to do so, since I believe for our engine, multiplayer is the heart of it.

Something else to keep in mind is that while the engine has improved a lot over the years, we've not put any work into singleplayer stuff, so mechanically we're still very limited there. It would make more sense to create singleplayer games on a different engine.

AR will be using a little bit of singleplayer for a tutorial mission. (And you will want to play it, because AR works a little different from your typical C&C shooter!)

[wolf]

1 hour ago, Raap said:

I'm a bit late here but let me clarify the main issues with singleplayer.

1. There is no technical limitation. We can do singleplayer, we can do a whole lot of whatever we want, since we control the full engine codebase. Yes, some things are hard coded, but if someone has both the time and motivation, there isn't technically much stopping us from doing something.
2. Why we've not seen singleplayer content in released projects yet, is simply because most of us as developers/designers do not feel much for it. Most of us prefer working on multiplayer games because of the replayability and social aspects. 

But no, to re-iterate, right now I could make a singleplayer mission if I wanted to (I'd just have to check up on a few things). But I lack the time and have no motivation to do so, since I believe for our engine, multiplayer is the heart of it.

Something else to keep in mind is that while the engine has improved a lot over the years, we've not put any work into singleplayer stuff, so mechanically we're still very limited there. It would make more sense to create singleplayer games on a different engine.

AR will be using a little bit of singleplayer for a tutorial mission. (And you will want to play it, because AR works a little different from your typical C&C shooter!)

3. They take a crap-load of time to create. All the trigger zones and scripts that need to be placed... and that doesn't even include modelling the maps

[Einstein]

So about 6 months ago, I played with Sole Survivor a bit, and actually got it to run standalone (without renegade) and with the latest 4.6 scripts. But it had issues. It is such a custom piece of moddery.... SomeRhino (its creator) may be the only guy who could fix it properly.

[Raap]

On 9/7/2019 at 3:10 PM, wolf said:

3. They take a crap-load of time to create. All the trigger zones and scripts that need to be placed... and that doesn't even include modelling the maps

Basically, the justification just isn't there. So much work for something people run through maybe just once.

The Sole Survivor Renegade mod was fun - I remember the multiplayer. I do not remember the singleplayer, which indicates 2 possible things; That the singleplayer campaigns were not memorable nor replayable, or that I have a bad memory.