The future
As of the time of writing this (22/10/2024), version 1.0 of the marines is almost finished. However, this is not the end of the marines. Version 1.0 is just meant to be a direct reimplementation of the prior, much more broken and shitty version of he marines. With feature parity as that original version. plus of course, a ton of other features that version didn't have, such as running behind corners.
In the future I also want to add even more features to the marines, such as:
In the future, I want to add the ability for marines* to be able to swim across swimmable 3D floors. Allowing them to traverse bodies of water, and I suppose you could say, do marine stuff. I also already have sprites for that at hand, so it IS mainly a problem of programming that behavior.
*Well, actually, for all KAI humanoids to be able to do that, but that's beyond the scope of THIS wiki.
I might also consider adding the ability for marines to find nearby dangerous objects like barrels, and shoot at them, though that might now happen, because it will be very hard to do due to being almost impossible to check if an object is explosive or hazardous in some way at all, let alone how large its' danger range might be (So the marine knows that he can blow it up and actually hit the target).
In addition to giving the current marines more abilities. I also want to actually add more marines in general. In fact, one of the reasons I rewrote the marines (For the 7th time overall), is because the previous version was basically impossible to expand to add more features and marines.
Should be the easiest to make, I already have most, if not all of the sprites needed. And their overall behavior will be fairly simple:
- They'll have 200 health, 200 blue armor (So like a player with a megasphere).
- They'll be about as fast as the normal marines, if not slower. And won't be able to run (Not very fast at least).
- They won't be able to do moves like climbing, crouching, and jumping.
- They'll have a chaingun that can fire about 2-4 times faster than a marine firing full auto, with no recoil and likely better aim. And potentially a strong melee attack (Even without a berserk pack), if someone can make me the sprites for that.
These marines will carry around a guided missile launcher, that needs a few seconds to reload after each shot, but does 1000+ damage on impact. About half the sprites for them exist already, but I will need sprites of them also aiming up and down (Including while crouched, optionally, just for more variety), and might also want sprites of them switching to a sidearm like a pistol and firing. That being said I will at least not need sprites of them FIRING, as I'll probably just do that with actor SFX. They will have these abilities give or take:
- Of course, a devastating ATGM. That fires a single rocket that does crazy damage. But requires about 4-8 seconds to reload.
- Backblast, when firing, the launcher will produce backblast that can harm the shooter (If a wall or other obstacle is behind them), and anyone who might be behind them.
- They will avoid firing if any allies are getting in the way, if him or any allies will be caught in the backblast. And if the rocket will just generally hit to close and blow him up too. In the latter case (Like if the enemy is just too close), I might see if I can have him fire a sidearm like an SMG instead.
- When firing, they can either dumb fire the rocket (While also still leading it before firing). Or they can home it in, however, to do that they themselves have to aim it at the target, forcing them to be unable to do anything else until it either hits, or the situation is dangerous enough for them to give up on homing the rocket into their target. Of course, there will probably also be an option to allow them to fire it like a more normal homing projectile.
These marines aren't really directly attacking enemies, but they're able to make some simple emplacements, like digging foxholes (See below) for others to use, repair MVP and non-MVP vehicles. And can place landmines down (Both anti vehicle and antipersonnel ones), alongside disarming enemy ones first. However, I also have no actual sprites for them, only parts that ideally will be frankensprited together.
- Can dig foxholes that others like players, other marines, and other KAI humanoids can then use.
- Maybe they could also make simple barriers? Such as cover for other marines to use.
- Can repair friendly KAI vehicles.
- Can disarm enemy landmines.
- Can place down both antipersonnel and antivehicle landmines to blow up enemies or force them to not be able to reach an area without exploding.
- If forced into combat, they can use an SMG or pistol to directly attack enemies, and maybe also hit them with their tools, such as burning them with their blowtorch as a melee attack.
This would be the most complicated one to implement (And that's saying something coming from me!). As their behavior would be very different from other NPCs, mainly, because while they will be able to move and behave like normal NPCs. Their main movement will be going around predetermined map paths (Think how patrol points work) after each shot, to avoid being caught, similar to snipers IRL.
- Obviously, he will have a sniper rifle that does a ton of damage and has super long range, but is slow to reload.
- Unlike most fictional snipers, he will [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper#Sniper_teams actually rely on a spotter] equipped with goggles and an SMG. The spotter helps the sniper actually aim and defending him from weak threats with his SMG, so the sniper can focus on shooting. However, if the spotter dies (Or is just not included), then the sniper will take longer to take aim and fire, have significantly worse aim overall, and receive aim penalties from targets with +SHADOW or any +SHADOWBLOCK actors getting in the way of the line of fire.
- Snipers and spotters will mainly work by taking aim, firing at the best target they can find. Then moving away from their firing spot to another one along their sniper path nodes that they are assigned to follow, said nodes will have to be set up in the map itself, and kinda function like monster patrol paths. Hell, they might literally just be normal monster patrol routes that they have special handling for (Picking a random safe point and going there). If they have no route. They will just try using the normal pathfindingless movement to find some random point for them to go to after firing.
The machine gun is not the only emplacement marines, players, and other NPC will have access to, as I also want to add more emplacements like:
Fairly straightforward, this is just a hole in the ground, that when entered, will give the operator the +SHADOW effect like a blursphere, making it hard for enemies without specific abilities like +SEEINVISIBLE to actually target them, in addition to also lowering their height (Making them a smaller target to hit in the process) and giving them a slight damage resistance. This will just require a simple hole flatsprite in terms of assets, which I'm sure I can just make myself lol. And is generally likely to be the easiest new emplacement to make by far.
A tripod mounted anti tank missile launcher (Like the TOW or Kornet), it will likely have broadly similar logic to the ATGM equipped marines mentioned above. So not much else to say. Coding it shouldn't be too hard (Especially if the ATGM marines are done first), this will mainly just be an issue of me modelling a tripod ATGM in Blender, and maybe also asking someone else to make sprites of a marine using it.
An 80 or 90mm infantry mortar. This will be VERY hard to code as I want it to actually fire in proper ballistic arcs, I WILL need someone else to code that for me as I have no math knowledge. Coding a line of fire check for it will also be very hard. In terms of difficulty with the assets, it's just the same difficulties as I'll face with the tripod ATGM.