Hired Guns: Your memories (plus some fun fan-created stuff!)

[theugly]

a pathfinding Rahl? wow your sadistic

next thing you will be writing an hyena script so they work together in packs

[Lord Aga]

All right, Rahls rule the Earth after a Zombie apocalypse

[dex]

Is there a way to play a single player game as player 1 with keyboard or gamepad instead of the mouse? Oh please someone say it is so...

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by dex

Is there a way to play a single player game as player 1 with keyboard or gamepad instead of the mouse? Oh please someone say it is so...

Cherno's remake or the original?

If you mean the original, no. I have asked for keyboard support for the WHDload version, if that is actually possible. Feel free to bump

http://eab.abime.net/games-images-ne...-1-player.html

[dex]

I meant the original And I did post there - this is a cause worth supporting

[Predseda]

So the project is now abandoned?

[Cherno]

Let's say that I hit a few snags... Namely the fog of war and pathfinding, which I haven't been able to get working in a satisfactory fashion.

Oh cr.p! I was so excited about this project. Now it is dead:-( But on the other side I didn't belive in it as the amount of work needed is hard to imagine. Why should anyone waste his time for free? Anyway, thank you a lot Cherno. It was really nice of you to get HG2 to that point. Now it is time to move on or rather get back to the original editor. Hired Guns is perfect and doesn't need any improvements except... Does anyone know anything about fan made levels. I dug through the entire internet and found levels made by some guy from Czech Republic (prise him:-) but I want more...

[Cherno]

Just thought I'd post my thoughts in hindsights about this project.

1. Nostalgia aside, it just wasn't much fun! The grid-like movement and turning works for games like Legend of Grimrock where you move as a party and combat mostly occurs in a slow fashion (due to the weapon cooldowns), in melee range.
It does not, however, work for a First-Person Shooter type of game with rapid-firing guns. You need to be able to strafe, duck behind cover, take potshots at the enemy in the darkness and so on, which is why a free movement scheme is needed.

2. It was my first programming experience. Due to this, the code is a mess and not optimized at all. Hell, even halfway through my current project did I start using basic stuff like Arrays, and I haven't even started using classes yet, which is another basic building block.

3. Grid-based or free-form, Hired Guns is a FPS at heart and this means all items, monsters, characters, and level architecture will be seen up close, which in turn means it has to have a certain quality if the hard sci-fi, realistic style of the original HG is to be retained. Making these kinds of assets however is very time-consimung, not to mention the skillset needed: Low-poly mode, high-poly version for the normal maps, textures, rigging, animation, all has to be high-quality or else it'll look like a game from 1995.
It is partly for this reason that I'm currently concentrating on isometric tactical RPGs where you can get by with medoicre models, because they will be about 2 inches big at most on the screen, hiding most of their detail anyway.

If I were to do this game again, I would try to set it apart from other sci-fi shooters as much as possible. How many games like Killzone, Halo etc. do you know? That's right, every second game is one of those (the other ones being Call of Duty 15 and Battlefield 43 )
For that reason, one has to look at what the actual gameplay of Hired Guns consisted of, and which made it special not only then but also the reason it's still unique in some ways as of today.
For me, it's the puzzle-like gameplay. The monsters are just another obstacle, but only one part of the experience. Games like Trine 1 & 2, Half-Life 1 & 2, Lost Vikings, and countless others show how much fun it is to use your brains for more than thinking about the weak spot of the enemy you are facing currently.
I'd like to see a game where you again have the usual moving platforms, buttons, keycards etc., but also the endless possibilities of the enigmatic Psi-Amps that allow for thinking outside the box (as the user Relic posted in this thread about how he used to modify a level into a deathmathc arena by using all sorts of bridges, forcefields etc). Making those work in a pure 3D environment would be challenging to say the least, but the official Hired Guns 2 shows us some ways this could be done (as far as I remember, it had summonable platforms that could be created anywhere, as well as the added Cyberspace mechanic which is something I'd love to see in a sequel).

So where does that leave us?

I have learned a lot from this project and I continue to do so, currently I'm working on an isometric tactical RPG in the vein of Jagged Alliance 2 and Shadowrun Returns which aims to provide the gameplay of the Call of Cthulhu PnP RPG. At the moment, I am trying to learn more about modeling, rigging, texturing and animating characters and it's coming along reasonably nicely.
Other than that, I have a txt file with a bunch of other projects I'd love to work on some day, two of which are remakes of Burntime and Steel Empires / Cyber Empires

[Cherno]

Hello, a quick status update from me

I have been working on my isometric game the last few months, tackling things like animation, pathfinding and A.I. Yesterday, while randomly browsing for something completely unrelated, I stumbled upon an image I had saved on my HD, a map from Hired Guns:



A few weeks before that, I played a game called "Eldritch" which is a cross between roguelikes, Minecraft, and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The game world is made up of small blocks but you and the monsters can move freely, jump, run etc. as in normal first-person shooters. It allows for easy level creation and in fact while the individual "chunks" are pre-made, the overall level layouts are randomized every playthrough.

Anyway, seeing this map got me thinking about Hired Guns again. What if the game world is made up of blocks, but all characters and creatures can move freely around, aim up and down, even float in the air? This would update the gameplay to 21st century standards while retaining the strengths of the original game: Having an environment that can be changed by pushing blocks, creating forcefields or summoning bridges. Now, Eldritch has some very basic graphics and since I like Hired Guns' hard sci-fi look, even though it would all be blocky I'd really like each block to look good to create an atmospheric world with dim lighting and other effects. I fired up 3D Studio Max in order to learn how to make normal maps which are essential for detailed models but so far I couldn't achieve much.

What I wanted to say is that this occurency has sort of sparked my interest again and I might re-start the project, now that I have a much better grasp of programming I can do a lot of things (or do them better) than before (inventory, hint hint ) and even enemies that listen for your footsteps and hunt you down are possible now.

Watch this place :P

[Lord Aga]

Woohoo, go Cherno

[Predseda]

I already considered this project abandoned

[lilalurl]

Abandoned Depot, Z axis = 11 (starting location)



Was it taken with the Hired Guns level viewer? I remember there was such a program but I don't remember if it gave such a result. Mine is taken from the level editor.


As with your previous work, you will have my support for some testing and such if need be. Good luck.

[Lord Aga]

Yup, we are here to help with testing and ideas

[Cherno]

The map is ripped from a GIF file that has all levels of the map, taken from the HG Operations Center. IT saved my sanity when I first played through the game a couple of years ago

http://www.ppa.pl/hiredguns/inne.html

[Cherno]

Two small things:

1.

After depserately watching http://snap2grid.blogspot.de/ for any sign of this thread being mentioned, by pure chance yesterday I stumbled upon another blog by the same author http://www.dmadesign.net/ where, lo and behold, our small fan community gets it's own blog post

http://www.dmadesign.net/2013/08/11/hired-guns-fan-art/

2.

I thought about the user interface of Hired Guns. A remake should make it less clunky and more user-friendly of course. I quickly drew up a basic schematic of how it could look:





As you notice, the screen divisions have been taken directly from Hired Guns 2. It makes sense to let the main view be bigger, with only "surveillance camera" style monitors for the three team members that are currently under AI control.

On the bottom left there is a small holographic minimap that shows the immediate surroundings, as seen in GTA and many other games. A full DTS map can be accessed via hotkey if available.

The inventory screen retains the icons from HG but will feature mousewheel-scrolling and most importantly a sorting feature as seen in Skyrim. If the mouse cursor hovers over an item, it's info is shown in the rightern area.

There is also a bar of quick slots on the top, you can just drag&drop items here so they become available by pressing the keys 1-8. This is taken directly from Deus Ex 1. The mouse cursor will only become active in the inventory view, the main view will be controlled just like any other FPS.

[Predseda]

No matter how, but please continue in your work

[Cherno]

I will, but I also have my other project on the plate where I've had some good progress lately, and I fear that it will fall to the wayside if I start something new

[Cherno]

I just thought about the possibiltiy to play this game in the living room with friends, using gamepads... I think I'll have to include an option for regular 4-player split screen.

[Lord Aga]

Well that is a must, surely