Greetings

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you, one of the three Mods that qualified for the final round of the mod competition!

This mod is being developed by the "Throwface Modteam":



From left to right:

-Dominik Rippke - Character Art, 3D-Modelling
-Christian Patorra - 3D-Modelling / Gameplay
-Antonio De Falco - 3D-Modelling, Programming
-Tom Fiedler - Leveldesign, Story
-Jens Breuker - Story / Gameplay, Leveldesign
-Tobias Janicke - (Teamleader) Story / Gameplay, Programming


Skulls of Treasure Island

1.) Setting
2.) Gameplay
3.) Graphics
4.) Multiplayer Modes
     a.) Treasure Hunt
     b.) Pushing Back
     c.) Under Siege

All text herein is the original work of the authors and represents their own vision and description of the Mod they are currently working on.

Setting

The modification takes place in the “golden times” for pirates, the 16/17th century. It consists of the conflict between the pirate faction and the navy. The setting will be the Caribbean with its uncountable islands and harbours. Just like the original game “World in Conflict”, this modification offers a unique kind of gameplay experience for the online multiplayer community.

The pirate-theme will be a good addition to the overwhelmed real-time strategy genre. Unlike most strategy games this modification will add several role-playing features to the game.

Gameplay

In the game will be two, mostly visually different fractions. There will be the pirates and on the other side the (i.e. British, Spanish, Dutch, French) navy. Each fraction lands on different locations on an island. These points are the starting points for each player in the game. From these starting points or landing zones will spawn periodically some units.

A unit consists of approximately six to ten members (i.e. pirates).These units are ai controlled and will walk along a predestined path towards the enemy landing zone. To influence the game, the player has to get control of up to two ai units .By walking into their close vicinity with the captain, the player can take control. When the map starts up, the player will select a captain from a pool of fifteen different captains for each side.

This “hero” or leader is the player controlled unit. He will direct the captain until the battle is won. If the captain dies, he will respawn after a short amount of time at the ship depending on his rank. For each of the leaders are twelve special abilities choose able. Four abilities are unique abilities, which only the selected captain can learn. The remaining eight are common abilities, which are dedicated among the captains from a pool of abilities. From all these abilities, the player can choose six abilities over time, to make the most out of the selected captain. An unique ability is i.e. the “barmaid”.

This pretty dream of all pirates will set up a couple of rum barrels to distract some of the ai controlled units for a short period of time. An example for the common abilities is the “sprint”. With “sprint” activated, the captain will move with a vast increase of speed for a short duration. In case the captain is hurt he carries a bottle of rum. From this bottle he can drink four times.

Each time he drinks he replenishes his health for a small amount, but he can’t drink in combat. A refill option for his bottle is available at the landing zone at any time. When the captain is in combat with enemy units or captains, he gains experience. He can advance in up to twelve ranks. Each time he advances into a new rank, his base hit points (health), accuracy, damage, etc. are increased.

Additional to the ranking system, the captain can gain so called „rum-points“. These points are gained, when friendly units defeat enemy units in combat. If the captain defeats an enemy unit in combat, he gets even more rum-points. The most points will be earned if the captain defeats another captain. The final aspect of the modification will be the ship. It’s movement can’t be controlled, but it is the player’s base of operation. From here his units will be periodically built.

Furthermore will the ship be the point where the player can purchase different upgrades for his units, such as damage increase or hit points (health) for the standard units or building of special units (i.e. cannon troops, musketeers) could be made possibly. The points for purchasing the upgrades will be earned while conquering and defending different points (command points)on the map/island.

In addition, these points can be used to call in support units: an octopus to attack the enemy ship, guerrilla attacks by cannibals, weather changes or artillery from the ship’s cannons or a fortification. This way, the player has many possibilities to join in the events of the game and change the course of action. Since this is a multiplayer modification, the different teams playing on a map have to select different captains, special abilities and upgrades to make their team the most efficient on the map.

This makes the game experience endless and the multiplayer matches most innovative.

Graphics

The original game „World in Conflict“ has an incredible amount of realism in gameplay and graphics. In this modification, our team chose to make the game more funny and took the step to overdraw the ingame characters and style of the mod.

It was very important to us to deliver a lot of clichés about pirates in the humorous way to improve the fun, online players will most definitely have, while playing this mod. The standard viewpoint is the bird’s eye perspective, but when the player wants to, he can choose to play in a 3rd person perspective behind his captain.

Multiplayer Modes



4A.) Treasure Hunt

The teams in this mode are small or the players chose to play alone against everyone (death match), but this is depending on the size of the map. The Objective is to get the treasure, which is divided in i.e. three parts, and bring it back to the ship, which is either for the whole team or the individual player. The possible locations of the treasure-fragments are located on the minimap and for all players visible. The player who reaches such an location has to fortify it and dig for the treasure.

If a fragment is at the location he now has to get back to the ship in order to score. But to win the game, all fragments are needed. The next challenge is to get back with the fragment to the ship. While carrying the fragment, the captain can only move at a highly decreased speed and can’t fight or use special abilities. He is the only unit, which can carry the fragment and has to be defended by his crew.

The teammembers have to organize how to get the treasure back to the ship. For example searches player 1 for the treasure, player 2 prepares the return of the captain of player 1 and defends him, while player 3 is harassing the other team. If a team manages to get a fragment back to the ship, another fragment will spawn after a short amount of time at another preset location on the map. So there will be enough fragments for every team. But the first team with all fragments needed (in this case 3) will win the game.

In this game mode the player will control all of his unit by himself, along with the captain. While in combat, the captains are getting experience and will advance in rank normally. This will grant the players the possibilities to use special support or abilities.

4B.) Pushing Back

While playing the „pushing back“ gamemode, the players will be divided in two teams (pirates/navy). From each landing zone (one per team) ai controlled units are spawned periodically and begin to swarm in boats from the ship to the beach.

These units will mostly be ai-controlled and aim on predestined paths for the enemy landing zone. They will meet in the centre of these paths and fight on their own. The objective is to reach the enemy landing zone and drive the enemy player off the island. Along the paths are several small outpost which the player has to destroy to advance towards the enemy.

In this mode, the players will only control their captains. While playing, the captains have to support the ai controlled units in their advance or block the other team in advancing towards their ship. The motivation factor in this mode is to advance in rank and defeat the enemy through superiority and skilfully use of the special abilities and support.

4C.) Under Siege

The map in this kind of mode is divided in several sectors. One team plays thedefending role, the other the attacking. The map is a town with a harbour. The sectors could be the harbour itself, the town square, the fort and the governor’s house.

The attackers (pirates) spawn from their ship(s) in the harbour and land at the docks, while the defending team (navy) spawns from the fort or governor’s house. Maps could also be located to a pirate town or fortress and the navy plays the attacking role. The attackers have to conquer each of the sectors to advance towards victory.

In this particular game mode the time is always against the attacking team, because the victory for the defenders is to either drive off the attackers back to the sea or by defending until the time runs up. If the last sector is fallen to the attacking team, the battle is won for them.

The modification allows many different game-modes. Another example are sea fights between ships, where every player controls his ship (or a group of them) instead of the captain.