# MULTI-Z INITIATIVE ### Contributors: Nivrak, spartanbobby #### Project Coordinator: Thwomper ![image](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/Sy5PHiddkx.png) ## Design Motivation CM has a problem of linearity. What do I mean by this? Linearity in the sense that in the two-dimensional format of the game, the only way for two enemies up against each other to move is through the enemy. Around is scarcely an option, but that's ultimately the net sum of choices available. Left, right, and center. This is a problem for the game because of how terrain disparities actually influence combat. Any CM player worth their salt knows intricately how the terrain can play a role in the fight, but this most often manifests as a series of chokes and clearings. Chokes are where the xenomorph players typically have the advantage, specializing in CQC combat and playing to cover, and clearings are where the Marines are able to dominate by capitalizing on ranged weaponry and a lack of cover. We know this to be true, as its a fundamental function of the game. This is all you get. Left, right, and center. It's a reality for both sides to deal with, and over the years, restricting the players to what is **effectively** head-to-head combat has resulted in a number of key effects that are listed below. [i] Combat has oriented itself around a frontline as the player population grew, where the opposing forces are able to condense into large forces. [ii] Condensed forces result in an artificially amplicated combat potential, think of it as the natural solution to the nature of the game, affectionately called 'The Murderball'. The more people you have in one place, the safer you are, and the more dangerous you are. [iii] Following the trend, gameplay has lent itself to a theme of inflexibility. This is not a player response or fault, simply the nature of the game. Success may require one method or another, but it is *safest* to follow this one. It is a textbook problem of linearity, so, in an effort to keep things interesting, the solution is to introduce an element of nonlinearity. Multi-Z, in essence, is a system in which we can smoothly overlay multiple map segments vertically, and create the seamless illusion of verticality in a 2-D perspective. The magnification of terrain elements introduces a scaling factor to the options available, creating a vastly different state of gameplay. The previous considerations no longer apply. ## Project Goals * Introduce the Multi-Z framework in a context that is fully playable. This means groundmap integration. * Multi-story buildings, sub-floor caverns and basement, sewer systems, tunnels. The options are unlimited, and each option favors different aspects of gameplay and mechanisms. A USCM offensive bogged down in the streets of a colony can be alleviated by a group of marines capturing nearby rooftops to lay down fire from a vantage. An unsuspecting group of survivors can be ambushed from sewer access grates by xenomorphs travelling below. Actual strategic utility provided by complex terrain. * Incentivize terrain interactivity, and not total destruction. * Every map is the same if you bomb them enough. Places to traverse, and utilize verticality to the advantage of the player, and reward players for both organization and creative decision making, and not cruelly punish them for trying new things. * Introduce fitting mechanisms to carry out terrain traversal to both sides in a staggered manner. * Shared mechanics should always exist, these are your stairs and ladders. Xenos should receive inherent climbing abilities that scale in effectiveness for smaller xenos. Marines should be pretty poor climbers on their own, but have access to tools and equipment that allow them to traverse Z-Levels in different waits (See: VTOL). ## Basic Elements Based on the framework project, the following elements are currently present in Multi-Z and have been tested on the live server for performance and bugs. * Players have access to a Look-Up verb in the IC tab that allows them to inspect the Z-Level directly above them if one is available. * Walls with surfaces above them can by climbed by interacting with them, teleporting the player to the above Z-Level. Additionally, players can then climb down by standing next to a ledge and clicking the open air. Passing the edge boundary without climbing in any way will cause the player to fall, dealing damage and incurring leg fractures if human. * Projections of the lower Z-Levels can be seen from above where no surface exists, projectile weapons and abilities can interact with players on lower Z-levels without engaging a look-down verb. * Additional compatability features have been added for tactical map Z-Level traversal, and coordinate targeting for fire support in three dimensions. Also includes short-length stairs as a traversal element, dissimilar from the Almayer projector stairs. ## Test Review Four individual test rounds were conducted on the live server employing various builds of the Multi-Z frame work on an incomplete, modified version of Solaris Ridge with included Multi-Z elements, primarily focused on multi-story buildings with rooftops. Of the four tests, two were able to be run fully playable, with the first two resulting in crashes or unplayable bugs. The latter two tests saw full-round success, with the final test (1/30/2025) being of the most significance, where nearly all bugs previously encountered were successfully eliminated. #### Positives: - The round lasted for 4 hours total. A significant amount of back and forth took place during the round where both sides had ample opportunities to take a lead and win. - Players more or less adjusted to the new system reasonably well, and immediately began taking advantage of newly available strategies. The murderball strategy was essentially rendered redundant, and small teams broke off to secure buildings and roof tops on both sides. * Round pacing was slowed down dramatically, but this was likely due to Marine fire support features having limited compatability with Multi-Z. * Multiple lanes of combat were established in parallel in a manner that was not necessarily dividing resources like multi-front conflict would. Conducive to small squad behaviors, which is in turn conducive to roleplay. Increased player-player interactions were seen, but this might just be TM-event irregularities. #### Negatives: * Some of the strategies adopted to take advantage of the feature system, such as flinging players off of roofs or setting up sniper nests in the FOB for multi-layer defense stacking, were undesirable or otherwise frustrating to deal with in current state. * Fire support features saw much less use and effectiveness due to a lack of compatability with the system, as previously mentioned, where only one Z-level can be affected at a time. * Communication, tracking, and commanding became very confusing and leadership did not adjust to the feature system until later in the round. * While the Look-Up verb is functional, it is not very refined or intuitive. There is currently no indication that there is something to look up at, leading to significantly reduced situational awareness. * Combat between Z-levels can be clunky at times. Things such as tail-stabbing from third floor rooftops all the way down to the ground, shooting down from the middle of a building, stairs. ## Gameplay Integration Elements The main focus of the below elements is to hide the seams of the feature system, and introduce interactivity in a way that is both interesting but enjoyable as well. * Traversal * Humans should be have the greatest variety in means of traversal, but require some sort of cooperation or sacrifice in order to execute to increased degrees of effectiveness. Things such as climbing kits, deployable ladders, or even an aircraft (See: VTOL Project, Dropship Rework) can possibly fill this role, otherwise it's climbing by hand, which should be slow as hell. Players should consider built in options before going straight up a wall. * Xenomorphs should have much more uniform traversal ability, climbing directly being the main one, as I'm unsure that they would need much else. That being said, climbing capability should scale with the size of the xenomorph. Runners and Lurkers should climb at a speed that far outpaces that of a Crusher and Ravager, comparable to tunneling speeds. This disparity is to discourage all of one side from doing one thing, being on a roof or on the ground, different groundside units should have different accessibility to different areas, leading to a split-form combat that lends itself to skirmishing, which is what we've seen inklings of in testing. * Falling * As previously stated, falling is extremely punishing in the current build, resulting in heavy damage for humans and xenomorphs. * Humans falling from a single story probably shouldn't take much damage at all, perhaps a slow-down or minor stun is more suitable. Falling multiple floors down should definitely do some brutal damage however. * As for xenomorphs, I believe we should apply the same principle as above to falling, where the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Smaller xenos should be able to fall without taking damage at all, maybe a minor slowdown if anything. * Fire Support * CAS, OB, and Mortar need to be able to penetrate roofs and floors to damage Z-levels below at reduced effectiveness, from top down, and destroy roof floor tiles in their wake. The implications of this are that Xenomorphs get some degree of increased natural fire support protection inside normal buildings, whereas previously it was only in cave protected ares. Fire support being more effective at upper levels allows for Marines to punish Xenomorphs for attempting to hold out or form up en masse on upper levels, where they may be slow to flee if a strike is incoming. * Fire support features and explosives should impart some degree of permanent damage to buildings, being able to destroy the floors themselves to varying degree. Destroying buildings outright should be reserved to more expensive CAS features and OBs. Destroyed floors should rain some type of obstacle forming or damage dealing debris on levels below. This will make the dense vertical environment infinitely more dynamic. * Vertical Indicators * As stated above in the Test Review section regarding situational awareness, players should be given some sort of indication to look up at things when there are things to look at. It is unfun and tedious to not signal the player in these cases where there might be an open roof above them while in the interior of a building, or an enemy positioned to range attack them from directly above. * Shadows is likely the most intuitive means of displaying a visual indicator to the player that isn't inherently obtrusive or distracting. An outlined shadow extension overlay past a wall's natural occlusion to indicate a climbable ledge. * Players near a ledge, within ~2 tiles, should project a shadow downwards to a below z-level based on the radially outward direction relative to a vector between the player and the nearest ledge. Think of it as a little dark blob underneath where a player is standing, this should give players some indication of whether or not something is in a vantage position above them. * Inter-Level Combat * The primary combat interaction between Z-levels should be ranged attacks, i.e guns and acid projectiles. All inter-level attacks should incur some sort of accuracy modifier, and that modifier should increase (to reduce accuracy) as the z-level difference increases. For instance it should be more difficult to hit targets on the ground level if you are on a third-floor versus a second-floor. * Direct melee attacks should not be happening over Z-levels entirely. Perhaps there is a place for tail-stabs over a ledge, but not from the more than one level away, which is what was seen in testing, as players have no way to react or fight back. * Players should only be able to attack down from a higher Z-level if they are near the ledge, 1-2 tiles. Shooting down from the center of a building should not be possible, and you should be exposed to risk when doing so, similarly goes for shooting up, you should have limited ability to do so the closer you are to the building. Think how the angles would work from a first person perspective. * The two primary tools for player awareness are motion detectors on the Marine side, and thermal vision on the Xenomorph side, which are both heavily reduced in effectiveness in Multi-Z. Xenomorphs should be able to look up anywhere and see thermal signatures through Z-levels, and some manner to look down below. Motion detectors should also ping unknown motion through Z-levels as well, likely in the same capacity as to not differentiate where the target is, above or below. * Map Guidelines * What was seen in testing shows some indication that the actual layout of the map, and the details therein become less significant in a balance context with increasing verticality, a relationship that was clearly observed. I think you might need a much, much larger sample volume to observe small-scale effects of map design, and weed out abusable features to a functional degree. Whether it be sheer luck or a testament to Bobby's mapping abilities, the unfinished Solaris Ridge iteration suffered from very little issues mapping wise that were not due to the unfinished aspects of the map. * That leaves us with some design guidelines for future map iterations and Multi-Z integration, the first being that the LZs themselves should have limited Multi-Z features. It was seen in testing that the high walls and gaps for vantage positions created opportunities for a much increased defensive capability, allowing Marines to shoot from above while defending on the ground simultaneously. Along with the cut-off West Caves route for entering the LZ, Xenomorphs struggled with breaching the FOB in both tests. * The hull tileset used to represent rooftops were unweedable to Xenos. This, in testing, was a good offset to the lack of fire support integration mentioned above, allowing Marines to get some foothold on upper levels, but going forward would not be ideal for a fair back and forth, especially with limiting large caste accessibility to upper floors. A new roofing tileset should be created. ## Extent of Implementation `To be determined by Management.` ## #### Thwomp's Notes ##