Ive been wanting to come up with a way for people to play Outpost 2 competitively. People play, fight, reach for rank, play ladders, score points, world domination, etc.
So I began working on an OP2 Mod for Continuum and a new way for people to play OP2 competitively.
What is Continuum? Continuum is a client for a game called
SubSpace. I have been playing it for as long as OP2 and since working on the mod, have discovered how easy it is to modify. Mapping, while time consuming and contrived, is possible and allows for very heavy modification.
Continuum is a top-down quasi-first person shooter (although youre not really playing from a first-person viewpoint) that lets you take control of a spaceship to fight against other players. Subspace (the old version of what came to be called Continuum) is arguably the world's first MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game. Players battle in arena style maps that at maximum size can take 10 minutes to fly across with fully upgraded engines and afterburner. The game is highly customizable and barely resembles the original SubSpace. New networking protocols, graphical enhancements and additional content make Continuum a fun, free, non-system intensive experience. The full version of Continuum available for download is only 4.6 megabytes!
First Some Background InfoWhat can you do in Continuum? People begin when starting the game by selecting a play server or "Zone" as they are called. Once the map has downloaded (seconds) you select your ship and begin shooting at other players. You may change your team at this point. Teams are referred to as "Frequencies" (or freq) and a freq may only have a certain number of players. When the team reaches its max size, players automatically join the smaller freq. When all freq/teams have their max player numbers, a new freq is created by the server or players are sent to another instance of the arena with less players. When you die, you are immediately respawned at the spawn/safe area of whatever arena you joined and you never run out of lives. The goal is to rack up as much points as you can by several methods:
Kills - Killing players in dogfights. You can hunt alone or in packs or squads that go after the highest ranking / most upgraded ships. The more kills you or another player get, the higher their bounty becomes. Bounty is the point reward someone receives for destroying another ship. Bounty also determines what upgrades/weapons/armor a ship can have.
CTF - Most zones have capture the flag. It usually runs on a timer and a new CTF match begins every few minutes. When a match does start, unclaimed flags spawn at random places on the map. When players capture flags, another timer starts. When the timer reaches zero, the flags are dropped. The goal is to find and capture all the flags on a map, take them to a safe location and defend them from other teams until the CTF round is over. A server-determined reward is given to all members of the winning team.
Soccer - Two Powerballs ("soccer balls") spawn at regular intervals in random places around the map. These balls may be captured and when a player does so, grans the bearer extra power and weaponry but can only be held for a short amount of time. The object is to take the ball to a special location thereby scoring a goal. When a goal is scored, only the ship which carried or launched the ball into the goal gets the reward.
King of the Hill - The King of the Hill is a server-specific reward given to players by a number of factors including kills, goals, flags captured/defended, total time on server and more. Being the King gives you special powers and armor which last until the next King of the Hill round begins, at which time the King is returned to normal until a timer runs down. When it reaches zero, the next King of the Hill is determined. Kings are given a reward and their bounty is often greatly inflated while they are the King. There can only be one King of the Hill at a time and it is possible for one person to be King of the Hill more than once or back-to-back. Most squads hunt Kings.
Jackpot - The Jackpot is an ever increasing pool of points. It increases at a server-determined rate over time but more can be added spontaneously by events in the zone. If a CTF round begins, but none of the flags are grabbed by anyone or the CTF round is never completed, the total potential reward for all possible players combined is put into the Jackpot. Every time a player is killed in a zone, points equal to their bounty are put into the Jackpot. Many zones/servers have numerous other ways the jackpot grows. A person or team will receive the entire Jackpot by fulfilling certain objectives or having the most kills, goals, rounds, etc depending on the zone.
Special Events - Many Zones/servers have more than one arena that players can join. Many of these are special event arenas. Every one is unique and creative in its purpose. Players may encounter special event arenas in which they race around a track; play trivia games, reenact events from popular culture, games or movies; team up to kill a single ultra-powerful player and many others! The rewards offered in these arenas are usually very large and filter down to any arenas the zone/server hosts.
It helps to think of Continuum like IRC. Much of the game uses text commands and arenas are structured much like IRC. A "server" (Zone) hosts multiple "channels" (Arenas).
Since Continuum is an MMO, scores, standings and other player records are stored when you arent playing. The game world is persistent and does not go away when you sign off.
How this applies to OP2Every aspect of Continuum can be customized when using the proper tools and a server. Certain features can be delivered to anyone joining the zone/server via download but some must be distributed to players by a customized distrobution of Continuum. This is what I am working on. The server-distributable content will be complete in only a few days and is sent to anyone joining the server, but the client-side content will not be done until the end of the week. This content will totally convert the Continuum client into an OP2 format. The changes will be mostly asthetic
The Zone/ServerThe server the zone is hosted on will likely be provided by Freeza unless he gets many more power outages >
All customization to the game experience can be done through information on the arena map itself, and server settings. A development module for servers exists and it will be extended to provide the features I desire for the server, most of which for the purpose of converting gameplay from the Continuum space combat style to something more familiar to OP2 regulars.
The arena map I am currently building is not the fullsize version I began working on. The one that will initially be the main public zone is about the size of Axen's Home, while I originally intended it to be 9 times the size of Around the World. Due to testing and transfer speeds (Im 56k, the server is not) Ive reduced the map size to accomodate my weak connection. However, once the server is running, the mod distributed and the bugs worked out, I will release the final map version. This should keep any amount of people busy while I work on the sub-arenas and special event arenas (Continuum can support as many sub-arenas and special event arenas as the server can support).
I am welcoming anyone who wants to help develop subarenas and special event arenas by familiarizing themselves with this
resource, this
forum and this
guide. In addition, people should take a look at
this thread.
I am also documenting the entire dev process since nobody really has everything written down. I will release it when the server is up and the wiki complete.
Anyone who wants to help without hacking Continuum can shoot me ideas for special events, make maps I could use for arenas (Must be bitmaps and can only contain terrain. To figure out map size, download
this editor, open one of
these maps and compare it to an OP2 map) or do testing.
Once the server is done and distributed, I will begin work on the Zone website which will host and display ranks, leaderboards, standings and events. Most of the content is parsed by the zone server.
I hope people will take a look at the zone when it is done! If enough people play, I will be able to host the zone on the official Continuum Central Billing Server* and not have to rely on OPU to host the zones. The Continuum community is large, varied and devoted. If nothing else this should draw more people to OPU.
*(Dont worry, no aspect of Continuum has a cost associated with it. "Billing Server" refers to the aspect of the client that allows players to join a server. When SubSpace was still owned by a corporate entity, this did deal with account sales but since Continuum has been open and license free for years, it is not much more than a technical term)
