Hi there

I like many others have been disappointed with the lack of mod and mapping tools, the lack of dedicated servers and low player slots for the latest games in the COD series - the ones that use steam. ( That still didnt stop me buying them however as they are still great games )

There are some people out there ( like me ) who like to spend most of there gaming time actually modding the game rather than playing it and because of this i have moved back to the older cod titles such as cod4 / cod5 who have a greater modding capability and 64 player dedicated servers.

I want to have a go at creating a different kind of mod for WAW ( have chosen WAW because of the limitations of the cod4 engine ) and was thinking about having a go at mod that is more like an MMO where players interact with each other and ai characters within the various game worlds, completing various challenges and gaining experience as they do so. Of course there would still be the FPS aspect that makes the cod games great.

I have looked into this and think a mod like this may be possible ( famous last words lol ) however it is a lot of work.

I would like to get some views and opinions on a mod such as this both from players, mappers & modders points of view in terms of the idea and if it would actually be possible.

Cheers AP

Truthfully, I do not think this is possible, you would have to revamp the COD engine for that to be possible.

With the idea you are talking about, I would just create a game with it, use the UDK engine.

singleplayer yes possible multiplayer... possible but sorta not really. so lets think for a sec. on multiplayer you would need like 10+ servers if you wanted to make a cool MMO and why i say that is because maps have there limits ull exceed something eventually and when you do you can then create a new world but have it on a different server so when the person goes to this new world or new part of the land lets say they will load into the other server instead of having to change maps for everyone on that 1 server. and for singleplayer you could have all the AIs you want. you would still need new maps for each part of the land you go on but you dont have to worry about needing alot of servers. pretty much your looking at ALOT of work but good luck.

Hey, thanks for the input

@ AFirstTImeMapMaker

i like a challenge lol - wouldn't be any fun otherwise

@ liltc64

Yes you would need about 10+ servers, one for each map. When a player reaches the edge of a map, they would then disconnect and then connect to the relevant server. a dedicated quad core server with 8gb of ram would be enough to begin with to run a few servers. This would always be the case with any mod such as this and would be exactly how i would do it.

As for AI characters - this is whee the problem is. AI in mp can be achieved through bots ( test clients ) and some complex scripting.
The problem is that bots take up server slots. So for every npc in the world thats a play slot lost. So if a map had 32 npcs that would leave 32 slots. Therefore to get 64 players one would need 2 servers running the same map this isnt a huge problem it just increases running costs of the servers

As far as im aware it is not possible to add animated models in mp like it is in sp ( self setAnim( bla, bla, bla, bla ) dosnt work in mp ??? can someone please confirm this )

There is something i want to try but this will have to wait till sunday when i actually get a day off work.

Another issue would be how to save all the players data so that they can jump from server to server and at certain points as they complete challenges / jobs / whatever

Of course making 10+ high quality maps will take a while + i can map ( just not that well ) scripting the ai, i know how to do it, however this will also take a while ( just not enough hours in the day lol :( )

hopefully have some time off over xmas so might have a go at trying to overcome some of these problems

iv never modded for WAW but self setAnim would only work for cod2 singleplayer. but to play an animation on a person in multiplayer for cod2 you would just play the animation threw the weapon its self. i love the idea and all. just way to much work i could understand if you had about 5-10 people helping you with mapping and scripting and actually dedicating them selves to work on this mod. you just alone attacking this idea wouldnt be such a great idea. it would take for ever.

AbneyPark writes...
Open sp executable in a hexeditor and search for setanim (will find the string) and do the same for mp exe (no matches) --> it doesn't even exist!

There are dogs in mp though with some sort of AI. If i remember correctly, then it's not possible to change the animation tree of dogs to human - or has this been solved?

Hey Sevenz

Thanks, i didnt actually think to check in a hex editor

No its not possible to change the dog anim tree to human. However i did manage to convert the dogs into zombies by swapping the models & animations, then renaming them to the ones used by dogs. It wasnt perfect and i never got around to perfecting it because of the dog limit. This limit set to 16 and is within the game engine itself. I also want to keep dogs in the mod to attack players

I know that it is possible to do the ai aspect via testclients and i know that it will work ( pezbots for example ), They just take up slots meaning less slots for actual players :( meaning that if servers become full there might be a need for more than 1 server running each map

Im gona have a play over the next few days to see if i can actually get some simple ai working and to overcome a few other things.

The mod probably wont be possible

AbneyPark writes...

Afaik they take up slots and won't free them again (at least CoD4). On map change, the slots will be blocked (32 slots, 12 testclients, 20 left for players, map change --> 12 blocked, 12 testclients, 8 left for players...). only restarting the server will free the slots

Sevenz writes...

In cod4 all you needed to do to solve this was to kick the bots at the last min before the map changes. Then when the next map loads, the bots were added again before any other players had a chance to join.

besides this wouldnt be a problem for a mod like this as the server wont change map or restart as each different "playable area" would be on a different server.

AbneyPark writes...

Map size is going to prove difficult.Players will have to get used to lots of load times. I mean sure, areas can be bigger and it's completely possible, but you have to factor in all the assets needed for a large amount of people and simply the scale of detail that is required for a complete open enviroment.