Thread: Dystopia

Like with Neotokyo, I want to try and get a group of TTPers together to give this mod its fair shake. I think it's pretty fun, but you really need to work as a team to see the best results, and that doesn't seem to happen on most servers I've played on. For those people interested in Neotokyo, I'd recommend giving Dystopia a shot as well, since they're fairly similar.

For those that don't know, Dystopia is a cyberpunk mod for Source (you'll need HL2, CSS, DODS, or a similar game) and is vaguely similar to UT's Assault gameplay mode - one team is defending, while the other is attacking. The attackers have to complete a set of objectives around the map, usually in order (there's a little leeway with some of them, and some objectives have multiple means of accomplishing them), and typically culminating with setting off a bomb, blowing up a reactor, or something similar. The defenders' job, obviously, is to stop the attackers from completing these objectives.

What makes Dystopia fairly unique among games and mods of its type is its cyberspace aspect, which is an integral part of the game. Players can opt to "jack in" to cyberspace via computer terminals located throughout the maps, gaining access to a fairly unique gameplay variation, and one that doesn't follow normal rules. Gravity is fairly weak and unusual in cyberspace (seeing as how you're technically just a bunch of electrons and not physical mass and yes Soy I know that's technically not correct but whatever), and your means of play are drastically altered. Cyberspace is rife with firewalls, viruses, and other computer stuff that are represented by physical walls and things... it's somewhat hard to explain, so I'll try to get some screenshots up later. At any rate, while you're jacked in to cyberspace, your real-world body is still standing there at the terminal and completely defenseless, meaning you need to have your teammates protect you while you're hacking (called decking in the game's lingo.) Through hacking, you can disable or even convert sentry turrets, lock or unlock doors, raise or lower shields, and even open up new spawn points for your team (and close spawn points for the enemy.)

Like in UT's Assault mode, both teams constantly respawn during the round, with respawn times varying depending on class and how many of you are dead. Likewise, the round ends when the attackers either successfully attack, or they run out of time.

And on the subject of classes, Dystopia has three classes, divided by armor type - Light, Medium, and Heavy. All three classes have a unique selection of weapons to choose from (along with a standard sidearm and melee attack) and each comes with a special kind of grenade - Light classes get concussion grenades that disable implants (more on those in a bit), Mediums get standard frag grenades, and Heavies get special spidermines, which rapidly run towards nearby enemies after being placed.

In addition to armor weight, classes are also differentiated by available implant slots. Implants are special abilities that you can choose to load your player out with, with Light receiving the most available Implant slots, and Heavy receiving the fewest. Implants add or modify many abilities, and cover a whole host of things: stealth camo (think thermoptic camo from Neotokyo) to become almost invisible; thermal vision, which allows you to easily pick out stealthed enemies; cold suit, which prevents you from showing up on someone's thermal vision (though it can't be combined with stealth camo for obvious reasons); cyberdecks and enhanced cyberdecks, which allow you to interface with computer terminals to hack into enemy mainframes and accomplish objectives in cyberspace; a mediplant, which slowly heals you and nearby teammates; leg boosters, which enable sprinting and enable the boost-jump ability; wired reflexes, which reduces reload time for most weapons; extra energy storage, which allows you to store more energy for use on implant abilities like stealth and sprint; and even the cortex bomb, a little bitty themonuclear bomb that sits in your head and goes off when you're almost dead, killing you and everyone near you.

Each armor class has a limited number of implant slots, and juggling implants to fit into those slots to fill needs by your team is an important part of the game - do you want to take Wired Reflexes and Leg Boosters for better combat capability, or does your team need you to pack a Mediplant? Should you take Cold Suit in order to screw up those people who sit around using Thermal Vision all day, or does your team need you to be packing Stealth Suit in order to slip past those people without Thermal Vision?

In addition to differing implant slots, each armor type has four different weapons (in addition to the standard machine pistol sidearm and melee weapon) to choose from, which alter your method of play. Light armor gets access to a sniper rifle, a shotgun, and two other weapons I forget. Medium gets access to a standard assault rifle, a grenade launcher, a semi-automatic rifle (think DoD's M1 Garand), and a tesla rifle (which was overpowered last I played, but I hear it's been nerfed.)

Heavies get access to fun stuff like a minigun, an ion cannon (similar to a sniper rifle with falloff damage, making it more effective up close than far away), a weapon called the basilisk (which performs similarly to UT's Flak Cannon), and a laser-guided rocket launcher. Every single weapon has an alternate fire - for some weapons, this is just ironsights, but for others it's a new method of firing (for example, the basilisk lobs what's basically a flak ball, the rocket launcher switches to guide-by-wire mode, and the shotgun fires both barrels.)

I haven't played very much recently (only a couple of hours), but it's still a fun mod, and as a mod, it's totally free. More than that, it's a mod that's officially supported by Valve, meaning you can get it directly from the Steam store (again, it's free) and Steam will automatically keep it up to date for you, and you can also use the Steam Server browser to find servers instead of having to do it in-game.

I do think this mod has a lot of teamplay potential, but there aren't any servers that operate like TTP out there that I've been able to find, so I'm wanting to find a group of TTPers to be able to play the game like it was meant to be played.

Links, videos, stuff like that would help

Look some up ya lazy fuck. I'm at work, so I can't do any of that right now. I'll see if I can't get a few screenshots and maybe a video clip or two tomorrow when I get home, before Fallout 3 takes control.

Alright, by popular demand I hopped into some empty servers to take a few screenshots. I made a small album on my photobucket, which you can access at http://s185.photobucket.com/albums/x...20Screenshots/

The screenshots all have descriptions attached to explain what you're looking at. As you can tell, Dystopia is not a pretty game - I'm running at maximum settings here. Still, I'd rather have functionality over form, and it's not like NeoTokyo is any prettier (though it's more colorful.)

Dystopia also comes with an in-game tutorial that explains all the basics (much like Smashball does), and the website itself has a comprehensive newbies guide, a wiki, and other player resources, all of which can be found at http://www.dystopia-game.com/readme.php

It doesn't seem like there have been many updates for Dystopia in the past several months, but I'm not looking to turn this into a TTP game or even a major gaming group - I just want to try playing the mod the modmakers intended it to be played at least once, and I don't think I'll get that without having at least a few TTPers to play with.

Originally Posted by DancingCorpse

Links, videos, stuff like that would help

:3 Why did we vote you in? The correct reply to the thread would have been: "Oh look an article! Go post it up in the article forums."

I'll copy this over there with the OP's permission.

How do you think I feel about Smashball, Meno? It's UT2k4's Bombing Run repackaged and shit all over and released as a Source mod.

Regardless, it's a fun mod. I think it has a lot of potential for tactical depth, but we'd need to find enough players to make pickup games to find out for sure

And you can copy this over if you want, GM, but I imagine I'd have to go in and clean it up and fluff up some parts to make it article-worthy.

Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK!

How do you think I feel about Smashball, Meno? It's UT2k4's Bombing Run repackaged and shit all over and released as a Source mod.

Regardless, it's a fun mod. I think it has a lot of potential for tactical depth, but we'd need to find enough players to make pickup games to find out for sure

And you can copy this over if you want, GM, but I imagine I'd have to go in and clean it up and fluff up some parts to make it article-worthy.

you play smashball? how is it? thinking about downloading it, but didn't know is any people at ttp played it

I played a couple hours worth. It's not anywhere near as good as UT's bombing run, but UT2k4 and bombing run especially are pretty much dead these days.

I believe jabber and cprice have or maybe still do play it... you might try asking them if they'd be up for some more.

I used WeGame to record a couple of video clips but I'm having trouble uploading them to them.

Mostly just showcasing how thermal vision and sound wave triangulation work, and then showing what happens when you use the grenade launcher in a game that has 100% friendly fire and teammates who don't listen to you