Dystopian "crime simulator" in Source. Thread

Basically, I've wanted to make something big for a long time, but every project I've ever started fell to pieces because I couldn't get a team. So, I've got a plan to make a mod that won't require a team to get started I'll make the mod in Source, where there's so many free resources available I won't need anybody until I've already got a playable alpha up and even then not much and not from many people.

Overview:
The mod itself is supposed to be a crime simulator (with a more realistic approach than, say, GTA or Saint's Row) in a dystopian alternate reality in the eastern United States. The US has had a massive civil war that split it in two, and you're in the half that sucks. Specifically, you're in the loyalist half, and more specifically you're in a fictional city (that I have no name for) in Texas, right on the gulf. And keeping in mind that you live in a dystopian police state, here's a few facts about your character:

1. You're in your early teens. This isn't crippling by itself, but it's hugely crippling with the other factors I'm about to mention.
2. Your folks were busted for marijuana possession and sentenced to four years.
3. The orphanage you get sent to gets shut down a couple days after you arrive. (The orphanage section works as a tutorial. It probably won't be in the alpha.)
4. You get left behind when all the others are shipped off, and since you're a new arrival the city doesn't have you on file. Now you're homeless.

The three goals are:
1. Make enough money (with no legal source of income) to support yourself.
2. Don't go to jail.
3. Don't get killed, either.

The primary means of doing this are:
1. Steal shit.
2. You could start selling contraband once you steal enough to get on your feet.
3. As you earn a reputation, eventually other jobs may become available. Smuggling's one of them, the other is murder for hire. These are risky, but pay well.

The catch is that the game is really, really unforgiving. If you get reported, you're either going to jail (which is all sorts of bad) or blowing a LOT of money buying your way out. (A good lawyer and a good bribe go a long way towards getting you a "not guilty" verdict.) And the more serious your crime, the worse both of these are going to be. Now, nothing's illegal if you don't get caught, but as a general rule you want to avoid the really serious stuff. Especially murder. If you have to kill somebody, odds are you already fucked up.

To make matters worse, the authorities in this place don't really care about the law so much as they do maintaining control. If you get a reputation, the cops might just decide to striaght-up murder you. And of course, killing your assailants will increase your reputation, and make them want you dead even more. This can snowball really quickly. And the more they want you dead, the more they'll send to do it.

As the game goes on, you'll eventually go to prison. Here, you'll meet other victims, real criminals, and revolutionaries that want to overthrow the US government. You can incite a prison riot, break out of prison and join the revolutionaries. Now, the government in this game is seriously fucked up, but the revolution isn't exactly spotless either. To be blunt, you're joining a terrorist group. A well-meaning terrorist group, striking out against a corrupt government that has no legal accountability, but still a terrorist group. What they're going to have you doing ranges from the minor theft and smuggling to sabotage and assassination and eventually major terrorist attacks including arson and bombings. Eventually, the revolution will go open once the city government has been sufficiently weakened, and you take over the city.

This story doesn't end well. You don't have control long. The Navy arrives with the entire goddamn fourth fleet, sinks all the boats in the harbor, destroys all the planes at the airport, craters the runway and then turns its attention to the city itself. What follows is twelve hours of shelling with the full firepower of the fourth fleet. There isn't a building over five stories high left standing, sends in the entire 25th Marines and declares martial law. And if they weren't currently at war, they would probably have deployed the entire 4th Division. And this leaves them in the game's epilogue, where the city is largely uninhabited and has no real government. And the game ends with the player able to tool around in the sandbox all they want.

The neighbourhood:
The neighbourhood you live in is a slum. The apartments are cheap, but that's because there's probably a meth lab somewhere in each building. The place has more than its fair share of gang members, many of which have been to prison and would rather kill than go back. Which brings me to the prison. Yeah, it's right there. It's across the street from the abandoned orphanage where you start off. The police station is also right there, across the intersection. The cops around here make the gangs look tame. They'll beat you senseless on the slightest provocation, and any violence towards them will get you beaten, tased and shot.

You can choose to squat in the abandoned orphanage, and you probably should at first. But keep in mind it's abandoned for a reason. It was closed down because the floor in the older girls' dorm collapsed, so they moved the younger girls into the younger boys dorms to make room for them. Upon finding out there were boys and girls in the same dorm the city fired everybody who worked there and shut the place down. (Never mind that they're all under 10, and are probably fine together.) The place is falling apart, the water and power have been turned off, the heat didn't work to begin with, there never was air conditioning (not really a problem in November) and there's critters moving in. Most prominently, there's zombies in the basement. Female zombies. Don't ask how they got there, you won't like the answer.

There's not much to steal in this area, and anything you still is going to hurt the person you steal it from. You'll need to head to another neighbourhood to find any valuables, or be able to steal without really hurting anybody. On the plus side, if you manage to get your hands on what you need for it, you could also produce and sell drugs. And then there's the late-game smuggling and assassination jobs. Thankfully, the industrial district and the waterfront are both nearby. So is a decent middleclass suburb and the downtown area. The gated upper-class neighbourhood and wealthy manors, of course, all the way on the other side of town.

Levelling:
You gain experience as you go, every level gives you two points to invest in your six attributes. Every even level they can gain a perk of their choice based off a deity or other powerful entity from Norse, Greek or Egyptian mythology. Each deity has three abilities gained in order, some passive and some active. Passives always work, actives can only be used once before you have to rest for a day to get them back. For example, Odin's first perk is "God of War", an active ability which makes critical hits deal 10x damage instead of 5x for one minute, his second perk is "Allfather's Wisdom", a passive which allows enemies you can't see to be marked whether you're sneaking or not, and his final one is "Life and Death", a passive that makes the player regenerate a point of fortitude (basically an armour point) every time they take a hit.

Some deity perks are gender-locked. There's an even number locked to just females and to just males. This isn't something I wanted to do, but plenty of these simply would not work for an opposite-sex character. The prime example of this is Aprhodite, whose perks are limited to female players only.

There's also a fourth perk for each god that you get for free if you have all three of their other perks. For example, Odin has the Gungnir perk, which passively makes thrown weapons more likely to critically hit. Also, if I eventually get achievements for the mod (I don't see why not, Black Mesa and Modular Combat are Source mods and they have achievements) there will be an achievement for each god, gained by acquiring all three of their perks.

The six attributes are strength, agility, constitution, perception, charisma and resolve. Strength increases melee damage and reduces recoil. Agility increases ranged accuracy, reload speed and stealth. Constitution increases stamina (aux power) and fortitude (armour points). Perception increases experience gain and marks enemies around corners when sneaking. Charisma makes you less likely to get reported for a crime, reduces the cost of paying your way out of a conviction and increases the price you sell goods for. Resolve has a "morale" meter associated with it. (This meter is scaled directly to resolve, as is restoration of it. If it hits 0, all attributes but resolve are treated as 0 and your screen goes grey.) You should be able to figure out which of these works best for your playstyle pretty easily.

Items:
Items have weight, and there's an equip limit. Basically, for every kilogram of weight you have on you, you get 1% slower. You can also only have two melee weapons, two pistols, one long gun and three utility items equipped, and you don't get much ammo. Melee weapons are things like knives and crowbars, your fists are also here but aren't in this count. Pistols are self-explanatory. Long guns is any firearm that takes two hands. Utility items is everything from medical kits to molotovs. You can also have one off-hand item (which has its own key), one light item (which has its own key), one set of clothing (determines your damage resistance, and there's only a few types) and clothes can only be changed in certain places. Clothing selection is important. Heavier clothing and armour provide more protection, but they also slow you down more and draws more attention. Jeans and a hoodie don't draw attention, but they don't protect you much. Interceptor body armour doesn't give a shit about bullets, but everybody's looking at you when you're wearing it. Similarly, if you're unarmed you'll be stuck fighting with your fists if it comes to it, but walking around town with an assault rifle puts all eyes on you. (Yes, even in Texas.)

Health, vitality, fortitude, stamina and needs:
This is important to cover. You have 100 health points. Some deity abilities improve this value. Combining all relevant deity abilities combined would give you 200 health points. You get slower as your health falls. Below this is a layer of "vitality points". Run out of health and you collapse (like in Left 4 Dead) getting all attributes treated as zero and losing one point of vitality per second, and you have the option to pass out and wake up in a hospital, though this takes one minute of not getting hit. You can use a pistol while downed and can use your medical supplies. However, if you run out of vitality, you die. Your vitality is 100 and cannot be increased through any means. Above these is a layer of fortitude points equal to your constitution, which absorb all damage until depleted and are easily to replenish than health is. Some things, such as poison and falling damage, skip fortitude.

Restoring fortitude is fairly easy. Pain pills will restore one point per dose. (Pain pills have a one minute cooldown time between uses, so there's no spamming them.) A first aid kit or day of rest will restore 10. Going to a hospital for a day will restore 100. Restoring health is much more difficult. Pain pills do nothing, first aid kits and rest only restore one point, and a hospital restores 10. Vitality can only be restored by a hospital, at one point per day. Hospitals cost $1000 to enter and an additional $100 per day. You will not be released until your vitality is full. You have one month after release to pay it off or a warrant will be placed for your arrest. You also cannot receive treatment again until you pay your debt. (Did I mention this society was seriously fucked up?)

Stamina (which uses the aux power meter) is much more expendable, of course. You get ten points of it per point of constitution. (So for most characters, it'll start at 100.) Some deity abilities increase it. Both relevant deity abilities combined would give you 20 per point of constitution. Jumping uses 1, sprinting 1/second, and grapple attacks (like L4D special infected grapples) 10/second. It doesn't regenerate, but it's easy to restore. Food and drink items restore 1, 10 or 100. (Remember that you can only carry three types of utility items, and food and drinks are either counted as utility items or are used on the spot.) A day of rest restores 1000 stamina.

You need food, water and rest or you'll die. After one game day (144 minutes on easy, 72 minutes on normal and 48 minutes on hard) without food, water or rest your meter will be empty and you'll enter a deprived state. Sleep deprivation causes your morale to slowly deplete. It will not continue beyond breaking your morale. Starvation causes your morale to slowly deplete, then your health. It stops when you collapse and awaken in a hospital. Dehydration causes your morale to slowly deplete, then your health, then your vitality. It will kill you if you don't stop it. These needs don't go below 0, so *anything* that restores them will instantly terminate the deprived state. However, it will take a lot to fully replenish them. The exception is sleep deprivation, one day of rest is an instant and complete fix for that. It takes a total of 4 large food items or 20 small food items to fill the hunger meter or 10 bottles/glasses of water for the hydration meter. There's a one minute cooldown on water.

Combat:
The combat in this game is considerably more realistic than it is in other source games. And if I say "realistic" and you think "instant death", don't. It's actually really hard to get instantly killed. It's not impossible, it just takes a lot. And usually, a lot more than the game has. There's no rocket launchers, the most powerful firearm is a sniper rifle and the biggest explosive you'll get your hands on is a small pipe bomb. And this isn't a game where a single bullet to the head instantly kills a target.

The typical human enemy has 200 hit points and collapses at 100. And just like you can use a pistol while downed, so can they. They take 1/4 damage to the arm, 1/2 damage to the leg, 1x to the abdomen, 2x to the chest and 4x to the head. To use a couple pistols as example, the Five-Seven deals 2 damage, the Glock 17 deals 5 damage and the USP .45 deals 9 damage. They all have a 30% chance to critically hit for 5x damage. The Five-Seven is resisted 0% by light clothing, 40% by heavy clothing, 90% by light armour and 100% by medium and heavy armour. The other two are resisted 10% by light clothing, 60% by heavy clothing and 100% by any armour. In this setting, most people wear light clothing, but plenty of them, including all street soldiers and security guards, wear full-body heavy clothing. Cops walk around in full-body light armour all the time. SWAT kicks your door down in full medium and the military will ignore everything you throw at them due to full-body heavy armour.

Placing a shot on any particular part of a target's body will penalize them. The penalty depends on the part hit and the power of the weapon. Multiple hits do not stack. A hit to the arm means +100% spread and -50% melee speed. A it to the leg means -50% movement speed and -100% jump height. A hit to the abdomen means +25% spread, -10% melee speed, -10% movement speed and -25% jump height. A hit to the chest means +50% spread, -25% melee speed, -25% movement speed and -50% jump height. A hit to the head means +100% spread, -50% melee speed, -50% movement speed and -100% jump height. The duration of these penalties is one minute. Regardless of hit location there is a momentary "aim punch" for all hits that cause damage, which is much more severa and accompanied by a flash in the case of a hit to the head. NPCs are much less accurate for one second, and if hit in the head this is much more severe and they lose the ability to critically hit.

Melee weapons and explosives are non-locational. Instead of special effects for hit locations, they stagger enemies. The player, when hit, takes a very severe aim punch and is pushed away from the hit. NPCs are staggered, much less accurate and can't critically hit for one second. If a melee attack is blocked, the target is not pushed or staggered by the hit, the aim punch is much smaller, NPCs lose less accuracy and retain the ability to critically hit.

There are some less-lethal options. If you attack with your fists, a baton or the unarmedgrapple attack (likely the only grapple in the alpha, uses the L4D hunter beat-down animation), you build up a incapacitation meter by twice the damage dealt. When it reaches 100, the opponent collapses. At 200, they lose consciousness. A taser does four times damage and has the additional benefit of slowing and weakening opponents. These things also affect you, only they damage your stamina instead of building an incapacitation meter. You don't collapse at 0 stamina, so it isn't quite the same.

Enemies:
The main enemies in the game when combat occurs are going to be other humans. Eliminate them quickly, and don't leave witnesses. And if you can avoid it, don't kill anybody. Remember, what somebody sees doesn't matter if they don't tell anybody, so as long as they don't call 911 or reach a squad car, they don't count. A non-lethal incapacitation still removes them from the witness count, and even if you miss one it carries a much lighter penalty, as does killing somebody with a less-lethal weapon (which is manslaughter). Later versions will have a sleeper hold grapple attack you can do when behind an opponent to take them out stealthily with no chance of a fatality. If you have to kill somebody, you've probably fucked up. And if you have to kill somebody openly, you definitely fucked up. The primary human enemies are going to be gang members, security guards and cops.

Gang members do a lot more threatening and blustering than they do acting, but they're dangerous when they actually do something. They'll either come in light or heavy clothing, never body armour. They may or may not own guns, melee weapons such as knives and baseball bats are also common, and when they do have guns they tend to only be handguns. Shotguns may be broken out if they're on the offensive, and they may occasionally have a machine pistol or full submachine gun.

Security guards aren't well organized or armed, and are generally the least dangerous of these three. You'll probably get used to sneaking around them, though, since a lot of the places you'd like to rob have them. Or, in the final version, choking them out and leaving them handcuffed in a broom closet until the janitor lets them out. They aren't very aggressive, but they all have a gun so that's something to be glad for. There's definite grades of them, too. They wear light clothing, heavy clothing or light armour. The ones in light clothing will carry pepper spray, a maglite and a gun. The ones in heavy clothing add a taser and a shotgun. The ones in light armour carry submachine guns. If you're breaking into a place important enough to have security guards with armour and submachine guns, you'd best be careful.

Police are going to be dangerous. Even if you haven't broken the law yet, they're dangerous. They're more tenacious than gang members, better equipped than security guards, and have a hair-trigger temper. These people will beat the crap out of you for standing too close to them. (Literally.) They wear full-body light armour, riot officers (only seen later on in the game) wearing medium armour. Most cops carry a handgun, taser, pepper spray and a baton, and smoke grenades for "signalling purposes" (which is used as a discount gas grenade), and every squad car has a rifle and a shotgun. Riot officers will replace the smoke with CS gas and add a shield, shotgun or submachine gun. (Notably not loaded with rubber bullets.)

SWAT is the most deadly of the police by far. You might not see them coming, on account of having been blinded by a flash grenade. And they aren't coming in to arrest you. (They don't even carry less-lethal weapons.) They'll come in a group of five, all of them have medium armour, a pistol and a knife. They may carry shotguns, submachine guns or rifles, sometimes a shield. If they show up, it'd be good to be well armed and wearing your armour when they arrive. Most targets aren't so lucky.

As deadly as SWAT is, they're nothing on the military. If a riot gets far enough out of hand, the national guard will arrive on the scene. They'll be dressed in medium armour, armed with knives, pistols, CS gas and either submachine guns or rifles. If this continues to escalate, the marines will arrive on scene and clean house. The marines will bring heavy armour with rifles, machine guns or submachine guns, with smoke and frag grenades for every soldier.

Other than humans, there are zombies. These are weaker than humans, and nobody cares about them unless somebody owns them. The zombies in this setting are a fungal zombie, but there's a unique trait: The infection is respiratory and normally performs as a minor respiratory infection, spreading by coughs and sneezes instead of bites, giving the host hell for a week or two and having a very low fatality rate. The special part comes in if the host dies while infected. The fungus will actually revive a dead host in a matter of hours, but hours of being dead does a number on the brain. Hence, zombies. And if this happens, the infection isn't going anywhere now. It never restarts the immune system, instead relying on its own natural chemicals. It tries to take over the roles of failing organs, moving into the place of necrotic tissue, but it's horrible at it. Eventually, the fungus can no longer save the host. When this happens, the fungus gives up on the whole "carrier" thing the host was supposed to do and just consumes the host to produce as many spores as possible, flooding the area with them for a couple days and likely infecting nobody. (And even if it did infect somebody, they still don't become a zombie unless they die with it in their system.)

Zombies are present in the game for three main reasons. First, I want at least *some* enemy variety, and zombies are an easy way to get that. Second, the setting is an old one of mine and zombies exist in it, so why not? And third, I like the idea of zombies being present and be completely unimportant to the game. Think of it as an insult to zombie fiction, it's not far off. I mean, I designed the zombies in this setting to be scientifically feasible while also completely ruling out the zombie apocalypse scenario so thoroughly that even proposing the idea in-universe would get you branded as a lunatic.

Zombies in-game take 8x damage on the head instead of 4x, 1/2 damage on the legs instead of normal and 1/4 damage on the arm instead of 1/2. They move at a normal run speed, but never sprint. They start off very much human, if still mentally handicapped and mentally ill, able to communicate verbally (usually in short phrases, sometimes single sentences), use firearms and explosives, open doors and climb. They can be territorial, and although normally scavengers are predatory or even cannibalistic when hungry enough.

Zombies have 800 health. Every 25 damage dealt will slow it 25%, and it'll collapse at 700. After reducing its health to 600, it will lose consciousness and awaken one game hour (6 minutes on easy, 3 minutes on normal, 2 minutes on hard) later. It will be much less intelligent when it awakes, losing the ability to string together words and phrases, use firearms and open doors, though they will still break doors down, however it will only be slowed 25% and another 25% for every 50 its health is below 600, collapsing at 450. At 400, it will need another game hour to revive, and will lose the ability to communicate in any way, use any weapon or climb, now only being slowed 50% and another 25% at 300. At 200, they stumble blindly around, barely aware of their surroundings, moaning and whimpering from physical and emotional trauma, lashing out violently at anything that comes near them, now slowed 75% with no further slowing. Zombies do not lose health when collapsed.
Animals will be present as well. These aren't an overly developed concept, but there are a few things I can say. Dogs have 160HP with no resistances, have a very slow attack with little reach that doesn't do much damage and is shit against armour, and are mostly just fast and hard to hit. Bears occasionally make an appearance in the epilogue, they have 320HP, have roughly equal resistances to a human in light clothing, and while they're less mobile than dogs and an easier target they deal more damage with their bites and have claw attacks with better reach and speed than their bites, but less damage. Animals are helpless when at or below half health.

There should be more enemies later, but that's all for now.

Notoriety:
Notoriety measures the level of attention you're getting from the authorities. It needs to hit certain levels for any response.

This will be built by standing close to a cop, rich person or politician at 1/game minute, filming an officer for 10, 20 or 30 per second (on easy, normal and hard), an instant 10 notoriety for attempting to talk to an officer, an instant 100 if you attempt to talk to them a second time after they tell you to fuck off, or a varying amount for each level of crime. The most minor of crimes would be misdemeanours like underage possession of legal drugs, vandalism or assault and non-offences like bothering cops or politicians or entering a gated community, which results in 10 notoriety and a 100 day prison sentence. The second lowest are felonies like possession of illegal drugs, arson, manslaughter or attempted murder, misdemeanours against upper-class folks, cops or politicians and non-offences like bothering rich people or entering their communities, which result in 100 notoriety and a 1,000 day prison sentence. Right in the middle are capital offences like murder, felonies against upper-class folks, cops or politicians and misdemeanours against rich people, which result in 1,000 notoriety and a 10,000 day prison sentence. Then there's capital offences against upper-class folks, cops or politicians and felonies against rich people, which result in 10,000 notoriety and it doesn't matter what the sentence is because you'll be shot on sight. Finally, there's capital offences against rich people, which results in 100,000 notoriety and the SWAT team isn't there to arrest you. You can pay off the first three at a rate of $1,000/day. A crime with no witnesses or evidence doesn't carry a sentence, but still builds notoriety at 10% of the normal rate. (Some deity abilities will reduce this.)

Notoriety also decreases. Any crime you go to jail for (or buy your way out of) is removed from your notoriety. It also decreases at 10/day. You can also use money to bribe newscasters and make your notoriety decrease faster. (100/day at $1000/day.)

At 10, they'll threaten you with their baton. (With the same animation used by Civil Protection, yes.)

At 100, they will arrest you, even if you haven't broken any laws. This is a "because I feel like it" arrest, which puts you in jail for a hundred days on a charge of "harassment". If you don't cooperate by getting on your knees (crouch) and holding still still they'll beat and tase you until you either cooperate or collapse. If you strike them, they will immediately use lethal force.

At 1,000, they will come after you to arrest you even if there's nothing on the books. If you don't cooperate, they'll immediately use lethal force.

At 10,000, they'll come after you, but they aren't interested in arresting you anymore, even if there's nothing on the books. There won't even be a "get on your knees", they'll just immediately open fire.

At 100,000, they'll send a SWAT team after you. The odds are stacked against you.

At 1,000,000 the military will show up. You're dead.

Final word:
This here is most of what I've got right now. I want it to be clear that I came up with this concept *less than a week ago*, don't have a design document yet and I'm not only open to input, but input is the sole reason I made this thread, or joined the site in the first place. I want input and constructive criticism, especially from people who have experience at source modding.

Flop mechanic:
Okay, I've got a new mechanic I want to run by the community. It's a random chance that human opponents may immediately drop to the ground when damaged by bullets or explosives, and the chance is completely unmodified by shot placement and resistance. It's a trick. The opponent you just shot isn't dead, they're just playing dead in hopes that you'll buy it and won't shoot them again.

The chance of them dropping is determined exclusively by the type of weapon and the range. At ten metres or less, no opponent will ever flop because the chance you'd fail to confirm the kill is extremely low and the disadvantage they'd be putting themselves at at that range is entirely too great. Up to one hundred metres the chance is only 1%, because you're likely to confirm the kill and they're close enough they wouldn't be able to stand before you could run right up to them and confirm the kill. Up to a kilometre the chance is 10%, as they're now far enough that there's a good chance playing dead will work, due to a combination of the time and difficulty required to reach them, and how long they'd have to get back up and run away if you tried to close the distance. Beyond a kilometre, they'll always flop. And they'll do it because it'll always work. If you did try to confirm it, you'd find it virtually impossible to hit a target on the ground from that distance, and if you tried to get closer they'd have a lot of time to get up and run for it. Explosives have a 1% chance at ten metres or less, 10% at one hundred metres or less and 100% any further than that.

A flopping opponent will always stay down for at least one game minute, ignoring all possible cues to get back up during that time. They will get up when either one game hour has passed, they take damage, an explosive lands near them or their attacker gets close. They won't get back up due to time passed if you're looking at them, and the chance of them getting up when you get close is random and based on how close you are and how far you were when you fired the shot. They will always get back up if injured, unless it occurs within one game minute of their initial flop, and explosives landing near them is random and dependent on distance. What they do when they get up depends on them. Usually they'll either attack you or go for help. If the opponent would collapse anyway and lack a pistol, they always flop and won't get back up. If they would collapse and have a pistol, they obviously can't get back up, but when they'd normally get back up they will instead sit up and draw their pistol, likely shooting the inattentive player in the back.

Unsure if an enemy is really down or if they're just faking it? Double tap. It could finish them off if they're faking, and if it doesn't it'll make them drop the act (most of the time) and that's still valuable. Enemies on the ground also take double damage from melee weapons and it's easy to get a headshot with a ranged weapon if they're just laying there and you're fairly close. The downside is that double-tap means either getting close to them to melee or using ammunition (and still probably having to get close) to shoot them in the head.

I'm also considering adding a key that would allow the player to do this, giving a chance for opponents to stop attacking the player, but keeping the opponent hostile should the player get back up in their presence. This could be used to escape a fight the player is losing, or get the opponent to turn their backs on the "dead" player and leave themselves vulnerable.

Edited by: Seattleite