Spec Forces DLC

[Image Miroir]

What about making a DLC introducing Spec Forces?

With this DLC the narrative would be a little different: instead of a security contractor agency, the characters would be sent by a government, being part of a black op. The objective remains the same, but it's part of a foreign power agenda.

In that DLC, you choose a nationality (American, British, Canadian, French, German, Israelian, Russian, etc.), you start with 3 new soldiers (2 men +1 one of your choice). Two of the three have a detailed background, being part of most famous special force unit of that given country; and the third character is created like with AIM (in addition you choose the unit you belong to and get the badge of that unit on your character sheet).

The two detailed characters, would be of medium strength (with country related firearms). Being a little bit better than the mercs you can get at the beginning, for free as they are on mission. Not to unbalance the game, this group will not be bigger than 3 (except for special additional characters that could be related to a specific mission), even if you can recruit other groups of mercs (like usually).

Such a DLC wouldn't be that difficult to create, and could please a lot of players from all around the world. With 2 detailed characters per country, it'd represent 30 additional characters for 15 countries (it's not that much work). To get the symbol of units for each country, two days of work with Wikipedia should be enough.

It could be interesting to add a specific quest for these spec forces units, but the more you add into this DLC, the less it's profitable to create and release it.

So what do you think about this idea?

[ninjalex]

1 minute ago, Image Miroir said:

it's not that much work

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell. Modeling a bunch of characters, writing backstories, creating voicelines. It's gonna be a HUGE job.

 

And that doesn't even reflect the changes that has to be done to change how the environment and NPCs react when you have a completely different role than the original game.

 

You're talking basically an entire new game

[Image Miroir]

1 minute ago, ninjalex said:

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell. Modeling a bunch of characters, writing backstories, creating voicelines. It's gonna be a HUGE job.

It's not to exagerate. Yes you have to model the faces, for the bodies it's not needed.

The back stories? It's very simple, these guys already belong to a country and a defined unit. With ChatGPT you create a background for each in barely 10 minutes. So it's a full day of work.

Voices? Offer players to be part of a DLC and you'll get a lot of candidates. Choose them on a voice sample. It's barely a few days of work.

7 minutes ago, ninjalex said:

And that doesn't even reflect the changes that has to be done to change how the environment and NPCs react when you have a completely different role than the original game.

These guys are black ops, so they do the same dirty jobs mercs do. So you have nothing at all to change.

[ninjalex]

Have you ever made a video game? Saying that making a character gallery of 30(!) new characters is a few days of work is absurd.

[Elite77]

17 minutes ago, Image Miroir said:

What about making a DLC introducing Spec Forces?

With this DLC the narrative would be a little different: instead of a security contractor agency, the characters would be sent by a government, being part of a black op. The objective remains the same, but it's part of a foreign power agenda.

In that DLC, you choose a nationality (American, British, Canadian, French, German, Israelian, Russian, etc.), you start with 3 new soldiers (2 men +1 one of your choice). Two of the three have a detailed background, being part of most famous special force unit of that given country; and the third character is created like with AIM (in addition you choose the unit you belong to and get the badge of that unit on your character sheet).

The two detailed characters, would be of medium strength (with country related firearms). Being a little bit better than the mercs you can get at the beginning, for free as they are on mission. Not to unbalance the game, this group will not be bigger than 3 (except for special additional characters that could be related to a specific mission), even if you can recruit other groups of mercs (like usually).

1 would be very boring, in my opinion, most spec forces missions are very much "go in, kill somebody or capture a politician, get out", it's very procedural bureaucratic stuff, there's no grander narrative about a dictator or anything like that.

2 How would you make items work in this. No more item loot? No more items being kept from last mission and brought into the new mission?

[Image Miroir]

10 hours ago, ninjalex said:

Have you ever made a video game? Saying that making a character gallery of 30(!) new characters is a few days of work is absurd.

I never made video games, but I made serious games. I also do tabletop roleplaying games, and created so many worlds, characters, creatures and adventures, I can't count.

Characters belong to archetypes, and in an environment like Jagged Alliance, you don't have so many. With a concept artist, 30 characters should take a week of work (6 per day), not more.

With ChatGPT you generate the background of one of them in 15 min. With Midjourney, you create an inspiration visual in 30 min. With Wikipedia you get the unit badge in 30 seconds.

Once done, you finish the visuals with Photoshop/Illustrators. You identify weapons used by special forces of these countries; most should be already in the game. So for the visual of the few new ones it shouldn't take decades.

So, in 70 hours of work all the design and narrative/storytelling should be done.

Now, I don't know how long it would take for developers but given a few of them I think integrating/adapting two faces per day (we already have the bodies) should not be out of reach. So, 2 faces per day makes 7 days of work for two developers.

Voices? One day to prepare the contract. One day to write the sentences in different languages with ChatGPT/Google Translate. Three days to contact native speakers, and get samples. Two days to mix it all. You have everything done in a week of work.

So you can make you DLC in a month, for around $8,000. It means you need around 3,000 sales to make it worthy.

11 hours ago, Elite77 said:

1 would be very boring, in my opinion, most spec forces missions are very much "go in, kill somebody or capture a politician, get out", it's very procedural bureaucratic stuff, there's no grander narrative about a dictator or anything like that.

2 How would you make items work in this. No more item loot? No more items being kept from last mission and brought into the new mission?

You don't need to change the game at all. Black Ops are infiltrating units used to act under cover or false flag.

So, if it's boring, it means the game is boring as you don't have to change anything in the scenario. The motivation is just a given order instead of the money like usual for mercenaries.

For sure you have your items to loot, you don't change at all anything else in the game.

 

So, maybe my mistake it's to name it Black Ops instead of Special Forces, my mistake.

[Elite77]

4 minutes ago, Image Miroir said:

You don't need to change the game at all. Black Ops are infiltrating units used to act under cover or false flag.

So, if it's boring, it means the game is boring as you don't have to change anything in the scenario. The motivation is just a given order instead of the money like usual for mercenaries.

For sure you have your items to loot, you don't change at all anything else in the game.

 

So, maybe my mistake it's to name it Black Ops instead of Special Forces, my mistake.

I mean, just sounds like Jagged Alliance at that point.

But most spec op forces don't have missions that last longer than a few hours, go in, do something, get out. Usually most of their gear is pre-planned, and there is no real item loot necessarily.

[ninjalex]

42 minutes ago, Image Miroir said:

I never made video games, but I made serious games. I also do tabletop roleplaying games, and created so many worlds, characters, creatures and adventures, I can't count.

Characters belong to archetypes, and in an environment like Jagged Alliance, you don't have so many. With a concept artist, 30 characters should take a week of work (6 per day), not more.

With ChatGPT you generate the background of one of them in 15 min. With Midjourney, you create an inspiration visual in 30 min. With Wikipedia you get the unit badge in 30 seconds.

Once done, you finish the visuals with Photoshop/Illustrators. You identify weapons used by special forces of these countries; most should be already in the game. So for the visual of the few new ones it shouldn't take decades.

So, in 70 hours of work all the design and narrative/storytelling should be done.

Now, I don't know how long it would take for developers but given a few of them I think integrating/adapting two faces per day (we already have the bodies) should not be out of reach. So, 2 faces per day makes 7 days of work for two developers.

Voices? One day to prepare the contract. One day to write the sentences in different languages with ChatGPT/Google Translate. Three days to contact native speakers, and get samples. Two days to mix it all. You have everything done in a week of work.

So you can make you DLC in a month, for around $8,000. It means you need around 3,000 sales to make it worthy.

 

Tabletop roleplaying game != a professional video game.

 

30 characters take a week to make? 6 per day? Holy timeline batman.

Not to go into the whole problem of AI-tools that you are overestemating wildly. The raw material from that probably works perfect for a tabletop RPG, it does not necessarily translate to actual video games and isn't plug and play. Write a prompt and then just magically insert it into a game. Not to mention the whole grey area of AI-tools to make copyrighted commercial products.

"You finish the visuals".

You keep saying things like this without any regard for how much time it actually takes to do these things. It is time consuming work all of it, not to mention every game out there gets rewritten, refined and changed up during production. Because the things you did (models, voice lines, text etc) just didn't work as you intended.

THREE DAYS TO CONTACT NATIVE SPEAKERS AND GET SAMPLES AND TWO DAYS TO MIX IT. What in the actual what. Here we are talking minimum several months because you need to prepare and plan for recruitment (what are you looking for, what is gonna be the salary for the work, how much work are we talking, how are you gonna advertise it and for how long so you make sure you get enough response, how do you filter through candidates, how are you gonna set up interviews and what is your backup plan if you don't get decent candidates). And that's even before salary negotiations, writing up contracts and setting up time to do the actual work, and then evaluate the product you got, do-overs, changing up the script because it's not working. And then finalizing it.

This is so unrealistic it's unfathomable. 

[Image Miroir]

3 hours ago, Elite77 said:

But most spec op forces don't have missions that last longer than a few hours, go in, do something, get out. Usually most of their gear is pre-planned, and there is no real item loot necessarily.

It's why I'm more speaking of Black Ops. Please just read. But if you accept a country called Grand Chien that never existed on this planet, I don't see any drama to accept Special Forces running Black Ops missions.

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

Tabletop roleplaying game != a professional video game.

A character is a character. Steroid (like Ivan or any other) has a background "defined" over 10 lines. No serious TTRPG character has such a poor background. So, again, the level I present in TTRPG is much higher than what we have in JA2 (I can't speak about JA3 for obvious reasons).

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

Not to go into the whole problem of AI-tools that you are overestemating wildly.

I'm using them daily for work, and most of the time for companies bigger than Haemimont Games. And many colleagues I know do the same, so I'm not at all overestimating AI. I'd even qualify myself as a basic AI (but professional) AI user.

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

The raw material from that probably works perfect for a tabletop RPG, it does not necessarily translate to actual video games and isn't plug and play.

We're speaking about background here, character conception. What you can witness in good TTRPG right now is way far advanced than what you have in ANY video game. Everyone knowledgeable enough in video games industry would tell you. The best TTRPG went to help and develop video games 30 years ago. The complexity of worlds and characters of the best TTRPG of the 1990s still don't have any equivalent in video games.

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

The raw material from that probably works perfect for a tabletop RPG, it does not necessarily translate to actual video games and isn't plug and play. Write a prompt and then just magically insert it into a game.

Who's speaking of plug and play??? You create "Bob who's belonging to SEAL Team 6, after 2 years in MIT, and several covert missions in Kenya... blablabla..." You make it the proper way and you have a character. You just need answer a simple grid for that "name, surname, age, unit, major accomplishment/failure, demeanor". If you're a game designer and can't create 30 fictional characters in a full week of work, change job, they need arms in agriculture!

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

Write a prompt and then just magically insert it into a game. Not to mention the whole grey area of AI-tools to make copyrighted commercial products.

It's almost that. It just work fine for companies making billions, so I think Haemimont Games could comply with it until they make their first trillion.

There's no grey area for copyright. Just read and learn. A copyright can only be related to a production achieved by a conscious mind. So, it's been ruled by law that no animal can get copyright and has there's no AI with consciousness in this world (yet), if you do it before the 2050s you don't have any problem.

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

You keep saying things like this without any regard for how much time it actually takes to do these things. It is time consuming work all of it, not to mention every game out there gets rewritten, refined and changed up during production. Because the things you did (models, voice lines, text etc) just didn't work as you intended.

You can do it in Sims' for over a decade. So, if you weren't first designing a tool to easily create the faces of the characters in a professional video games released in 2023, I wonder why you call yourself a professional.

When I worked on my first serious game in 2018, the designer who knew a bit of Blender (but not that much), did a dozen of characters in 7 days of work. Still the guy wasn't a game developer.

3 hours ago, ninjalex said:

THREE DAYS TO CONTACT NATIVE SPEAKERS AND GET SAMPLES AND TWO DAYS TO MIX IT. What in the actual what. Here we are talking minimum several months because you need to prepare and plan for recruitment (what are you looking for, what is gonna be the salary for the work, how much work are we talking, how are you gonna advertise it and for how long so you make sure you get enough response, how do you filter through candidates, how are you gonna set up interviews and what is your backup plan if you don't get decent candidates). And that's even before salary negotiations, writing up contracts and setting up time to do the actual work, and then evaluate the product you got, do-overs, changing up the script because it's not working. And then finalizing it.

In my day-to-day job as a e-learning designer, I can find, recruit, get a voice record for a 3 hours speech in 3 days. And the requirement are much higher than having Ivan to say basic sentence in Russian language.

 

Seriously, if you want to have it done, the first think is to consider it possible, the second to want to have it done, and the third to mobilize yourself to do it. Maybe they should hire Ukrainians, they seem to be smarter and more adaptative!