[Silent Thunder]

Hey, recently ubi and rse have dissapointed many people by making the sequals to their most respected games arcade shoot 'em ups and poorly treating the community. With the development of lockdown underway, we (Silent Thunder) have decided to make a real alternative. Silent Thunder is a remake of the popular game Tom Clacys Rainbow six in the HL2 source engine. However, this wont be just a straight forward remake, we will be making new features, basing the mod more towards the novel, redesigning all the original and best maps from the game and such n such...

heres some features we plan

From now on, we shall be focusing on creating Rainbow Six utilising the advanced features and power of the Source engine, to bring it into the modern gaming age. However, there’s a twist! We won’t be making a direct remake of the game, on the contrary. We will base our story on the themes and idea of the book more closely, and create a new story based on Clancy’s writings.

We will however recreate some of the old classic maps as seen in the games, such as the Belgian Embassy, the first mission from the original game, and popular multi-player maps like Bunkers and City Streets. Along with these remakes in Source, will be a new Campaign, separate from these single missions (think Custom Mission in Rogue Spear onwards which allowed you to play maps not within the campaign) which will be based more closely upon the novel. We will create a back story for each mission within the campaign, so there isn’t a “why am I actually doing this?†kind of feeling.

All of your favourite characters shall make an appearance, (although due to legal reasons names may be slightly changed to avoid being sued) and will retain their skills from previous games. On that note, our “skill†system will be customisable. We will have the ability to create your own character, so gender, name, race, hair, and face and so on, and then you shall get a set number of starting points which you can add to different abilities to make a character suited exactly to your play style. We shall include the following abilities:

• Assault (CQB skill and so on)
  
  
• Demolitions (explosives; disarming and so on)
  
  
• Marksman (sniper; self explanatory really)
  
  
• Mechanics (picking locks, fixing/sabotaging vehicles, planting bugs, “fixing†camera’s and so on)
  
  
• Accuracy (how accurately you can fire your weapon, this includes handling skill, such as being able to withstand recoil and so on)
  
  
• Agility (how quickly you can move; this can help in CQB and allows you to aim much quicker with all weapons)
  
  
• Recon (your “sneak†skill basically; this aides you especially in the sniper role by making you more akin to the world of camouflage and scouting ahead for the rest of your squad)
  
  
• Endurance (this will be affected by weight, and lowers when you run or sprint. You can regain it by moving slower or standing still, the latter of which will cause you to regain it much faster)
  

These abilities will help define your character so they are more individual and potentially unique when it comes to online gaming. This will help you create a suited style of play that is tailor made for your game style. Having said that, there are disadvantages to your set up. Others will have counter abilities that could out do you in certain areas. For example, a player who is more suited to the sniper role will be disadvantaged if attacked in close quarters by someone with a high “assault†and “agility†skill.

This system is designed to make teams play as that, teams, by having players with better abilities than others in certain area’s, and to balance the squad out by having people who make up for the weaknesses of their other members, and to support their strengths to give an overall balanced and potent squad of killing machines!

This system shall be implemented in the campaign and allow you to select your skills, then you shall have extra “points†to add to your character after each successive mission to reflect the fact that in reality you’d get better with more practice.

In multi-player, this system won’t be as dynamic, in order to keep things fare. However, we shall implement a feature so you can save your custom point set up so you can simply select them from a drop down to save you assigning the points every time you enter a server. This will also be true of weapons and gear load-outs. You will be able to select skills and gear every round, and in between the rounds if you die before the round is over so you start the next with the selected gear.

This brings us nicely onto multi-player modes! We will include the classic “Team Survival†modes, where you and your team must eliminate the other to win the round, as-well as “Survival†which is basically a deathmatch. The last alive wins! Other modes will include “Hostage Rescue†from the original games, which was removed from Raven Shield and replaced with “Pilotâ€, although essentially the same thing. In this mode, one team will have hostages which they must escort to a “safe zoneâ€. Each map will have two of these zones, and the other team’s objective is to stop them from reaching one of these zones, either by killing the team, or the hostages they are protecting.

The different modes we hope to add are “Coop Campaign†and “Coop Objectives†where you play against the AI with the same objectives you had in the campaign. This is already in the R6 games, but this will be different on the basis that you will get to select from several different insertion zones and types. For example, you can select to insert on the roof, and fast-rope form a helicopter, then abseil down a wall and enter via a window on the 60th storey by placing a breeching charge on the window or door then blowing it, or simply shooting it out or kicking it open.

You will have these same options in the campaign also, but in MP this will be more dynamic because there will be support for up to four squads, each consisting of four operatives who can select any of, or all of these insertion methods. We will have places around the maps that are hard coded for things such as abseiling by attaching ropes, and will have the ability to “remove†them either after use, or by shooting or cutting them. This makes it all the more important to have people covering all arcs at all times to make sure your team doesn’t come to suffer these dirty tactics the AI will try and use if discovered.

We also hope to include Team vs. Team objectives. By this we mean areas one team must defend, and the other must capture. Each side will be “Rainbow†operatives, and so will have access to the same kit, and each round will alternate to make sure each team has have a defence and attack round each. This will be up to the admin of course depending how many rounds he sets per map rotation.

Unlike most MP MODs, we won’t have a “buy†or “money†system. We will allow you all to have access to all of the gear from the start. However! You can only carry so much, and weight is a factor we will take advantage of, or disadvantage as some of you heavy loaders may come to see. The more weight you carry, the slower you will move, and the more cumbersome (i.e. if you have a large weapon, such as an LMG like the FN MAG) you will be less agile. This will affect your “pointsâ€. Each person will have a number of set points for every ability as a base line. This will mean you won’t be able get around not being affected by not assigning points!

We will have it so extra weight will have a “minus†effect on your abilities. So if you carry a large mass, your agility will be minus X in accordance to the weight you’re carrying, large objects will affect your speed and so on. Also mass will affect your endurance. The more you carry, the quicker you will get tired and have to rest (you will still be able to move however, just not run/sprint).

Moving on, all of our weapons will be modelled as closely to the real things as possible (by that we don’t just mean in terms of physical appearance, we mean muzzle velocity, range, power, accuracy, recoil, rate of fire and so on). We want to give the player the tools to get the job done. We will hopefully be able to code in realistic ballistics which will allow ricochets, projectile penetration of materials as well as humans (think of being able to kill/injure more than one person with one round because they are stood in a line from point of firing to impact). This feature will make you think about what sort of cover you take when being fired at with different calibres and weapons. Taking cover behind a car may be all well and good against someone with an MP5A4 some 100m away, but you may have to think twice if they’re closer, or their friend is training an AK-74 or 47 on your position, or if someone decides to lay down with a PKM onto your position.

Anyway, I think I’ve said enough for now, and we thank you for reading. We hope this has interested you, and for all you mappers, modellers, texture artists, coders, sound engineers and the like out there will be interested in joining and helping us fulfil these plans! If you’re interested, please drop us a line, either for more information, or to express your interest in joining by clicking the “JOBS†link at the top.

Some odd bits:

• Paramedics and team medics able to patch you up
  
  
• Bandages on wounded body parts that eventually bleed through
  
  
• Local police officers who u can rescue from being pinned down and they help by shooting enemies
  
  
• Different choosable methods of insertion, such as helicopter insertions by fast rope
  
  
• Interactive walk about menus based on RAF Hereford (the home of rainbow) to choose your weapons and hear briefings
  
  
• AI command menu, you can tell your AI to stack up on a door and perform actions such as open and clear
  

Please feel free to post your comments / suggestions / support

And fee free to visit our

Website (website is out of date cause im making a new one)

Forums

Regards

Spearhead, ST Co-Founder and admin

Silent Thunder - The real alternative

[HOT INFO from an E3 chat with BIS]

arent bis just the cutest, we love bis

[HOT INFO from an E3 chat with BIS]

faces of the units and a few shadow errors are the only things wrong wiv the engine at the moment (as far as i can see), BIS are concentrating on dx9 effects, vehicles, unit models (not faces) and physics before they put the finishing touches to gfx. this is the ultimate game for realism, gr used to be fairly realistic, then gr2 and 3 look like theyve ruined the realism, rainbow six used to be about realism but they screwed that up with raven shield and beyond. i can see all the dissapointed realism seekers migrating from all the games like bf2, lockdown and gr3 over to this new "ultimate game"

[OFP2 NOT anything to do with the new BIS games]

the flaspoint community wont react well to codemasters decision to develope it seperatly, most will probably boycott it. BIS has been mixing with the community since its creation, even making little addons for us to play with, they are a real community based developer, they live on the forums taslking to the community but at the same time produce some amazing stuff. where-as codemasters has done nothing for the community, all they did in the way of publishing the game was to actually publish it, they never advertised ofp in a big way or even cared really, the game took off because of word of mouth and the qaulity of the game. so youll find that most, if not all of the ofp community will stay loyal to BIS and their creations