Story Mode

[Amaso]

I was sitting in my "Terrorist Of Iraq" server as I came across a new player. I taught him how to chat and double bind +1 but what he asked me shocked my whole mentality...He said...
"How do I get to the story mode?"

Now why don't we have a story mode for new players? Or the game itself?

[nara]

Creating a story mode for this game is a very interesting idea to me. The intersections between the narrative, its presentation, and tron as a game mode would be very interesting to work out, as well as the creation of the narrative by itself. I don't have the technical know-how to actually program a story mode, but I may think about the story and its presentation in tron as a side project in my free time (it would also be fun to solicit ideas from the community about the narrative)

Without having thought a lot about this, I wonder how one can have a story mode when you're a light cycle driving in right angles on a grid. The racing maps come to mind. I remember a particular racing server having maps that were very large and inducive to exploration.

Also, it would be useful to look at similar games to tron in terms of their presentations/physics and see how they do their story modes (if any exist).

[ConVicT]

I think they person you mean, may have meant, a tutorial type of thing.
I'm guessing this game was inspired by Tron, so there's your story.

If the player meant some sort of Tron-RPG, then, the closest we have is "Happy Fun Time", as far's I know (not even sure if it's still running).

[Monkey]

I'm not sure that a story mode would be suitable for this game. I view Arma more like a sport than just a video game (especially fortress). To me it's kind of like saying "why doesn't football (soccer) have a story mode?"

[sinewav]

Story Mode was last suggested on 18 Jan 2009, and previously dismissed in September 2008. Armagetron is a Tron Clone, which makes the world of Tron the "back story." This is not the same as story mode, which usually means a single player campaign. However, Since the last time story mode was suggested Z-Man created a nifty tutorial system. There is definitely room to expand off that framework and include something like increasingly difficult logic puzzles/mazes.

The closest we have to a single-player campaign is the currently unavailable Maze-A-Tron server. I know Light made a couple interesting servers that worked well as single player games. All the pieces are there for a more interesting local play experience if someone wants to prototype it.

[Word]

Young Emacs, who is raised by his aunt Quake, tries to find the lightcycle that core dumped his parents Linux and Gcc in a dark corner of CTWF. After years of training he takes up the identity of LaTex. With this new alias he manages to track down Elm, glTron and Cycles3d who once had close ties to his family. They lecture him about double-binding, color codes and the lag-o-meter. Meanwhile, the lightcycle responsible for the derezzing of his parents becomes aware of LaTex's efforts and sends a killer named Excel after him. However, Excel dies during a failed no-point-hole. Not long after that LaTex starts an affair with Photoshop, Excel's beautiful daughter, who is unaware of what happened to her father. Her clumsy sister Gimp, driven by jealousy, eventually uncovers the truth and the couple flees to another server that is brutally ruled by Word and his clan. LaTex and Photoshop join the resistance movement led by the charismatic Outlook, whom LaTex replaces after Word had him murdered. LaTex finds out that Outlook received information about a traitor shortly before his death. LaTex interrogates all members but the identity of Word's mole inside the group remains obscure until Vi, who was apparently promised a better ping, boxes him and teamkills a few others before being teamkilled himself. LaTex escapes in the last split-second and concentrates his allies for the last battle. Suddenly Word appears, someone manipulated his brakes and velocity control so that he keeps getting faster than he can handle, while having an agonizingly high amount of rubber at his disposal. LaTex takes pity since no lightcycle deserves a death as cruel as this and puts an end to it. Instead of ascending to power he chooses to move to a server that is less populated and LaTex returns to his normal identity. Soon, Photoshop and him have twins, TeX and Pine. They are abducted while their parents are distracted by a spammer. TeX commits suicide so that his brother can be saved: He leaves his dead trail for Emacs to follow. It leads to aunt Quake. Emacs refrains from core dumping her as he once vowed (she's family, after all), and instead decides to shrink her zone so that she is doomed to a life without a home. Photoshop and him live happily ever after and have another kid they name MSVC++. Photoshop finds religion and condemns the use of rubber, the couple splits. Her delusion causes Photoshop to die in an accident. Emacs is grief-stricken and core dumps every evangelist of the new religion that crosses his way.

[sinewav]

Now we need Cosmic Dolphin to illustrate this. Also,

Photoshop finds religion and condemns the use of rubber...

Pure genius.

[Word]

Thank you, sine

Everyone: Feel free to add/remove/change stuff if you want.

[compguygene]

The closest we have to a single-player campaign is the currently unavailable Maze-A-Tron server. I know Light made a couple interesting servers that worked well as single player games. All the pieces are there for a more interesting local play experience if someone wants to prototype it.

At the time of this post, my VPS was down, so the Maze-A-Tron server was not available. My provider has since fixed things on their end and it lives as Wild West Maze-A-Tron. If you check out the Wild West servers, you will see several of the old AOT ones there. I loved playing in them too much not to host them. One of these days I am going to beat Maze-A-Tron

[/dev/null]

A theoretical story mode could be fun just for the hilariousness of it.

An actual one would likely require a lot of new ai for the bots, otherwise it would just be cutscenes.

[Lucifer]

What's wrong with just having single-player (or multi-player local game) tournaments/freestyle/training/etc? You know, like the other sports and racing games do....

[ConVicT]

In other sport games, you can have SP tourneys though.
Will bots ever be able to play fort, or sumo?

[Amaso]

In other sport games, you can have SP tourneys though.
Will bots ever be able to play fort, or sumo?

Possible

[/dev/null]

fort isnt a sport, its xdude made physical. UT is a ******* sport.

[Durf]

I'm going to have a new tournament soon (mostly single player), but it's not really for story.

After I'm done that though, I'm sure I could work on designing some real single player servers..
Light's snake server is a pretty good example IMO - simple, single player, a noob should be able to pick that up in no time and it will improve their skills (sorta).

We'll see.