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I've just blogged my plans for a Jailbreak GTA2 level. For multiplayer, of course. Pyro and I have released Jailbreak Chapter 1 which lets you escape from the prison cells shown below.

Concept
Players must escape across the border from a maximum-security prison in an American desert. Just an idea for now.

Progress


General Sequence of Stages
Normal pink mission arrow(s) guide players through these objectives:

1. Prison cells. (Start point and respawn points. Inmate respect +4.)
2. Punch cell block police and key becomes available in their office to open the prison block doors. (Wanted level 1.)
3. Punching other police puts key outside armoury so you can enter to get basic weapons. (Wanted level 3, SWAT inside.)
4. Grab weapons from armoury. (Wanted level 4, bank alarm sound starts in armoury only.)
5. Collect 3 briefcases. (Armoury, kitchen storeroom and locker room.)
6. Set bomb at SE corner inner gates. (Visible and audible bomb. Explosion destroys doors and damages floor. Wanted level 5. Inmate respect +5.)
7. SWAT patrols now hunt any player. (Respawning in armour and under other doorways.)
8. National Guard alerted and on patrol in outer area. (Faked as a gang.)
9. Various other objectives, working anti-clockwise to the Garrison.
10. Open outer gates by destroying security controls in Garrison. (GENERATOR object, collecting Armour delivers it to prison cell.)
11. Police, FBI and Army logjam at bridge over moat. (Does not respawn? Wreckages are left to clear naturally, like Ghetto.)
12. Desert roads towards border with FBI wanted level of 5, high and low routes.
13. Desert café, maybe an old mining village.
14. Heavily defended border gates.
15. Safehouse with all players together ends the level.

Research
I'll take inspiration from Residential District (ste.gmp) and probably use the ste.sty textures as well.


The Northern desert region in GTA San Andreas has a lot of awesome scenery. Would be a great challenge bring that to GTA2. Would make the run from prison to border more atmospheric.

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nice idea. looking forward to play it :>

Excellent. But 2012 sounds very far! Please release it earlier!

Sounds interesting, let me know if you want help with mapping/scripting/ideas.

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.

I will write it in my personal organizer, oh dang, I can't find 2012.

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"Only Silky Milky implants by Zaibatsu feel and taste like the real thing."

First set of prison cells, where all players start:


I tried scanning in my pencil sketches but the scanner could hardly see them. Same thing happened with planning of Curveshire some years ago. Eventually went over the stable designs in pen, so I could show them off. Too early in the planning to do that, though!

I have a good idea of how the prison will be arranged. Several stages, some interior some exterior. There will be an explosion, an Army garrison, a moat as well as the stuff mentioned in the blog entry. I have loads of other ideas for it as well. The biggest challenge (which I'm really looking forwards to!) is bringing it all together into one playable level.

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you can do roofs simple commands that checks if char is in location and

if = true then you can use REMOVE_BLOCK command
if = false ADD_BLOCK command

it would be be prefect for me!

Cell walls, wall tops, as well as the fences for gantries and stairs would be wiped out by REMOVE_BLOCK. (I've added a screenshot of the surface types to previous message, so it's clearer how much stuff is affected. It's high up because it's a mountain.)

Using CHANGE_BLOCK to swap lid texture could work. But there are 108 see-through lids for that cell block roof. DeCon Labs seems to run about 4 CHANGE_BLOCK commands for each rendered frame when the power core animations are turned off. So it could take ~25 frames to swap the whole roof, which is one full second.

I could swap the lids nearest the entrance, then spiral outwards to the edges, so the lag is less visible. Would be worth trying out...after the building designs are stable!

Gustavob and Pyro have talked to me about ideas for sharing the work. Far too early to give anyone actual tasks. But later on, scripting work could be shared around while I concentrate on design, terrain and gameplay. Ideas very much welcome! I might release the early files at the weekend, for coders to experiment with.

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Using the CHANGE_BLOCK command can get quite interesting. As you said it can take a lot of time depending on the number of cubes and faces changed. Of course, the REMOVE_BLOCK (and don't forget to choose between DO_DROP and DONT_DROP depending on what you need!) is pretty fast as far as game "rendering" goes. It's the ADD_BLOCK which is a killer (if you remember the Vice City map for GTA2 one of the ideas was to 'render' a ship and that took ages for a small-ish ship).

Things I'd like to see in your map (some I explained to you earlier today):

• A classic car chase with Police/FBI cars. For added "coolness" you can make cars follow other cars and then have another car following that to make a big chain of cars. Unfortunately you can't do a follow with offset like you can with characters meaning that any following cars would be directly behind you. Not sure if you, say, set 2 following FBI cars to the players vehicle at the same time they would bump/hit each other trying to follow. I'll test it out sometime. Either way if the car stops the FBI blokes should pile out and shoot them!
• Some sort of off-road type bit with trees, rivers, bridges and jumps to do.
• An area to abandon your car and swap it with something else, maybe meet a contact or something?
• Perhaps 1 or 2 cars for the players? At least at the start? You can use code to get players as passengers in cars. I think this would be better than having 6 separate cars (assuming it will be up to 6 player).
• At the start maybe add some NPC inmates who try and help but generally end up dying so that you (the players) can escape?
• Would love to hear your ideas for the border patrol area. I can imagine, once you get that far, it'd be crammed full of FBI cars, cop cars with bollards, cones, road blocks, stopped traffic and FBI agents and police officers patrolling around. Not sure if the army would be appropriate but could add some Pacifiers and some soldiers wondering about as well.

That's a few things I can think of now, but I'll be sure to think of more

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.

Following is some ramblings I wrote to Pyro in Game Hunter this afternoon.

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Been talking to Ben earlier tonight for ideas/testing etc for this, going well!

I'm trying to get a scripted version of the ROAD_BLOCK_TANK_MAN working (it will desync if you use them in multipler if you have roads with arrows on the, and even Ben said they sometimes desync in his Army Base level which has no roads for tanks to spawn on) but running into some rather unintended effects...



The above is what I've tested so far, even adding the tank driver to a gang and setting the respect to -5. The objective I've tried changing multiple times (even removing it thinking he would fire because of the gang respect) but quite strange. If the tank is on-screen, he does nothing. Once off-screen he will drive EXTREMELY quickly, stop and then try shooting in the tank. Even setting him to stop driving and setting car speed won't work! It's unfortunate there isn't a general kill something command from a tank as it will shoot at objects just fine.

Setting objective to things like GUARD_SPOT and GUARD_AREA will not work and makes the game crash if set to an NPC inside a car. Same goes for DESTROY_OBJECT and FIRE_AT_OBJECT_FROM_VEHICLE will crash if set to a player (unsurprisingly). It is a pity that the ROAD_BLOCK_TANK_MAN desyncs as this is perfect and will shoot at everyone without needing to switch targets via code etc.

Still, I'll try random things and see what happens

Edit: I'll also do a test with the different character occupations to see how "tough" they are tomorrow (as to your question of giving NPC's armour). Will test with a pistol and see how many hits they take before dropping dead!

Edit 2: Gone through the list of occupations but came up with some pretty strange results. There seems to be no way of setting how much health they have, and I thought their health was linked by their occupation type (you'd think an FBI agent would be tougher than a DUMMY character) but apparently not. Each occupation character took exactly 2 pistol hits to kill, including occupations such as DUMMY, FBI and ARMY (in comparison, a normal ped on street takes 1 pistol round to kill, FBI takes 5 pistol rounds to kill and army also takes 1 pistol round to kill). However, for occupations such as SWAT, POLICE, ARMY and FBI you'd get a wanted level if you fired on-screen with them nearby and they will chase you. It would seem that any created character by script will always have a set amount of health.

Sektor made a little code-snippet giving a character the appearance of more health by using counters and checking weapon hits, you can find it here. However, depending how many FBI guys you want to make yourself this could get quite long-winded.

Still no luck with the tank shooting so far Tried more combinations such as setting tank drivers occupation to ARMY, POLICE etc and having 6 star wanted level and still sits there doing nothing. Gah!

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.

You can now download a preview of the Jailbreak files. Pretty much nothing there, just the central cell block and placeholders for rooms in the inner facility.

Thanks for trying, now we know for sure. I vaguely remember setting various other foot-based AI commands to tanks, with and without drivers and different occupations. All failed.

Does FIRE_AT_OBJECT_FROM_VEHICLE work if it targets the car the player is currently driving? Or can it only shoot at objects like the INVISIBLE_TARGET?

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The FIRE_AT_OBJECT_FROM_VEHICLE only works on objects (such as INVISIBLE_TARGET etc). Tried it out with a car and player and game will crash.

Also, the commands DESTROY_CAR and DESTROY_OBJECT only work for characters on foot, otherwise, like above, the game crashes. It would seem the only commands/objectives you can give characters who are inside vehicles (not including things like enter car as passenger etc) are:

FIRE_AT_OBJECT_FROM_VEHICLE (only works with tanks!)
FOLLOW_CAR_IN_CAR
GOTO_AREA_IN_CAR
LEAVE_CAR
WAIT_IN_CAR

Rather limited compared to what you can give NPC's on foot! The closest I've been, as mentioned before, is the KILL_CHAR_ANY_MEANS but that gives undesired effects! Until ROAD_BLOCK_TANK_MAN can be (hopefully) fixed it's going to be hard/impossible to get a scripted roadblock tank in multiplayer - sigh

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.

Now scanned as a black and white photo and it picks everything up! The sketches are very rough and my handwriting is hard to read. Putting it on paper makes it a lot more organised than leaving it in my head.

Prison Facility
Already deviated from this plan as it felt too big and straight in-game:

The arrangement of the central areas will be tuned to make them play well. Most of what's in this drawing will be kept but the details only get sorted out through testing.

The inner/outer layout with long, anti-clockwise gauntlet to the bridge over the moat is still the general idea.

Mini Map
Colour-coding would help this a lot. I'll probably just make flat areas with no details in the map editor to do this.

• J = Jail
• R = River
• RD = Road, small
• D = Dam
• G = Gate
• M = Mountain or Mine
• L = Lake
• V = Village
• S = Safehouse or other supportive area.
• Din = Diner
• T = Track, dirt
• C = Sight seers, viewing area, tourism.
• A = Tornado Alley? (Destroyed roads, erosion, flooding, debris and so on.)
• W = Weir, like a small dam with a fording point.
• + = Church

The line from NE to SW with 90° turns is the freeway, 3x3 lanes with 2 lane median. I haven't marked a lot of details, such as:

• Ditches
• Landslides
• Erosion patterns
• Off-road racing course
• Shooting range
• Scripted extra-tough roadblocks
• Army bot patrol routes

Various Notes
(I'll type these up somewhen. Some are already in the blog entry or at the start of this topic.)

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try resketch/correct it with black marker or pen and then scan.

Alrighty, I have done the code for the scripted instant-gang. It will either...

Add 2 members if there are zero (0) group members in the players group
If one of the two group members is dead, it will spawn the "missing" member. Example: Group Member 1 is dead but Group Member 2 is still alive, go back to phone and only Group Member 1 will respawn.

Here it is...

Before Levelstart Command:


After Levelstart Command But Before WHILE_EXEC Loop:


Inside WHILE_EXEC Loop:


I initially tried using the CHECK_NUMBER_ALIVE_IN_GROUP but that proved unreliable. That check sees if it is equal to or greater than the value. Even using some NOT commands didn't help as it would spawn the 2 members fine as well as replace the missing member, but, it would add a 3rd member if you went back to the phone again (replacing the missing member twice on two separate visits to the phone)! This one is much more reliable and works!

You could disable the thread trigger but the phone still appears to be ringing for the player. Since you can't make different objects viewable for different people you'll have to make do with a constantly ringing phone. Also, you could make another phone somewhere else on the map (say the abandoned town) and use the same code but with a different trigger name and will still have the same effect!

This script could be used for more unique multiplayer group members, all you need to do is change the condition of the trigger (such as wait in area etc)!

Next step is to make them change weapons when the player does and will try out making my own "turrets" (easy to do, but depends on how you want it to activate)

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.

Cool, I've added that to Jailbreak preview.

• Refactored the code to use fewer counters.
• Simpler checks.
• Avoid repetition of the CREATE_CHAR lines.
• Updated locations so it takes place on the playing court.
• Respawn points are not concealed, as it's just for testing.
• Forgot to try out the CHAIN_GANG effect for them.

Todo:

• Add a Pistol and a Shotgun to the armoury inner chamber.
• Increase police ratio so the cells will use real cops who can arrest you.
• Make all other peds into inmates, with some Elvis entertainers and maybe some muggers.

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Hey, glad you found the code useful. I looked at the changes you made to it and still makes sense heh heh. This is what happens when you finish a piece of code late at night

Makes sense seeing it now removing a redundant section for spawning both members at the same time rather than each separately as it will respawn both anyway if they are dead. Always good to let someone else see code from a different perspective!

If you want to make them follow in a chain, you can add: SET_GROUP_TYPE ( leader_name , CHAIN ). You can add this right after the code that gives the player a group of 0. Forgot to add this myself

I'll draft up a MAP_ZONE piece of code that you can use for the prison section with what you need (inmates, police, Elvis and muggers). I do think that if everyone is wearing a prison uniform that Elvis and muggers might look a little out of place! I'll do the inmates like the prison in ste.gmp and make them their own gang and give them the prison remap, unless you need something else. Perhaps this "gang" the players are +5 (friendly) to?

Anything else and I'll be on GH

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.

The latest unstable preview files are on the web page, for anyone who wants to play and experiment.

Pyro and I have developed the script a bit more. At least now it doesn't crash! Main problem is the helpers shoot other players. We must dial that out before this feature is usable for a co-operative prison break.

Also, I'm really pleased with how the inner areas of the prison are developing. The layout of the cells and surrounding support areas is coming together nicely, imho.

We're thinking that any small weapon you acquire will be delivered to all prison cell respawn points. A bit like the way Hidden Packages work in GTA3/VC/SA.

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Yup. I fixed the code so it wouldn't crash. Basically if the player died the game would automatically remove any group the player had, meaning you need to re-add a ADD_GROUP_TO_CHARACTER again. Since you can't add a character to another character who doesn't have a group (note: a single character is NOT in a group of zero (0) in game terms until you use that command!) it would crash when you went back to the phone after you died.

As for the shooting problem, our initial idea is to try using ADD_CHAR_TO_GANG for the spawned characters AND the players, although will have the results next time Ben and I test the script. The code itself is ideal for death-match but not team/co-op for now. I'm hoping this will fix the issue otherwise it may have to be dropped.



Some really good areas coming along for the prison, nice variety of rooms/places so far! I'm sure many changes to come to make it flow properly



Some of the ideas we discussed included:

• Initially the cells have nothing in them at the start of the game.
• Once you do certain "objectives" items will appear in your cell. Example would be to raid the armoury and/or kill a armoury guard to steal his key allowing future access. This will mostly be small items like pistol, armour, health or other things.
• Prison canteen will (after some objective I imagine) spawn some molotov's in limited quantity and/or slow respawn timer. All kinds of things like oil, chemicals and stuff are found in kitchens so make perfect molotov's!
• Once you escape the prison, there will be a diner in some place that will have more weapons, and give a bigger quanity of molotov's for example (and possibly a flamethrower!). This diner might include things like a petrol station, garage (with car repair), parked cars, tow trucks, spilled oil, barrels etc.
• Reliance on NOT using heavy weapons all the time (things like rocket launchers etc will more than likely be available but you need to do stuff to get them and in limited quantity!). For example, if you clear out an army barracks/armoury/outpost then rocket launcher will be available - but won't be easy!
• Considered having a limited number of generated items from a powerup for things like rocket launchers. This means you can't just keep going back for the rocket launcher to instantly pick up 99 rounds each time forever until the map is complete. Depending on how it turns out, we could limit not only how much ammo it gives you and the time to respawn, but also how many times the actual powerup respawns! To be nasty we could limit, for example, the rocket launcher to only respawn 50 times while only giving 5-8 ammo each every 15-30 seconds. After the 50 respawns are up, it will never respawn again!

That is just a sample of what we discussed and what is possible and what may/may not appear in game. There will be many, many changes as things play out over time. For now, adding the code slowly is the safest option and saves having to code stuff right at the end and/or make fixes to the code and map.

Would love to hear other people's ideas for this

(As a note, I've been watching things like Terminator 2, Shawshank Redemption, Blues Brothers and things like that for ideas for prisons, escape, car chases and the like!)

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• Old School GTA2 Mapper and Scripter.
• Creator of the original GTA2 Scripting tutorials hosted by Ben Millard.