UPDATE! Job is fucking awesome! See below!
Do you like guns? Cyber suits? Futuristic hyper-katana? Then you probably wish you played...
What is it?
Dystopia is an awesome, well programed, beautiful Sourcemod. It is set in a Gibson-esque sprawl where mercenary runners take on corporate security in objective based games. There's quite a few maps, an interesting class system, and the game is well maintained and has an active playing community.
Players can be heavy weapons platforms, loaded with big guns and missiles, light troops, hacking computers to help their team, or middle-strength troops, which can do some hacking or heavy weapons, or simply be grunts with rifles.
Hacking? Soliders? This sounds like Shadowrun! I love Shadowrun!
Hold your horses. While it sounds like Shadowrun, I called it "Gibsonesque" because there's no magic, or elves, or any of that stuff. Honestly, it's mostly like playing an episode of Ghost In The Shell. (Note: If you have any of the GiTS soundtracks, listen to them while playing. "Cyber Bird" on OST2 goes
really well with the game)
All maps, as far as I know, are objective based. I've not known the game to have deathmatch-only servers, but this is entirely possible. Also, the objectives are usually Unreal-style Assault; defenders must prevent actions from occurring at certain points, and once they do, the action cannot be undone, and the attackers move forward.
Everyone has class systems these days. I'm just gonna go play TF2.
That's fine. I love TF2 too. This has a gritter, different feel, though-- and the lines between the "classes" are a bit blurred.
You start with a choice of the three armor types I stated below, then can pick cyber-augmentations to fit your playstile. This is great, because you can be a medic/decker if you want, or a heavy with several vision modes for spotting cloaked buggers. Light classes can also take thermal or optical camo (but not both). I can't remember all the augs, I'm afraid, but there are some to modify your accuracy, speed, jumping ability, ability to heal self (or others) or detect enemies on radar. Some augs are passive bonuses, others are active and have appropriate cooldowns.
Finally, you can choose a weapon basted on your class. Lights and Mediums get neo-katana for melee, and Heavys get a sweet ass mecha-fist.
Each character has three status bars: health, armor, and energy. Health can be healed via certain augs (or medpacks), armor recharges on it's own, and energy powers your devices and charges when not in use.
Hacking? It's probably boring...
NO! This game does hacking in an amazing way. Classes can choose a cyberdeck as an augmentation, and can jack into cyberspace at certain terminals located throughout the levels. The jacked in player then controls their avatar in cyberspace--a completely different map altogether-- to open doors, hack and control turrets, complete objectives, and spy on their opponents. This is done by defeating firewalls, reaching and slicing into nodes, and rebuilding your own firewalls for protection. The console cowbows, however, require protection from the outside, too. If found, they can be killed quickly and their avatar with them. Also, if your avatar is defeated, you're dumped from the terminal and suffer a short stun (and occasionally health damage, depending on the attack). You can, of course, pull an emergency jack-out to avoid taking these penalties.
Furthermore, there's a full cyberspace combat system, to duel other's avatars to control the objectives.
I promise you, hacking is done right here. The cyberspace maps are gorgeous, and have a great feel to them. There's also a neat feature--players near their decker can watch their activities via the monitor on the terminal they are at.
Cool, where do I sign up?
This is the only issue. We used to have a PA server, and the Goons ran a nice public server, but those days are long gone. I'm not quite sure where to play nowadays. Back when I started, the community was a bit cliquey and not very tolerant of newbies. This may have changed, but I'm unaware.
My primary hope is to collect several people with interest to swamp a lower population server and get a feel for the game together. If any of you have been playing since 1.1, feel free to post servers for us to join you in, and I'll put them here.
Another thing we could do is find and uninhabited server to practice cyber-combat. Cyberspace has no clear gravitational pull and has a very different feel from most maps, so for those interested in hacking, some practice might be good to get up to par. Good hackers are essential to success, so don't ignore them.
The game also has a functional and helpful tutorial you should definitely do before playing online.
A list of players who you can friend and follow into games:
*NOTE*: I included links to the people's Steam pages so you can easily add them if you're having problems with some people. There's a link on each ID page to add to your friends list.
Forum Name
Steam Name
JerikTelorian
[Pa]Jerik
TheSuperWoot
MelancholyMark
cwapfobrains
Infocalypse
Zetx
Zetx
Lord Jezo
Lord Jezo
MiSTieOtaku
MiSTieOtaku
Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
Snowbeat
Snowbeat
Carcharodontosaurus
Carch
Dyvion
Dyvion
Woggle
Woggle
Mustachio Jones
Mustachio Jones
Carry The Zero
carrythezero
Peewi
Peewi
Job_41:25
Job4125
DarkMayo
darkmayo
Redlance
Redlance
Capuano
Capuano
Spire7
Spire
Firebug
UrbanWandererJob is awesome! We now have a server!!
Graciously, Job (who some of you may know from his
excellent TF2 Server) has offered to switch his CSS server to a Dystopia for the time being. This is really great for us, so that we don't have to deal with clanner rape all the time.
Server Info:
Helpful Hints and Tips
Quick and Dirty Cybering (:winky:) Guide for PA Dystopians (Courtesy of Zetx)
Disclaimer: This is from memory. (1. I'm writing from work. / 2. It's been a couple years)
Basics
REMEMBER -- If you have the mediplant in your loadout, you NEED to turn it off while decking. Otherwise, if a hurt teammember comes walking by, you will heal them and lose energy.
LESS ENERGY = LESS TIME
You can turn it off by pressing whatever key (by default, a Function key) it's been assigned to... (Of course there are exceptions, like quick decking jobs or ... whatever, but yeah, it's important)
Movement - Decking is a race against time. For one, your energy begins to drain when you enter cyberspace (CS) and second (usually if you're trying to take an objective), the longer you take in CS, the longer your team must defend you and/or the greater your chancees are of getting killed, wasting more time for your team, blah, blah blah.
A general suggestion is that if you want to deck you should go to an empty server/create your own with your map of choice and have a look around. This way you won't be bumbling about when it's game time.
Okay, on to actual advice. Jumping around generally helps you move faster. I usually just hold the spacebar once I'm in CS and push through to a node. Also, your secondary fire (the projectile) can be used as a "rocket jump" type thing (which I'm no good at) allowing you to get to higher areas and depending on how it's angled, will let you move faster also.
Obstacles - The things you will encounter are...
1. IceWall - an IceWall by itself poses no real harm. If you're in a hurry, use Wedge and slide on by
2. IceMine - Embeded into the IceWall, if you Wedge the Wall, the Mine will come flying for you (or any nearby player? I'm not sure... I've seen Mine's do crazy things...) If it hits you, you'll lose energy. If you use the IceBreaker, you'll take care of the Mine.
3. GreenIce - If you touch it, you'll get EMP'd and kicked out of the system. An IceBreaker should take care of it (IIRC...)
To add a bit to what Zetx stated:
You can Password/Encrypt nodes you are at. Passwording is faster, but easier to crack; and encryption is slower and harder.
Hacking - In v1 they added the hacking "mini-game" where you can press the buttons in order to complete a task faster. Obviously, the disadvantage is that you'll probably be too busy to fend off a surprise attack, so be alert! :P
*Jerik Note: Just to clarify--the minigame only appears with an Enhanced Cyberdeck.
If you note, once the program is running, you have a console at the top with buttons below. The console will print the button you need to press next up there. As Zetx said, the order is the same, so with skill, you can conquer it easily. Success makes it both faster and lower energy cost, but mistakes cost you extra energy.
The program's order never changes, but the locations of the buttons do.
Enemy Deckers - As all deckers have a trail of their team color behind them, which can be seen through most walls, it should be pretty easy to figure out when someone's coming. Your primary attack is a hitscan attack, so just get your reticle over him and click. The secondary is a projectile so it'll take awhile, but does more (energy) damage. Added in v1, the beam attack is a short (mid?) range draining beam ... which drains them.
'Course other options are hiding somewhere while your programs finish running then distracting them before they can put up/down the security and you finish your job (either ambushing them or trying to finish your objective)
Also (thanks cwapfobrains) when someone is cyberfrag'd they leave behind crystal shards which will replenish a decker's energy. When you are cyberfrag'd, you'll be kicked out of CS and the JIP will display the spray of your attacker, disabling the JIP temporarily, not to mention damaging your actual health slightly. You can die from that.
*Jerik Note: Zetx did mention in the thread: If you jack yourself out before you get dumped, you do not leave a crystal.
(Bonus: You can kill someone with legboosters. Stand ontop of them, charge it up, and release! :winky: (I don't think it's insta-kill))
Links:
Dystopia Wiki: Contains everything you want to know about anything. A great resource for reasing about the augmentations, also has information for binding keys to augmentations (For instance: you can bind a key to a Cortex Bomb "Detonate" Command, taking you out without lowering your health)
Newbie Thread On Dystopia Forums: Links to several charts and other important bits of data, especially regarding CPU draw in cyberspace. Very valuable asset.
[url="
http://dystopia-league.net/dys_alphabet.pdf]Dystopia Alphabet[/url]: An amusing and helpful guide for newbies with some tips and tricks (a few that may even help some people who have been playing awhile).
Warrior Nation Training Construct: What seems to be a pretty serious training page for Dystopia. Some clanners got together and make a bunch of tutorials, along with a tutorial server, that trains new players in gameplay.
I CAN HAS?
The game's website has links to all hosts for the game. It.s about a 550mb download for the core game, and a required 10mb download for the 1.1 patch.
http://www.dystopia-game.com
Posts
Would definitely be interested in playing if enough people are interested. My steam name is the TF2 one in my sig.
It's a Half-Life 2 mod, so you'll need HL2.
Actually any of these games will do.
PSN:Hakira__
I'll definitely play if we get people, i used to mostly play on a server run by the Wnx clan i think, although i have no idea if it is still around. Steam id is Infocalypse, feel free to add me
LoL Summoner: infobrains | XBL: cwap4brains | PSN: infobrains
I stopped a couple months after v1 came out. Some of the original dev team (at least Fuzzy and Teddy, IIRC) have left to do other things after v1, too...
Right, if you guys want to get together for a game night, I'm in.
[strike]Also I think you need the Source SDK to play. The FAQ on their page should clear it up.[/strike]
EDIT:Guess you just need the core stuff.
I added people to the list above, maybe we can get a game on tonight?
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
Funny that... I'd have to get on later, probably 8-9ish central. If someone would add me to Steam or perhaps create a group, it would be an easy way of tracking the rest of the dystopian-inclined PAers ;p (I'd do it, but I'm at work )
SuperWoot, I couldn't add you as a friend. It says it couldn't find you. Feel free to add me.
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
I sometimes play this if i ever get a hankering for a good shadowrun game. I don't recall my steamname 100% but I'm pretty sure it's Hibiki
I never asked for this!
You don't have to hack :P
Hmm, couldn't find you as a friend with the PA tag, but was able to find jerikt. I assume that is you.
edit: Guess we played some TF2 yesterday since I found you as [PA]Jerik in the recent players played with, and added that.
And that's why I played for the few months I did.
If you can't find me using the add friend thing you should be able to find me in your own players recently played with thing.
Hahah, I don't think I was ranked very well because I threw myself (as a Light) against the other team trying to get to JIPs and do objectives...
I made a group, and people are being invited to it. Everyone in it has the ability to invite.
Just for reference, the group is [PA]Dystopians.
Yeah, in fact teams usually only have 2-3 hackers. The other 10 players are all combat teams.
EDIT: Jake and Zetx, you've been friended and group'd. Mark is also in.
EDITEDIT: Also you, Viscount
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
I'd like an invite to the group here.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/lordjezo
I am downloading it now.
I KISS YOU!
Woops my steamid is beatthymeat my bad.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/beatthymeat
[strike]I added you and got another name- [sm!leY']. Is this correct? If not, link your SteamID page.[/strike]
Awesome! Added and invited.
Could I trouble one of you chaps to invite me to the Penn Arcade Steam Group, while you're on?
And I suppose it's time we found a server...
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
please add me to the new Dystopians group
LoL Summoner: infobrains | XBL: cwap4brains | PSN: infobrains
Done and done.
I'm going server hunting, see if I can find a nice place for us.
XBL: LiquidSnake2061
Oh there it is, I had to restart Steam
I KISS YOU!
|NK| NeoKobe 66 Tic
69.90.34.213:27015
Empty, twelve slots. Come join!
XBL: LiquidSnake2061