Operation: Pathogenisis

Overview:
This will be a short, six-seven map campaign, set in the near future.
The campaign will be about a team of marines, trying to capture a biological weapon that was stolen from the government.
What I want to make is a campaign, starting with your team infiltrating an office block or something, where they find the location of the secret laboratory which is being used to manufacture a virus based on the stolen bioweapon.
They go there, and infiltrate the laboratory. When they get to the end of that mission, there'll be a cutscene, and the virus will get released by a mad scientist guy, who escapes with some more tubes of the virus. Then, the next level will have them fighting their way OUT of the same laboratory, which will now be infested with... Errrr... ZMOBIES! Yes, that's right. Not zombies at all!
Anyway, after fighting their way out, they will have a mission where they have to hold the exit to the base, and keep any zmobies from escaping until an airstrike is used to seal off the exits.
The next mission will see them searching a big, semi-military complex, where they hope to find more information on the virus, and where the scientist might have taken it. They'll fight their way to the databanks, steal the files, then escape again, no problem.
The penultimate mission will have them assaulting another secret lab, where the mad scientist is hiding out. About halfway through the mission, the mad scientist will realise that they're going to win, and release the virus into the airducts, infesting the building. Lots of zmobies appear, and they must fight their way through to the center, to kill the mad scientist.
When they get there, there is a final, massive battle against the huge monster thingy that the scientist turned into. As it dies, it sets off the selfdestruct mechanism, and the final mission has them escaping from the base within a five minute timer.
Then, perhaps, an ending cutscene which shows a lone zmobie sneaking off into the night, or a tube of the virus half buried in the ground...

Gameplay:
I'm planning on using a slightly unusual gameplay structure for this: You have four Marines, each with a speciality: Demolitions, Sniper, Medic, Hacker.
They're units, not heroes, and they'll each have a range of abilities. What will be especially unusual is that to attack, you must target a spot on the ground for the marine to shoot. They WILL auto attack (since it's hard to aim for all four at once), but since the attacks will be avoidable, when they auto attack it will mostly be covering fire, and will miss a lot of the time. There will, of course, be limited ammo.

I'm planning on doing most of the work myself, however there may be model requests, and I'd like people to keep badgering me to finish it. :-P
Fortunately, I'll be able to use the sane terrain for several levels...
So, opinions? Suggestions? Anything?




EDIT:
Well, I've made a testing level, got the attack system working, got some basic "OMFG I'M DYING RUNAWAY" AI up for the enemy guards (Zombies won't run.), "borrowed" a tileset from Gadden, though I'll ask him before I actually use that in the final thing, and made some quite cool looking computers out of doodads.

Ah-HA! So they are zombies after all! What a cliche... and it seemed so promising when they were still zmobies...

Thats unusual? I see that type of thing in every Zombie game.

I'd recommend having alot of variety on the weapons like shotguns, flame throwers, grande launchers, machine guns etc.

Are you going to use a sort of puzzle-game like element with the 4 heroes, (Sorta like what Blizzard did in lost vikings - each hero was needed to perform certain actions to complete tasks) or is it purely combat stuff?

There will be certain puzzle elements; for example, if you come across a locked door, you can either get your hacker to open it, or if he's dead, you can find a keycard, and there will probably be other things as and when I think of them. Rest assured, it won't be purely shooting things.

Fulla:

THAT's fairly normal, what's unusual is the bit below it, about the aiming system. Which, incidentally, works ten times better than I had hoped.
As for variety in weapons... Each hero will have a standard attack with their rifle. There MAY however, be additional weapons, but these will be items, kind of like the shotgun in Night Of The Dead II.

The combat side seems a little fiddley to ahve to attack-ground system in. So I think that you should implement more puzzles with fights along the way.

Actually you'd be surprised. It's not as hard as you'd imagine.
For a start, it isn't attack ground based; your marine will only fire a short burst at the target area, and then stop, which makes it a little easier.
Secondly, the marines that you aren't directly firing for can be set to spray wildly at any enemies that come too close, so you do get the benefits of having them all firing. (Though when you use covering fire, they are very inaccurate; not a good thing with limited ammo.)

It's been more than 48 hours, and the thread is less than one week old, so...
BUMP!
I've now finished most of the basic stuff; items, attack and ammo systems, player marines, and I've done most of the stuff for the enemy AI...
Not only do they run for help when injured, they'll also run away from grenades, and run in a random direction when you blind them with a flashbang. It's nothing special, but it adds a little more flavour...

Must... resist...
Don't... flame...
Resist... stupid... project... interesting... only... for... its... creator...

For starters, playability of your map will go miles, if you simply give all your marines an attack ground ability, and allow them to use their normal attacks as well. Then all you need to do is trigger the linear bullet flight with all the collisions, and you're set.

Having the system that you described now will only serve to confuse your players. Trust me on that :/

Resident Evil was such a great game, because its creators thought about players and gameplay first, and neat features second.

TBH, if they're that easily confused, I really couldn't care less what they think. :-P (Yeah, I know that's kind of a bad attitude, but... Meh.)
As for your suggestion, triggering a linear bullet flight, the only way I can imagine to do that (without using stupid carrion-swarm infini-penetrator shots), would be to do it by making each bullet a unit, which seems... Nasty.
Plus it still doesn't have that level of challenge that aiming on two axis' does.

Each locust in Crypt Lord's ultimate is a unit... So why not?
That, and you still retain an ability for 2-axis aiming with attack ground.

Its your right as the creator to not care about users of your creation. But then be prepared to seeing your creation ignored and forgotten.

Having looked at the problem, I suspect that implementing proper projectiles to my satisfaction would be impossible.
You can't simply order the bullets to move to the targetted point, as they would then be subject to the usual move speed maximum.
If you tried to move them by triggers, there is no way that I can see of storing the point to which they should be moving, since there may often be many bullets flying at once.

Additionally, I don't see what's so confusing about my current system:
You use the attack ability on the point you want to shoot at. If there's an enemy there, they take damage, if there isn't, no-one is hurt. After you've used the ability, your character does nothing until you issue them another order.
Why is this so confusing?

EDIT:
Here's a stripped down training map, demonstrating how to use the attack system. I really can't see how anyone could be confused by this...