Payload gamemode

Ayo! I am Zanieon and I have a funny and interesting story to tell about a custom gamemode for Northstar.

How everything started

“Payload? What’s that Zanieon?”.

So for those you actually never played the other TF2 (Team Fortress 2) or Overwatch for the matter, both games have this gamemode of same name in which one team prevents the other team from pushing a vehicle to its final destination.

This mode has been proven very interesting in both of those games due to the way its main objective works and how it creates a specific dynamism in gameplay. However, Titanfall never had said gamemode, no cut content or anything of the kind, zero clues in regards to that.

There have been previous attempts to make this mode in Titanfall. Another contributor, named cat_or_not, tried to make it around 2022 but back at that year, the navmeshes of the maps in Northstar were very broken and many times, the NPCs would fail to path properly. Ever since I joined (in February 2023), my main focus was entirely on the Frontier Defense gamemode, because my real motivation to join as a contributor was to make Frontier Defense work properly on Northstar, which back then wasn’t also working as intended due the same reason of navmeshes and other issues.

Payload coming to reality

So, due to me dedicating an entire year of my life into making Frontier Defense work, fixing up all problems with it and gaining experience in coding content for the game, I finally came into realization that I could probably attempt myself at doing such Payload gamemode because I’ve always had interest in playing said mode, despite never playing Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch in my life.

Case in point, at a random day, I consulted cat_or_not to see how far he went with his own version of the mode before starting anything on my own — if there was anything I could start from — but the code wasn’t touched ever since he lost motivation to work on it due to broken navmeshes. It was extremely bare-bones so starting from that code or building an entire new one from scratch would take equally long.

Speedrunning the code

A couple days after I did this consult, I decided to start writing the gamemode entirely from zero pratically. I had a very clear vision of what this gamemode should be and how it could be played with its own spice of Titanfall 2 on it; so I began writing the scripts, and here comes the funny part:

I was so hyped to see this thing working that I wrote the entire server and client logic within only 2 days non-stop!

Yes! Non-stop, meaning I also haven’t slept between both days while I did that, only taking the normal breaks any person would do (toilet, eat and drink).

That was actually only possible due to the entire work I did on Frontier Defense, as a lot of functions and code was adapted from there, alongside some logic from Amped Hardpoint gamemode too, with everything working on the basic level the way I conceptualized this mode with the touch of Titanfall 2 over it; it even attracted the attention of the Competitive players whose only gamemode to play is Capture The Flag.

Pretty much on the week that followed that happening, I did some rebalances and touches here and there and bam, there’s this fully brand new gamemode that never existed into the game actually fully functional now with the way it could play in Titanfall 2’s gameplay terms. This was probably my quickest speedrun of coding anything for Northstar project given the 2 day timespan, one does not simply drop a whole brand new gamemode that easily, but well, it was fun doing that.

The gamemode

The objective for the attacking team is to lead a Nuclear titan to the Harvester of the opposing team, to hopefully destroy it; the defending team must prevent this happening to secure the win! Like Team Fortress and Overwatch, the more attacking players around the Titan, the faster it is.

Now for the Titanfall touch:

• defending team can steal batteries from the Titan to reinforce their harvester’s shield (meaning it won’t necessarily be destroyed if the Titan reaches it and triggers its nuclear explosion!);
• attackers can use batteries on the Titan to shield it; while it is shielded, the Titan moves automatically, even without players being around;
• both Titan and harvester shields can be damaged with conventional weapons.

Media

The Titan payload automatically moves towards the enemy harvester... as long as there are allied pilots around it.

Defending team can steal batteries from the Titan to shield their harvester (and hopefully make it survive any nuclear explosion).

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Payload is playable now, you can install it using your favorite mod manager or download it from Thunderstore.

That’s it folks! It was fun writing this piece of story!