Alaska is a survival based game I am working on at the moment. I am not an experienced Unity developer, and as posted in the Collaboration thread I am looking to form a team to continue this. The current design is for a first-person, immersive HUD-less proof-of-concept environment set in the mountains of Alaska. The player will be able to gather resources, craft items and clothing, light fires and traverse the snowy peaks with the aid of his equipment. The game will focus on inventory and stamina management, with more action and danger accompanying the mountain climbs.
I have currently designed a small environment, a cold system and various other mechanics. I aim to have a realistic cold system, with the players wetness, altitude, clothing and time of day affecting your temperature. Cold can slow you down or even kill you. Walking in snow will be more difficult although equipment can negate this, as the player reaches higher places they are rewarded with equipment including flares, a hunting rifle etc.
Yes I’ve been working on the map myself using World Machine and free textures. I am still working on realistic weather, day night cycles and so forth though.
I noticed that this forum category allows for discussion of projects so I’d like to hear some input if possible.
I know by a glance at the forums that there are 20-30 “survival” projects on the go at any moment; I feel mine is individually worthy of attention as it doesn’t involve cliches like tropical islands, zombies etc. but it runs the risk of having bland gameplay as a result.
Here’s some of the things I have in mind right now:
Cold - cold is influenced by altitude, clothing, wetness, although the player will become cold over time anyway. Fires replenish cold, dry clothes out which are wet.
Hunger - replenished by harvesting meat from corpses or from certain plants. I would like a fishing mechanic if possible but without refractive water this lies outside of my remit at the moment. It should be possible to program a deer which can be shot for example.
Thirst - besides targeting the water and pressing “E” to drink, inventory items like bottles (bladders) can be used to store water (increase the maxWater element of the player).
Crafting - hopefully the player can interact with trees to harvest sticks, I would then like them to be able to craft. Is it possible to program a system where the player can sharpen sticks with a knife (in a minigame fashion)? And for lighting fires? What about building shelters?
Weather - snow slows down the player (this is easy to program). What about rain? How to make shelters necessary part of gameplay?
Climbing – it’s easy to implement shoes that affect how you move in the snow. What about climbing with ropes and axes Call of Duty: Black Ops style?
I have more ideas that are programmable at the moment so I have plenty to get on with. However I am not a games designer. I am looking for some input in this project to make the mechanics have a underlying fun gameplay, challenging and yet realistic and immersive. I will add screenshots of what I’ve got working so far later, for example I have a wet timer which when you exit the water, counts down and you still count as wet (and cold increases rapidly when wet).
I am hoping though that Unity forum-goers can give me some direction to continue in.
Everything you mentioned sounds pretty fun. I actually don’t think its a unique idea at all, but so what? I like games that are fun not unique. I worked on a similar project and so here are my 2 cents what I learned:
-Have realistic expectations.
-Keep it simple where possible. You can still (somehow?) make it fun elegant without fancy bits. Or you can approximate things without getting too fancy.
-Most of what you mentioned is easy enough to program, just don’t get carried away with the graphical side because artists get expensive plus big fancy scenes can be slow.
-Get what art assets you can from the asset store and use that. (Personally I wouldn’t buy any script but art is ok)
-Don’t even bother with multiplayer.
-Create a game design document that says what the game will do, that shows where to draw the line that its completed. (no feature creep)
-My advice would be to improve the map first, that would set the mood nicely and get more people interested.
I’ve been playing around with ISO perspective. It gives me the idea to recreate the game Schiffbruch if anyone played that? It would involve ditching first person and making a player that you can click and issue orders to.