Hi !!
I was thinking of working on a first person shooter game with a nice storyline but first I wanted to get my core mechanics in place.
I know that the fps market is extremely crowded and they all somehow feel the same. So i thought of creating this thread where everyone could post their own idea for a better fps. This would help not only me but the countless others who want to make their own awsome fps
Though Iâm not going to start this project anytime soon⌠but I would still love to hear what stuff you have in mind
Military shooters are getting stale. If it has to be a realistic shooter, make it not a military one at least. Something where you play as someone whoâs not a marine, maybe an office worker or something. This also allows you to start out with high recoil and bad aim and during the game gradually improve it as the character learns how to use weapons.
Unrelated, but important. Make weapons feel loud and beefy. No pew pew airsoft feel, make them feel like youâre shooting a tool of murder, not a toy gun. Make the shots connect. When I shoot someone, I want to feel like they were impacted by the shot. The ragdolls need to be heavy. Many games have overly light ragdolls that just look funny. Unless thatâs your intention. Decals on geometry. Bullet holes, explosion marks, blood splatters. It all adds to immersion.
Make the player feel like heâs making a difference all the time, not just during a cutscene. This is especially important for story driven games. A story is a continuous flow of events, not a binary progression where 0 is shoot and 1 is a cutscene.
Scary, I was just writing a GDD for a game like that.
Anyway, Iâd like a game thatâs set in the future, so you can go wild creating the weapons and technology, like quantum guns, guns that kill before itâs shot, turret robots that look like cats!
Play System Shock 2, the Thief series, Amnesia, The Void, Zeno Clash and any other first person game that isnât a massive AAA game. They have many interesting mechanics and experimentations going on. Find inspiration in them. Donât limit your FPS game to FPS mechanics. Try doing things that are FPS but influenced from many genres. Find something that feels good and interesting, then iterate on it till itâs polished as fresh chrome. Do this 4 or 5 times for different mechanics. Then polish them together so they all feel synergistic. Make sure the the story, theme and characters inform gameplay. Make your product feel right on every level, and have every level enforcing other elements of your game.
Find inspiration in what you enjoy, figure out WHY you enjoy something in a game and then make something new with your new found understanding, Game design is a very introspective process, you need to understand WHY you enjoy or do not enjoy something, itâs only then that you will be able to make something truly awesome.
morning they are some very good ideas that I fully support⌠It also sparked some ideas for a future project I may work on⌠the title would be something like RSK(Realistic Shooter Kit). NOTE: This is all just the spur of the moment thinking It would be a framework where the rag doll physics would be greatly improved and enemies and the player would act like they got shot n flinch when the bullet impacted. Also bullet impacts would have a more realistic effect when hitting surfaces and the environment could be fully destructible like in the Frostbite Engine 2. Iâd probably never start this
I think a shooter with an average Joe picking up a weapon and having to do something about a problem would be nice like he was walking to a store with his child they are caught in the crossfire between two gangs and his daughter gets shot(She later dies on route to the hospital) he picks up a weapon n starts shooting and he gets shot(wounded) he almost died and when he wakes up in the hospital 3 weeks later and hear the news about his daughter he just loses it and vows revengeâŚ
There are a number of different roads you could take all of which could be good or bad depending on what you put into them. Iâll repeat the Unity forum mantra âImplementation > Ideaâ.
What Morning said about player feedback is generally good advice.
The biggest challenge to making a good design is avoiding oneâs own poor judgments. Ironically, to make a shooter unlike the usual you should look at examples of games past. Make a list of reviews, detailing good ideas and bad from those games. The best way to distance yourself from the same stale designs is to analyze exactly what is so stale about them, that should lead you to fresh ideas as you think of alternatives.
Thanks a lot Morning ! I think Iâll go your way and create a game on an average man who due to an extraordinary situation picks up the gun ⌠something along the line of KingCharizard (Thanks a Lot !! )⌠The concept is indeed quite interestingâŚ
Thanks stramit⌠Now I know how to go about some stuff that I didnât really have any idea of ⌠And Iâll surely look up those references (Hehehehe got some games for my vacation )
I was also wandering if sharing of certain specific game mechanics would be possible⌠For example I was thinking of removing the âshooting with the help of a crosshair while carrying the gun by the hipâ aspect of fps games because I want my game to be hard hitting and as close to the real thing as possible and not some arcade shooter. So for shooting the player would have to right click in order to draw out his weapon and go into âAim down sightâ mode as that would be the only way of shooting. And when the player has had his fill of killing people, pressing the right mouse button again would make the weapon quit the âAim down sightâ mode and move completely out of the screen giving the impression that the player is casually holding the gun.
Thanks a lot Morning ! I think Iâll go your way and create a game on an average man who due to an extraordinary situation picks up the gun ⌠something along the line of KingCharizard (Thanks a Lot !! )⌠The concept is indeed quite interestingâŚ
Thanks stramit⌠Now I know how to go about some stuff that I didnât really have any idea of ⌠And Iâll surely look up those references (Hehehehe got some games for my vacation )
I was also wandering if sharing of certain specific game mechanics would be possible⌠For example I was thinking of removing the âshooting with the help of a crosshair while carrying the gun by the hipâ aspect of fps games because I want my game to be hard hitting and as close to the real thing as possible and not some arcade shooter. So for shooting the player would have to right click in order to draw out his weapon and go into âAim down sightâ mode as that would be the only way of shooting. And when the player has had his fill of killing people, pressing the right mouse button again would make the weapon quit the âAim down sightâ mode and move completely out of the screen giving the impression that the player is casually holding the gun.
I personally wouldnât like this. Hip fire is useful for quick shooting. A lot of shootings in real life happen from hip or extended arm without using sights. You generally use sights for precise shooting which isnât really required in close quarters. Hip firing is realistic. When not aiming, it would be nice to see weapon if you look down if itâs a rifle.
The choices really depend on how much shooting there is and what other elements there are. If itâs a detective game(just an example), you might not be using your gun a whole lot so you can holster it. But if it has a lot of shooting, it would quickly get annoying to click every time to pull out your gun.
If you do go with hip fire, do not make it so hip firing makes your bullets spray 180 degrees like it does in some games where they âencourageâ usage of iron sights.
You donât need to look into the sights to hold your weapon steady. Simply do not add onscreen crosshair. Some more realistic games like arma for example even have free aim where your gun can move on the screen and you donât always shoot from the center.
How about: having to control your foot syncing by looking down when you walk up/down stairs for example. Because normally people that run backwards in staircases while banging away at enemies trip over with 100% guarantee and get killed within a second.
One doesnât need to look down all the time, the way it works in our brain is, we look once or twice and remember the step distances and heights, and then we can adapt the stride without looking.
This may be the case, but this is bordering on realism and not gameplay. It wouldnât be fun, donât add features that arnât fun. Unless your niche is realism enthuasists(But there is still a point where this isnât the case because those people are still looking for realism, but not in the form you describe)
This would be like having people press A D for their left and right foot, with how long you hold it is how long itâs lifted and goes forward. Itâll become tiring fast.
Sooo many FPS games out there, Combat arms, Face of Mankind, etc F2P.
Iâd love to see a full loot FPS game. That would be different. I liked Smoking Guns, a western shooter, wish it had more in the way of shopkeepers and stuff. Basically every FPS I wish had more in form of story/NPCs rather than just run around blasting. They do tend to have a simple to use, hard to master approach with various weapon types and each with a trade-off, or a combination of uses (aoe, non aoe)
Not sure what you could add that isnât already done a million times before(other than full loot :0 ). Combat Arms seems simpler than battlefield 1942 (only BF I played) but has a couple different game modes. (One is called fireteam where you have to just blast waves of thousands of npc monsters to control an area through 20 waves that get harder and harder) really simple to make (single location) but kinda fun.
I think a FPS version of a League of Legends type game would be epic. Shooting anything in 3d (especially a bow and arrow) is fun. Having some RTS elements would be great.
If you think about it, the list of good fps games isnât this long: Half Life (1998), System Shock 2, No one lifes forever, Red Faction, No one lifes forever 2, Tron V2.0, Doom 3 / Half Life 2 / Far Cry (all 2004), Bioshock and Rage (2011). If you allow third person perspective, you could add the Dead Space and Resident Evil franchise, maybe Mass Effect, oh, and for sure Max Payne 2.
I donât play a lot but there are more than that and those are all AAA, who here has published a AAA title and link to it pls. CoD, how many unreal based FPSâs are there?
The only one I ever played for a period of time was an MMORPG called âDarkfall Onlineâ which was full loot FPS. Equipping a melee weapon switched to 3rd person, but shooting spells, bows, or ship cannons was all FPS. It was probably the best FPS game ever, but the company was indie and couldnât move fast enough to cope with hackers/tweak grind mechanics that killed it.
edit:: I still think a FPS LoL is where itâs at, youâd draw the fantasy crowd and FPS crowd. With little side paths people could optionally take to kill stuff to get items/level up for that game session. Simple yet well rounded.
I donât know good fps titles which arenât AAA, unless games like for instance Legend of Grimrock count as well or Dear Esther or you rely to certain mods run by AAA engines.
Well I think Legend of Grimrock is a far more attainable goal for more people. If youâre going to make the next Halo, Mass Effect, etc, Iâd think long and hard about what it would take to make just a clone(with art, audio, etc), what youâd do differently, and realistically how would you do it given your resources.
The darkfall game wasnât famous or anything because it was an indie game and they didnât have the million bucks to market it, it was started by a couple guys who moved to Greece to save on labor and started a team of 35 devs.
This is a vid of a siege, the map was so large it took over 4 hours to run across. Across the map were âholdingsâ villages, towns, cities, some with mines and lucrative resources that could be harvested, or located near good dungeons for pve farming. Holdings could be sieged, where 1 group can fight the group currently occupying it for possession.
Not the typical FPS, but even melee had to be aimed and there were power attacks, whirlwind attacks, etc strategic moves. Hitting people in the back did 2x more damage than in the front. Naval combat was even better. Also you have to aim your heals at your friends without healing the enemy, which happens a lot. Itâs intense.
Thanks for the feedback Morning So I guess eliminating hip fire wonât do me much goodâŚhmmm⌠probably adding dynamic crosshair would do the trick. The crosshair would remain in sync with the movement of the gun, so when the player moves his gun so would the crosshair. Thus keeping the gun steady would become an important factor in the game.
I guess adding a dedicated key for drawing the weapon in and out could be a good option because I find the gun sticking to the screen at all times pretty annoying.
I was also thinking of adding a customisation menu for the guns. This would be different from the other games as the player would have the option of creating their own gun from scratch complete with body color and art.
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