Ideas for FPS games

[MKSheppard]

Of course with more out of the ordinary behavior you have a harder time infiltrating, and would have to resort to lies like that. But rather than having a player have replay a mission over and over because they can't make it through sucks.

I actually did talk about a game like that on page two.

Basically, there's more than one way to infiltrate a secret base to steal the death star blue prints, and if you're detected, it's not instant fail. That's lame.

No, what happens is the mission becomes progressively harder. Loud noises like gunfire, etc will cause everyone on the base to go crazy, for example; you'll see floodlights flick on, guards pouring out of barracks, doubling of guards and shorter intervals between patrols; as well as limited lockdowns; e.g. several doors which previously anyone could open, are now electronically locked and you need at least a level x cardkey to open.

They won't forget about the gunfire in five minutes; instead the lockdown will last for some time; and if you continue to shoot your way through the base, they'll lock down everything and call in a quick reaction force from a nearby base.

You can still get the gun/information/secret whatever from the base, it's just a hell of a lot more difficult.

Dynamic campaigns are cool too, but they require a lot of work because you have to create not just one path, but at least three:

1.) High Stealth -- man, what the fuck happened to that gun? Where did it go? if you get in and out like a ghost
2.) Marginal Violence -- Someone broke in, killed a few guards, and got the gun.
3.) High violence -- Holy fucking shit, this guy massacred our entire base staff; we better double guards and call in all favors from now on to stop him.

The Hitman games might actually work better for this; because rather than being a series of missions closely linked in time and space, they're independent contracts separated by several months or whatnot, and can be simulated quite well by people getting suspicious of you and calling the police, if on your last mission, you were captured on camera as a giant bald guy with a barcode on the back of his head....and now you've shown up again....

[The Yosemite Bear]

remembering the Vampire RPGs and Gabrial Knight. Can we have a Suipernatural FPS where you play a Loup-Garou (Werewolf) or Vampire and have to deal with lots of supernatural hunters and be cleaver and sneaky (can't let those mortals find out your kind really exist or Sarah Palin will be out there with her Helocoptor and either silver bullets, or high powered stake launchers.

[Zixinus]

The Hitman games might actually work better for this; because rather than being a series of missions closely linked in time and space, they're independent contracts separated by several months or whatnot, and can be simulated quite well by people getting suspicious of you and calling the police, if on your last mission, you were captured on camera as a giant bald guy with a barcode on the back of his head....and now you've shown up again....

Possible nitpick, but didn't the Agency have cleaners to remove that kind of stuff?

Also, that's one aspect that I hated about Hitman. Not the suspicious thing, but the the fact that sometimes your contracts followed each other, with only a vague sattelite photo to work with.

In a real assassination, you have SOME time to plan, even go and visit the location. You gather information about your guards, where were they trained, what are they armed with, do they have radios, etc. You can move appropriately.

But no, not here. Here, you dropped smack-in the target's area and expected to find the train of logic that the developers had for an area.

[MKSheppard]

Possible nitpick, but didn't the Agency have cleaners to remove that kind of stuff?

It costs a lot more than a few dozen thousand dollars to clean up a bullet-fest.

Also, that's one aspect that I hated about Hitman. Not the suspicious thing, but the the fact that sometimes your contracts followed each other, with only a vague sattelite photo to work with.

In a real assassination, you have SOME time to plan, even go and visit the location. You gather information about your guards, where were they trained, what are they armed with, do they have radios, etc. You can move appropriately.

But no, not here. Here, you dropped smack-in the target's area and expected to find the train of logic that the developers had for an area.

We actually discussed that in the old Hitman thread regarding what needed to be done fot Hitman 5:

2.) Buy Access: You should be able to spend extra to buy the equipment you need for that mission; like you can contract the uniform company who supplies the uniforms for a cruise ship's crew, and buy yourself a pursurers' uniform, so you don't need to snap/syringe a guy to get one. Same for keycards, keys etc. I'm sure for $10,000 USD, you'll be able to get a copy of the keys to the loading dock.

Why make me tranq/kill an innocent and raise suspicions as to why Jimmy has been on lunch for 2 hours if I can just buy a mock couriers outfit and walk straight past the front security and into the express lifts.

And how about the ability to recon a target building beforehand?

Like, entering a map without any targets, just civvies, sitting at a restaurant table, watching, making notes, noting what kind of uniform the cooks wear, etc.

Alternatively, just give us some fucking photos and maps before I go in!

[Zixinus]

About the AI thing:

The thing about is, is that developers don't really want to make good AI.

To a developer, a good AI is an AI that can doesn't need YET ANOTHER layer of the map, so the enemies would know hot to go from point A to point B with the minimum possibility of getting themselves lost or bugging out of control. It would appear and chase the player in the fashion the developer wants it to.

To a player, a good AI is an AI that doesn't make stupid mistakes and realizes the situation around itself. Or essentially, more than just a set of hitboxes on a model that sometimes throws bullets at you.

A good AI, by a player's definition, is one that adopts and changes tactic.

For the developer, welcome to development hell. You now have an unpredictable system working with another unpredictable system and you are told to find every absurd situation so you can iron out the bugs.

Developers want to control the player's experiences trough controlling what happens in the game world. Making a adaptable AI makes that very difficult as it can create experiences that the developer doesn't want the player to have.

"Besides. " says the developer "most games are stupid kiddies who just want to win. They won't appreciate the difference nor a decent challenge."

See the problem here?

[Sarevok]

remembering the Vampire RPGs and Gabrial Knight. Can we have a Suipernatural FPS where you play a Loup-Garou (Werewolf) or Vampire and have to deal with lots of supernatural hunters and be cleaver and sneaky (can't let those mortals find out your kind really exist or Sarah Palin will be out there with her Helocoptor and either silver bullets, or high powered stake launchers.

Vampire the Masquerade : Bloodlines already did this with the exception you are one of the kindred instead. You have to blend in with humanity or suffer problems ranging from freaked out people to Vampire hunters.

[Jade Falcon]

I remember Project IGI tried to be ambitious but ultimately failed. You could fire through a door and kill a guard on the other side. However, the enemy AI wasn't so great considering there were two guards there and if you killed one, the other guy in the room ignored the fact that his mate had just been perforated.

[Big Orange]

The military/corporate compound you're trying to get into is not only defended by fifty guards, but also the place has an emergency line to the police department down the road, so the place could be surrounded and then secured by helicopters, SWAT units, and armoured vehicles if the guards at the compound raise the alarm. To avoid the hassel you could set up devices that jam ingoing and outgoing communications, then plant a bomb at the police station (more to cause a diversion than destruction), so you could get into the compound relatively unopposed.

[Singular Intellect]

I remember Project IGI tried to be ambitious but ultimately failed. You could fire through a door and kill a guard on the other side. However, the enemy AI wasn't so great considering there were two guards there and if you killed one, the other guy in the room ignored the fact that his mate had just been perforated.

Which is amazingly stupid. You need only to have a certain radius of detection for AI and the behavior of any fellow AI in that radius will affect it. IE: if a fellow AI drops dead, the AI immediately goes to full alert, even signalling other AI NPCs for help if it can.

[chitoryu12]

I wonder what the chances are that we'll get a new Terminator game with the new movie coming out?

It'll be a lame movie-tie-in game if there is one.

Like this?

[ArcturusMengsk]

I want to see World War I brought to life in a FPS game. There have been more Civil War first person shooters - in fact, there has never been a World War I FPS. It's high time that record was broken.

The most common rebuttal to such a suggestion is, "How do you make trench warfare exciting?" Well, trench warfare was only one aspect of the First World War, and then mostly in the west. There were many open and city battles in the Eastern Front that could be used for the setting. Certainly enough to throw in to spice up the game alongside various trench battles.

Of course it'd have to be different from games like Call of Duty; you couldn't just pick up a machine gun of that war and run-and-gun with it. It would be much more tactically oriented, and probably much darker thematically - imagine watching on as your squad goes over and up from the trenches only to get mowed down by the dozens in a cutscene. It would likely need to be rated 'M', and for good reason; I'd be sorely disappointed if it did not come off at least in part as a horror game, to convey the real senselessness of that particular war.

[Sarevok]

I want to see World War I brought to life in a FPS game. There have been more Civil War first person shooters - in fact, there has never been a World War I FPS. It's high time that record was broken.

The most common rebuttal to such a suggestion is, "How do you make trench warfare exciting?" Well, trench warfare was only one aspect of the First World War, and then mostly in the west. There were many open and city battles in the Eastern Front that could be used for the setting. Certainly enough to throw in to spice up the game alongside various trench battles.

Of course it'd have to be different from games like Call of Duty; you couldn't just pick up a machine gun of that war and run-and-gun with it. It would be much more tactically oriented, and probably much darker thematically - imagine watching on as your squad goes over and up from the trenches only to get mowed down by the dozens in a cutscene. It would likely need to be rated 'M', and for good reason; I'd be sorely disappointed if it did not come off at least in part as a horror game, to convey the real senselessness of that particular war.

I hope this does not sound rude hut your proposal sounds like a theme park ride design.

You have to concentrate on gameplay elements first. The setting itself means zip zilch nada nothing. You have to think like how do you create balanced weapons and units for a WW 1 setting. Since an individual soldier is virtually cannonfodder do you make the player more of a front based commander unit controlling many sub units in FPS view ? Or do you make the player controlled unit switch a random friendly in vicinity each time he perishes ? Both could be ideal in creating a FPS with a player character that does not have special perks and hitpoints over any other unit in the game. I am no game designer but these are factors that you should consider instead thinking of games as a different kind of CGI movies.

[ArcturusMengsk]

You have to concentrate on gameplay elements first. The setting itself means zip zilch nada nothing.

I know absolutely nothing about video game design, which is why I didn't comment on it.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Not to mention WWI had the war of the tunnels, where you could dig, lay explosives, counter dig, ect....

[Laughing Mechanicus]

I want to see World War I brought to life in a FPS game. There have been more Civil War first person shooters - in fact, there has never been a World War I FPS. It's high time that record was broken.

The most common rebuttal to such a suggestion is, "How do you make trench warfare exciting?" Well, trench warfare was only one aspect of the First World War, and then mostly in the west. There were many open and city battles in the Eastern Front that could be used for the setting. Certainly enough to throw in to spice up the game alongside various trench battles.

Of course it'd have to be different from games like Call of Duty; you couldn't just pick up a machine gun of that war and run-and-gun with it. It would be much more tactically oriented, and probably much darker thematically - imagine watching on as your squad goes over and up from the trenches only to get mowed down by the dozens in a cutscene. It would likely need to be rated 'M', and for good reason; I'd be sorely disappointed if it did not come off at least in part as a horror game, to convey the real senselessness of that particular war.

I've often wondered at the possibilities of a First World War based FPS. I don't think you need to abandon the Western front to get something interesting going.

- The obvious "Over the top" style attack, made even more tense if you are in the second wave of an attack and get to watch the first wave cut down 20 yards from your trench.

- Infiltration missions would have you crawling through no-mans land, cutting your way through barbed wire and marking out mines while freezing every time you see a flare go up.

- Trench raiding, with fleshed out melee combat with some of the very brutal weapons used at that time - bayonets, knives, clubs, trenchbrooms, grenades etc...

- Tanks! Either using them as mobile cover during an attack, or having to stop a rampaging ones using improvised weapons against it. Ofcourse, you could also be put on the crew of a tank as a gunner.

- Using some of the heavier weapons of the time could be interesting - laying down mortar fire on enemy trenches, using flametrowers on dugouts, using heavy machine guns to defend against massed attacks, defending against aircraft with pom-pom guns etc...

- Sniping and counter-sniping, using periscopes and the "helmet-on-a-stick" trick to get an enemy sniper to reveal his posiiton.

- Gas attacks could be implemented - the player would need to quickly don his gas mask in the event of one, which would then apply a suitably restritive claustrophobic effect to his vision.

- Sapping into enemy trenches.

Kuju was actually developing an Unreal 3 engined First World War FPS called "To End All Wars" but it has totally dropped off the radar (it is supposed to be released in 2008).

And really, the complaint that the players character is too survivable can be levelled at every "historical" FPS ever made.

[Sarevok]

The biggest problem with WW 1 imo would be the sheer numbers involved. You can't do armies of thousands without going the Total War route. Which results in unacceptably sucky graphics and AI for a FPS game. Yes you can do small scale confrontations but that misses the most iconic element of WW 1 : epic scale trench warfare. Without it a WW 1 game would just feel like a typical WW 2 game but with less automatic weapons.

[Zablorg]

Here is a good example of AI being suicidal.

I hear Valve knows how to make FPS games, *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

That's just sad, really. First couple of guys I can understand, but the other 40?

Yeah, that's really wierd.

How many games have actually incorperated a noticable anti-dodo factor? Just about every fps game I've played does this to one degree or another.

[Zixinus]

There is already a game that places itself in WW1: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/ne ... lt;title;0

Granted, its a fantasy game, but for an FPS that might work better off, considering the weapons of the time.

I posted this in the Fallout 3 topic but I think it might be appropriate here as well.

Personally, I came up with the personal theory that the more simple the RPG, the better. For example, I think that about 80% of the RPG system could be replaced by a much simpler and possibly more interesting "skill" system that should be more story-driven. Leveling would be non-existent. You increase health by wearing armour and your health is depended on body-damage rather than an arbitrary health metre, which has more health according to the armour you're wearing (like, a vest will give you more health to your torso but it won't do anything for your head). The only way to increase health without external accessories, is by augmentation (which would require an actual doctor and associated kit).

You get perks for completing various quests or part of the storyline. Like getting Black Widow/Ladykiller perk during your childhood or in some quests where a character from the opposite sex betrays you and the game gives you the option of either humiliation/loss of resources/etc or channel your (character's) rage into sexism, helped by finding a guy/gal that is also sexist. It may sound silly, but it makes a bit more sense than levelling up and suddenly deciding that you are a sexist.

Or another example, completing the Wasteland Survival Guide should give you radiation resistance as well as the additional bonuses of learning new weaknesses of creatures (by giving us more body parts to attack rather than an arbitrary +21,3432% increase in damage) among a variety of other things. Like, completing the quest about the mirelurks gives you more useful drops from them or the Roboco quest gives you the Robot Expert perk. Ultimately, the quest would grant you endurance.

Skills would be increased by reading magazines, learning from instructors and doing associated missions. Doing a firing range nets you a 1+ to the gun skill (out, of say, 20, where 10 equals well-trained/practised and 20 equals "magician", like "gun-magician"). Of course, you can only use raise your gun skill so much with easy-to-find stuff , as learning from magazines will obviously won't turn you from "can't hit the wide side of the barn" to "can hunt flies". So if the player wants to become better, he has to work hard for it.

Stuff, like charisma is increased by two things: what you are wearing and how well can you express yourself. Obviously about the latter, a character focusing on this from the start will have less trouble. But the former means much, because I think people are a little less friendly when they see a guy in power-armour walk into town. Of course, karma and reputation perks will also effect various characters. Killing slavers to free slaves will give you good karma, but previously indifferent slavers will shoot you on sight.

Of course this would require some shiton of script programming, but it would still be more interesting than "level up! assign your point to increase your skills which you never used based of arbitrarly-earned experience points".

I think this game would suit Fallout 3 far better than your traditional "level up" system. After all, the best thing about Fallout 3 is exploration. This would reward exploration even further.

I don't think that attaching a regular RPG system unto an FPS truly makes a different game. You are still playing a RPG, just with a overly big representation.

With this kind of system, exploration would not only become the focus of the game but would make the game more immerse and interesting, while actually making a new yet same gameplay experience. Technologically, it would only require heavy use of scripting, which may be troublesome but certainly nothing truly new that needs to be developed from the ground up. It's just an existing technology used in a more novel way.

[Lagmonster]

One level that was particularly exciting to play, in theory, was the New Orleans Mardi Gras level in Hitman: Blood Money. The idea of being an assassin literally in view of thousands was an exciting concept. Unfortunately, the teeming throngs amounted to little more than paper cutouts, but it was a remarkable step in the right direction and I give the directors credit for leaping the technological hurdle they did to at least give the illusion of a crowd.

One thing I will add to this is about the ongoing cries for greater realism; realism has, up until now, been layered over gameplay like an illusion - it's not really open-ended, it's just a bigger box. It's not really a city, it's just a corridor with wallpaper that looks like windows and doors and fences. It's not really a global conflict, it's four guys in a room.

The thing is, insane depth requires either insane technology, or a brilliant new illusion. The Truman show is a brilliant analog to video games; as long as you stick to your path, you'll never notice the illusion. If you start trying to test your limits, you'll eventually hit the "edge of the dome" and realize that the sky is just another wall.

But here's the thing; in games like Crysis, the illusion is that you're in a big, lush world and not a box. When you hand players that kind of expectation for suspension of disbelief, they will ACT like it's true, pushing outwards until they hit the wall. But in games like the original Serious Sam - a game which is for me the most fun co-op shooter game in the history of mankind - the illusion isn't sold to the players in the first place. Sure, it looks like you're in a giant Saharan wasteland, but you don't have time to pay attention to that because the focus is on the thousands of screaming monsters bearing down on you and your vast resevoir of bullets screaming back. You don't get to spend five lonely minutes creeping through a jungle in the dark wondering why your amazing suit won't let you scale rough rock walls or climb trees, because you have bullets to shoot.

In short, and maybe this is a defence of gimmicks in gameplay to some extent, when you create a game, the trick seems to be in deciding which illusion you're trying to convince players of - the one you can actually do (fun gameplay) or the one we just aren't completely technologically ready for (non-scripted, open-ended, non-linear worlds with realistic and competent AI).

[Singular Intellect]

In short, and maybe this is a defence of gimmicks in gameplay to some extent, when you create a game, the trick seems to be in deciding which illusion you're trying to convince players of - the one you can actually do (fun gameplay) or the one we just aren't completely technologically ready for (non-scripted, open-ended, non-linear worlds with realistic and competent AI).

Far Cry 2 has begun to push into the "open ended" world concept and did a pretty decent job of it. (although as I mentioned in the FC2 thread, I managed to break their system and forced a load, demostrating the weakness of their system)

We are quickly approaching the point of movie level realistic graphics; after that there's no further 'up' to go, and game programmers will redirect their efforts towards larger world models to play in and simulations of wacky effects.

I can easily see this process leading to programmers not designing the worlds themselves, but literally having to depend upon computers to generate said worlds for them, and just injecting their story ideas into the world.

After all, games like Crysis have even multiplayer maps big enough to make plausibly sized nuclear weapons going off.

Once hardware systems can access harddrive level storage space with RAM level speeds, we'll be golden. And as far as I know, we're getting close to that as well.

[Big Orange]

How good is Far Cry 2's map making mode? I have ideas of making a hospital in a urban warzone and a military controlled border crossing in the savanna, could FC2's level editor make locations like that?

[chitoryu12]

How good is Far Cry 2's map making mode? I have ideas of making a hospital in a urban warzone and a military controlled border crossing in the savanna, could FC2's level editor make locations like that?

A hospital might take some doing, but a border crossing is extraordinarily easy. I've downloaded a few maps, and I currently have recreations of the Battle of Hoth, complete with walkers and an exploding shield generator, the Sarlaac Pit, including the sail barge and sand skiffs, a village under ten feet of water with airboats to get around, a recreation of the landscape from Peter Jackson's King Kong, a small version of a destroyed Times Square, the Eiffel Tower, including part of the Champs de Mars, and a picture-perfect representation of the atoll from Waterworld, including the Smoker's oil tanker, the tower, and the Mariner's catamaran.

So, if you've got ingeneuity, just about anything can be made. It helps that the map editor, even on the 360, is worlds more advanced than the one from the first game, so you can also precisely place objects and rotate them to face any direction.

P.S. You also seem to be in the wrong thread.