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Plan for Gary Haussmann
Plan for Gary Haussmann
| Name: | Gary Haussmann |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Sep 26, 2005 | |
| Rating: |  4.0 out of 5 | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Gary Haussmann |
Blog post
Finishing up the FPS side: inventory, item combining, and quad-wield.
For those who just tuned in, I am pretty much meandering around the torque engine to see how far I can get implementing a FPS/RTS where the two genres are represented by opposing sides, the "humans" (FPS) and the "aliens" (RTS). The HL mod Natural Selection is an analogous game, although the building of structures is conspicuously absent from my game.
It's been a while since I posted my last plan, mainly because I had to go back and redo a lot of scripts doing the basic mechanics, like mounting weapons, spawning/respawning, and the overall inventory system. But the basic mechanics for the FPS team (humans) are complete at this point. Hopefully I can get enough bits working on the RTS side (aliens) to make for an interesting demo at IGC.
To start with, the human player chooses their overall class and also chooses from a set of abilities/enhancements to their avatar. The abilities function similar to "advantages" or "perks" available in many RPGs, and provide a bit of customization to your player.
Once the player spawns, they also get another customization opportunity, by modifying weapons. Scattered around the map are various resources which represent technological parts useful for modifying your weapons. The player can pick these up and they are stashed in the inventory. Here we see the player has picked up some "steel" and "fire" resources, represented by the spheres with colorful icons on them. You can see a bunch of other resources scattered on the ground, currently represented by my colorful programmer-art lozenges.
Using these resources the player can modify his/her weapons; by combining a standard weapon with a specific type of resource, the player can produce a new type of weapon. Here we see the player has combined the Blunderbuss Pistol with the Fire Resource, producing a Flamethrower weapon (the orange pistol-like thing). Any player can produce enhanced weapons, and one class (the Mad Scientist) will be able to create all sorts of wacky equipment on-the-fly.
Finally, here is a gratuitous shot of my steam-powered robot automaton wielding four weapons at once. The robot is pretty much a walking arsenal but is really slow, which makes him a prime target for artillery...
It's been a while since I posted my last plan, mainly because I had to go back and redo a lot of scripts doing the basic mechanics, like mounting weapons, spawning/respawning, and the overall inventory system. But the basic mechanics for the FPS team (humans) are complete at this point. Hopefully I can get enough bits working on the RTS side (aliens) to make for an interesting demo at IGC.
To start with, the human player chooses their overall class and also chooses from a set of abilities/enhancements to their avatar. The abilities function similar to "advantages" or "perks" available in many RPGs, and provide a bit of customization to your player.
Once the player spawns, they also get another customization opportunity, by modifying weapons. Scattered around the map are various resources which represent technological parts useful for modifying your weapons. The player can pick these up and they are stashed in the inventory. Here we see the player has picked up some "steel" and "fire" resources, represented by the spheres with colorful icons on them. You can see a bunch of other resources scattered on the ground, currently represented by my colorful programmer-art lozenges.
Using these resources the player can modify his/her weapons; by combining a standard weapon with a specific type of resource, the player can produce a new type of weapon. Here we see the player has combined the Blunderbuss Pistol with the Fire Resource, producing a Flamethrower weapon (the orange pistol-like thing). Any player can produce enhanced weapons, and one class (the Mad Scientist) will be able to create all sorts of wacky equipment on-the-fly.
Finally, here is a gratuitous shot of my steam-powered robot automaton wielding four weapons at once. The robot is pretty much a walking arsenal but is really slow, which makes him a prime target for artillery...
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 03/24/06 - More AI Pack Trigger Examples 02/10/06 - A real simple AI pack example 01/02/06 - An Approach to Making Random Dungeons 10/31/05 - Plan for Gary Haussmann 09/26/05 - Plan for Gary Haussmann 03/07/05 - Plan for Gary Haussmann 01/30/05 - Plan for Gary Haussmann 01/04/05 - Plan for Gary Haussmann |
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Submit your own resources!| Vashner (Sep 26, 2005 at 09:46 GMT) |
| Eric Roberts (Sep 26, 2005 at 12:56 GMT) |
| Stephen Zepp (Sep 26, 2005 at 16:05 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
We as independent developers (both GG, and the community) stress the importance of prototyping, and working on gameplay before art, etc., ad nauseum, etc. We also talk about how indie developers can push genres by taking risks that AAA companies avoid like the plague, or attempt and fail miserably.
In the screenshots above, we obviously have some serious programmer art...and the screenshots reflect it. However, (and I know this is a relatively new post), no one -at all- commented about some of the pretty damned amazing tech behind the screenshots: he's talking about having a gameplay mechanic where players are run-time dynamically creating completely new items and weapons, and are able to use them in game...
Think about that for a minute: He has defined a set of properties within his engine that can handle dynamic allocation of physical properties, and in effect create completely new items on the fly. I can think of a couple of AAA games that have tried this and failed (Asheron's Call II I think it was tried this for spells, TES:DaggerFall did something like it for spells as well, EQ didn't even bother trying), and I know that I put a model and prototype implementation for this exact concept together in the late 90's for a MUD I was working on...and it is incredibly complex to build a working implementation of the concept.
But the only comments we've seen so far are about screenshots...
As Indie developers ourselves, if we expect the concept of prototyping to work, we need to see beyond the programmer art into the gameplay that is being demonstrated by that art, and analyze the fun factor itself...
[/soapbox]
Edited on Sep 26, 2005 16:56 GMT
| Matthew Langley (Sep 26, 2005 at 16:40 GMT) |
I agree with Stephen that there are some potentially impressive gameplay features that are being implemented.
Personally if you can get the quad weapon system working and fun then I'll be more than impressed, seems like a nifty feature that could be a blast but lots of ways to go wrong with :)
| Gary Haussmann (Sep 26, 2005 at 17:28 GMT) |
But I guess I have another week to live up to your exhortation :)
Edited on Sep 26, 2005 17:54 GMT
| Stephen Zepp (Sep 26, 2005 at 18:09 GMT) Resource Rating: 5 |
| Bejong K Yang (Sep 26, 2005 at 21:40 GMT) |
| Anthony Fullmer (Sep 28, 2005 at 04:43 GMT) |
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