Plan for Ben Garney

Disclaimer: This .plan is about something I'm working on in my spare time, for fun. It is not representative of GG's plans or current projects. It does not indicate that I've changed my development focus. This is a .plan about a man, and the zombies who love his brains. Please enjoy, realize that 90% of it is speculation on my part on things I may never get done, and hopefuly get excited about your game projects. :)

Oh yeah: I realized after writing this that I end up pimping a lot of the cool stuff we have at GG. I didn't intend to when I started. We have, like, lots of useful stuff for making games with, and I guess I reflect that. :P

Onto the real plan...

So, I thought I'd take a little time and prototype a game idea. Specifically, something concerning zombies, and shooting them with shotguns because, dammit, that's a lot of fun.

I quick-like snagged some resources using the inimitable search.garagegames.com, our Google Mini-powered search system. A shotgun resource, some free sample art, a radius damage script upgrade, some tweaking, and I've got a pretty bad ass shotgun. Nevermind that I have to manually mount it to my player for the moment. ;)

Then I write some simple zombie AI that tries to home on the player and spawn about 20 zombie-orcs.



This is fun. I've decided the working title will be "onoez zombies." ;)



In general, it was amusing (but not the best thing ever) to shoot the zombies - which for the hour of time I put in, wasn't too bad.

Where to go from here?

Well, first off, let me note that I probably won't get too far. I've got a lot on my plate, and not much free time. :) But we'll assume I do, and go from there...

A lot of places. First off, I need to get the zombies to look like zombies (using a certain soldier model I've seen bouncing around...) and use Mr. Cailiff's excellent ragdoll animations to get a better reaction to shotgun blasts.

I want a more interesting level to get chased around by zombies, and I need to tweak their AI a bit - for instance, it'd be nice if they'd just wander if I wasn't nearby, rather than homing no matter what. They should also chase the nearest player - I want to be able to play co-op, which means they can't all home on the first player. (Or, the one who sticks his ID in the $Zombie::target global... :P)

I need to make the shotgun feel really, really solid. This is equal parts art, animation, tweaking physics constants, and sound. A lot of weapons I see in games (even in professional ones!) just don't feel very solid. I think for an FPS-like game, where you interact with the environment almost exclusively by shooting, it's VITAL that you have extremely solid, fun weapons. For this game, I'd sorta like to have: a shotgun, a pistol, an SMG, and a sniper rifle.

One problem I have with the shotgun as is is simply that the network model in Torque isn't well suited to fast-action weapons like a shotgun. Spawning a projectile that dies almost immediately makes it tend to not show up, even on a loopback connection. I'll probably end up moving a lot of the weapon effects for that class of weapon onto the client side, for better responsiveness. Humans can detect delays in the range of milliseconds - and this is a pretty easy way to cut that down. (See RTS Starter Kit for prior art on client side projectiles... :P)

Every weapon should have a unique place in the gameplay, and in a multiplayer game, they should act to reinforce one another. For instance - shotgun is for closeup zombie mauling. Pistol is a last ditch or harassing weapon. SMG is for mid-range broad fire. Sniper rifle is for long-range zombie assassination.

Weapons are tools to enable players to deal with certain situations. I'm of the mind that if you have a hammer, a screwdriver, and some pliers, you don't need a kit with five hundred unique tools in it. Especially not when you're being chased by zombies, slavering for your sweetest brainmeats.

I could easily imagine, in co-op, having one player up on the roof picking zombies off, while you have a few guys with shotguns or SMGs doing cleanup work. Maybe using their pistols from time to time to save ammo.

Anyway - let me just stress once more the importance of good tools. If you give the player a gun that's satisfying and fun to fire, they won't care if they're shooting crates with it - they'll have a good time. On the other hand, if your weapons feel flimsy, even if you have the best monsters in the world, people'll have a hard time buying into the reality of your world, and people that can't buy into that, can't have fun with it...

The other major thing is to get some more interesting levels in there. I have some ideas... ;) But art sets the mood and Orc Village isn't quite the right look for a exhilarating zombie shoot-'em-up. I'll probably raid some of Tim Aste's content packs so I can get something about right going quickly. The urban pack might also be a good idea, come to think of it.

Once I get something fun and pretty solid feeling, I can try to seduce some of the artists around here to working on onoez zombies in their spare time. ;)