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[Tsuchigumo550]

Single Player Survival FPS
Progression of Skill-
Skill is needed to preform tasks often given to you out of the gate in FPS. At the very beginning:
All guns are difficult to use. Pistols sway, and LMGs just about fly out of your hands. Guns like assault rifles will jam much more, and moving around with them makes this even more common- running about and sliding will make the possibility of a jam more prevalent. The best kind of ranged weapon to use, if you absolutely have to, is a bow or small caliber pistol. Melee weapons are considerably more useful but very very few are an instant kill and the more finicky ones (such as pocket knives) are slow to bring out. Fumbles are possible.
Movement is also difficult- certain actions cause injury (such as sliding down a hill), and you can't run fast or for too long.

At the start, you'll get points to spend in skills immediately. This allows you to have a small amount of natural ability.

For guns:
You first have to put experience into using pistols, revolvers, and bows. These types of weapons will show sharp accuracy increases and more controlled kick and recovery from kick and all movements involved will become faster (reloading, etc.), and accuracy for all guns will increase slightly. Pistol jams will be fixed more quickly, and happen less often (there is a point they will not happen.)
From there, you can begin levelling on Light Arms. Automatic weapons become viable at this point, and submachineguns and some assault rifles begin improving just like pistols, then large weapons like bigger ARs and LMGs. It takes a while before you can use an LMG with any effectiveness at all, but it is worth it.

For melee:
Here, there are less restrictions. You can level for Blunt, Blades, and Unarmed. Leveling weapons of their category makes them quicker, deadlier, faster to move with when sneaking, as well as unlocking abilities such as Beatdown (knock down a foe with a blunt weapon before finishing them off, or knocking them off a cliff), Jack Rip, which quickly strikes a foe multiple times to disarm them before slicing their throat, and the Stranglehold lets you take a human shield by coming from behind them and grabbing their necks, choking them. These takedowns give you more options such as attacking from on high or low, and warrant more XP.

For general abilities:
You also need to be able to heal yourself and move about the world. If you were to max out Movement, you'd be able to act like a tireless parkour machine, but if you start at 0, you won't even be able to slide without hurting yourself, and running is pathetic. You can't use a medkit without some skill, and with enough levelling you can heal yourself very quickly with minimal supplies. Even looting is determined by skill- at it's lowest, you won't be able to spot anything useful unless you're right up on top of it, then they start appearing on your minimap, before you gain the ability to mark items by looking at them (such as in Far Cry 3) and also be able to unmark them with the press of a button.

So, you start as someone with very little ability to take injury, use weapons, move or heal yourself, or really effectively do anything in the game. It makes you earn your skills.

Guns can jam. They can jam with different types:
Light: Something like the casing getting stuck halfway through ejection. This can be fixed by inexperienced players in a few seconds and nearly under a second for those with experience.
Medium: This is a bad jam that could take 30+ seconds for someone inexperienced to fix, if they even can without taking the weapon to a gun shop. Experienced players will take 10 or more seconds.
Heavy: Very bad jam. Experienced players will take 30 seconds or more to fix.
Critical: The gun is broken and requires maintenance.

Guns will jam more and more critically based on experience, as well as the gun. Some guns won't jam very often even in a noob's hands, some guns are annoying to use for even experts.

[Max White]

So is this just any game design concepts, or do we keep it topical to the opening post?

[Tsuchigumo550]

Anything you have ideas on, any genre. I'll pop up and randomly spew things on different topics.

[Max White]

You know, I have noticed a new genera of games emerging within indie circles that we should all be interested in, because it stems very much from roguelikes. Not sure what we would call these, but they seem to have several aspects to deliver on a core experience.
These are games like Spelunky, The Binding of Issac and Faster Than Light that some people attribute as roguelikes, but when you analyse their mechanics you find are some what different in some reguards. Core features include

Loosing is a core feature: In many games today, you are never going to die and start from the very beginning again. In these games this is not only important but beneficial to the player. Permadeath is required for this game experience. More on why later.
Randomised content: Randomised content is one of the most important features, because it increases replay value. These games are designed to be played through over and over, thus randomising keeps things interesting.
Item upgrades: These exist purely to make life hard for the player. Without upgrades you would have to balance the game for the players starting abilities, so any play through would have a good chance fr victory. With item upgrades, it gives the chance to miss items, forcing the player to collect them or become underpowered. They also force the player into interesting situations to gain these upgrades, and help to increase replay value. Once you have beat the game with the shotgun and jetpack, there is incentive to try again but on a run where you don't pick these up.
Expirmentation: Basically presenting the player with situations without an obvious outcome, and letting the player figure out what they want to do to solve it. These include putting enemies in pots, so the player must learn that these present a threat and be catious in the future or pretty much any event from FTL. These help force a curve onto players, as they will only progress after the knowledge gained from a death.
Unlockables: In a game where you are expected to play over and over, unlockables are there to make the game feel rewarding. Without them the player starts to wonder why they keep trying. They are the final incentive, so have a lot of them.

Now on dying. Because the randomised upgrades to the player and the inability to back trace, there will be times when a player is far too under powered to beat a section. In this case, permadeath is an ideal solution. It forces the player back through the earlier levels to attempt to gain better gear. If you didn't restart but just respawned, players would try much more to get through with inadequacy gear, getting more and more frustrated, and quit more often than restart.


As you can imagine, these games achieve many, many hours of gameplay, so if you want a game that people just keep playing, think on these mechanics.

[Tsuchigumo550]

I love permadeath. I've wanted to do a survival FPS like above with permadeath features- write up the idea- for a long time, but I can't think of ways to make it non-infuriating and sensical.

I also LOVE randomized content. It keeps things much fresher than what you'd think: if you're playing an FPS and no one really has the map memorized, they just have a general idea of what to expect: this is a round building, it's here, etc. The maps are just unlearnable.

[Max White]

Go play a little Wolfenstein 3D. You will notice that the levels are composed of large 3d blocks. You can even view a top down view in a map editor. This format makes procedural level gen a lot more simple.
The game also includes the possibility for experimentation, one of our core focuses. Having wall hangings that you activate to open secret doors is exactly the kind of thing you need.
Item upgrades are a little trickier for a FPS, because many items focus on maneuverability, and this is a lot more limited in these types of games than a platformer, but gun, ammor, health and armour upgrades are still possible and strongly recommended.

The above paradigm for game design is ill suited to a modern FPS, but lends itself almost ideally to an old school style one. If somebody made such a game, they could make a lot of money selling it.

[kytuzian]

You know, I have noticed a new genera of games emerging within indie circles that we should all be interested in, because it stems very much from roguelikes. Not sure what we would call these, but they seem to have several aspects to deliver on a core experience.
These are games like Spelunky, The Binding of Issac and Faster Than Light that some people attribute as roguelikes, but when you analyse their mechanics you find are some what different in some reguards. Core features include

Loosing is a core feature: In many games today, you are never going to die and start from the very beginning again. In these games this is not only important but beneficial to the player. Permadeath is required for this game experience. More on why later.
Randomised content: Randomised content is one of the most important features, because it increases replay value. These games are designed to be played through over and over, thus randomising keeps things interesting.
Item upgrades: These exist purely to make life hard for the player. Without upgrades you would have to balance the game for the players starting abilities, so any play through would have a good chance fr victory. With item upgrades, it gives the chance to miss items, forcing the player to collect them or become underpowered. They also force the player into interesting situations to gain these upgrades, and help to increase replay value. Once you have beat the game with the shotgun and jetpack, there is incentive to try again but on a run where you don't pick these up.
Expirmentation: Basically presenting the player with situations without an obvious outcome, and letting the player figure out what they want to do to solve it. These include putting enemies in pots, so the player must learn that these present a threat and be catious in the future or pretty much any event from FTL. These help force a curve onto players, as they will only progress after the knowledge gained from a death.
Unlockables: In a game where you are expected to play over and over, unlockables are there to make the game feel rewarding. Without them the player starts to wonder why they keep trying. They are the final incentive, so have a lot of them.

Now on dying. Because the randomised upgrades to the player and the inability to back trace, there will be times when a player is far too under powered to beat a section. In this case, permadeath is an ideal solution. It forces the player back through the earlier levels to attempt to gain better gear. If you didn't restart but just respawned, players would try much more to get through with inadequacy gear, getting more and more frustrated, and quit more often than restart.


As you can imagine, these games achieve many, many hours of gameplay, so if you want a game that people just keep playing, think on these mechanics.

I think this one is mostly trying to kill the players, without a chance of them actually surviving themselves. I think the player should be able to survive the first time through, as long as they aren't stupid.

Also, I would like to see a permadeath multiplayer game, but it could not work out.

[Max White]

Go play some Spelunky, it is pretty much the paragon of what I mean.
It is a fun game. This much has been established through its huge popularity, but you will die. Yes, the game is trying to kill the player, but that s ok.
A game where you can't beat it first try and need to repeat the same actions is bad. That is just a dick move on the devs behalf. A game where the world is genned in such a way that you can't finish it the first try, but the second try is different from the first is good, it makes learning the game interesting.

[Tsuchigumo550]

TPS may actually lend itself better simply due to  sort of divide- Let's say:
Permadeath: Your character gains levels through gameplay, death means you drop back to level 1. Every weapon and the like is unlocked from the beginning, levels benifit you by affecting how good you are with the guns you've chosen. Every Level 1 guy is better than previously mentioned- they can fire a pistol accurately, a bare assault rifle sways a bit, an LMG sways a good bit. Attachments make things better- grips can help sway, for instance, but in general, Level 1 guys have a better chance with a knife and a sidearm. As they level, they get better with guns. Jams are rare at anything above level 2 for anything save LMGs, 3 for that. Firing an LMG on full auto at Level 1 is not only horribly hard to control, but very likely to jam.

Ramdomization: Maps are made of a 3x3 grid, and players during voting can select a "theme" for each tab: up/down and left/right. This could be:

"Seaside" for right side, Industrial for top, Natural for left, and Natural for bottom.

This map is made of randomly chosen elements tagged with these titles for each part of the grid:
Top Right:       Docks 
Top Middle:      Water Treatment Plant
Top Left:         Sawmill
Middle Right:     Waterside Campsite
Middle:            Dirt Parking Lot
Middle Left:     Tall Grass Hills
Bottom Right:   Swampy Forest
Bottom Middle: Forest
Bottom Left:    Steep Hill Forest

This way, different map sections fit together- there is a system of smoothing the land between tiles, so that height differences are not jagged cliffsides.

Upgrades: Base attachments are unlocked from start, using them allows ou to get slightly better or custom versions of the attachment beyond permadeath, sort of like unlockables. Reach a certain level with an attachment so man times, get a new version of it.

Each match starts balanced, but if some guy manages level 10, it's going to be possible but much harder to kill him. Team work is a huge thing, as it is a TPS styled game with cover mechanics with added features above.

[professorlamp]

These aren't really mechanic tips, they're more design tips but mleh, it's the most relevant thread I've found.

*Before you progress with mechanics and add more of everything, more guns, more potions, more spells, whatever...
Make sure you have that ONE item working perfectly.

If it was a FPS shooter, employ one pistol, work on the combat mechanics, tweak and then try again. Quantity comes AFTER quality. This is one of the many reasons some of my games have failed in the past and I know it's a recurring theme for a lot of designers.

*Don't even think about the art of your game. The sooner you think about the art, the sooner you stop thinking about the mechanics. Have it all ugly. If it's fun with blocks of blue and different shades of red, then you can be damn sure that a baked 3d render of your game is going to be astounding.

*(In contrast to others opinions) Randomization is not always a good thing. It is good in moderation but if you play a game with 1000+ items, you will find it lacks coherency. You need to strike a balance where you WILL encounter something you've encountered before but also have the chance to find rare new things.

[Tsuchigumo550]

That's where I find it a good thing Borderlands 2 had no focused multiplayer. Random elements don't work with every thing- the farthest I'd be willing to go with that would ba a PC multiplayer game where inventories can be saved on accounts, and have attachments have various stat mods and be lootable. And I don't like that from a design standpoint.

[Shook]

You know, I have noticed a new genera of games emerging within indie circles that we should all be interested in, because it stems very much from roguelikes. Not sure what we would call these, but they seem to have several aspects to deliver on a core experience.
These are games like Spelunky, The Binding of Issac and Faster Than Light that some people attribute as roguelikes, but when you analyse their mechanics you find are some what different in some reguards. Core features include

Loosing is a core feature: In many games today, you are never going to die and start from the very beginning again. In these games this is not only important but beneficial to the player. Permadeath is required for this game experience. More on why later.
Randomised content: Randomised content is one of the most important features, because it increases replay value. These games are designed to be played through over and over, thus randomising keeps things interesting.
Item upgrades: These exist purely to make life hard for the player. Without upgrades you would have to balance the game for the players starting abilities, so any play through would have a good chance fr victory. With item upgrades, it gives the chance to miss items, forcing the player to collect them or become underpowered. They also force the player into interesting situations to gain these upgrades, and help to increase replay value. Once you have beat the game with the shotgun and jetpack, there is incentive to try again but on a run where you don't pick these up.
Expirmentation: Basically presenting the player with situations without an obvious outcome, and letting the player figure out what they want to do to solve it. These include putting enemies in pots, so the player must learn that these present a threat and be catious in the future or pretty much any event from FTL. These help force a curve onto players, as they will only progress after the knowledge gained from a death.
Unlockables: In a game where you are expected to play over and over, unlockables are there to make the game feel rewarding. Without them the player starts to wonder why they keep trying. They are the final incentive, so have a lot of them.

Now on dying. Because the randomised upgrades to the player and the inability to back trace, there will be times when a player is far too under powered to beat a section. In this case, permadeath is an ideal solution. It forces the player back through the earlier levels to attempt to gain better gear. If you didn't restart but just respawned, players would try much more to get through with inadequacy gear, getting more and more frustrated, and quit more often than restart.


As you can imagine, these games achieve many, many hours of gameplay, so if you want a game that people just keep playing, think on these mechanics.

This made me think a bit about my own game in development. As it stands, when you die, you just restart the level from the beginning. The idea behind this is that you'll eventually memorize the enemy patterns enough that you can beat it with your current selection of upgrades, but it doesn't really let you experiment, since it doesn't throw you back to the shop. It also possibly starts an unstable equilibrium, since if you manage to BARELY scrape by a level, you'll likely have less cash from that level to buy upgrades, which in turn will make your life harder in the next level. I've recently added a Hardcore mode, which essentially means permadeath, which by your sound logic allows for more experimentation, and ends the unstable equilibrium once it starts to tip too far away from your favour. The problem here, however, is that the enemies are NOT random, quite the opposite actually. Every single enemy is placed individually and deliberately, so as to create a challenge for the player to overcome.

But i digress, what i'm thinking is this: Would permadeath be beneficial in a game without randomization? Damage is fixed, enemy placement is fixed, point value is fixed, there are no random powerups, the only thing that actually varies randomly is enemy firing intervals. The idea behind that is to minimize the players dependency on luck (luck-based missions should crash and burn), thus making player skill far more relevant. However, although there's no significant randomization, the enemies do increase in variety and threat level as you progress, sometimes in rather unanticipated ways, which could likely screw over a player just as much as a spiteful RNG. If you get hit by something unexpected while still being in reasonably good standing from the previous levels, does that mean you should start everything over?

This also makes me think that permadeath should remain optional, but enabled by default. Some people don't care much for running through the same levels over and over because there's one particular thing that messes them up, especially not when the previous levels don't change at all. However, fun thing is that Raptor: Call of the Shadows is almost exactly like this, and it's a huge inspiration for me. It has levels with fixed amounts of enemies (which varies by difficulty), and if you forget to save (which in and of itself kind of makes permadeath pointless), it's permadeath for you. It's still a very entertaining game. My game doesn't really support saving, but potentially gets a free pass by virtue of being relatively short. Hell, another game with permadeath, The Binding of Isaac, is not all that short, you can't save in it either, AND it's often mercilessly difficult. It has random levels, however, so every time you start a new game, you actually get something new. My game does NOT feature that, which is a fairly strong counterpoint to permadeath.

So... I guess what i'm trying to say is that i'd like some external input on it. The player obviously needs some incentive to start over again, but what would that even be? The notion of a better playthrough? Not so sure about that.

[Tsuchigumo550]

Without randomization permadeath lacks much of the draw it had beforehand, however, if dying means you lose bonuses and the like and restarts you as a grunt, probably in the same position, and makes you work off your death, it can be worked right. Difficult to tryly do, and without randomization, permadeath is... less good. Bad, in most cases.

[Max White]

Like I said, permadeath is important as a benefit to the player. If you haven't collected strong enough upgrades to pass, the game will just throw you back to the start to try again instead of banging your head against a brick wall.
Don't add things like permadeath just because 'My game iz for da hardcorez and your just not gud enuff' because that isn't very good design. There are much, much better ways to appear to the more adapt players than just artificial dicking them over.
So I can't really see permadeath helping a game without randomization unless you want a twitch platformer where the highscore is what the player is going for, rather than completion.

Looking at these games of this new genera more, there is one more features I think is important.
No back tracking: You can't revisit prior levels/sectors/zones/whatever. This is important because if the player can collect every upgrade,they will, despite the fact that going through zones that they have already cleared is boring. Even when enemies respawn, going through the same area twice is not what this genera is about, rather the excitement comes from challenging the new.
An important aspect of this is a time limit. Spelunky had the ghost, FTL had the rebal fleet. Binding of Issac had nothing, and going over the rooms you have already cleared is dull.
For a really interesting example of this, check out 'Risk of Rain' another amazing title that fits into this genera. In this game, over time the enemies get harder over time, meaning you never 'finish' a zone, you just get pushed out. I think this actually works really, really well.

In fact, check out Risk of Rain anyway, it is a great game to play.

[professorlamp]

So, on the topic of game design/mechanics.

Who actually plans out their game with pseudocode and/or flowcharts of the overall games scheme?
Maybe I'm just being an uber n00b but I've started doing flowcharts of games that I have in my head and it makes the project significantly more manageable and easier to understand. I'd just like to know your guys stances on the preparation that you undertake before diving right in.