Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reasonableman]

However implementing aliens is always the hardest thing to do, cause so many games have done it. I personally love "Alien or Aliens or AvP" universe and the way that it works. However, avoiding copyright would be the biggest thing haha.

The interesting thing about Alien aliens was that they were so... mysterious. Found on a derelict craft with no explanation or context, an impossibly deadly and adaptive killing machine that worked outside all known science... It points out that -not- knowing can be far more interesting than having things handed to you. But this is a double edged sword in that, if you're not careful, you'll look implausible. It's important to establish at least possible reasons that aliens might show up- either they're war-mongering conquerors (Independence Day), xenophobes (Borg), religious zealots (Supreme Commander's Seraphim), knowledge-seekers (obviously they'd have to be searching for something far more valuable than human lives), exploitative parasites (Stargate's Goa'uld), or some combination or aberration. If you wanted to do some kind of moral quandary, you could even set up humanity as the aggressors in the situation. Ender's Game, almost.

[Shades]

The interesting thing about Alien aliens was that they were so... mysterious.

The best thing about the AVP games, imo, is the fear caused by playing the marine as your walking down those dark corridor and hear that loan 'bleep' come up on the scanner.

The only other fps I've enjoyed so much was Deus Ex which although isn't as atmospheric was just a really good game and played nicely without feeling like you had no choices (even though you didn't really).

Serious Sam is good too but that is a different kind of Fun.

I doubt this post has been any help to the OP

[Zangi]

Well, you need more of the basic information then just... CoD-like weaponry and Aliens to get better ideas.  I guess this has been stated already.

What kind of shooter will it be? 
RPG like ME? 
RPG like Borderlands?
RPG like FO3? 
Some mix of the RPG stuff?   
Generic Halo/CoD/Almost every other damned shooter? 
Team co-op like L4D/Army of Two/Borderlands/Resistance 2's Mission thing? 
AI Co-op with... just AI buddies? (Squad based?)

Will there be multiplayer?

[Hawkfrost]

If you wanted to do some kind of moral quandary, you could even set up humanity as the aggressors in the situation. Ender's Game, almost.

I was thinking the same thing before.

I'm tired of the "big bad aliens are invading us for no reason, no fair" thing.
The way humanity is, it makes complete sense that we would go invade another race just because they think we are ugly or something.
And I'm also tired of aliens that look almost like humans.
My favorite alien race would probably be Space Pirates from Metroid. They were badass, deadly, and possible.

[Reasonableman]

If you wanted to do some kind of moral quandary, you could even set up humanity as the aggressors in the situation. Ender's Game, almost.

I was thinking the same thing before.

I'm tired of the "big bad aliens are invading us for no reason, no fair" thing.
The way humanity is, it makes complete sense that we would go invade another race just because they think we are ugly or something.
And I'm also tired of aliens that look almost like humans.
My favorite alien race would probably be Space Pirates from Metroid. They were badass, deadly, and possible.

... I hate you. Now I have to go out and buy the Metroid Prime Wii Trilogy so I can play through the whole thing again. God that first game was good. The other two, also good, but holy crap the first one blew me away. I still haven't just looked up into the rain in a game since.

...Siiiidetracked.

Also, I have to reiterate what Zangi and I have both said now. There's lots of different kinds of FPS- the basic gameplay can differ greatly. I'm also personally curious about just what the background is behind your development team, the process we're talking about, and the mysterious overlords who are pulling the game-designing strings here.

[Virex]

Let's first see about the mechanics.

We've got multiple paths to a goal as an important thing mentioned, as is "bullet realism". This implies more of a tactical shooter with municipal weapons, like the gravity gun from Half-Life 2. I was thinking off something like a rope gun, like in Smashball, or a painless 'rocket jump' weapon as used in Nexuiz.

The tactical part would be in the sense that taking someone out takes only a few bullets, but you die just as fast. This means taking cover is IMPORTANT, as is planning movement. Levels should reflect this by not spamming endeless streams of enemies. Rainbow Six also had an auto-aim option that was important

[Shaostoul]

I'll have more specifics late tomorrow (don't know length of meeting.) I'm certainly going to bring up a lot of ideas, I hope some of the good stuff gets approved, personally I'd love to see another AvP like game, but maybe without the predators. IMO playing as marines in AvP was the most fun and rewarding. I'm certainly going to bring up the matter of weapons. I really hated the way some of the guns in say Borderlands worked, but they solved that with what weapons companies focused on. I really appreciate the feedback! Also the health thing I'm going to try to stress the most, I hate being able to get to "full health" in the heat of combat, especially if you suffer severe injuries.

We shall see what they say, I'll let you all know on their decisions for aspects.

[Servu]

How about a "suspiciously steampunk" futuristic setting? Sure there are spaceships and all the like, but everything is made from very low-tech parts. Let me elaborate: When the player arrives at the space station/whatever where you are to have your first mission, he is not greeted with the usual smooth metal surfaces and randomly scattered led-lights, but instead sees a scene more fitting to an old factory complex; large brass tubes and vats with littered with valves, mechanical assemblies that have been fitted through the walls roofs everywhere to save space. Instead of automatic doors that make a "hiss" when opening, there are regular standard issue doors that creak when opened. Everywhere a noise of rusty machines and pressure valves echoes in the tunnels. When the player receives his first gun, it's not a shining laser rifle, but a regular AK-47, bit rusty from the years of storage. Your superiors don't want to waste money on some rookie wannabe tough guy on his first mission.

Considering aliens: Why does every single freaking game with a futuristic setting have to have them? It's so difficult to make an alien species both original and interesting nowadays that they almost never end up well. If an alien species is necessary, may I suggest Cthulhu and his minions? There are surprisingly few games that take advantage of the excellent mythos. The existing material is also very helpful what comes to storyline. For example a weird genetic anomaly is detected in distant mining base's population that causes strange deformation. The player is a doctor hired by a medical company to investigate the matter. Hilarity ensues.

And finally an opinion about FPS's in general: The less hud the better. You aim with iron sights and check the ammo from the holes of the magazine. Automatic fire is for immediate close quarters combat only, and distant targets are for single shots. Also, bullets should hurt things, not just take a tip off of a life bar (Even the biggest and meanest alien can feel when you shoot it through the skull)

Carp. was I too late?

[Shaostoul]

No Servu, you aren't.

Staying up a lot later than preferred, but it happens.

The idea is nice, I the like old and rickety as opposed to the brand spanking new shiney.

The cthulu idea is suspiciously like Doom imo

[Xombie]

I don't really give a damn about setting. Everything fine, except for steampunk(too silly), WWII(plz, leave it alone for a while) and anti-terrorism(FFS).

What makes a good FPS by Xombie:

-Fun gunplay, since its all you do in fps, a little bit tactical is better. Easy deaths, no 40-bullets to kill dudes. But not too ARMA.

-Ballistics, ricochet, real clips(when you wont reload after each shot).

-Destruction Everything from making holes in walls(with bullets or RPG) to exploding whole buildings is fun. Not that it should be only good thing about whole game (like in Red Faction Guerilla)

-Various enemies, levels. Yes, FEAR2 sucked on many levels, but more than one enemy skin would help a little. FEAR1 was full of same warehouse and his clones with same shelves with same hammer on it. Copy-paste FTW.

-No ragdoll or PhysX Just NO. I don't want to see that shitty slow-floating indestructable corpses in various humorous poses. Either make something GTA4-like or gtfo(use animation - just not too slow and dramatic, in other words not like in CoD).

-Good AI. No super-accuracy from mile away or complete imbeciles who knows no better than getting stuck in passageways and ignore enemy.

-Bots for multiplayer is a must, too bad nobody ever makes them nowdays. I dont like going online before trying game with bots, and sometimes i don't want to play with people at all(especially with 9-year olds spamming in voicechat about immaturity and other childish problems), add lag, add various punkbuster shit etc.

-Performance. Loading times, slowdowns, missing textures, shaders 4.0, lots of bloom, awful screen filters(CoD6)... well pretty much everything that makes you think twice before clicking the shortcut.
 No nobody needs a graphic breakthrough, CoD4 had outdated graphics and was popular. CoD6 uses same damn graphics and even worse.
 And nobody actually wants to make decent 25234x58985 textures. Dragon Age has detailed faces and lots of very lowres equipment.
 So why bother with Unreal Engine 10 if your models/textures is right from Quake2?

[codezero]

Two teams, thousands on each side. What fps has done that?

I mean in the sense of WW1 and 2 ground warfare, not some huge quakelike map.

[Shaostoul]

Thanks for that input Xombie.

Gunplay - I would love to have them have guns a lot more fun to use and no one gun can be used to be the ENTIRE game (cough cough Dead Space) I don't know how much say I have in this, but I'm hoping for guns to be a big focus.

Ballistics - I believe an older Ghost Recon game had actual clips. I like the idea, we'll see how that flies. Ricochet is good, but idno exactly how this'll work out.

Destruction - As fun as blowing shit up and having huge holes everywhere is... it can be pretty intensive on the machine. I like it, but it may be limited.

Various - As hopefully the head model/animation person I hope to have many unique creatures, I hated the way Oblivion and Fallout was. I want diversity.

No ragdoll or PhysX - This isn't my call I think, but show me a good game with good deaths that isn't ragdoll or physx and I'll see what I can do... However I do not know what engine the game is running.

Good AI - This is entirely not up to me, but IMO should be a major focus. I hate idiotic AI's and ones that can see you from miles away and head shot you with a pistol.

Bots - I don't quite know the direction of the game, I hope it's either multiplayer or singleplayer not a hybrid. But if it is multiplayer, I'll try to get them to include bots. (Whether it's single or multiplayer will also tell a lot of other things)

Performance - I love quick loading times as well, but how much scenery do you want?  A closed in space station is easy peasy, but an open environment like Oblivion can be tricky. Being the Model/Animation guy, I'm shooting for damn near perfect on graphics and flawlessness. Again engine related and multiplayer/singleplayer related. I don't plan on having insane textures, I want this to be able to run on an off the shelf computer maybe a couple year old machine as well.

@codezero - I believe this is the first big project by this company, so it probably won't be that until the have a fan base and a much higher income of funds.

Side notes...

-This will not be based on anything pre-2012
-This will not include magic, superpowers or time travel.
-This will not include a super massive multiplayer scenario.
-I do not know which engine it is running, so graphics are sketchy, certain game mechanics are sketchy, and a few other things...
-I do not know if it is strictly multiplayer or singleplayer or both.
-Weapons are going to be a main concern on my part, I want good ones as well.
-Creatures/NPC's/etc are a main concern as well, variety is good.

-I'm looking for STORY related ideas at the moment so we can better decide the direction the game is going.

[PenguinOverlord]

If Aliens exist, why can't dwarfs? Now, then, let me think of some positive input.

[cerapa]

Maybe the protagonist should be an alien.

How about your planet is invaded by other aliens on the run from something. You fight for survival as the others attempt to harvest all the planets resources. If you win then the aliens that the other aliens were running from would show up, they could be humans. You could pull off a good humans are bastards when they would start blowing the crap out of the planet because a few of the invading aliens survived. At that point it would become a battle for survival as you try to run with the now half-broken invading aliens ships and then you reach another alien inhabited planet and it all starts over again.

It could make for a pretty cool loop of destruction in my opinion...

[Shaostoul]

Thanks all again, meeting is in 2 hours. I'll let you all know how it turns out. Also thanks for all the input.

I'll try to see that certain ideas a big focuses.