MA Semester 2 Preparation - Third Person Shooter

For semester 2 I would like to make a Third Person Shooter game with an emphasis on fast paced, dynamic combat with multiple different types of weapons and an advanced movement system that will allow the player to approach combat situations in many ways. I have wanted to make a shooter for a really long time and I'm glad I'm finally doing one.

Why a shooter?

My main reason for wanting to create a shooter is due to my love/hate relationship with playing them. Shooters are an extremely over saturated genre nowadays and while I do enjoy a handful of them a large portion usually rely on cover mechanics. I hate cover mechanics. Combined with auto regenerating healing you've served up a delicious combo for a slow paced game where players are forced to wait behind cover until their health has regenerated, only to do it again and again until finally all the enemies have been defeated. Cover mechanics promote inactivity. Doing nothing isn't gameplay. 

Shown above: Max Payne 3 introduced cover mechanics to the franchise to bring it more aline with modern shooters. While received well by critics, many fans of the franchise believed it ruined the more "run and gun" nature of the Max Payne games and created a slower game flow compared to the original Max Payne games.

This semesters goal is to create a shooter that is constantly active. The player will always be doing something, whether that is performing an action such as shooting, dodging enemy fire or jumping around the environment.

A couple of key areas that I want to focus on are:

Gameplay Design/Play testing - As always my biggest focus will be on the gameplay. I want to create new mechanics I haven't done before and make them fun for the player. I also want to create weapons that feel good to use. Through play testing I will determine what players like or dislike about the gameplay and make changes with the feedback I receive. While we are on the topic, play testing is a key word here. With StarKid I did have a lot of people test my game, but I only had two play tests. That's not enough, with each play test I made changes to the game that made it play better. Imagine how good it could be if I did more. So expect to see a lot more feedback blog posts this semester.

Level Design -  I want the players to be able to forge their own game flow by allowing them multiple ways to approach and tackle combat situations. To do this, I will need to carefully design levels and have people play test them, so I can analyse different kinds of players' decision making and make sure no areas of the levels design are not being properly utilized. I also want the levels to have many areas to explore while not in combat, players will be rewarded for their exploration each time they discover a secret area, hidden pathway or shortcut. These rewards will be an incentive for the player to get the most out of a level, extending the time they spend in one level while also building up player satisfaction when they do find secrets.

Animation - I have done two projects where I have animated a character, one for Heart of Copper in third year and recently StarKid for semester 1 of the MA. StarKid showed that I had improved on animation a lot since HoC and I can only further improve the more I do it. This time I would like to animate the playable character again as well as animate some enemies too.

Particle Effects - I have never made a particle effect before, particle effects make a game look more visually appealing as well as make certain gameplay actions more satisfying, such as smoke effects as a character lands from a jump, or the explosion effect from a grenade. Particle effects are a key component to help bolster player satisfaction, this semester I'm going to learn how to make them, which will help further expand my skill set.

Plan of Action

Tomorrow is the first day back and the start of semester 2. My current plan for tomorrow is to continue idea generating and at the end of the day provide a blog post showing what I've come up with.