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General discussionWhat would you guys want to see in a modern "retro" FPS(130 posts)(130 posts)
(130 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 06, 2016
The video looks very much like quake, i.e. very early 3D. Personally, I much prefer the style of 2.5D FPS games like the Build games, Catacombs, ZPC, etc. Good luck on this project though, there definitely aren't too many other games like it, and I very much enjoyed your earlier attempt "The Pit"!

One thing I'd like to see in these games is more puzzles. Only a few old FPS games incorporated inventive puzzles, but it really added a lot to the gameplay. A fantastic (if obscure) example of this is "Goosebumps: Attack of the Mutant".
Post edited January 06, 2016 by ecamber
Posted January 06, 2016
There has been a lot of focus on old school level design in this thread already, so I'll leave that alone and focus on often overlooked feature in old school FPS games; monster design. When it comes to creating enemy units and AI there isa short list of general features to choose from. For each individual enemy you just pick traits such as melee or ranged attack, fast or slow movement and hard or easy to kill. By mixing and matching these three traits you can get the majority of your enemy types. Beyond that are optional features like invisibility, the ability to summon or spawn other units, the ability to teleport and other unique feats. The key is to keep the AI simple and the character models easily recognizable. A perfect example of this is Doom. The AI for Pinky was the same as for the Lost Souls/Flaming Skulls. They both ran towards you and did direct physical damage, it's just that one was way easier to kill than the other. However there was no way to get them mixed up, in fact the character designs were so different from each other that it took the player only a single glance and they instantly know what enemy they were facing and what tactics it would use.

A modern day game developer would try to add some variety to Doom by making several different styles or ranks of the classic brown Imp. They would have different AI, attack patterns and health values starting with the basic Brown Imp, Brown Imp with small spikes, Brown Imp with large spikes, Brown Imp with horns, Dark Brown Imp with Horns and so on. This might sound like a good idea, especially to the art department, but it adds unnecessary stress to the player. Think of the classic FPS traps where you would walk down a hallway towards a button or switch that, when activated it removes the hallway walls and you are now in a large room surrounded by enemies. With simple and distinct enemies you only need a quick 360 spin to know where the biggest threat is coming from. Any player trying to analyze which enemies are darker in color, have fangs, horns or some other distinguishing marks age going to die quickly. They might not even realize why some seemingly identical enemies are harder to kill than others.
Posted January 06, 2016
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Klumpen0815: Basically I just wish for something like a Doom 2016 edition with nothing changed except resolution of everything.
I've modded my Doom, Doom 2, Hexen and Heretic in the Doomsday Engine with excellent HD wall textures already but can't find proper upgrades for the sprites anywhere (besides filters), just 3D replacements and I don't like those.

Is there an FPS like this out there? Anywhere?
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NotJabba: It's easy enough to improve the resolution of the whole game (for any Doom-engine game) with a source port like ZDoom, but I'm not sure if that's what you're asking for. Do you mean you want the sprites to look like they were created through digital painting rather than pixel art? I've seen a couple of people experiment with doing this with individual Doom sprites, and it always looked terrible, so they gave up. The few 2D indie FPS games that I've seen (Harmony, for example) went full retro and used pixel art similar to Doom's or Wolfenstein's.
The HD wall textures wouldn't make any sense if I wouldn't play it on 1080p anyway but the sprites get quite blurry this way, even with HD filters applied. ;)
I just want high res sprites, don't care if they are made via painting, drawing, photography or pixel art extreme.

I've seen an attempt of upgrading the old sprites with a mixture of HD filter and reworking them and it looked quite good but the creator gave up after a couple of them and was never seen again.
Post edited January 06, 2016 by Klumpen0815
Posted January 06, 2016
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Klumpen0815: I've seen an attempt of upgrading the old sprites with a mixture of HD filter and reworking them and it looked quite good but the creator gave up after a couple of them and was never seen again.
I warned you about what happens when you threaten American gaming companies with competition.
Post edited January 06, 2016 by zeogold
Posted January 06, 2016
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ecamber: The video looks very much like quake, i.e. very early 3D. Personally, I much prefer the style of 2.5D FPS games like the Build games, Catacombs, ZPC, etc. Good luck on this project though, there definitely aren't too many other games like it, and I very much enjoyed your earlier attempt "The Pit"!
Oh hey, someone who played Pit!

Biggest issue with that game, I think, was the level design. I didn't know anything about it, and I wasn't thinking about flow or anything like that, I was just placing blocks and making mazes. That's one area I really want to improve in Dusk.
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Stevedog13: There has been a lot of focus on old school level design in this thread already, so I'll leave that alone and focus on often overlooked feature in old school FPS games; monster design. When it comes to creating enemy units and AI there isa short list of general features to choose from. For each individual enemy you just pick traits such as melee or ranged attack, fast or slow movement and hard or easy to kill. By mixing and matching these three traits you can get the majority of your enemy types. Beyond that are optional features like invisibility, the ability to summon or spawn other units, the ability to teleport and other unique feats. The key is to keep the AI simple and the character models easily recognizable. A perfect example of this is Doom. The AI for Pinky was the same as for the Lost Souls/Flaming Skulls. They both ran towards you and did direct physical damage, it's just that one was way easier to kill than the other. However there was no way to get them mixed up, in fact the character designs were so different from each other that it took the player only a single glance and they instantly know what enemy they were facing and what tactics it would use.

A modern day game developer would try to add some variety to Doom by making several different styles or ranks of the classic brown Imp. They would have different AI, attack patterns and health values starting with the basic Brown Imp, Brown Imp with small spikes, Brown Imp with large spikes, Brown Imp with horns, Dark Brown Imp with Horns and so on. This might sound like a good idea, especially to the art department, but it adds unnecessary stress to the player. Think of the classic FPS traps where you would walk down a hallway towards a button or switch that, when activated it removes the hallway walls and you are now in a large room surrounded by enemies. With simple and distinct enemies you only need a quick 360 spin to know where the biggest threat is coming from. Any player trying to analyze which enemies are darker in color, have fangs, horns or some other distinguishing marks age going to die quickly. They might not even realize why some seemingly identical enemies are harder to kill than others.
This seems like really good advice, I will keep it in mind when I start designing enemies.
Post edited January 06, 2016 by jefequeso
Posted January 08, 2016
Started doing some improved textures as per suggestions.

http://ironsnowflakes.blogspot.com/2016/01/kinda-improved-textures-maybe-sorta.html

Krita is awesome. Just the simple additions of a line tool and the seamless editing mode make it worlds more useful for texture creation than Gimp.

Still using Gimp for a few things, though.
Posted January 08, 2016
One thing I hated about many classics such as Blood was weapon bobbing which leads to motion sickness. Most modern games completely remove all bobbing effects these days, and you probably should too. At least as an option.
Posted January 08, 2016
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jefequeso: I'm working on a Doom/Quake throwback FPS.
You've got to be kidding me... first I started making a first person game in a two-colour scheme and you showed me The Music Machine. I ended up turning the project into a Doom-style FPS (something I had been meaning to do for years) and recently even got a friend on board, now I see you working on this. Dude, have you hacked my Skype account?

Edit: Well, at least my game is 2.5D and uses bitmap enemies. I guess that's one difference. :P
Post edited January 08, 2016 by F4LL0UT
Posted January 08, 2016
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jefequeso: I'm working on a Doom/Quake throwback FPS.
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F4LL0UT: You've got to be kidding me... first I started making a first person game in a two-colour scheme and you showed me The Music Machine. I ended up turning the project into a Doom-style FPS (something I had been meaning to do for years) and recently even got a friend on board, now I see you working on this. Dude, have you hacked my Skype account?

Edit: Well, at least my game is 2.5D and uses bitmap enemies. I guess that's one difference. :P
Well, sometimes I catch a glimpse of the computer screen when I sneak in to watch you sleep :D

Seriously, though, I think that's awesome that you're working on one too. If you ask me, the more Doom/Quake style FPSs the better. Especially if you're doing a 2.5d bitmapped one. I'd instabuy a game like that.

I guess technically we'd be in competition, but I think in this situation the two games would complement each other. Maybe we can help each other out with cross-promotion stuff when it gets to that point.

And hey, if you happen to be in need of a composer, you know who to ask :)

(btw, did you catch that part for a little while when I was working on a two color bitmapped FPS? :D)


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onarliog: One thing I hated about many classics such as Blood was weapon bobbing which leads to motion sickness. Most modern games completely remove all bobbing effects these days, and you probably should too. At least as an option.
That shouldn't be hard to add. I'll put it on the list.
Post edited January 08, 2016 by jefequeso
Posted January 08, 2016
1: quicksave/load
2: unlimited amount of held weapons
3: awesome melee weapons
4: Cerebral bore style weapon
5: interactive things
6: auto pathing bots that modify movement based on level
-- EG new map bots work fine after building path (see ERASER Quake 2)
7: bot matches because peple suck
8: vertical level design look at Blood and some Duke 3D, Quake is a good example too
9: universal ammo pickups (backapcks of a few of each or certian types)
10: puzzles are fun but not break our mouse and go to gameFAQ's hard
11: bosses that can be a challenge but not frustratingly hellish
-- maybe purposely made exploits to help kill tough ones
12: secret codes for all sorts of things, godmode, ammo, lives, skills, noclip, ETC
13: shitty 8bit loading screens with bad disolves :p
14: BRING BACK MIDI MUSIC!
15: VOX sound files! or other poorly sounding effects (see duke 3d)
16: a story of somesort... sort of the hidden one in Quake 2 with bitterman and the strogg
17: tons of large levels and logically placed keys/cards that highlight after X time (toggleable highlight in menu)
18: grenades or other thrown weapons
19: trip mines or some other mine type weapon
20: rocket jump
21: boobies, badly pixelated boobies (see shadow warrior, duke 3d)
Posted January 08, 2016
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Starkrun: 10: puzzles are fun but not break our mouse and go to gameFAQ's hard
Wimp.
(I actually didn't mean to reply to you, but I had to come up with something to cover my mistake, so decided to say this)
Post edited January 08, 2016 by zeogold
Posted January 08, 2016
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Starkrun: ...snip
21: boobies, badly pixelated boobies (see shadow warrior, duke 3d)
Hahaha, can't beat a bit of pixalated boobies to break up the mindless violence :o)
Posted January 08, 2016
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jefequeso: And hey, if you happen to be in need of a composer, you know who to ask :)
Argh! I'm a composer! I'm a composer!

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jefequeso: (btw, did you catch that part for a little while when I was working on a two color bitmapped FPS? :D)
AAAAARGH!

Nah, of course I'm kidding with my reactions. Although I am somewhat in awe that it's the second time I see you doing a project similar to mine just as I've finally decided to focus on a specific one and got things rolling. :D
Post edited January 09, 2016 by F4LL0UT
Posted January 08, 2016
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F4LL0UT: Argh! I'm a composer! I'm a composer!
Good lord, I know right?

I get regular emails from people offering to write music for my games, and I'm always like "umm... that's literally the one thing I KNOW I can do well." I hate to be on the other end of things, but then that's the only way you even have a chance of finding composition work :P

And then you see all these indie games on Steam with stock music, with this many videogame composers out there scraping for work... *sigh*
Posted January 08, 2016
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jefequeso: I get regular emails from people offering to write music for my games, and I'm always like "umm... that's literally the one thing I KNOW I can do well." I hate to be on the other end of things, but then that's the only way you even have a chance of finding composition work :P
Exact same experience on my end. Even some music duo whose music was featured in Hotline Miami actually sent me an email several months ago offering their services. I wonder how they even found us. I understand that these weird companies offering PR services and stuff for mobile games either use algorithms or buy lists created by other companies to automatically email anyone remotely fitting the profile of their potential customers but I wonder how creative guys end up emailing a company that's published a single and rather unknown mobile game.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWhat would you guys want to see in a modern "retro" FPS(130 posts)(130 posts)
(130 posts)