New version up on the webplayer link:
http://t-machine.org/web/WebPlayer-jumptest/WebPlayer.html
Proving quite fun just playing around with it and testing different jumps:
Two jumps in a row using the same algorithm, but it aims your jump based on where you’re looking when you hit the spacebar. In this case, second jump I flicked the mouse up at last moment before jumping, giving a higher/longer arc:
In a physics-based engine, there’s many ways to make a character “jump”. For my 7-day FPS entry, I’m trying to work out the perfect jump for my gameplay. Easier said than done. I’m struggling…
Before I go looking for feedback and suggestions, I thought it would help to make a demo showing the things I’ve been trying-out.
Unity webplayer link to try the examples below
Instructions: wait till you land on skyscraper, then hit a number key to select a jump type, and get jumping (spacebar).
Note: if you fall, no problem, it’ll auto-respawn you after a couple of seconds of falling
Just gathering links here as I find them or remember them … useful things on FPS design, FPS coding, FPS art, etc.
(I’ve never written an FPS before, so … everything/anything in the way of research is useful!)
Specific to my game:
Things I had to do to fix Unity long-standing bugs (that Unity has declared they’ll never fix). Most of these copy/pasted from my “Fix Unity Bugs” folders in other Unity projects ;)…
Next week is the 7DFPS challenge – design, code, ship a game in 7 Days, on the theme of “first person shooter”. I want to do something unique and interesting. Here’s one of my ideas.
(if you like this idea, please re-tweet this to vote for it – I’ll decide which to do based on which one(s) people like most) Other ideas: “Runners”, “Follow”)
Premise: what makes an FPS unique/special among games is the visceral, immersive nature.
But our FPS’s today all project the same, boring, 1:1 flat rectangle as our window on the world.
What if we had eyes on the side of our head? (a la most herbivores – you can see to both sides, and halfway behind you – but have a blindspot dead-ahead. This is why some birds flick their heads left and right all the time – they physically can’t look directly ahead!)
What if you were a Beholder – with 360 simultaneous vision. Looking ahead, behind, up and down all at once?
What does the world look like when your camera is 2 inches off the ground? (a rat’s-eye-view) … or upside-down, attached to the ceiling? (a spider’s…)
In Metamorphosis, you start in a lab with one way out: a small mouse-hole in the skirting-board. A theft gone wrong, a wizard about to catch you “in flagrante”. You have only one chance: a giant bubbling flask labelled “Rat”. You gobble the potion, dive through the hole, and escape.
…but now you’re a rat, loose in a dungeon full of nasties. Absolutely everything out there is bigger, meaner, and (often) uglier than you. And sadly: loot won’t be much good, since you’re too small to wear armour, and have no hands to hold a sword.
It’s a dungeon-hack with a difference: you’re looking for magic potions that metamorphose you into new and useful creatures. When you metamorphose, everything changes:
An old friend of mine wrote a real-time 360-degree FPS projection 15 years ago, and kindly dug out his original source code + demo app for me. With his permission, I’ll post it here ASAP, but suffice it to say: this stuff is doable, it may sound a bit crazy, but I’ve experimented with it (a little) before.
…entirely dictated by the creature you’re currently polymorphed into.
I like this idea because:
Next week is the 7DFPS challenge – design, code, ship a game in 7 Days, on the theme of “first person shooter”. I want to do something unique and interesting. Here’s one of my ideas.
(if you like this idea, please re-tweet this to vote for it – I’ll decide which to do based on which one(s) people like most) Other ideas: “Follow”, “Metamorphosis”)
Premise: what makes an FPS unique/special among games is the visceral, immersive nature. How many Oculus Rift games are not first-person?
One thing FPS’s should be particularly good at is wish-fulfillment. Well, something I’ve “wished” I could do ever since seeing the opening sequence of The Matrix … is superhuman jumps from rooftop to rooftop. (YouTube: the ‘jump’ program and YouTube: the opening sequence)
(I especially like the second clip – this is the point at which we first get proof that the film can’t quite be real; it’s the first leap down the rabbit-hole…)
Runners is simply an excuse to do desperate, death-defying, running jumps from rooftop to rooftop, while being shot at (and shooting back).
That’s it!
Moment to moment during the game, the player has the following decisions:
Three conflicting tensions (no upgrades in this one! Just choice of weapons):
I like this idea because:
Next week is the 7DFPS challenge – design, code, ship a game in 7 Days, on the theme of “first person shooter”. I want to do something unique and interesting. Here’s one of my ideas.
(if you like this idea, please re-tweet this to vote for it – I’ll decide which to do based on which one(s) people like most) Other ideas: “Runners”, “Metamorphosis”)
Premise: what makes an FPS unique/special among games is the visceral, immersive nature. Almost every *other* genre of game gives you 360-degree vision. This was originally to compensate for the way “a computer” fails to use most of your human “peripheral” senses (depth, perpheral vision, positional sound, etc). The most obvious difference with FPS’s: you can’t see what’s behind you.
In most FPS’s, you only have to worry about your own skin. You spin around frequently to check no-one is sneaking up on you. You strafe round corners so that a head-on enemy doesn’t get a chance to blindside you as you slowly rotate around the corner. Stealth games let you “lean” to make up for the danger of corners.
Follow is different: you are invulnerable, and you’re being followed by creatures you’re trying to rescue / lead to safety. Because they’re always behind you, you cannot see when they’re being attacked – you can gun down all opposition, then turn round to find out everyone’s been eaten behind your back.
But if you walk backwards everywhere, you’re bound to fall off a cliff, or run into an enemy and only notice it when your followers go down in a hail of fire.
Moment to moment during the game, the player has to compromise between the following tensions:
Three interwoven upgrade paths:
At end of each level, you get cash in a virtual currency based on how many followers you rescued, how quickly – and how much they like you.
(if you got them to the end by bullying … they won’t like you so much as if you gently nudged throughout)
Potentially: various unique weapons only “unlocked” when you achieve difficult non-shooting things, e.g.:
Ideally, those weapons would be complementary to the achievement. e.g. for the “complete a level fast” award, you’d get something that made it easier to complete levels stealthily (you’ve already mastered “moving fast”, so this gives you something valuable).
…also: if you don’t like playing fast, this gives you a high cost/reward incentive to do so: you want to play stealthily, you want the uber-weapon for stealth … so you need to take a break from stealth-play to go earn it.
I like this idea because:
