Ideas for FPS games

[Civil War Man]

He said he wanted to play a game where Hannibal Lector would be considered mild-mannered and level headed. Hannibal Lector a sadist who eats people for personal enjoyment.

I have no problem with being evil but there is no slippery slope needed to see that he is suggesting sick over the top shit. So go toss off.

One of the reasons I brought up different Evil paths is that games that tout good and evil endings tend to shoehorn you into certain roles. Good people will go out of their way to help people and refuse the monetary reward, though get it anyway because the people love them so much. The Evil path involves killing people who you have absolutely no reason to kill. Eschewing rewards for instead gouging out the person's eyes. Why? Because you're Evil.

If the game has an Evil Path, you are not allowed to be Darth Vader, the bitter and jaded husk of a Hero who turns to Dark Side because his life was mercilessly destroyed by his own good intentions. Nor are you allowed to play Hannibal Lecter, who may be a psychopath who eats people, but is at least an intelligent and debonair psychopath who eats people. My being the villain suggestion is just that. You are the bad guy. Your various options are simply different methods of being the bad guy. If you want to be a degenerate mouth-breather, that option's open. If you want to be a Fallen Hero, that option's open. If you want to be a guy who eats someone's kidneys while quoting Dostoyevsky, then by all means do that.

And by the way, that was a slippery slope. You were the one who invoked Godwin's Law to say that my statement that there should be a game where someone could play a wide variety of villains (from the sympathetic to the intelligent and all the way up to idiotic sociopathy that's already present in every game with an Evil Path) meant "hur hur Holocaust simulator lol."

[Bilbo]

And by the way, that was a slippery slope. You were the one who invoked Godwin's Law to say that my statement that there should be a game where someone could play a wide variety of villains (from the sympathetic to the intelligent and all the way up to idiotic sociopathy that's already present in every game with an Evil Path) meant "hur hur Holocaust simulator lol."

You did not say that. You clearly said:

Also, there need to be more games where the character is the villain. One where acting like Darth Vader or Hannibal Lecter ranks you as mild-mannered and level-headed on the morality scale

You said nothing about variety. The only thing you said was you wanted to play a character so depraved that Hannibal Lector is a nice guy in comparison. If you want to revise what you said that is fine. But no trying to change it by saying I misunderstood you. Your statement was quite clear and concise.

[chitoryu12]

The use of enhanced movement is definately a plus for any game. Along with movement, terrain destructability can complement that. Think about Battlefield: Bad Company. I see a fence in my way. If I were Gordon Freeman, my gravity gun, rocket launcher, and shotgun wouldn't even put an inch-deep hole in the wood. In Bad Company, I can take my assault rifle and just blast a hole right through it.

You can combine the ability to make your own entrence with freerunning movement. If you see a locked window that you can't just jimmy open, you could run up the opposite wall, turn and grab an overhanging pipe and swing right through the window into the next room. Mirror's Edge has already proven that such movements are easily possible in a first-person game.

[TheMuffinKing]

Words

In addition to this, I'd like to see a tactical shooter that combines a fantastic element ie; aliens, monsters, etc, with something like ghost recon or rainbow six.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Words

In addition to this, I'd like to see a tactical shooter that combines a fantastic element ie; aliens, monsters, etc, with something like ghost recon or rainbow six.

HALO SIX RECON OF WAR

[Big Orange]

I can find playing a heartless character in a FPS palatable if he/she was along the lines of a bent cop, mercenary, or defected agent, not a campy face munching serial killer.

I'd got some guard AI ideas:

There should be regular sentry guards patrolling most of the level (in normal uniforms), with more mobile and aggressive response guards (in SWAT gear) dotted around strategically important areas, ready to hunt you down if the alarm is raised. There should be no artificial spawning where goons pop out of nowhere or pour out of a magical doorway, instead they should be inserted by helicopters or come round in ground vehicles.

Security systems should be as consistant and realistic as possible (most CCTV cameras are linked to a monitor, high security entries to buildings have metal detectors, water sprinklers in every modern building, security doors only opened from the inside, fire doors linked to alarms, drone weapons linked to a control console, key cards that can be locked out etc). You can fashion or improve your own explosive devices that can destroy any manmade structure and displace the landscape (like detonate the side of a small hill to get to the bunker complex inside).

[Singular Intellect]

I can find playing a heartless character in a FPS palatable if he/she was along the lines of a bent cop, mercenary, or defected agent, not a campy face munching serial killer.

Well, I know for a fact that the Alien Versus Predator series games allowed the player to be inhuman monsters that stalked, terrorized, dismembered, beheaded and even eat the human characters.

Given the popularity of that particular franchaise, I don't see why this kind of gameplay suddenly becomes taboo if the character you're playing is a human instead.

[Sarevok]

Well, I know for a fact that the Alien Versus Predator series games allowed the player to be inhuman monsters that stalked, terrorized, dismembered, beheaded and even eat the human characters.

Given the popularity of that particular franchaise, I don't see why this kind of gameplay suddenly becomes taboo if the character you're playing is a human instead.

Actually this should not even be an issue in a FPS game as long as it does not have retarded invincible characters. You could be a paragon saint of peace and justice and yet suddenly pull out a chaingun and start spraying in a part of the level filled with civilian AIs. In a FPS you should be able to kill everything regardless of enemy, civilian or neutral status,

[Trogdor]

I want to mow down a bunch of motherfuckers with absurdly large weapons and relative impunity - preferably in and around a skyscraper. Then I want to fight a grim battle against the unlikely duo of the Terminator and Robocop.

The last level should involve (but not be limited to) multiple robo-Hitlers and a gorillasaurus rex.

That was far too funny to not sig. You, good sir, win.

[MKSheppard]

I'd like to make a FPS based around the concept of the very first Terminator PC game. The Terminator (1990) by Bethesda Softworks. It allowed a 6 x 10 mile area, vehicles you could steal and drive in, you could even rob banks to get money, bust into national guard armories, etc.

A modern remake focusing only on you being a T-800 series terminator sent back to about like 2000 to kill someone would make an excellent FPS.

There would be no pre-set target; just a bunch of random ones coded in by the game designers ranging from a derelict hobo on the street to the Mayor of California's son, etc.

And far from being a kill-a-thon, if good thought was put into it; it would be very fun.

For example, you wouldn't be able to keep up your disguise for long if you simply walked in guns blazing, killing everyone; because your face doesn't regenerate. Oh, I'm sure if you get shot in the cheek by a .45 and you extract the bullet, clean the wound, and bandage it up; your skin will eventually scar over and regrow.

Same thing with a chest shot; you can bandage it up, get new clothes and you're fine. However, if someone shoots you in the head repeatedly, your disguise will no longer be worth anything, I mean, you could cover up a bullet that grazes the top of your head revealing shiny metal underneath by getting a hat of some kind, but massive damage to your biological covering can't be easily explained away; and there would be intense government interest into why a robot of somekind is walking around.

So this would mean no walking into a gunstore full of customers killing everyone, and taking their money and guns; you'd be able to do it, but you'd be shot up pretty badly in the process; and you'd be on camera. However, waiting until night time (we can have a "wait/sleep" function) and then catching up with the gunstore owner as he closes shop, beating his head on the wall, smashing the video camera recorders, and leaving with a few guns out the back door is doable.

Yeah, it would make a bitching sandbox game -- the GTA series is a lot like this; but in order to get the full experience with GTA, you have to go through their bullshit missions to unlock all the good stuff...

EDIT: When I told someone else about my idea and how you could buy things; he said:

"You would have to get money somehow first."

Me: You're a terminator -- walk up to an ATM after stealing a can of spray paint. Spray over the Camera (you've IDed where the camera is on the ATM, you're a terminator, remember how in both 1 and 2, they had extensive diagrams of just about anything). Once the camera is disabled, you punch your fist into the ATM and rip out the money bin...

Also, you'd have an enormous range of options, like if you need to get through a secure door, you could either wait until someone opens the door, then cack him and take his ID card, or you could just kick the door in with your hydraulically boosted strength....

[Civil War Man]

You said nothing about variety. The only thing you said was you wanted to play a character so depraved that Hannibal Lector is a nice guy in comparison. If you want to revise what you said that is fine. But no trying to change it by saying I misunderstood you. Your statement was quite clear and concise.

I had a poor choice of words with mild-mannered, but Hannibal Lecter is not considered one of the greatest villains of all time just because he was some lunatic that ate people. You'd have more of a point if I had used Buffalo Bill instead. Part of what makes Lecter such a compelling villain is that he is intelligent, erudite, and to some (i.e. Clarice) downright friendly.

Another poor choice of words is that when I mentioned a morality scale, I was implying that the game would have one. And the reason I would put Lecter on one side of the scale is that the whole idea of playing the villain is that they are a compelling character that, for whatever reason, performs acts ranging from unpleasant to downright horrifying. The popularity of the Antihero largely is the result of taking someone who would otherwise be a villain and putting them in the role of the protagonist.

And if you still have a problem with me using Hannibal Lecter as an example, would you feel better if I used Magneto instead? Intelligent, cultured, and still villainous. Just replace cannibalism with superpowers and attempted genocide.

[Zixinus]

Before I begin what I want to talk about, I'd like to make a bit of a rant:

Physics. They're not just rag dolls. Bullets don't just go zip and reduce health points. They penetrate stuff. They have velocities, they have trajectories, etc. The 9mm "pea-shooter" and the "Desert Asswhooping Eagle" isn't the only handgun in existence and they don't have just standard munitions.
Also, do more than just an occasional cinematic destruction scene and rag dolls when it comes to physics engine. No, having the equivalent of a gravity gun is still useless. Allow us to destroy the environment. Don't make us stop at a flimsy doorway that looks like it can easily be opened with just by shooting off the hinges. Red Faction had the good idea of destroyable terrain and this should be applied on buildings as well (that's why I'm actually excited about Red Faction 3/Guerilla/whatever despite looking suspiciously like a GTA clone). In Fallout 3, we have mini-nukes at our desposal yet our movements are defined by wooden doors and mere rubble. Stop giving us pseudo-choices and allow us to change the game in a way that actually matters. Stop making rail fences that look like easily destroyed by a pair of wire-cutters, nevermind explosives. Mercenaries 2 allowed us to do that, even if it failed in some other aspects.
Speaking of physics, making enemies more than just animated blocks that occasionally shot at you. Allow them to be knocked out, thrown and finally, crippled. Let a blow to the arm make them unable to USE that arm, let a shot to the groin paralyse them, let a shot to the leg slow them. Most players just try headshots and don't bother with almost anything else, knowing that anything else will only make them lose or just waste time, effort and health.
Dark Messiah and even Oblivion tried to make fighting a more interesting experience. Dark Messiah in particular did stuff that should be more often emulated and followed. It allowed you to kick at any given time, allowed some of your abilities to manifest more deeply (like, making the freeze spell not only freeze enemies but the floor, making fire propegate, allowing enemies to be reduced to ragdolls, etc). This CAN be translated to other games and it should be. If nothing else, it would be much more amusing.

Now, that I'm done with that I have an idea that's been in my mind for a long time and I'd like to share.

Concept on gameplay: make the environment not only influential by you, but also something you work with. A piece of machine isn't just decoration, it is potentially something full of parts for you that you can turn into more useful items. Your most powerful weapon isn't the BFG 9000 but your toolkit. Also, YOU are a tool as well, modifiable just as your gun.

Story: On one of the distant, stable moons on the outer reaches of a solar system is a research centre. The research centre, among many other things, houses an engineer called Sarah O'Neill. Sarah has the bad luck of not only being an exceptionally good engineer but also someone who's "protected" by her father's influence, meaning she can't get the carrier she wanted in the military. Instead of landing a spot on the battleship Heinlein, she ends up as a maintenance engineer on said research station. Granted, its a position that many, many people would cut their limbs for if it wasn't against the requirements (for obvious reasons), so she's only a little bitter about and the station, plus the station is quite comfortable to live on once you get used to it. There is the possibility that she may get involved in some of the ongoing projects.

Of course, as life would have it, a sub-space experiment finds that the channel they want to use for their experiment is already used by a distant power that forces to portal to be remained open. No one knows why, although its possibly a safety precaution, evident by the fact that the moment the experiment hit the crud, various creatures and terrain from the other side were teleported into the station.

Of course, for Sarah this means that the tram she was using falls of its path, killing its other occupants and her. Well, almost. She wakes up feeling odd but uninjured, only to find that a creature is latched on her back. She claws with her fingernails to get it off, but suddenly starts to spasm, loses control of her arms as she takes up a glass shards and to her horror, cuts her wrists. Which heals almost instantly and Sarah is once again in control of her own body, asking aloud whether the thing on her back did it. A voice in her head says "Yes.".

So, that's the beginning of the game. The main problem is to finding out what the hell happened and whatever else you want. As luck would have it, the lab you need to go to is literally on the other side of the moon. You can go and find survivors and help them. You can even send a distrall call, however any help will take months to arrive. You can look into the other projects of the station and try to make something of them. You can even take a stroll on the outside surface of the moon.

You will also find out that the thing on your back and what gives you regenerative abilities is sentient and talkative after a while, whom Sarah names Squid. You learn that Squid is a member of an artificial race made to adopt to various (artificially sentient) lifeforms and serve as medic, medicine and nurse all in one. It is sheer luck that he was able to latch unto you, thus saving not only your life, but his. He will also comment on various stuff, simply by looking at something and pushing a key on your keyboard.

Gameplay in general: the key to the game is that your shotgun is not your greatest weapon. Your belt full of futuristic tools are, filled with wonderful things that would require an entire workbench in the real world. And everything infront of you is potentially a component, looking at the world trough an engineer's eyes rather than Space Marine 44234HEERB's. This being an isolated research station, there are very few "real" weapons in the game and security guards are mostly issued tasers (with a few exceptions of course, most not accessible). However, being a good engineer possessed by the mother of invention, that will not stop you. A coat-hanger can be easily turned into a spear by a little saw-work. With salvaging a few things, you can even turn that thing into a cattle-prod that you can overpower as much as you like (or more simply, have Sarah have a "stun", "pain" and "kill" setting for the thing). Modding occurs by doing mini-games, ea, sawing means actually moving the mouse up and down a few times. Wire-cutting means applying pressure to the wire with your knife to expose hit and then splicing it to another component.

Obviously, you will be looking for general parts. From an average desk up computer, you can salvage the power supply, some wiring but not that much else (Sarah will obviously not start making taking apart boards to make new circuits on the fly). Sarah will also refuse to temper with systems she doesn't know what they do, so you will have to download data on your computer to know what you are tempering with.

There are survivors. Obviously, not everyone needs rescuing. However, there are a sufficient number of people whom if you go out your way to rescue or help, will make the game easier later on or help you access cool stuff. Security personal will give you passcodes, keycards (which almost everyone can give) privileges to access the security systems and even occasionally some weapons (for which you will have limited ammo, but you can mod to your heart's desire). Scientists will give you passcodes, but also information that you couldn't get otherwise. Other engineers can give you architectural data, components and you are getting the idea. Some characters may start supporting you later on. Of course some will annoy you and some will even treat you like shit, which you can react. Of course, you will have to convince these people that you are not turned into the mindless puppet of an alien parasite first.

Speaking of which, Squid can not only help you regenerate but tweak with your body as well, although you will have to severely increase your food intake for that. For this reason, food is health and medical kits are only marginally useful, even then, only for specific purposes. Tweaks include higher adrenaline/endorphins/whateverthing production, allowing you slow-mo or temporarly more health. You can even gain night vision by looking at the world with the eyes on the thing on your back. A very extreme example, is having an organic space suit (a process helped by cutting up an actual space suit and other various components) that you can walk the surface of the moon with (not for long, obviously).

Your health isn't just a number and there is no HUD (however your hand computer provides you will allot of useful information). Your health is a measurement of blood quantity, bone and flesh integrity and pain tolerance. That's right, pain. Get too much pain and you might find yourself with less control over yourself, blurred vision and even unconscious, which may or may not result in death. Hunger is an issue too. You can eat almost anything and you should, as any surplus will be stored in fat that you can use later on.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that your enemies are not monsters from outer space. They're animals, driven dangerous by suddenly appearing in a new, alien environment. You will have to dispose of them or at least get around them. Some animals are more dangerous than others, some are predators, some are panicking prey and some are just dumb insects that are dangerous either way. Your taser will serve you only so well, unable to effect animals either too small or too big for it. You can bait them away, you can calm them, you can just hide or run from them or you can even kill them. The player shouldn't be punished for killing them, even rewarded with meat that Sarah's modified stomach can process as food.

That's it. A weird RPG with some FPS elements. It's not meant to be a horror game and I don't want to see it like that. It's meant as a sci-fi game.

[Big Orange]

To make a level more like a sandbox, the NPCs should have their own daily routine, like guards off duty hang around their barracks or a recreation block, patrol teams go about on broader patrol cycles, guards take turns guarding areas on rotation, etc. One way of getting into a heavily guarded compound situated in a remote town is to wait around a few days for some maintenance replacement to shack up in a nearby cheap hotel, you quietly sneak in, kill him/her, then assume his/her identity (with a Mission Impossible style face mask) and have his/her clearance levels to go into the guarded compound (you could go into restricted areas and crawl spaces without raising much suspicion).

[Pulp Hero]

I had an idea, though it might be better as a third person shooter. Basically its a 'Terminator' game where you play as a Skynet Terminator.

It is a sandbox game set in Burbank/LA, maybe into Vegas and Mexico. You start off with missions to pick of minor human resistence leaders and assets. Each mission completed opens up more programming that shows more targets.

For some targets or assets it is fairly straight forward: Bust in and shoot up the place. For others though, it requires a little more detective work. Like there are three people named "John Smith" and you have to kill one who will be a future leader. If you do the "kill by phonebook order" it will work, but with each mistaken killing, the real target gets more alert. Thus, you have to use snippets of known info to match the targets.

As a Terminator, most current weapons do not damage you- an NPC can fire an MP5 at you all day and you won't go down. But you have an "infiltration meter" that gauges both actions and appearance- the more shot up you are, the harder it is to walk around unnoticed. You can repair your skin by "sleeping" but you lose time and a target might gain distance or escape entirely, forcing you to skip to the next one.

[MKSheppard]

Uh, Pulp, didn't I just write that a few posts above?

[Pulp Hero]

Oh, wow. Holy shit. I honestly didn't read that before I posted my idea. I've had Terminator on the brain from a TSCC marathon. Wow.

[MKSheppard]

Oh, wow. Holy shit. I honestly didn't read that before I posted my idea. I've had Terminator on the brain from a TSCC marathon. Wow.

No problem. Such a game would be a breath of fresh air in the entire FPS gaming industry, which has come full circle to where it all began, nearly 15 years or so ago.

Back in 1993/1994, the stupid tricks and conventions like "Monsters will always be hiding behind secret doors in a FPS and leap out when you come by" among others, were acceptable since the overall game environment was still very new, and consisted of small teams of people programming, so there wasn't a lot of funding or time to think things through.

However, we've had about 500~ FPS games since Doom, and at least 5 X-COM Clones since then to see what works and what doesn't. So it's annoying to see multi-million dollar, multi-year productions created by a team of dozens, if not a hundred people, come back to the same basic simplistic gameplay and mechanics that were fresh in 1993, but by now are just tired, such as "no matter how many people you kill, the AI will just keep blundering in."



That was acceptable in Mid-1993, when the top of the line computer was a Pentium 60, maximum memory was what, at most 8-16MB, and hard drives were at best 100~ MB. You had a lot of overhead for the graphics and sound engine in your memory overhead, so there wasn't a lot of room for advanced AI.

However, since then, overall memory has just exploded; we've got video cards on the general market with 1 gigabyte of RAM for reasonable prices ($200 or so), and you now have 2 GB of RAM available (max you can get with Win XP). So what excuse is there for stupid AI like in the picture above?

How hard is it to code in a simple "death spot", e.g the game keeps track of where people died, and when the death count goes above x, the NPCs don't go anywhere near it, but instead, take up position at nearby doorways and wait you out, or call in a tactical team to clear you out instead of blundering in one by one?

[Big Orange]

MKSheppard, I whole heartedly agree with you in regards to the relative lack of self-preservation seen in enemy NPCs. Why should you have fifty people blunder into the doorway and end up a big pile at your feet? Here is a good example of AI being suicidal. Why wouldn't they just pull back and start lobbing grenades/launching rockets at your cubby hole?

[The Romulan Republic]

MKSheppard, I whole heartedly agree with you in regards to the relative lack of self-preservation seen in enemy NPCs. Why should you have fifty people blunder into the doorway and end up a big pile at your feet? Here is a good example of AI being suicidal. Why wouldn't they just pull back and start lobbing grenades/launching rockets at your cubby hole?

Maybe because if you make it too hard the average gamer will just be frusterated and give up? Sadly these games are made by bussinesses, and if they have to dumb down the AI to keep stupid customers, they will.

[MKSheppard]

Here is a good example of AI being suicidal.

I hear Valve knows how to make FPS games, *I'm a smarmy asshole*?

That's just sad, really. First couple of guys I can understand, but the other 40?

[MKSheppard]

If you do the "kill by phonebook order" it will work, but with each mistaken killing, the real target gets more alert.

Don't forget that the police will notice this, and put a lot of backup on the remaining John Smiths, or put them in a police safehouse. And wild massacres won't be as easily escaped as in the original Terminator. We've advanced a lot since 1984 in mass media communications. You can bet your ass that within 5 minutes of you depressing a trigger on a police station to kill John Smith and 34 other cops; your visage will be splashed across every PDA, TV, Computer monitor, etc in the state.

You can repair your skin by "sleeping" but you lose time and a target might gain distance or escape entirely, forcing you to skip to the next one.

I was thinking of having that repair only work for minor problems, like gunshot wounds to your extremities or chest area. Getting shot in the face would be much more damaging, it's not like your fake eyeball can regrow itself....

"Sir, why are you wearing sunglasses at 1 in the morning?"

*list appears*

FUCK YOU ASSHOLE
I HAVE A EYE CONDITION
BECAUSE I'M THAT GODDAMN COOL. <-----------

"Because I'm that goddamn cool."

"Sir, I'll have to ask you to remove them..."

*squeezes rent-a-cop's heart from his chest*

[The Romulan Republic]

I wonder what the chances are that we'll get a new Terminator game with the new movie coming out?

[MKSheppard]

I wonder what the chances are that we'll get a new Terminator game with the new movie coming out?

It'll be a lame movie-tie-in game if there is one.

[Pulp Hero]

I'm trying to think in game design terms, what would be hard, but not frustrating.

Of course with more out of the ordinary behavior you have a harder time infiltrating, and would have to resort to lies like that. But rather than having a player have replay a mission over and over because they can't make it through sucks. Instead a branching mission system like some games have would be better, where if you fail with a target at one location, you have to go back to your base, repair, and either re-play the same mission OR continue the story by playing a mission based on your failure.

[The Romulan Republic]

I wonder what the chances are that we'll get a new Terminator game with the new movie coming out?

It'll be a lame movie-tie-in game if there is one.

Probably. Also, given the movie is about the future war itself, it might be more suited to an RTS than a FPS.