Topdown mech shooter

[chjacobsen]

I've recently started my first "serious" game development project after poking around with Irrlicht and game development in general on and off for roughly a year. I work professionally as a programmer (mainly Java, Python, PHP and JavaScript), though game development is a new field for me.

I'm making a top-down shooter with a fair amount of RPG elements, somewhat similiar to games like Renegade Ops. It is a genre i enjoy quite a bit, though i've found it hard to find exactly the game i want to see.

The game isn't exactly a blank slate at the moment (~1000 lines of c++), but most of the work has been under the hood, so there isn't much to show right now. Still, here are a couple of plain screenshots which should give an idea about the perspective:


I'm starting to build an editor as well (there are ready-made ones, but i want something that is more tightly integrated with the game):


As there isn't much to show visually yet, i'd like to take a moment to talk about the weapon system, which is where much of my theoretical design-work has gone so far.

Unlike most shooters, the player won't find finished weapons. Rather, the player composes them from 3 types of findable/unlockable components:

Chambers - These are the components that define which type of projectile will be fired. It could be anything from a metal slug or a grenade to a laser beam or a handful of shrapnel. Each projectile type has different attributes, strengths and disadvantages. Each weapon has exactly one chamber.

Nozzles - These are the components determining in what way the weapon will fire. It could be things like rapid-fire, shotgun-style, long-range sniper fire etc. Each weapon has exactly one nozzle.

Addons - These are bonus modifiers, used to give the weapon additional attributes. The bonuses could be simple things like improved range and damage, but also more sophisticated features like piercing bullets, slowing effects or heat-seeking capabilities. The player starts with a limited amount of addon-slots, but as the game progresses more slots will be added.

As a last note, i have a great graphics designer (a friend of mine) who i'm teaming up with to develop games. He's working on his own stuff at the moment, so he won't be a part of the project until further down the line. The bottom-line is, expect things to look quite ugly until he jumps in

I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions. I'll try to posts updates on my progress on a regular basis, so check back from time to time.

[darksmaster923]

Mech game? I'm interested.

Are you planning on making the mechs like the how they are in MechWarrior? More realistic feeling, clunky weapons of doom, or the anime mecha style where they're really agile despite being huge hunks of metal with legs.

[chjacobsen]

Most likely somewhere inbetween. I envision the mechs as being small-ish and designed for exploration of hazardous areas, meaning they would require some mobility yet don't really have to be super-fast. That said, as the game progresses i want players to be able to trade armor for mobility and vice-versa. I intend to add multiple chassis to choose from.

[Cube_]

so, basically completely customizable mechs and weapons?
Me gusta.

[chjacobsen]

Yes, certainly. I love customization, i enjoy tinkering with my character and the game will reflect that. An important design point for me is that equipment should never be outdated. If you just want to use the initial configuration for the whole game, only installing more addons as you unlock more slots, that is fine and i don't think a player should be punished for that. I also want the barrier to change equipment to be low, giving the player a chance to experiment.

[ACE247]

Looks nice for starting posts.
Now all you need is some cool mech models. You could take a look around on Google 3D Warehouse, they are general quite good and should be fine to use. I certainly never had anyone complain
Keep up the good work, would love to see how this improves in the future.

[chjacobsen]

Thanks for the tip
I'm actually thinking about keeping the graphics intentionally simplified for a while. This is something i learned when doing prototypes for websites: If the prototypes are too good looking, people will tend to focus on minor issues, like a button being off-color, rather than looking at the broader picture. That said, i'm probably going to create a couple of very low-poly models in blender and use them, just to get a better feel for the final product.

[ACE247]

You are absoluteley correct about that.
Its like building a car, first the mechanicals of the car have to be made available then the manufacturer can design and style a body to put on it.
However in production these are actually often done in sepparate 'threads' so to say and converge later. So If you're not working solo make an exact plan of what you're going to do and need to implement then you know what code you need to make and what Game media another dude needs to make. Then just glue everything together once both are done. It really streamlines a process.

[Cube_]

now I remembered what this reminded me of! Armored core (PS1 game)
Anyway. I am bookmarking this topic to see what progress is made

[ACE247]

Reminds me of Mech Warrior, Was a superb game back in the 90's
Maybe you can learn something from it, I bet there's lots of Youtube videos.

[chjacobsen]

Alright, a brief update. Doing some more work on the loader and the data formats for maps, units etc.. It's basically a ton of different xml-files storing maps, units, events etc.

These are quite different depending on the data type, meaning it's going to take a bunch of time to get all of the parsing logic done.

In the meantime, i added hotspot-support in the maps. These are essentially rectangular areas (visualized here by a transparent box) which trigger an event when touched by the player. These should be a good help when developing gameplay, for storytelling etc.