Hypothetical game.

Technology and Gaming
#1

The past few weeks, I’ve been brainstorming over what sort of gameplay aspects could make a decent game, generally pondering newbie questions, what have you. You at the BM Forums have proven very insightful, and I’d like to propose something to you guys.

This is a gameplay idea to be used in a hypothetical FPS, zombie-survival game, based on 2-player co-op, and realism:

Each weapon has a designated number of magazines with a specific capacity, and each player carries a supply of reserve bullets for each ammo type. When the player picks up ammo, the bullets do not appear in your magazines for your immediate use, but are stored in your reserve pile.

Now, the SMG and Handgun share 9mm ammo, but each use 6 specific magazines. When you feel that any of those magazines have become too empty for your comfort, you have to refill them manually with 9mm bullets from your reserve. However, this takes a realistic ammount of time, leaving you temporarily vulnerable. During this ‘advanced reload’, or whatever, your partner has to cover you for a minumum 20 seconds, and if you’re attacked, the process slows down to half speed for about a second.

It’s a pretty simple idea, and just a little feedback would be great. IMO, it would add to the realism, this being what you would actually do when using firearms in real life, and would add a cooperative element, of you being fully dependent on your partner for 20 seconds. However, some players might not have the patience for such a grueling process, and may find it boring and/or agonizing.

But I’d like to hear your opinion.

#2

I think that would be too slow for a coop game, personally. A realistic zombie survival shooter would be awesome though, and this idea would be a cool one Imo.

But it would have to be for a slow game, where each enemy actually means something instead of a fast paced, break 800 baddies without breaking a sweat sort of deal. I would assume a mostly Melee game, with firearms being a special, very big deal.

#3

Actually, it would be roughly in the style of a L4D, large-scale infestation of running zombies. I guess ‘breaking 800 baddies’ is pretty accurate. The player characters are civilians who salvage weapons, and keep the same set of guns on them at all times, like real-life soldiers, but the way you salvage the ammo to keep the guns useful works like a linear FPS, finding bullets as you go.

But, to address the problem (derp) L4D rather successfully incorperated reliance on your partners with things like Healing and Reviving. This game could introduce Ammo Sharing, encouraging players to be beaurocratic with their bullets, and forcing them to do MATH (mwahaha)

#4

I think the idea is solid, the only things i would personally like to point out is that even the fastest magazine loaders take a lot more than 20 seconds to reload a magazine. Let’s say for instance you have yourself a Glock 18 with a double stack magazine. Those double stack magazines hold 23+1 rounds. You’re looking at a minimum of a 2-3 minute reload time by hand.

Like rot said, you’d have to make it so that killing an enemy actually meant something then tier that so that by the time you reached an overwhelming number you could incorporate speed loaders, and specializations requiring some form of talent point distribution and complex strategies so that if you had 3 people on a team, you always had 2 dedicated to shooting and 1 dedicated to reloading magazines.

Like i said the idea is a great one and the game would be awesome but you’d be limiting your market to hardcore realism gamers. I would certainly play it.

#5

Hmm… that could fall into an awkward RPG area. The game is pretty strictly about two characters surviving through a linear storyline with a definate ending (think Portal 2 co-op meets L4D campaigning marathon)

I think the best way, and least cumbersome way that wouldn’t exclude an audience, is to have the characters each with an identical gameplay experience, and each mutually reliant in the other, admittedly similar to L4D (you know, like a game for married couples :3) This is acheived by the exclusion of ‘Special Infected’ who subtract one entire team member form your force, with generic zombies, 2 fighters is sufficient. But the dependency is built in not only Ammo Filing, but in healing your partner faster than he can heal himself, and generally watching eachother’s flanks.

#6

I had a similar idea to this. Basically, it boiled down to a super-realistic single player survival horror game. Bullets reloaded manually, inventory consists of remembering what you put in your pockets, there would be hidden calculations for accuracy based on fear, exhaustion, etc…

Anyway I think the point I originally wanted to make is that I think what you’re proposing is cool, but I think it’s a little too simulation-esque that it might suck the fun out of an otherwise fun FPS. Adding realism is great and all but at some point you have to realize that all realism is arbitrary in a video game. Hampering a standard-type game with a non-standard limitation would probably not go over so well. However, I think a game that specifically markets itself as being ultra-realistic and then lives up to it could be successful. Or at least cool. Well, thats my 2 cents anyway.

#7

I can see how this would work. and successfully at that.

A game like the one i was outlining would be 100% dependent on it’s niche appeal and it’s ability to deliver to that niche. The game that squirrel is outlining would be much easier to market, but you’re right, there is a fine line between enough and too much

#8

That’s all well and good, but I never said it was an ULTRA-realistic game ;-; Just one that incorporates real-world math in a way so that bullets don’t magically appear in your gun, and you’re not lugging around 17 Glock mags in your anus.

Realism is used rather lightly, to justify some of the parts of conventional FPS-ing that baffle anyone who really knows how fighting works. The realism would not be used to an excessive state that would be a detriment to a fun experience, just enough to support it’s own feasibility.

#9

Well, it’s certainly feasible. It’s difficult to judge an idea’s mass appeal until you actually start playtesting however. Some ideas seem great on paper but totally turn out to just not be fun when playing. It’s also hard to tell what people mind and what they don’t. So who knows? I’d want to play just for the novelty factor. I’d just worry that it might turn out like Mirror’s Edge, where new mechanics added to an existing kind of game ended up being cool but somewhat frustrating and ended up not doing so hot. Although ME was kind of a cult hit, so that’s not bad.

#10

I’m not sure it would necessarily be survivable if you’re going ultra-realistic with L4D-style running zombies and slow reloads. Here’s some suggestions, if you’d like.

Depending on the type of weapon you’re using, reloading a gun can take anywhere between 3 to 30 seconds, but reloading the magazines will take a few minutes. You don’t seem sure about which you want to focus on, i.e. one magazine that reloads slowly, or a number of magazines that can be changed quickly but need to be replenished once they’re all out (which could present difficult pacing problems depending on how much ammo players waste). If you want a good example for how this can be done, play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. This has a very good inventory/health system with no HUD at all.

Secondly, there’s a reason that most zombie films that have some survivors end up with only one or two - a zombie apocalypse is incredibly dangerous. If you’re going for super-realistic, then you ought to have a time limit (e.g. two hours, though the limit could be justified depending on the nature of the infection) from the first time you’re bitten to finishing the game. This would allow for healing to avoid immediate death, but still give players a real “keep it away!!” feeling. If you were to go along the lines of Dead Rising 2, then the vaccine would have to be very rare, and you’d have to explain why it’s not a one-shot vaccine.

Thirdly, you need to be careful about the number and types of zombies. Personally, I don’t like the ‘special’ types of zombies found in games from a medical viewpoint, but it can help with pacing. However, if you’re going to have a realistic zombie game, then I’d reccommend having either fast zombies or a lot of zombies, not both. This would just make the game too hard, in my opinion, if you’re focusing on realism. The films 28 Days + Weeks Later show how hard it would be to have a realistic chance of surviving with fast zombies about, especially with large numbers.

All in all, I really like the idea of having a realistic zombie survival game, but you need to be careful about the gameplay if you want to make it realistic but achievable. However, I absolutely love the idea that you can heal your team mates faster than you can heal yourself, because it’s very realistic and a nice co-op touch.

TL;DR: 1 - balance the reloading, 2 - balance the infection time, 3 - have either lots of zombies or fast zombies, not both.

#11

My best game ever: Assassin’s Creed meets Elder Scrolls.

#12

I used to find loading rifle magazines to be a tedious experience in real life :stuck_out_tongue:

What would the player do while loading magazines? Sit and watch an on screen animation? A repetitive quick-time event? If you remove the tension, say the player reached a safe area, it would be a case of hitting reload and going to put the kettle on while it finishes.

Juggling magazines would be a good way to ratchet up the tension. It might be a bit difficult to have to select a magazine in the middle of combat though. Which magazine would the reload key select? Would you have to go through a menu? Usually spent mags (usually mostly empty) get chucked somewhere like down the front of your jacket for safe keeping, so you don’t waste too much time or accidentally pick up an empty one

#13

make a mod of L4D where it takes 3 minutes to reload your gun and while you’re reloading melee attack is disabled. and see how fun it is. answer: not fun at all.

i think a realistic zombie survival FPS is a great idea. i’ve got a pet brainchild hyper-realistic FPSRPGthing bouncing around in my head. the problem with this though is that it sounds like L4D with added frustration.

what you want is for the game to work WITH this functionality. slow zombie would work better and it would add some atmosphere. L4D is a very fast paced game and to add something that slows down gameplay, it would be difficult and frustrating.

imagine it though: two players running through a city. it’s been relatively quiet so far. dusk is starting to settle and long, black shadows are cast over the city streets. they click on their flashlights and see, further down the street, a hundred shambling masses lurching around a pair of overturned police cars.

they close in and open fire, trying to cut a way through the horde. out of the alleyways around them shamble dozens more moaning undead. they’re closing in; the players are trapped. for every abomination they drop two step forward to take it’s place.

player B drops his last mag; he’s empty. he shouts “hang on! i’ve gotta reload!” and player A switches to his Benelli M3 and starting covering player B as the horde begins to arrive.

that would be intense and fun as hell. in your version i think players would forego weapons like pistols and SMGs for bolt action rifles and shotguns, making the ammo system pointless. that, or they’d drop a pistol or SMG after all the clips have been used and grab a different weapon, or use melee until they found a full gun. although that would be cool too.

tl;dr: in order to have a fun game you have to play to the advantages rather than just add more difficult obstacles for the players overcome, which leads to frustration. if you’re going to try something new, it helps to try out other new things to balance it and help it not feel simply tacked on.

#14

Okay, this might be a little hard to grasp, but I never mentioned hyper-realism…

A huge part of what allowed me to appreciate L4D is that the zombies were living humans infected with a viral pathogen. This makes for supportable science fiction.

As for a Dead-Rising style ‘cure’… realistically, impossible. Like L4D, the only reason the 2 survivors are still alive is because they are immune. It’s not just bites, people don’t take into account that blood-splatter and phlegm would just as easily cause infection. Sci-fi, people… Undead zombies are completely absurd.

The zombies in my game are fast, because the virus causes uncontrollable aggression, pretty much turning everyone into L4D Common Infected. Human mortality, easily killed individually, and each just as big a deal as in L4D.

As for L4D’s ingenious use of Special Infected that required 4 players to overcome, I’m at a loss for any mutated zombie beastie that could threaten a pair of survivors… anyone?

Like I said, the point of the ammo-bureaucracy is just another way to make the couple reliant on each other. It would work like the L4D ‘Healing Yourself’ progress bar. It’s not to be simulation-esque at all, just to be an added obstruction, like L4D’s Healing, Incaps, and helping your teammate up from a ledge.

BTW, would it help if I proposed the initial base premise of the game to you guys? In retrospect, it could have cleared a lot of things up… and add some interest.

#15

See, I think you should have said this first:

Instead of this:

I think that’s why we were kind of hung up on the idea that the purpose of this was to add to the realism of the game.

With that said, I think it’s a good idea, as long as you keep it relatively short, so that it doesn’t cripple the team. If you happen to get a chance, go back and play L4D again, and this time, count every time you and one other person reloads. Once you get an idea of how often people are going to have to do this, I think you’ll get an idea of what would be an acceptable duration for the magazine reloading. Personally, I think you’d probably have to trim it down to around the time a L4D heal/revive takes at maximum, so that you won’t end up with situations where players have to go into a corner and spend 10 minutes while they reload all their magazines.

#16

Undoubtedly :{D

#17

When it comes to zombie games, I personally feel that there’s very little middleground between realism and gun-fun (in lack of a better word). Combined, the outcome is often very lacking- having some of this, and some of that, and you get a very mediocre experience.

I believe that if you’re going to make a realistic zombie survival game, you should focus on the “survival” part, and take a couple of steps away from games like killing floor and left 4 dead.
Recently, I started playing Project Reality, and the realism is mindblowing. If the circumstances are right, then sitting around doing nothing for 20 minutes is still fun, because it’s part of a larger experience.

My own idea of realism in zombie survival games, is having a open world in which your main objective is to survive, not to fight zombies.
Finding other survivors, food, clothes, ammunition, weapons, shelter, and avoiding infested areas as often as possible.
With focus on things like barricading a flat to open up a safe zone where you can safely reload magazines, eat and drink, and just enjoy the company of other survivors.
But that’s something that usually doesn’t sell, because people generally don’t appreciate the concept of “being idle” or “avoiding combat”, since apparently, if you have a gun, you MUST use it!

Perhaps I’m delusional when I tell myself that “a game offering these things, would be utterly amazing!”, but I stand by it. Every FPS game is pretty much the same. You point your gun and shoot it, and that’s the apex of your gaming experience. I want more!

#18

I think I may not have been using correct terminology in my OP.

I meant realism as in, this is what what you’d really have to think about when you’re facing a life-or-death situation. It’s a linear story, where the characters take into account what paths they have to take to avoid the growing hordes, what their plans for escape are, where they intend to try to be rescued, that sort of thing, all presented in a context that adds gritty and painful truth behind a normally childish subject.

The couple just fought through a city thick with infestation, but the chopper’s overrun before they get there. They fight through hell to acquire a boat to escape on, but they eventually have to return to shore because they don’t have enough food for a long journey. The gameplay itself is close to standard FPS stuff, so no eating or sleeping in-game, but the deeper conflicts are presented outside of gameplay. It’s meant to be thoughtful, and to add almost an element of human-interest to the story, like ‘World War Z’ by Max Brooks.

I’m considering making the two protags a couple of sixteen-year-old gaming nerds, who thought the apocalypse would be fun. But the infection’s effect on the world was too much for them to handle, or even predict. That’s how a real apocalypse would be, and I guess that’s what I mean. O_o

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.