I spent most of high school trying to develop my own game engine, as well as learning new graphics techniques. I spent a ton of time rewriting my engine to have all sorts of shaders and I wasted time trying to design realistic levels and ZBrush sculpted models to match AAA quality. It was certainly a lot of fun and I learned a lot, but as far as the end result was going, I never liked the direction and gameplay and I kept rewriting it.
I think that trying to ground the gameplay mechanics in reality destroys a lot of the fun, and it took me a long time to figure this out. All the games I wanted to play when I was younger were based on modern weapons and movement. However, after playing and mapping for various versions of Quake, and playing Doom, I realized that fast-paced and complex movement mechanics made the game significantly more fun. The game is so much better when you get an arena full of enemies you have to airstrafe and hit with flickshots and various types of aim mechanics (tracking, prediction, hitscan).
The issue is pandering to the lowest common denominator of players and telling a good story. I had a great story I wanted to tell, but adding all sorts of unrealistic mechanics didn't make sense and I couldn't create characters to justify their abilities. I also find it incredibly difficult to get someone into a game that throws all regular movement and guns out the window.
I wanted to go all out with a game using GoldSource type graphics (easier to make), advanced mechanics like Quake 3 movement normally and Quake 1 movement when crouching, and try using machine learning trained enemies or just throwing a million enemies into a room with lots of verticality. Also, I wanted to add VR support, but the movement mechanics would need to be changed because I tried to bunnyhop in VR and I just couldn't find a good way to do that without being distracting.
If you made a game, what mechanics would you add and how would you justify it in the story?
>The issue is pandering to the lowest common denominator of players just don't, problem solved
Charles Wilson
Like I said I changed my mind. Everything is humanoid now.
Evan Sanders
This is my coders are not idea guys. You guys are too autistic for developing games that understand normal humans. Games made autistic devs usually have a loyal autistic fan base. My suggestion don't cater to normies and make a game for people like you.
Parker Sullivan
>story driven quake players are going to be bhopping through the levels before the dialogue can finish playing
Jaxson Sanchez
>Story driven game Stick to kissing boys, faggot.
Juan Smith
I could barely write more than a fancy hello world program in high school. How high is your IQ to be able to write your own engine?
Brandon Phillips
Not everyone was a baka, user. I also wrote my own "engines" in middle and high school. It was zork text adventure shit followed by simple 2d atari tier shit, but still. Never made it to 3d though but thanks to the internet the resources for nerds are out there, easy to find, and easy to follow.
Lucas Powell
I also wrote rough 2D games in my spare time, but it took me years to advance to anything meaningful due to all the motivation-curbing setbacks and hurdles. Anyway. I have an interest in the field as well. Since you're going for a "retro FPS" style game, I'd urge you to take the mindset of a graphics programmer from that era. Use OpenGL 1.x functions and don't just emulate shit with pixel shaders, or at the very least, don't be another "Unity game with standard shaders but with blurry textures, so retro!" I don't remember why, but I wanted to settle for a 2048 vertex-per-object limit. The average Quake 3 model was about half of that.
Isaiah Fisher
Well, firstly. What's the setup? What kind of setting does the game take place in? Because I once had this idea for an FPS that justifies several old school mechanics >The whole hyperspace armory happens because our protagonist is carrying some pretty small guns. And even at that, he's only really carrying 4. >He moves fast because he's in great shape and is a trained long distance runner. >His durability comes from a combination of proper armor and pain tolerance.
His only weapons are >Taurus Revolver >Diablo 12 Gauge >Glock 18 >A handheld grenade launcher. All of these have a lot of upgrades.
Carson Campbell
as in furries?
Austin Powell
>develop my own game engine Why? Why do you try invent wheel again? You could use something existing instead.
Oliver James
t. Tim Sweeney.
Ayden Jones
Why not? there are many reasons you'd want to make your own engine.
Jaxon Morris
>I spent most of high school trying to develop my own game engine Wow thanks for making me feel like shit you little faggot. Hope you never make anything.
John Martinez
>Wow thanks for making me feel like shit you little faggot. Hope you never make anything. Maybe you should try doing _something_?
Jack Ward
I too have thought about reconciling old-school mechanics with realistic settings. The game start outs as a pretty standard tactical shooter, something akin to FEAR. As the game progresses, the player develops beneficial mutations caused by benevolent microorganisms. The movement speed will increase, the recoil will become more tight, and dexterous actions will become lightning fast. I also like Crysis-esque world interactivity, so being able to pick up objects and hurl them towards enemies in case guns aren't an option sounds like fun.
Leo Jones
And the only GOOD reason is to learn more about programming video games. Nothing you can do is going to be better than the already readily available tools that have been both worked on and used by thousands of people far more knowledgeable than you.
Jeremiah Torres
>Everything you do has to compete with the elite out there in the world No.
Jonathan Williams
It's not about competition, ya dingus, it's about not wasting your own time and effort.
Daniel Sullivan
get a build of sdl2 and opengl and you too can make one you fruit.
Ryan Clark
>but the movement mechanics would need to be changed because I tried to bunnyhop in VR and I just couldn't find a good way to do that without being distracting. Bunnyhopping is not an interesting technique, it was just a trick to maintain a higher than normal run speed. Just make the fucking movement speed higher.
Justin Nguyen
>Nothing you can do is going to be better than the already readily available tools You don't need to be "better", ya dingus. It's about creating an engine that suits your needs specifically, not to blow the world away with cutting-edge technology. A world full of nothing but Unreal Engine and Unity games is a soulless one.
Brody Watson
I am sorry but do you know why i don't trying to make my own showel? Because i can use much better tool. Same with your engine. Your engine will never be better than Unity, Unreal or CryEngine. Nice hobby. But if you want people to play your game, use good tools and keep your autism for yourself. It is not 1995 anymore.
Asher Peterson
>Yeah, bro, just go out there and grab an engine license. Nobody wants to play some ugly game with a bespoke engine that tries to look like it's from 1995
Don't get upset because someone else is expressing more ambition than you ever would (or could).
Jayden King
Nothing in OP's idea guy schtick sounded like a generic FPS engine couldn't handle. There's more than just unity and unreal. He also mentioned VR, and that's not something you want to put in the hands of an amateur. I bet you refuse to use software libraries too.
Julian Rodriguez
You play as Powerarmor/Robot/whatever. You can run very fast (80-100km/h), but but it takes few seconds to accelarate/decelerate. You can perform standard or highjump, Depending on level and enemy design you might also have jumpjets (without air control). You have weapon mounted to each of your arm and can fire the both at once. You can switch them with your 2 backback weapons. Total of 4 weapons they follow Q3 archetypes (laser,plasma,rocket launcher, railgun). You also have grenade launcher with dedicated button. You have health, armor and shields. Shield block 100% damage and regenerate but are relatively weak. Armor block 50%.
Story: In a near/distant/whatever future you fight for your nation against other nation. Both nations use powerarmors/robots/whatevers, but your nation is prefers more versatile and surviveable powerarmors/robots/whatevers while enemy nation preferers more specialized and numerous powerarmors/robots/whatevers.
Camden Wood
I feel bad for the Zachtronics guy. Imagine being a smart autist with an engineering background and some pisspoor java dev comes along, steals one of your games and makes billions while you're still slaving away making niche puzzle games that barely sell like TIS100 and Shenzhen I/O
Benjamin Diaz
he wasn't so smart, was he?
Brandon Adams
>Hope you never make anything crabs in a bucket
Benjamin Lewis
I've not once seen a faithful recreation of a Quake-like engine in modern frameworks. Even if you get the look right, there are some small fundamental limitations that prevent them from ever succeeding. Even if you somehow deconstruct Unity or Unreal to the point of resembling something you'd want, you might as well just have created your own engine at that point. Software libraries are fine if they are open. Fuck proprietary shit.
Blake Scott
This. True artists know they don’t have anyone to please except themselves. Only money hungry businessmen care about the audience or making money.
Wyatt Cruz
He runs a successful business making games he enjoys making while Notch tweets constant cringe about how lonely he is, so I dunno about that. His GDC and googletalks presentations are interesting, too.
Austin Davis
I'm doing something similar but like some people told you here, I'm using ue4 because I don't want to reinvent the wheel and I can see this side project taking some years anyway, ue4 is open source, if your knowledge is so vast you can tinker with it to fit your needs
Benjamin Thomas
notch is a faggot but that's not the point one of them saw the potential, it's like bill gates and dos
That's more about knowledge and perseverance than intelligence. And just cause he says he wrote an engine doesn't mean it was a good or even complete engine.
Then OP would be smart to steal Quake and use it instead of making it all himself.
Ian Mitchell
Quake's code is such a great learning resource, certainly more insightful than all the Unity tutorials I have followed combined. I wish more people would base their work on that rather than using a bloated general-purpose solution.
Xavier Ramirez
I agree, he can waste his autism in code that is not there
Oliver Powell
It is not about ambition. It is about wasting time and resources. Best way to never finish your project.
Lincoln Garcia
This. Unity tutorials are only good for understanding what certain built in functions do. The general-purpose solutions and pre-made components that most people rely on is what gives Unity a bad name. They barely offer any room to customize without having to tear the whole damn thing apart. Much better to start from scratch and code your own components IMO.
David Bennett
Neat.
Gabriel Bennett
If you wanna go for an oldschool shooter, make sure there are ZERO hitscanners. Also >Quake style >story driven What?
Hudson Davis
Quake has hitscan enemies. So does Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood etc.
Exactly, and people hated them. Quake 1 was actually decent in that regard because it saved hitscan attacks for only the weakest dudes and the shamblers which could be baited, but remember chaingunners? Or entire fucking Blood? People already were calling out that bullshit design when it first started to appear in games.
David Torres
Hitscanners aren't issue, it's their implementation. Archville is good type of hitscanner because it has telegraphed attack that can be avoided by breaking line of sight. Bad hitscanner is Halo 2 Jackal - one shots you withing few miliseconds of you entering his LOS. Another thing is that if player partially or fully regenerating health, getting few hits from hitscanners here and there doesn't matter in the long run.
That has to do more with enemy/level design than the nature of hitscanning itself. Blood has bullshit enemy placement to begin with.
Samuel Diaz
Screen isn't flashing red.
Nathan Cox
>he was indoctrinated by /g/ before he left highschool think of a good game first get it out in the fastest way you can, don't reinvent wheels
Ayden Collins
Hitscan is only bad if you have no time to dispatch the threat or to conceal yourself. Take a game that pretty much only consists of hitscan enemies like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. A single headshot can take out most enemies or at least daze them, and that gives you ample opportunities to avoid taking damage. If they are tough, you have to be smart and shoot around corners.
Lincoln Gray
>regenerating health stop right there criminal Regeneration is a stupid mechanic that was the consequence of trying to implement enemies with unavoidable attacks. It's a slippery slope of bullshit design that led to the shitty state the singleplayer FPS games are in for at least a decade now.
The single best thing about classic shooters, and the most fundamental thing about what made them good was the perfect balance of health replenished only by pickups (of which there is only a limited amount on a map) and attacks being avoidable if you're good enough. Of course in the 90s the genre was only forming so obviously some mistakes were made, but if you want to pick up where the classics left, you need to learn from those mistakes, not repeat them.
John Hernandez
>Yeah, bro. Just pump out those games non-stop. Don't bother with experimentation and research, we need more metroidvania roguelike soulsborne games out there!
Thomas Adams
>shoot around corners Well, we all did that because we had to, and it was fine game design at the time, but that's barely any different from console cover shooters.
Jonathan Watson
I'm not saying pump out games mindlessly, I'm saying its useless to spend time creating your own engine thats bound to have compatability issues when there are performance friendly alternatives and you don't even have the game fully figured out yet, maybe it might be good for a learning experience but the product will likely be sub sub par
Hudson Nguyen
Except that console cover shooters don't let you pull out a grenade launcher and fire off grenades that can bounce on a wall and land directly on an incoming enemy. Part of the fun of Quake isn't to bunnyhop around all the time, but to assess the situation and think on your feet. Remember that bunnyhopping was an unintended mechanic that only really served arenas. This is what separates Serious Sam from Painkiller. The former retained the "thinking" part of shooters, while the latter went all in on movement and reaction times.
Caleb Young
I mean I would just make something with the actual Quake code if I were you. And I don't mean to rude but things like the game being story driven, trying to keep it realistic and heaving just four weapons in your retro shooter just don't sound like good ideas to me, the things I want from a shooter are things like fun and fast gameplay, interesting environments, enemies and weapons that tie together well and it just seems like you restrict yourself without there being any payoff for me as a player.
