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[Wolf_FGR]

Hello there.

YOU CAN SAFELY SKIP THE TEXT UNTIL YOU SEE "STOP SKIPPING HERE" (BOLD AND UNDERLINED):
My name is Wolf (not really, but anyways...) and I'm the guy behind FGR games, chances are (100% of chance as of now) you've never heard of me nor of my cheapo game ""studio"" (Yay!). I've released 2 games on Google Play (a cheapo game made for a 24hs contest and another extremely unsuccessful racing game) and I have 2 games 'in the works' (development is paused atm; the games are Cute Commando (quite decent imho) and Mortal Attack), and since I figured I don't have the minimal required resources to have 'successful' (read: popular) games (that is, lotsa $$$ and(/OR?) friends on social networks/real life), I just gave up altogether on making 'profitable' games and I'm gonna start making a game just for fun! Yay! Good news for you guys!

This is a game I always wanted to make, I have started the first annotations like 9 years ago when I had no idea on how to make non-text-based games.

The game is gonna be programmed in Unity, just in case some big publisher want to pay 'big money' for me to port it to all the next-gen consoles . Due the lack of a decent JS(/US) editor, I'm gonna program it in C# because it's a quite decent language imho that I'm used to. Of course I'm gonna use Unity Free and MonoDevelop because I'm as cheapo as it gets. It's not intentional though, it's just because I don't really have the means ($$$) to be different, so from now on you can always assume that I'm always going the cheapo way, I mean, there's no need to ask me if I'm using 3Ds Max or Blender, it's obvious I'm using Blender. Well... in fact I could be pirating stuff but that's not the case .

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The game is a top-down, one-man army shooter with RPG elements (only skills initially), loosely inspired on the early 'Rambo' movies. It's 3D and it's gonna have lots of enemies simultaneously on the screen, it's not gonna be a "Bullet Hell" kind of game though, the enemies won't be shooting all the time but there are going to be lots of them, so that's why I'm calling it "Enemy Hell" until I find a proper (and copyright safe) name for the game.

The controls are very simple and the challenge is gonna be on the 'response' to what's happening on the screen; fast reflexes and thinking are gonna make a difference, so I need the controls to be as responsive and intuitive as it gets to reduce the frustration.

The game is going to be hard to master but easy to get started. My inspiration for the gameplay balancing are the old NES and SNES games (those were the days!); especially those games that I've started 30+ times and only beaten once . I suck at gaming.

Basically you're a guy on the bottom of the screen, the default controls will be WASD for movement, when you reach 1/3 of the screen vertically (down-up), then the camera begins to scroll up and doesn't scroll back, so you have 1/3 of the screen to move freely, the enemies appear on the scenario, I'm thinking about something like 50+ enemies at once, and you have to kill them (duh!), you aim with the mouse and use LMB to shoot, RMB to throw grenades and space to jump. The character will attack with a knife automatically when the player approaches the enemies (incl. 'death from above' move when jumping on them).

The graphics are gonna be cartoonish with lots of visual feedback for stuff going on.

The game is going to abuse of physics (3d physics), and there are going to have destructible stuff everywhere, the 'cover' system is going to be the most basic possible, you simply have the obstacles and you either jump to shoot over them or run to shoot from their sides. More basic impossible.

I'm not going to reveal a lot about the story because that will break the game for when it's released, and the beta builds I'm gonna post here are not going to have any story parts, just some random levels, they are going to be more like 'tech demos', so once the game is released it's gonna be interesting to play.

I plan to make a very decent 'boss creating system' in a way that I'm gonna use "premade" scripted pieces to make various bosses easily, plus there are some special bosses that are simply going to be, for example, lots of tanks at once, and stuff like that, and since there's no deadline I'm planning to have a large number of 'environments' and bosses, so far I could 'fit' about 50 distinct bosses in the storyline.

The RPG elements/skills (not final) are going to be along the lines of these:
+ movement speed
+ ammo capacity
+ grenade capacity
+ grenade throw distance
+ grenade 'power'
+ consecutive jumps
+ fire rate multiplier
+ damage multiplier
+ aiming precision
+ health

I apologize for not having screens/videos ATM to show you guys.

Thank you for your time.

Random Notes / FAQ:
- Online coop-multiplayer may be introduced in the future.
- Same-PC multiplayer is surely gonna be there! (in the future).
- The next alpha/beta build is gonna be released when it's released. No use asking for it.
- I'm working on this game on my spare time. All C&Cs are very welcome, just be patient please. If you're willing to pay me I'm gonna work full-time on the game, otherwise don't put pressure please.
- I'm NOT going to abandon the game without letting you know. Unless some tragedy happens of course. If there are no frequent updates it's because I have all of these to deal with also: 1- A Day Job, 2- Bills to Pay, 3- A Real Life.
- I'm planning to do everything except the sound effects and musics because I suck at making sounds and music (not even bfxr helps me), I count on free sfx scattered around the web and on my talented friend Kevin MacLeod to deal with that limitation of mine though .
- Q: What exactly are the NES+SNES games that have inspired you? A: Mainly the Contra series. Some shooter games that have really made my days back in the days were: Metroid (NES), Contra 3 (SNES), Jim Power (SNES).
- Moar to come

[Wolf_FGR]

Small Update:

I've managed to put a small, playable prototype together and I'm trying to balance things a little bit... I'm kinda stuck with the maths since I couldn't find a decent way to estimate the 'damage/time' (potential max) of the player because the 'cover system' really makes it hard to get a meaningful number... that's mostly because of the time it takes for the player to actually be shot (because of bullet speed). I've tried adding 'snipers' on watch towers (destructible with grenades), which are able to quickly shot the player if the player is shooting 'over' (i.e. jump+shoot) the cover, but that didn't work as I was expecting.

I'm going to experiment with 'instant bullets' so all the enemies will be able to deal damage to the player immediately... I don't want to mess with the game control responsiveness, for example, a common way to deal with those problems is somehow making a 'cool-down' for jumping, or even making the player stay for some time in a vulnerable position, but that's not the way I want to deal with it. I want the controls to be extremely responsive. I want the player to feel absolutely 'in control' of their little gunman.

I'm thinking of making an AI player in order to balance the game better. I don't know if it's worthy though, in any case I could always use it for the actual game to make AI 'companions' and stuff, and certainly it would allow me to balance the game much better.

Overall the basic mechanics are really taking shape, I couldn't imagine it was going to be so hard to do that though... things that 'unbalances' the game that I'm dealing with atm are:
- Shooting over cover - probably I'm gonna 'fix' this in a few days
- Shooting from the sides of cover and quickly hiding again - I have a few ideas on how to address this, probably the best one is making enemies throw grenades and run there.

The gunfights without covers are really enjoyable imho, I don't know how it's going to be with the insta-bullets, but certainly it's not going to get much worse. I only have to fine tune the accuracy over distance which I'm afraid won't be a linear function.

I know it's kinda hard to understand what I'm saying without pictures/gifs/videos, but so far there's nothing pretty to show you guys, sorry, but once the prototype is working decently (I mean, once the basic mechanics are reflecting the ones I want), I'm gonna post a webplayer demo for you guys to try. I read the Unity plugin doesn't work in chrome any longer though... and afaik html5 is not really an option atm (4.5), so if any of you have any problem I will attach a zipped binary also.

Thank you.