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[Theophilus]

Today's shooters all seem normal, and the same. Not very different in any way. And with the shooter being a very popular genre, we can't have that. Sure, there are different weapons and enemies, so the core of the similarities is not in this, but the method of killing: Shooting. Shooting your enemies is common to... you guessed it, 11 shooters all shooters. I believe we must make the methods of shooting different in order for our games to be individual games. What ways can we do this? Shooting games are so simple to make because they're classified down to a science. Most if not all competent programmers have taken to heart the way to create a 'cookie-cutter' shooter This is further dumbed down when you make a zombie shooter. Why is this?

In this thread we will discuss methods of making shooters different, as far as the shooting aspect.

I will start out.  My method is making the shooting seem realistic. This seems like a no-brainer, but in reality many games do not practice this method of difference. This can include...

• Bullet drop
• Recoil (You may want to include a 'recoil skill' that sharpens the player's ability to handle such weapons.)
• Weapon jams
• Overheating
• Muzzle flashes and bullet holes (Fairly common)
• Destruction of objects by way of bullets.

The list can go forever.

I'm anxious to hear your suggestions!

[mirosurabu]

When I think about shooting mechanic my mind goes blank. Is there really much to experiment in this field?

I mean, mechanically, it's just your realistic gun minus realistic details that tend not to add anything to the gameplay. This means the defining features are bullet type, magazine type, reloading time, range, fire-rate and scope. Add more and you'll ether sacrifice fun or make balancing a nightmare.

Bullet drop would, for example, introduce an effect that is hard to balance against and it's particularly not so fun. Recoil wouldn't make much sense unless, of course, your character has statistics, but, then, we are speaking of a different type of shooter. Weapon jams, hmmmm... These kinds of details are sometimes useful for balancing the game, but they are generally not fun per se. So, maybe, if you have a bunch of off-balanced guns, you can add this "jam chances" property to balance them. The same applies to overheating.

When it comes to relation between shooting and world i.e. what does shooting do to the world then yeah, there might be some room for innovation here. Portal proves this.  

[gimymblert]

When I think of run/aim/shoot
Run and aim relate to shoot through positioning.
Therefore I would made a higher emphasis on positioning by bringing semi automatics movement (think assassin's creed) to increase complexity of environment. Weapon would be function of positioning and movement (ballistic, heat seeker, line of sight, sticky, etc...).

[Theophilus]

When I think about shooting mechanic my mind goes blank. Is there really much to experiment in this field?

I mean, mechanically, it's just your realistic gun minus realistic details that tend not to add anything to the gameplay. This means the defining features are bullet type, magazine type, reloading time, range, fire-rate and scope. Add more and you'll ether sacrifice fun or make balancing a nightmare.

Bullet drop would, for example, introduce an effect that is hard to balance against and it's particularly not so fun. Recoil wouldn't make much sense unless, of course, your character has statistics, but, then, we are speaking of a different type of shooter. Weapon jams, hmmmm... These kinds of details are sometimes useful for balancing the game, but they are generally not fun per se. So, maybe, if you have a bunch of off-balanced guns, you can add this "jam chances" property to balance them. The same applies to overheating.

When it comes to relation between shooting and world i.e. what does shooting do to the world then yeah, there might be some room for innovation here. Portal proves this.  

I think shooters have evolved into something that's not precision and stealth but "KILL MOAR, FAGGOT". I probably should have explained that these suggestions were for a more stealthy type of game than more recent games.

I will agree that these might not be fun.

Suppose shooting and stealth in general are related more. You would get a game where shooting is not the point, but completing your goal is. Isn't this what the creator had in mind? Is it still what the author was thinking of if there is no stealth element?

Perhaps sneakiness and shooting could be more integrated with a bot.

Code:

Grunt bot's flow chart:
-Patrol area
-Wait for suspicion.
--If suspicion is minor, dismiss it.
--If suspicion is average, be looking out for things. Stop patrolling and raise line of sight statistics for the bot.
--Is the suspicion sighted?
---Move closer and fire.

What would fire off a suspicion? Sight, and more likely, sound. I don't know about you, but when I am awake in the night, I am more paranoid of sounds than sights. Why wouldn't a grunt? Perhaps this is the secret to creating innovation in the shooter genre. Not the weapons themselves, but how the environment reacts to the weapons.

[Taugeshtu]

Couple of ideas:
No shooting.
Am I insane? No. And here's the reason:
on living space station you seriously can't shoot - you'll kill the whole station if you will. That's why you use futuristic grenades instead - hydro generators, endothermic explosives and Push-grenades, which creates blastwave without sharp pieces.

Bounce shooting
Imagine, that all surfaces are damn very bouncy. They're sooo bouncy, that bullets not loose their speed, but increases that! 1 bounce - double damage, 2 bounces - quad damage, 3rd bounce - and bullet just vaporize itself :D
Shooting indirect does make sence in that conditions

Bloodhound lifestyle
There are Sheeps with some sort of gravy-gun (pushes other players/bots) and Bloodhound with scary deadly gun. But! Hound is blind.
All he can see are smell flows. Wind shifts it, blood smells brighter than everything else... You can see depthi-buffer of screen, rendering just scene, and smell traces - hound them, find them and kill them until time expired.

Shift everything
Quite hard... No. GODDAMN HARD for realisation concept: shift environment (requies voxel env.), destroy it, shift in different time to track your enemies' paths, shift in different dimensions, shift your gun and shoot them all.

[Theophilus]

Bounce shooting
Imagine, that all surfaces are damn very bouncy. They're sooo bouncy, that bullets not loose their speed, but increases that! 1 bounce - double damage, 2 bounces - quad damage, 3rd bounce - and bullet just vaporize itself :D
Shooting indirect does make sence in that conditions

Timesplitters. Sci-fi handgun. Ring a bell?

I need to play Timesplitters now... :<

[Philtron]

I can't tell if the initial post is supposed to be ironic.

Shooting your enemies is common to... you guessed it, 11 shooters all shooters.

Just eleven? I think anyone familiar with games would guess a much higher number than that, unless they were making a joke.

Shooting games are so simple to make because they're classified down to a science.

Hold on. What?! Who is classifying them? Scientists presumably. Still, where can we read this classification and study the science of shooting games?


Anyway, going along with what I think is the initial intent, here is my suggestion for altering a first person shooter:

Slow projectiles:
Have bullets, rockets, and such move incredibly slowly but do incredible damage (perhaps even insta-gib). Have them move slower than even the players. Obviously for this to be fun the rest of the game would need to be well designed. Perhaps levels would be labyrinthine so that the players could not see bullets coming from a distance away. Perhaps projectiles could blend in  with the environment so that players have to deliberately move slowly to be able to spot them (or move quick but risk being surprised). Ultimately I think if this shooting element was properly implemented it would create a very thoughtful type of gameplay as you set up several trajectories of projectiles in such a way that it tricks and traps your enemies into getting killed. I can also picture that after several minutes of play a typical map will be filled with an obstacle course of slow moving projectiles everywhere and that players have to become a lot more careful when moving around the arena.

I think it is worth noting that some older games have some clever takes on shooting. I know Duke Nukem had a shrink gun and it would make your enemies tiny so you could step on them. Unreal tournament had a teleporter which you could use to move around the arena and also telefrag your opponents. A quick bit of research shows that an FPS game called Blood had a weapon that was a voodoo doll that you could use to blind your enemy or make him drop his weapon. Half-life is a series with many unique FPS weapons such as the Gravity Gun, Snarks (small aliens that when thrown eat your opponents), and Pheropod (which summons aliens to fight for you). Also Portal's portal gun, Metroid's Freeze Gun, and Gears of Wars' Hammer of Dawn.

So, there you go.

[Riley Adams]

As a firearms enthusiast, I approve.

For most shooters I'm fine with unrealism for the sake of gameplay, but I'd rather like to see a super realistic game (Arma's kinda like that, but I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped I'd be...).

A few general things that I'd like to see on the realism end:

- Emphasis on trigger pull (a big part of shooting is a steady, relaxed trigger pull, if you just jerk the trigger you'll be waaay off).

- Less of having the gun cemented in the corner of the screen (or the center when looking down the sights).

- Realistic reloading, only chamber a new round if you're reloading an empty weapon, account for the extra round when you reload with one in the chamber. Count ammo by magazines, rather than by individual rounds... And for Pete's sake use the bolt release on an M16, the charging handle isn't necessary unless its empty and the bolt is forward, and the forward assist really shouldn't ever be used unless there's a jam...

- Stop with the mirrored guns. Your arms/face generally don't play nice with hot brass; most rifles have the ejection port on the right hand side for a reason.

- Do red dot sights correctly (COD, and a few other actually have to some extent, for what it's worth), it isn't fixed in the center of the sight, you can't see the dot unless you're looking almost straight through it (the idea is that the dot is where the bullet will go, if you look at a bit of an angle, the dot will be offset). Also, the dot jumps around a lot unless you're using a rest or something.

[Theophilus]

I can't tell if the initial post is supposed to be ironic.

Shooting your enemies is common to... you guessed it, 11 shooters all shooters.

Just eleven? I think anyone familiar with games would guess a much higher number than that, unless they were making a joke.

Shooting games are so simple to make because they're classified down to a science.

Hold on. What?! Who is classifying them? Scientists presumably. Still, where can we read this classification and study the science of shooting games?

Geeze, man, learn to lighten up. I can't just drop this dose of theory and design in here without some humour, albeit dry.

Slow projectiles:
Have bullets, rockets, and such move incredibly slowly but do incredible damage (perhaps even insta-gib). Have them move slower than even the players. Obviously for this to be fun the rest of the game would need to be well designed. Perhaps levels would be labyrinthine so that the players could not see bullets coming from a distance away. Perhaps projectiles could blend in  with the environment so that players have to deliberately move slowly to be able to spot them (or move quick but risk being surprised). Ultimately I think if this shooting element was properly implemented it would create a very thoughtful type of gameplay as you set up several trajectories of projectiles in such a way that it tricks and traps your enemies into getting killed. I can also picture that after several minutes of play a typical map will be filled with an obstacle course of slow moving projectiles everywhere and that players have to become a lot more careful when moving around the arena.

I think it is worth noting that some older games have some clever takes on shooting. I know Duke Nukem had a shrink gun and it would make your enemies tiny so you could step on them. Unreal tournament had a teleporter which you could use to move around the arena and also telefrag your opponents. A quick bit of research shows that an FPS game called Blood had a weapon that was a voodoo doll that you could use to blind your enemy or make him drop his weapon. Half-life is a series with many unique FPS weapons such as the Gravity Gun, Snarks (small aliens that when thrown eat your opponents), and Pheropod (which summons aliens to fight for you). Also Portal's portal gun, Metroid's Freeze Gun, and Gears of Wars' Hammer of Dawn.

I think what makes the slow projectile idea so interesting is that it carries an element of strategy, and it makes the player think when the best time to use it is. Suppose he fires point blank. The opponent will shoot the missile without thinking, sparing him. But suppose the player fires a flurry of bullets, plants some grenades, sneaks behind the opponent while he is busy and fires the rocket, the enemy is toast.

I knew some of these games had interesting weapons, but I never really thought about it. Changing the type of bullets can add a lot.

As a firearms enthusiast, I approve.

For most shooters I'm fine with unrealism for the sake of gameplay, but I'd rather like to see a super realistic game (Arma's kinda like that, but I wasn't as impressed as I had hoped I'd be...).

A few general things that I'd like to see on the realism end:

- Emphasis on trigger pull (a big part of shooting is a steady, relaxed trigger pull, if you just jerk the trigger you'll be waaay off).

- Less of having the gun cemented in the corner of the screen (or the center when looking down the sights).

- Realistic reloading, only chamber a new round if you're reloading an empty weapon, account for the extra round when you reload with one in the chamber. Count ammo by magazines, rather than by individual rounds... And for Pete's sake use the bolt release on an M16, the charging handle isn't necessary unless its empty and the bolt is forward, and the forward assist really shouldn't ever be used unless there's a jam...

- Stop with the mirrored guns. Your arms/face generally don't play nice with hot brass; most rifles have the ejection port on the right hand side for a reason.

- Do red dot sights correctly (COD, and a few other actually have to some extent, for what it's worth), it isn't fixed in the center of the sight, you can't see the dot unless you're looking almost straight through it (the idea is that the dot is where the bullet will go, if you look at a bit of an angle, the dot will be offset). Also, the dot jumps around a lot unless you're using a rest or something.

I've never shot a gun, And I live in Arizona. so I don't really know what degrees of realism these have. I feel that realism in games add a lot to the immersion, but if it's overdone then it's no longer a game. Finding balance is difficult.


Thanks for the suggestions so far! I hope this is a resource for others as it is for me.

[JoGribbs]

I think Gears of War (one/two) is a really interesting shooter. For instance, while machine gun fire is the meat of the experience, there are weapons like the Torque bow that completely change the rules of engagement. Essentially, the torque bow requires a strong charge period to fire, and you have to aim precisely at the target to get it to stick to them, but once you stick it to them they explode. It works the other way though: getting hit by a Torque bow is for all intents and purposes a one-hit kill.

When you're first starting to use the weapon, it seems impractical, but it's only when other enemies start using it that you engage in these heated Torque bow duels; finding time to charge, taking cover at the right moments, lining up the right shot.

One piece of advice I have read about puzzle games is 'keep making the previous strategy impossible'. If the opening level is about staying put in cover, then the next level needs to be about moving away from cover every so often. If the player has been using the shotgun to great effect, make the shotgun the most impractical weapon to use. Keep mixing it up and keeping the player on their toes.

I think that's the difference between Call of Duty and Gears: wheras Modern Warfare is all about using the same mechanics to engage in different spectacles (I am shooting at a burger restaurant; I am shooting on an oil rig; I am shooting in a tundra), Gears is a combination of Spectacle and interesting mechanics.

That might not have been as relevant as I thought it'd be. I... I just really like the Torque Bow.

EDIT: I'm serious, I think the Torque Bow is a work of genius. I think Gears is too to an extant. It is clearly a game made with the design process of 'is this fun? okay, put it in', rather than pre-emptively sitting down and deciding what is fun according to a spreadsheet. I'm sorry that Gears is dumb but it is at least inventive (in a mechanical sense - I am a big fan of Kane and Lynch for it's narrative and atmosphere, even though they are pretty standard shooters).

[SundownKid]

I think the obvious way to change the shooting would be to "take away the gun" and replace it with something completely different. There are already some "realism mods" for shooters, but games like Portal or Half Life 2 have recieved their biggest accolates for being FPS's with non-gun shooty things. As long as it is a projectile, though, you could really shoot anything. Snowballs, black holes, wrecking balls from hammerspace...

It would be fun if there was a "tool gun" like the one from Garry's Mod that worked in an actual game context.

[baconman]

Admittedly, when I first scoped out this topic... I thought it was about space-shooters. And while that may be a questionable assumption at first, it DOES raise some important potential, as well.

For instance, the most important aspect of a space-shooter isn't just blasting everything in front of you (which aside from terrain and bosses, you *always* could), it's about dodging and avoiding enemy firepower. In shmups, the focus is always on the mobility, and never about "finding cover," because seeking cover never accomplishes anything there, anyways. Then, there's the expanding territory... sure, shmups autoscroll that shit, but what if *your* scenario never did?

Consider the potential, for instance, of a map that's nonlinear-race-track-like in design. But it's your goal to traverse a lap or two in one direction, and your enemy's goal to traverse it in the opposite direction.

If you'll look at the comparison between modern CoD-style games and say, Duke Nukem 3D in this thread, you'll notice that the *exact* science really isn't as exact as it first appears to be. In fact, there's a number of shooting-oriented action games that take things in a number of directions.

-Early titles like Doom, Duke Nukem, and Quake series were level-oriented action games, with a bit of emphasis on exploration.
-Hexen made a noteworthy, if a bit flawed/unpolished attempt at making a "First Person Slasher" game.
-Some 3rd-person shooter games like Armored Core and GTA emphasized their shooter/combat aspect, but along with more of an awareness-of-surroundings approach and mission-based gameplay.

The gameplay in the shooter/FPS is loaded to the gills with fun, untapped potential, many of it already explored in other gaming genres, and some already attempted. But when push comes to shove, I think the biggest limiting factor, in FPS especially, is player demographics and their expectations. Most people that really dig FPS games want one concrete experience: An online multiplayer experience where you can jump in, learn your vantage/spawning points, and start knocking off your enemies with.

And really... if that's what the players want/love, then what's so wrong with that?

I'm not saying every FPS'er is like that. But I've commonly came into games of Capture the Flag, and other interesting variations of objectives in the game like that, and usually I'll run into at LEAST one or two players per game, where all they do is run around and gun anybody they find; whether they're on their team or not.

Now, something else that would be interesting? Taking a set of these gameplay modes (even including Zombies, and Free-For-All Deathmatching), and placing a different objective on each team. It might take some balancing to get right, but it would make for a very interesting experience!

So you might have two teams running "laps" of checkpoints in opposite directions of one another (clearly forcing frequent combat between them), while 2-3 other teams duke it out over CtF bases, and a few lone rogues are making their way from differing "starting points" to a common "finishing point," allthewhile defending against AI aliens/zombies, and interfering with one-another. And some guys just get 3 minutes to rack as many kills as they can in that time; and 3 "chances" of these 3-min segments. (But whether you win or lose is based entirely on how you compete *within your event*. IE: Whichever rogue reaches the finish point first "wins," regardless of the outcomes of CtF or the laps.)

Even a 2D execution of the concept would be groundbreaking.
__________

But so long as the cookie-cutter formula continues to produce easy-to-create, easy-to-profit shovelware and people continue to blindly worship that crap, it's not gonna change. Players get new maps (however terrible in design), and producers continue to make cash. It makes both of those sides happy.

[SundownKid]

Now, something else that would be interesting? Taking a set of these gameplay modes (even including Zombies, and Free-For-All Deathmatching), and placing a different objective on each team. It might take some balancing to get right, but it would make for a very interesting experience!

That sounds like a really fun idea. It would be great if there were squads with different objectives and gameplay modes working together to accomplish a common goal. Or, if it randomly switched the team's objectives mid-game so it went from a bunch of Co-Op squads to Team Deathmatch or something.

[Riley Adams]

I've never shot a gun, And I live in Arizona. so I don't really know what degrees of realism these have. I feel that realism in games add a lot to the immersion, but if it's overdone then it's no longer a game. Finding balance is difficult..

Yeah, as much as I tend to cringe at gun mistakes, going for pure realism is mostly a bad choice. However, having fired a lot of guns, I think there's some interesting gameplay potential to something that really simulates it well, there's a lot more skill and finesse to shooting than most people tend to think.

[eiyukabe]

We recently tried something unique in the shmup category by removing "shooting" (making it a mup?) and replacing it with a radial attack centered on the player ship (V Prototype, can be played here). It leads to very interesting level design. The trick to getting a high score is to touch several enemies with a single burst of your attack, which doesn't last long. By waiting for enemies to line up, attacking while moving, starting your attack before going through a teleporter and ending it on the other side, or letting enemies swarm you until you can't handle anymore and tagging them all at once you can find clever ways to push your score up higher each time you play.

I think it was a pretty big success design-wise since we were constantly finding new ways to improve our own scores at our own levels that we did not intend. Always a fan of mechanics that are deep enough to surprise the creators . I can't say it was that successful in terms of reception -- though it got great reviews, scores, and comments, it also got some complaints about the pacing being slow (a necessity if you want your players to use their puzzle-solving more than their reflexes) and doesn't seem to get many plays/features. Oh well, definitely a worthwhile and educational endeavor, might expand on the gameplay if people start showing an interest.

The real question of course: is V Prototype still a shmup? It foregoes the main verb of the genre, unless you count emitting an AOE pulse shield as "shooting", though it holds true to the rest of the formula. If it isn't a shmup, then what is it?

[baconman]

The real question of course: is V Prototype still a shmup? It foregoes the main verb of the genre, unless you count emitting an AOE pulse shield as "shooting", though it holds true to the rest of the formula. If it isn't a shmup, then what is it?

A "dodge 'em down?"

[eiyukabe]

The real question of course: is V Prototype still a shmup? It foregoes the main verb of the genre, unless you count emitting an AOE pulse shield as "shooting", though it holds true to the rest of the formula. If it isn't a shmup, then what is it?

A "dodge 'em down?"

And the domdown genre was born, only to fade into the night when people realized they had more fun shooting things!

[laserdracula]

I'd be interested in seeing a shooter where the goal isn't tied absolutely to killing the enemy.  And I don't mean a "stealth" game; detection should be an integrated element of combat in a game, not a separate system.

When I play Call of Duty, my suspension of disbelief breaks at about the second level when I've single handedly killed 200 guys.  Those games provide a very believable visual/aural presentation but in the end it's all just a dumbed-down killfest.

Part of the issue is in the ease of the shooting, the other part is more that the enemies don't really behave so much like they're trying to preserve their own lives.  If you look at real firefights, they go on for hours.  Both sides are usually reluctant to make a move.  Also as mentioned earlier, shooting accurately is actually fairly challenging (especially when you're tired and scared and being shot at).

I'm not really sure how well it would translate to a game but It'd be nice to see one in which there's actually some weight attached to taking lives and preserving your own life.

[eiyukabe]

Definitely. I think a fun game could be made that's about "not shooting" or shooting as little as possible. It might not appeal to the masses like CoD, but I know I would enjoy it.

I like how Iji handles the pacifist run. There is a level where, if you haven't killed any enemies, one of the aliens tells you they will go against orders and tell their troops in the area not to attack you as long as you don't even touch them. There is still a little bit of a challenge since you have to avoid touching the aliens, but it is a nice reward that says the creator of the game is paying attention to how you play and cares enough to respond.

[s0]

I'd argue that dodging has been the main focus of shmups ever since the invention of the "bullet hell" genre anyway and probably even before that. The Touhou games even introduced mechanics that directly reward skillful dodging.

But back to what the OP meant, i.e. FPS and TPS: I don't think the "way forward" for them is designing more gimmicky guns, that's almost a genre cliche in itself. One way to make shooters feel "different" is to alter player movement. The last shooter I played that felt really "fresh" to me was Shinji Mikami's Vanquish. The basic concept could be described as "Gears of War with an acrobatic main character", and it's the last part that makes it really stand out. Instead of hiding behind cover, playing whack-a-mole until enemies get too close and then finding another cover spot, you're sliding around on your knees, rolling, doing Matrix-style bullet time leaps etc and it all happens with incredible fluidity. The game is more about moving around than aiming your gun.

So basically, I agree with what I think eiyukabe is implying. Moving away from the main mechanic (or "verb") of the genre you're working in and shifting the focus somewhere else can yield interesting and often great results. The next logical step would to stop thinking in "genres" altogether.