Alien Assault - Doom Style

[Omega2064]

Been tinkering with this on the side with one of the remnants of Gadget3D to see what could be pulled off with what little there was in the pack, which wasnt much at all unfortunately and attempts to get the wall sprites from the single release exe have proved unsuccessfull to date.

So far works to a degree. The helmet interior needs a little more refinement and the Swarm are recoloured and reworked Doom Demons who still need some grabby claws on the upper arm set. They are just simple 5-frame forward facing units while currently theres just the rifle as weapon. I'd have preferred the corridors to be a bit narrower. But thats the limit of the system as shown.

A lone soldier vs lots of bugs. Mostly worked up for fun and to try and get a grasp on G3Ds system of handling things.

The screenshot below gives an example.

[gregor_y]

Hm suggestion drop it no offence but space hulk 2 is good shooter

[Flomax]

Looks a lot like that old chestnut Wolf3d.

No offense, but yeah, just get Vengeance of the Blood Angels. It's excellent, and over 10 years old so you could easily find it out there for free.

Now if your game could be turn-based, that would be interesting.

[gregor_y]

Secound suggestion drop the idea of helmet its stupid...

In voba its showed terminators see though cameras and thats cool actually you get scream + static when you die

[Omega2064]

I guess you two missed the part where it said this was done up mostly for fun. ahem.

If I'd wanted a Space Hulk game I'd just buy one of the versions of SH2:VotBA.

As for the helmet view. I wanted something to diffrentiate it from the myriad Wolfenstein/Doom games.

Its not like it took overlong to tinker together the swarm sprite. Pallet swap a Doom demon, remove wings, add arms. Good to go. And its been helpfull in getting any sort of grasp of G3D and GM's code system which doesnt allways trigger in the ways expected.

If I wanted turn based I'd do it up in Unlimited Adventures. Which I am. Using the SFUA patch I contributed to.

[fdfdfdfd]

So far it looks great! Here's some quick suggestions:

1 -The helmet view is a great idea, but this simple feature which is supposed to booster the feeling of immersion it should never ever affect the FoV excessively, othwerise it will simply become annoying and restrictive. Ideally you want to give the players the idea they're wearing a helmet by displaying a visor-like HUD while adding some realistic touches to player movement (IE camera bobbing a bit up and down everytime you take a step to simulate IRL walking/running). Two games that do this especially well are republic commando and the metroid prime series:




See how great these are? The trick is to simplify the way information is displayed in a easy-to-read way acessible to the dumbest grunt. Think of yourself as an actual military equipment designer trying to come up with something pratical and readable for every soldier.



2 - The aliens should be a bit more bug like and don't forget to make 'em quick as hell. Making them able to climb through the ceilling and walls would be awesome too. Remember you're playing with players' emotions while using a single enemy type, so the players already knows what expects them. Make sure they know it's something very very dangerous and unpredictable beforehand and use both level design and characterization for you advantage. You might want to avoid any resemblance to a humanoid face at all, but on the other hand, it's always good to make 'em bleed red, since nothing stimulates that pool of hormones we call brain as the good ol' red vino.



3 - Don't forget to include a bleep based radar like on VOTBA or the original alien movies. They're great for both tactics and increased player immersion. Additionally they can be cunningly used for playing mind games with the players, especially if they're motion-track radars. On AvP2 (the game) the radar usually bleeped for almost everything that moved slightly, be it doors opening, friendly troops, other dynamic objects and even additional wildlife like rats and bugs. Essentially it's another way of adding more unpredictableness to a monospecies enemy.

[gregor_y]

@fdfdfdfd your expecting too much from him if im not wrong he is only one person and we know how such projects end i did try to make a game once too and i failed still i was young and stupid im preaty sure you guys are younger than me if not

[Omega2064]

hah-hah! For all that I'd be better off trying it in Silent Walk in full 3d to get all that in. We'll see in a week maybee when I get a system upgrade that may allow delving into that. Though 3d modelling definitly isnt my area of skill.

In the Gadget engine they move pretty fast. Once a batch of them find you it gets pretty hectic even with a very simplistic AI that seems to know a flamer is a threat and to try to flank once in a while. But its mostly patrol then home in sorts of bare basic routines with 2d mobile sprites. If you've ever seen the early Doom you likely know what Im on about there

Neet for a basic Doom-like romp. but the system as it was left isnt up to the more advanced tricks. The proto G3Dv2 upped it to 3d walls. But figuring out how the vertice files assemble from the text is a mess. Definitly something a little more user friendly.

But as an experiment it did what I wanted which was find the limits of the system. Which wasnt quite what I'd hoped. but I may tinker with it some more just for the hell of it now and then.

As for completing projects. I've gotten most I started to where I wanted. But also know when to quit when Im out of my league. (Well sometimes I do know to quit... really! Honest I do! )

[gregor_y]

Originally Posted by Omega2064

As for completing projects. I've gotten most I started to where I wanted. But also know when to quit when Im out of my league. (Well sometimes I do know to quit... really! Honest I do! )

Get some people on the team alone is not fun its more like hell...

Still if im not wrong there are somekinda software on market that make it easier i need to google it i think they could allow you to make game to similar level to doom...

Any way look at aa its preaty simple game and it was not made by 1 person in 1 year...

[Omega2064]

Well Game Maker was started as a engine to make 2d, isometric, and/or scroller/shooter/platformer type games. What the guy with Gadget got it to do is amazing all by itself and then you look at Silent Walk which takes it to the next stage of full 3d while still being semi user friendly.

Heres a screencap with the original wide visor and also a good example why this project was forever relegated to just tinkering. The sprites clip into the walls unexpectedly and no fix is fourthcoming unless someone can revert the original demo exe back into its gmd file. Unlikely I've been told.

Still. Was interesting to try and I made progress with its oddball scripting heirarchy. Though attempts to add more guns failed for no known reason. Should have worked and didnt. grump-grump.

Did at least figure out the progression for the walls. They are essentially animated gif images that the system flips through to get the right view angle based on where the camera is. Pretty ingenious use of the GM basic sprite rotation procedures.

IE: In GM to have a sprite spin or rotate you have to set it up as a gif animation with each frame part of the rotation. Rather than TDs relatively easier approach of just taking the single sprite and rotating it.

We'll see what Silent walk can do soon.