Triptych diary 1

MUSINGS ON WEAPON DESIGN FOR AN FPS GAME

PART I. WEAPON SYSTEM CHOICE

Triptych is a narrative-driven FPS game, inspired by Half Life, Bioshock series, as well as classic shooters like Quake 2 and Heretic.

Being an FPS game, I realize having a good plot and visuals will not be enough to make the game good. The shooting part itself should be enjoyable. So I started my research on what makes a good shooter.

I used my own experience as a gamer, feedback from fellow gamers, reviews by critics like TotalBiscuit and several GDC talks and publications for the sake of this research, as well as other choices.

Remember, that everything I write in this diary is work in progress and a subject to change based on the feedback.

When making a weapon design choice, one should take into consideration how the choice will affect the overall gameplay. Old school games would not limit the amount of weapons carried; and would provide a balanced amount of ammo scattered across the level for each carried weapon. This would limit weapon variety and and reward exploration - especially when some more valuable ammo caches were hidden in "secret locations". This would also force the player to value each shot fired as the eventual amount of ammo was fairly limited. This was even more important for survival horror games like Silent Hill 2.

The new school of game design went for a different choice - limiting the amount of weapons carried (2 in Bioshock Infinite, 4 in FarCry 3, etc.), yet provide more variety. Ammo is often provided in the form of "refills" - the amount of ammo allowed to carry is limited, but "refill points" are present. This allows to control the pacing of the game between "checkpoints" and stops the game from becoming "unbeatable" if the player made poor decisions. This also affected the save system - the "save whenever you want to" system was replaced by an "automatically save at checkpoints" system.

While I understand how the new school system allows the gaming experience be more controlled and a more "softcore", active experience - one which many gamers would find more satisfying, I feel like it takes too much control away from the gamer.

Still, I wanted the weapon variety. So I decided to have 8 "weapon slots", each representing a class. The player would have one weapon of each class -

• [1] Melee
• [2] Pistol
• [3] Shotgun
• [4] Assault Rifle
• [5] Sniper Rifle
• [6] Rocket Launcher
• [7] Explosives
• [8] Superweapon

Still, even this system provides us with a choice. I decided not to go with the "tiered weapon" system, where progressing through the game provides you with better weapons of the class. I'd rather have the player make gameplay choices based on the weapon they choose to wield - say, having a .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda revolver vs .44 Magnum Desert Eagle pistol in the Pistol slot, having both weapons different damage, recoil, spread, clip size, reload speed and other characteristics would allow the player to adjust their gameplay according to the weapon they choose to wield, not the weapon the game provides for them.

I haven't decided yet whether to include ammo variations - standard, hollow-point, incediary and armor-piercing - I need more feedback and testing to see if it would work in the context of my game.

This choice of weapon system allows me to go with a more maze-like level design for Triptych as opposed to the modern school of linear corridor-based level design. The player would be forced to explore the level, find secret locations and hoard ammo to be able to progress through the game.

This would also mean that if the player makes poor choices, they might be faced with a situation when they are unable to progress because they lack the firepower needed. Tough luck, eh?