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Vehicles in FPS games

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18 comments, last by Tom Sloper 5 years, 2 months ago

Me and a friend are in the middle of making a futuristic yet realistic First Person Shooter. What games did Vehicles right? What vehicles would you like to see in an FPS? Do you even use them? Any feedback would be appreciated!

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On 3/2/2019 at 10:33 PM, Megainator9000 said:

Me and a friend are in the middle of making a futuristic yet realistic First Person Shooter. What games did Vehicles right? What vehicles would you like to see in an FPS? Do you even use them? Any feedback would be appreciated!

Planetside 1 and 2 did Vehicles really well. You had to save up resources to "spawn" a Vehicle. Each vehicle had weapon unlocks, ability unlocks and cosmetics. Your loadout was focused on either anti air, anti armor or anti infantry, which was usually tied to the weapon you choose for your vehicle. The resources you use to get over a set peroid of time. If you where good enough, by the time you died, you would have enough points to spawn another one. This naturally produced communities of specialists and Air Squads, and made it so most people where good at something, and if not or if you where a new player, you could just repair vehicles and still feel like you where doing something vital.

 

The other game i think did vehicles really well was grand theft auto. You can steal a car, which lets you explore, get to a location or fight in a differnt way. The super tuned vehicle physic's is what makes that fun. especially if your not just a combat only game.

As for what Vehicles.... It depends on the game. Are you doing modern warfare (small to medium maps), battlefield (medium to large maps), GTA (huge open world), Halo story mode (linear single player levels)...Also are you allowing or forcing 3rd person view... cause a hover board is awesome in 3rd person, but sucks in 1st. I do think if your going sci fi, I would want Mech's. There fun to fight in, and against, there weakness is a plausible explanation as why they exist and arn't just tanks.

Thanks for the response! In my game there are medium to huge maps. I didn’t even really think about mechs until you mentioned it, so thanks! I like your ideas/mentions about customizable vehicles. Me and my friend talked about this but didn’t dive into it very deeply. Having customizable parts that still fit the theme of the vehicle (no wings on a tank), but allow for it to still feel different from another combination is a very interesting concept.

Just keep in mind that making a good fps that feels right is already a huge project. Adding driving and vehicles interaction and gameplay to that will end up a mess if not enough resources are put into it. You need a large team!

Non-receptive or unpolished driving is worse than no driving at all in a game :P. I like vehicles in battlefield, but then again, HUGE team. They are different and can change the balance, but they are not impossible to take out from a single soldiers perspective.

21 hours ago, suliman said:

Just keep in mind that making a good fps that feels right is already a huge project. Adding driving and vehicles interaction and gameplay to that will end up a mess if not enough resources are put into it. You need a large team!

Non-receptive or unpolished driving is worse than no driving at all in a game :P. I like vehicles in battlefield, but then again, HUGE team. They are different and can change the balance, but they are not impossible to take out from a single soldiers perspective.

Do you have any actual experience making a game? Not saying that to be mean, but that is just so wrong it made me actually laugh out loud. If your making an FPS, your using either unity, unreal or Cryengine. Each one has almost limitless tutorials on how to make an FPS and vehicle controller from scratch. Unreal and Cryengine's default controllers are FPS. There are tons of assets for these you can simply buy. The Bar to making these games isn't the ability to setup 2 types of controllers. It happens when you realize you don't know how to use the networking API, or how to re-texture a gun, or the feeling you need to do everything from scratch.

 

Perhaps you plan to use many assets and already implemented functionality in those engines and that will help of course. It sounded like this is a 2 person team, in which case I think my comment stands :P Tutorials and good engine support doesn't make the game by itself is my point.

The most common reason a project fails is not since there was a lack of ideas or enthusiasm at project start, but that a too large a scope was invisioned and never fully realised (or quality never reached expectations).

But if both fps and vehicles are a central point in your game you need to pursue it obviously. Otherwise I would start making the fps part feel real good before branching out too much.

I liked the vehicle passage in HL2. Reason is the variety that comes from introducing the vehicle later in the game, and then putting focus on it for some limited time. Often games smash all their features at the player in the first five minutes, so all those features become just overwhelming and after that there is nothing new to expect. Doing it one after another is much better, levels can be designed for the vehicle passage and everything becomes easier and results in better gameplay.

This said in the assumption you make a single player game.

 

I am also making a FPS Sci-Fi in Unreal and use driveable vehicles as well as ones you can fly. Both add great to the gameplay (roadnetworks, tunnels...and z-axis).

http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc2018/presentations/TerrainRenderingFarCry5.pdf

 

Saw a tunnel implementation there the other day, not sure it can work alike in unreal et al. 

15 hours ago, suliman said:

Perhaps you plan to use many assets and already implemented functionality in those engines and that will help of course. It sounded like this is a 2 person team, in which case I think my comment stands :P Tutorials and good engine support doesn't make the game by itself is my point.

The most common reason a project fails is not since there was a lack of ideas or enthusiasm at project start, but that a too large a scope was invisioned and never fully realised (or quality never reached expectations).

But if both fps and vehicles are a central point in your game you need to pursue it obviously. Otherwise I would start making the fps part feel real good before branching out too much.

In other words, no, you have no actual experience making a game, you just like talking about it a lot. No shame in that. Just don't expect to be taking seriously when you use terms like "already implemented functionality". Or perhaps in your endless wisdom you could kindly explain how one would use unimplemented functionality? Would it be possible to use already unimplemented functionality?

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