I blinked and suddenly we’re a full week into November. That also means that I’m one week into developing my yet-to-be-named shooter, and I owe you all some updates. Along those lines, you’ll be happy to know that I have some progress to report!
The Hook
The first big step in making this shooter was to decide what would help hook people into playing the game. There were three main hooks I considered for my take on a Doom-style first person shooter: using no hook, element-based combat, and rhythm-based combat.
No Hook
The first option was to not try to stray too far from what the 90’s games did. This would mean giving players a handful of different weapons to use against a handful of different enemies in a handful of different environments. One big benefit of this path is that since everything has been done before, there are plenty of tutorials and documents available for how to make all of the necessary systems work, thus making the programming side easier. Another benefit is that Doom’s formula has already been proven to be a successful one; people think running around blasting demons is fun. The biggest downside to this approach though, is that it has been done before. A lot. Doom has been copied so many times that websites such as Screen Rant and Giantbomb have made lists of their top X Doom clones. I would much rather make something that I can put more of myself into than make something that someone else has already made, even if that means the project will ultimately be more difficult (totally not foreshadowing…).
Element-Based Combat
One way to add my own twist was to alter the combat system to utilize some number of elements. For instance, I tossed around the idea of having a small number of basic weapons and elements, while allowing the player to mix and match weapons and elements. This felt like it could create some interesting opportunities for combat design, such as the difference between a fire-based shotgun versus a plant based shotgun. A challenge of this elemental system, though, is that a lot of players are used to rock-paper-scissors style element systems, such as the types used in Pokémon games. With a small number of elements (say fire, water, and plant), some of the interesting combat decisions players have to make become much more straightforward. If you see several fire-based enemies, the choice of which type of weapon you want to use (water) is much less interesting. While this particular hurdle felt like a surmountable one, I was much more excited about adding a different twist to the combat in my game.
Rhythm-Based Combat
Making a game where the gameplay revolves around the music sounded really appealing to me. I’m a huge fan of the Guitar Hero games, Crypt of the Necrodancer, and Beat Saber, and have been musically inclined for a long time. Tying in-game events to the rhythm of the music playing in the background, and making mechanics revolve around these rhythms, is a really satisfying experience when done correctly. The biggest hurdle to taking this approach is that, as any musician can tell you, music is a surprisingly exact medium. When performing actions in time with music, the timing window that must be consistently hit is often a few hundredths of a second long. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to program a system that could consistently hit this miniscule timing window, but I was also the most excited about taking this musical approach, so I decided to spend more time than I should have this week figuring out a way to make it happen.
The Result
With a bit of help from Oliver Trujillo (a programmer at Brace Yourself Games, one of the minds behind Crypt of the Necrodancer, and a man to whom I owe many thanks for his tips), I was able to put together a system that allowed me to make things happen in time with music. The system is set up so that I should be able to take any song and make all sorts of stuff happen in time with its tempo. Having this much success setting up this system means that I am much more confident to move forward building the rest of the game around these beats, something I was not sure I would be able to do a week ago.
Looking ahead
Now that we have a somewhat functional rhythm system that we can tie events to, there are a lot of decisions to be made regarding how the rest of the game interacts with the music. What actions can the player take at any point in time versus what actions should be constrained to the downbeats of the music? What actions will the enemies perform on the downbeats? What happens when the song ends? Do I even let the song end before the player finishes the level? All of these questions are going to need answers, but having figured out that I do need to answer them feels like an important first step to have made.
In the meantime, I’ll be marching forward, and will have more updates for you all again next week!
-Mark