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Hello everyone, I wanted some opinions of the fpsc community, young and old, of my new project. It is going to be a horror game(i know, i know, not much variety there..0.o), but not just any horror game. Its going to be an amped up, hardcore, horror game. It may even be the most challenging to boot. The ambient light will be set to 0, relying only on light markers(as everyone who uses fpsc seems to do...0.o)...and enemies only take one hit to kill. Easy enough right? Wrong. Here's the catch: You have no crosshairs(intuitive aim! just like real life!...sort of), no ammo HUD(you wont be able to tell how much ammo you have, if any. ammo will be sparse. depending on skill, resorting to less-than-desirable killing methods may be a common occurance), and no life HUD(it only takes one hit to kill you, too).
Here is my basic story layout:

Title: City of Darkness

<You> awake in the gloomy bunker where you took refuge from the previous day's battles, oddly quiet. <You> were knocked unconscious the day before by a type of gas that leaked under the door. Slowly getting up, you retrieve a handgun from the makeshift table. Loading it, you head out the bunker door into the destroyed attack post(lol couldnt think of a better word), and to a site of destruction, you city had taken serious damage the day before. Yet...there are no ppl. Nowhere. <You> hear nothing. Anywhere. You start to travel through your destroyed underground city, quickly finding out that the residents havent left. They have CHANGED.

The character is used to the underground city but does not understand its existance. <You> uncover secrets about the city and its real reason for existance, that ultimately lead to escape from the cursed city...if you survive long enough...

well features sound very same than hardcore zombie prifect
for aiming you should get airmod and EAI´s airmod featured guns

"hardcore zombie prifect"...?

K ill get airmod...i already planned to revert to like v1.09...EAI featured guns...?

My issues with this concept:

1. Not knowing how much ammo you have is a severe detriment to the player. Anybody in real life can look in their pockets or at the clip and get an idea of how much ammo they have.

2. One-hit kills, while sem-realistic, are not fun at all - no matter which side you're on. Killing an enemy with one hit is fun the first couple of times, but after doing it to everything you start to ask yourself if the game is going to be challenging at all. And no player wants to make it halfway through the game only to find out that if they get looked at by a blind squirrel they are gonna die. Where is the fun in knowing that all it takes is one tiny hit to get killed?

3. Complete darkness does not equal horror. Why does everyone think that it has to be dark to be scary? Yes, lack of light does provide an effect, and being in darkness is a primitive/primeval fear that all light-loving creatures such as human beings have. But complete darkness, in my opinion, does not equal scary. It equals boring and frustrating. Where is the fun in not knowing where you are going? "Ok, I'm in.... a room? It's completely dark, so I don't know where the exits are, or where I need to go from here."

The things I like about this concept:

1. I hope you can pull off the no crosshairs thing. Intuitive aiming is a good thing, and I would love to see you pull this off. One minor downside to attempting this, though - almost everyone here knows that the majority of missile weapons in FPSC aim in the middle of the screen.

2. No life HUD is an ok idea, but I'd suggest something that tells the player they are hurt as opposed to how much life they have left. Something Resident Evil-like: Fine, Caution, Danger. Although you are going with the one-hit-to-the-player-and-they-are-dead thing, so this doesn't matter, does it?

3. While the concept of a character waking up to an empty building/town/village/city/state/country/world is a little overdone these days, it's still a good concept. Your backstory may need a little work, but it's good.

Some questions I have:

1. What era is this set in? Sci fi? WWII?

2. What types of weapons does the player have access to? Remember, the player kills enemies with one hit. Giving the player missile weapons makes the game unbalanced for the player. But making it so the player dies with one hit and not giving him/her missile weapons unbalances the game for the enemies.

3. You mentioned a bunker and an underground city. This is 2 separate levels, correct? How big do you plan on making this game?

lol
You're right.
I'll put on of those blind squirrels midways in my next game.
Thanks

Death Message HUD Caption: "You were spotted by a blind squirrel!"

They'll be like..."what the ...?"

But that is after I rickroll them.
I'll save the squirrel for the detection of the escape key while the video is playing.
Even the blind squirrel likes that video.


Ok, now the amibience level makes sense.


I can relate.

No, I'm just kidding dude.
Wonderful storyline and imagination.
Some people may not like the one hit kills, but others will like the challenge.
To each his own.

Excuse me if this sounds like City of Ember with...zombies?

The darkness is a sweet thing, dont let anyone tell you that darkness is not scary. Well, maybe in small amounts.

If I could name a single scary thing, it would be slow walking. I cant explain it, but it freaks me out when the player has the speed of 50.

1 hit kill? Really?

hey everybody thanks so far for you opinions they are really helpful

To "Leon Kennedy":
1. I think your right, I should have some kind of ammo effect. Nothing SUPER obvious like numbers(i.e. 2/5), more of a subtle effect that doesnt tell the player how much ammo he has, but tells him when hes getting low. Idk. If you guys have any ideas please post!!
2. I am going to make it where enemies spawn where you have to have a quick reaction, or die(i.e a zombie or beast pops up and your first instinct is to shoot right? Can you shoot it before it kills you is the question.) And I also had some doubt about the one-hit-your-dead thing. Maybe a vest as an explanation that you can take say...3 hits or you die. But if you get hit 2 times, your vest is gone, and only takes one hit to kill you...?idk.
3. I am not going to make it like "omg i this sucks i cant see" darkness, more of a "where am I?" darkness to disorientate the player a little bit.
Things u like?
1. Is there any way you can make it so that shots are randomly slightly off from the center? like you shoot at something, but you dont know if the gun is going to recoil to the left slightly, or the the right....0.o.
2. Since this vest idea may seem plausible, perhaps a slight red HUD infringement might do the trick when the vest is destroyed? (also i suppose you could pick up new vests off of dead bodies)
3. i know its not very specific or anything, its just something i threw together for a starting point...0.o.
questions u have?
1. Its sort of like ww2, but more advanced. sort of like City of Ember, if you dont know what im talking about look it up(if you want 0.o) where technology is a little bit limited. But instead of living together like in City of Ember, humans have dividing into seperate warring factions. A gas created by one has a catastrophic effect on the population as a whole, but as you can probably tell, our unnamed character is probably not the only survivor....not to mention the war has taken considerable damage on the city, and has destroyed part of the power grid so that an advantage could be gained through darkness...except the war no longer exists, only survival.

2. there will not be a big variety of projectile weapons such as guns, maybe a pistol, a magnum, and a semi-automatic rifle at max variety, but a small 4-6 weapon variety of melee weapons of different objects(poles, fists, ...etc)
2. yeah. he wakes up, then you traverse though the silent bunker, basically like sort of a tutorial to get used to the controls, then you leave -cinematic cutscene- and ur in the city.

to "Conjured Entertainment":
from quote 2, he has lived here his whole life and was not alive at the time of its creation. Thusly, he does not know WHY it is there, but just knows IS there. make sense??

to "Saint Drake"
I have planned to use speed against the player. Never being able to shoot quite fast enough, walk quite fast enough, KILL quite fast enough. Also, read above to answer the stuff surrounding the "one hit kill" thing.

It makes better sense when related to the 3rd quote, not the 2nd one.
Oh I see, you were only counting your own.
Yeah, it make perfect sense.

I wish you luck on your project.
Maybe you will get farther than I do on mine. (I take off on new ideas before ever finishing the old ones)
Planning is important, but so is actually making the thing.
Sometimes, that's why I don't get my ideas off the ground; I get new ideas that I want to explore before I ever got out of the planning stage of the old ones.

Your game sounds great to me.
So, "build it and they will come".

lol thanks man

You know, you shouldn't have to restrict gameplay like this to make a game hard. High difficulty should come as a result of smart game design, not removing huds and pitting the player in darkness. (Not that these can't work if done properly.) Any noob can get rid of a crosshair and set player health to 1, but it takes tact to make a properly challenging level.

I know its not all about hud and ambience. And if u read more of the post then you would realize ive already decided to add more health to the player. Im trying to inspire fear in the player not by "scary" things but with the environment. I want the player to react more on instinct than thought. I want to remove the crosshair so that you shoot instinctively, without "aiming." 65% of the game is melee anyway so crosshairs arent a big loss.

Here are some tips:

1.remember, in a horror game you don't often fight enemies. it ruins the effect.

2.music and ambient sounds are everything, they set the mood for your game.

3.use blue lights (looks like pale moonlight)

4.get ply's mod for the blood effect; It works REALLY well for a horror game, trust me.

Just giving you ideas, as the community gave me.