Game idea. Any tips?

Hey guys me, my friend and possibly others are going to start working on a PvP survival game. I wont give too many details but the game is a procedural generated low poly styled game based around customization. Meaning that every weapon, vehicle is made and customized by you in the game such as swords, guns, planes, tank etc. So I would just like you guys to tell me what you think of the idea and try and answer these questions.

How I could achieve in game sculpting of items (For custom weapons).
Would you play a game with this base idea?
Would you rather have factions for pvp or nations and towns.
Do you think low poly graphics are stylish? Example is Poly World from unity asset store.
Any tips on how this game could be improved or simplified?

(This is very un-detailed because we still have not worked all of them out and am still coming up with the whole idea.)

 

Make a prototype where multiple players can log in and attack each other with a single pre-made type of gun. When you get that working smoothly -- with proper damage tracking, ammo pickups and reloading, respawning, and basic AI if you're going to have any AI entities -- then revisit the rest of your ideas.

Ideas are important, since they're what will make your game unique and fun, but make sure you can get past the basic framework first. Then implement your ideas iteratively so you and your friends can find the fun in each one.

 

I agree with @TonyLi: Start simple (relatively speaking) and go from there.
The idea you have described sounds very, very ambitious!

What exactly do you mean with "sculpting items"? My first though was something along the lines of working with voxels, but that seems overly complicated.
Instead, I'd go for modular, premade components or "building blocks" that can be combined into custom weapons, something similar to what Borderlands did for the procedural generation of their guns. This also allows you to start out with a small selection of components for your prototype and thus manage complexity. If everything works out, just add as many as you want, later on.

Gameplay and networking are the deal breakers here, I think, so that's what your prototype should focus on. Visual style and questions like "factions or towns" are details you should leave blank for now and just fill in later! Even if you make decisions right now, they may very well change during development. Many times.

 

So basically what I am trying to achieve with "sculpting items" is that when you have a certain amount of something such as iron you can add on to a weapon such as a sword and sort of shape it how you wish while adding damage to the sword. If you still do not get it then reference cube world, it has the same idea just with blocks. And as for ambition I am aiming for this because I have learned most of unity coding. Plus I will be using uscript for most of the game to make the process alot simpler and I will be using many assets from the asset store for the game to help with developement.

 

Good point. I have already started production but I will re post this once I have done that.

 

Agreed. Except from the sounds of it the prototype should deal with the crafting of stuff, not the shooting. Can you make making a gun fun? What about collecting the iron?

If the core is not fun, none of the rest will matter.

 

I agree with the sentiment, but the ability to get a basic multiplayer shooter working will be the greatest barrier. The OP's team should make sure they can get that working first so they'll know if the project is feasible for them.

 

Well we will be using photon for networking which should make it much easier

 

Famous last words...

Yes, photon and UNet and other solutions make networking much easier. It's a case of moving them from very hard to just hard.

 

As I'm sure others have said, it sounds like your starting with something very complex and with just an idea. My stance on ideas, though its hotly debated, is that ideas are the least important part of the game. They're important, but anyone would rather play a well made game with a generic idea than a poorly made game with a good idea. But I wont go on about that anymore, and I'll try to give some feedback.
1. How would I achieve the idea of custom weapons? My best guess would be having every item modular, making the game a kind of drag and drop of different parts. Then you get into the complex stuff, like raycasting out of every modular to see if they can be in your position the player dragged it to. But long story short, modular model design seems like the way.
2. Would you play my game based on this? I'm gonna be honest, no. There are a lot of PvP survival games out there.
3. Factions or towns and nations? This shouldnt be a concern for you right now, getting a prototype is top of your list of things to do. But I would say factions. Games that try to have eve onlines political style are doomed to fail in that regard, because they ignore how eve got to that point and think they can get it instantly.
4. Does Low Poly look good? If done right, I love it. If done poorly, especially when it comes to generic textures on low poly models, it looks awful. Its much more difficult than it looks.
5. Any ideas to simply or improve? Cut down on this idea that everything is designed and built by the player, or at least simply the way its done. Also, perhaps reconsider the whole idea itself, as I'm about to respond to, multiplayer is far off easy, I even consider it separate from game dev since its almost like a whole new discipline to learn.

Cant agree with this enough, from experience. Its all relative, since multiplayer is just so difficult, its easy in comparison.

 

You said no because of one aspect of the game. Just because it is pvp survival doesnt mean its like every other game. Thats like saying a game with a gun in it is no different than call of duty. As for cutting down on the idea I could see myself doing that. I will most likely make custom design cuboid along with other shapes that you can add onto a weapon or vehicle.

 

check out Planet Explorers. They have an incredible system that is exactly as your describing. you can do thinngs like design the shape of your sword and what material it is made out of which in turn determines its strength. I think their biggest problem however is that its very complicated. I would play it as some research then come up with an easier way for the average 8 year old to figure it out. kids love to build stuff. that is pretty much what fuels Minecraft. I think we are on the verge of something that will blow Minecraft out of the water. its only a matter of time before someone cracks to code.

 

To him you must listen.

Ideas are good. Sometimes, they have problems you don't anticipate. Sometimes, those problems are buried in the fine details of the design. That's why @TonyLi says, "Iterate." When you find an iteration that doesn't feel fun, you'll be able to say, "In this one we added [feature]", and you'll know what to fix.

 

Most FPS games aren't that different from call of duty...

Survival games are a fairly saturated genre. If you are going to go into it, you have to make your game better then the competition if anyone is going to play it.

This is opposed to something like a space ship builder, which just had to work.

 

your game concept is kinda paralleling what I'm working on. but I lack the coding and arts to pull it off on my own. so If you are serous about this I would like to join forces.

"Would you rather have factions for pvp or nations and towns."?
so I've been tossing this question about in my head for quite a while, here is what I think so far. I think it all hinges on how the game is hosted. If you will provide a dedicated Host like a MMO. I would go with Nations/Towns conflict. that way any player can join what ever side they want. and maybe have to option of expanding that town by going out on there own to settle a new area, allowing that Nation/Town influence to grow.

The biggest problems I've witnessed out there with Factions is you are dependent on players to make factions and be nice enough to let other players join them. I would only consider this option if I was distributing the game to be individually hosted. That way its' their server they can be as Trolly or bigoted as they want.

the vision I am seeing is kinda a RoboCraft MMORPG with material gathering elements. Then take some elements of PlanetSide2 for an infantry plus vehicular assault to dominate different regions of a world. I have some systems I'm working on now to give the infantry a vast selection of abilities to choose from thus giving it a nice RPG feel. And then last but not least throw in some Banished as a way of expanding Realms/Nations/Towns. Banished type city builder uses prefabs. and if you are able to do like you want and have players be able to create their own prefabs.
This combination ought to overshadow Minecraft.

This also allows for some interesting PVE scenarios. You can spawn in some random global events. maybe an AI nation appears and unleashes an assault on multiply player civilizations and they can choose to work together to defeat the enemy.


"Do you think low poly graphics are stylish?" Well its definitely a style. however I don't think its success is because of how it looks necessarily. Low Poly allows for the game to be available on more platforms. or on really cheep computing systems. I think the Style your looking for is Cartoonish. Low Poly naturally gives a cartoony feel.
My recommendation is to go with the Marching Tetrahedrons rather than cubes. Now days if a player sees cube they will automatically dismiss it as a Minecraft knockoff. With Tetrahedrons the brain will still think Minecraft but then reply with 'oh but it has a couple more polys so it must be more advanced.' That right there is what you wan't people to think when you are marketing it. that this is the next evolved stage of Minecraft. It has to be clear that you are competing for the same market and at the same time seem like your not directly copying it.

oops... didn't intend to right so much. TTFN

 

I would definently like to join forces. We could possibly work something out on skype. Just so you know I don't have much programming experience either. Me and my friend are learning how to use uscript visual scripting. Contact me on skype at green_foxx. Also just so you know I am in high school and want to take this out as a high school project (Not at school just on my free time) I have a lot of free time this summer so we could get a good percentage done. If you don't want to work with me because Im in high school then thats fine I understand.

 

well... as long as your not a female. I gotta feeling that being a 30 year old man Skyping with a highschool girl would be a bad idea.

 

No... Im not, Im male. But it should be fine, Im very mature for my age. As long as things stay on the subject of developing this game we will be good. And we don't really need to do video chat just voice.

 

Straight up. I had a team of 7 a while back and we started working on a pvp game. The first 2 months was just getting all aspects of the game working smoothly with networking. You have to think of server authority, encryption/account security, scale, bandwidth, prediction.... That that's not even the stuff, I mean that's just the backbone to not having a crappy multiplayer game.

The 7 of us decided after a few months that we'll get better bang for out buck (ie time) if we made something that didn't have any networking components.

I got curious one day and decided to see how quickly I could make an offline version of what we'd done in 2 months with networking. Three days. In 3 days I had a mirror image of what we'd done in 2 months only the enemy players were handled by AI and navmeshagents (BTW this was by myself). They didn't have logic which obviously was fine because we don't code the player's logic either.

So ya. If you want to get a game done in a reasonable amount of time and aren't networking gurus, either pick a new project or be SERIOUSLY prepared to spend insane amounts of time on just the networking.

And to make matters even more fun, just wait till you release that game and bugs start pouring in about network latency, connection issues, dropped connections etc. Now you have to get in there, and fast mind you, and figure out exactly the problem and implement a real fix.

Not a trivial task. I say all this because I think people genuinely, and horribly, underestimate the commitment required to make a successful multiplayer game. I'll be the first to admit I don't have the chops and it'll be a while before I make a networked game.

 

I am wanting to make the game player hosted, meaning that the players will have to host their own games. Im not saying that it will be easy but it should be easier

 

Not necessarily. I used a cubic-based visual style in The Hero's Journey.



The reason I used it, is because the game is based on Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link - a side-scrolling swordfighter. The visual style is a bit of user interface built directly into the levels, in addition to the retro aesthetic. Specifically, it allows the player to more easily gauge their jumps and distance to things in the game world.

Visual styles mean more than just "what does this look like?" Visual styles can also serve your user interface and game mechanics. Wixel systems like MineCraft can work just fine. I just wish I'd researched a wixel system, it'd probably have made The Hero's Journey more efficient, and easily built.

It also works for top-down!

 

If it's competitive, that will make your life harder. People will hack the daylights out of it.

 

I can't really help if someone hacks their own server to give certain players abilities. And as for hacked clients its not my job to make sure someone doesnt cheat. I will give the tools for the player created server to be able to ban players.

 

You say that, but when other player's expecting a fair game don't get one, they're going to blame you. And then they won't play it anymore. And then they'll tell their friends. And then you'll get bad reviews. And then no one will buy your game.

And you can help it. Just put a ton of effort into locking it down, or go with an authoritative server.

 

If this is your first time making a game (or even delving into Unity), I would advise that you go for the blocky look of Crossy Road for the guns, tanks, and swords. Not because it's a nice style (which it is), but because the process of merely moving a block's position/rotation is a whole lot easier than sculpt-coding your own 3D, low-poly, non-boxy shape.

For example, in the attached images there's a tri-style sword, and a box-style sword. The latter can simply be made up of a load of simple boxes manipulated into the right positions. The former, while looking slightly move avant-garde, would require you to basically create a simplified 3D modelling system, complete with UV editor (if you're using textures) and multi-vertex face calculations. Depending on how proficient you are with mesh generation, you'd probably want to go the box style for the customizable stuff.

 

Most big games just can't help hacking because hackers always find a way. These games are still wildly sucessful though. Take Minecraft and GTA V for example. Im not going to make sure that people can't hack. If they hack theres nothing I can do and its not worth my time which I could be using to work out bugs on the game. If someone is hacking then the owners of the server that the people are hosting will simply be able to ban them.

 

And yes I will be doing this.

 

You asked for my opinion mate and I gave it to you, you have no reason to be angry.
if you dont want to know, dont ask

 

I don't think he got mad. Just defending his game.

 

Which kind of defeats the point of asking for feed back.

 

The thing with this is that the genre is flooded now as said above, but also it is unlikely you will have anything playable & fun for about 18-24 months & in that time more of this type of game are likely to be released.

To your questions: would I play it - no, it's just not my style of game. My son might look at it, like he has done with Ark & others, but he stops playing after a week & keeps going back to mine craft because he just finds it more interesting to make stuff there.
For monetisation I would go with factions. Towns/cities imply a boundary, & if each player has their own town/city & they join forces then really that is just a clan which is just a faction.