Old School Shooter Mechanics

Hey everyone, long time no see.

I've finally have gotten to a point where I can dedicate some time to game development and would like to work on a project that I've been working on conceptually for some time.

I'm taking a lot of inspired from Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit about Doom:

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In the video he talks about a "dance" that occurs due to "orthogonal unit differentiation".

So taking that concept I'm looking to design a handful of enemies and weapons that create interesting scenarios.

And with lots of time to think on the matter I think I'm going to go for a Diablo-esq fantasy setting with the player controlling a Battle Mage.

Here are some core concepts that I am honing in on, let me know what you think.

-Player-
-The player will move at one speed and there will be no sprinting, crouching, swimming, or climbing.
-There will be no zooming or "iron sights".
-They will have four magic types that have their own mana pools: fire, water, air, and earth.
-Drops will include mana (red, blue, yellow, green, and white. One for each magic type and white will increase all mana pools evenly), health, and temporary buffs.
-Buffs will include invisibility, invincibility, quad damage, unlimited mana for each type.

-Spells Mechanics-
-Spells will be gathered like weapons and be limited to a few spells per magic type to keep it streamlined and avoid overlapping mechanics.
-When a spell is cast it will use up 1 part of the mana permanently and 10 parts temporarily. This is to encourage variety and act as a "cooldown".
-I am debating if there should be a spell in each type that does not permanently lower the mana so they can always be used.
-Each spell will work like a weapon and two spells can be equipped at the same time.
-Each spell can be equiped by two button presses. One button to select the type, one more to select the specific spell.

-List of Spells being considered-
-(fire) Fireball- Acts like a rocket launcher from Quake 3.
-(fire) Flames- Acts like the Pyro's flame thrower in Team Fortress 2.
-(fire) Firebolt - Acts like Quake's plasma rifle. Can be fire slowly at no cost if out of mana.
-(fire) Engulf- Acts like a Molotov cocktail.

-(water) Beam- Acts like Halo's Sentinel Beam (or Quakes Lightning Gun), but stuns.
-(water) Frost- Acts like the TF2's Pyro's flame thrower, but stuns.
-(water) Ice Storm- Acts like Diablo 2's Ice storm. Has a high cost and clears out most minor enemies.
-(water) Healing- Heals the player a little for a high permanent cost. It is not meant to be a staple, but rather a last resort.

-(air) Lightning bolt- Acts like Quake's railgun.
-(air) Gust- Pushes enemies and can be used to "Rocket Jump".
-(air) Nova- Acts like Quake's BFG, but weaker.
-(air) Thunder Strike- Zips the player to the enemy and does a high damage strike, like Halo's plasma sword.

-(earth) Stone Blast- Acts like Unreal's Flack Cannon's primary fire.
-(earth) Stone Blossom- Acts like Quake's Grenade launcher.
-(earth) Deadly Swarm- Acts like Halo's needler.
-(earth) Wolf Form- Transforms into a werewolf.

-Enemies-
-Each enemy will be designed with a certain sound, shape, color scheme, and animation in mind to make them unique and stand out.
-Enemies act in predictable manners, but have a good size behavior tree.
-Enemies will be broken into 3 groups: Demons, Undead, and Nature.

-(demon) Fallen (warrior, slinger, and shaman)- Fallen are small demons much like Diablo 2's fallen demons. They work in teams and aim to surround the player and do feign attacks, retreating whenever another enemy is killed. Warriors move in cautiously and use melee attacks, slingers do raycast based attacks and put pressure on the player to act, and shamen cast slow moving fireballs and resurrect dead fallen.


-(demon) Imp- Imps fly in a flanking manner and throw fireballs at the player, while making sudden movements in all directions and always retreating from the player.


-(demon) Bull Demon- Bull demons are charging tanks similar to the tanks in Left4Dead. They sweep around the area, require the players attention, and take some time to take down.



-(boss demon) Demon Lord- Demon Lords have huge amounts of health, move slowly, and throw very heavy ranged attacks at the player.


-(undead) Skeletons (warrior, archer, and mage)- Skeletons act independently of one another and do not respond to other enemies dying like the Fallen do. They hop about the area adding a lot of verticallity. Warriors move forward with a shield covering a part of them and use melee attacks. Archers roll sideways and shoot with raycasts. The mage throws bursts of fireball spells.

-(undead) Wight- Wights move towards the player and explode upon dying or touching the player. Once exploded they may spawn more enemies.

-(undead) Wraith- Wraiths fly about the area and phase in and out. They can move in any direction and move through walls. They attempt to move up to the player and do massive melee damage.

-(boss undead) Lich- Liches move about quickly, summoning and resurrecting skeletons. Tons and tons of skeletons. When they are beaten down their bones scatter, but their skull but be destroyed before they resurrect. The longer they are active the harder it is to take them out and can quickly become unbeatable.

-(nature) Ent- Huge lumbering trees men with huge amounts of life and does heavy melee damage.

-(nature) Giant Spiders- Swarms of fast moving spiders that run on walls and leaps at you.

-(nature) Giant Wasps- Fast flying enemies that swarm you and do melee damage that increases with each hit.

-(boss nature) Fairy Queen- Inspired heavily from the Fairy Queen from Seven Soldiers of Victory. Fast moving and flying she fires spells at you and keeps her distance while summoning ents, spiders, and wasps.


Any suggestions so far?

 

Not from me. It seems very well thought out, and sounds like fun to play.

In fact, as far as I'm concerned, you could drop the enemies and make a multiplayer arena game a la Quake. Given the interesting balance and variety in the spells, that could be a lot of fun.

OK, one suggestion has occurred to me, which might work better in the arena game than in the Doom-type game: let players specialize in an element, if they choose. That would give them a buff in power (and reduction in mana cost) for spells in that element, and do the reverse for spells in the opposite element. You might even add special spells which only specialists can see and use (but in that case, weaken them even further in the opposite element). That would provide for more differentiation in the players.

The other thing to consider — and again, I guess I'm thinking arena deathmatch here (sorry) — is how to handle health. A lot of modern games seem to have quick and automatic health regen, to avoid that no-fun situation where you're low on health and just running around trying not to be noticed while you collect health packs. With the quick-regen, you either survive the encounter (and are thereafter fine) or you don't. On the other hand, some people like the change in playstyle required by managing health. I certainly don't have strong feelings about it — just something to think about.

 

Old school FPS gameplay? Or something more Diablo-like in gameplay?

If it's Doom style, it sounds similar to Heretic but certainly unique enough to be its own thing.

... and JoeStrout just beat me to my two points: fast, simple arena multiplayer would be a lot of fun, as would element specialization. It might be interesting to play with how this could affect mana.

If you decide to do single player against AI, you listed a lot of enemies. Doom only had 10 unique enemy types. For the sake of discussion, what if you only had one spell and two types of enemies. In this case, what would you envision as the core fun?

 

Imho that's totally missing the point the video made and @Not_Sure stressed in his post: the "orthogonal unit differentiation". You're asking "what's the core fun if you take out the core fun?". With only one spell and two enemy types you don't have enough differentiation possibilities to create interesting and varied combat gameplay from. Even the hyper streamlined and small scoped Devil Daggers has more enemies and offensive abilities.

Don't listen to the siren calls that want you to add multiplayer .

 

No, I considered doing an arena game and decided that this would be easier and more fun to make.

IF I were to do an arena game I have an entirely different GDD for that:

Spoiler

It would consists of players starting with four weapons with two fire modes (a rocket launcher / grenade launcher, a railgun / lightning gun, a pulse rifle / bfg, and a flack cannon). Then the game would drop 3 to 5 relics that buff your character in different ways (more damage, faster run and higher jumps, more life, vampirism, rapid fire, etc). You keep each relic until you die and drop it. Once a player has all the relics the other players stop respawning and all the other players no longer damage one another. If they kill every other player they win the game.

So if I were to break it down to two enemies and one gun I suppose I would do a medium sized enemy that runs at you and an enemy that shoots fireballs from a distance. Then the weapon could be any one of them and still be fun. Probably a rocket launcher.

Keep in mind that I do not plan on having all 12 enemies listed on one stage all at once.

I would most likely keep it to 7 enemies or less per stage (7 being the max number of items a human brain can keep in short term memory). I would just make sure to grab ones that will make for interesting circumstances.

OH, and the only influence I am going to take from Diablo is the enemy AI. No loot or Rogue like elements.

And the only thing I'm taking from Heretic/Hexen is that art style. I always thought that their inventories and classes muddied the experience.

The three big debates I'm having right now are:

1) Do I include a weapon, such as a mace?
I'd like to have a mace to sell the whole "battle mage" aspect, but it seems like it would just muddy the experience.

2) How do I juggle the spells?
I really want to have the player switch a spell at the tap of a button, but it will be difficult with multiple spells in each school AND an alt spell.

I was first thinking that 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys (d-pad for consoles) would each represent a school. Tap once to go to the last used spell. Tap while it's already equipped and it will start cycling through the different spells. But then how do I decide if it is changing the primary fire or the secondary fire?

OR

I could use a wheel like Farcry and you select the spells and assign four separate sets (one for each key). So you can preload 8 spells and swap to them at the touch of a button. Which requires a lot more programming, but once is done will make combat easier to juggle spells. Plus that 3 more "pick ups" I can do to increase the player's ready spells. AND I can also assign different physical weapons if I decide that that's what I want to do (probably not).

3) Should I use UFPS or make the controller from scratch?
Lastly, I'm just not sure if UFPS is really worth messing with rather than just doing a controller from scratch.

I'm just going to do a simple grid locked cube for all collisions and no body boxes.

There's no sprint, crouch, climb, or swim.

So the controller just needs foot steps, slopes, moving platforms, a primitive jump (just add force when grounded), pickups, inventory / spells, resources, surface materials, and that's about it.

I'm thinking I could tweak Sebastian League's 2d controller to get 90% of what I need:

Does that sound impractical?

 

How would you describe the game feel that you're after? Doom is a run-and-gun; it's intense, and you feel pushed to run through it but expect a monster to pop up around every corner. A quintessential move is frantic circle-strafing. Gears of War, on the other hand, encourages tactical positioning to take advantage of cover. It's still intense, but you're constantly looking for the next best cover position.

 

On this specifically: If you don't have a spell that works without mana, what does the player do when they run out of mana? Shooters generally seem to all have a "pistol" type weapon with infinite ammo for when you run out of ammo for everything else. I'd say your battle mage needs some sort of generic spell for when they run out of other things to cast.

Depending on how much you want the player to focus closely on their current spell selection and mana type, one option could be that if the player runs out of mana of a particular element but keeps firing off the spell of that element, they default to that element's freebie spell. If there is enough mana to cast the currently selected spell, it casts instead.

I might even go so far as to keep the freebie spell out of the rotation entirely, to simplify changing spells. The drawback I see to that is it would prevent a player from trying to defeat the game using only freebie spells and/or using only freebie spells on weaker monsters.

 

Make sure you keep focused, if you want an old school feel, you have to understand what made those games so great and what's changed. TonyLi said it nicely, classic shooters don't have cover. Your cover is the fact that you can strafe at 90mph. To be good at a modern game, you're good at shooting, but movement is so sluggish that there isn't much you can do other than memorize the maps, where old school deathmatches required skill with movement. Because of this, level design was also very different and that has to be taken into consideration. I see a bunch of games out there that have the old feel, but have modern levels and they just don't work.

To expand on what Socrates said, all games need an infinite ammo backup weapon. Even been stuck in a game hunting for ammo? It's really not fun. It especially ruins pacing in games like DOOM where the focus is supposed to be running and gunning.

Some games like DOOM 2016 give you a pistol, which limits your use because it's weak, but the original DOOM gave you the most powerful weapon as your infinite ammo but limited it to extremely close range. Personally, I liked the former. It feels good when you're low on ammo and punch your way through a bunch of Pinkies. So maybe give your player a very powerful magic burst that is only damaging over a very short distance.

 

Yeah, I think if I do the wheel I'll have some weapons as the infinite ammo.

So start out with a mace, then give them a shield, or crossbow, or dagger, or something.

And I have zero plans to do cover based shooting in any capacity.

Along with waves of enemies, cover based shooting is one of my all time least favorite mechanics.

It's wack-a-mole. It's freaking wack-a-mole.

But I do think that I may slow down the player a little compared to Doom. Halo 2 was sluggish movement, but one of the greatest shooters of all time. Also, slower movement means that player choices will be more delibrate. But not TOO slow.

 

Oh, and looking at the enemy list, I think I want to make 3 spider classes like with the skeletons and fallen demons.

As is it would be 3 monster types that just charge.

I'm thinking a spitting spider that leaves pools of acid, a swarm of small spiders, and a momma spider that drops hundreds of the small spider when killed.

What do you all think?

 

Maybe I'll only let the higher end of the mana pool only drop to 10%.

That way you can get a little burst out and recharge.

 

You’ll probably home in on the right speed over iteration. FOV makes a huge difference too. Master Chief moves at the same speed in Halo 1 and 2 but it feels way faster in 1 because of the FOV.

 

True.

 

What is the purpose behind the permanent reduction of mana? What player behavior are you hoping to engender by that?

 

I am wanting the player to alternate tactics.

So rather than using the same spell over and over again you lose readily available mana and need to use something else and give it time to regenerate. But the upper limit is steadily dwindling so that you have to juggle resources.

 

None of that is related to permanently reducing mana. Or rather, it can be, but it's going further in one direction than you need to to get that effect.

Think of mana like bullets. Permanently reducing mana is like giving a player a max number of bullets period. Meanwhile, mana reduction and regen would be related to clip size and reloading time. Sure, lowering the player's maximum number of bullets to a certain number will force them to switch to different weapons. But they can also run out of bullets, which means that they may be inclined to play cautiously and defensively, only firing when they know they'll hit, or focusing on hitting critical locations. They're not going to be aggressive and in motion (unless you bring in some other impetus like infinite enemy waves).

Thing is though, you can also force them to mix things up by varying clip size and reload time (or mana depletion and regen). That will make them jump between weapons more (especially if you allow regen of a non-active mana type, like is typically done (or go a step further and make non-active mana regen faster than regen for the active mana)) without causing the more defensive play.


So you don't need to reduce mana permanently. You just need to make it regen slower, and maybe make spells cost more. You can also encourage mana switching by giving different enemies different resistances (demons resistant to fire, but weak to air / nature resistant to air and earth, but weak to fire / undead resistant to earth but weak to air (not a fan of mixing "air" and "light" by the way, but that's just me)). You can do the same thing within a single mana type (for example making a "hardened" enemy strong against a normal spell and requiring a "piercing" one (so having another set of spell categories--piercing, blunt, etc.)).

 

I'm not keen on damage types, at least in this example.

But I would figure that lowering the max pool would cause the game play to shift to be more frantic until they can pick up a mana potion.

It slowly pulls them out of their comfort zone.

I'm debating doing the same thing for life, but I think "halo health" is done to death.

 

For controls:

I could see something like the attached, where you switch between the two options by pressing left or right on the D-pad. You can select your level in the hierarchy by pressing up or down on the d-pad as appropriate, and move left or right in that selection by pressing Rb or Lb. Switching out D-pad use vertically and horizontally is a little awkward, but it's not super easy to get to so you'd want to quickest movements on the shoulders there.

There's nothing wrong with a wheel, but I can see the value in an approach where a player is simply pressing discrete buttons rather than trying to move the analog stick to the appropriate location on the wheel. You're going to have 12 options, which will definitely require some precision when using a wheel. I'd rather simply know I press up on the d-pad once, Rb twice, then down on the d-pad, then Rb once. That sounds like a lot, but it would be done faster than moving an analog stick into place would, and it might allow you to better multitask (to move around while navigating the menu).

We could probably go even farther than direction and have it so you can still attack with the alternate spell while switching the current spell, but that would take a bit more work to pull off well.

 

How does that make them frantic? it's already been described here for health: people will play more cautiously if they're low on resources (unless you have specific mechanics that encourage aggressive play in that situation, like DOOM 2016 with the glory kill).

Can you give an example of a game working that way?

 

It depends on the game type. For a dealthmatch, I definitely slow down and hunt for resources when my health is low, but for objective games like CTF where your death count doesn't count, I'll kamikaze and try to take as many out with me to let my teammates have a chance. In a campaign, I will always slow down when low on resources.

 

I'm really just looking to do pve, so multilayer isn't really a concern.

As far as the combination of button presses goes I'm not big on the idea.

I think you've got the wrong idea about the wheel, though.

You'd have four preset slots, and the wheel would ready the slots.

So 1 (or up on a d-pad) would load the presets at a single press. The wheel would let you change the preset. So you Can have 8 spells ready to go, but can change them up two at a time.

 

Because of the other discussion about steam's content guidelines I always read this thread title now as being over the old "school shooter" mechanics...

I would recommend to design systems so that players can voluntarily pick a strategy that works better than others, so that they feel "clever". When you railroad them down one strategy as being the only viable one, you might alienate those that would prefer to have fun in a different way. E.g. I love playing pistol-only in FPS games, and some shooters just don't allot enough ammo to the pistol for it to even be possible to do a pistol-only run, and that frustrates me every time. You need to provide good opportunities for fun, and ideally design the systems so that players are not incentivized towards un-fun playstyles, but beyond that I'd recommend offering some freedom and alternative strategies to pick from.

 

Gotcha. That sounds good.

 

I absolutely agree about letting the player feel "clever".

Only rather than "fire works on ice enemies" it's "let's set up a set of spells that I can rotate that works well".

And instead of damage types, it's situational.

 

Can you describe this? I've been meaning to say that you need a positive impetus for players to switch things up. By separating out mana you've got a "punishment" mechanic to push players towards switching things up, but I have yet to see a "pleasure" mechanic for doing so, which is the reasoning behind damage types.

 

AH! Good point!

I was kicking around the idea of rotating damage types.

Ice freezes, fire cauase's thermal shock and melts the ice making them "wet", "wet" enemies get bonus damage from lightening.

But I didn't like the idea of a wash-rinse-and-repeat cycle.

 

How would you encourage variety with a carrot rather than a stick?

Maybe the bar is an "umph" rather than a limit?

 

You might take a look at Dragon Age 2 (and maybe Inquisition, I don't remember), which implemented skill/spell combos. Also the Xenoblade series (though that one seems a bit too rote). They might provide some insight into such systems. I think Dragon Age has a rock-paper-scissors system where each of the three can setup then trigger a combo (like AB, BC, CA).

 

No. That works for an rpg, but not a shooter.

But I think I have it.

Each mana pool has a value like 90 mp out of 100 max mp. Then that 90 mp is the max for the "umph". So at 90 mp and 90 "umph" you do 1.9x damage. Or maybe effect the time between shots.

The "umph" cost 10x the mp cost.

So a 1mp spell drops the "umph" by 10. But "umph" recharges up to the current mp.

MEANWHILE the "umph" of health acts as damage you can take before really taking damage. (No Halo Health!).

 

Ever played "Bulletstorm"? I liked their skillshot system. Added tons of incentive to switch things up and experiment with weapons and environmental hazards.

 

Another possibility to get players to switch up mana types would be that every time you cast a spell of X type, you regenerate a certain amount of mana in all the other types. Or if you want to keep the idea of the player's "clip" getting smaller with a dwindling maximum mana pool in each color, you could instead increase the maximum mana pool for all of the other types instead. This would require a lot of balancing to make it feel fair.

 

That's not a bad idea, but what if enemies dropped neutral mana that slightly recharges all mana pools?

 

You should also consider that all of the enemies and mechanics are imperfect if they're not placed in a good situation in the game. So you should consider balancing out levels and areas that are designed for certain play styles. You should also take advantage of enemy difficulty as a way of shaping where the player walks within a level. You should also consider "breaks" in the game, as a way to relieve stress and repetition. For example, place 20 easy enemies instead of 1 really difficult enemy, or vice versa, etc etc.

You should also note that giving the player a limit to how much they can shoot, places a limit on how much focus they can place on the shooting itself. Take GTA 5 as an example, guns reload, but you dont actively reload them. Or better yet, Serious Sam games, where no guns ever reload, and you can shoot for as long as you like.

Then of course, you're challenged with how to balance the usage of weapons. This could again be balanced by designing the game around the enemies. But it shouldn't be too specialized, because then you get the issue that Team Fortress 2 has in its 6v6 competitive mode, which is the fact that only 5 out of 9 characters in that game are useless most of the time. If you make them too specialized, then it will be useless in many situations but one. So why bother using ability X when ability Y can is more general and can be used in many more situations. This is specific to your gameplay.

However, in Team Fortress 2, players do switch to a specialized class every now and then (off classing). This is used to break stalemates or to make a play. Which can translate to: "that enemy there doesn't want to die to my X ability, I will now activate my Y ability and wipe them!", something like that. But IMO, you shouldn't be balancing ability based on how well they do in a specific situation, but based on how well they can be applied in a general situation. Which is the reason why in tf2, people play 4 out of the 9 classes, which 3 of them actually does the killing. They choose those, because those are the most effective, and most applicable to many situations. Which is how abilities should be. X should be just as useful as Y, even if they require a different play style. In tf2 for example, 5 of the 6 players are separated by mobility, protection, area denial and 2 burst damage players, which are 4 different play styles.

Hopefully this aids.

 

Wow, me finding this thread is a very odd coincidence tbh; i'm working on something almost identical in concept: a magic based shooter with old school FPS movement, inspired by Doom, Heretic, and Hexen, intended to be developed on the Unreal engine. Main difference is, I want mine to be PvP focused rather than PvE. Just looking through this thread almost made me feel like i stole something i didn't even know existed lmao.

IMO, ammo (mana) and resource management can really enrich the experience of PvE FPS games. With the right mindset, it adds to the thrill of the combat. Rather than thinking, "Oh no, i'm running out of X mana, what weapon should i switch to?", something along the lines of, "If i shoot X amount of times or kill X amount of enemies with X gun, then i should swap to Y weapon to finish off the remaining enemies." Getting into a rhythm has always been a big attraction of shooters for me. If you want to encourage this kind of behavior, i would suggest color coding enemies, or having some other kind of immediate tell that tells the player: "Green = dangerous, close combat, range it down; Blue = low priority, dont waste ammo.", or maybe "Small = fast, challenge it when it comes up close; Big = kite and range it down or nuke it with a limited resource." This is part of what makes some games "Trial and Error", and some games more reliant on your intuition, for lack of a better phrase. For example, you wouldn't see a Hell Knight in Doom 2016 rushing towards you and think, "Maybe i can stop it with a shotgun blast.". You'd think "Alright, chainsaw time."

If you notice I'm using a lot of quotation marks for implied or imagined quotes because that, in my experience, helps me rationalize when i'm thinking what my next design step should be. Put yourself in the situation you would put others into in your game, try and detach yourself from your position as game developer. And when you get a good feeling of how something would turn out in your experiences, try asking friends who's general reactions to game elements you are familiar with.

TL;DR: Just some weirdo off his meds giving advice that may or may not be applicable at all . I will now start writing my actual question(s). Ignore this if you're not interested and/or don't have time.

 

Lmao i just realized these are Unity forums not Unreal. Forgive my mistake above.

 

This is the game design forum. non-engine specific. You and your inferior engine are both welcome here.

but about your game concept, the color system sounds like it would be easy mode. why not make sure your ai acts consistently so if you see a goomba, you know, from previous experiences, that you should jump on its head. when a Pikachu appears, you should hit it with water. this is/could be how your player gets part of the games reward. "hey, I remember this guy, I know exactly what to do"

 

My point with the difference between "trial and error" and intuition is the first encounter scenario. Having an immediate tell based on setting, atmosphere, built-up tension, or enemy design and aesthetic, can all lead to the solution to that first death to the enemy you've never seen before. Deaths like that cause a lot of frustration in players, which in my opinion is never a good thing.

Also, not trying to start a game engine war, but legitimately which would be easier to replicate Quake movement physics on: Unreal or Unity?

 

the function of your colors isn't being contested, I just think it would be too "color by number"
"Patterns" can be your functional color system
a goomba pops up on the screen. Tutorial time. A static sprite of Mr T slides onto the screen and says "I pity the fool that gets jumped on"
The player learns that head bopping is effective for the goomba. now the player sees a koopa tropper. "hey, it moves kinda like the goomba. lets try to jump on it." A Sub Zero sprite pops up and says "Fatality"
next, a spiney comes along with its spikes. "nope, cant jump on that, Alright, chainsaw time."

Here is my caveat, colors will work well if its a fast paced fps with Gauntlet style generators everywhere, but id still prefer textures with a color theme rather than enemies with color tints(not speculating on which you were commenting about, just counter-commenting objectively)

and sigh... Unreal could probably replicate quake controls easier, but then again that's what Unreal is supposed to be good at. It can be as good as it wants to be.

 

I'm partial to Unity.

I think it's just easier to use over all.

And there are some pre-sets in UFPS that are exactly what you are looking for.

THAT SAID, I've been playing around with Doom Builder 2 to try and pin down some mechanics. (I even made a few levels if you're into Doom WADs. Here's one that's not too bad.)

After playing with DB2 I'm realizing some design changes I'd like to make.

The big one being completely ditching magic.

I think magic is fun and all, but for frantic gameplay I really want something chunky and with a kick.

I can't see a glowing hand have the same umph as a double barrel shotgun.

I'm reworking the concept, but I'm still liking the general mechanics. Just minus the magic.

 

I tend to agree. I played Hexen and Heretic and the magic weapons felt a little flat. Though maybe a small group of magic weapons would add something to your game. If instead of plasma the plasma gun and bfg used some sort of magic, that’s work fine (pretty sure the argent energy from the new game is some dark magic.). It can feel powerful done right: ever been ambushed by a bandit in Skyrim and just shout him to oblivion? That feels good to me.

Love that your practicing level design with wads. Rapid prototyping I find quite useful. Old school shooter mechanics is as much level design as shooting.

 

Tell me about it!

I wish I could develop tools for in game map making akin to Build 3d or Doom.