Tag: guns

Risk Mitigation: Test Bigger Muzzles

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This is the follow-up article about lens #16, the lens of risk mitigation from The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell. If you buy books through the links in this article I will get a small commission for that.

I will try different sizes of muzzles and add a bit more random to it to see if that could make a difference. As well as experiment with different sizes for every gun. As well add some random to make it more vivid.

For fast prototyping, I need a simple way to switch between the weapons. There are a couple of ways. I can make a pickup command and exchange the gun with the previous gun and just put all guns in a row. Or add them programmatically and make a switch weapon button for this test.

I made a four-panel gif image with https://www.kapwing.com labeled with A: Constant muzzle with a flashlight, B: Random muzzle with a flashlight, C: Constant muzzle no light, and D: Random muzzle no light.

And made a tweet to get some feedback which is the best variant.

I also asked friends and family members. The outcome is that a bit more of the votes like B the best as it looks more vivid. The second large group preferred A because the muzzle leaks through the floor if I use a random muzzle size, which is simple to fix. Many said a tiny less random would be beneficial. There was one vote for C as the gradient muzzle would not fit the art style.

Furthermore, that way I could engage many more people on my tweet, much more than I expected.

So thanks a lot for helping me out to find the best muzzle style which is important for my game as it lives from the weapon, shell ejection, recoil, and muzzle. I will have at least 3 different sizes of muzzles, one for nine-millimeter weapons I have, one for the soldier rifles like M1 or M4, and one for the bigger guns. I will probably have to fine-tune this further.

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M163 Vulcan from Sketch to Model

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I modeled my M163 Vulcan tank with blender 3D for my game. The plan is that a soldier can control that tank alone, which of curse in reality it needs more people at least a gunner and a driver. And because one soldier can control this tank the player can take out that soldier and take over the tank. The next step is to bring the tank into my game and do some shooting prototyping to see if it looks cool. The real old M163 Vulcan does eject the shells visibly which fits in my concept so well.

Lens #10: The Lens of Holographic Design

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The next lens I want to look through on our game All Fucked Up is the lens of holographic design from the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell. This lens is about seeing the four elements (Aestetics, Story, Technology, and Mechanics) and the player experience in a holistic way. Let’s tackle the following questions in this lens.

  • What elements of All Fucked Up make the experience enjoyable?
  • What elements of All Fucked Up detract from the experience?
  • How can I change game elements to improve the experience?

The cute characters, the little details, the smooth gamepad integration, and the guns make the experience enjoyable. To watch and experience guns in action is satisfactory. The gamepad optimized precise control makes the navigation of the character smooth and nice and does not distract from the game experience.

The double barrel shot gun with it’s late shell ejection, like in reality, as well the camera and character kickback makes the feel of the weapon nice and power full.

Here we see wall jumps in action. The control is smooth and lets you navigate quickly through levels.

The environment and the level-design do detract from the game experience. It looks nice but not brilliant. Quite flat and too simple. The levels don’t look exciting enough way to simple and linear. This can be improved, I need to design much more level also to get more experience on what works and what does not work. If I want to introduce the switch from rifles to handguns or knife I need to design the levels accordingly to make that a need. The same for shooting enemies, if I just can jump over them it makes no sense to shoot them except for the joy of using the collected weapons and ammo.

I think it is very clear that the element level needs a big improvement to make this game fun to play. I feel I’m far away from that. I probably first try to improve the existing levels not on the graphical level but on how I compose the platforms, weapons, ammo, and enemies. I need to make it impossible to jump over enemies and evade but have to design it in a way that they are a danger if not eliminated. As well I want to avoid that there is only one way to manage a level.

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Lens #4: The Lens of Surprise

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The next lens I want to look through on our game "All Fucked Up" is the lens of surprise from the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell. I try to answer the following three questions:

  • What will surprise the players playing "All Fucked Up"?
  • Does the story have surprises? The mechanics? The artwork?
  • Does the mechanics give the player ways to surprise themselves?

Quite though to answer this for your own game. I give it a try and might be completely wrong. But at least it is documented. We placed cute funny animations that get played if you achieve a goal like kill two soldiers in a row which makes the character laugh. The artwork is not breathtaking to be honest, but what might be surprising is that every gun feels different. The gun itself is not visualized instead we focus on shell ejection, kickback on the characters (gun impacts the player, bullets provide kickback on the objects they hit).

I plan to have time limited levels as well, where everything explodes if you don’t make it in time. The time goes backward in those levels.

Improvements I can think of

  • Use the gun kickback to achieve something
  • Add a shootable grappling hook to climb up unreachable spots
  • Add defuse abilities
  • Compose weapons out of parts
  • Destroy locks or start a chain reaction on explosives

I think this is an important part and I will have to think more about it and collect more ideas.

Thanks for reading. I would appreciate your oppinion below in the comment section.

I get commissions for purchases made through the following links, I only put stuff in this section I also would buy or I already bought