Report Blog Entry
Retro Action-Horror Game Devlog 1: Initial Setup
SORRY IF THE IMAGES DON'T WORK
Foreword:
I am, at long last, attempting to develop a game that I've been floating in my head for four years now. I've worked on a few first-person perspective projects before, and have long had a love of first person melee, from Morrowind and Oblivion to Mount & Blade and Chivalry. There are some truly excellent examples of first person melee combat from recent years, however I find myself yearning for a far simpler design in melee combat than the more intricate melee systems seen in games such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Oblivion is perhaps my greatest influence of all - I absolutely adore the simplicity of the system, particularly with the limited player input, despite how floaty and outdated it is today.
In addition to melee combat, I am a huge fan of horror. Games such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Cry of Fear and both Resident Evil and Silent Hill franchises are a huge influence in the kind of game I am aiming to create. I have been fortunate enough to work on a few major horror games, but only in sound design, so I'm keen to scratch the more generalist design itch I get with horror. Additionally, non-horror games such as the original Thief series have an excellent horror atmosphere despite not being directly horror. That atmospheric element, alongside the slow-burn narrative witnessed in much of Lovecraft's stories, is a key initial influence and reference in the pacing, building of narrative and overall atmosphere.
I say that this game is a 'retro' game, however I am hesistant to use this label too much as it has the danger of being lumped in with the seemingly infinite amount of PSX-style horror games being released. I am a big fan of the PSX aesthetic, however I don't believe it would fit the kind of game I am developing. Instead, I am aiming for an early 2000s PC game in fidelity, with low-poly models with low-res textures and nice crunchy audio, but without the very iconic jank and hardware limitations that developing in a PSX style contains. I will write more on this thought in another blog post.
I will be using my blog as a bit of a devlog as I create this game over the next several months, alongside a few others aiding me with 3D art and UI. I am not one for overly formal structures, so the content of my blogs will be whatever I'm doing that week! The aesthetic can be seen below, and throughout the gifs in this blog!
For now, the models are placeholder, and are coming from a variety of standard UE assets, that I am generating new low-poly LODs of. As my artist continues to create assets, anything that's not original will be replaced out.
The Game:
The game, as it stands right now, is a first person perspective action-horror game set in 1760's Edinburgh, Scotland. You play as Alistair Black, an ex-British Navy soldier who has returned to Scotland after a hard few years at sea, and is finding his feet as a private investigator for the wealthy of Edinburgh. Black is given a job, to investigate a series of grave robberies in a small coastal village just north of the city. However, of course, not is all as it seems, as Black takes a plunge into a dark tale filled with paranormal threats, ancient cults and the grimness of 18th century Scotland.
As the game is an action-horror, I am putting more weight on the 'action' side than horror. There will, of course, be plenty of haunting and spooky moments and locations, however the focus throughout the game will be using your combat skills to defeat the various monsters and enemies.
Locomotion, Attacking/Blocking:
As mentioned before, I am no stranger to working on first-person systems. However, for this particular character controller, I am starting from scratch, as I am aiming for a retro feel not just in aesthetics, but also design. As this is an old-school first person controller, I am not making it a full-body FPS controller or true FPS, but rather opting for a basic controller where the disembodied arms are attached to the camera. It looks rather silly, as you can see below, but thankfully the player will never see this!
Our protagonist, Alistair Black, is armed with a saber and a flintlock pistol. As of now, his pistol will act as a strong one-off attack, with a long cooldown of use, rather than being a conventional gun with an ammo-counter. This is subject to a lot of change, but is due to the fact I'm potentially going to build several cooldown abilities, this being one of them. I haven't begun to build any of the pistol logic yet.
With initial combat design for the saber, I have opted for directional attacks. These attacks are triggered by movement, in the same way that they are in Morrowind. I have chosen this method of directional choosing rather than mouse movement (as seen in M&B) due to the simplicity involved for the player as well as the implication of UI design.
As seen in the gif above, the player has four attacks (at this stage).
- Overhead slash (moving forward)
- Slash left (moving left)
- Slash right (moving right)
- Stab (moving back)
These attacks will have different uses against the different planned enemies. For example, if you're fighting a foe that's shielding itself from its left (player's right), the player can slash right, knocking the shield out of the way, to then follow up with a stab or overhead slash. Some enemies will be weaker to certain attack types in general, but with many attackers at once, the player will have to be careful with the type of attack they're doing!
Blocking works in a way that's less punishing than Dark Souls for 1h blocks, but still rewards good timing. As seen below in the gif, there is an 'entrance' into the block state. When the player triggers the block, they have a short window, starting from the blade rising to the block, during which any attacks will be blocked for full damage, including subsequent attacks (in the style of Chivalry 2). However, if you just walk around holding block, the amount of damage negated begins to drop, until you'll be taking only a small amount of reduced damage. This is to help the player try and be careful with timing, and will keep combat fluid and flowing.
Another element of locomotion that is an absolute plague for first person controller design is clipping. It can break immersion very badly if every wall you approach has your weapons clip through, so this was an element I wanted to fix ASAP. Initially, I took the approach of using a render target to keep the player's hands/weapons rendered on top of everything else, however this didn't feel quite right for how everything else feels thus far. Thus, I opted for a more physical approach, that is equal parts goofy and fun.
As seen above, rather than rendering over the physical blockers, the arms are pushed back. This is due to the setup of the arms: they are on a spring-arm, attached to the camera. The spring-arm extends far beyond the character, with the arms model being about halfway along the spring-arm. When the spring-arm, collides with anything, it will retract, as it's really built for cameras. In this case, however, it retracts the arms themselves back, pulling them behind the character. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a heck of a lot better than arms and weapons clipping through walls!
My next blog post will be about setting up enemies, and some audio design. On the audio front, this will be particularly fun as I'm aiming for early 2000s fidelity - something that's surprisingly challenging to do in 2024 with modern DAW quality and compression!
Comments
Displaying 1 of 1 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
Pato Hermano
You're nailing the 2000's aesthetic, if you said to me that was from some gaming project from the time I would believe!
Thanks! It should end up being really nice - I'm gathering a lot of lighting references right now to work out that side of things, I'm aiming for a bit of a Thief: Deadly Shadows aesthetic for lighting and ambience! I'm also using some proper 90s synths to keep the music sounding nice and authentic too :)
by Goose; ; Report
I have to try the original Thief games some day, immersive sims look very interesting to me
by Pato Hermano; ; Report
I really recommend them! 1 and 2 are definitely a bit dated now, and can feel a little bit clunky, but the atmosphere is brilliant. 3 (Deadly Shadows) is my fav, it's truly such an experience start to finish!
by Goose; ; Report