Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Back to the GameDev Groove - Presenting, "ZERO"

Thinking of new ideas for a new game is easy. Applying it into a new game is the hard part.


I don't know if people noticed, but August has marked the start of my "tryhard/workhard" period. This is the time where I stop playing too much video games, and start working many of my career-related works, like my 3D model/animation portfolio as well as a general game design portfolio.

I learned that if you want to make it into the 3D field, whether it's entertainment, architectural, medical, educational, etc., you must first learn that field. Make sure you know all of the current tech they have. Know the big conventions that people actually care about. Most importantly, let everyone know you have potential by showing them your BEST work in a portfolio. That's what I'm doing now. I'm not that great at character design, but I'll have to do it and place it in my portfolio. It has to look very presentable, too. However, I am a prop/geometrical designer. That includes buildings, vehicles, weapons, and other geometric objects. This is what I'm good at, so I'll be focusing my efforts on those.

As for general game design, I think I'm going to pursue more of an administrative role. I actually love the leader role when it comes to these kinds of things. Of course, this doesn't mean I'm not doing actual "grunt work." From what I have read and absorbed over the past few days of reading, it is much better for your project to be somewhat at a "tech demo" level before you hire. This means some programming, some sound engineering, some of everything. What this does is it lets the people you are going to hire (or ask help from, if it's not paid) that you know what the deal is on their side of the project. You know how your main job weaves and connects to the other aspects of the game development phases and jobs.

On that note, the first order of business, I present to you, "ZERO." ZERO will be a 3rd-Person Shooter, with borrowed mechanics from Battlefield and Call of Duty. It will have singleplayer and some multiplayer, if I could get a team to work with it. My options for an engine include Source and Unreal 3. I think those would be good platforms as they have some prefabs until I could actually find artists to make new content. Anyways, I actually want the singleplayer to have a storyline, so I'm definitely working on that myself. Of course, multiplayer is still the core, as with many games. Balance is the biggest issue with online games, and with 3rd-person involved, corner peeking can't be avoided. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to use a sticky-cover system (so overused) or just the plain old "crouch/prone behind something thick" tactic.

Anyways, I'll leave a link below on what I currently have in terms of multiplayer. I'd like to balance things out, and I might end up removing the Balanced categories and just stick to power/speed.
http://pastebin.com/jUeaGLvQ - "ZERO" Super-Rough MP Design Document

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