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Game Name TBD


Developer: xplosiff

Storyline:
My name is <TBD>. I'm an urban explorer. Sometimes I get a little bit too curious and put myself into tight situations. Well, it's worth it! Most of the time anyway. But this time I think I've taken it a little bit too far. The roof was locked and the main entrance was boarded off. I had to climb down a couple stories of windows to find an open one I could enter through. There was no way to get further down, and I don't think I'll be able to climb back up. Now that I'm inside, there's footsteps and some strange noises coming from down the hallway. The only way out might just be through the building. I guess I'll just take it as it comes. I better get a move on.

Description:
<Game Name TBD> is a survival horror game with a puzzle aspect that's backed with an intriguing storyline and immersive gameplay. You play as <PLAYER NAME>, an urban explorer, who has found himself at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Throughout the game, you'll find yourself solving puzzles, getting around obstacles and fighting many mutated creatures and zombies. The game's packed with gameplay mechanics never before seen using FPS Creator.

Project Information:
This is a fresh project I started on Friday. Although I've already fed around 10-15 hours (60% of which was testing and bug finding) into almost perfecting this one level, you can see there's still work to be done. Even though FPS Creator is dated, it still has some potential. I have had this idea for a game in mind for quite some time now but have been looking for a simple to use game engine since. I've even tried to code my own in C++ and got bored of it after a couple weeks when I barely even had a basic single model environment load in without any shading or anything. I haven't used FPSC in quite a number of years now. Back when I was using it before there was only 1 model pack for sale so it's come a long way since then. This is a work in progress. I'm not sure whether it will be sold for money, free, or even released at all for that matter. In fact I might even work on it on FPSC:R rather than the classic version.

At the moment I have just produced a proof of concept to demonstrate some gameplay mechanics. Not to spoil the story, but [code=spoiler...]after the next level loads the player would find the exit of the hotel to be guarded by zombies from the outside and has to go underground to find another route. That being through a bunker under the hotel, which would then lead into a sewer, and so forth. I've done my best to produce a level that is reasonably cluttered and doesn't feel empty. Though it's difficult keeping within the 2GB limit.

Gameplay Video:
[href=Click...]http://youtu.be/yUcqTJTjB6s[/href]

Editor Screenshot (For those interested):
[code=1st floor]

The Question: Would people be interested in playing a full game based off this storyline (10 to 15 levels)? Whether it be created in FPSC Classic or Reloaded (using my own segment creation kit)? And would you be willing to pay a fair price for the final, full game (~$20)?

TO BE DONE:
-Dynamic lighting shaders? Making doors/items blend in better.
-Find a fix to the charactor and weapon shader bug.
-Voice acting
-More levels!

I just can speak for myself and I would say no. Of course there is a lot of work to do. You must do a lot of commercial outside of this forum. Also then there is a simple marketing basis: Supply and demand!

If you did some work in cc, rewrite the engine make some fixes, delete all what you not need and do some special effects

If you have enough work put into it then you can sell it for 20$, but people want something individual, so not recreate anything, do something on your own...

Nice layout and look.

I think you'd be better off using Reloaded or something else. The original FPSC is extremely sloppy/wasteful with resources and very buggy. Been following the Reloaded blog, and Lee seems to be working hard (with good success) to work the bugs out of Reloaded and getting the performance up before releasing it. Plus Reloaded has far more capabilities.

i would only say that if you have no clue what you're doing

Well that level there is only around 10 minutes long, and consumes just over 2GB of memory. On the other hand, there are 300 to 400 entities placed and there's a lot of detail so the high consumption would be expected.

I am considering moving over to FPSC:R though as it would encourage me to model my own 'segments' or even an entire level from scratch. And due to the size of the map, I might even be able to make it some what open world. But we'll see what happens from here.

Aside form that, I have some ideas in mind to increase immersion and create a better atmosphere but I'm having difficulty implementing them in the scripting system.

The original FPSC is extremely sloppy/wasteful with resources.



I wasn't talking about the user interface. I was speaking of the inner workings of it. For example maps created by the original FPS Creator use around 40x or so (depending on the map layout) as many polygons as necessary to get the job done (this is obvious if you've ever inspected the resulting .dbo files). For example, a small, flat, square floor that spans 36 segments (6x6) should be optimized to one object, but it's not. It's still outputted as 36 objects, one for each segment. Not all objects within a segment can be optimized this way (depending on its contents), but most can, yet they are not.

There are rendering conflicts throughout the maps that the FPS rendering engine hides well during gameplay (it stands out when rendering with DarkGDK). Things that are deleted at creation time may not get fully removed. There are memory leaks and misses that stand out on lower-resourced graphics cards... Like I said it's a mess.

Btw, you can greatly conserve memory by making sure the textures are compressed .dds files (such as to DXT5). If a texture has no alpha, you can halve it again by compressing it to DXT1. Just keep the originals and check how the compressed texture renders to be sure if does so to your satisfaction (that'll depend on what's in the texture). Some model packs are already optimized this way, but many are not. Doing this will make a HUGE difference in memory.

If FPSC did proper instancing (which I believe it does for textures and perhaps dynamic objects, but not for static objects), then memory wouldn't be based on the number of entities placed, but on the number of unique entities placed.

Ah i assumed you were, but yeah the actually engine is "wasteful" with resources.

I could also agree with that The Tall Man. Another example would be a segment. Imagine a 3x3 room at 1 level with very basic walls, floors and ceilings with a texture slapped on.

12 walls, 9 floors, 9 ceilings - all 12 tris each.
12+9+9 = 30, 30x 12 = 360

If that segment were to be optimised, while the player is inside it, only 60 tris should be rendered.

Even more ideally (but with great difficulty) the engine could be programmed to detect a flat 4 sided area with the same texture and convert 18 tris into 2 (the floor) and render the texture tiled 3 times horizontally and vertically for the same effect. If this were to be implemented (which I don't think it will due to the age of the engine), the same segments would be rendered with 1/30 the consumption.

Well, that could be a good idea for reloaded.

I guess I could try model my own level and import it into FPSC and see how it goes. I haven't tried that before but there's always a first time for everything!

I might do that later. I'll make a simple corridor, texture it, and display it ingame. As I am still on post moderation you're likely to see the post appear at the same time as this one appears.