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I´m working on a FPS at the moment ... and I thought it´s time for a WIP Post now.

The Game is at a early stage ... till now I did the core engine that handels everything. There´s nothing like a story yet.
Another big part of the programing was performance optimization.

My goal is it to make a F.E.A.R. clone ... or let´s say it´s inspired by it. The Story I thought about so far is meant to be like a parallel story to the one of F.E.A.R. just that it isn´t said clearly. The plan is to make the story and maybe some maps in a way that lets the player, who played F.E.A.R., think that the game obviously is connected to F.E.A.R. in a scary way.

Here I got some Screenys





At the moment I think I doesn´t make sense to write a real statistic as nearly every part of the game is incomplete ... so I will just list what features are in the game right now.

Features till now:




I started my work on the AI but it doesn´t yet operate on a acceptable level

The Map is a testmap ... not really meant to represent any quality or to show what the game should look like

I removed normal jumping as I think it´s odd to have it in a FPS ... nobody is jumping around in reallife were you can walk without any problem ... so my idea was to just let the player jump on defined places ... such places are allready in the demo. Try jumping over the small stone walls by pressing Space ... its a bit tricky to get the right moment when pressing ... however ... the best way to jump over the small walls is to just press and hold space while running towards them. I will fix that soon.

I don´t know what to say anymore. Just hava a look at the game.

Note 1)


Note 2)


Note 3)


Note 4)


Note 5)


In the Launcher I included a wide range of graphical Settings ( not really a problem with Evolveds Deffered Shading ) so you can try different things out. But I would also like to know what Frames you have with which settings.
To make that easier, if you test the demo please tell me what Frames per Second you have with:
1) Shaders deactivated
2) Shaders on but on lowest possible setting ( I mean with everything unchecked )
3) Shaders on full power
I think the resolution doesn´t make much of a difference ... at least for me

My FPS results:


The Controls are:

Those are shown in the Demo, too, if "HUD-Text" is checked in the launcher.

Also feel free to say everything that´s on your mind. tips,critics or what you think about it. I don´t know XD.

PS: As I allready said at the beginning of the Post. The most time till now I was programing the core engine and the things around it ... I didn´t really care about quality ... except for the shading stuff ... but thats more core engine too for me ... I want to get everything working well in the game mechanic ... THEN I will make nice models with good animations.

EDIT: I just saw ... I forgot to translate some parts of the launcher ... so they are still german XD ... it´s not really a big thing but here´s a small translation



EDIT2: You can cancel the Intro Movie by pressing esc

EDIT3:

The big performance killers in the graphics settings are

PostProcessing ( the hole thing )
Dynamic Shadows

So if the game doesn´t even run a bit smooth with everything on you can also try swithing one or both of them off ... I believe Postprocessing eats more performance

DEMO v0.1
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=G77IN55O

did these runs on Full Screen 1280x720 :

1) Shaders deactivated = 150-289
2) Shaders on but on lowest possible setting = 25-39
3) Shaders on full power = 28-38

in Windowed Mode:
1) 230-324
3) 28-30

at 800x600 FS LOWEST (all): 340-460

system specs:

AMD Phenom™ X4 9750 Quad-Core @ 2.4 GHz . 8 GB PC2-6400 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 3650 @ 512 MB . Vista Home Premium 64 Bit

notes/thoughts:

1) simply walking sometimes caused FPS drop down to same as firing gun in automode. is this a newton issue?

2) dynamic shadows eat massive FPS.

3) is "BT Multi" Multi-Core Processor Support??? (had optional 1-4)

4) for window mode, use set window position and keep it from starting underneath the task bar (mine's on top).

5) you could also finish translating the launcher.

looking forward to more. but, if you want testing like this done again, please don't force the intro? it's a cool intro but running quick tests like this over and over made it very annoying! heh.

Ok I should have mentioned a few things more

1) When walking ... or better when moving the mouse I abuse the DOF for some kind of motionblur ... that actualy eats some FPS ... and I´m thinking about taking it out ... as it is not really sightable ... except you know it XD

For the shooting ... that´s one of those things I want to do next ... when shooting the tracer-objects and Shells are all newly created and if not needed anymore deleted again ... that´s one of the oldest parts of my game ... while programing that game I learned much about 3D Game programing ... and performance in general ... so I will change that soon not to create and delete the stuff ... so that it instead creates a bunch of those objects in the loading process ... then the game can use the existing objects place them on the right position ... rotate them use them as it is now ... and instead of deleting them when not needed anymore it will just exclude them and position it somewhere under the map or something like that.

I will do that with Bullethole decals too. I know they look dumb right now ... XD but they are positioned correctly ( except the ones if you shoot on the door ... that´s also something I´m into ) the right texture will come sooner or later

2) For the dynamic shadows ... your right they "eat massive FPS" ... I don´t think it´s ok to say it´s evolveds "fault" as my game would never look like this without the deffered shader system ... but it is actualy evolveds fault XD ... somewhere I read that the Shadows are not as fast as expected ... but ... thats why you can turn them off right? ^^" Bad thing is ... I definitely can´t write such a complicated shader system ... but I can use it ... so I have to take what I get XD

Another big perfromance killer is the hole postprocessing
Have you tried setting dynamic shadows on and postprocessing completely off .. i think that should run better

3)
BT-Multi is a multiplier to fade in and out the Bullettime ... the lower the slower the fade. But because of the timer basing I made recently this doesn´t work very well on 1 ... best is at 4 ... but I will fix that soon, too. Problem is that I fit the timers to the game speed but if the steps for the bullettime fading are too low the timers get changed ( and so restarted too ) faster as they are ... if you understand what I mean XD ... so parts of the game just stand still for a moment ... for example the bad particle effects ^^"

4) thats something I didn´t think about till now ... you mean I should just place it in the middle of the screen?

5) Yeah sure XD ... that´s what I will do ... but I uploaded the 15Mb package first directly in the forum ... then it was some strange file without fileending and the name was just a bunch of numbers o.O ... then I uploaded it on rapidshare ... afterwards there came a note that the file could be downloaded only 10 times ... for more downloads I would have to make a collector´s account ... that was to much action XD ... then at least I uploaded on megaupload ... so ... I didn´t want to upload a fourth time XD ... I will include the completely translated launcher with the next version. The parts not translated are not really important.
Left means low, right means high ... as allways

Ah and for the intro ... you can cancel it by pressing esc


EDIT: BTW thanks for testing XD

Isn't a FEAR clone basically just a generic FPS with bullet time?

In my eyes there are a few things about FEAR that make it one of the best horror shooters ever. Those are the things I´m trying to copy somehow.

1. The Atmosphere ... when Alma does one of her psychic attacks ... lets you see things and stuff ... there´s a wide range of effects to use that to scare the player without even getting him in a fight situation

2. The Enemies ... they are clone soldiers wearing helmets and gasmasks ( they wood look all the same anyway as clones) ... I think that is also a big part of the atmosphere. They are faceless, nameless Freaks shooting at you.

3. The Effects ... If you shoot at the wall or on metal the Effects are big and bold ... for blood effects the same.

4. Overall ... It should be optimized for Action ... maybe some tricky parts here and there but all in all the game should run smoothly form one Part to the other ... I mean no bossfights, or puzzles and such things. And all enemies, except for the alma part of the game, are normal human. The Story should be neatless like a movie more or less in realtime ... so no scenes like "1 week later" and stuff. All that to give the imagination of one endless Horror Trip in the middl of some crazy nightmare.

5. Story setting ... The Story should run rather linear to give the feeling that you really fight for your life ... no warm places to hide. The maps should be more indoor. That has some kind of claustrophobic effect plus it´s much easier than big open worlds.

That´s what FEAR means to me ^^. And that´s what I love it for.
My english is not the best ... sorry for that XD.

All in all it should be action oriented and overhyped. Some Realistic elements mixed with madness and sick horror. That´s what I want it to be ^^.

Sounds Like a great way to explain it! thats my kinda game. Straight Horror! lol

Looks pretty cool . I like the bullet-time effect. A few things:

-The camera could use a little work-- I can see through the walls if I go up to them.
-The post-processing shaders make it very hard to see exactly what is happening in in the scene (maybe my brightness was too low).
-The hand model and bullet holes are untextured when I play the game without any shaders.

Other than that, nice job! I look forward to seeing where this goes.

1: The atmosphere is an imagined thing. It has nothing to do with the game engine. You can imagine the same atmosphere on any other genre of game or engine for the genre.

2: How is the fact the enemies are nameless, faceless freaks any different than the fact that games like Serious Sam, Halo, Metroid Prime, and just about any other FPS are nameless, faceless freaks? Honestly, you need better than "nameless, faceless freaks" to set your enemies apart from all the other "nameless, faceless freaks".

The mind controled enemies thing in FEAR wasn't pulled off very well. The enemies moved in erratic patterns that did not indicate a that they were controlled by a singular entity. So again, it's an imagined trait that's all in your head and not in the engine.

3: Effects I'll partially give you, but the effects really aren't that unique... You can shoot for "FEAR like effects" but ultimately that's just a matter of your assets, not your engine.

4: Overall, how is this any different from story or atmosphere? How is this a part of the engine?

5: Story Setting... again with the stuff that's not a part of the engine

In closing, I cannot tell FEAR's engine apart from any engines that also have bullet time. Maybe I'm just zeroing in on the word "clone". To me "clone" means the engine and nothing else. Like how Ken's Labrynth was a clone of Wolfenstein 3D, but neither had the same atmosphere, just nearly identical engines in terms of capability.

Mh ... ok

Than there must be two possibilities of a "clone" for a game I guess. I´m not trying to clone the engine ... I´m aiming for the same game experience.

I just think FEAR has a very good story and is a special kind of horror though. That´s what I want to copy. But again ... it´s not meant to have the same story ... so no remake in any ways. I want to make a story that is meant to happen while the things in FEAR2 happen.

So that the game actualy starts with the explosion from FEAR1. The story is far away from beeing complete ... I just have an unsharp idea of what will be.

The story should be like a side-story. About some kind of police team ... maybe a SWAT-Team or something that is on a mission that has absolutely nothing to do with FEAR. Let´s say a SWAT-Team or so.

They are maybe on a mission ... trying to take over a bank where robbers have taken hostages or anything like that. The location is rather far away from the one of FEAR ... and the mission goes on normal untill the bomb from FEAR1 explodes. Than suddenly scary things beginn to happen.

And before the mission has ended the world for that people changes to some nightmare-like horror show.

So the idea is to give alma an incredible amount of power and so a wide effectrange including the city where our Team is in the moment of the explosion. The actual story is about those guys trying to survive.

Maybe a bit lame but it´s also possible to include an own main story. I could just say alma´s hate for the world manifests different in that location. That would allow another bunch of great possibilities.

That are just some thoughts to make clear what I´m aiming for. Again I didn´t start the story yet in any way ... nor did I write it down or structured it with actual game quests.

EDIT:
XD I almost forgot:
I know about the things not textured but in the moment thats no big problem for me ... there are many other things to do ... I want to make my fps-engine first ...

I need a working particle system ... there are big problems with transparency and stuff ... than I need far better animations ...

The AI will take a lot work ... damn hard to make a clever ai ... you can see the way- and hidepoints in the map. Those small boxes on the ground. I want the AI to use those hidepoints to take cover to shoot. The enemy has a good looking animation to jump over those little walls. But they still walk trough walls and stuff.

The map loading system can allready load that all and it stores it in arrays and stuff ... the problems are the hole handling of the enemy and the collision-rays needed to choose the Point of interest and so the walk-target of the enemy.

Than I want to include some kind of Enemy-mood-thing ... to give the enemy some kind of state of mind. So to let him run away if he is scared or attack frontal without taking cover when he is pissed. Stuff like that.

And for the Ragdolls of the enemies ... that will possibly take more time that all others things together XD. In my opinion thats damn hard too.

So thats why I don´t really care about the things being untextured ... I want to make a stable solid engine with smart AI .... than I will do the cosmetics.

EDIT2: By the way the shaders never are deactivated completely ... a simple flashlight shader with up to 5 or 6 dynamic lights is still used ... but compared to the deffered shading pack that does hardly cost any frames per sec.

So, then basically, you're looking to make a game that's inspired by it FEAR?

Yes like that. More or less "clone" the game experience I would say.

Bumb ... Sorry for the double post XD

I just wanted to say ... lets get back to topic please ... it should be clear now what my game is meant to be ...

So it would be very kind to have some more FramesPerSec-Data if you want to test the demo.

Ah ... and if it is down just tell me and i´ll upload it again

It could be that an update will be available in near future.