Scifi shooter/rpg

[BeardyElf]

Hi. We are 2 brothers creating a scifi shooter/rpg. We have been on this project about 5 months now and decided to share it to you.
Game is based on solar system similar to ours and no interstellar travel is possible at the time. Lot of the inspiration comes from a tv show Firefly and games like borderlands and mass effect.
Most of the core gameplay mechanics are almost ready or in the making. Game has skill system, quests, somewhat of an inventory system and you are able to interact with npc's, use bountyboards etc.
Lots of work is still to do, but most is just extending from already written code and creating new assets.
Current work is mostly geared towards improving enemy AI and completing early game maps and game assets.
Here's few pictures and will post video of gameplay later.

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[majic12]

Good stuff.Solid looking,i can feel the weight of the assets,the placement is right and feels close to natural.I like it.I see you are using a outline post process.I personaly like it.Other people these days tend to say its not a good idea but if it looks good to the eye than keep it.I personaly approve the look.
I made a very detailed level some time ago to which i only applyed a post process outline like you did and kept it like that for some time being inspired by borderlands.A few weeks later i told to my self what will it look if i keep the toon outline and just give a toon/other style to the existing textures?So here is the tip for you to experiment and see what happens.Find a photoshop plug in named Topaz Labs.Try to convert one of the existing textures to another style and if you like it make a copy of all textures in a separate folder>make a photoshop action>and apply all the changes automaticly to the textures and try in on your level.Youd be surprised what you can achieve

[BeardyElf]

Here's video of early gameplay. Characters, animations, ui are not final.
I'll have to check out plugin majic12 mentioned. Most of our texturing are made in Gimp but I think there's exe for it that enables use of photoshop plugins.
Give us your comments and feedback. Lot of stuff will change and most of the lighting is not done yet.

[majic12]

Yup!Its good Keep up and the best of luck with the project.Be warned that you may receve litle comments as udk is abandoned and there are probably only 15-20 people still lurking in here.The animations are hand made right?If so try giving Mixamo a try and you coud save a lot of time on animating.

[Snipe34]

First off, professional looking maps that look realistic and I tasted the industrial complex environment immediately. Personally I don't like 3p shooters or Borderlands. Firefly, is ok... But my personal opinion doesn't disqualify the fact they have merit, exhibiting creativity resulting in hours of fun for many people.

Criticism - well not the maps (although I prefer stark contrasts, dirt grime) - but your maps are excellent for your type of game. The character is reasonable, the HUD could be a little more unique. But maybe it's blue HUD and your maps environment of brown/sandy/buff colour that are a stark colour clash with the blue HUD. Probably the HUD would fit better moving its colours towards the overall map colours.

The game. AI performed brilliantly - I notice one guy close to you dodging in and out of cover, excellent, I was impressed.

What I didn't like was the endless tour of the complex... walking... walking - I get it, the map is great, but that walking would quickly bore me. Perhaps again that's just me, I like action and more action. Suggestion to break up the walking: maybe a hitman out to get the main character, sniping somewhere nearby - bound to be someone trying to get rid of him. And randomly; the player would never know when. Maybe booby traps too, anything to break up that walking. Diversions, lots - maybe you have them planned, but so far player goes from A to B to shoot, for me would get boring quickly.

[BeardyElf]

Thanks for your feedback. Maybe the gameplay was wrong word for the video. We intented to show little of our first maps and gameplay elements. Actual gameplay, npc's, storyline etc. havent been added yet to maps.
They exist but we just have create them in game. That much pointless walking will not be in game
Animations are actually bought from a website but most of them are just ugly looking so currently we are using them only for prototyping purposes. We have tried IpiSoft's motion capture for animations and the
results were pretty good, so sometime in the near future we are planning to use it for our animations.

[BeardyElf]

Some new screenshots and new enemy. Brute with a smashing hammer.

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[gaz661]

its a solid lookihg map.as others have said.
you say you are 2 brothers,do you share the work equally?or is 1 a modeller and 1 a coder?

[BeardyElf]

Here's a small video of brute combat. It's early in the works, but it's getting there.
Energy shield for the enemy seems to be pain in the a**. I had to create pretty thick collision for it, otherwise bullets are too fast and just go through it.
And because of the collision, brute sometimes gets stuck in the walls.

My brother is mostly working on the levels and I'm doing the coding. Both of us are also doing modeling.

[gaz661]

instead of stopping the bullets you could make the enemy immune to the damage type while holding the shield.that would solve the sticking problem.

[BeardyElf]

I thought of that too but that prevents all damage and I need to be able to shoot enemy to the legs, from side etc.
Maybe I'll figure it out later how to do it properly. Currently its skeletal mesh and physics asset collision, per poly collision dont work very well in this case.

[gaz661]

no,per poly collision isn't that good,but you could detect the nearest bone hit and if its a lower arm or leg allow the damage.

[BeardyElf]

New screens.

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