Hello,

I have recently started to make a full commitment to developing a game of my own. After years of playing all the popular shooter games, I want to throw in my own creative tastes. The issue is this: I have so many ideas.

I have decided to try and develop a first-person shooter that is centered around parkour. I have a strong love for the art and I practice it myself. I want a game that revolves around fluid movement. But I want it to be more than just that. Battlefield and Call of Duty have begun to add more fluid and "parkour-like" movements with vaulting, sliding, diving, etc. But there are so many movements the human body can do that these games do not allow you to. I know that this is what I want. I just am not sure about the story and confrontation.

I am an avid writer, so writing a good story is not an issue. But I have options. The most basic idea for the game would be to pit two teams against each other in an environment focused around parkour and have them fight to the death. But then, I had another idea. How about an FPS that functions as a racing game? Two teams of "parkour warriors" race from one side of the map to another. They can shoot at each other, damage the environment, take shortcuts-all that jazz. But there is a twist: the teams are getting chased by velociraptors on the roof tops! Sort of like Temple Run with guns and dinosaurs. My final idea is a zombie survival game- kind of like the popular DayZ mod. Except, destructible environment, customization, parkour, and maybe some other features that are too specific for that idea to be included in this post.

I have been asking my friends which game they would want to play more and almost all of them have said the Zombie Survival game. I am interested to try it as well but, getting chased by dinosaurs sounds really freakin' sweet to me. I would really love some feedback on which idea is the better or if none of them are good. I can reach a lot more opinions on the internet than in person. (We all know people love to give their opinions over the web XD)

I would greatly appreciate it.

-Effective

I like the zombie game idea. Zombie and parkour just plain go together. With the dinosaur game, you might have a tough time explaining what dinosaurs are doing on rooftops.

FPS + Parkour + Dinausaur? + Zombie Apocalypse??. Well that is interesting, add some pirates and ninja and it will be perfect.

More seriously, I find the idea interesting. Kind of a competitive Mirror's edge. To make it more interesting I would let one team being the humans and the other the raptors. I don't know if it could stay attractive after playing on or two games.

Zombie + parkour was already made in Dying Light (from Techland, the same guy behind Dead Island) so go find some inspiration in these games. For games about parkour there is of course Mirror's edge, and in a competitive way there is Blink. Then, as you said, there is more and more FPS who uses parkour moves.

And now even more serious. Are you just proposing an idea (purely theoretical) without wanting to go further? (Which is, in my opinion perfectly fine and honorable.) Or do you really intend to develop it?

If your answer is the first, then I would recommend you to write a complete Game Design Document (http://www.runawaystudios.com/articles/chris_taylor_gdd.asp) It's a GDD template from the guy who made Total Annihilation. Try to imagine the whole game. I insist, the whole game, not just the start, not just the story. Try to think about how will be your game from the first button to the last. When you'll finish completing this document, you should realize that making a game can be very demanding and hard. (But you can always send me the completed document, I will gladly look at it)

If your answer is the second, then I have more question. Do you have some programming/team-managment abilities ( design/modelisation/texturing/animation/artistic/sound/cinema/writing/etc...) Did you estimate how long can it take to make a FPS? Even when using an engine like UDK, Unity, or else, it take a lot of effort and time to make a game. Did you try to make a simple FPS first? One, where you have to reach an exit before the time (or invisible raptor) eat you? Do you know how you plan to make the parkour movement? To make it realist using capture motion would be the best solution, but I guess not anyone has a capture motion (and actor) in his garage. If not, then you should have an army of modeler and animator to make your animation (and your raptor)

The issue is this: I have so many ideas.

Well, like 90% of the population -_-'

Anyway, to make it short, I hope you have a little more than what you just posted. Because your ambition doesn't seems to match your means ^^'

And before finishing my post, I want to clarify a few things.

1. I don't blame (just a little) nor want to break your motivation. I just want to make sure you are prepared.
2. I don't say it's impossible to do. But maybe not without the right experience, method, organisation and funding.

Other than that, good luck.

PS : On a side note, in my humble opinion, comic sans ms is like the less serious and worst police ever ^^'

If you plan to do this with a team I would recommend you to make a smaller game first, just to get a feel on how to manage a team and get an understanding how tedious it is to make a game. Unity and UDk are both great in making mobile games, you should start there. (or do as I did, do a PSP Mini game, you just need to get your hand on a PSP devkit and a programmer who is ready to tackle the shitstorm that is playstation programming. Good luck ^_^)

Cheers!

I would start with a ready-made game building tool and prototype the idea (GameMaker Studio or similar). Then you will see what kind of skills will be needed to upgrade it to FPS.

A 2D sidescroller with dinosaurs below and jumping guys above could be fun to play

I appreciate the feedback. I have been doing some practice with GameMaker, a side-scroller like mippy has talked about. Now, I am not going to just jump into this without any preparation. I understand all the obstacles, the time and effort required, etc. I comprehend and respect all of that. I plan to use Unity, Blender, and Photoshop for a practice game, to get the mechanics and everything worked out. I have friends who have experience with audio, scripting, and modeling, and I myself have received an education on graphic design, scripting, and modeling. I am also the story-teller of our group. This post here is merely to see which type of game would take off.

So really, I am asking this: As gamers, which game would grab your attention the most? A FPS/Parkour TDM game, a FPS/Parkour race game, being chased by dinosaurs (pretty off the wall but I thought it sounded cool), or a zombie-survival FPS with an emphasis on parkour?

That is my question. As for the development of it, I know the process. But before I do anything, I want to know what I am going for here. Getting some demographics, so to speak. If I could get the opinions of game developers and gamers alike, it would really help me in making a game. I AM going to make a game focused on parkour and shooting guns, that is my goal. But I am not sure about the "conflict" the characters and players alike will have to deal with. Writing dinosaurs into a believable story will be a challenge, but one I plan to accept if more people prefer the dino-parkour game over the other two options. The other stories will be very easy to write in comparison.

Again, thanks for the feedback. I am willing to take all comments and criticisms, but please try to answer the inquiry and not the development process.

Thank you

-Effective

Just going to pop in here and say that it's bloody hard to implement (good) parkour mechanics. Good luck, though, it's a noble cause.

That aside, an FPS/Parkour race game sounds the most interesting to me, and the only one that I do not immediately equate with another game. Dinosaurs might be a little hard to sell, I gotta be honest, but hey, it's your game! Just make sure they actually add something to the gameplay other than just "dinosaurs". Potentially all they'd be is annoying, rather than legitimate obstacles or something that's frightening to run away from/shoot, but if you have an idea to make them fun, then by all means, include them!

Seconding Navezof on writing up a good GDD for yourself and any team you might already have and/or will acquire in the future. Make sure it's always evolving and growing. An idea might have an appeal, but it's not until people actually play the implemented game that they'll really understand what it's about. Good luck!

Hmm, i think *at first glance* the zombie-game would be more appealing to me(and most people), but that is because it is easier to imagine a zombie-game(they already exist, and you shoot zombies in them, which is like shooting other people only easier)

But, having dinosaurs could be interesting as well, since they can be of all sizes, getting chased by a huge dinosaur and /hiding in/running through/ a tunnel and thus avoiding a dinosaur that is too big to fit through all the while still having to shoot the occasional (smaller) velicoraptor you encounter would give a much intenser gaming-experience.

This would be harder to program in, so maybe start with something simple(zombies) and use the experience to make a dinosaur-game ?

Very good points from all of you. I am so interested in putting dinosaurs in a parkour game because how agile some dinosaurs are. When I first thought of it, I pictured a huge urban map, larger than Caspian Border on Battlefield 3- but being pure urban environment. I pictured players fighting it out on the streets, trying to score points to win a match, but then, I threw parkour into it, having players leaping through windows, vaulting over rails, running up walls to reach second-story windows to get to a better position, etc. And that seemed really cool to me, especially if the battlefield was destructible. Then I glanced over at my collection of Jurassic Park books and immediately pictured players running on rooftops, shooting each other, all while being chased by those little green dinosaurs. Then I pictured a player jumping off a roof, diving through a window of another building, and running down the hallway as a T-Rex tried to eat him by breaking through the wall of the building. Players flying Apache helicopters as pterodactyls engage in a "dogfight" with the pilots. Maybe velociraptors chasing players down the street- the ideas kept on coming. It seemed like a really good idea. But, zombies are a lot easier to script than agile dinosaurs that will have to be jumping through windows, fighting helicopters, stomping on tanks, etc. That seems like a really complex script to me. So maybe I will do a zombie game first, and use that experience to develop the dinosaur game.