Games Production - Christmas Prototype

Games Production - Christmas Prototype

After submitting our Winter submission, I was eager to begin working on our next game for our Spring assignment. We had already decided on our team, and although we hadn't fully discussed what we wanted to make, I personally wanted to create a first-person shooter. Over the first week of the Christmas break, I created a small gameplay prototype to show to the rest of my team, and to begin figuring out if pursuing this idea would be possible with the specified time-frame.

The style of gameplay I was aiming to re-create is a style that can be found in 'old-school' shooters released in the 1990s such as Quake and Doom. Two gameplay aesthetics that typically characterize this style are a fast player movement speed, and an ability for the player to fire weapons accurately from the hip without aiming down sights. These two aesthetics were the main focus of this prototype.

I created a very small level for the player to move around in and some basic enemies that walk towards and shoot the player. Similarly to Unity's Standard Asset FPS Controller, the player movement is controlled by rotating and moving a capsule-shaped GameObject with a camera. However, instead of using a Character Controller component, I decided to use Unity's rigidbody physics in order to create a more natural feel for the movement.

There are some elements of feedback for the player in order to exaggerate the feel of the game. For example, the camera tilts when the player strafes in order to accentuate the speed of the movement. The recoil animation on the gun model is also vastly exaggerated in order to attain the aesthetic I was aiming to achieve.