How I Overhauled Combat in my Sci Fi FPS | Devlog 12

Hey everyone,

Sorry for disappearing for a couple months, but I'm back and I'm hoping to get a couple uploads out before school starts again. The enemies I've shown here aren't final as I still plan to add other enemies, new features and have a lot of bugfixing do, but they're good enough for me to finally move on to level design.

Devlog 13, which will be dedicated to level design will be coming out soon so stay turned for that :D

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
1:35 Chapter 1: Recap
3:21 Chapter 2: Gunplay
6:04 Chapter 3: Enemies
12:54 Chapter 4: One Last Note

[martyboi]

I feel like your visuals could use some more contrast. I don't mean a post processing effect, but actually making darker things darker. There is nothing really distinguishing a distant wall from an enemy right in front of you- since the color schemes and saturation and values of both are very similar. I think it would really help with readability

[KatsoGoGo]

Very lovely game dev, keep it up!
In my humble opinion, I believe to add more satisfactory to your enemies, add more distinct movement to them.
For example, the smaller drone could move side to side quicker, the tank would be slow, the soldiers would dash/boost backwards to avoid your shooting. Also, different testing area could show the potential of the enemies. Guess this could mean, write down what each enemy would do and try to achieve that?

[corranhorn]

I think you have a ton going on that looks really great. The visual design and weapon feel looks spot on. The biggest issue I think is that it just looks lifeless. I think you have the right idea about humanoid enemies, but the execution kinda just resulted in more floaty turrets than actual humanoid characters with life. I think if you could actually get some enemies that walk on the ground, on two or more legs, it would go so far to make them feel actually different from the other enemies and more alive. There's a very stark contrast currently between the player character, which feels very human and familiar, and the enemies. Particularly with how smoothly and realistically the gun manipulation translates as you reload. It could work for something more dystopic as a lone survivor type of thing, but I think it would feel better to have a world with creatures that feel as grounded.

[Bruhtatochip]

I remember when an indepedent developer did devlogs of a sci fi FPS. I hope this can fill that void.

[SageMuy]

For gunplay, an overlooked element of satisfaction is the sound the gun makes Also for visual hit marking you can have enemy body/body part highlighting on hit. That always makes gunplay satisfying

[Csbees]

Lighting, please add cool lighting.
The new art style looks epic btw, even better then before!

[MaximusOvernight]

i'm gonna buy this day one when it launches, good luck!

[lpfunvf]

Lore idea: make it so that the player is the baddie and he’s trying to conquer a planet, and the people of the planet are just trying to defend themselves, but make it like a plot twist so its a surprise for the player

[karyjas]

They need animations to show theyre alerted, maybe they need to reload, or they overheat, maybe they get into a defensive mode, maybe due to different health they behave differently, like becoming more and more defensive. Generally they should be more animated i think, and there is a lot of opportunity for satisfaction and liveliness

[DanielMcNeil-cg]

Welcome back, your work is an inspiration, keep up the great work.

[hardtailfails]

I think you're going in the right direction but just remember to focus on the fun factor before anything else, is the game fun is all that matters in the end this is why a simple game can make millions like lethal company

[laserpipes]

Finally the great unity guy has returned from his cave

[lazercatanimations]

Since this is a Sci-Fi game, it would be on theme if you add interesting weapons like a coil gun or anything else in that direction

[ADo_Bad_Idea]

Well, if you want a specific combat experience, you have to force the play to play like that
For example:
If you want the movement to be fast and the player to always run around, then make the terrain large and easy to traverse, where keepings momentum is easy.
The enemies should also reward that style of combat, by a combination of reward for moving, and punishment for not.

[FugaceFugite]

Nice progress ! Those enemies look quite satisfying to play against. One thing on the visuals is that the enemies don't really contrast with the background much.
Right now most (if not all) the attacks you shown have to be dodged after they have been fired. You could vary that with a hitscan attack that clearly telegraphs when it's coming, you'd have to pay attention to the enemy instead of the projectiles for this one.

I was wondering if you knew about the Shift + Space shortcut in Unity that allows to quickly maximize and unmaximize any dockable window by hovering above one and pressing it ? It'd probably be a lot better to watch those gameplay or scene demo moments with the scene/game view being maximized, instead of it covering less than a third of the screen.
I would also highly recommend upgrading to a higher resolution monitor, for your experience primarily though it would also help with the video quality. I can't stress enough how much better it is to work with space on your screen instead of constantly resizing or scrolling around to see specific things. A 1440p monitor would feel like a revolution, pretty much guaranteed !

[giggio]

Very cool! I guess that you could add some partial destruction and hit effects to the enemies as well. As they are not organic creatures but rather hard surface machines, we kind of expect them to malfunction as we damage them, instead of just being alive until it explodes.

It will add another level of immersion to the game feel!

[a_games]

I think majority of the enemies should strafe to the sides, humanoid robots should have much more animations (various hand formations, body spin and so on).
I guess there is still lack of enemy dynamics .

[eli_the_great]

A great video as usual man!
Since you mentioned level design next time, I'll add that I'm super excited to see what those look like!
I'm also hoping we'll get to see what you might be thinking for movement abilities, if you include those. As a sci-fi shooter, you can do pretty much anything with the movement - dodge rolls, double jumps, dashing, etc.
(Movement is my favorite part of video games, so excuse me if you decide not to do anything with movement).

[dylancarey]

I like your video!!! The project looks amazing. I would recommend watching a video by the developer of Patch Quest. He talked about how he developed a game for 2 years without play testing or having a fun simple game loop made and he ended up scrapping and redoing the project. I would 100% recommend to focus on the fun game aspects of the game first and make sure the combat and game loop is fun and then go back and add all the details you want too.

[therobberpanda]

I'd love to see how you make the models, It's something i struggle with so im sure it would be pretty useful. Good video!