So taking from this thread I thought it would be a fun side project to try and make a simple sniper combat game. Basically, you get a sniper rifle and a ghillie suit and you’re spawned in a medium size map with tons of cover everywhere and you your goal is to try and find other snipers and take them out. The fun in the game is sneaking around and trying to find people and take them out while staying out of sight yourself.
I’m planning on building the map out of smooth terrain and I can build the sniper rifle as well but I need help with these things scripting wise:
The sniper rifle scripting and I’d like it to include bullet drop
An LoD system for the terrain which I’ll explain below
Possibly a simple team system so you can team up with friends
Ghillie suits (explained below)
The reason I need a LoD system is because I’d like to have tall grass as one of the things that you can hide in. Now it’s kind of obvious that I don’t want to hand place a ton of grass and that could also get laggy so I’d like to have system that will create a good amount of grass around your character and then have less grass placed further away from your character. This and having an LoD system for the rest of the items in the map could allow for a much smoother experience.
For the Ghilli suits I think it would be cool if you start will an empty ghillie suit which would basically be a uniform that you’re wearing with nothing on it. Then, you can press a button to scavenge for materials around you. When you do this you would play a gathering animation and it would then find materials around you (grass, sticks, rubble, etc) and take some of those and attach them in random spots on your character. each time you did this it would add more material up to a limit, after a while it would choose random items to remove and then add new stuff. If you were in a new setting (say you were in a forest and now you’re in a town building) then you’d remove stuff that wasn’t relevant to what was around you and add items from what you could find around you (e.g. you can’t find grass around you so it replaces grass with rubble). In this way, you could change your suit as you move around but it would also have animations that would attract attention so you’d have to be careful when and where you do it.
Other details I’d like to mention are the fact that I’d like to have large server sizes so that you can actually find people. Also, definitely using lighting affects and a day-night script would be awesome. Maybe a weather system if this works out?
Now, I know you’re asking yourself “What do I get out of this?” I honestly don’t have much to offer but I love being a sniper in PF and I’m more doing this for fun to make a crazy sniper game but if this works out we may be able to turn it into a proper game with unlockable weapons and stuff and make some money off of it. At the very least you’ll get to work with some other awesome devs and get recognition and a fun game to play.
Looking at this game plan, I get the idea that staying in one spot is the best tactic. Do you think that’ll be fun? Do you have alternate ways to encourage people to move?
Also, the LoD system will be hard if you expect players to hide behind grass. If from 200 studs away you know grass looks totally different, you wouldn’t want to camp in it.
Sorry to be a Debbie Downer. I don’t want to discourage you from making it, I just want to make sure you’ve considered these things.
Battlefield generates grass at the cameras pointed position
I actually made the game you’re talking about last summer when Kinetic Code’s spiritual predecessor was made. I shut it down because of the massive smooth terrain map which lagged. Now with LOD terrain I’m sure it’s just lovely. Maybe tomorrow when I’m on my PC again I’ll find it. There were a few towers and the rest is smooth terrain perlin noise hills. The two weapons are a 50 Cal and a 44 magnum. Bullet travel and gravity
Yes, I did consider the fact that grass won’t look quite the same from a distance but if you’re on a ridge overlooking somewhere and just your head it sticking up and you have some grass in your hat then I’d say it’s still pretty good cover. However, this hasn’t actually been tested so I can’t be 100% sure. Also, you won’t want to be in the middle of a bunch of obstructions since that will block your vision and make it easier to sneak up on you if someone spots you without you spotting them. I suspect that some of the best spots would be places like a tower with a really good vantage point or where two area meet where one provides cover and the other is open to scan the area (e.g. the edge of a forest or brushy area)
Some ways that I can think of to get people moving around:
Give them binoculars so they can spot people to go after. This may just make it easier to find people but if you’re trying to track someone then it can be a good way to help find them. If it gives better views than your scope and you can see really far then you might be enticed to walk to the next ridge to take your shot since you’re too far away.
Taking from that previous point, sniper could also have a max distance, granted it would be long but if the map is large enough there may be spots where you have to move in order to actually hit someone. Additionally, if damage goes down over distance and there are badges or something if you get so many headshots in a row then people could be motivated to move closer in order to ensure a headshot so they can get that badge.
Just not seeing anyone right away. While this may turn people away, at the same time people only have so much of an attention span and they will move to a different place if they think it will be a better position. Also, when you spawn in you’ll be on the edge of the map so you’ll want to move towards the center to try and find people.
Wanting to get revenge on whoever just took them out. While I don’t want a killcam, I’ve seen ideas of ways to let people know at least the general location of their killer so they have some clues about where to look for them and believe me, when someone takes you out I think just about everyone would agree that you feel like it would be very satisfying if you could find that person and take them out yourself in return.
These are just some of the ideas that come to my mind right now though there may be other reasons that people can think of.
Also, one side thing I’m curious about in trying to make this is if it’s possible to reasonably hide your player using a ghillie suit. The reason I say this is because from what I’ve seen, if a roblox game has a ghillie suit it will look cool but it doesn’t actually really provide any stealth advantage and I’d like to see if it’s possible. Not to mention, people are quite accustomed to seeing a roblox character and so it’s normally fairly easy to pick them out from their surroundings (as far as I ca tell) so I’d like to see if it’s possible to take a character, suite them up with a pseudo random ghilli suit and then put them in a world where it’s actually possible for them to blend in so that another player could walk by and not even realize that they just walked by a player. (If you’re looking for a challenge in this then here you go!)
EDIT: That turned out waaay longer than I expected
