Hey guys, I was watching through the videos and just had a short brainstorm..

1: The sharks..

Can you remember playing games where you'd have huge characters burling towards you or quick nimble beasts jittering around, and in an FPS all you can do is run around or strafe to avoid it...

Well I was thinking that it would be insane to have a dodge button where judging on how the enemy or object is coming towards the player, he automatically dodges in the appropriate manner.

For e.g imagine being online with your buddies and a shark comes for one, he dodges to the side avoiding the shark, while diverting its path straight for you! It jumps up into the air for your face, but you press the dodge button and you duck down place your hands on its belly and throw it over your shoulders sending the shark hurling through the air or skidding across the ground where your friends shoot at it before it can recover!

Imagine the traps you could set, you could have a shark coming for you and dodge out the way to send it into another enemy or better yet into a pit or glass window etc...

The immersion value would become immense as I've ALWAYS wanted to be able to dodge in an FPS.. looking at how frustrating it could become having sharks that quick.. it would add a HUGE depth to the game to be able to dodge / counter enemies.. for bosses or bigger enemies you could even have it where you shoot out their legs and then if all of you press dodge at the same time or something you do a killer "beat it to death" style animation/execution...

What do you guys think?

2: Gore - short and sweet.. this game needs to be viceral to make it brutal and give it that POWER of immersion in my opinion

Hit me up with your thoughts! And maybe a little feedback from the makers?

Love Red x

The dodge thing reminds me of fighting dogs in CoD4.

And I don't think you will have to worry about the gore in the game, based on the photoshoot trailer and the fact that blood will get on your visor and obstruct your view.

I was thinking of a Think Fast button (sounds funny :) but is it possible? NO!

A button that when you press the character makes a decision and moves according to it.Like to throw a grenede, avoid damage, break shark necks? could be! ,but I do not believe it could go further then just breaking necks or planting bombs and etc.

(But it would be awesome if the character could take action according to the situation with only one button!)

The dodge thing reminds me of fighting dogs in CoD4.

And I don't think you will have to worry about the gore in the game, based on the photoshoot trailer and the fact that blood will get on your visor and obstruct your view.

Yeah totally in the same vein as COD4 but just better... not as rigid and static..

Something that you can do at anytime depending on the situation.. how sick would it be to run into a room and have a guy pointing a gun at you, you hit him, shoot him as always... OR you press the button and kick the gun out of his hands and knock him to his ass where you shoot him with one bullet between the eyes..

It could be a truely epic addition man!

I was thinking of a Think Fast button (sounds funny :) but is it possible? NO!

A button that when you press the character makes a decision and moves according to it.Like to throw a grenede, avoid damage, break shark necks? could be! ,but I do not believe it could go further then just breaking necks or planting bombs and etc.

(But it would be awesome if the character could take action according to the situation with only one button!)

And yeah that was pretty much what I was suggesting but you nailed it! A One Button Fits All Button :D we shall call it the OBFAB button hahaha :D

Yeah OBFAB would be thy most awesome thing in a game!

("OBFAB" lol)

Well then how about a 50 percent faliure chance :)

@Carolus_Rex
You're reading my mind. What would look 'cool' can kill many essential things, it's just basic balance you can't avoid when you're restricted in a simulation.

I would not say the dodge feature is stupid though. An all-purpose button that engages consolish stupid 100% scripted context-dependent actions is, like you described, but a dodge key could really be great IMO; as long as the creatures don't act like a Spanish bull, the feature can prove useful in many situations.

I've always liked full control of the virtual body. We've got so many keys on our keyboards.. The dodge thing could be like the one when we use the dash key in Warsow; just a quicker and shorter jump in the direction you're headed (like a normal jump). Or of course it could throw yourself on the ground, maybe directly put you in prone stance, or immobilize you until you get up, or the character could even roll to quickly get up. We've seen that in other games.

Another thing I can think about is climbing. Come on, 90% of FPS games feature a badass character that can't even lift himself up a wall his height. I can't think of a clear implementation however.

@ Carolus_Rex, thib:

I am pretty much in agreement. If i wanted to play a fast button game, I would go play this.

I hope nobody asks for quicktime events... ugh.

In a singleplayer scenario it might be somewhat fun. Though I think that this would ruin immersion for me. I'll explain.

Consider the following: As a Marine with a projectile weapon your strenght compared to the sharks is range. You are going to want to keep your distance to the sharks cause if they get close enough they'll bite your head off.

With a OBFAB button as you'd like to call it, the threat of the sharks getting close to you is basicly rendered none-existant. You no longer have to fear them in close combat, just mash the OBFAB button and you'll be OK!

This, in my opinion, is dumbing down the game console-style in the favour of a Simon-Says-Buttonmash-Event which will only mess with gameplay. I'd much rather prefer to have some good level design where I can use the environment to my advantage as I see fit.

Also, in a competative MP environment this would be horrible as you would nullify the need to be able to handle stressful situations close-up and be sure to put your first bullets into the head of your enemy rather than anywhere else. It reduces the "skill cap" that a player can achieve because of features that would normally require precise actions are reduced to "Spamm this button moar!"

I agree about the gore though. Games are way too worried about not pissing off soccer-moms who think their kids will turn into murdering psychopats if they see people bleed on a screen.

These problems can be avoided by class balancing, for e.g only one or two classes can do it naturally whereas others either plain out can't do it, or have to upgrade to achieve it in order to keep the actions relevant to the class you've chosen. On top of that, where "skill" caps are considered, it's not that difficult to turn these features off on a competitive level... but purely for the co-operative mode, I feel that an OBFAB button would kick ass!

Does that return my point fairly? Or is the idea of an OBFAB button still ridiculous :D

hit me back man!! :D

Oh and make the OBFAB button charge or something where you can only use it so often to avoid "Jericho" style button sequences

Red x

@ SilverEvolver:

The thing is, IM is not going to have a class system. An excerpt from this article:

Playing a pre-made character in a game can be great fun, but when designing Interstellar Marines it was pretty clear that we wanted more than that, we wanted to give players the freedom to shape and mold their character themselves.

In the game the characters will enter the solar system as rookies, but during the progression of the game all gradually become more and more experienced as the story unfolds. With experience comes new skills and abilities as well as access to new and better weaponry, and it is now all up to each player how they want to build and equip their Marine.

Create a stealthy medic with hacking skills, a heavy armored sniper with explosives or maybe an officer with excellent strategic abilities and a minigun?

It is all up to the player to decide.

Saying how the leveling system would work is pure speculation right now, but based on that description I would guess either a perk or a point buy system. After every mission you get some perk selections / some skill points to train. Here's the thing though - In that environment, the OBFAB would be available to everyone, and if the legged sharks are as dangerous as they should be, everyone would get it. Conversely, if you nerfed it to lower than 100% success rate, nobody would get it.

I had a similar situation in a game I had played not long ago, Dead Space. There were all kinds of things trying to chop me up into little bits, and it had some really tense moments when things got too close. That is, until I got the force gun. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, I will elaborate. Probably 90% of the enemies in Dead Space were melee, and you couldn't do a whole lot but try to knock them back and run away at melee range. The force gun basically hammers things with a gravity blast, think the illegitimate child of the hl2 gravity gun and a shotgun. It basically took ALL tension out of fights. If things got close I just switched weapons and knocked them on their ass. Yawn.

I want to be scared of the sharks. I want to be put on heightened alert and get a little paranoid at any hint that they could be present. I want them to be deadly as hell. I don't want an "i win" button that neuters all tension and pressure I am hoping I will feel when fighting them. I don't want to be Zangief the shark wrestler. I want to control my character to do cool things, not push a button and watch an animation of them doing cool things.

All of the above statements were simply my point of view. I welcome counter-arguments.

P.S. Oh, and how much do you think a legged shark would weigh? I'm guessing in the +400kg range. I realize you can do a lot more than normally by throwing with momentum, but I think that is pushing it a little :)

@ SilverEvolver:

The thing is, IM is not going to have a class system. An excerpt from this article:

Playing a pre-made character in a game can be great fun, but when designing Interstellar Marines it was pretty clear that we wanted more than that, we wanted to give players the freedom to shape and mold their character themselves.

In the game the characters will enter the solar system as rookies, but during the progression of the game all gradually become more and more experienced as the story unfolds. With experience comes new skills and abilities as well as access to new and better weaponry, and it is now all up to each player how they want to build and equip their Marine.

Create a stealthy medic with hacking skills, a heavy armored sniper with explosives or maybe an officer with excellent strategic abilities and a minigun?

It is all up to the player to decide.

Saying how the leveling system would work is pure speculation right now, but based on that description I would guess either a perk or a point buy system. After every mission you get some perk selections / some skill points to train. Here's the thing though - In that environment, the OBFAB would be available to everyone, and if the legged sharks are as dangerous as they should be, everyone would get it. Conversely, if you nerfed it to lower than 100% success rate, nobody would get it.

I had a similar situation in a game I had played not long ago, Dead Space. There were all kinds of things trying to chop me up into little bits, and it had some really tense moments when things got too close. That is, until I got the force gun. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, I will elaborate. Probably 90% of the enemies in Dead Space were melee, and you couldn't do a whole lot but try to knock them back and run away at melee range. The force gun basically hammers things with a gravity blast, think the illegitimate child of the hl2 gravity gun and a shotgun. It basically took ALL tension out of fights. If things got close I just switched weapons and knocked them on their ass. Yawn.

I want to be scared of the sharks. I want to be put on heightened alert and get a little paranoid at any hint that they could be present. I want them to be deadly as hell. I don't want an "i win" button that neuters all tension and pressure I am hoping I will feel when fighting them. I don't want to be Zangief the shark wrestler. I want to control my character to do cool things, not push a button and watch an animation of them doing cool things.

All of the above statements were simply my point of view. I welcome counter-arguments.

P.S. Oh, and how much do you think a legged shark would weigh? I'm guessing in the +400kg range. I realize you can do a lot more than normally by throwing with momentum, but I think that is pushing it a little :)

I'll take it back man, and I'd have to agree with you, the weight of the shark and the tension breakers are the main ones which got me! I think I overlooked the fact that this is supposed to be a horror game of sorts? with scares in the sense of truely deadly foes.

Very good points man, and Dead Space owns, I deliberately only use the first pistol to maintain tension throughout the whole game, I never saw a reason to swap it does a killer job.