Game Pickups

[Psychophobe]

I want to request confirmation on a subject that seems in general very poorly executed in the wide variety of shoot em up and skill tactical games I've played, including the Deus Ex games. Let me illustrate you an example:

Edit:Apologies if I've preaching to the converted, so to speak, reading my post back I feel it comes across as a bit too , er, blunt, for my liking, but I'm absolutely not intending to disparage but more looking for iDGi to say "yes, we're on the same viewpoint" :-) Cheers.

So you've got into a firefight, after a conversation, and there's blood drips trailing after your not-quite-dead body as you haul yourself back into the shadows, fair enough, it was a tough battle but that final Flashbang you pulled was enough to overcome and defeat those two remaining terrorists. Walking down another corridor, you can hear some voices off to a room to the side, but what's this, in the middle of the corridor there's a +20 health pack. TadaHH!! There we have it, you're health is now almost back up to half way, that means with a bit of skill and a bit of luck you got enough cushion to go terrorist pushing once again......

And so it continues.

I find several related elements to this deeply atmosphere breaking for FPS games in general:

• - "finding" health packs just laying around like unwanted Chistmas presents. Does no one else ever use health packs?
• - Having health "packs" like sticking a plaster on a bullet wound is some sort of magical instant cure
• - Finding ammunition in the most unlikeliest of places, cupboards in abandoned schools on one FPS I played. Like WTF?

Please iDGi , when level designing please bare in mind that for it to be a world, that means not thinking about it as a game, and that means not having the ready supply of randomly distributed collectables and powerups all over the place like virtually every other FPS game...

• -- Can FOOD regenerate your health, thus after a firefight you need to find a staff room in The Tower, or a kitchen area to find foodstuffs you can restock with.
• -- You can extend this with being able to "carry" some food and then only needing to find a microwave (any staff or communual area) to use to turn packet food into eadible food that can restore health and stamina etc.
• -- This would by and large replace the atmosphere breaking and extremely unrealistic genetic "health pack" style which really dates from 1980s games and does nothing for world submersion.
• -- Obviously, medical kits from some occassional first aide centres can be found and used for bigger benefits.
• -- But you get the idea. No "magic answers", people have to think about what they would do IN THE WORLD, not what they should do in the game, to find the things they need to survive and overcome.
• -- This doesn't mean hiding things, but simply that various usable items should be stored in a logical location rather than as so many generic FPS games leave them "laying around random rooms".
• -- Same with ammuition and weapons, some from dead bodies, yes of course, but others would mostly be from security checkpoints, not a bunch of RPG-heads just sitting on a sofa on level 15 Cold Calling Sales office in The Tower.

For me, I think this sort of approach to the ammo/health/pickups concept would make huge improvements on the perception of this project as a World rather than as a Game with a clever dialog system. This issue overall is one that is very common amongst FPS shooters (as I'm aware), but I leave it to others to confirm or deny on newer ones (I've not played much since RTC Wolfenstein II)

Cheers
M

Qualifier: Obviously there's a balance to draw, as some people will inevitably complain that it could be too difficult to have to clear the security checkpoint of guards before going on there and restocking on ammo and likewise I don't want to tell you what to put where exactly, but rather than as a concept of "well the player could be running out of bullets about this area, so we should drop them some bullets for them to pick up around here.... say in that room there, just because" to be more like, "where would you really be likely to find a box of bullets on floor 15 of the Tower?". It's a way of thinking about the WORLD rather than a way of thinking about the LEVEL.

P.s> Very pleased to read you got the Primary goal on Fig. :-)

[GreatBird]

Psychophobe : We are 100% on the same wavelength, do not worry. :-) Have you played the original CONSORTIUM? It follows ALL of these rules already....

The primary health mechanic uses what we call Medical Nanites, which are tiny robots that can repair physical damage to yourself, with a very high Utility Energy expense. There are NO med-packs or any such BS in our games, nor will there ever be.

Food is an interesting subject, and is certainly something we'll be considering....

[Psychophobe]

Thanks for the reassurance, I have bought (I paid money and everything!) Consortium and played it through a few times but felt the game scale was not really approiate enough to use it as a reference point in my post (ie not muc fighting). Also I'm aware that these are the sort of things that "change" when developing from a smaller game size to a larger game size.

The points in my post I found even in Deus Ex: HR, which really disappointed/cut submersion for me that someone in an (abandoned ) office in Deus Ex was keepng high explosives in their desk draw for me to "find".

[GreatBird]

Yeah, I am also extremely nitpicky about that sort of stuff, so we should be OK. ;-)