CAGD 495 Design blog

Jen Davalos

Hi there!

My name is Jen Davalos And I'm the game designer for MARRED. I'm very excited to be working on this project, and I wanted to be the best that it can possibly be. 

MARRED Is a fast-paced first-person shooter with an emphasis of fun movement abilities and intense combat.  In my initial pitch, I narrowed MARRED  down to three main pillars; Shootin’, Lootin’, and Scootin’.  I believe that if you're able to get all of the pillars into the foundation,  we will have the beginnings of a very good game.

Shootin’

A fast-paced first-person shooter cannot function without good shooting mechanics. That's why the design of how the active combat and shooting feels has to be perfect. 1 thing that was brought back during Sprint 1 Who was the use of ammo in weapons. There were a few things that I was thinking of when it came to Mo and the speed of gameplay.

Solution 1- no ammo + no reloads

The first proposed solution was to have the player never run out of ammo and also have to not reload the guns.  I know this sounds strange and possibly even wrong;  and don't get me wrong, it feels that way too.  I was looking at a game I am taking reference from called Ultrakill for this design approach. 

However, when thinking about how that will look on screen, I couldn't get past the idea of not reloading.

Solution 2- no ammo + reloading

The next evolution of this problem came in the form of having reloading animations, but having no need to pick up ammo.  This worked for a short while where the player wouldn't need to worry about running out of ammo, and just focus on the combat but they still get the satisfying reload animations. I thought this would be the way to go, but as more and more  got added on to the Lootin’ pillar,  I realized that  it would be best for the player to have ammo reserves so that they can find them around the map. 

Solution 3- ammo + reloading (back to basics)

Since the inclusion of upgrades, I found it to be better that The player has to manage ammo types, As well as being able to find them in crates and getting them from enemies. This will be discussed more in the Lootin’ Section.

Lootin’

In MARRED, The player has several ways of acquiring A variety of items. Our main 3 collectibles are upgrades, ammo, and scrap. Players have various ways of acquiring these items whether they be from killing enemies, destroying drop boxes, or buying them in stores.

Scrap and upgrade don't need too much of an explanation right now, but drop boxes do.  Essentially, whenever your player destroys a special kind of box, The game rolls a dice to see what the player gets. Initially The chances of getting something from the box is 30%, but by buying or finding an upgrade called the Vegas blacklist, they can boost those chances to 60% or even 90%.

These are the stats for the dropbox

Each square represents 3%

The ammo is decided randomly, but the upgrade is also rolled on another layer of 10

Scootin’

Scooting is another one of our top priorities in MARRED.  We want the player to move fast but still have tight control over their character. We've done this by having our basic moving system with a couple of add-ons  two very up the players moving and use in level design. 

So far we have walking, running, looking, jumping, and sliding all implemented. And I hope that in the future we’ll be able to add things like wall running!

Visuals

This is MARRED’s color scheme. This color scheme will mostly be used for UI elements as well as screens that the player sees in the levels. So far, our 2D artist has done a lot of good work when it comes to keeping within this style. 

This is a piece of prototype art that I made. This is the weapon selector display.  It shows the player what weapon they are using. As you can see, all of the colors in the picture are from the color scheme board!

Conclusion

I'll be running quite a few more of these,  so I hope to give you an Insight on how the design for MARRED changes and grows as the project moves forward.  I can't wait to see what else We’ll do, and I’ll be sure to update you on what happens next! See ya! Jen Davalos Game Designer