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First person shooters (FPS) have come a long way over the years.
So I have decided to have a look back over how they have evolved and where I see them going.
For me the first FPS was Wolfenstein. Some will argue that technically it wasn't, that there was some dodgy vector line game or something made a few years earlier, but pahh!
Anyways, Wolfenstein had you play the role of some American guy and you took on the Nazi massive. Even coming up against Hitler himself at the end of one of the chapters. You were armed with 4 different weapons, knife, pistol, machine gun, chain gun. At the time this was enough weapons to satisfy your needs. The levels in the game were only on a horizontal plane, with no up and down movement available. The AI in the game was quite competent, with guards reacting to sounds from your weapons. But other than that, they weren't the smartest people on the planet. Overall I think it was a fantastic FPS and spawned a variety of clones. Wolf itself even recently had a reviving visit on the GBA. I haven't managed to play it yet, but I hope to soon!
After Wolf the next step in evolution was Doom. The main change to the genre was the ability to go up and down in the levels. Even though "technically" you never actually went up and down, it was all some graphical trick, it still gave you the visual impression and feel that you actually were going up and down. Also in Doom, your arsenal was doubled from that in Wolf up to something like 8 or 9 different weapons. Ranging from the pistol to things such as rocket launchers, and the famous BFG9000!
One more thing that came along with Doom, was the cause for controversy. Doom was seem as ultra violent with graphic scenes of gore and violence. This caused quite a stir, but like with GTA it only helped to boost sales of the game.
There's one more thing that Doom brought to the FPS genre. Multiplayer! Wolf was only a single player experience, but in Doom you could network the game and play a deathmatch up to 8 players. This was a massive hit for Doom, and added to its popularity immensely. It also caused a hold-up in quite a few offices over the country, as employees were sticking Doom on their computers and playing that rather than getting on with their work!
The next evolution came with Quake. Quake finally brought proper 3D to the genre. Now levels were properly created in 3D and the gameplay used this to its utmost effect. Movement of your character was now changed from the previous settings of just the arrow keys, and now used a combination of both keys and the mouse. So now, players were able aim where they wanted to shoot with the mouse and fire off in any direction they desired. Another thing Quake finally brought to the genre was fully 3D characters. In previous games such as Wolf and Doom, the characters had always been sprites (2D flat characters). But now the enemies were presented in glorious 3D, and so you were able to see them turn around properly, and it gave a much more realistic feel to the game.
Those were where the main advances in the FPS genre, but I want to discuss a few more important aspects of the FPS to show where they originated.
Telescopes. Sniper rifles. Or just zooms in general. Where'd they come from? The first game to use a zoom feature on a gun to help the player aim, was a FANTASTIC FPS by the name of Outlaws. This was a game by LucasArts, based on something like the Quake 1 or 2 engine and was a western theme FPS. During the game you acquired many weapons, and one such weapon was a rifle. Also in the game was a telescope. On acquiring both items, you could use the telescope with the rifle. What this actually did ingame, was put a spherical viewport on top of the gun on screen, and within this viewport was a zoomed in area. And so, not the whole screen was zoomed in, but rather just this reasonably sized part just above the gun. This made the game really fun, because you were able to sniper enemies from a distance away, rather than having to be right next to the enemy before you could shoot at it.
There's one more that Outlaws did, that I've hardly ever seen in a FPS. Wind! How often have you come up against natural elements in FPSs? Not very often! But even back in the days of Outlaws, elements like wind were being used. When you were running along ravines, wind would blow you forcing you to one side. And so, unless you were paying attention you might find yourself getting blown off the cliff, to a rather nasty fall! This kind of thing, natural weather effects are something I think is missing from modern day FPSs. Something I think needs to be addressed if the genre is going to progress!
Full 3D movement in every direction. A game called Descent brought this to the gamer. You flew around in a spaceship, which allowed you to move in every possible direction. This game was reasonably successful, and spawned a couple sequels. Even though I think the game Forsaken on the N64 (similar game style), was far better than them all!
A big step in the FPS genre came about with the release of the game Half-Life. Why? Because when it was released, it was released as open source. What this means is that the source code (all the programming) wasn't encrypted and hidden away so that no-one could see it, use it, copy it. So this allowed anyone who wanted to, to play around with the games code to do whatever they wanted to do with it. This resulted in many mods being made for the game. Thus the community of Half-Life fans grew and the game became massively popular. Many websites sprouted up offering loads of different mods for the game ranging from Goldeneye Half-Life, to one of my favs, Vampire Slayers. The main mod however which every must know about is Counter Strike. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the game, probably because I've hardly ever played it, and I don't have a decent enough internet connection to actually play it properly. Anyways, this mod is about terrorists and antiterrorist, diffusing bombs and the likes. This is stupidly huge on the internet, with their being loads and loads of different clans, filled with internet *cough* geeks *cough* with nothing better to do with their days.
Whichever way you look about it though, making Half-Life open source was the only reason it did so well, sales wise. It did have a decent game engine, but if you hadn't been able to customise the game like you could, then it's a well known fact that the game wouldn't have done as well as it did. Thus, with quite a lot of the new FPS that come onto the market now, they more often than not let you play around with the code. Developers wanted to encourage people to mod their games so that they become ever more popular.
Strategy! Most FPSs just require you to run around madly, blasting anything in sight until nothing moves. But when the game Rainbow Six appeared this changed. Before actually getting to the level where you could run around, you have to plan how you're going to tackle the level. You set paths for your computer-controlled players telling them where to go on the level. And then when you entered the level, you are encouraged to move around slowly, creeping around corners because you know that with as little as one shot you could be on your way to heaven. This level of realism isn't often used in FPS with you normally being able to take several shots, and then have the option to go and pick up a medkit from somewhere and get all your health back. This medkit feature is something that annoys me about some FPS. They just make the games too easy. Also, these games are suppose to resemble some sense of realism, and how often in real life have you seen someone take several bullets to the body, and then go find a medkit which makes them instantly healthy again. I know that's a bit of a stupid comment in that, if there weren't any medkits in games then they'd probably be far too hard and not many people would be able to complete them. But it's mainly in multiplayer games I think they should be omitted! How annoying is it when your playing a multiplayer FPS and one of your mates just continually CAMPS around the health pick ups. So that every time you shoot him till his health's almost gone, he just moves over the health and he's fine again. It's actually quite rare to find a FPS which lets you turn off health pickups in multiplayer mode. The only game I can think of which does this is Perfect Dark on N64. Top job to Rare for realising this was something people found annoying with Goldeneye, and FPS in general, and so they rectified to issue. Now lets hope more developers take note!
Destructible levels. If you've played Red Faction you'll know what I'm referring to. If not, I'll explain. In the game, some of the walls in the game allowed you to blow holes in them with rocket launchers, or with bombs etc. The walls in the game were quite deep in places, which meant that you were able to create vast tunnels. This was a great feature to be exploited in multiplayer mode. When I've played the game with my mates we've almost spent more time just digging tunnels around the level, rather than just trying to shoot each other. I think more FPS need to incorporate features like this, where you can destroy more of the scenery. I mean, if you fire a rocket launcher at a wall, how often is it likely to be still standing. But in most FPS it will be! We need more destructibility in FPS!
There are some other points I could address but I'll leave them open to you to point out and discuss.
But from what I've said so far, there are some features which I think should be incorporated in more FPS :-
Natural weather effects - wind, snow, rain, etc
NO health pickups in multiplayer modes
Open source
Destructibility of levels
Those are some of the things from current FPS that I think should be used more.
But that's not enough. For this genre to flourish there needs to be even greater advances. Some of us discussed this a couple weeks back briefly. I think there needs to be more natural elements incorporated into FPS. Like after you've killed someone and their body's left lying on the floor, if you "run" over the body, there should be the chance that you're character could trip over the body. Natural elements like this should be used more often. Another idea is that if a grenade or something goes off right in front of you, then your sight should be effected. This was kind of used in Perfect Dark when you got hit with a tranquilliser, or when you got punched, your sight became blurry. This sort of thing should be used more often and for other events.
One final point I've always wanted to see properly incorporated and used in a FPS is a VR headset. I'm determined to one-day see this happen or create it. Another level of realism has to be achieved. It's getting almost to the point where just looking at a flat screen isn't good enough. You can improve the graphics till the cows go home, but your still never going to attain that true feeling that you're really there. VR is what we need! Why hasn't anyone created a "cheap" VR headset yet? When the day comes that they do, that's when I think FPS will truly reach their next evolutionary step!
What are other people's opinions on the FPS as it stands now? And how would people like to see it improve? And where do people see it going?
Thanks for reading,
:) Cooky :)
So I have decided to have a look back over how they have evolved and where I see them going.
For me the first FPS was Wolfenstein. Some will argue that technically it wasn't, that there was some dodgy vector line game or something made a few years earlier, but pahh!
Anyways, Wolfenstein had you play the role of some American guy and you took on the Nazi massive. Even coming up against Hitler himself at the end of one of the chapters. You were armed with 4 different weapons, knife, pistol, machine gun, chain gun. At the time this was enough weapons to satisfy your needs. The levels in the game were only on a horizontal plane, with no up and down movement available. The AI in the game was quite competent, with guards reacting to sounds from your weapons. But other than that, they weren't the smartest people on the planet. Overall I think it was a fantastic FPS and spawned a variety of clones. Wolf itself even recently had a reviving visit on the GBA. I haven't managed to play it yet, but I hope to soon!
After Wolf the next step in evolution was Doom. The main change to the genre was the ability to go up and down in the levels. Even though "technically" you never actually went up and down, it was all some graphical trick, it still gave you the visual impression and feel that you actually were going up and down. Also in Doom, your arsenal was doubled from that in Wolf up to something like 8 or 9 different weapons. Ranging from the pistol to things such as rocket launchers, and the famous BFG9000!
One more thing that came along with Doom, was the cause for controversy. Doom was seem as ultra violent with graphic scenes of gore and violence. This caused quite a stir, but like with GTA it only helped to boost sales of the game.
There's one more thing that Doom brought to the FPS genre. Multiplayer! Wolf was only a single player experience, but in Doom you could network the game and play a deathmatch up to 8 players. This was a massive hit for Doom, and added to its popularity immensely. It also caused a hold-up in quite a few offices over the country, as employees were sticking Doom on their computers and playing that rather than getting on with their work!
The next evolution came with Quake. Quake finally brought proper 3D to the genre. Now levels were properly created in 3D and the gameplay used this to its utmost effect. Movement of your character was now changed from the previous settings of just the arrow keys, and now used a combination of both keys and the mouse. So now, players were able aim where they wanted to shoot with the mouse and fire off in any direction they desired. Another thing Quake finally brought to the genre was fully 3D characters. In previous games such as Wolf and Doom, the characters had always been sprites (2D flat characters). But now the enemies were presented in glorious 3D, and so you were able to see them turn around properly, and it gave a much more realistic feel to the game.
Those were where the main advances in the FPS genre, but I want to discuss a few more important aspects of the FPS to show where they originated.
Telescopes. Sniper rifles. Or just zooms in general. Where'd they come from? The first game to use a zoom feature on a gun to help the player aim, was a FANTASTIC FPS by the name of Outlaws. This was a game by LucasArts, based on something like the Quake 1 or 2 engine and was a western theme FPS. During the game you acquired many weapons, and one such weapon was a rifle. Also in the game was a telescope. On acquiring both items, you could use the telescope with the rifle. What this actually did ingame, was put a spherical viewport on top of the gun on screen, and within this viewport was a zoomed in area. And so, not the whole screen was zoomed in, but rather just this reasonably sized part just above the gun. This made the game really fun, because you were able to sniper enemies from a distance away, rather than having to be right next to the enemy before you could shoot at it.
There's one more that Outlaws did, that I've hardly ever seen in a FPS. Wind! How often have you come up against natural elements in FPSs? Not very often! But even back in the days of Outlaws, elements like wind were being used. When you were running along ravines, wind would blow you forcing you to one side. And so, unless you were paying attention you might find yourself getting blown off the cliff, to a rather nasty fall! This kind of thing, natural weather effects are something I think is missing from modern day FPSs. Something I think needs to be addressed if the genre is going to progress!
Full 3D movement in every direction. A game called Descent brought this to the gamer. You flew around in a spaceship, which allowed you to move in every possible direction. This game was reasonably successful, and spawned a couple sequels. Even though I think the game Forsaken on the N64 (similar game style), was far better than them all!
A big step in the FPS genre came about with the release of the game Half-Life. Why? Because when it was released, it was released as open source. What this means is that the source code (all the programming) wasn't encrypted and hidden away so that no-one could see it, use it, copy it. So this allowed anyone who wanted to, to play around with the games code to do whatever they wanted to do with it. This resulted in many mods being made for the game. Thus the community of Half-Life fans grew and the game became massively popular. Many websites sprouted up offering loads of different mods for the game ranging from Goldeneye Half-Life, to one of my favs, Vampire Slayers. The main mod however which every must know about is Counter Strike. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the game, probably because I've hardly ever played it, and I don't have a decent enough internet connection to actually play it properly. Anyways, this mod is about terrorists and antiterrorist, diffusing bombs and the likes. This is stupidly huge on the internet, with their being loads and loads of different clans, filled with internet *cough* geeks *cough* with nothing better to do with their days.
Whichever way you look about it though, making Half-Life open source was the only reason it did so well, sales wise. It did have a decent game engine, but if you hadn't been able to customise the game like you could, then it's a well known fact that the game wouldn't have done as well as it did. Thus, with quite a lot of the new FPS that come onto the market now, they more often than not let you play around with the code. Developers wanted to encourage people to mod their games so that they become ever more popular.
Strategy! Most FPSs just require you to run around madly, blasting anything in sight until nothing moves. But when the game Rainbow Six appeared this changed. Before actually getting to the level where you could run around, you have to plan how you're going to tackle the level. You set paths for your computer-controlled players telling them where to go on the level. And then when you entered the level, you are encouraged to move around slowly, creeping around corners because you know that with as little as one shot you could be on your way to heaven. This level of realism isn't often used in FPS with you normally being able to take several shots, and then have the option to go and pick up a medkit from somewhere and get all your health back. This medkit feature is something that annoys me about some FPS. They just make the games too easy. Also, these games are suppose to resemble some sense of realism, and how often in real life have you seen someone take several bullets to the body, and then go find a medkit which makes them instantly healthy again. I know that's a bit of a stupid comment in that, if there weren't any medkits in games then they'd probably be far too hard and not many people would be able to complete them. But it's mainly in multiplayer games I think they should be omitted! How annoying is it when your playing a multiplayer FPS and one of your mates just continually CAMPS around the health pick ups. So that every time you shoot him till his health's almost gone, he just moves over the health and he's fine again. It's actually quite rare to find a FPS which lets you turn off health pickups in multiplayer mode. The only game I can think of which does this is Perfect Dark on N64. Top job to Rare for realising this was something people found annoying with Goldeneye, and FPS in general, and so they rectified to issue. Now lets hope more developers take note!
Destructible levels. If you've played Red Faction you'll know what I'm referring to. If not, I'll explain. In the game, some of the walls in the game allowed you to blow holes in them with rocket launchers, or with bombs etc. The walls in the game were quite deep in places, which meant that you were able to create vast tunnels. This was a great feature to be exploited in multiplayer mode. When I've played the game with my mates we've almost spent more time just digging tunnels around the level, rather than just trying to shoot each other. I think more FPS need to incorporate features like this, where you can destroy more of the scenery. I mean, if you fire a rocket launcher at a wall, how often is it likely to be still standing. But in most FPS it will be! We need more destructibility in FPS!
There are some other points I could address but I'll leave them open to you to point out and discuss.
But from what I've said so far, there are some features which I think should be incorporated in more FPS :-
Natural weather effects - wind, snow, rain, etc
NO health pickups in multiplayer modes
Open source
Destructibility of levels
Those are some of the things from current FPS that I think should be used more.
But that's not enough. For this genre to flourish there needs to be even greater advances. Some of us discussed this a couple weeks back briefly. I think there needs to be more natural elements incorporated into FPS. Like after you've killed someone and their body's left lying on the floor, if you "run" over the body, there should be the chance that you're character could trip over the body. Natural elements like this should be used more often. Another idea is that if a grenade or something goes off right in front of you, then your sight should be effected. This was kind of used in Perfect Dark when you got hit with a tranquilliser, or when you got punched, your sight became blurry. This sort of thing should be used more often and for other events.
One final point I've always wanted to see properly incorporated and used in a FPS is a VR headset. I'm determined to one-day see this happen or create it. Another level of realism has to be achieved. It's getting almost to the point where just looking at a flat screen isn't good enough. You can improve the graphics till the cows go home, but your still never going to attain that true feeling that you're really there. VR is what we need! Why hasn't anyone created a "cheap" VR headset yet? When the day comes that they do, that's when I think FPS will truly reach their next evolutionary step!
What are other people's opinions on the FPS as it stands now? And how would people like to see it improve? And where do people see it going?
Thanks for reading,
:) Cooky :)
Strafex wrote:
> I didn't mean cel shaded exactly (wasn't invented back in those days),
> just looked cartoony like a Cel Shaded game would.
It wasn't really cartoony. Just used sprites instead of 3D enemies.
:)
> I didn't mean cel shaded exactly (wasn't invented back in those days),
> just looked cartoony like a Cel Shaded game would.
It wasn't really cartoony. Just used sprites instead of 3D enemies.
:)
Strafex wrote:
> I didn't mean cel shaded exactly (wasn't invented back in those days),
> just looked cartoony like a Cel Shaded game would.
Yes, it did have a cartoonish style, though as I said before, it was only done on the A.I. enemies in the game and the guns you held in the first person mode. The 3D enviroments where all typical 3D, with the usual textures, and no cartoonish colouring. Good game as well, fun to play, but it's a little old now.
> I didn't mean cel shaded exactly (wasn't invented back in those days),
> just looked cartoony like a Cel Shaded game would.
Yes, it did have a cartoonish style, though as I said before, it was only done on the A.I. enemies in the game and the guns you held in the first person mode. The 3D enviroments where all typical 3D, with the usual textures, and no cartoonish colouring. Good game as well, fun to play, but it's a little old now.
cipro wrote:
> Not cel-shaded, it had more of a cartoonish style. For the enemies in
> the game anyway, who where 2D sprites in 3D world.
I didn't mean cel shaded exactly (wasn't invented back in those days), just looked cartoony like a Cel Shaded game would.
> Not cel-shaded, it had more of a cartoonish style. For the enemies in
> the game anyway, who where 2D sprites in 3D world.
I didn't mean cel shaded exactly (wasn't invented back in those days), just looked cartoony like a Cel Shaded game would.
cipro wrote:
> I think we've seen all the innovation the ganre can produce,
That's what they say about ever genre until someone comes up with a new interesting idea!
There must be something that can be done.....
:)
> I think we've seen all the innovation the ganre can produce,
That's what they say about ever genre until someone comes up with a new interesting idea!
There must be something that can be done.....
:)
Strafex wrote:
> A Ninty posts a huge topic on FPS evolution and forgets to mention
> Goldeneye... I never thought I'd see that! :-)
I didn't forget. Was on my list of things to talk about. I was gonna comment on console FPS, but in the end couldn't be bothered. Wasn't too much to gain by mentioning it. Also thought someone would bring it up.
> By the way, I've heard a bit about Outlaws.
> Wasn't it made to look 2D in a sort of Cel Shaded sort of way?
> I remember Digitiser yelling about how underated it was by EVERYONE.
It was based on the Quake engine which had 3D bad guys, but for this game, they decided to resort to going back to 2D sprites again. Probably a good thing, because it meant that you could have quite a few enemies on screen at once. Something that is lacking in most full 3D FPS still!
> To evolve the FPS further would be to start merging it with other
> genres.
Yer this is probably one of the main areas that the FPS is going to change. Mixing it in with other types of games. Like Turok Evolution, which tries to have flying sections, kinda like Starwing. The only problem with those in Turok, is that there quite poor!
> Metroid COULD have taken this further, although it seems to be taking
> the FPS in a different direction...
Yer, Metroids going to be an interesting one to look out for. It'll be interesting to see what a looked over the shoulder by Nintendo FPS is going to turn out like!
:)
> A Ninty posts a huge topic on FPS evolution and forgets to mention
> Goldeneye... I never thought I'd see that! :-)
I didn't forget. Was on my list of things to talk about. I was gonna comment on console FPS, but in the end couldn't be bothered. Wasn't too much to gain by mentioning it. Also thought someone would bring it up.
> By the way, I've heard a bit about Outlaws.
> Wasn't it made to look 2D in a sort of Cel Shaded sort of way?
> I remember Digitiser yelling about how underated it was by EVERYONE.
It was based on the Quake engine which had 3D bad guys, but for this game, they decided to resort to going back to 2D sprites again. Probably a good thing, because it meant that you could have quite a few enemies on screen at once. Something that is lacking in most full 3D FPS still!
> To evolve the FPS further would be to start merging it with other
> genres.
Yer this is probably one of the main areas that the FPS is going to change. Mixing it in with other types of games. Like Turok Evolution, which tries to have flying sections, kinda like Starwing. The only problem with those in Turok, is that there quite poor!
> Metroid COULD have taken this further, although it seems to be taking
> the FPS in a different direction...
Yer, Metroids going to be an interesting one to look out for. It'll be interesting to see what a looked over the shoulder by Nintendo FPS is going to turn out like!
:)
Strafex wrote:
> By the way, I've heard a bit about Outlaws.
> Wasn't it made to look 2D in a sort of Cel Shaded sort of way?
> I remember Digitiser yelling about how underated it was by EVERYONE.
Not cel-shaded, it had more of a cartoonish style. For the enemies in the game anyway, who where 2D sprites in 3D world.
> By the way, I've heard a bit about Outlaws.
> Wasn't it made to look 2D in a sort of Cel Shaded sort of way?
> I remember Digitiser yelling about how underated it was by EVERYONE.
Not cel-shaded, it had more of a cartoonish style. For the enemies in the game anyway, who where 2D sprites in 3D world.
A Ninty posts a huge topic on FPS evolution and forgets to mention Goldeneye... I never thought I'd see that! :-)
It's not like Head shots, mission structure, console-style, impressive AI, splitscreen multiplayer and stealth/Sniping (although I hear Outlaws did do that bit first) was anything to shout about! ;-)
By the way, I've heard a bit about Outlaws.
Wasn't it made to look 2D in a sort of Cel Shaded sort of way?
I remember Digitiser yelling about how underated it was by EVERYONE.
To evolve the FPS further would be to start merging it with other genres.
Jet Force Gemini merged the FPS with the platformer.
Didn't quite manage to compete with Platformers with it's platforming, or shooters with it's shooting, but great as the unique hybrid that it was.
Metroid COULD have taken this further, although it seems to be taking the FPS in a different direction...
It's not like Head shots, mission structure, console-style, impressive AI, splitscreen multiplayer and stealth/Sniping (although I hear Outlaws did do that bit first) was anything to shout about! ;-)
By the way, I've heard a bit about Outlaws.
Wasn't it made to look 2D in a sort of Cel Shaded sort of way?
I remember Digitiser yelling about how underated it was by EVERYONE.
To evolve the FPS further would be to start merging it with other genres.
Jet Force Gemini merged the FPS with the platformer.
Didn't quite manage to compete with Platformers with it's platforming, or shooters with it's shooting, but great as the unique hybrid that it was.
Metroid COULD have taken this further, although it seems to be taking the FPS in a different direction...
I think we've seen all the innovation the ganre can produce, games like Deus Ex, Operation Flashpoint, Halo, Theif 2, No One Lives Forever ect.. Have provided new and exciting ideas for FPS. The thing is though, there is no new ideas left, no huge ideas ideas anyway that will make another groundbreaking FPS.
With the success of games like Halo, I think if anything the FPS genre will no start to become more infested with second rate FPS games which may look nice and be fun to play, but offer nothing new, and nothing innovative. It's an overused genre at the moment, and it's only going to get worse.
What I think the genre needs? Well a rest for one thing.
With the success of games like Halo, I think if anything the FPS genre will no start to become more infested with second rate FPS games which may look nice and be fun to play, but offer nothing new, and nothing innovative. It's an overused genre at the moment, and it's only going to get worse.
What I think the genre needs? Well a rest for one thing.
****checks computer to see if cooky has hacked it******
I was halfway through one of these but ill scrap it as A) yours is better B)ill just be accused of copying.
Irritating. but good stuff
I was halfway through one of these but ill scrap it as A) yours is better B)ill just be accused of copying.
Irritating. but good stuff
First person shooters (FPS) have come a long way over the years.
So I have decided to have a look back over how they have evolved and where I see them going.
For me the first FPS was Wolfenstein. Some will argue that technically it wasn't, that there was some dodgy vector line game or something made a few years earlier, but pahh!
Anyways, Wolfenstein had you play the role of some American guy and you took on the Nazi massive. Even coming up against Hitler himself at the end of one of the chapters. You were armed with 4 different weapons, knife, pistol, machine gun, chain gun. At the time this was enough weapons to satisfy your needs. The levels in the game were only on a horizontal plane, with no up and down movement available. The AI in the game was quite competent, with guards reacting to sounds from your weapons. But other than that, they weren't the smartest people on the planet. Overall I think it was a fantastic FPS and spawned a variety of clones. Wolf itself even recently had a reviving visit on the GBA. I haven't managed to play it yet, but I hope to soon!
After Wolf the next step in evolution was Doom. The main change to the genre was the ability to go up and down in the levels. Even though "technically" you never actually went up and down, it was all some graphical trick, it still gave you the visual impression and feel that you actually were going up and down. Also in Doom, your arsenal was doubled from that in Wolf up to something like 8 or 9 different weapons. Ranging from the pistol to things such as rocket launchers, and the famous BFG9000!
One more thing that came along with Doom, was the cause for controversy. Doom was seem as ultra violent with graphic scenes of gore and violence. This caused quite a stir, but like with GTA it only helped to boost sales of the game.
There's one more thing that Doom brought to the FPS genre. Multiplayer! Wolf was only a single player experience, but in Doom you could network the game and play a deathmatch up to 8 players. This was a massive hit for Doom, and added to its popularity immensely. It also caused a hold-up in quite a few offices over the country, as employees were sticking Doom on their computers and playing that rather than getting on with their work!
The next evolution came with Quake. Quake finally brought proper 3D to the genre. Now levels were properly created in 3D and the gameplay used this to its utmost effect. Movement of your character was now changed from the previous settings of just the arrow keys, and now used a combination of both keys and the mouse. So now, players were able aim where they wanted to shoot with the mouse and fire off in any direction they desired. Another thing Quake finally brought to the genre was fully 3D characters. In previous games such as Wolf and Doom, the characters had always been sprites (2D flat characters). But now the enemies were presented in glorious 3D, and so you were able to see them turn around properly, and it gave a much more realistic feel to the game.
Those were where the main advances in the FPS genre, but I want to discuss a few more important aspects of the FPS to show where they originated.
Telescopes. Sniper rifles. Or just zooms in general. Where'd they come from? The first game to use a zoom feature on a gun to help the player aim, was a FANTASTIC FPS by the name of Outlaws. This was a game by LucasArts, based on something like the Quake 1 or 2 engine and was a western theme FPS. During the game you acquired many weapons, and one such weapon was a rifle. Also in the game was a telescope. On acquiring both items, you could use the telescope with the rifle. What this actually did ingame, was put a spherical viewport on top of the gun on screen, and within this viewport was a zoomed in area. And so, not the whole screen was zoomed in, but rather just this reasonably sized part just above the gun. This made the game really fun, because you were able to sniper enemies from a distance away, rather than having to be right next to the enemy before you could shoot at it.
There's one more that Outlaws did, that I've hardly ever seen in a FPS. Wind! How often have you come up against natural elements in FPSs? Not very often! But even back in the days of Outlaws, elements like wind were being used. When you were running along ravines, wind would blow you forcing you to one side. And so, unless you were paying attention you might find yourself getting blown off the cliff, to a rather nasty fall! This kind of thing, natural weather effects are something I think is missing from modern day FPSs. Something I think needs to be addressed if the genre is going to progress!
Full 3D movement in every direction. A game called Descent brought this to the gamer. You flew around in a spaceship, which allowed you to move in every possible direction. This game was reasonably successful, and spawned a couple sequels. Even though I think the game Forsaken on the N64 (similar game style), was far better than them all!
A big step in the FPS genre came about with the release of the game Half-Life. Why? Because when it was released, it was released as open source. What this means is that the source code (all the programming) wasn't encrypted and hidden away so that no-one could see it, use it, copy it. So this allowed anyone who wanted to, to play around with the games code to do whatever they wanted to do with it. This resulted in many mods being made for the game. Thus the community of Half-Life fans grew and the game became massively popular. Many websites sprouted up offering loads of different mods for the game ranging from Goldeneye Half-Life, to one of my favs, Vampire Slayers. The main mod however which every must know about is Counter Strike. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the game, probably because I've hardly ever played it, and I don't have a decent enough internet connection to actually play it properly. Anyways, this mod is about terrorists and antiterrorist, diffusing bombs and the likes. This is stupidly huge on the internet, with their being loads and loads of different clans, filled with internet *cough* geeks *cough* with nothing better to do with their days.
Whichever way you look about it though, making Half-Life open source was the only reason it did so well, sales wise. It did have a decent game engine, but if you hadn't been able to customise the game like you could, then it's a well known fact that the game wouldn't have done as well as it did. Thus, with quite a lot of the new FPS that come onto the market now, they more often than not let you play around with the code. Developers wanted to encourage people to mod their games so that they become ever more popular.
Strategy! Most FPSs just require you to run around madly, blasting anything in sight until nothing moves. But when the game Rainbow Six appeared this changed. Before actually getting to the level where you could run around, you have to plan how you're going to tackle the level. You set paths for your computer-controlled players telling them where to go on the level. And then when you entered the level, you are encouraged to move around slowly, creeping around corners because you know that with as little as one shot you could be on your way to heaven. This level of realism isn't often used in FPS with you normally being able to take several shots, and then have the option to go and pick up a medkit from somewhere and get all your health back. This medkit feature is something that annoys me about some FPS. They just make the games too easy. Also, these games are suppose to resemble some sense of realism, and how often in real life have you seen someone take several bullets to the body, and then go find a medkit which makes them instantly healthy again. I know that's a bit of a stupid comment in that, if there weren't any medkits in games then they'd probably be far too hard and not many people would be able to complete them. But it's mainly in multiplayer games I think they should be omitted! How annoying is it when your playing a multiplayer FPS and one of your mates just continually CAMPS around the health pick ups. So that every time you shoot him till his health's almost gone, he just moves over the health and he's fine again. It's actually quite rare to find a FPS which lets you turn off health pickups in multiplayer mode. The only game I can think of which does this is Perfect Dark on N64. Top job to Rare for realising this was something people found annoying with Goldeneye, and FPS in general, and so they rectified to issue. Now lets hope more developers take note!
Destructible levels. If you've played Red Faction you'll know what I'm referring to. If not, I'll explain. In the game, some of the walls in the game allowed you to blow holes in them with rocket launchers, or with bombs etc. The walls in the game were quite deep in places, which meant that you were able to create vast tunnels. This was a great feature to be exploited in multiplayer mode. When I've played the game with my mates we've almost spent more time just digging tunnels around the level, rather than just trying to shoot each other. I think more FPS need to incorporate features like this, where you can destroy more of the scenery. I mean, if you fire a rocket launcher at a wall, how often is it likely to be still standing. But in most FPS it will be! We need more destructibility in FPS!
There are some other points I could address but I'll leave them open to you to point out and discuss.
But from what I've said so far, there are some features which I think should be incorporated in more FPS :-
Natural weather effects - wind, snow, rain, etc
NO health pickups in multiplayer modes
Open source
Destructibility of levels
Those are some of the things from current FPS that I think should be used more.
But that's not enough. For this genre to flourish there needs to be even greater advances. Some of us discussed this a couple weeks back briefly. I think there needs to be more natural elements incorporated into FPS. Like after you've killed someone and their body's left lying on the floor, if you "run" over the body, there should be the chance that you're character could trip over the body. Natural elements like this should be used more often. Another idea is that if a grenade or something goes off right in front of you, then your sight should be effected. This was kind of used in Perfect Dark when you got hit with a tranquilliser, or when you got punched, your sight became blurry. This sort of thing should be used more often and for other events.
One final point I've always wanted to see properly incorporated and used in a FPS is a VR headset. I'm determined to one-day see this happen or create it. Another level of realism has to be achieved. It's getting almost to the point where just looking at a flat screen isn't good enough. You can improve the graphics till the cows go home, but your still never going to attain that true feeling that you're really there. VR is what we need! Why hasn't anyone created a "cheap" VR headset yet? When the day comes that they do, that's when I think FPS will truly reach their next evolutionary step!
What are other people's opinions on the FPS as it stands now? And how would people like to see it improve? And where do people see it going?
Thanks for reading,
:) Cooky :)
So I have decided to have a look back over how they have evolved and where I see them going.
For me the first FPS was Wolfenstein. Some will argue that technically it wasn't, that there was some dodgy vector line game or something made a few years earlier, but pahh!
Anyways, Wolfenstein had you play the role of some American guy and you took on the Nazi massive. Even coming up against Hitler himself at the end of one of the chapters. You were armed with 4 different weapons, knife, pistol, machine gun, chain gun. At the time this was enough weapons to satisfy your needs. The levels in the game were only on a horizontal plane, with no up and down movement available. The AI in the game was quite competent, with guards reacting to sounds from your weapons. But other than that, they weren't the smartest people on the planet. Overall I think it was a fantastic FPS and spawned a variety of clones. Wolf itself even recently had a reviving visit on the GBA. I haven't managed to play it yet, but I hope to soon!
After Wolf the next step in evolution was Doom. The main change to the genre was the ability to go up and down in the levels. Even though "technically" you never actually went up and down, it was all some graphical trick, it still gave you the visual impression and feel that you actually were going up and down. Also in Doom, your arsenal was doubled from that in Wolf up to something like 8 or 9 different weapons. Ranging from the pistol to things such as rocket launchers, and the famous BFG9000!
One more thing that came along with Doom, was the cause for controversy. Doom was seem as ultra violent with graphic scenes of gore and violence. This caused quite a stir, but like with GTA it only helped to boost sales of the game.
There's one more thing that Doom brought to the FPS genre. Multiplayer! Wolf was only a single player experience, but in Doom you could network the game and play a deathmatch up to 8 players. This was a massive hit for Doom, and added to its popularity immensely. It also caused a hold-up in quite a few offices over the country, as employees were sticking Doom on their computers and playing that rather than getting on with their work!
The next evolution came with Quake. Quake finally brought proper 3D to the genre. Now levels were properly created in 3D and the gameplay used this to its utmost effect. Movement of your character was now changed from the previous settings of just the arrow keys, and now used a combination of both keys and the mouse. So now, players were able aim where they wanted to shoot with the mouse and fire off in any direction they desired. Another thing Quake finally brought to the genre was fully 3D characters. In previous games such as Wolf and Doom, the characters had always been sprites (2D flat characters). But now the enemies were presented in glorious 3D, and so you were able to see them turn around properly, and it gave a much more realistic feel to the game.
Those were where the main advances in the FPS genre, but I want to discuss a few more important aspects of the FPS to show where they originated.
Telescopes. Sniper rifles. Or just zooms in general. Where'd they come from? The first game to use a zoom feature on a gun to help the player aim, was a FANTASTIC FPS by the name of Outlaws. This was a game by LucasArts, based on something like the Quake 1 or 2 engine and was a western theme FPS. During the game you acquired many weapons, and one such weapon was a rifle. Also in the game was a telescope. On acquiring both items, you could use the telescope with the rifle. What this actually did ingame, was put a spherical viewport on top of the gun on screen, and within this viewport was a zoomed in area. And so, not the whole screen was zoomed in, but rather just this reasonably sized part just above the gun. This made the game really fun, because you were able to sniper enemies from a distance away, rather than having to be right next to the enemy before you could shoot at it.
There's one more that Outlaws did, that I've hardly ever seen in a FPS. Wind! How often have you come up against natural elements in FPSs? Not very often! But even back in the days of Outlaws, elements like wind were being used. When you were running along ravines, wind would blow you forcing you to one side. And so, unless you were paying attention you might find yourself getting blown off the cliff, to a rather nasty fall! This kind of thing, natural weather effects are something I think is missing from modern day FPSs. Something I think needs to be addressed if the genre is going to progress!
Full 3D movement in every direction. A game called Descent brought this to the gamer. You flew around in a spaceship, which allowed you to move in every possible direction. This game was reasonably successful, and spawned a couple sequels. Even though I think the game Forsaken on the N64 (similar game style), was far better than them all!
A big step in the FPS genre came about with the release of the game Half-Life. Why? Because when it was released, it was released as open source. What this means is that the source code (all the programming) wasn't encrypted and hidden away so that no-one could see it, use it, copy it. So this allowed anyone who wanted to, to play around with the games code to do whatever they wanted to do with it. This resulted in many mods being made for the game. Thus the community of Half-Life fans grew and the game became massively popular. Many websites sprouted up offering loads of different mods for the game ranging from Goldeneye Half-Life, to one of my favs, Vampire Slayers. The main mod however which every must know about is Counter Strike. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the game, probably because I've hardly ever played it, and I don't have a decent enough internet connection to actually play it properly. Anyways, this mod is about terrorists and antiterrorist, diffusing bombs and the likes. This is stupidly huge on the internet, with their being loads and loads of different clans, filled with internet *cough* geeks *cough* with nothing better to do with their days.
Whichever way you look about it though, making Half-Life open source was the only reason it did so well, sales wise. It did have a decent game engine, but if you hadn't been able to customise the game like you could, then it's a well known fact that the game wouldn't have done as well as it did. Thus, with quite a lot of the new FPS that come onto the market now, they more often than not let you play around with the code. Developers wanted to encourage people to mod their games so that they become ever more popular.
Strategy! Most FPSs just require you to run around madly, blasting anything in sight until nothing moves. But when the game Rainbow Six appeared this changed. Before actually getting to the level where you could run around, you have to plan how you're going to tackle the level. You set paths for your computer-controlled players telling them where to go on the level. And then when you entered the level, you are encouraged to move around slowly, creeping around corners because you know that with as little as one shot you could be on your way to heaven. This level of realism isn't often used in FPS with you normally being able to take several shots, and then have the option to go and pick up a medkit from somewhere and get all your health back. This medkit feature is something that annoys me about some FPS. They just make the games too easy. Also, these games are suppose to resemble some sense of realism, and how often in real life have you seen someone take several bullets to the body, and then go find a medkit which makes them instantly healthy again. I know that's a bit of a stupid comment in that, if there weren't any medkits in games then they'd probably be far too hard and not many people would be able to complete them. But it's mainly in multiplayer games I think they should be omitted! How annoying is it when your playing a multiplayer FPS and one of your mates just continually CAMPS around the health pick ups. So that every time you shoot him till his health's almost gone, he just moves over the health and he's fine again. It's actually quite rare to find a FPS which lets you turn off health pickups in multiplayer mode. The only game I can think of which does this is Perfect Dark on N64. Top job to Rare for realising this was something people found annoying with Goldeneye, and FPS in general, and so they rectified to issue. Now lets hope more developers take note!
Destructible levels. If you've played Red Faction you'll know what I'm referring to. If not, I'll explain. In the game, some of the walls in the game allowed you to blow holes in them with rocket launchers, or with bombs etc. The walls in the game were quite deep in places, which meant that you were able to create vast tunnels. This was a great feature to be exploited in multiplayer mode. When I've played the game with my mates we've almost spent more time just digging tunnels around the level, rather than just trying to shoot each other. I think more FPS need to incorporate features like this, where you can destroy more of the scenery. I mean, if you fire a rocket launcher at a wall, how often is it likely to be still standing. But in most FPS it will be! We need more destructibility in FPS!
There are some other points I could address but I'll leave them open to you to point out and discuss.
But from what I've said so far, there are some features which I think should be incorporated in more FPS :-
Natural weather effects - wind, snow, rain, etc
NO health pickups in multiplayer modes
Open source
Destructibility of levels
Those are some of the things from current FPS that I think should be used more.
But that's not enough. For this genre to flourish there needs to be even greater advances. Some of us discussed this a couple weeks back briefly. I think there needs to be more natural elements incorporated into FPS. Like after you've killed someone and their body's left lying on the floor, if you "run" over the body, there should be the chance that you're character could trip over the body. Natural elements like this should be used more often. Another idea is that if a grenade or something goes off right in front of you, then your sight should be effected. This was kind of used in Perfect Dark when you got hit with a tranquilliser, or when you got punched, your sight became blurry. This sort of thing should be used more often and for other events.
One final point I've always wanted to see properly incorporated and used in a FPS is a VR headset. I'm determined to one-day see this happen or create it. Another level of realism has to be achieved. It's getting almost to the point where just looking at a flat screen isn't good enough. You can improve the graphics till the cows go home, but your still never going to attain that true feeling that you're really there. VR is what we need! Why hasn't anyone created a "cheap" VR headset yet? When the day comes that they do, that's when I think FPS will truly reach their next evolutionary step!
What are other people's opinions on the FPS as it stands now? And how would people like to see it improve? And where do people see it going?
Thanks for reading,
:) Cooky :)