On Shooters – The Daily SPUF

On Gold Weapons

August 19, 2017September 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments borderlands 2, call of duty, cosmetics, Depth, On Shooters, overwatch, payday 2, payday the heist, Saints Row, Team Fortress 2

Humans love to customize things. We want to leave our mark on the items that mean the most to us, and as a warrior culture we especially love to own weapons that have unique, stylized decals. In the programmed world of video games, where one need not worry about firearm maintenance or practicality, the sky is the limit for how many ways we can customize our guns. So why do so many developers immediately go for golden guns? When available (and they seem to be available in almost every game with weapon skins), a golden reskin will almost always have… [Continue Reading]

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On Crouching

January 16, 2017February 3, 2017 aabicus 1 Comment accuracy, On Shooters

“Pro tip: Some platforms can only be reached by staying ducked while jumping. That had me stumped for a while at first. You’re welcome.” I’m definitely showing my age, because when I read this sentence in SilverWolf’s recent article on Refunct I thought, “Wait, are there people who didn’t grow up on Source games?” Because years later I’m still struggling to unlearn the muscle memory of crouching during a jump for a free height boost. In modern games that tends to lead to crouch overriding jump and gluing you back to the floor. But that got me thinking about crouching as a… [Continue Reading]

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How to Design Enemies That Are Truly Scary

January 7, 2017January 27, 2017 aabicus 1 Comment comparison, design, enemies, horror, mechanics, On Shooters, scary

There are many, many enemies in video games designed to be scary, and I wanted to take some time to talk about ways to make enemies that fulfill this trope without resorting to “cheap” tactics like jumpscares or making them speedy OHKOs. Note that this article is mostly interested in “normal” enemies, not single boss-like monsters (like Spider from LIMBO) or full-fledged NPCs (like Pyramid Head from Silent Hill). Also I’m not an art major so my focus is on game mechanics and AI behaviors, and less on appearances. One of the scariest monsters I’ve had to fight in any game was… [Continue Reading]

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On Laser Sights

November 26, 2016December 31, 2020 aabicus 0 Comments killing floor, On Shooters, payday, saints row 2

Laser sights are one of my favorite weapon mods in games; they’re just so cool looking! Despite being relatively old technology (reflex sights were invented in 1900!) they have a sci-fi, high-tech feel to them that makes any gun look more badass. There are two major forms of laser sights in video games: ones that come with a visible beam of (usually) red light or ones that are simply a colored dot showing where the barrel is pointed. In real life, the latter is the only feasible option since the laser beam is too difficult to see in normal daylight and… [Continue Reading]

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On Hype

January 15, 2016January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments developer, hype, On Shooters, overwatch, payday

Gamers have a love/hate relationship with hype. It fuels our soul, keeps us looking to the future and fills our minds with the tantalizing possibilities foreshadowed by either a PR Department or just the words of our online comrades. Sometimes the final product fizzles in the sun, sometimes it handles itself well enough but doesn’t meet hype, and on rare occasion it can exceed everyone’s expectations. But is too much hype a good thing? From a developer’s perspective, it makes sense to try and drum up as much excitement over a product as possible. Your goal is to get people… [Continue Reading]

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On Ladders

November 21, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments criticism, design, mechanics, On Shooters

Abandon all gravity ye who enter here. You think you’ve tackled the toughest foes first-person shooters have to throw you? Do you evaporate bullet sponges, quickscope flying speedsters and melee tanks to death without thinking? Then I present to you the one enemy who doesn’t care. The foe whose only strategy is to use your own weight against you, the foe who can morph the game into a platformer at the worst possible time. Not only is it seemingly impossible for any shooter to make ladders that don’t suck, they also can’t agree on the mechanics. Do you latch on by facing… [Continue Reading]

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On Accuracy

August 16, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments accuracy, Left 4 Dead 2, On Shooters, payday, strategy

Hitscan guns in shooters often have two major qualities that people care about; how much damage they do and how accurate they are. (How quickly they fire is also relevant but in this article I’m focusing on the first two.) Which seems simple enough, because at the end of the day you want to know how fast your guns can kill things. But lots of shooters have been making the question a bit more difficult by introducing accuracy-affecting mechanics. Ways for a player to use positioning, modifications, skills, or game mechanics to manipulate the likelihood of a fired bullet hitting the… [Continue Reading]

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The Light Machine Gun Plight

July 10, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments balance, gun, Not TF2, On Shooters, payday, weapon balance

LMGs have always been a misunderstood and under-appreciated weapon genre in first-person shooters. Whereas mechanically they fill an obvious role in the sniper rifle>assault rifle>machine gun progression tree, in practice they’re often left off the list entirely or locked into specialist roles due to lack of developer support. Mechanically, LMGs focuses on spewing huge magazines of high-damage bullets very inaccurately. In theory its wielder assumes a suppressive fire role, ensuring that somebody is still firing while all the more-accurate teammates are reloading. Unfortunately its often the case that devs shoulder the LMG with a whole host of downsides; I can… [Continue Reading]

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Game Design: Differentiating Your Baddies

June 4, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, design, killing floor, l4d, Left 4 Dead 2, non-tf2, On Shooters

First-Person Shooters do a great job of naming all the guns. Whether borrowing real-world names like “M14” in the name of accuracy, generic names like “sawed-off-shotgun” in the name of clarity, or custom names like “Klobb” in the name of uniqueness, I can’t think of a single instance where I was disappointed in the dev’s firearm naming efforts. But this satisfaction does not always transfer to their naming of the things being shot. In a way, I think it’s almost more important that the bad guy units in a shooter be given decent names, especially if the devs are hoping a… [Continue Reading]

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On Blood

May 12, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, gameplay, history, On Shooters

Ah, blood. If guns are the protagonists of the first-person genre, blood is the deuteragonist, the damsel-in-distress the player needs to liberate from his opponent’s bodies. It’s a character like any other, a liquid life-force with a relationship to both the player and the world around him. The shooter genre seems almost unhealthily obsessed with it. As this mini-documentary covers in great detail, gore has been a cornerstone of gaming for decades, harking almost back to the beginning: But in this article I’m actually more interested in blood as a game mechanic. Because blood is often more than just a… [Continue Reading]

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