For this post we want to highlight one of the less exciting things about making games from the past month and how we plan to address it. It’s often referred to as “finding the fun” i.e. the process of iterating on a set of prototyped mechanics or systems and testing them to see if it fits within the expectations of our design and achieve a broadly enjoyable feeling of “play” (also sometimes referred to as a “flow state” in more academic circles).
Our caveat like last time that what you see below is not indicative of the final product. There’s still jank like map boundaries missing allowing units to wander into the void and things generally looking “empty” while veterans of our first game will recognize reused elements.
The following video is of three short encounters on small scale maps that measure about 40x40 tiles. We also had a fourth, much larger map (around 220x250 tiles) to stress test how many things we could stick into one map, but it is not included for reasons that will be laid out in this post.
📺OPEN THIS IN A SEPARATE WINDOW AND READ ALONG
1️⃣ENCOUNTER 1 (00:00-05:11)
The first encounter map opens with the player in plainclothes incognito with a carmine tac suit standing nearby. The player mouses over the tac suit to see that it is equipped with an assault rifle and a rocket launcher. Their objective for this map is simple: clear out the garrison. For this one they need to eliminate 31 targets, most of which are hostile NPCs in plainclothes (hereafter just “Dennis”), but a few are green palette swaps of the carmine that serve as placeholder for tac suit-wearing Faber units.
By entering the carmine suit, the player is no longer incognito and instead perceived as hostile to any armed NPCs, which is why they open fire. Fortunately, this exchange of gunfire will do the player no harm because the Dennises’ weaponry is not strong enough. Like we outlined at the foot of August’s post, BK now has a pierce system in effect. Or, in other words, we’re too tanky to take any damage from their puny firearms (note the health bar in the top left). That quickly changes when the green Faber suits turn up, who start plinking away at the player’s HP, forcing them to switch to their rocket launcher and one-shot the first Faber unit.
However, just 30 seconds in, we have multiple problems with how a lot of this all feels that might not be obvious from the footage. In no particular order they are the following:
- Player aim sucks
- Player damage output sucks
- Environmental props are very solid (compared to the previous game)
- Engagement distances feel off
- Reloads suck
- Camera sucks
These problems also overlap in a few ways. Because there are no reticles in the game yet, where projectiles land as the player aims isn’t great, which is compounded by both Brigador’s existing accuracy cone system and how the plainclothes units are crouched behind cover. Here’s a visualization of how that accuracy cone system functions.
It’s intentional that these props are chest-high walls, but as you can see from the footage of the player shooting at two retreating plainclothes, the bullets are “catching” on the top of the prop rather than hitting the intended targets, though the player has no such problem taking out the Dennis in plain sight to the south west. Except it’s still a problem that the player can’t see someone shooting at them from off screen - and then the first Faber unit turns up.
Depending on the Faber unit firing, they will either slowly drain a carmine suit’s precious HP, because despite the lack of distinct SFX their guns actually have higher pierce than the Dennises, or potentially destroy a carmine suit outright if they land a rocket on the player. These first two Faber units are only carrying rifles, but rather than getting into a two-on-one DPS race, the player beats a hasty retreat to… reload their rocket launcher which in this current setup takes ten whole seconds to cycle. All these factors combined result in a less-than-satisfying experience for the player.
After just an initial skirmish, the player is now down to two-thirds of their starting hit points, which don’t last and a Faber unit eventually busts the player out of their suit, only to quickly eat through their remaining hit points.
Restarting the encounter, the player decides to make use of the incognito status and scout things out. They find a muscle car to drive freely – up until they run over a Dennis, at which point the level turns hostile. The player races about to find a Rounder tank parked deeper into the encounter, and proceeds to gleefully tear through all the Faber units, which highlights another problem: the current disparity between the “fun” of vehicle-based combat, and infantry-scale combat. Compared to everything mentioned so far, the Rounder has absolutely no problem tearing through the entire encounter, even though Faber is equipped with rockets that can eventually take out the tank. Finally, after debussing from the tank in their pursuit to get rid of the last few units, the inertia on the tank and the trample system unintentionally kills the unprotected player. Oops.
2️⃣ENCOUNTER 2 (05:12-08:53)
The second encounter opens with the player in plainclothes next to both a carmine suit and a Rounder. The player’s goal is to destroy an object at the other end of the level. Explicitly there’s two ways to go about this encounter – a combat gauntlet through the “main” route, or taking a side route through some buildings. The player opts to take the main route on foot first.
Again, we see a repeat of the same behavior of easily dispatching some Dennises, only for Faber to appear and make the player’s day worse. This time around the player loses their carmine, and opts to get the Rounder to take the side route, encountering an enemy Rounder that would give the player trouble were it not facing the wrong direction.
The player succeeds in scoring a rear shot on the spacer tank, blows up the objective, makes a mess of several dozen Faber units, and generally has a pleasant time in the vehicle. Once again, we see the disconnect in vehicles generally having a faster time to kill, while the infantry experience is much less snappy.
3️⃣ENCOUNTER 3 (08:54-12:08)
The third encounter is the shortest of the lot, containing a mix of mostly police units, a few “personal mobility devices” and some more green tac rigs equipped with rifles or rockets. The player’s first attempt goes poorly, with their shots failing to go over the barriers and Faber eventually eliminating the player.
Restarting, the player is more careful, running around corners to abuse the AI’s method of pathfinding and being sure to prioritize the first Faber unit to turn up with an RPG. Due to all this violence, the police retreat, which shows off the flinch/flee behavior we mentioned in August’s post.
As they retreat, the player uses this breathing room to reload their RPG and extend out the camera to scout the area ahead for any units lying in wait. A lone Faber unit, likely attracted by the explosion noises, is felled by a rocket from behind and the footage ends here.
📃TO SUMMARIZE THE CURRENT PROBLEMS
As a result of these short encounters, infantry scale combat feels bad. Chiefly the reasons why are:
- Player movement doesn’t feel good especially compared to vehicle movement – we either walk/run or mostly stand still to shoot
- Aiming and shooting feels very static and uninteresting to engage in – this is amplified by how the accuracy system functions causing projectiles to catch on top of barriers we want to shoot over, as well as the excruciatingly slow reload times
- The environment is tanky – part of the joy of the previous game is that even though shots from either the player or NPCs sometimes failed to land, the environment was so fragile that something was still happening even when shots missed
- Time to kill is off – versus armor an on-foot player should certainly feel terrified going up against a bigger foe, but there’s a current frustration just dealing with units of the same size (even non-Faber) which can lead to the player getting dogpiled by multiple enemies
- Engagement distances are too great – getting damaged from off-screen sources not only adds to the frustration but also encourages the player to default to camera-optimal distances i.e. zoom out and extend the camera as far out as possible to get a bead on any potential threats
- Too much is going on and cognitive load irritates the player – frequently the player was trying to quickly dish out damage at approaching units, only to find that their guns had to be reloaded and their health was quickly deteriorating and had no means to counter incoming threats both on- and off-screen beyond running away
…But all that’s okay! Diagnosing the problem is how we approach a cure, and we already have a strong idea how to go about fixing a lot of the above.
🤔SO WHAT TO DO?
There are a wide number of issues to deal with, but we can boil them down to four main things that we intend to do:
- A form of ADS (Aim Down Sights) along with a new type of aiming reticle – our intent is to have right click on mouse act as a form of focused aiming for the player which will involve changing how the camera operates
- Changes to the AI behavior of enemy infantry – these NPCs fundamentally act the same way as vehicles do which does not translate well as infantry behavior
- Tweaking a number of values – experienced Brigador modders will be aware that it’s possible to do many things with the data in-game, so reducing reload times and HP pools, stopping bullets from catching on chest-high walls, or changing when and how quickly enemies engage with the player is already doable
- Simplifying input while not overburdening the player – this point is a bit vague but one thing we might do is give the player character an additional option to “run and gun” on top of firing while either crouched, standing or walking which means new animations are required
Of this list, the first two are the biggest asks of our programmers. As of time of posting we’re currently working on changes to the camera system in order to accommodate this new aiming scheme we have in mind. The past month has been eventful and we should stress that this isn’t intended as a deliberate downer of a post – this is part of the process of making games.
By next month we hope to report back on how infantry scale combat has changed. If you for some reason haven’t yet wishlisted Brigador Killers – please do. As developers it helps us out immensely as we edge ever closer to 2023.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/
