So…when the heck did I have the thought “That’s it, an assassin simulator”.
Shortly, 2+2=4 , unless you’re wrong. Explaining…
Rewind a few years back, back to when Sniper Elite came out (2005 if I’m not wrong), I fucking loved it.
Rewind a bit more and I was ‘playing’ Phantom of Inferno an AnimePlay DVD title – aka: a Japanese visual novel, more correct to call it a Japanese ADV game, stuck on a movie dvd – at the time – 2003 or 2004 – a pirated copy (I was 15 or 16 then, what did you expect?), and if someone ever played it, you’ll probably remember the sniping part of it, for some reason I loved it.
I’ve always had this strange love for snipers, the whole ‘one shot is enough’ thing made me love it.
Fast forward to 2010 and I was watching Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ , Yep, same thing different medium. While watching the part where Zwei and Cal go look for a sniping spot, I just thought “Shit, it would be awesome if there was a video game that simulated this kind of thing.” and yeah…2+2=4.
While, at first, the game will not simulate everything I want to simulate, if I ever really start working on it I plan to (in a very distant future) add people on the street who might call the cops if they think you look suspicious, make cops come looking for you and then you’ll have to reach a ‘checkpoint’ (your car, a taxi or something like that) before time runs out. Maybe various sniper rifles, more missions/maps, maybe even a storyline…Only time will tell…
Now on a more techie view (not very techie, just barely) the engine I’ll use is Unity3D as I’m already using it on a project I’m making with a friend. Graphically, be warned that I’ a 3D noob although I’ve been playing with 3D modelling since I was 13, all of my models would be fuel for laughs to anyone that knows how to make a cube in 3D modelling software (ten fucking years…and I’ve learned nothing…but since I only played with it once every 2 years I have a good reason to be crappy, also I only became a bit more serious about it in the last 3 years but still only touch it once every 2 months or something…)
As far as polygon count goes I am aiming for ≈10k tris – well a triangle is still a polygon on a more ‘traditional’ sense of the word – continuing, ≈10k tris for ‘main’ objects, like, dunno, the fucking sniper rifle maybe? and maybe buildings too; everything else will be around 2k-6k tris. So not a very light game, consider that every apartment will be fully/90% decorated and normal looking and streets will have street signs, trees, traffic lights, garbage cans and all that shit.
What is really making me think is sound…where do I – as an 0 budget ‘game dev on my spare time’ guy – get a realistic sound of a sniper rifle? That, I believe, is one of the mysteries of the universe…
Also, how much sound do I need? Do I really need birds singing? Do I need the sound of cars (although on the first few versions the streets will be empty)? Do I need the sound of a stray cat tipping over a metal trash can? Maybe some aluminium cans (Pepsi cans and such) rolling down the street propelled by the wind?
Yeah…it’s a world of choices…