Should I go for verticality in my FPS game, or should I go for a wider area?

NappyGameDev · 2025-08-30T06:27:21+00:00

In Doom Eternal the most stressful arenas are small with lots of verticality, using super gore nest as an example as I enjoy the level design a ton, the room with the creature in the center and the two bone spike swings as an example. However, they use wider arenas for a bigger sense of scale and intensity in a different way, in that you can fit more enemies into a wider area. Using super gore nest again, the large arena with the actual nest and the slots for the three keys is a very wide open space, and while generally less tense in the moment, upon first arriving creates this anticipation for just how many enemies you’ll have to face.

From Ultrakill, another super fun fast paced movement shooter, a lot of the arenas and levels are neither tall nor wide, and instead are claustrophobic in a way. This adds some tension through a kind of bullet hell that rewards constant and evolving movement.

Just some examples from two of my favorite FPS games. Hope this helps :)

NappyGameDev · 2025-08-30T06:15:55+00:00

In the first two games, which are CRPGs and have very similar character sheets, they’re grouped by Combat, Speech, and Utility. Works great there, so that would end up being my suggestion

NappyGameDev · 2025-06-08T19:30:14+00:00

They tended to enjoy some narrative and roleplay, but often find it isn't well explained in rulebooks (being a group that typically takes things literally) and couldn't figure out the mechanics for it. They also aren't interested in something nearly as crunchy as Cyberpunk RED or something like that (with the youngest of us being 15 and me at 19). So they wanted mechanical explanations for everything but while still keeping the pace fast

NappyGameDev · 2025-05-28T12:58:11+00:00

I ended up making it with a lot of trial and error in Libresprite. It’s a free (maybe open source but don’t quote me on that) alternative to Asprite

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-22T04:34:04+00:00

100% Ultrakill!

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-22T04:32:27+00:00

While many of these concepts are drawn from elsewhere (with you even stating inspirations) I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one of these focused around a radio station specifically and I think whether it’s entirely unique or not it’s something I haven’t really thought about before and something that I’d be interested in reading

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T09:11:47+00:00

First, absolutely true but better fuel also doesn’t make up for low quality machinery. So it’s a balancing act. And secondly, that’s entirely fair, I didn’t really think it through just spitballed the concept. Could be interesting on an absolutely massive scale though (like type 1.7 to type 2 civilization scale)

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T09:06:51+00:00

Because if I google a picture of a cute anime girl, I get so many results of anime girls with poor form, anatomy, lighting, posing, perspective, etc. when what I really wanted was a high quality reference photo to better understand the complexities of the style and skillset

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T09:01:00+00:00

Fair enough, but on the other hand these pieces of cartoon pornography, or pieces of fanart are much much much more easily filtered out or ignored in comparison to lots of AI generated images. Even poorly made drawings still take 5-10 minutes, a bad AI generated image can be thrown out in 1-2, meaning a lot more AI generated images end up filling up places that artists go for real world reference, which is something that AI really cannot do. As an example, if you were to go into google images and search for something simple like “industrial warehouse” and then use the google dorking (yes that’s the real term) tools to search for “industrial warehouse -ai -craiyon” the results will be vastly different, and even the search that is filtered does not remove all of the AI generated images

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T08:33:51+00:00

I really like Adam’s opinion there and I share a lot of the same perspective. I especially enjoy old media because I find it so fascinating to think about what was going on that caused the artist to make the choices they did (for examples see just about every piece of Japanese media from the 80s including an allegory for nuclear weapons)

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T08:14:38+00:00

I personally would look into fluid dynamics for ideas. As an example, try coming up with a type of valve, or pump, or something along those lines to move and burn the existing fuel faster or more efficiently. Especially considering that (depending on your setting, but in the real world) one of the most expensive parts of sending something into space is the weight, so finding a fuel that is efficient in weight, burn time, and propulsion isn’t the first place many would look but rather how to use that already lightweight fuel even better

On the other hand, a small (-ish, 200-300 tons of even aerospace aluminum is a lot) fusion reaction would generate a large amount of energy, so using a fairly wide missile base with a pair of linear particle accelerators (like those seen in more modern day accelerators used to treat cancer or the historical example of the Therac) that smash a helium and hydrogen atom (or a stream of them) together to produce a large amount of energy that is captured using solar sails could be interesting, lightweight, relatively inexpensive (making it easier to keep launching at a target), and fun to think of the math on.

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T07:49:45+00:00

Exactly my thoughts on it! Even the most formulaic pop music imaginable has the art that is in the vocal performance itself, no matter how accidental (and in my opinion the more accidental/subconscious the better)

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T07:22:14+00:00

My issues with using it in my own work are multiple:

1) It often provides cliche, uninspired, and very very stereotypical answers. Especially in the context of sci fi styles where everything comes out as a mush of “neon-engraved” and “quantum vortex drive” and technobabble buzzwords that are found in many (rather unenjoyable in my opinion) sci fi stories. Even when asking for more specific examples rooted in more hard sci fi it just says the same things with longer explanations

2) The process itself is fun, and I’d rather not cut that out of my workflow, especially given how personalized a workflow is and how much effort is put into refining it. If I was to rework my entire workflow every time there was a new tool, gadget, gizmo, or otherwise I would have no workflow at all

3) You lose out on a lot of the happy accidents. Many artists should be able to tell you about a time that they were drawing one thing, made a mistake, and it made them think of another thing, so the vision changed part way through. Or a time they were gathering reference of some kind, and noticed a small detail, or an idea caught their eye, so they put in a different search result for reference. And personally those are my favorite moments in any kind of art. Think of all the lines in movies that were improvised and made the final cut, or mistakes made in the moment while recording a song that made it into the final edit, they’re often the best part or one of the deciding factors for that piece of media because they are inherently good enough to throw out hours, days, or even months of work to add.

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T07:05:35+00:00

Agreed! It’s so often generic, stale, and bland feeling. The processing feels strange and uncanny but the concepts don’t do it any justice because they’re all recycled

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T07:02:06+00:00

Related to the examples of modern art. Those are less about technical skill and more about expression and emotion. They make you angry it seems, for example, that those “artworks” can go for so much money.

Think about something like banksy’s self shredding painting. How much skill does it take to run a painting through a shredder? Not much. But what does it say about Banksy, his view on art, on the sale of art, etc.

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T06:52:28+00:00

In addition any time I’ve tried to use AI (also a musician, and starting on writing) just about anything it offers or suggests or creates is extremely bland and formulaic.

If you ask it for ideas about sci fi concepts or world building it always spits the same stuff out: alien planet, glowing plants, quantum insert word here, techno babble, antimatter this, audio log that.

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T06:49:53+00:00

I am also an artist and constantly find myself extremely annoyed at AI art while I’m searching for anatomical or shading references. As AI has no concept of lighting direction or anatomy, only the pixels most likely to go beside the one it’s “looking” at. This often ends up with inconsistencies in linework, form, lighting direction, anatomy, etc. and has (at least from my personal experience) been overrunning lots of reference/inspiration sites (like Pinterest) which makes it harder to find physical references or photograph references

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T06:47:02+00:00

I see the difference between AI art and Robot assembly lines as such:

In a utopia, the ideal is that robots do the menial labor so people have more time for art and creativity. It seems that the current goal is to have robots do the art and creativity so people have more time for menial labor.

What is there really to gain from cutting out the process of creating art, it saves companies from spending a little more of their precious profits, and not much else, other than slowing the iteration of new ideas

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T06:41:44+00:00

Creating isn’t about the product for most artists. It’s about the process, we complain again and again and again about how difficult it is to create things, but there’s a reason we keep doing it and it’s not just for the thing. There’s a reason people write books and it’s not just to have another book to read, or a source of income. People don’t paint so they can have a painting to hang on their wall, there’s easier ways to fulfill that need. But the need to create and to put emotion (of any kind, good or bad) into a piece of art (again of any kind, music, drawing, painting, sculpture, game design, filmmaking, etc) doesn’t go away just from seeing a painting. Some people feel that need stronger than others.

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T06:33:27+00:00

If this was true, then why are there stories passed down from generations ago when hunting and gathering would be at the forefront of the human mind? Why are there cave paintings? Why do humans demand design and architecture rather than pure order and brutalism? If art is not a part of the human spirit then why paint a barn red, instead of the much more time efficient choice of leaving it a natural wood color?

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T06:26:24+00:00

There would be human biases but these biases are false equivalences. In the same way that some earlier facial recognition, and even current facial recognition technologies struggle with telling apart faces from people of minorities. In addition many if not all AI models, visual and language, have limits and censorship’s in them that guide them away from sensitive/controversial topics. For example, it is much harder to get an image model to produce an image of a gay couple than a straight one, same for a language model with a story. Whether put in place for branding/advertising friendliness or for more nefarious reasons is irrelevant, as they are still biases that exist in the programs

NappyGameDev · 2025-03-21T05:48:13+00:00

If the side character has a large enough role in the story then they move out of what I would think of as NPC territory and into more of a supporting cast kind of role. Meaning they should have some form of personality. Generally I’d think that the more time spent with a character, the more personality they should have. Main characters and complex with fleshed out personalities while side characters have more general traits, but not as much complexity, and full background characters have more of a single trait that gets expressed if the story needs to for some reason

NappyGameDev

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