Anyone do gamedev stuff?

[ReconSWS]

Just curious. 3D modeling, programming, sound design, technical custodian, anything.

All the paintball games on Steam look like trash... they ain't no Call of Duty clearly.

[caylegeorge]

Heya, yeah I've been a game developer for quite some time. I would agree, the paintball games out there have never been great, and generally fallen into the realm of shovel-ware.

I think the problem is 2 fold - Most of the commercial paintball game products look to be relatively very budget limited, which by nature means they are going to have a difficult time producing a product with compelling features if they bite off too much. 2nd, most every paintball game I have ever played has focused on the the airball / speedball style play, or has aimed to enable players to get that experience.

I think its a mistake to try and simulate the full experience of speedball, or modern paintball for that matter. Especially as a FPS.

If I were to make a paintball game, I would try and lean into the fact that it is just that, a game.

I'd make something titled like:

"Paintball 1986"

I'd make it a Third person action game, retro themed to the 80's technology and stylings of the sport.

Let you pick a class based character in a romp of free for all every-player-for-themselves elimination paintball field or some such.
Give you the option as a player to build a loadout of questionably useful 80's gear and attachments.

I think slowing the game down to pump-action 80's, having some humor with class based archetypal players, and junk the FPS controls for something a bit more casual with third person and I think you could make something actually fun.



I want to play this type of guy in a paintball game:

[ReconSWS]

Sweet analysis I was thinking along the same lines, be a bit more inclusive than just speed-ball, get some woods ball and indoor in there, get a battle-royale mode. The beauty about paintball is, there IS room for an amazing game... versus airsoft... which would just be redundant with call of duty. I am down with you on the technology range.

Unfortunately, I'm one of those who are over ambitious and will over-scope instantly to make the best thing ever, but at least I think I've learned to take it in bite sized chunks. Going to start with a simple marker builder first and go from there.

Also, with experience from playing a game like PUBG, first-person is always the superior game mode. That game launched with third-person, and its third-person was literally what sold me the game (i.e. dang these view models and animations are so sick), but when the released first-person mode, I think like 80% of the players preferred FPS. Third-person unfortunately promotes corner camping and peeking without exposing ones self. To make first person amazing, it needs good movement, good lean, good vault, good sprint.

[ReconSWS]

Also, that pic will be the cover art.

[ReconSWS]

Actually, I see your point about third-person though. And it'd be best to include BOTH modes, that the player can swap to (or just have it a setting). Third-person is great too.

[BrickHaus]

I want to see forza/ need for speed underground level customization to your gear in a paintball game.

custom anno, valve options, bolt options, gloves, jersey customizer, ect. I want to be able to build custom stuff on there for hours.

perspective doesnt matter as much 1st or 3rd.

And it could be 80s ball like ultimate paintbrawl with a graphics update. but Id think it would be cooler with current stuff and the devs continually releasing parts and guns as manufact7rers release guns.

[ReconSWS]

I agree with you, step 1 of any paintball game should be to make a marker builder, with full customization and full disassembly of markers, upgrade of individual components, etc. I'll take a look at paintbrawl.

[ReconSWS]

Oh dang paintbrawl is literally a DOOM 1 reskin lmao! Yeah, that needs a GFX update. Looks great tho just needs a paint chainsaw xD

[ReconSWS]

Unrelated, but since this is a gaming thread, dang look at this military night vision tech, that looks like a game-shader lol :

[AtomJaay]

I work on a social VR team using Unity and have written about a playable museum project idea to celebrate those first philosophical debates and games in 1981 New England.

If were making a 2D vidya game based on paintball, I'd prefer a mix of the ideas above from caylegeorge and BrickHaus with some mod support like SkaterXL so that people could recreate their outlaw, local or now defunct field (RIP Canobie Paintball).

[ReconSWS]

That sounds like a cool project! Also I like the idea of a map maker or mod support to make your own fields. Good one!

[AtomJaay]

Thinking about this more, the only paintball game worth a damn would HAVE to be made by and for the MCB community... it's like the "Jane's Information Group" of paintball.

[ReconSWS]

No doubt... (15 char limit)

[BrickHaus]

Years ago Greg Hastings had a dev group for the next big greg hastings paintball (4)? game. And it promised a lot of this plus VR support. I was in the group on Faebook, but the chatter all but stopped long ago. Ive since quit facebook so I cant check on the progress.

With all of the awesome games being made by small dev groups on the unreal engine it shouldnt be too crazy of a game to make.

[caylegeorge]

You could also take a paintball game a different direction, something like -

Paintball Field Manager

You could do a whole game about inventory management, Airsmithing, field a facilities building and so on.

Maybe some kinda hybrid game between Rollercoaster tycoon and Item shop tale.

[AtomJaay]

You could also take a paintball a different direction, something like -

Paintball Field Manager

You could do a whole game about inventory management, Airsmithing, field a facilities building and so on.

Maybe some kinda hybrid game between Rollercoaster tycoon and Item shop tale.

^ add some feature where I can run various Big-Game Scenario weekend events at my sim field and you've got yourself a steam sale here!

[BrickHaus]

I do like the field manager idea, make it like roller coaster tycoon, but you could incorperate geometry data to make your fields play like they would in real life, so you would have to build fields that work well vs just look cool. You could even hire and promote refs. And have employees all have unique character traits that change your fields strong and weak points dependant on what task you give them.

[ReconSWS]

Okay I did the math, since I have a Phantom CAD file, and it'll probably take 1-3 hours per part to remesh it for a game model and uvwunwrap it for textures or materials. Phantom has like 30 parts so thats like 30-100 hours for 1 marker not including CAD file. Anyway I'mma take a stab at making a marker builder in Unity and see where it goes from there.

[Siress]

I've posted on here about Digital Paintball Redux before. It's on Steam. Best paintball game I've played.

caylegeorge , I think you described http://www.2dpaintball.com/ with woods, rather than speedball.

[Siress]

DPB (as we used to call it...maybe DPR now?) is one of those games that looks like garbage but is really fun. It's achilies heel is that it's multi-player only and so few people play that you can really only find one or two active servers a day, and only during peak hours (~6-10pm Eastern). Here's the previous thread I started about it: https://www.mcarterbrown.com/forum/o...redux-on-steam

[ReconSWS]

I'll gib it a buy then sometime :P and post up a group game or something

[ReconSWS]

Alright I gave a few more videos a look and it does look like a blast xD . Can even use a pump vs speedball : https://youtu.be/XBbGzUxW3C4?t=198

[ReconSWS]

Got my pile of parts ready for gamification (we'll see how long it takes from here), aiming for 100k polygons right now its several million ; for main markers and PBR textures for some nice anno shading potential.

[ReconSWS]

So this is the type of graphics I want to see in a Paintball game, converted just the barrel to see how that'd turn out and yeah I'm down, it should look the same in Unity. 500 polygons vs 20,000 original. Gotta redo this one but it was a good warmup. Threads and ports came out trash tho you can't see how bad in this pic but I guess nobody is going to be micro-scopin the details.. This took about 2 hours to refresh myself on the process but I can probably do it in 30 minutes actually. So the entire gun maybe 10 hours-20.





And what it looks like under the hood lol :

[Siress]

ReconSWS What are you even trying to do here? It looks and sounds like you're just saving as mesh file (e.g. .STL) with reduced quality and then rendering that for some reason. Unless and until there's a paintball game running on an engine capable of using modern-sized gfx without bogging down like a dial-up modem I'm not sure what anyone can do with such models.

Also, out of curiosity, did you model those parts yourself or am I seeing someone using my earliest CAD models in the wild? That'd be cool, if so.

[ReconSWS]

I believe gamers love gratuitous detail... is all. I kind of -redacted rant-

Actually it is necessary for the marker builder portion.

[ReconSWS]

My barrel is 450 polygons. Considered low-poly by any means even with the ID. I can budget up to 100,000 for each FPS marker.

[ReconSWS]

Ok thanks. Mr. Cassidy is a cool guy!