Been going on a movie binge this weekend and it hit me that certain action movie scenes are a great way to draw inspiration for gameplay from.
Each action movie has it’s own rules and it’s own physics. There are ground rules of what a human is capable of doing. How accurate guns are, how fast people can move and how much they can survive.
Some movies has the hero lay down the enemies en masse without breaking a sweat, the other time the hero is the underdog and the enemies are invincible. Sometimes you see two opposing parties clash and hit nothing but cardboard boxes. Sometimes enemies are intentionally stupid etc etc.
The robbery scene from the movie ‘Heat’ kind of stands out in this one because it pitches two sides that are matched quite well. The rules are only slightly over the top meaning that the people involve perform slightly over what you would expect in real life.
Anyway, it leads to a tense scene and it really gives a nice feel for how I think a shoot-out in a game should play out:
One thing I can take away from this is how important lean is in lengthening a firefight without increasing the TTK. I still think that leaving it out in DB is a huge mistake.
But more importantly:
Take note of the sounds. If you close your eyes you really develop a sense for the pace and rhythm in the fighting (I really start to sound like a sociopath now). It makes me believe there’s far more possible in sound engineering than most games are currently doing.
IE, if a lone fighter gets hit by a bullet then it makes sense not to make a whole lot of noise, unless the pain is so severe that it’s more down to a sound of anguish (which happens in the movie) OR the damage is so lethal that the player loses the capacity to make any sound at all.
However, if someone gets hit near a team-mate, it makes sense to shout-out as a form of warning. In that moment it becomes more important to let your friends know that you’re being hit and that the position you’re all in is vulnerable to incoming fire.
And it goes even further. If ANOTHER friendly player sees or hears his team-mate getting hit he may also make a warning sound. This will sound different from the person being hit, it will sound calmer and more composed as it only serves to warn fellow people around him.
A few simple rules, algorithms like this will cause waves of audible-information to ripple through the combatants, both enemies and friendlies and it will give players a better sense of what’s going on around them. Players will be able to extract a great deal of combat awareness just from the shouts alone. And combat awareness is definitely what DB needs more of.
In that way I think the mercs in DB need to start make situational noises when they’re being hit out of which players can draw high-quality information.
The game needs some sort of psychological sound system that makes the shouts/yells/cries very context-sensitive.
TLDR:
-Movies are a great way to convey the pace of action you want to see. Do you guys have any favourites? Mind you, scenes that can be turned into multiplayer action. Scenes where one guy lays down a horde of enemies are only useful for singleplayer.
- Player sounds need to be more psychologically driven so that everyone involved can develop a better sense of what’s going on.
It could become annoying/repetitive, though. Depends on how it’s handled. I love that Heat fight scene btw - wouldn’t want a fps that plays like it - too much standing still behind cover, but cracking scene.