njfrlng Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 So I'm working on compiling a list of items for a game I'm working on. (Weapons, armour, food, etc....) My question is, how realistic do you keep things? Do you use real world items/real world logic, or do you make stuff up as you go? For example, I'm working on a weapons list and am using actual weapon names. Do you actually make the weapons as powerful in real life or do you just kind of find your own way to balance items? (I'm talking about attack scores/damage delivered) Any thoughts or comments? I'd love to hear em! Quote
KyleMassacre Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 I think keeping the aspect ratios from real life to a game is best. You don't want to make it exactly like real life but you don't want to have a shotgun have more power than a bazooka. Quote
njfrlng Posted March 18, 2014 Author Posted March 18, 2014 I think keeping the aspect ratios from real life to a game is best. You don't want to make it exactly like real life but you don't want to have a shotgun have more power than a bazooka. Thats exactly what I was wondering. My issue is there will be a ton of handguns available, and im not overly knowledgeable on which is better then which, so it will be alot more work on my plate to figure all of that out. Oh well, perks of the job. Quote
Zettieee Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 (edited) If you look around youtube they is some old guy who has a ton of guns. He gives a good basic idea of what a gun is capable of. PS: When I find his channel, I'll post it here for you. EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/user/hickok45 There you go. Edited March 18, 2014 by Zettieee Quote
njfrlng Posted March 18, 2014 Author Posted March 18, 2014 If you look around youtube they is some old guy who has a ton of guns. He gives a good basic idea of what a gun is capable of. PS: When I find his channel, I'll post it here for you. EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/user/hickok45 There you go. Thanks! I think I've seen this guy before, lol Quote
Zettieee Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 My opinion on weapons is. The crazier it seems, the more it does. IE: chainsaw is 90%. But my AK 47 is 65%. Quote
Guest Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 I think keeping the aspect ratios from real life to a game is best. You don't want to make it exactly like real life but you don't want to have a shotgun have more power than a bazooka. Technically a shotgun does more damage depending on the distance, RPG's don't explode 100% of the time, if it hits you directly there is a chance of you surviving, however a shotgun close up will inevitably kill you, there are exceptions of course :p. And that is only if you bring variables into your game such as chance of mis fire etc. Quote
njfrlng Posted March 18, 2014 Author Posted March 18, 2014 Technically a shotgun does more damage depending on the distance, RPG's don't explode 100% of the time, if it hits you directly there is a chance of you surviving, however a shotgun close up will inevitably kill you, there are exceptions of course :p. And that is only if you bring variables into your game such as chance of mis fire etc. Way to complicate things even more!! haha Quote
Djkanna Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 Depends on the game really, sure if it's a mafia, war, so on and so forth then sure go for realistic items with realistic properties. If it's a fantasy game, then things get a little more interesting and you can play with unrealistic weapons with unrealistic properties and such. Not to say you cannot have unrealistic items in the other genres, but those tend to lean towards realism over fantasy. As for attack properties, you probably have to compromise a little, especially if there isn't some implementation of misfires and such like Angel mentioned. You've got to think ( using the ideas here ), which does more damage a chainsaw or a shotgun. Whilst a shotgun is easier to handle, a chainsaw could do more damage than a single shot of a shotgun. But a chainsaw requires the one that's handling it to be up close, a shotgun has a little more distance to it. However distance doesn't really apply, unless you want to factor that into the equation. Many factors apply to real-life situations, that don't really apply in the game ( unless it's implemented ). Categorising the weapons seems to help a little. Say having chainsaw and baseball bat in one category, then it's easy to see which would deal the most damage, whilst both can be lethal but a chainsaw would kill you with a little more ease. Categorising the weapons would in most cases allow you to only apply attack properties based on that of the weapons that are also in that category. So guns, would only need to factor in other guns. Melee would only need to factor in other melee items. The rest would depend on your implementation of attacking. Quote
njfrlng Posted March 18, 2014 Author Posted March 18, 2014 Thanks Djkanna, great info. Categorization is what I've been thinking pretty much, otherwise trying to compare apples to oranges will be nearly impossible. Crazy how quickly something can get so complicated! Much respect to all the games I've played over the years, haha Quote
Djkanna Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 Thanks Djkanna, great info. Categorization is what I've been thinking pretty much, otherwise trying to compare apples to oranges will be nearly impossible. Crazy how quickly something can get so complicated! Much respect to all the games I've played over the years, haha Indeed, finding a decent balance in games is a tricky thing. But at least you can always tweak your values after the game is live, so it's not like the ones you start with are set in stone... That's at least something. Best of luck. :) Quote
Script47 Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 What I used to try and do is, have a lowest value and a highest value. So lets say 1-150. I would make the strongest weapon (lets say a laser cannon) that would be 150 and the weakest (fists) being 1. Then I would have the weapons in between. But nothing exceeds 150 unless it's a bonus weapon. This way I know which is the most powerful and which is the weakest then everything else is in (logical) order in between. Quote
KyleMassacre Posted March 18, 2014 Posted March 18, 2014 Just to spin off what DJK said about balance and all that jazz. I don't know if you noticed this article but I may help a little bit: http://makewebgames.io/content.php/157-How-google-docs-excel-can-help-to-create-your-content Quote
njfrlng Posted March 18, 2014 Author Posted March 18, 2014 What I used to try and do is, have a lowest value and a highest value. So lets say 1-150. I would make the strongest weapon (lets say a laser cannon) that would be 150 and the weakest (fists) being 1. Then I would have the weapons in between. But nothing exceeds 150 unless it's a bonus weapon. This way I know which is the most powerful and which is the weakest then everything else is in (logical) order in between. Awesome idea!! That should atleast give me a starting point that I can tweak during alpha testing! - - - Updated - - - Just to spin off what DJK said about balance and all that jazz. I don't know if you noticed this article but I may help a little bit: http://makewebgames.io/content.php/157-How-google-docs-excel-can-help-to-create-your-content Definitely read this article and have already started using what it speaks about :) Quote
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