   Designing a shooter for one-vs-one combat
  I have an idea for developing a shooter that features instances of one-vs-one combat. I'm trying to tap more into tactical skills (outsmarting the enemy) rather than technical skill (who can aim better). The problem is, I'm not sure how someone can counter a gun without just shooting back with another gun.So far my most promising idea is having the players struggle for the best attack position, while giving them enough health to get to cover, and maybe have them go back and forth like that a few times before it ends. I'm not sure if it will end up being the most interesting solution, so I'm wondering if anyone else can think of some good ideas. For the record, I'm not sure if I want to promote sneaking - maybe, maybe not - but I'm definitely fine with a bit of melee combat.I'm also interested in hearing of any games that puts a focus on this kind of combat, to see what they did right/wrong.   
  Some ideas:The player has 2 reticulates for shooting. One is quite large, the other is very small ( possibly a normal dot ).If you can see your enemy and can target a certain part ( maybe 3 parts on 6? - head, body, 2 arms, 2 legs ) of his body within the large reticulate, the shoot automatically hits. This should lower the technical skill requirements.However, if you wish to try a lucky hit or can see just a small fraction of your enemy's body ( for example, he isn't hiding well ) you can try to hit him with the small reticulate.For maximizing the importance of every single bullet, the latency between every shot is very high. Also, shots do a large amount of damage.Now, the only missing things are all the tactical gadgets, such as smoke bombs, flash granades, decoys, mines, timed bombs, and so on. Maybe a knife should be also a basic weapon, which deals certain death.What do you think? ^_^   ;I think Svalorzen is really onto something when he talks about the time delays of the weapons. If you create a lag time for the weapons, and possibly even limit the ammo provided, that will force the player to make sure they are ready to fire. You could perhaps let the players use the terrain as a weapon. Rock slides, or falling trees. Allow the players to set up booby traps like trip wires, or motion activated bombs.   ;  You're on the right track with your thoughts about increasing the importance of positioning and spatial awareness within the game.  In a typical Free for all or Team vs Team shooter, your spatial awareness is being maximized by tracking multiple objects in a complex environment.  In a one vs one game using those same engines, your spatial awareness is not being stressed to the same extent.  You will want to emphasize any design features that rely on awareness of the environment to succeed.Some ideas that have been used effectively in past games:  Slowing down the player's movement speed, especially while strafing and moving backwards. Decreasing the player's offensive capability while moving or turning rapidly, which is usually done by reducing the accuracy of their shots.  Allowing different body positions, crouched and prone, that offer a slimmer profile while reducing or eliminating movement.  Allow the player to erect a limited number of projectile-stopping barriers (force fields, for example).  Make the majority of your weapons range-limited, such as flame throwers, chainsaws or lightning guns.  Create devices that act as distractions, such as noise-makers and decoys that will create the sound of footsteps fleeing down a hallway or some such.  Allow damage taken from the rear or flanks to be greater.:)   ;  Probably the single biggest thing you can do to encourage careful tactics is to make each shot do a lot of damage. I don't like Svalorzen's idea of automatic targeting (if I may call it that), but a lot of the other stuff he said is good.Seriously, though, go out and have 1v1 duels with someone. Use rubber bands, airsoft guns, nerf guns, whatever. Go experience 1v1 combat!I've had some experience in this, with both airsoft and rubber bands. It often comes down to outmaneuvering someone to get a good shot. Actually, you really just want to avoid detection entirely, and get your shot off before your opponent knows where you are. Once the initial opportunity for this is lost (when both players are aware of each other), things often degenerate into a standoff. Either someone needs to back off farther away, or someone needs to run really quickly into a new position. Here, the lack of technical skill works in the runner's favor, because unless they are really clumsy, they have a pretty good chance of surviving the bullet fusillade, especially if there is no fusillade because rate-of-fire is limited. Also, these fights usually take place over distances that make accurate targeting difficult, because it's safer for both combatants out there. They naturally avoid closing with each other, until they are forced together by the circumstances.You want to emphasize the maneuvering and stealth aspect of the game, while reducing the occurrence of standoffs. Design your terrain with lots of opportunities for cover and stealth, but also for movement when the tendency might otherwise be to hunker down and wait for the other guy to move. Perhaps remove all radar-type devices, and replace them with a simple system that makes up for the lack of peripheral vision (or experiment with some kind of fish-eye camera view). Let detection be on sound and visuals alone. Be careful that levels are large enough to allow you to move undetected to a certain extent, but small enough that contact is inevitable. You would want to have some levels/stages suited to tactical maneuvering, others suited to stealth, and whatever other strategies and combinations you can think of.One interesting game I played with rubber bands was a 1 on 1 duel where each player only had 1 rubber band for the whole round. Careful tactics were very important, moderated by the fact that each round went very quickly. You either had to get a sniper shot off before your opponent saw you, or pop up and have a faster snap shot than they did. My cousin and I played a lot of these games, and they were more fun than you might expect. We had a fairly large yard, and we would start on opposite ends, giving us lots of room to "get lost". It wasn't the ideal place to play, but it was pretty good. It only got old when we had fully exploited the tactical possibilities of our environment, and couldn't come up with any new ones. I can only imagine how fun it would have been if we had had some really interesting, varied terrain.One tension-building mechanic happens when there is a possibility that you or your opponent or both are just going to wait the other one out. You may decide to wait for your opponent, and snag them when they walk by. But then you never know if they are doing the same. So you might venture out, full of fear that you are going to get shot. Even worse is when you are waiting for someone, but they detect you anyway, and out-sneak you. That's embarrassing.One last thought: design levels to avoid circling, where two players are just following each other around some large obstacle, or trying to out-guess the opponent about when to stop and wait or reverse direction. That's not usually very fun. You never want the game to settle into a limit cycle like that.   ;  I'm getting some good ideas from this.Traps, or any device that isn't a gun, are things I haven't really considered much. They could work though. I think there would be a way to incorporate them such that players could construct their own cover, concealment, etc. A limited means of altering the flow of the level. It's a dynamic I really should consider more fully.And then there's the idea of restricting the rate of fire, or rather, how much damage a person can do before the enemy gets a chance to react. After firing a shot/volley the logical thing would be to move to cover, since you can't continue attacking and the enemy might negate the advantage with a counterattack. But what if instead of having an instant of powerful attack, it was reversed to become an instant of weakened defense. From an advantageous position, the attacker could hit the weak spot (flank, back, etc.), but then the person being attacked would tend to face the attacker or escape, accomplishing much the same thing. I may be misinterpreting the intent of the suggestion, though.I do find it interesting that someone suggested reducing the speed of strafing/backpedaling; I was going to do that, but for a different reason. I wanted to make the player feel like they were controlling a person instead of a set of floating geometric coordinates, which most shooters haven't really improved upon since... ever. I thought it might have been because you could move in any direction with equal speed, so I decided that strafing/backpedaling would naturally be slower. It's kind of funny how that worked out.If my original question has run its course, maybe I can come at it from a different angle. Let me ask, what do you think would be the best way to reduce the technical skill requirements of a shooter? Is auto-aim taking it too far? I have an idea for an unusual solution, but I wouldn't want it to drive the discussion, I'd rather hear 100% original ideas first.   ;  It's a tough problem.  If you want to be dealing a lot with fields of fire and zones of cover and careful maneuvering, then level design will be a big part of gameplay.  Slow-fire weapons help a lot with this, and what you wind up with (with nerf guns, anyway) is a situation where you're trying to get the other guy to take a difficult or risky shot, so you can bum-rush him while he reloads.  It might get monotonous and boring, though.If strategic positioning will be a core feature, how about working on deepening locomotion?  UT got pretty wild with the wall-jumping and dodge moves, making instagib matches really intense, with dodging and circling and leaping all over the place.  A cover system like you might see in Gears of War or similar titles can add some adrenaline to getting behind stuff.How about limiting ammo, or otherwise introducing a "meta-reload"?  You fire the gun once every five seconds, but every twelve shots you have to spend twenty seconds recharging the thing before you can shoot it again.  That'll reduce the chance of just circling and shooting until someone dies every time you see the other guy.  A related option is guns overheating.  Take the two sniper rifles in Halo.  The human rifle fires four shots, as fast as you can pull the trigger, but then you've got to reload it.  The Covenant version never reloads, but if you fire it too fast it'll overheat, which takes just as long as reloading.   ;  Another thing could be making the map environment made of blocks. Two shots destroy a block. The blocks are disposed like in a trench warfare, in groups of 3-4.So you could plan to get your enemy in one spot, having mined another one near it, destroy his cover and then watch him go over your mine in order to protect himself from your fire =);Quote:Let me ask, what do you think would be the best way to reduce the technical skill requirements of a shooter? Is auto-aim taking it too far? I have an idea for an unusual solution, but I wouldn't want it to drive the discussion, I'd rather hear 100% original ideas first.This isn't a 100% original idea, since it relates to the only game I've played that's really fun with only one other player: Americas Army.The reason it's fun is it relies on maneuvering and tactics rather than gun power stats to determine a winner. All guns are absolutely deadly and very accurate (if you spot someone across a map, chances are he'll be dead in seconds. This forces players to be more cautious and sneak around, find ambush points, etc. more, and works well for 1 vs 1 because it becomes a small scale tactics war where you need to outsmart your opponent (and react quickly).   ;Quote:Original post by AethonicIf my original question has run its course, maybe I can come at it from a different angle. Let me ask, what do you think would be the best way to reduce the technical skill requirements of a shooter? Is auto-aim taking it too far? I have an idea for an unusual solution, but I wouldn't want it to drive the discussion, I'd rather hear 100% original ideas first.The best way to reduce technical skill requirements is to make the rate of fire as high as is practical. More bullets = more chances to hit. How easy do you really want to make it?Probably if you combine potent ammunition (where one to three hits will usually do it, depending on the location) with a fairly high rate of fire (~200 rounds per minute?), you will have a good balance of technical skill requirements and forcing the player to be creative in their maneuvering. Also, as Iron Chef Carnage said, level design will be extremely important in giving the player opportunities to be creative.At this point though, we're talking about content creation: weapon design and level design. As long as you make it easy to tweak weapon properties during play-testing, you should do pretty well.   