How I Design the Weapon | Crystalled Bullets - Dev Diary

In Today's Dev Diary, I will talk about Guns in Crystalled Bullets. This article is a transcript of The Crystalled Bullets Dev Diary Video adjusted as an IndieDB/Itchio article.

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Hey Kids! I'll ask you a question, What is the most significant part of the First Person Shooter Games?

"Multiplayer!!" (said with an obnoxious Japanese accent)

...No, that's not on the script. "uh... guns?" That's right! Guns!

Guns in shooters always play a significant part. How satisfying to use them and how they look, sound, and usability, gives a significant impression about the games. In specific cases, the gun itself's quality could determine the game's reception entirely.

So, Let's stop faffing at the first introduction, and start talking about the philosophy of "Crystalled Bullets"'s Gun Designs!

When I started making this game, after deciding on the art style, I started working on guns first. While I was working on those weapons, I personally found some important 3 rules for what I think is a "good gun" to design the gun.

That is what I'd like to call, "Three Gs".

1. Guns need to look original.
2. Guns need to be satisfying just by firing them on empty air.
3. Guns need to be easy to understand each gun's unique roles and elements to the player.

Let's start with the first one "Guns need to look original".

As I said in the past, when someone sees the screenshot or video footage of the game, It gives a significant first impression of the game.

Guns in FPS, of course, have a significant impact too. because they occupy the majority of screens. both screen time and screen spaces. and I believe making guns look original, colorful, and most importantly, memorable, rather than reusing the design of the dull, generic real-life gun, gives an edge in this competitive market.

I mean, come on, take an example. How many games feature an armory called "AK47" and its subform?

"Metro 2033", "Atomic Heart" "Counter-Strike" "Vertigo 2" "Spec Ops: The Line" "Hotline Miami 2" "OTXO" "50 Cent: Blood on the Sand" and whatever the heck is the "Blue Archive" thing, You get the point! there's AK everywhere!

But while trying to make guns original, It's not all completely designed from the ground up. The designs of guns in my games are partially taken from other real-life guns. Crystal Pistol's design takes inspiration from Desert Eagle, and Crystal Shotgun's design is from the Russian Revolver Shotgun "MTs255", and the Italian Semi-Auto Shotgun "Benelli M4".

Still, it's just another corner-cutting to save time. It's not easy to come up with the design from scratch, after all.

Let's move to the next one. "Guns need to be satisfying just by firing them on empty air."

In the world of game design, there's a word called "Core Gameplay Loop"

The meaning of this word is what the player does in the game at the moment and moment level. For example, in action-shooter games like "Quake", shoot the enemy and avoid the gunshots. In hack-and-slash games like "God of War 4", attacking the enemy with melee weapons, avoids the enemy's attack by dodging and parrying.

At the basics level, you can improve the core gameplay loop fun bit by bit with nice, satisfying sound effects, and animations of characters, guns, and perhaps anything that appears in sight.

Of course, It's not all about basics at all; Elements such as unique gameplay mechanics, map design, pacing, and game balance are also essential to keep gameplay fun and engaging. Of course, I'm not neglecting those elements in my game.

But, If games fail to offer strong basics no matter how unique the mechanics are, It is transparent that the game gonna fall apart when judging the game by fun. Without strong basics, making gameplay fun is like building a tower without strong columns, or rather, trying to understand quadratic functions without the knowledge of multiplication.

In Crystalled Bullets, I designed the sound of guns by combining multiple free stock sounds on the internet and a record of model guns lying around in my house to make a unique, satisfying sound.

As for the animation, I created an animation by separated parts of the gun, hand, and crystal and moving each of the parts depending on the scene. And some pseudo-motion blurs on animation as well. because I prefer it this way.

Also, I designed the majority of particles, bullet trails, muzzle flashes, and Dynamic lights. All of those particles are also some of the key factors that determine the feel of the guns.

Of course, Those amounts of effects need not overshadow the other things in games like enemies' voices and, the map's terrain.

They need to be conspicuous while simultaneously not causing dissonance with other effects.

And so, here is the game's current state's result.

(sorry, you can't check gun sounds on text-only article. just check youtube video above instead.)

...by the way, I'm combining not just stock sounds from English stock sounds websites but Japanese stock sounds websites, so I think that gives another touch on the original feel. And that's the advantage of being a bilingual person! baby!

And lastly, "Guns need to be easy to understand each gun's unique roles and elements to the player."

The great thing about Shooter, Especially in Boomer Shooters that it lets you carry multiple weapons, It lets players use appropriate arsenals for many different situations to give another layer of challenge.

For Example: A shotgun for the close-range enemy, SMG for hordes of enemy, and a Pistol for the weak tiny enemy. But some games tend to have multiple guns that overlap roles. I mean, what is the difference between an SMG and an assault rifle? furthermore, some game's gun shares ammo type for different gun serves a different work. like Half-Life 1's Glock and MP5, and the original Doom's Beretta and Chaingun.

Maybe This isn't a problem if you're a gun nerd, but not everyone is a nerd who knows the difference between... say, a 9mm bullet and 50.Cal bullet really.

So, I put distinct colors to each 4 guns. Red on Pistol, Blue on SMG, Green on Shotgun, Yellow on Crossbow. To clarify what crystal, i.e.: ammo type, each gun gonna use, and What capability have.

Red for fire-strong types, Blue for cold, rapid-fire types, Green for spreads, and poison types, Yellow for Very High impact and all that.

Also, I decided to have only 4 guns in games. 5 if you included a Magical Pickaxe. Instead of having ridiculous amounts of guns and weapons to make the game a huge mess, I'm focused on a few guns and emphasize each gun's strength, distinct enough to encourage players to use them all.

Plus, this design decision made it much easier to choose what gun to have in a critical situation.

And to overcome the lack of varieties in guns, I'm experimenting having an unlockable Alt Fire Mode that Pistol could be used as a flame thrower, SMG do a Grenade Launcher as well.

As for the additional effect, these Alt Fire Mode take up extra ammo than primary fire, but crystalize the enemies without the enemy being in a special state, and...

Oh, boy! I could keep dreaming about the plans I have for my game!

So, this is all about my design philosophy of a gun. It's not perfect on all sides. Some of my friends criticized the first-person view's gun angle, the reload animation's too-strong blurs, etc. They aren't a very high priority right now, probably part of the things I'm gonna fix as a final polish.

Hey, at least I'm sure that no sweaty gun nerds gonna nitpicking about my game's gun's real-life accuracy.

The moral of This Story: If you have trouble with gun design in a shooter, Follow the "Three Gs"!

AfterWords:

I think I should have talked about this in previous developer diaries afterward, but I'd like to use this opportunity to express appreciation to Ospaggi for showing interest in my game and composing the music for my game for free. His works are promoted on this DevDiary series's intro and outro as well.

And also, Thank you Vikka for composing a First Trailer's Music. without her work, I couldn't made the trailer in the first place.

Thank you, Thank you for everyone.