Sprawl - retro style FPS inspired by Ghost in the Shell and Neuromancer running on Unreal Engine

[Slipgate Tourist]

Quote

 

SPRAWL is a hardcore retro FPS set in an endless cyberpunk megapolis. Here the streets are your playground. The dark alleys and dilapidated apartments are all surfaces compatible with your “icarus” cybernetic implant. This implant allows you to perform gravity defying acrobatic wall-running maneuvers. Your enemies, the militarized police of the sprawl, stand no chance. Not only that, but their blood fuels this same implant, vastly enhancing your reaction time. On command you can enter a state in which even bullets move at a snail's pace. A vast arsenal of weapons lie at your disposal, the armies of the corporate government are endless, but be warned...

the sprawl eventually consumes us all.

 

 

 

[snapshot]

All these Cyberpunk games coming out lately, Ghostrunner, Disjunction, Cloudpunk

[Tetzlaff]

Looks fun and dynamic and I like the dystopian megalopolis setting. What about enemy variety? Only slight variations of that corporate mercenary? Also they should get rid of that pixilation filter, it really looks out of place in those detailed environments.

[frag enabler]

god DAMN I hate chromatic aberration with a passion

[Slipgate Tourist]

2 hours ago, frag enabler said:

god DAMN I hate chromatic aberration with a passion 

 

Same here. I also dislike the blur effect. Fortunately, it looks like we will be able to tune the visuals to our liking:

"The game is being built for PC before anything else and will have a proper options menu where you can disable all the fancy effects and even switch into an old school retro mode."

[hybridial]

Well on a positive note I really like the subtle pixelisation, I feel if there's anything that kinda makes a 3D game pop to me it's that. Why that is, I wonder if it helps for me to have that because it kind of says "we're not trying to look real" as if that stops me from being repelled by the game's visual weaknesses as I see them. I'm definitely interested. 

 

 

[[McD] James]

22 hours ago, sluggard said:

All these Cyberpunk games coming out lately, Ghostrunner, Disjunction, Cloudpunk

 

 

[snapshot]

11 minutes ago, [McD]James said:

(video)

Rebel Path, great music choice

[Murdoch]

Creating pixelated artwork doesn't make you retro. Does look potentially fun though.

[Vic Vos]

Looks kinda eeehhh, maybe shoulda shown more

[jupiter_ex]

On 2/3/2021 at 8:28 AM, frag enabler said:

god DAMN I hate chromatic aberration with a passion

 

why do people hate chromatic aberration :(  I love it

[Job]

Looks like it already delivers better than 2077.

[Eric Claus]

Looks interesting, though I am not 100% sure on the style of the graphics, has that mid 2000s clunky vibe to it that didn't age well imo.  The premise looks interesting though so another game to keep an eye on for me.

[ChopBlock223]

If it has procedurally generated levels it's going to be shit.

[hybridial]

17 hours ago, ChopBlock223 said:

If it has procedurally generated levels it's going to be shit.

 

To me that's every game that makes that choice. 

[ChopBlock223]

13 hours ago, hybridial said:

 

To me that's every game that makes that choice. 

I think it was perfectly fine for Diablo, and the kind of Roguelikes it stems from. For a first person shooter though, you aren't working on just tiles to move on an increment at a time, and you're down there in the level seeing it in first person and doing real time combat with real time movement, so I think the haphazard repetition becomes both glaring and boring.

 

Looking at Doom and Quake, every single locale is crafted by hand, and not only does it show, the maps are crafted to be fun and interesting, they have themes and concepts. These aren't things easily applied in an interesting way with procedural generation for first person shooters.

[Embyr]

Hey guys, dev here.

It's nice to see you guys showing an interest and wanted to respond to some questions you guys had.

 

The game will have no procedural generation, each level is hand crafted.

 

Most visual effects will be exposed in the options menu for you to tweak.

 

There is some raw gameplay showing off the grenade launcher here: https://twitter.com/SprawlFPS/status/1361022512914698242

We'll be releasing a video showing our super shotgun (used for rocket jumping) tomorrow too.

 

Currently enemy variety is thin but the game is still early in development and we have plans to substantially fill out the roster including mechs, spider tanks and more difficult enemies that will require more strategy to take down.

 

As for the mix of pixel art and y2k aesthetics with modern rendering, that's an intentional choice on our part.

We do appreciate feedback and suggestions from you guys based on what you see though.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Embyr

[Rudolph]

Welcome Embyr!

 

Is the game going to have a continuous story mode or is it going to be separate levels like in Maximum Action?

 

Also, I trust the SMG model is just a placeholder? Judging from the footage alone, it looks too clean and weak.

 

Finally, will there be a demo?

Edited February 17, 2021 by Rudolph

[Embyr]

It's going to be a continuous flow of levels split into 3-4 episodes.

 

At the moment all models are up in the air and in-development, I personally like the SMG but it may get replaced when the rest of the arsenal is in if it doesn't fit. 

 

Our plan is to release a shareware style demo containing a few levels or a full episode (E1M1 is currently 20-30 minutes long, depending on the player) however this decision may ultimately fall to the publisher if we decide to go down that road.

 

There will most likely be a sizable chunk of gameplay for you to try before buying! Current plan is sometime end of this year or start of next year. As you can tell almost nothing is set in stone at the moment but we do have a somewhat clear idea about our plans for this.

 

We also have server browser based multiplayer planned too if that is something you guys are interested in.

[Rudolph]

YES!!! Except for the multiplayer part; I don't particularly care for that myself.

 

I guess my issue with the SMG is that it looks like a plastic toy and doesn't come across as particularly powerful in terms of visual feedback. But hey, maybe it's actually satisfying to use in the game itself, so I'm willing to reserve judgement in that regard until then.

[Embyr]

Here is the shotgun video if you guys are interested!

 

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Embyr

[taufan99]

6 hours ago, Embyr said:

(I have no clue how to embed on this site...)

Welcome Embyr!

You just paste the link as it is on your post. The site will do the job by itself.

[Rudolph]

Shotgun Jump? That is new.

 

Anyway, I had mixed feelings about the SMG, but the Shotgun looks pretty good! 

[Rudolph]

I like the new SMG model!

 

 

[Rudolph]

 

[Sinael]

On 2/6/2021 at 5:44 AM, jupiter_ex said:

 

why do people hate chromatic aberration :(  I love it

Objective reasons:  It's emulating a lense defect that actual artists struggle to eliminate. It adds visual noise to the image without adding any detail or putting things in focus like DoF does, and does not convey anything (like motion blur tries to convey motion). It does not serve any actual artistic purpose.

 

Personal reasons: It is quite literally headache inducing for people with myopia (nearsighted) like me. I can not look at a ChromAb image longer than 2 minutes before my eyes begin to hurt.

Even slightest bit that DeviantArt people love to use is immediately extremely noticeable to me and I can't "unsee" it, because it physically hurts my eyes.

 

 

Anyway, for me, exploring levels is ~75% of what makes or breaks an FPS game. Procedural levels are VERY hard to make interesting so I don't think this game would be up my valley.

[Embyr]

22 hours ago, Sinael said:

Anyway, for me, exploring levels is ~75% of what makes or breaks an FPS game. Procedural levels are VERY hard to make interesting so I don't think this game would be up my valley.

We've already clarified that there will be 0 procedural generation in the game. In fact we've posted a thread specifically about our level design philosophy... IDK where this misconception is coming from?

 

 

[Rudolph]

On 3/30/2021 at 7:55 AM, Sinael said:

Anyway, for me, exploring levels is ~75% of what makes or breaks an FPS game. Procedural levels are VERY hard to make interesting so I don't think this game would be up my valley.

I am trying to think of FPS games that do feature procedural levels in the first place.

 

Aside from Six Days In War crimeFallujah recently announcing such feature, the only games I can think of are STRAFE and Shadow Warrior 2. There is also Oblige for Doom, but I admit I do not know much about that one.

[Bauul]

I think this is looking pretty promising personally. It seems the movement is the main attraction here and it looks fluid and fun to play. Shotgun jumping as an actual mechanic is inspired!

 

Some of the videos above show the combat feedback being a little on the weak side (the one of the new SMG it isn't even clear if you are doing damage at all, or if the enemy is immune to the weapon), but that's nothing that can't be relatively easily tweaked. Overall the fundamentals look really nice, so color me interested! 

 

35 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

I am trying to think of FPS games that do feature procedural levels in the first place.

 

Not to take this too far off topic (given Sprawl does not feature procedurally generated levels in any way), but one of my favorite FPSs of the last year is a Roguelite called Gunfire Reborn that uses procedurally generated levels, and it's amazing. But Roguelites and Roguelikes are very much their own thing.

[jupiter_ex]

On 3/30/2021 at 8:55 AM, Sinael said:

Objective reasons:  It's emulating a lense defect that actual artists struggle to eliminate. It adds visual noise to the image without adding any detail or putting things in focus like DoF does, and does not convey anything (like motion blur tries to convey motion). It does not serve any actual artistic purpose.

 

Personal reasons:...

 

 

Sorry hearing about your condition, and that's a perfectly valid reason not to like it.

Now, about the objective reasons: a thousand post processing effects in games and other media are made emulating defects that people struggled to eliminate. Lens flare for instance, is the result of a filter put on a video camera to absorb an excess of light. You don't see lens flares in your eyes, and nothing akin to a camera exists in the game world (not to a video camera, what we call "camera" in engines are matrix multiplications) and still vfx artists add lens flares to games. Any time you see droplets of water / particles of debris splattered on the camera, or lens dirt like here in BF3 where you're not even implying the water / debris / dirt splashed on the protagonist's face but on "the camera's lens" literally emulating a film, is another example of that.

 

I have in the tip of my tongue other effects that initially were defects or unintended in other media, and were translated to videogame visual design. I'll mention if I remember.

Chromatic aberration for me looks very pretty (fitting only certain situations) and I've aimed at including it in many shaders I wrote

 

EDIT: motion blur is another example of that. It emulates the camera having low exposition time and picking up the image inaccurately. That doesn't happen to human eyes, still we imitate a camera's limitation in videogames. And I'm not sure how necessary to convey motion is that. Depth of field of course is another...

 

And I believe it does serve an artistic purpose. Take a look at some Terry Gilliam films shot through a lens. Photographic cinematographic techniques have often being replicated in game development like, for instance, silver retention (and here comes BF3 again)

Edited April 4, 2021 by jupiter_ex