Game Career Guide Forums - Game Programming Challenge 4: First Person Shooter

Hello everyone, I think it's time for another Programming challenge and this time it's a big one!

The Challenge
First person shooters are one of the most popular genres of games at present and it's about time that we acknowledge that fact with these little challenges. Therefore for Programming Challenge #4 you will be creating a 1st person shooter. Due to the complexity of creating an FPS we will accept a rather broad range of implementations.

There are 2 requirements that must be met by your games:

Your gameplay must revolve around shooting things.
Your game must be represented from the eyes of the player character.

Bearing that in mind, it could really be something as simple as a 2D image of the side of a building, with bad guys popping up at the windows and doors for you to shoot. If you want to go 3D however, this is the perfect opportunity. If you've never tried any 3D programming before, I'd recommend giving it a try with this challenge. The absolute worst case scenario is that you learn how not to do it in the future, and you can always ask for help & advice here.

The Call of Duty series of games display the current level of detail of modern First Person Shooters.

Wolfenstein 3D was one of the earliest FPS games to be released, and used very basic levels consisting of very square rooms with all floors and ceilings at the same height.

Lethal Enforcers is typically categoriesd as an "on-rails shooter", but it has shooting from the gun-man's perspective, so we will accept entries with a similar format.

The Deadline
The deadline for this challenge is Sunday 31st October 2010 (submissions should be made on or before this date). That's 2 months of development time. You may find it useful to submit your game early to make sure that the judges can run it on their computers. Source code does not need to be submitted, only the executable file and any assets it needs to run.

Submitting
To submit your game you can upload it to your own web space and provide the link in this thread, or we can set up an e-mail to send it to (PM me for the e-mail address).

Additional Information
You may use any language you desire, providing the end result can be played by the judges easily. You may reuse code that you have already written in the past. The code should be written by you, entries should not use an off-the-shelf engine, the idea this time is for you to create your own FPs from the ground up. Projects can be submitted by a lone programmer or by a team. Please try to keep the file size down when submitting a game. Also if you are taking part it would be good to know, so we can judge the success of the challenge. If you need any help, or advice on any aspect of your game, feel free to ask. Finally why not make a post/thread to tell us about your project?

Tips

The deadline (31st October) is Halloween so you might want to use a spooky theme in your game.
If working in 3d, you may find it easier to program your game controls & collision whilst using a basic top down view with sprites to represent your character & walls. Then when your controls are ready you just need to change it to 3D rendering.
If you are experienced with C++ and 3D concepts you could use DirectX or OpenGL to create your game. If not and you're looking for an easy platform to program in, I recommend Microsoft XNA.
If you need basic models for your game (eg. your guns) and don't have the time / knowledge to create them, do ask and someone might create them for you. Better to spend your time programming your game, than learning to use modelling software!
Modern FPS games take large teams several years to develop. You are not going to be able to match them in 2 months, so don't waste your time trying. Just concentrate on the key requirementsm then add anything nice (eg. normal mapping) later.

Judges
If you would like to be a judge for this challenge please let me know by PM.

The Entries
Ghostball by Osmethne

Rho-bot by Claxon

Goto Game Programming Challenge 3