Pyrrhic Game Design Document

Team : FWU*

Revision : 2.0.1

Written by : Steve Scalia

Section I : Game Overview

Concept
- A fast paced arena First Person Shooter (FPS) between modularly
scalable teams on a variety of objective orientated maps with a detailed back
story.
- Pins a native Alien species against morally ambiguous Robotic invaders.

Audience
 - (Mechanical) Targets are a community familiar with the niches of playing a
highly competitive shooter with preferable Arena genre experience.
- (Visual) Targets are those interested in any sort of non-terran Alien
landscape or science fiction scenes involving drastically different flora, fauna,
and robots.
- (Audio) Targets, or those turned on or off by a game based on how real
the sound effects are, should be interested in varying ballistics and energy from
lasers to bullets to pulses.

Game Flow
- Flow in a shooter is dictated by the Map, based on size and speed of
player movement.
- Preferably the maps will employ the modern Clover strategy of level
design with heavy amounts of symmetry.
- In terms of immersive flow, ideally the varying of maps between racial
aesthetics will pull the player into the concept of participating in a very do-or-die
war.

Look
- Alien planet, heavy use of purple colors and hues.
- Crystals form the basis of the Alien culture, causing them to be littered
across the map
- Robotic areas will be melted down and darkened to illustrate the strip
mining and environmental destruction

Feel
- Meatgrinder meets precision
- High action, fast pace, high skill rewards
- Skill measured equally in gun handling, movement ability, and map
awareness

Scope
- 2 unique maps with different game modes for each
- 8 guns, modeled / textured / animated
- 2 models, one for each side, modeled / textured / rigged / animated
- UI w/ Shield, Health, Ammo, and Score tracker
- Local networking system programmed / implemented
- Team based game modes
- Respawn Manager, Ammo Manager, Gun Manager, Pickup Manager
scripts
- Full Audio kit (i.e. Player movement sounds, gun sounds, pick ups)
Section II : Mechanics Overview

Objectives
- In order to keep with the original Arena FPS theme, objectives will be
based on the map being played. This also allows for a smoother map design.
- Objectives for current scope include one (1) Team Deathmatch (TDM from
here on) and one (1) Capture the Flag (CTF) map.
- All objectives need to feel equally fast paced in order to avoid players
feeling let down or disappointed that one map or the other is being loaded in.

Game Modes
- TDM objective is solely to kill or be killed along with the 4 other members
on your team (total 5 each).
- This is played on our base level, Shrine, which minimizes
camping spots and is just a tight circular arena bloodbath.
- The CTF objective is two fold. The map, Factory , houses a central
Production facility that will hold the flag. Instead of the standard One flag per
team, players will fight to control the factory and secure the flag to return to their
main.
- Factory is a map that should (Not in production yet) focus on
equal vantage points for each side, as well as strong flanks.

Combat Flow
- The combat flow should be something relatively hard to pick up on with
minimal experience but be notably mastered by the player. Despite the actual
action going on, Arena FPSs punish those who are not precise in movement and
aim.
- The biggest flow difference comes from the lack of movement.
- No sprint
- No dash or slide like modern games
- Just lateral movement and bunny hopping.
- Being projectile guns, aka a physical bullet coming at you, not an invisible
laser, players with a mastery of the flow of combat will be able to predict
opponent movement and pre-fire where they will go.
- This also allows for tracers, so learning players can learn the
flow of guns by watching the bullets.

Section III : Story, Setting, and Character

Backstory
- Pyrrhic takes place on an extraterrestrial planet named Raxxis.
- Raxxis is inhabited by a species known as The Radaxxu,
primitive beings who warp and shape the trees around them with the use
of a native crystal, Hyacinthinite.
- Hyacinthinite emits an inexplicable energy, and as such, is
the center of Rad culture.
- The IMPs, or Intergalactic Mineral Processing Corp, come to
the planet to strip mine all of the minerals they can find. However, a
cataclysmic event occurs within the Human System, destroying the IMPs
higher echelons of management. With no more humans to give orders, the
IMPs just act out their last objective : Mine.

Character Races
- Pyrrhic allows for two playable races.
- The Radaxxu, an alien species sporting green skin, horns,
and armor made of wood, vines, and organic life matter. The vine armor
houses a central Hyac crystal that allows them to warp the vines into the
armor. Physically, they stand with a hunch in the back, hoofed feet, and
facial bone structure similar to a primate.
- The IMPs are a hivemind of Robotic soldiers and workers
that have silverish armor and a singular squarish eye in their face area.
They were designed by the art team to not be flashy and imply a sense of
mass production and expendability. The IMPs are accented by bulks of
armor and exposed metal, as well as antennae.

World Aesthetics
- Terran-esque, AKA no really wild natural objects.
- Color palette of fluorescent teals and blues.
- Minimized Green
- Landscape with a lot of rocky crags being grown over by blueish grass,
purple crystals dotting the landscape, growing in plants, etc.
- A large tree that holds up a massive crystal, effectively the base of the
Rad culture (The Mother Tree)
- A skybox with nearby planets and rings, unlike an Earth sky where nothing
is visible until night.

Section IV : Interface

Visual UI
 - Visual UI will encompass Starting Menus and Selection Menus for the
purpose of this GDD.
- Start menu will be present upon launch, asking if the player
is interested in hosting a local multiplayer game, joining a local multiplayer
game, or spectating one.
- If the player joins a local game, they must input
the local host IP to connect.
- Selection Menu currently in allows the player to pick a name
before they spawn for the first time. This allows for better ID and a little bit
of personalized fun.
- In the future, we plan on having a map
selector, team size selector, and the pipe dream of mutator effects.

IG HUD
- The HUD in Pyrrhic, and Arena FPS shooters in general, is decently
sparse.
- The health and shield of the player are represented at the
bottom by bars scaling from 100 (full) to 0 (dead).
- Ammo is counted per gun on the bottom right side of the
screen for each gun, and it represents total ammo, seeing as there is no
reloading.
- The top middle of the screen will have the score , based on
the game mode. Team deathmatch will have the kills per team and CTF
will have the number of flag captures per team, with no representation of
how many more are needed to win.
- Killfeed is on the scope but low priority
- There is no mini map

Audio / Music
- Audio is based on movement and a hit matrix written by myself and the
audio team.
- Movement sounds are compared between hooves and hard
metal.
- Hit matrix corresponds to the object A hitting object B, and
comparing the materials that comprise object B.
- So far, the hardest audio component in scope is the guns.
- Each gun has its own firing rate and munition
type, and the effect can change completely based on which race
the gun is from.
- Rad guns focus on lasers and
beams because theyre crystal based.
- IMP guns focus on bullet ballistics
and are way more bassy.
 - Music and ambience are in production as well.
- Because Pyrrhic takes place during a grueling war, were
aiming for sort of tribal war drums and a non light-hearted tone.

Section V : Technical

Target Hardware
- The Target Hardware for Pyrrhic is strictly a PC build.
- Mac Builds are cumbersome and Macs are notorious for not
supporting FPS well (especially with the mouse hardware).
- Will never be considered for VR or mobile.

Dev Hardware / Software

- Dev Hardware is taking place across our personal dev laptops and lab
PCs.
- Were trying to use as many personal devices as possible to
avoid losing any ownership. 90% of Programming and Production work is
being done on these.
- Roughly 35% of the art is being done within the Weller Labs,
and that's mostly texturing work during lab periods.
- Audio is being done both in the Sound Labs in the Design
Building and off campus at one of the audio teams personal homes.
- Dev Software is standard really.
- Programming : Unity / Visual Studio / Monodevelop
- Production : Mainly just Docs.
- Art : Zbrush (High Poly), Maya (low retopo), Substance
Painter (texturing).
- Audio : ProTools, Absynth, Kontact, Audacity

Section VI : Art Bible

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xJPtSVEM59rfLE5ecW2YuFvSSItytEKsf1xCy_U
Qut4/edit?usp=sharing