So, once I decided I was going to turn my western story into an FPS game, I had to choose how to develop it. In 2021 there isn’t a shortage of game-making programs - quite the opposite: too many options!
Narrowing down my options
When I first had a look around, I ended up with a long list: Unity, Unreal Engine 4, CryEngine, Godot, Stride 3D, Flax and so on. At that stage I was a bit lost with all these alternatives, but I had to start coming to terms with some practical aspects of developing a videogame:
- Is my computer powerful enough?
- What are my options in terms of assets for developing a western-themed FPS?
- Do I have the technical skills required to use this or that engine?
Not surprisingly, it turns out that my old laptop from 2013 - never intended for playing or even developing videogames - can’t cope with a modern engine like Unreal Engine 4 (which I would have probably chosen otherwise). Which brings me to the second and third point: I am quite new to the whole world of 3D modeling. I have some experience with coding/scripting and I am not afraid to learn something new, but I am also aware of my current limits. And when I saw the amount of work involved in creating, rigging, animating, importing new assets etc. I realised that at this stage I need ready-to-use (or at least easy-to-customise) assets - whether that’s weapons, characters, buildings, props and so on, not to mention the gameplay aspect of it like in-game interactive elments etc.
So, with all the “modern” and serious engines out the way, I had to settle for something else. A quick search for an fps game creator quickly led me to discover the existence of a software called, in fact, FPS Creator (FPSC). Even better, this software is super easy to use and it has been open sourced by their owners and made available to everyone for free. So this was an option, but even though a couple of western-themed model packs exist for this program, they are not quite right for the what I have in mind. And this is not me being ungrateful to those who kindly developed these model packs, I just think that FPSC is visually more appropriate for scifi, fantasy or horror games, but may not be the best choice for a western game. Also the notorious level memory cap in FPSC is quite limiting and not great for a genre like western, where there would be plenty of outdoor locations.
Just for the records, I have also tried GameGuru, the spiritual successor to FPSC. It was just £4 on Steam, so it was worth a try, but ended up discarding it because 1) it wouldn’t run properly on my old pc, 2) lack of suitable assets, 3) apparently it has technical limitations similar to FPSC.
Western-themed FPS? No need to reinvent the wheel
So, what else should I consider? Veteran FPSC user Bugsy recommended me the Source engine, which is over 15 years old like FPSC but without FPSC‘s limitations and with a very active community around it, and an easy-to-use level editor called Hammer. Source+Hammer weren’t the easiest thing to install, but I want to give them a go as Source offers the ability to potentially produce good-quality standalone Half-Life 2 mods, as demonstrated by the recent NEOTOKYO° Kshatriya.
About the assets, there is already a popular western-themed multiplayer game called Fistful of Frags - which runs on Source and has pretty much all the elements I would need for a western story like the one I have in mind. I guess it would be just a matter to ask permission to the Fistful of Frags creators, and see whether I could reuse assets from their game to create a single player standalone mod.
But that’s not my only option in that sense, because a couple of days ago I came across point 12 on this list. I never played Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood from 2009 before, but after trying it out I can see how this is another case, like with Fistful of Frags, where there is already an existing western game offering a very good baseline to build upon. In this case the game runs on Techland’s Chome Engine 4, and apparently a decade ago there was a very active modding community around this game. There was even a dedicated website (cojmodding.com), now closed down but some bits are still available on the Internet Archive.
So I downloaded the ChromEd level editor, included in the CoJ User Content Creation Package, and it is indeed very easy to use and it includes some cool options like a cutscene editor. The only drawback would be that, unlike the Source engine, Chrome Engine 4 is still proprietary, therefore the resulting game in this case would be a series of modded levels for Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood requiring the original game. Which is not a massive problem, as these days Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood is quite inexpensive and widely available. But not being able to distribute my own game independently, even for free, is not ideal - especially with all these other open-sourced game engines around.
Conclusion
So, after having a good look around, I ended up with two options for my western game: either modding Fistful of Frags or Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. I still don’t know which one I will eventually go for, I guess I will try to develop a similar test level with both engines and see which one I find easier and what I can achieve with Source or Chrome Engine 4.
Even though I have discarded FPSC for this project, I ended up keeping it for something else. It is fun to use and a great tool to get used to game making for a newbie like me. Also The Black Ice Mod is keeping FPSC very much alive and allows to make very interesting stuff with it, so I am currently creating a test game to try out what can be achieved with it. This is probably what I am going to talk about in one of my next posts.