![]() The bullet flies out at 16 pixels per frame, with a 0-4 degree offset to either direction. Then a little shell is ejected at relatively low speed (2-4 pixels per frame, at 30fps and a 320x240 resolution) in the direction where you're aiming + 100-150 degrees offset. When you fire the pistol in Nuclear Throne, first of all the Pistol sound effect plays. RPS: Other than those fire rates and travel time, what other properties or settings does a weapon have? Could you be specific, and maybe provide those numbers for the basic pistol in Nuclear Throne and how they impact the way it feels? Apologies if this sounds crazy. Tiny differences like that are important to making sure all guns have at least some value, and changing them around is fun! The automatic shotgun in Nuclear Throne shoots at an insane rate of fire, but fires one less pellet than the normal shotgun. Super Crate Box is sort of an exercise in this, the best example being the disc gun. We like designing extremely powerful weapons, and then giving them a distinct downside. That intuition comes from having spent years making games about shooting and running around. Basically this is a highly iterative, partly intuitive business. That's why we spend half our development time shooting monsters. No pile of code/design document/list of values can really express anything as well as playing a game. Nijman: We firmly believe that a game is only a game when you're playing it. RPS: When you're tweaking things like fire rates, audio, bullet travel time, etc., is it a purely intuitive and iterative process? Just moving the screen around a bit randomly, and offsetting the camera away from where you're aiming can be so powerful. Other than that we always make sure our projectiles move at relatively high speed, look huge (the bullets in most of our games are about the same size as the players), and communicate clearly (with some animated effects) when hitting something. A good, punchy, bassy gunshot does wonders. On Nuclear Throne we're working with a great audio designer called Joonas Turner, who manages to produce super realistic but over the top sound effects that really suit this game. Nijman: There's a couple of things, but the most important factor would probably be sound. RPS: What are the most important factors in making a gun feel good? ![]() What we do at Vlambeer is spend a lot of time working on the "reactions enter player" part. That last bit is where it becomes valuable. Game enters player > player puts input into game > game reacts > reactions enter player > player thinks about reactions. The problem with (and cool thing about) games is that we need player input before our systems become of any value. I guess "feel" is something super abstract we both have to work with in a non-abstract way. Nijman: "Feel" is a super vague term to game designers as well, and while you guys have things such as "crunchy" and "meaty", we have things such as "add more bass to the sound effect" and "screen shake". He was gracious enough to do the hard work of explaining why Nuclear Throne feels great for me. I wrote to Vlambeer game designer Jan Willem Nijman about how you make pixels bullets feel powerful, and about finding a better language to talk about videogames. ![]() "Feel" is a poisonous word in games criticism though, and I was unsatisfied with the normal language used to describe games like this: "meaty", "weighty" and "crunchy" only gets us so far. Nuclear Throne (formerly Wasteland Kings) is currently available in Steam Early Access, and like those other games, it already feels great. It's fast, frantic, and made by Vlambeer, the two-man indie development studio behind similarly compulsive shooters Super Crate Box and LUFTRAUSER. Nuclear Throne is an "action roguelike-like": a top-down shooter with permadeath, set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and starring a cast of mutants who need to hoover up radiation to gain in power.
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