My history with games
Ever since the times of Commodore 64, Sega Master System and Nintendo Entertainment System, the games I always found most interesting were the ones where you assumed direct control of a character. The more ways you had of interacting with the environment, the more amazed I was.
The way you could drop rocks on the enemies in Boulder Dash, grab and throw people in Streets of Rage or the way you could do combo moves with your team member in Double Dragon, those were the best things about the games.
I never really cared about the graphics. It was always completely secondary to me how the game made it clear to me what was happening on the screen, as long as I understood what I saw, it was enough.
It was the first game I saw that had the character animated realistically. Moving around, you clearly saw the player shift his weight, struggle to keep his balance when stopping near an edge and exert extra force to leap across a longer chasm. It made the game come alive, it was awesome.
First time I played Descent I was instantly sold, being able to float around in zero gravity inside a ship that allowed you to rotate on any axis and move in any direction. This freedom of movement made a lasting impression on me and served as a major inspiration in my own game design preferences.
Quake
The way the game captured you when a monster came at you from behind the corner was unparallelled. Seeing the kick of the weapon and being knocked around from the force of the explosions, seeing and almost feeling the attacks hitting you, it was great.
I played Quake a lot and started to realize that there was something interesting going on with the movement mechanics. I saw people online doing longer jumps that I was able to do, and I saw them using the rocket to jump around and also steer in the air. I started to investigate.
I noticed there was something going on when you used the strafe keys when in the air, you somehow gained more speed when doing it. Once I found out you can actually steer in the air and continue jumping while maintaining your speed, I realized there was something powerful about this feature.
It felt like running, running by actually having to do something that required a bit of effort, instead of just pressing a single key. Having this new feature made me realize how much more games could be doing in terms of giving the player ways to control the character.
The Specialists
In late 2002 or early 2003 I was introduced to a game called The Specialists. It was a multiplayer modification for Half-Life. In it you played as a "movie action hero" that was able to dive, do flips, slide on the ground, climb over ledges and even use hand to hand combat with kicks and punches.
I fell in love with the gameplay, which consisted of deathmatch with pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and such, and you got extra points if you killed someone while diving through the air. It was exactly the way I liked to play, so I played a lot. I even got a bit of fame when I made a bunch of videos in it.
I also discovered that you could perform the same ground acceleration moves in The Specialists as you could in Quake, so I found a way to use the technique to do longer dives. I even made a video teaching this move, as well as a lot of trick montage videos showcasing different ways of performing those moves in the multiplayer maps.
I often went online to play with people, and if there were only a couple of people around I suggested that I would teach them my tricks instead of fighting. I gained a reputation of a "nice guy" because I was always willing to help people learn the tricks.
Adrenaline Gamer
In 2003 I was introduced to Adrenaline Gamer, which is another multiplayer modification for Half-Life that enhanced the default multiplayer mode of Half-Life by doing some balancing and adding some competitive features.
I saw a demo of Garpy playing Adrenaline Gamer on a large map called Boot_camp. He was flying around in the air, moving extremely fast and shooting the enemy like a maniac. I was absolutely blown away, it was the first time I saw someone use a weapon in the game to substantially increase his movement potential. I had seen some rocket jumping in Quake, but this was something else.
I started to learn Adrenaline Gamer gauss jumping and it was a lot of fun. Having that extra dimension in terms of tricking was awesome.
Quake 3
Then I was introduced to Quake 3 trickjumping. The smoothness, dynamic nature and depth of all the things possible in Quake 3 was absolutely unparallelled. Adding to that being introduced to the Challenge Promode ruleset, which added some of the movement elements of Quake 1 (air move, ramp jump) and Quake 2 (double jump) into Quake 3, there was no turning back.
I began to do little more than trickjumping in Quake 3 CPMA. Started to get noticed and ended up starring in a bunch of trickjump movies. It was tons of fun, I was welcomed into the community as a skilled movement expert and was able to gain a lot of friends because I would constantly offer to show newcomers how the movements worked.
For a very long time I didn't feel the need to play other games, Quake 3 CPMA was so rich in depth and challenge that I was totally engrossed in it. I would constantly improve, keep becoming more consistent in the easier tricks and constantly learned new tricks, because people would come to me and suggest a trick they thought of. I would then practice the trick until I made it, which seemed to be my superpower, patience.
Helicopters
I would randomly play other games, also wasted a bunch of years in World of Warcraft, but let's not go into that. The first time any game showed a glimmer of hope was the helicopter flight mechanics of Battlefield. My introduction to them was in Bad Company 2, and I spent a bunch of hours on empty servers just flying around. It was a very fun control system, dynamic and challenging. I also did a lot of flying in Battlefield 3 and 4, which made me realize how much I enjoy flying mechanics that are fun to use while still being challenging.
How the project started
I started to imagine a set of flight controls that I thought would be most fun to use. I went through a lot of different systems, this game being just one of them. But I thought that it would be a lot of fun if you also had a forward thruster in a craft that flies like a helicopter. As in control your pitch, yaw, roll and have a thruster up and down, but also forward and back, so that you could fly horizontally while facing down or up.I would often daydream by just imagining the flight mechanics in my head and flying around, testing how different flight patterns could be performed. It was obvious that the thrusters would all have to me of equal power, so that you could perform every move in any orientation.
It also felt natural to replace the strafe feature with roll, so that you had direct control over your orientation while keeping the amount of buttons manageable. Getting rid of strafe also meant that there's a new challenge in movements, because in order to move sideways you had to roll to the side and accelerate "up".
Unreal Engine 4
I had been putting off actually attempting to make a game like this, but once Unreal Engine 4 was released at 19 €/month, I simply had to give it a shot.
I bought the engine and started to mess around with it, learning how things are done, but I quickly realized that I needed a lot of help.
I asked around on the forums about where I should begin with movement mechanics, and the next thing I knew someone posted a tutorial for a Jetpack mechanic he had made in a previous Unreal Engine. I also noticed the guy's signature said: "Unreal Engine 4 programmer for hire".
What it looks like in motion? (excuse the simple map, I'm no artist)
(Song by an old acquaintance called Mulperi)
Why I want to make the game
Quite simply It's a game that I want to play. I've spent thousands of hours jumping or flying around in other games, and they've always had small things that I wanted to add or change, now I finally have the power to potentially mold a game into exactly what I want it to be. Granted, with help required from others, but still!
I want a game that caters to me specifically, I want to be absolutely sure that the game developer doesn't waste resources doing something that I don't care about. The game will be purely focused on making moving around in the game as fun and engaging as possible, with some left over focus on interacting with the environment.
I have a lot of ideas but I don't really have a clear focus on what exactly I want it to be in the end. It could potentially be many things, but I think it will first be a game focusing 100% on the movements to make sure that they're perfect. After that it could start turning into something with some point to it besides moving around, but that's a later story.
Why I think it's a game that should be made
I think it's a bit of a niche idea. Most games focus on combat these days, the other end of the spectrum is simulators, which attempt to recreate maneuvering some vehicle in exact detail.
This game would attempt to create a very realistic movement system that is intuitive to grasp and hopefully fun and challenging to use.
I chose a flying mechanic because of its simplicity, you need nothing more than simple physics force vectors and it's done. I have a sphere with mass, the ability to accelerate in 4 directions and rotate along all axes. Together with gravity, these mechanics make for a very smooth flying experience that enables a lot of possibilities.
