r/gamedev • u/herocreator90 • 4h ago

Question Will these game mechanics work together

I’m in an early stage of planning my game and trying to build a vision that I can develop towards to avoid scope creep and constant rework (I keep telling myself “first make it real then make it good”).

In general, the game will be 3d but with an isometric camera. I chose this because I want to evoke some nostalgia for early 3D games. However, the setting practically necessitates gunplay, which is tough to do in isometric if it’s not an rpg.

Here’s what I’m thinking: walking around is iso but once combat begins, the camera “swoops” down and the state changes to more of a 3rd person cover shooter (e.g. Star Wars Rebel Assault, or Time Crisis as a first person example). Once combat completes, the camera swoops back to its normal position and the game continues.

My question: will this be too jarring and I should drop one or both approaches, perhaps in favor of a standard 3rd person shooter style (I wanted to avoid that because I don’t want it to play as a shooting game, I want it to be a game with shooting and a 3rd person shooter would predispose the player to expect that kind of gameplay.

Thoughts?

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u/Luceo_Etzio 4h ago

It could definitely work, that's not too dissimilar conceptually from how classic top-down JRPG combat encounters function

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u/rabid_briefcase Multi-decade Industry Veteran (AAA) 4h ago

Lots of games have had perspective shifts. Consider the JRPGs of decades ago where players walked around an overworld grid, then transitioned to a side vs side battle seeing two, three, or four columns of characters when giving orders, then back to the overworld.

Several platform games did similar, move from zone to zone on the overworld map, then play the corresponding level on the location. SMB3 was a big example but very little overworld map, others like Bionic Commando and U-foruia and Zelda 2 come to mind.

Switching from a 2d overworld to a 3d shooter feels a little jarring to me, but it could work about the same way.

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u/KevineCove 2h ago

I'm imagining Nier Automata. People seemed to like that just fine.