Gauging Interest as well as looking for advice for a first person shooter project I am working on.

Project Stray is being designed entirely in blueprints. It is being designed purely with the game play in mind at this time and currently has no graphics or sound.

Its a single player first person shooter that blends Doom And Quake with Dark Souls. I don’t think anyone is really doing anything quite like this right now. I have a long history of working on Doom and Quake style game play. I was one of the designers for a Doom 2 expansion called No Rest For The Living and I recently released a Doom 2 level called Redemption Of The Slain.

Here is a link to Redemption Of The Slain

No Rest For The Living and Redemption Of The Slain are perfect examples of the kind of combat and level design I want to see in Project Stray.

Project Stray - Gauging Interest

I am looking to see how many people would be interested in a project like this. Would I be able to sell the blueprints? Maybe I can find a way to gain support to finish this game. What do you think I should do?

Download a Playable version of Project Stray here :

I am currently looking for work! I have almost 20 years of industry experience.
Here is my Resume :

Below is the most recent dev video where I talk about progress on the project. I do videos on the stuff I work on pretty regularly. I like to communicate with people and appreciate feedback criticism ect.

Project Stray - Update On Fast Travel And Crafting Systems

I talk about the blueprints I used to create the crafting and teleport systems recently added to the game. Project Stray has come a pretty long way since last week.

I would be interested in this :slight_smile:

For a little bit I was wondering if maybe it wasn’t really all that interesting! Well, its coming along pretty fast. I did a bunch of updates to it already.

I am currently in the process of fully completing the first full level of the game.

if you are worried that player might get lost…, what about placing some minimap?Anyway, interesting cool project :slight_smile:

I’ll definitely buy your blueprints. Just because your nice, and help people. That, and because you randomly drop F-Bombs all day when getting excited just playing your own game.
This is how it should be. I’m not into the voxel type games. I like modelling for game engine, and playing.
I wouldn’t sell all of this on marketplace. Honestly. I would continue making your game like this.
You could sell a blueprint for the in game gun/loot pick ups, any type of AI, and maybe make a fast travel like the older TR, or ds.
Whether it’s a bastion, or fire pit. I would just sell some components if you need it.

As someone with one of the more successful templates on the marketplace my advice would be to think about how you want to approach this carefully before you drop anything to the marketplace. Whilst the suggestion to sell just some components is a good one, as it allows you to not stress so much about making your own project stand out from the ‘template’ you sell, that will, inevitably, make you less money, as (in my experience) people are much more likely to be won over by a complete template than the same bits and pieces of the template sold separately (even if they cost the same). It also comes down to what you need, financially, from the work. If you aren’t in too much need of money, then I would just sell some choice bits of your template - look on the marketplace, find some stuff that isn’t covered that your work does, or at the very least that your work does better, and pull them out as drag-and-drop components/features and sell them. That will get you some money coming in, but you will still have your main project as a very unique setup. However, if you are looking to break into the marketplace for financial reasons, then the entire template is definitely the way to go IMO. Just be aware that you will get a LOT of support requests from a template. I now have 6 products on the marketplace, and I get more questions about my template than I do about all other 5 combined, however I also get more sales of the template than all other 5 combined… well almost anyways haha.

Also be aware that, if you haven’t submitted to the marketplace before, you’re in for a lot of frustration and “WTF?!” moments when you go through the review process and they hit you with something stupid like “This float + float node isn’t commented… everything needs a comment” or “You have two blueprint noodles crossing. So we insta-failed you for this” lol. Submission can be a real drag if you get unlucky with it!

Project looks awesome and I look forward to seeing where it goes :slight_smile: Hope you don’t mind the above advice - you asked for advice in the thread title so figured I’d try and help :stuck_out_tongue: I don’t think I’m a master of the marketplace or anything, but I do use it as my sole income so I have a little experience haha.

Edit - also, more than happy to chat with you via skype/discord/hangouts/steam if you have any specific questions about marketplace stuff :slight_smile: I’m always happy to help out if I can haha

Thanks. @apoisonedgift I wasn’t trying to turn someone away from marketplace. I’d hate to see someone lose there game.
What OP has made is a game, and not a template, or kit.
I have some of your blueprints, and I personally prefer them to not have so much commenting but just general directions in comments.
It leaves a type of puzzle as to figure out what someone was doing, and understand the logic behind it. Newtonian I picked up on release, and it’s really clever.
I’ll drop you some reviews. Not that you need them at almost 5 stars on everything. On a side note you brought back some memories of an old hangout. Your logo looks similar.
It was a tavern called “The Winking Lizard.”

Oh I agree with your above points totally and wasn’t trying to refute them :slight_smile: Just offering my advice as someone who has both released a template and has taken components from a personal game project to sell. Apologies if it came across that way!

As for my commenting - trust me - I would much rather not have to do as much commenting too haha! Sadly, Epic’s submissions standards require that… I am very aware that not all blueprint packages on the marketplace have the level of commenting my packs do, however, I’ve had submissions fail review when they weren’t like this… so I just found what works during submission and stuck to it (which was seen with HealthKit and Newtonian, both of which passed submission first attempt). I personally dislike treating my customers like imbeciles… so having to comment everything, even simple nodes like print strings and such, is really not something I want to be doing… but yeah. in my experience with the review process, if I don’t do that, then I don’t get accepted on the marketplace haha.

Thanks for any reviews and/or ratings you drop :slight_smile: Whilst it may not seem like they are needed, they honestly help a LOT! And this tavern sounds like a cool place XD “The Winking Lizard” sounds like an Argonian inn from The Elder Scrolls haha!

For awhile there I thought there wasnt a whole lot of interest in the project here so I kind of forgot about this thread. With that said I pushed forward and decided to go all in and make a game of my own out of this. This week I plan to promote a demo of the game.

I plan to add a proper minimap this week once I get the options menu in place. I actually have an idea on how to do it where it will be really cool.

I have been hanging out in the UE4 discord channel for work in progress for a couple weeks now. I am super open to any advice in general though.

Right now what I want to do is make a game. A full game that follows in the footsteps of classic Doom and Quake with the rules of DarkSouls. So its a mix of oldschool shooter and Darksouls with leveling and gear grinding. Its a Unique take on an old idea.

So what I am going to be doing is trying to figure out how I can survive while I work on this, I have never done a solo project before, I have only worked in game companies for the last 17 years or so. But this project is a big deal for me because it could potentially mark the first time I can do something of this scale almost on my own!

edit: One aspect of the project is that I would like for it to have mod support which would mean releasing the blueprints that belong to me. The only catch is that the dev build would need to have everything that doesn’t belong to me stripped. So the options menu, sounds and effects would be stripped from the game. :confused:

Latest update for the game is here btw. I just got a basic mesh with no animations for all of enemies in the game. I also now have exploding barrels in the game.