I don’t know if it should be an FPS. Panzer to me is more about exploration and discovery. I don’t think it should be done as a shooting gallery with Panzer’s theme (funny, considering most of the Panzer games are on rails shooters, yet to me that’s not their defining element, as I still felt the amazement of discovering the new things the game threw at me). Not to mention it would get old fast if that’s all it was unless you could create compelling mechanics, AI, etc to rival AAA products, or a vast amount of custom content. It would be disapointing to the developers doing all that hard work if the players just played once, finished it, and then had little to discuss on top of that.
Why not attempt to keep combat at a bare minimum, something that you actively want to avoid because it’s really tough, really dangerous?
Maybe the levels could be gigantic with only a few points of interest. Ruins to explore, some safe havens, a couple of characters here and there maybe, a puzzle or two, randomly wandering dangerous monsters, and otherwise a plain gigantic desert. It shouldn’t be more work for the level designers as the desert itself could be plain with only the points of interest having the bulk of the artistic work. Terrain generation and altering isn’t the hardest part, is it? Without meaning it’s going to be just a flat ground of course, it could still have hills and ridges and possibly a small lake, and then the actual hard-worked-on structures placed far from each other around the landscape.
Perhaps add a survival aspect to it to entice players to go in the desert to hunt small prey yet flee from bigger monsters and only fight them as a last resort when all else fails.
Some of the mechanics could be simple to do. to begin with. Ie, you could have a constant low health damage effect on the player, and killing small prey would spawn healing items to simulate in a basic manner a hunter satisfying hunger, thirst, etc.
To imply distances bigger than they really are, you could have fog or sandstorm effects, so players can’t just see all the points of interest from one side of the level to the other, destroying the mystery, and the sense of danger as monsters would be visible from afar.
If a good scripter comes along he could potentially add a sophisticated hunting system, allowing players to track creatures from their, eh, droppings, their tracks on the sand, marks on the environment etc, similar to some hunting games.
You’d actively search for the small prey that is useful to you, and learn to recognise the signs of big baddies that you don’t want to hunt but avoid instead. Maybe you could even acquire new weapons through that process, that enable you to down bigger, and eventually the biggest prey (that could perhaps supposedly threaten a hunter or seeker village within the project’s simple story/setting).
Stuff like that, for when/if the project takes off with a decently assembled team.
But feel free to ignore me, I can’t contribute anything but ideas as I no longer do any 3D work (and I certainly never had the skill for UE3 level stuff anyway) and I’m aware that ideas nowadays are a dime a dozen for any such project. I just think this kind of concept could potentially offer more play and replay value even without the more sophisticated aspects, for the same amount of content/work. Win/win for developers and players.
I just find that games can sometimes give a great illusion of depth, purpose and good gameplay even with very basic mechanics, and mostly empty areas, so long as the atmosphere is helped by the music and sounds especially (I imagine is ok to use licenced material as I doubt it’ll get a cease and desist), so existing Panzer content like that already does a lot of the work for you possibly.
Anyway, whether you attempt something like this or not, I think it’s a key element to try and figure out what to do to extend the gameplay as much as possible for the smallest amount of content created, while keeping it not necessarily fun all the time (shooting is fun, walking isn’t on its own fun, for example), but atmospheric and engaging.
