First-person (video games)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
First person (video games)
)
A screenshot from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl; the presence of the player character's right hand firing their gun (bottom right) denotes the first-person perspective.

In

graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character (but possibly focused on a character); some games such as interactive fiction
do not belong to either format.

First-person can be used as sole perspective in games belonging of almost any

, although it has virtually been used in all genres, either as main perspective or for specific actions or sections.

First-person can be used for virtually any genre; Zeno Clash (screenshot above) is a beat 'em up in first person, an unusual choice for the genre.

Game mechanics

Games with a first-person perspective are usually avatar-based, wherein the game displays what the player's avatar would see with the avatar's own eyes. Thus, players typically in many games they cannot see the avatar's body, though they may be able to see the avatar's weapons or hands. This viewpoint is also frequently used to represent the perspective of a driver within a vehicle, as in flight and racing simulators; and it is common to make use of positional audio, where the volume of ambient sounds varies depending on their position with respect to the player's avatar.[3]

Games with a first-person perspective do not require sophisticated animations for the player's avatar, nor do they need to implement a manual or automated camera-control scheme as in third-person perspective.[3] A first-person perspective allows for easier aiming, since there is no representation of the avatar to block the player's view. However, the absence of an avatar can make it difficult to master the timing and distances required to jump between platforms, and may cause motion sickness in some players.[3][4][5]

Players have come to expect first-person games to accurately scale objects to appropriate sizes, although the key objects such as dropped items or levers may be exaggerated in order to improve their visibility.[3]

History

Origins

First-person perspectives are used in various different genres, including several distinct sub-genres of

light gun shooters. The most popular type of game to employ a first-person perspective today is the first-person shooter (FPS), which allows player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space.[6]

Electro-mechanical

racing games had been using first-person perspectives since the late 1960s, dating back to Kasco's Indy 500 (1968) and Chicago Coin's version Speedway (1969).[7][8] The use of first-person perspectives in driving video games date back to Nürburgring 1 and Atari's Night Driver in 1976.[9]

It is not clear exactly when the earliest FPS video game was created. There are two claimants,

Maze War. The uncertainty about which was first stems from the lack of any accurate dates for the development of Maze War—even its developer cannot remember exactly.[10]
In contrast, the development of Spasim is much better documented and the dates are more certain.

The initial development of Maze War probably occurred in the summer of 1973. A single player traverses a maze of corridors rendered using fixed perspective. Multiplayer capabilities, with players attempting to shoot each other, were probably added later in 1973 (two machines linked via a serial connection) and in the summer of 1974 (fully networked).

PLATO network
.

Futurewar (1976) by high-school student Erik K. Witz and Nick Boland, also based on PLATO, is sometimes claimed to be the first true FPS.

Panther, introduced in 1975, generally acknowledged as a precursor to Battlezone.[citation needed
]

1979 saw the release of two first-person space combat games: the Exidy arcade game Star Fire and Doug Neubauer's seminal Star Raiders for the Atari 8-bit family. The popularity of Star Raiders resulted in similarly styled games from other developers and for other systems, including Starmaster for the Atari 2600, Space Spartans for Intellivision, and Shadow Hawk One for the Apple II. It went on to influence two major first-person games of the 1990s: Wing Commander and X-Wing.[13]

1980s

TIE Fighters and the surface of the Death Star.[14]

Other shooters with a first-person view from the early 1980s include Taito's

Encounter in 1983, and EA's Skyfox
for the Apple II in 1984.

Flight simulators were a first-person staple for home computers beginning in 1979 with

Sublogic and followed up with Flight Simulator II in 1983. MicroProse found a niche with first-person aerial combat games: Hellcat Ace (1982),[18] Spitfire Ace (1982),[19] and F-15 Strike Eagle
(1985).

Amidst a flurry of faux-3D first-person maze games where the player is locked into one of four orientations, like

raycasting engine, giving it a visual fluidity seen in future games MIDI Maze and Wolfenstein 3D. It was followed in 1983 by the split-screen Capture the Flag, allowing two players at once,[21]
and foreshadowing a common gameplay mode for 3D games of the 1990s.

The arrival of the

deathmatch (communicating via the computer's MIDI ports). Sublogic's Jet was a major release for the new platforms, as were Starglider and the tank simulator Arcticfox
.

In 1987, Taito's Operation Wolf arcade game started the trend of realistic military-themed action shooters, and featured side-scrolling environments and high-quality graphics for the time. It was followed the subsequent year by a sequel, titled Operation Thunderbolt, that introduced a pseudo-3D perspective and the illusion of depth. The success and popularity of these two games led to Sega releasing Line of Fire in 1989, another military combat arcade machine that achieved a further level of realism by implementing a rotating point of view, thus creating the effect of turning corners left and right, in addition to just walking forward.

In 1988, Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode featured first-person shooter levels and included a sniper rifle for assassinating an enemy agent at long range using an unsteady sniper scope.[22] The same year saw the release of Arsys Software's Star Cruiser.

In the late 1980s, interest in 3D first-person driving simulations resulted in games like

Stunts
from Broderbund (1991).

1990s

In 1990,

Catacomb 3D
, which introduced the concept of showing the player's hand on-screen, strengthening the illusion that the player is viewing the world through the character's eyes.

Taito's

deathmatch mode where two players compete against each other or up to four players compete in two teams.[27]

In 1992,

VGA graphics in Wolfenstein 3D. It would be widely imitated in the years to follow, and marked the beginning of many conventions in the genre, including collecting different weapons that can be switched between using the keyboard's number keys, and ammo conservation. 1996 saw the release of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for MS-DOS by Bethesda Softworks, featuring similar graphics and polygonal structures to other games at the time and furthering the first-person element included in 1994's The Elder Scrolls: Arena
, to which it was a sequel.

Doom (1993) refined Wolfenstein 3D's template by adding support for higher resolution, improved textures, variations in height (e.g., stairs and platforms the player's character could climb upon), more intricate level design (Wolfenstein 3D was limited to a grid based system where walls had to be orthogonal to each other, whereas Doom allowed for any inclination) and rudimentary illumination effects such as flickering lights and areas of darkness, creating a far more believable 3D environment than Wolfenstein 3D's levels, all of which had a flat-floor space and corridors.[28] Doom allowed competitive matches between multiple players, termed deathmatches, and the game was responsible for the word's subsequent entry into the video gaming lexicon.[28] Doom has been considered the most important first-person shooter ever made.[29]

The 1995 game Descent used a fully 3D polygonal graphics engine to render opponents, departing from the sprites used by most previous games in the FPS genre. It also escaped the "pure vertical walls" graphical restrictions of earlier games in the genre, and allowed the player six degrees of freedom of movement (up/down, left/right, forward/backward, pitch, roll, and yaw).

See also

References

  1. .
  2. ^ Ann, Tory (October 10, 2021). "Sniper 3d world's famous first person shooting game".
  3. ^ a b c d Rollings, Andrew; Ernest Adams (2006). Fundamentals of Game Design. Prentice Hall.
  4. ^ Miller, Ross (17 July 2008). "How Mirror's Edge fights simulation sickness". Engadget. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  5. ^ Ashcraft, Brian (16 July 2008). "Mirror's Edge Motion Sickness". Kotaku. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  6. .
  7. ^ "Did You Know... Game & Pop Culture Fun Facts & Trivia". Live Magazine. Gametraders. April–May 2017. pp. 26–7.
  8. .
  9. ^ Torchinsky, Jason. "Meet The Doctor-Engineer Who Basically Invented The Modern Racing Game". Jalopnik. Retrieved 2017-07-29.
  10. ^ a b en, en. "Stories from the Maze War 30 Year Retrospective: Steve Colley's Story of the original Maze". DigiBarn Computer Museum. Retrieved January 19, 2016. It may be that the networked version didn't happen until '74 because I [developer Steve Colley] can't remember exactly when the network was put on the Imlacs.
  11. ^ Garmon, Jay, Geek Trivia: First shots fired, TechRepublic, May 24, 2005. Retrieved Feb 16, 2009
  12. .
  13. ^ Dutton, Fred (October 23, 2010). "Atari revives Star Raiders". Eurogamer.
  14. Killer List of Videogames
  15. Killer List of Videogames
  16. ^ "Nasir Gebelli and the early days of Sirius Software". The Golden Age Arcade Historian. August 28, 2015.
  17. Killer List of Videogames
  18. ^ "Hellcat Ace". Atari Mania.
  19. ^ "Spitfire Ace". Atari Mania.
  20. ^ Duberman, David (February 1983). "Product Reviews". Antic. 1 (6).
  21. ^ "Capture the Flag". Atari Mania.
  22. 1UP
  23. Killer List of Videogames
  24. AllGame. Archived from the original
    on 2014-01-01.
  25. AllGame. Archived from the original
    on 2014-01-01.
  26. ^ Virtual Reality 1991, retrieved 2023-10-02
  27. Killer List of Videogames
  28. ^ a b "The Greatest Games of All Time: Doom". GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2009.
  29. ^ Davar, Jenny (March 28, 2008). "Importance of FPS In Video Games". Retrieved March 29, 2008.