The History of ViciousOnslaught : Part 1 of 2 : Designing the Concept

ViciousOnslaught began it's life sometimes in 1995.  Me and a friend (Hitman213) were walking home from high school. We were both fans of FPS games like Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Wolf3d, and the (at the time) newly released Rise of the Triad.  We were both from Massachusetts, a little suburb of Boston which I will not name here...  But we were both huge FPS fans, and I was especially a big Doom Fan..

So We were talking about Doom. He then said, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could make our own game?"... I quickly told him that that would be impossible, because we were two guys with no experience in modeling, coding, texturing, sound work and the like. We were only beginner programmers then and had no experience in the other areas.

But we trudged on....

We thought up a name for our game later but first we did some sketching.. First thing we sketched were weapons. Hitman213 sketched a flamethrower, a spiked yoyo and a machinegun. All of those minus the spiked yoyo were in the final viciousonslaught.  We later on sketched our character, which we named Bastard... He was a mercenary. We hadn't thought up the story or enemies yet. But he drew the enemies soon after. They were white clad soldiers, and he drew the first mutations, one that looked like the hulk (which is not in the game's final version).  The white clad soldier became the soldier with a night vision goggle thing on later on.

 It was then thought up that we would use His story. His story involved some evil madman with resurrection powers resurrecting evil people in history, think Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Etc. I didn't want this story because it would be like wolf3d all over again, I wanted something more original. So I thought up the story that would be used for the game.

He didn't want to scrap his idea.  But I convinced him. We went with my story intstead... Some insane cult with illuminati like powers form.  They start bombing cities world wide causing the apocalypse to happen. Only your character can stop him because he's a cybernetic mercenary. He named this cult the cult of the serpent church, or CSC for short. I then thought of the concepts of mutations, experiments gone wrong that would be used to attack survivors, plus mechs to guard the cities. You would go through Massive cities doing missions to stop this mad cult once and for all.

Hitman213 then fleshed out our character some more, he was going to be a mercenary, a anti-hero, only in it for the money. He was hired to stop the cult but didn't care at all about what was happening to the world. He was an asshole, who didn't care, period. He wasn't supposed to be a "goody two shoes!"

While I thought of weapon and enemy ideas, he thought of a few. We started with basic weapons... These were the ones we thought up...

Cattle prod
Spiked Yoyo
Knife
Wolverine styled "cats" claw - think the claws that come out of someone's fist.
Pistol
SMG
Assault Rifle
Terminator 2 based lever action Shotgun
Automatic Shotgun
Triple Chaingun
Flamethrower
Napalm Cannon (Shoots flame able explosives)
"asskicker" Dual rocket launcher Backpack
Gasoline Can - A weapon that can spray gasoline on the ground you can light on fire later
Splattering Gas - Shoots gas that gibs enemies, and spreads to nearby ones, all making them convulse
first.
Spread Rifle - A gun with multiple barrels all spread apart shooting a spread of bullets at  your enemy. Basically a shotgun on steroids...
Skewer - A weapon that shoots a spiked dart on a chain, that impales enemies, spreads to form a plate
once it goes through, and can be pulled out, disembowling them in the process..
Turd Bomb - A shit throwing explosive!


Enemy ideas were thought of next... They involved me making the following human enemies.

Cult guard - the white guard drawn in our first sketch
Cult Riot Guard - Cult shotgunners basically
Cult Soldier - Cult soldiers armed with machine guns
Cult biker - Cult soldiers on Motorbikes

We then thought of some mutation ideas

Vampire Mutant - Huge winged red eyed mutant
Transylvanian Horror - Small cloaked mutant found behind doors waiting to scare people. Had pink
eyed and 3 legs
Musclehead - A "incredible Hulk" ripoff originally. Later on became something far more demonic.
Lardass - Huge fat mutant with dual grenade launchers.
Monstrosity - The first boss. A gigantic 50 foot tall mutant that attacked New York City.


We then thought of mission ideas, where the game would take place. It was to start in cape cod, MA, then move to Boston, then go to Hartford, CT, then to NYC, then to Newark New Jersey, then to Savanna Georgia, then to Miami where the second boss was fought, a cult general that was planning to nuke Miami. You had to kill him to end the countdown. That ended episode 1.

Then in Episode 2 you would start in Death Valley, California to stop some secret cult cyborg soldiers being manufactured in a base under the desert there, then the game would move to Las Vegas, then to Minneapolis, then to Chicago, then you would be captured in some city and would have to escape from a jail, in a A.S.S. HQ (they would betray you and claim they were working for the CSC all along).  Then you Would move to the west coast, and explore San Fransisco, LA, and Seattle and there would be a boss fight in seattle to end episode 2.

Episode 3 would begin in Antarctica and then go to a underwater base, then to Baltimore and then end in Washington DC ruins and there you would fight the final boss....

Our original idea would not be a super violent FPS.... At least when we thought it up in 1995. It was mostly inspired by ROTT then and had touches of Terminator Future shock and Crusader no remorse thrown in. We wanted security devices like cameras and lasers and such, just like in crusader. I also invented kinds of traps that the player would run into, such as radiation pits, bomb traps, etc...

Even though this original idea was not supposed to be a super violent FPS, the release of Duke Nukem 3D in 1996 changed that. From that point on, I wanted Onslaught (as it was being called then) to be a super violent game with tons of gore and nasty one liners. I thought it was a cool idea to borrow those ideas.

So we thought up one liners for our character, bastard.. One liners such as...

"Yup, that's one hellacious dump"
"You're soul betta belong to someone, cause your ass is mine"
"Common you pussies"
"damn I got bigass feet"
"You're about as hot as a naked eskimo, in the north pole, during the winter!"

and many others...

Around this time enemy ideas were being fleshed out.  We wanted  the following enemies in the game:

CSC Guard
CSC Soldier
CSC Riot Soldier
Vampire Mutant
 Tyransylvanian Horror
 CSC Biker
Musclehead
Lardass
Metron (Huge walking mech)
Road Patrol (Giant walking mech)
Monstrosity Boss (1st boss)
Turrets
Rocket Turrets
Sewer Mutants (looked like the Flukeman from the X-files)
Stranglevines (Huge living vines that strangled people who got close)
Rock Beats (creatures made out of stone that had a vaguely human form)
Viper Class Cyborg soldiers
Mini Monstrosities
Abomination (Living pile of guts - the second boss)
Ice Beasts (Creatures made out of ice)
Cult frozen patrol units (Cultists in parka's, seen only in Antarctica)
Cultists (Only see in their lair in Washington DC)

The Monstrosity boss started as a gigantic 50 foot tall mutant. Later on it got even bigger, being 150 feet  tall.  In that form he would throw trucks at you and they would explode. You would need to be in a vehicle to survive. We thought of many vehicle ideas, from  motorcycles, to cars, to trucks, to mechs, to jet planes, to blimps even.... Many of the  combat ideas in this game would be completely new for games. It was a shame it never got given to a gaming company, I think some gaming company would have made it fun but technical issues prevented us from doing  that.
Hitman213 wanted this game to be realistic. So did I. We wanted this to be hard and very unforgiving. I wanted there to be massive city sized levels with 3d textures, and I wanted deformable terrain in it. I also wanted there to be serious effects to your body when you were hit. There were to be 6 health bars for different parts of your body. If one got crippled, you would have to find a splint or find a health station to heal it. If it was your legs you would be forced to crawl. If it was your head or chest you would die. If it was one leg only you would limp. If it was a hand you would drop what weapon you were holding then.

This was  the game design around 1997 or so...  But we kept working on it in 1998-1999 and added even more ideas.... Especially weapon ideas...  Weapon ideas such as the rocket propelled enema launcher were invented around then. The idea was quite controversial and disgusting. It would shoot a homing ass perforating (tm) projectile torwards the enemy that pumped their buts with soapy water. That would make their upper body separate from their lower body in a disgusting death that sent their upper body flying into the air, sending soap everywhere, and blood, and guts, and worse...

Another really badass idea I thought up in 1998 or so was the black hole gun. It created a black hole where you aimed the crosshair. If you aimed for the enemies foot, a blackhole would be put on his foot, sending him flying into the blackhole... You could aim for really bad sections like his groin if you wanted... Hitman213 added  a bloody death idea to that, where guts would fly out and land on you from a "white hole" that was put above your head...

Another really disgusting weapon idea was a secondary fire for a weapon I invented called the stun gun. The  stun gun shot waves, knocking enemies unconscious.  The secondary fire would make bastard run at the enemy once this happened, jump on his chest, sending his intestines flying through his mouth... It was gross..

The violence in this game was going to be insane. We wanted tons of gore, and we wanted the character to be able to rip out hearts of enemies and such.  We wanted this thing to be disgustingly violent. It was also going to be horribly offensive as well.. There would be one scene where the monstrosity grabs a school bus, bites off the top, and then "drinks" the school kids down but he gets stomach problems and then barfs them on you! All the school kids would be toddlers.




Other weapon ideas were being thought of then as well... Really wacky ones!

Ideas such as:

Nuclear Waste Gusher
Staple gun
Saw Thrower (Never played Redneck rampage but the idea is similar to the one in that game)
Nail Gun (this was thought up before quake)
Asteroid Attractor - caused an asteroid to hit the city... Usually a small one... But the secondary fire was a death giving one that shot a GIGANTIC asteroid at the ground..
Tsunami Gun - Launched a tsunami at  the shore. Only use able near  the shore...
Spike Rifle - Shot a huge spike at the enemies
Lighting Rod - Similar to the lightning gun in Quake, except it shot an electrified projectile at the enemies.
Overkill Cannon - An overpowered shrapnel shooting gun..

These ideas were quite weird and there were a lot more that I can't remember now but  I thought of hundreds of these ideas..  Within a few years, hundreds of weapon, level, and monster ideas were thought of and put into this massive, massive design document. I was working on this document and my brother was helping us format it, so it would have good grammar and such.  But the design document got so bloated that I ended up deleting stuff from it later...

Enemy ideas were added. New kinds of soldiers were being invented, such as the SHIT (Super human interrogation trooper! - armed with an enema launcher and skewer..), flamethrower soldier, and many others  I cannot remember now..

But new mutant ideas were popping in as well such as...

Fear Elemental (A horrible creature with 3 eyes and 2 noses)
A huge green mutant
A mutant that could take the form of any other mutant at will - Hitman213 thought this idea up)
A medusa inspired mutant that would freeze you to death if you saw it, so you had to kill it around the corner from it.

The level ideas were being added to as well. The game would not jump straight for Seattle to Antarctica now, it would go through Europe and Canada before that. .. The Canada missions were cool. One involved stopping an Independence Day sized space ship from Destroying Montreal. And that one involved boarding the ship, flying it it up  to the atmosphere and destroying it and escaping in time...

The ideas were adding up so much that they became a nuisance. Survival horror elements were being thrown in, fights with demons and spirits and such, and magical weapons would be needed to kill them. A section where you go through hell itself with magical weapons needed to kill demons and such at the end of the game was added. None of these demons were killable with normal weapons, you had to use the magical ones.. But the ideas were now in the thousands and  the design document, I found out, was not the way the gaming companies wanted. They wanted the weapon ideas to be described in the level section... Rather than describe all the weapons each level had (that would take hours with all the hundreds of weapons and levels we had planned out), I decided that we needed to stop designing the game idea... I told hitman213 on the phone this news and we stopped it in 2001.

But the game would not die, no I would create it in 2012 and recreate it as ViciousOnslaught in 2016!