You may know electronic musician Joel “Deadmau5” Zimmerman for his tunes and his gaudy mouse helmet, but the DJ is expanding his creative efforts into something completely different: Developing a first-person shooter.
The project is still in the “prototyping phase,” according to Zimmerman, who released a small clip of gameplay via his Twitch channel. There aren’t many art assets to speak of yet. On Reddit, Zimmerman added that he and his team of developers completed the demo he showed in two days.
“At present, we’re just setting up some basic mechanics, getting a space together where we can jam out in an arena of sorts and spitball ideas,” he said in the post. “Once we’ve agreed on that and [have] nailed in network code and server delegation, we head down the ‘fun and original secondary objective’ route.”
In the Twitch clip, Zimmerman discusses his plans for the game’s weapons. They’re currently all using “hit-scan,” which automatically applies damage to a target if they’re in a shooter’s line of sight when they pull the trigger. The sniper rifle in the game could have this replaced with real projectiles using bullet-drop, which Zimmerman said is modeled after the system used by Epic Games in Fortnite.
The map created for the demonstration appears somewhat similar to a Halo 5 multiplayer map, with multiple levels and paintball-like obstacles spread throughout. This could be chalked up to the game not having art assets yet, but we’d certainly be down for a shooter than leaned into sportiness rather than over-the-top violence.
The design for the sniper rifle’s scope — and the speed at which it can be brought up to your head for a shot — is more reminiscent of Widowmaker’s weapon in Overwatch. With an emphasis on speedy gunplay and precision rather than a host of secondary abilities, perhaps it could find a home in the esports community.
For more of Deadmau5 and his gaming, check out the other videos on his Twitch channel. He has been playing a variety of battle royale games lately, primarily focusing on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, but he has dabbled in Diablo III and Rocket League, as well.
