OK, I would like to make a Multiplayer FPS, however, I have limited $ ($100 for a licence or something is fine, $2000 is not), limited programming experience (a little C, C++ and java, all at university, all forgotten) so i'm really looking for a game maker type thing where I dont have to do too much coding.

However, the game I want to make is not a standard FPS, so I suspect its going to rule out quite a few options.

The game description:

An FPS where you upgrade your character with "point" as you go. Each team start off with a number of players, the objective is to do a certain ammount of damage to a target within the enemy base.

Your character recieves points on the following basis:

Dying: 100 points distributed to everone on your team evenly
Killing: 100 points evenly to your team
Damaging sheilds: 1 point for every % of max sheild removed to your team evenly
Damaging HP: 1 point for every % of max HP removed to you
Receiving shield damage: 1 point for every % of max shield removed to your team evenly
Time: 1 point per second

Each time you die (or suicide if you want to upgrade early) you are presented with an upgrade screen to spend the points you have earned before you respawn. Examples of things you can upgrade are like so:

Offence

Damage
Range
Rate of fire
Penetration
Accuracy
Ammunition Capacity
Shield Reduction
Recoil Reduction
Barrell Thickness
Barrell cooling
Aimed accuracy

Defense

Health
Health Regen
Shield
Shield Regen
Shield Regen Delay
Head Armour
Chest Armour
Leg Armour

Other

Stealth
Detect Stealth
Move speed
Jump Height
Visibility

Everything is balanced out so there are no diminishing returns. For example:

Health - Initial Points 5 - Additional Points 5 - Max HP = 5000

Damage - initial points 5 - Additional points 60 damage per minute (variable on players rate of fire level) - max damage 1000

Rate of Fire - Initial points 12 round per minute - Additional points 60 damage per minute (variable on players damage level) - maxe rate of fire 1000 round per minute.

So, any suggestions?

In the next post i'll copy that whole spreadsheet in seeing as i'm not able to attatch an XLS.

Also, if anyone has already done, or attempted something like this just tell me and i'll go play it and save myself all that effort :)

*edit* ARRRG it came out a big mess..... it looked fine in the preview....

Ok I can add JPEG's..... lemme do that.

So anyway, as you can see, theres a few things in there (view distance for example) i'm not sure will work, so if I cant get them all its not the end of the world, but I would like to be able to adjust most of those things, and it needs to be able to be done during gameplay... which probably complicates things further but i'm new so maybe i'm wrong and some basic tool may allow me to change all of that.

I guess I am after the simplest most basic thing that will allow me to acomplish what I want.

Oh you know Hodgman, I did play with the farcry editor, and I was "sort of" successfull....

However, would that let me do things like adjust accuracy mid game, fire rate mid game etc? off memory they where all kind of fixed.....

Modern engine modding is very powerful (if not via visual node editors, then through proprietary scripting languages) so yes, you can do all of that and a lot more.

Thanks for that Irreversible.

I know it will be a little bit bothersome for you, but would you be able just quickly read both lists in the JPEG's and (in your head) confirm that I can do all using the FarCry engine? (if you know about the far cry engine, if not, maybe for some engine that you have worked with before?)

It would be very much appreciated.