What would you say is the biggest hurdle in programming a shooter? The reason I've chosen 3D is because I've modeled rigged and animated the assets and I'm eager to import and implement gameplay mechanics for them.

3D X-Person-Shooters are difficult to make because:

1. 3D engines are notoriously difficult to program, and polish. Most indie efforts look dated and ugly. Of course, it depends on your targeted audience. Minecraft got away with not-so-top-notch graphics. But it feels like the target audience for your game will care about having some good graphics.

2. There are a lot of things happening in a shooter. And all those things have to happen at "low" latency. From a networking point of view, this is extremely extremely demanding. Quite a daunting feat for a lead developer with no programming experience.

As for the multiplayer, does it make programing multiplayer easier if I alter the design to suit an 8 player match or is latency just a pain no matter the number of players?

Yep. Networking and latency is a colossal amount of work for a shooter even for 2 concurrent players.

Thanks again for the feedback, with any luck I can get this design to a stage where its approachable, achievable and actually moving beyond the conceptual stage.

You are welcome! Good luck!

I would urge you to start making games asap. Make singleplayer games, make tech demos etc. I know the feeling: you don't want to waste time and effort on something other than your "ultimate vision". I had the same problem when I started. But it is well worth it: you'll learn so much from making a game from start to finish, pick up programming skills, and might discover ways to modify your "ultimate vision" (mine changed a lot in the process).

ShawnCowles, do you have much experience with the visual programming UDK. I've taken a look at a few 3D engines and their communities, I would need a mentor to learn any sort of programing I'm afraid. I've sunk quite a few hours into trying to learn tutorials myself and on my own I can't seem to grasp what the heck I'm actually achieving when I'm working through them. I feel like I have some creative, simplifying answers to some of the technical hurtles that would be otherwise very daunting to build the original design idea (spherical world, 3D GUI, control system, etc) but I don't really know how the engines would handle it. ShawnCowles if you have any experience in the area of one of these free engines I could send you the files to import and attempt these design ideas using the rigged character, animations, items and icosphere level design I've been working on. Many of the design ideas could carry into single player demos and mini games like Legendre suggested. Would it help to post screen shots of these silly models?

FPS Creator: http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=view_product&id=2001

Might be a possibility?

Looks like a great resource. Thanks again Legendre.

Hmm, perhaps a starting point would be making a client/server FPS that's either one player or LAN only. You'd have enough to impress people and keep them motivated, and enough infrastructure to continue extending it later to an MMO (unlike if you did it without client/server). You could essentially ignore lag for the first version due to almost 0 lag, and just snapback whenever the server makes any corrections. The server wouldn't even need to do any fancy checking for a first cut, just simple bounds checking (e.g. players are within play area, ammo <= previous ammo + spawned ammo, player hasn't travelled faster than max speed).

ShawnCowles, do you have much experience with the visual programming UDK. I've taken a look at a few 3D engines and their communities, I would need a mentor to learn any sort of programing I'm afraid. I've sunk quite a few hours into trying to learn tutorials myself and on my own I can't seem to grasp what the heck I'm actually achieving when I'm working through them. I feel like I have some creative, simplifying answers to some of the technical hurtles that would be otherwise very daunting to build the original design idea (spherical world, 3D GUI, control system, etc) but I don't really know how the engines would handle it. ShawnCowles if you have any experience in the area of one of these free engines I could send you the files to import and attempt these design ideas using the rigged character, animations, items and icosphere level design I've been working on. Many of the design ideas could carry into single player demos and mini games like Legendre suggested. Would it help to post screen shots of these silly models?

Sorry to say that a) I don't have much experience with it and b) I am exceedingly busy with work, school, and my own project. It's called Kismet though, and from what I've seen UDK has a great online community for help and tons of tutorials on youtube.

Updates above!

This is a competitive, 3D arcade styled, third person, free for all combat game that is based on a small barren spherical world. The winning condition is to unifying all units in a match using a "Domination list" mechanic. With each kill a player creates a link and highlights the enemy on their domination list. This link disables the ability to do damage between the player, the enemy (now linked) and any other units/players highlighted on the player's "domination list" . If a player is already on a list the kills they make will add to the list they are a part of as well as highlight the kill on their own list. If a player is killed all the links on their own list are split up amongst the units/players lists disbanding any units/players with no kills of their own.

I find your explanation of this mechanic very unclear.

We have four players.
= A B C D
A kills B. A and B can't damage each other anymore, but can damage C or D. C and D can damage anyone.
= A(b) B C D
B kills C. C is added on A's list too since B was a part of A's list. A, B and C can't damage each other anymore. D can damage anyone.
= A(b c) B(c) C D
If anyone were to kill D, A would win because their list would be filled. Therefore, B and C must help D kill A by any means they have, though they cannot directly damage A themselves.
If D were to kill A, they get A on their list and A's existing list is distributed between others, but not with C since C has no kills of their own?
= A B(c) C D(a b)
So now A and C can damage each other, and D and C can damage each other, and B cannot damage anyone (but would like to help someone kill D)?

From what I understand, if the situation is like this:

A [b,c]
B [c]
C
D

When D kills A, it becomes like this:

A
B [c]
C
D [a]

But yes, this needs to be clarified by the OP.