New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

Post by Rex Claussen »

A couple of weeks ago I came across a thread on ZDooM forums that discusses a Half-Life weapons mod. In addition the the weapons that we have, it has other weapons (such as the Gauss Gun, satchel grenade, hand grenade, snark, and trip mines). Should we consider adopting those additional weapons into our mod? (Of course, we'll credit the author, TheCamaleonMaligno.)

The main issue for simply adopting the new weapons/ammo verbatim, is that the HUD models appear to be lower quality than what we have for our current weapons. This will become patently obvious in-game, and will be a major detraction.
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

Post by Ed the Bat »

If I were to add other weapons, I would more than likely import the resources myself from Half-Life. I haven't looked at that project, but odds are decent that I'd code the weapons differently, too. At most, I may borrow some inspiration here and there, and if I took in any major portions of work, I'd give credit. But I don't do anything wholesale.

This is all assuming, of course, there's interest in bringing any other weapons in. If so, I can pick the effort up. But I don't think I'd do it 'just because', unless something gave me a huge spike of inspiration. The Desert Eagle was mainly to support my silly idea to make Otis playable.
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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I was just spit-balling, and typically perk up when I come across resources that could be useful in various projects. I’m not pushing for the inclusion of the new weapons, merely gauging interest among our Team.

One of the big downsides of retroactively adding new weapons is that existing gameplay has to be re-balanced. For my part, testing (and re-testing) gameplay is generally the least interesting or enjoyable part of development. Therefore, I’ll be fine if no new weapons are added.
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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Understandable. The rebalancing would make for a rather involved effort. That being said, I'm certainly not opposed to adding new resources. It's just that, on the whole, I prefer doing it 'from scratch' (not entirely, but definitely never a wholesale lift from another project), so just don't expect to see a direct drop-in of things from another project like that one.
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

Post by Enjay »

I guess my only comment here is why?

If they will add something positive to the game, then it's worth doing. If it merely adds clutter, then it probably isn't.

So, what would these extra weapons bring to the table? Would they fill a gap and provide a weapon that can do X, Y or Z when the game couldn't before or would they merely be a slightly different alternative to something that we already have (i.e. would the new weapons have their own niche or not)?
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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Enjay wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 19:56Stuff.
Hey, hey, hey! Welcome back. Stranger. Heh.

But staying on topic, the main reason I considered the inclusion of the additional weapons was for canonical purposes. Also, I really like the Snark (but I realize this is not a good enough reason to include it, especially because of the gameplay retrofit it would require).
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

Post by Enjay »

Good to be back. I'm trying to be as much as possible but real life is just as hectic as ever. However, I figured that I've had to sacrifice a lot of the fun side of stuff for too long so I'm trying to shift my priorities a bit. Here's hoping that life lets me.

Don't get me wrong - if there's a reason to include the weapons (one or more), then I'm all for it. To be honest, "they're fun and they are canon" is quite possibly reason enough. I just think we should avoid over cluttering which can detract from the game (I know that I over cluttered my Burghead mod with weapons - albeit consciously and with reasons - and I did receive some flak for doing so (I'm still OK with the decision though)).
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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Enjay wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 19:19... I'm trying to shift my priorities a bit. Here's hoping that life lets me.
Yes, hope you find time to do things you enjoy.
I just think we should avoid over cluttering which can detract from the game .....
Agreed. The curious thing, is that when I first played Half-Life I was quite happy to be finding new types and classes of weapons. Eventually, however, I found the myriad choices to be somewhat unwieldy.

Returning to my theme of game-play retrofit, I had pointed out that even adding the Desert Eagle would require some kind of retrofit. Adding these other weapons would make the retrofit more challenging. Also, I don't recall players indicating they found our game(s) to be lacking as a result of an "incomplete" weapon inventory. As such, it might be a good idea to leave well-enough alone.
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

Post by Enjay »

I do recall one or two people saying things like "you should include [insert name of weapon here]" but that was mostly because the person suggesting it liked that particular weapon (or was just suggesting it because they remembered it existed) rather than saying there was a gap in the arsenal that caused a gameplay problem.

As I said, if there is a good reason to introduce one or more of these, then we should seriously consider it but simply sticking one in because we can (sounds ruder than intended) probably isn't a great reason when you consider costs (retrofitting, rebalancing etc) against benefit (adding not much to an already perfectly acceptable arsenal).


[edit] Also, from memory, doesn't adding weapons create problems with real estate on the status bar/HUD? That would also have to be looked at. [/edit]
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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Thanks to some restructuring on the HUD by yours truly, adjusting it to accommodate arsenal changes should be manageable, so don't worry about that last part. If I added more weapons, I'd be sure to include any necessary HUD work.

If we do decide to add any more weapons, I think it might be useful to now list all of the currently-absent weapons from Half-Life:
[*]Hand Grenade
[*]Satchel Charge
[*]Laser Tripmine
[*]Snark
[*]Tau Cannon

...and Opposing Force (Blue Shift did not include any unique weapons):
[*]Combat Knife
[*]Pipe Wrench
[*]M249 S.A.W.
[*]Sniper Rifle
[*]Shock Roach (would require new story elements)
[*]Spore Launcher (would require new story elements)
[*]Barnacle Grapple (Specialty weapon; not recommended)
[*]Displacer Cannon (Specialty weapon; not recommended)

It goes without saying that some of these weapons would be more complicated than others when it comes to replicating them in ZScript. While that may be a poor excuse, that does discourage me a bit when it comes to wanting to develop them.

Of course, I haven't even touched on the idea of adding weapons from outside of Half-Life. Not to say I'm entirely opposed to it, but if a line needs to be drawn somewhere, perhaps that's a good cut-off.
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

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Ed the Bat wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 19:35Of course, I haven't even touched on the idea of adding weapons from outside of Half-Life. Not to say I'm entirely opposed to it, but if a line needs to be drawn somewhere, perhaps that's a good cut-off.
My vote would be against the addition of weapons outside of the Half-Life sphere. So much of the current story-lines (and maps & enemies) are steeped in the Black Mesa events, that going noticeably outside that sphere would likely be jarring. Even the new maps (and story-lines) being developed fall squarely within the H-L universe, so introducing other weapons would detract from the overall experience.

As a matter of fact, I would be against the introduction of HL2 weapons, mostly for the same reasons I mentioned above. In summary, if any new weapons are to be added, I would vote for every one of them to be from HL1. [At any rate, I think this is an academic argument, as it seems our general consensus is to stick with the current weapons.]
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Re: New Weapons Beyond Desert Eagle?

Post by Ed the Bat »

I definitely wouldn't want any HL2 weapons. That was another sci-fi story with frankly very little to tie it to Half-Life. I would only consider adding other weapons that don't seem horribly out-of-place. Perhaps a real-life weapon as it appeared from HL Counter-Strike? Or in an extreme stretch, an easter egg weapon from Doom 3 or something. Anyway, if we do add more weapons, I would argue that the list I laid out above offers more than enough to choose from... unless, perhaps just for the sake of flavor, I were to add in the Glock and the MP5 as cosmetic skins. But that's for another day.
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