A matter of opinion or taste

[tcm]

I'm working on a mod, using an inventory system quite similar in function to the one WildWeasel used in his recently-released ww-ultimate.wad. (Of course proper credit will be given, but any manner of release is a long way off.)

Anyhoo, a summary of the mod, and then the question.

This will contain only pistols and other one-handed weapons. The idea is to combine any one weapon with any other weapon. For example, I've got a pistol in my right hand and a revolver in my left. I could swap that pistol for another revolver, or swap the revolver for a plasma pistol. I could also switch hands: the revolver goes to my right, the pistol to my left. You get the idea.

The part that I'm curious about, as far as the zdoom community is concerned, is what kind of firing setup would be preferable? One way to do it is, primary fire shoots the gun in my right hand, and secondary shoots the gun in my left. Another way is primary fire will alternate between the two. If I have 2 pistols, it'd just go right-left-right-left. If I'm holding an SMG in my left and a pistol in my right, holding down the primary fire will spray with the SMG and shoot-pause-shoot-pause with the pistol.

Any other suggestions are welcome. I hope I'm not being unclear in explaining this. I hope to release a "three gun demo" in the next month or so.

[HotWax]

Erm, no comment on how to fire them, however I have a couple points:

1) An SMG and a pistol? I know other games have done this, but it's still not very realistic. Are you going to make the SMG highly inaccurate to compesate for this advantage?

2) How are you going to deal with the slot limitation? With 3 weapons, you'd have 9 potential combinations, thus taking 12 slots:

Code: Select all

#	  Left hand	    Right hand

1	  <none>		    Pistol
2	  <none>		    Revolver
3	  <none>		    Plasma Pistol
4	  Pistol		    Pistol
5	  Pistol		    Revolver
6	  Pistol		    Plasma Pistol
7	  Revolver	     Pistol
8	  Revolver	     Revolver
9	  Revolver	     Plasma Pistol
10	 Plasma Pistol	Pistol
11	 Plasma Pistol	Revolver
12	 Plasma Pistol	Plasma Pistol

How many more weapons are you planning to add? With each one, the number of possible combinations increase exponentially.

[tcm]

1) Yeah, probably inaccuracy and lower damage per hit (as opposed to the revolver, say, which will have slow firing but high damage). I'm still not sure I will even have an automatic weapon, but it's a possibility.

2) I was thinking something more along these lines:

1 Fists
2 Pistol, DualPistols, PistolRevolver, PistolFusion
3 Revolver, DualRevolvers, RevolverPistol, RevolverFusion

...and so forth. Since there are somewhere around 8 weapons that can be set to a single slot (I think), I've got plenty of room. Keep in mind the player will actually only have 2 weapons in his/her inventory at any given time: fists and pistol(s). So the weapon number won't matter; switching would only be done by the "previous/next weapon" key.

And yes, I am aware of the exponential increase. I've got 10 possible weapons, but I will most likely cut it down to 6 or 7 at the most. (And even that's being ambitious; thus the "3 gun demo" release planned first.)

[Snarboo]

I prefer that each gun is set to a different button (ie primary fire is the right gun and alternate fire is the other), which is great for a dual weapon setup. This certainly sounds interesting. :) I definitely can't wait to play it.

[Phobus]

Why not have it so that you do a slot for each weapon in the primary position, and repeated presses for that slot will cycle through the weapons available for the secondary weapon?

[HotWax]

2) I was thinking something more along these lines:

1 Fists
2 Pistol, DualPistols, PistolRevolver, PistolFusion
3 Revolver, DualRevolvers, RevolverPistol, RevolverFusion

...and so forth. Since there are somewhere around 8 weapons that can be set to a single slot (I think), I've got plenty of room.

I wasn't saying you couldn't assign them to the same slot, just pointing out that even with your 3-gun demo, you'd already taken up 12 of the 80 available slots (10 slots, 8 weapons each).

And yes, I am aware of the exponential increase. I've got 10 possible weapons, but I will most likely cut it down to 6 or 7 at the most. (And even that's being ambitious; thus the "3 gun demo" release planned first.)

OK, see that was my point. 10 weapons would be impossible if all 10 were meant to combine, because you'd have 110 combinations. 6 or 7 should work, however.

[Matt]

I assume "fusion" means firing them both at once. Which means that while I personally prefer having one button fire each weapon (at least in theory), you'll have to have a button to alternate anyway if you ever want to let the player fire both at once, so I'll stick with using altfire to switch between the possibilities.

[tcm]

Ummm, no. I unknowingly reverted to my "Marathon" gaming terminology. In the game Marathon, the player has a fusion pistol... it short-circuits alien technology. Very handy for combating the armored soldiers.

That button-to-alternate-firing-style has occurred to me, but I shudder at the extra Decorate code that will require. I think for now, I'll try using Fire for the right gun and AltFire for the left.

[Penguinator]

I would prefer primary fire=shoot left gun secondary=shoot right(or vice versa). Otherwise you wouldn't have very much control over what gun to shoot. If you were using an SMG and an accurate revolver, but you used the fire left-right-left method, you would have to waste SMG ammo to kill someone in the distance.

[DoomRater]

Well, from my tests of making independent dual fire, I have no clue how in the world you'll pull this off, short of using weapons being drawn with HUDMessage and combining ACS. From a technical standpoint, I'd be wowed if you pulled it off that way... because if you went the route of using the independent dual fire I used you'll be writing a LOT of code and have a lot of duplicates.

The problem with Fire for the left and AltFire for the right, as I battered with this problem in my head, was getting them to fire independently from each other. If that's not important to you (and I think that unlikely) then Fire/Altfire will be all you need.

[Unknown_Assassin]

I think the idea of having left for fire and right for alt fire is a good idea.

The problem with Fire for the left and AltFire for the right, as I battered with this problem in my head, was getting them to fire independently from each other. If that's not important to you (and I think that unlikely) then Fire/Altfire will be all you need.

If you keep playing left for primary fire and right for alternate fire, you wouldn't have any problems.

[DoomRater]

While a weapon is running through the Fire animation, how can it respond to AltFire button presses? More importantly, how can these states make the second gun fire without removing or interrupting the first one? The only solution I found for this was to use inventory control hacks within the Flash states. If you have some sort of alternate scheme to make it work, I'm all ears...

Again, this only really comes into play if someone wants to control them independently from each other. If firing one weapon at a time + simultaneous dual fire is all that's needed, I could see it feasible to need only three attacks. But that leaves the reloading issue... have both guns reload at the same time?

[TheDarkArchon]

Inventory hackery.

[DoomRater]

Of course the relaoding has to be done that way, the question is more or less reloading each gun. If he doesn't have clips then this isn't even a problem, but imagine weapons that cannot really be seperated. I personally wouldn't want to force reloading on both weapons when I only want to reload one side...

Meh, I'm starting to overthink this.

[Matt]

Inventory hackery with one of the normal buttons? How?

And if you can't, a thought: how would this be different from just being able to switch between two given weapons very quickly?