Design and Layout of a Game's Arsenal

[NeuralStunner]

OK, I've been mulling over the idea of creating a new IWAD-ish game lately. So far I've come up with several weapons for it, but each basically has a DooM (2) equivalent. I'm wondering how to proceed.

The basic DooM selection:
1 - Weak Melee / Constant Melee
2 - Weak Hitscan
3 - Slow Refiring Multi-Hitscan / Stronger Version?
4 - Rapid Fire Hitscan
5 - Explosive Missile
6 - Rapid Fire Missile
7 - Big, Powerful Weapon of Epic Pwnage

Heretic's is similar, other than #3 being a projectile shooter and having no second version, #5/#6 being swapped, and #7 not seeming all that epic...

Here's some thoughts on both sides of the matter.

Advantages to a DooM-style arsenal:
- Veteran DooMers pick up the system and slot assignments very quickly.
- Probably simpler to code and balance.

Disadvantages to a DooM-style arsenal:
- The responses: "WTF? It's just a DooM knockoff!"
- Weapon behavior can be predictable and boring.

Advantages to a unique arsenal:
- New and exciting weapons to play with!
- You get to surprise your players.
- Lots of fun to design and code.

Disadvantages to a unique arsenal:
- Veteran DooMers may need a little longer to get used to it.
- Coming up with "new" weapons can be difficult, most of the concepts have been done already by someone.

Which "side" would each of you take, and why? ("Both" is completely valid and understandable.) What other thoughts do you have on the subject?

[XutaWoo]

I've always liked the idea of a mix of DOOM and HL2 weapon styles.

Maybe something like:

1-Melee, more powerful than pistol and smg.
2-Pistol (weak, accurate hitscan)/Rifle (basically a stronger, slower pistol)
3-Two different rapid-fire hitscans, one weak and innaccurate, and one stronger and more accurate but slower
4-Shotgun, probally low ammo/Some short of slow-firing projectile weapon, like a nailgun or crossbow
5-Grenade/Rocket Launcher
6-Some sort of projectile weapon/Flamethrower-ish weapon
7-The WTF Beam (or whatever)

Of course, given the differences between the two games, this might not actually work. It'd certainly be interesting. And if you're not up to making all those weapons, I'd help.

Also, remember the weapon orderings from some other mods, like Zero Tolerance or Zen, if you want something unique that did work.

[NeuralStunner]

That weapon selection looks suspiciously like Strife's.

Other problems I have with DooM's sytem/ordering:
- The two weapons which use bullets are separated from one another by the shotguns.
- The "stacking" of some weapons into the same slot. A player has to go through the "preferred" version to get to the lesser one. Unfortunatley the newer one tends to make the original nearly obsolete.
- The chaingun might as well go into the pistol's slot. The only technical advantage to the old pistol is that it doesn't use up two bullets per burst. (I think a good solution for this would be to make the pistol super-accurate.)

Heretic had a similar Pistol / Chaingun problem, with the Elvenwand & Dragon Claw. The DC actually works very well for sniping, comes with more ammo capacity and better damage than the Wand... The Gauntlets were difficult to use too, due mainly to the technical design of enemies not having the high pain chances they did in DooM.

Hexen's system works pretty well. A little low on the variety side from the perspective of any one class, but overall there are a lot of different methods, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. (Though some have way more of one than the other.)

Another intersting idea is to forego the melee weapon for the most part, and let the player hit foes with the guns (as in Halo - Though 2 does have the Energy Sword. )

[Ceeb]

Another intersting idea is to forego the melee weapon for the most part, and let the player hit foes with the guns (as in Halo - Though 2 does have the Energy Sword. )

I've always liked the idea of using guns for melee. It makes sense, why use your hands when you're holding a shotgun?

[phi108]

Gun experts might say beating enemies with guns could screw up the gun, but I don't mind. The idea of using a shotgun as a club is just too awesome, though I have yet to actually see an instance where the shotgun is held by the barrel and swung with full force...

[Ceeb]

Well, it could fuck up a rifle's alignment.

But like, a sawed-off shotgun, the accuracy is really a moot point. Beat some ass with that bitch!

[SFJake]

Well..

1-Melee
2-Pistols
3-Shotguns
4-Non-shotgun basic weapons (mostly automatic rifles)


This is a basic I am kind of used to and I've seen often. Its not just Doom, it just feels natural to assume that this is how it is to me.

Granted though, with the way weapons are selected in Doom, having multiple weapons under one number can be painful, but at least, its not confusing.

I believe the rest doesn't really matter. I'd just try to split them up and fill all slots, unless you really have many weapons. Some people don't like spreading their fingers passed 6-7 though (understandable: personally always bind 7-8-9-0 close to WASD), so you just keep the more powerful weapons in 5-6-7.

Sticking all explosives (or at least all that can hurt the shooter) in the same slot (say 5) is a good idea too, at least if you have many of these.

[Gez]

Gun experts might say beating enemies with guns could screw up the gun, but I don't mind. The idea of using a shotgun as a club is just too awesome, though I have yet to actually see an instance where the shotgun is held by the barrel and swung with full force...

Fist: ranged weapon. You throw them at your enemies, like Zharkov (or like Rayman).
Shotgun: melee weapon. You hold it by the barrel and bash people with it.

[qwerqsar]

Gun experts might say beating enemies with guns could screw up the gun, but I don't mind. The idea of using a shotgun as a club is just too awesome, though I have yet to actually see an instance where the shotgun is held by the barrel and swung with full force...

See it more like that: in the heat of battle, it doesn't matter how you hit with your weapon. I have the experience with the sword: in a good melee, you just use the blade to move the other weapon away. The rest is hitting the enemy down with kicks and fists. I can imagine someone bashing the backside of the rifle in an enemies face once he gets too close

[NeuralStunner]

Heh, I went through a large part of Halo using the Assault Rifle purely for striking. Helps that the buggers have lousy morale to begin with.

[wildweasel]

When I think about what weapons should go in one of my mods, I tend to go for a little bit of overlap, as many people prefer different sorts of weapons. I tend to prefer one-shot, one-kill type weapons like shotguns, magnums, and rifles, but don't usually like the slow rates of fire that they afford. So I make an "intermediate" weapon with moderate power, relatively fast fire rate, and an ammo type that can be found more commonly. WWHC-Diaz's basic side-arms are somewhere in between Doom's pistol and the chaingun in terms of power and overall versatility.

The key is giving the user some freedom to decide which weapon is the best for a given situation, as opposed to forcing them to pick one weapon over another on the pretense that, say, the plasma rifle does more damage to a Cyberdemon than a rocket launcher because the Cyberdemon is immune to the rockets' splash damage.

[Amuscaria]

1. Weak Hitscan/ Alt-fire melee (automatic when you get into melee range)
2. Shotgun/Spread-weapon
3. Rapid Fire projectile weapon
4. Slow explosive weapon
5. Rapid short range explosive weapon (flame thrower, pulse weapon, etc)
6. Beam weapon - fires a stream of projectiles every volley that shoots through monsters
7. Big bad-ass weapon - something with a cool effect ontop of the explosive; such as a lasting damage effect that decreases over time

[Phobus]

My more unique ideas (have either not been released yet or have been cancelled) are as follows:

Virus (ie. something weak expending ammo into stronger things with similar or superior weaponary):

1) Basic projectile spraying weapon. Weak, inaccurate but infinite ammo
2) Powerful and accurate projectile weapon.
3) Interesting projectile weapon with similar power to 2 and different ammo.
4) Weak explosives fired quickly with limited homing.
5) Powerful projectile weapon that fires many shots to produce a laser effect.

White Light 2 (Start off sort of playing Doom - turns into something more akin to DMC in first person):

1) Strong melee weapon useful for most situations (has a combo system that certainly nods to the Machete in Zen Dynamics) with a secondary, powerful projectile attack (limited ammo)
3) Shotgun and SSG only really supplied and stocked in secrets.

Pitch Black (Futuristic soldier with a multipurpose assault rifle complete with various attachments. Pace attachments with ammo availability.):

1) Knife (quick melee).
2) Assault Rifle (full auto primary fire with a bit of a spread) with secondary fire being highly accurate two round burst.
3) Same weapon, but secondary is a powerful shotgun blast with a pump to slow the player down a bit.
4) Same weapon, but secondary is a very powerful underslung grenade launcher that takes longer between shots than the shotgun.
5) Same weapon, but secondary is a flamethrower (limited range, high damage, very quick ammo absorption).

All ideas I'd love to have finished and released, but either take too long to fully implement or I just lose interest for some reason.

[Apothem]

I've always thought of weapon design like a complex game of rocks paper scissors.

If you think about it, each weapon has to have a set of intended strategies. You design a gun around the purpose it is meant to fill in a video game. Depending on the type of gameplay you're looking for, this can be a multitude of things.

But the thing that you're looking for when making weapon behavior is that for each strategy that you can make out of a gun, there must be a way to deal with it from all the guns, if you're taking multiplayer into account. Now keep in mind that when I say all, it means that even if the strategy is weak, it's still there. Also, the behavior of the weapon must be consistent across each range.

For example, While a sniper rifle in Halo 3 is good against someone with a melee weapon at long range, at close range the weapon still behaves the same way as it does long range with it's accuracy etc. Therefore, while you may not be able to counter the sword successfully, the behavior in the weapon is consistent at all ranges, therefore, you can still TRY to counter.

These philosophies can also be applied to SP, but it more boils down to how easy or hard you want to make it to use certain weapons for each situation. You're basically mapping to the guns you want to be used.

That's the way I've always looked at it at least. Hope this helps.

[NeuralStunner]

Thanks for all the input, guys. Starting to look like the line between "new and exciting" and "friggin' confusing" isn't so fine as I thought.