11 replies to this topic

[innociv]

viewtopic.php_f=7&t=250 Has some nice weapon suggestions, but I had another way I wanted to complain, or put it.  I don't have weapons to suggest, I just have this feeling.

  This is a sci-fi game.  I have this huge peeve of just seeing a range of traditional bullet-in-cartridge guns in sci-fi games.
  It is a bit facepalm-inducing when you have a sci-fi game like Brink, and the game has less weapon variety than a modern shooter like Call of Duty.(Neither is a game I like, but puts the point across well.)  Halo, on the other hand, is a scifi game with a lot of different types of weapons with varying balance mechanisms.  The Needler also finally became useful instead of just a cute concept later on, too.

  From the weapons I've seen so far, and heard about, they're the most lacking aspect for me.  The way the maps look(both in design and playability) looks great.  The mechs look great.  The UI is looking pretty nice in the latest showing.

  But these guns.. They're plain and don't feel like a big mech is using them.  I expect weapons like on helicopters, ground attack aircraft, and tanks on the mechs.  They look so simpler to man portable things.  Granted, these are smaller mechs than mech warrior.
  What was the number.. 7 primary, and 4 secondary_  That number sounds fine.  I'm sure lots would like more, I wouldn't mind either, but every weapon should feel special like the rest of the game feels special.  The coolest one to me so far was is the cannon looking one, with how it recoils back and has those sparkles on hitting someone, and that swarm of missiles that looked to be homing.

  One weapon was like a minigun.  It spun and such, but it looked like a pea-shooter.
  A minigun is fine, but the feel of it leaves a lot to be desired.  I'd expect something more lke the GAU-8 on the A10, or here is a video of the minigun Blackhawks have.
  Some parts of the video are so awe inspiring and awesome.  That's what I want on my mech.
  Heck.. it could even be something that has so much kickback that it pushes your mech backward when you're in the air, like backward thrust from your jets.  That also opens up the weapon to actually be usable in objective gameplay to retreat faster like you would with a rocket jump in Quake, or Spindisk in Tribes.
  
  Which, the spindisk mention brings another thing to mention.  Tribes was a scifi game, it has neat looking weapons.  The spindisk is nothing but a rocket launcher in behavior.  It fires a projectile that explodes on project.  It isn't actually nothing but a rocket launcher, though, because it looks cooler.  Now, a spindisk I suppose is maybe a bit ridiculous for this title that's more grounded, but you get the idea.
  I also remember a mention of a shotgun, or scatter cannon.  This brings me to another example, in the same generation of games: Unreal Tournament's Flak cannon.  It is your close range hard to miss with weapon, but it's so much cooler than a shotgun.

  Even in the "near scifi" levels, there are really cool weapon possibilities that aren't plasma, lasers, so on.  It can just come down to the execution of them.  A GAU-8 is a minigun, but it feels so much awesomer than your average minigun.  The bright red tracers add a lot of awesomeness to the Blackhawks minigun.  Just the whole "omph" of them.

I don't think there needs to be a railgun rifle, sniper, smg, the same for projectile weapons.  Don't think there needs to be a semi auto shotgun, automatic one, and flame thrower.  I don't think there needs to be automatic firing rockets, fast moving rocket, slow powerful rocket, homing missiles, swarm missiles, and a grenade launcher.
What I do think is that the weapons all need to be unique and concise in their function, and be "cool".  Concise in function as in it doesn't overlap with other weapons.  Like, what's the difference between a grenade launcher and rocket launcher_ Just the arcing_  That's not very exciting.

Also, this white text on black background really hurts the eyes.

[Ashfire908]

tl;dr... Just kidding.

Yes, I agree with you totally. Beyond the simple function of the weapons (to make things dead), they need to look cool, sound cool, and importantly feel cool to use. Weapons need that special quality called awesomesauceâ„¢ that makes them fun to use and to be used against you.

You brought up a comparison of Call of Duty and Halo. Call of Duty's guns are relatively generic with many of the same type available, where Halo has distinctive weapons that are memorable. Although to me at least, Hawken isn't quite as sci-fi as Halo (flying around in space 500 years in the future fighting aliens), so I don't see say something like a plasma gun working, though I've heard thermite been talked about over time which would fit in the game since it's more a gritty sort of thing (throwing sparks and glowing hot).

The machine gun (that's how I heard it refereed to as) is underwhelming in the sound department I guess, especially if you call it a minigun (which brings to mind an image or something more than a gun they just goes pew pew pew). I wouldn't say that the guns are as bland as say weapons from Call of Duty, however anything I say about the weapons distinctiveness would be totally speculation on my part, as I haven't even seen all of the weapons or obviously played with them (the only one I've seen in detail is the machine gun). I did catch a glimpse of some dual barreled gun in Part 2 of the GameTrailers videos (@7:16) that looked fairly distinctive however.

[innociv]

Thermite burning looks beautiful; it's so bright, all those sparks.  But.. Thermite is a powder.  You need something liquid, and sticky, to be an effective burning weapon.  I'm not sure if something like "liquid thermite" is possible because the powder is a large part of what allows it to react how it does, similar to the coating mentos has plus coke.

Flamethrowers aren't really practical, especially not against vehicles.
But if you had something shooting out a jet of copper, that'd make a beautiful, awesome, close range weapon.

[Flyingdebris]

The thing is that the overall aesthetic of Hawken is practically cobbled together Frankenstein'd mechs.  I really wouldn't be expecting railguns and assorted high tech gear.

also, a jet of copper in and of itself is not dangerous to armor.  Its only when that jet of copper has no where else to go but INTO the armor because every other direction happens to be an explosion focusing the jet forward like a violently popped zit, that it poses a threat to armor.  Thats why we have RPG cages on vehicles, to cause the HEAT warheads (the type of warhead that uses the plasticized copper jet principle) of the RPG to be triggered prematurely, thus giving the copper jet room to disperse, saving the armor.

[innociv]

Railguns aren't high tech.  We'll have navy ones in a few years.
But I certainly agree that there shouldn't be railgun assault rifles, smgs, so on.  A railgun is best as shooting a solid round(as in, no explosive), at high speed.  So, it's good for a sniper.
But a railgun can sound cool, and a lower fire rate is reasonable.
But canons are cool too.  I love seeing those lighten up shells fly across the map, with that little bit of arc, and that big boom.  A totally different feel of a railgun.
Both are slower firing weapons, but very different.. but yeah, like I said, weapons need concise purpose.  There shouldn't be a fast firing weapon, one of the same with HE shells, one that's just slightly slower and bigger diameter bullets, one that fires things fast with coils instead of catridges, blah blah blah.  Conciseness = good.

Now, things like lasers, plasma bolts(which don't make sense.  Plasmas heat disapates quickly so plasma is only sensible as a warhead, or close range), don't make sense to me.

What you said about RPG's isn't nessisarily true. It depends on the shaped charges gone shape.
The angle of the cone of the copper in the shaped charge decides its effective range.
Before this range, the "carrot" is too wide.  Past this range, the tip of the "carrot" breaks up from the "tail" because the tip is moving faster than the "tail".
Some shaped charges effective range is many meters, they shoot off from the warhead far away.  The "Sensor fuzed weapon" is one example, which shoots shaped charges from 15 meters away.  
Some, like the RPG, Bazooker, Panzershrek, and many HEAT rounds explode just a fewinches away.
Most modern ones have two warheads, one going off first at further distance to set off reactive armor before the main one. (The Hellfire is one of these, I believe)

That wasn't what I was saying, though.  I was saying that a weapon feeling awesome is independant of the technology.
The blackhawks minigun and GAU-8 on the A-10 are old technology, and freaking awesome to see.
On the other hand, the rotating barrel gun in Hawken looks very puny.
I'd rather see something that sprays high RPM, like 1200-1800, in short bursts, with sexy looking tracers, and pushes you back some. Maybe explosive rounds, too. Same idea of a weapon in that it's a short or medium range fast firing gun with some bullet spread, but way cooler.

[Ashfire908]

innociv said:

Railguns aren't high tech.  We'll have navy ones in a few years.

Navy will have in a few years -> future tech -> cutting edge -> high tech. The same might be said for lasers and such.

[The_Silencer]

innociv said:

Railguns aren't high tech.  We'll have navy ones in a few years.
But I certainly agree that there shouldn't be railgun assault rifles, smgs, so on.  A railgun is best as shooting a solid round(as in, no explosive), at high speed.  So, it's good for a sniper.
But a railgun can sound cool, and a lower fire rate is reasonable.
But canons are cool too.  I love seeing those lighten up shells fly across the map, with that little bit of arc, and that big boom.  A totally different feel of a railgun.
Both are slower firing weapons, but very different.. but yeah, like I said, weapons need concise purpose.  There shouldn't be a fast firing weapon, one of the same with HE shells, one that's just slightly slower and bigger diameter bullets, one that fires things fast with coils instead of catridges, blah blah blah.  Conciseness = good.

Now, things like lasers, plasma bolts(which don't make sense.  Plasmas heat disapates quickly so plasma is only sensible as a warhead, or close range), don't make sense to me.

What you said about RPG's isn't nessisarily true. It depends on the shaped charges gone shape.
The angle of the cone of the copper in the shaped charge decides its effective range.
Before this range, the "carrot" is too wide.  Past this range, the tip of the "carrot" breaks up from the "tail" because the tip is moving faster than the "tail".
Some shaped charges effective range is many meters, they shoot off from the warhead far away.  The "Sensor fuzed weapon" is one example, which shoots shaped charges from 15 meters away.  
Some, like the RPG, Bazooker, Panzershrek, and many HEAT rounds explode just a fewinches away.
Most modern ones have two warheads, one going off first at further distance to set off reactive armor before the main one. (The Hellfire is one of these, I believe)

That wasn't what I was saying, though.  I was saying that a weapon feeling awesome is independant of the technology.
The blackhawks minigun and GAU-8 on the A-10 are old technology, and freaking awesome to see.
On the other hand, the rotating barrel gun in Hawken looks very puny.
I'd rather see something that sprays high RPM, like 1200-1800, in short bursts, with sexy looking tracers, and pushes you back some. Maybe explosive rounds, too. Same idea of a weapon in that it's a short or medium range fast firing gun with some bullet spread, but way cooler.

Oh yeah.. tracers!

[innociv]

Good tracer effects are important.

Like in Black Ops, they're so ugly.  In MW1, they look nice.  The engine doesn't matter when artists are daft.

I'd imagine the tracers in Hawken for the rapid firing gun are just a placeholder. They just look like a basic one in UT; just like a circle partical that's been stretched, you can really see the flatness of them from first person and they look more like a Star Wars blaster than anything.
I hope they look cool in future builds, though; I hope it's not forgotten about.  Good particle effects are important.



The other particle effects, like smoke and some of the sparks stuff, look great, so I'm sure the current tracers are just a placeholder.
But that "Chug chug chug" monotone of the weapon firing constantly isn't very inspiring either.
It also looks really odd.. It appears to be a single barrel weapon, yet it's spinning.

[Flyingdebris]

Fair point on the copper jet, you are right.

and yeah, i definitely would like to see something interesting done with tracers.
IMO, crysis had some of the best tracer effects i've seen.

in the case of miniguns. Part of the seemingly low ROF might be due to resource issues.  Keeping track of an absurd amount of projectiles can be problematic.  However there are ways to fake having a faster ROF than you actually have.  Such as in the firing sound FX, making it sound like one drawn out whine/roar rather than having distinguishable gunshot sounds.  Animating multiple tracers and having a hit effect that looks like multiple impacts for what would technically be 1 shot.

This is how the miniguns in the BF 2 and onward games on the blackhawks are handled.

[innociv]

Yeah, you're right.
Most games don't have weapons that fire faster than 600-900 RPM.
Even the MG42 in many games, I remember Red Orchestra was the first game to actually have it fire at 1200 RPM(Other games had it firing at 600-900, sometimes with a fake 1200RPM sound and animation)

But, this is 2011, servers can handle 1200+ RPM weapons now.  The key would be to have it fire in bursts.  Those just one second bursts from the Blackhawk look awesome.

But there is no reason why Hawken couldn't have a gun firing 1000 RPM as far as the server is concerned with a 2000RPM animation/sound/effect.
Of course you'd want some sort of overheat mechanism on that.
But firing in bursts looks cooler.  The current fast firing gun seen in the trailers just feels like it's droning on and on...

But slower firing higher caliber guns, like the 30mm on the AH-64 Apache, and the 25mm on the Bradley APC are cool too.  The AH-64 gun has a lot of 'omph' to it, and the rounds are typically HE so the impacts look cool. Like this. (Rather graphic.)


I feel a lot of times that the particle effects in games are largely ignored.  Like, look at the particle effects in BF3 vs. MW3.  It doesn't really have anything to do with the engine now days, it's just to do with the time investment that only shows up in real time rather than screenshots.  Lots of Hawken's effects are looking cool and the sounds that go with are sounding great, so I'm not really directing that at Hawken, I'm just saying in general.

Oh, and I ran into this:
Minigun fire from a gunship.  I think it's the GAU-2 like on the Blackhawk.

Obviously a long exposure.

And I think this GAU-2 video is better than the earlier one I linked.

[The_Silencer]

Well, probably 2 or 3 tracers per second would suffice, IMO. Just make them useful having no need to make them look like laser beams. Moderate short "tails" would fill the gap pretty well and these would much more benevolent from a rendering standpoint.

And firing in bursts is the future, indeed. And if tracers somehow lag the game then to hell with them!. Simply as that.

[Snub_Barracuda]

I would love if rocket launching caused a huge blast in your face and obscured your vision with fire and smoke for a second after they are shot off. Maybe even a small lingering cloud in the spot it was fired from or something like that.

Something with alot of effect, to give you the feeling of shooting off something powerful, similar to how i imagine it would feel to launch an rpg, but as a massive and powerful machine capable of firing something with a bit more kick. I want to feel like i just dropped a nuke when i fire the thing, ya know. Stop in the heat of things, time one last perfect shot and BAM, good game.