An often overlooked point of realism or two

[deadnail]

Even in soldier of fortune there's one massive, gaping flaw. You can't run at full speed for miles straight and jump like a friggin' rabbit without getting tired. When carrying 50 pounds of supplies I think grappling and climbing would be more logical than jumping, although it would slow you down a bit.

Here's something else. Does anyone know how the Doom pistol works? It's a Beretta 92FS. It's a 9mm semiautomatic pistol that holds 15 rounds per clip. Picture that pistol in your head now.

Every magazine is basically a spring box. As you put the bullets in a spring pushes them upwards but there's a notch to keep them from all flying out (obviously).

Think of the pistol being empty. You slide a full magazine into the bottom. A bullet still isn't loaded. Now you pull the slide back. While back you see the first bullet in the clip come upwards. When you let go of the slide it slams forward, lodging the bullet into the chamber. When a bullet is in the chamber a small button is held down and the white dot on the side of the pistol is now red, a visual notice that the weapon is loaded.

Also, by pulling the slide back you locked the hammer back. All you have to do now is tap the trigger and it fires.

The hammer comes down hard against the bullet, firing it. The recoil pushes the slide back on it's own, and a ridge makes the empty shell casing fly out of the top of the gun to the right. Again, another bullet is pushed forward. The hammer is pulled back again. The slide closes and it's ready to fire.

When all fifteen rounds are fired and no more rise up from the clip the slide locks in place, essentially leaving the gun open. Pressing the release button on the side unlocks the clip from it's position and allows it's removal and replacement. Inserting in a full magazine puts the bullet into position; the slide pops forth and closes, leaving the hammer closed and another bullet in the chamber.

Having the hammer back makes the weapon a safety hazard. To ease it forward without firing, put your thumb on it and pull back while squeezing the trigger. Then ease the hammer down. A bullet is in the chamber but the weapon is not ready to fire... making the weapon much safer for personal carry.

A Glock is much simpler, however. It does not have an external hammer and the trigger pull is always the same. The weapon simply will not fire unless you pull the trigger, which makes it one of the safest pistols to own since its practically impossible to accidentally discharge it.

Because of the closed nature of semiautomatic pistols you can make use of supressors, or silencers. A silencer is attached to the end of the barrel of a closed-bolt weapon and it greatly reduces the sound of the firing. You can't deaden the noise made by bullets as they break the sound barrier, though. With this in mind you obviously can't silence a revolver... because of the gap around the bullets the sound comes from there, not the end of the barrel.


So here's my point. Video games today have just a set few animations for weapons, and I'm fine with that. Really. Games don't need to have all the physics down for these things. However, I think game developers (while modelling the firearms) should have a muted TV running a loop of a closeup of someone on a target range.

Simple details that have heretofore been sadly overlooked.

1) Proper weapon smoking effects. SoF is almost perfect in this respect... however, smoke also comes from every ejected shell casing and it tends to seep a little from the ejection port as well. The smoke in games today quickly dissipates. Now with 32 bit rendering becoming standard the dithering won't be an issue and the smoke can hang around longer and behave like it should.

2) Proper weapon animations. This one really bothers me but thankfully it has been paid proper attention to lately. Anyone remember SiN? That machinegun just pissed me off. The bolt sliding incorrectly, argh, just everything about it was beyond cartoonish and fake. Basically, even if the gun is fictional it is still based off of real weapons and proper attention should be paid to how it works.

3) Proper supplemental animations. You should see a thumb press the clip release button before it comes out. The slide should be locked back when he does it. Shell casings should eject from the proper place, yes, the ejection port, not just appear in the middle of the weapon (Half-Life) or fly right out of the damn barrel (Q3A) [Hell, even Resident Evil has this detail down cold!]. After all ammunition has been expended and more is found, a clip should be loaded and the slide (or bolt) should be moved to place the first round.

These are just a few, simple points of detail that have been usually overlooked for one reason or another. Nowadays in games, though, there is enough power available to do them justice. I don't think this detail should be overlooked anymore.

This isn't overly complicated, and it won't take ages to do properly either. If *half* the effort of texturing was put into weapon animation the result would be much more attractive (note I said 'effort' and not 'time').

Yeah, it probably won't happen with Doom 3. However, it *should* happen with a game using the Doom 3 engine.

[Guest PFCRon]

The time will come. We just need to find out how to expand memory. Who knows? The more realistic a game may seem, one of 2 things could happen:

1) The kid or kids (who lets their young kids play games like this?) would be given a good lesson in weapon management and would better understanding the real world. They would know how guns really work and would stay away from them beacause they don't want the hassle.

2) Nothing about their attitude will change and will still think video games are real; they could effectively kill someone due to their advanced knowledge gained from playing a video game. Imagine the reaction people people will get when they asked a 5 year old why they just shot someone and the kid answers, "I wanted to be like (whatever video game idol they practically worship)."

In a nutshell, the whole reason I think that games are less realistic is to keep kids safe. Parents should keep their guns in a safe place anyway.

Sorry if this was off subject. ::turns away, half-embarressed::

[deadnail]

I know practically everything I do about guns from MOVIES.

[Lüt]

deadnail said:

Even in soldier of fortune there's one massive, gaping flaw. You can't run at full speed for miles straight and jump like a friggin' rabbit without getting tired.

I know some people who aren't even military that would gladly prove you wrong there.

About the smoke, I have no idea how they'd get it to dissipate from the weapons and linger in the air. My guess is that for it to work effectively, it would have to be particle-based and they'd have to apply chemistry to the particles to get them behaving properly. That would be a real overkill on any processor, depending on how detailed they make the system. Code-wise, I think it would be much easier to do that than to make the smoke puffs actual "things" which meld together after floating around for a while. What I'm looking to see with this is that you'd be able to run around a room (say a bathroom like in the first map of SoF), shooting things with a chaingun, then sit there for a minute or two and watch the smoke expand, even out, and fill up the room. And possibly dissipate.

I suppose an idea to keep it under control is (if the setting is a facility), have air vents that the smoke "goes into", thus removing the particles from the map. If it's open-area, have it dissipate into the atmosphere.

Hell, if they did that I'd play it as much for the sake of making smoke clouds as I play Hexen2 for being able to destroy nearly every bit of scenery in the first hub. (The only time I play that game is to destroy the scenery :)

[deadnail]

Yeah, I have some marines in my family. I'd love to see them run and jump like crazy, never slowing down a bit no matter what, and having equal movement speed when carrying just a pistol or carrying ten weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammo for each, including fifty full size rocket propelled grenades.

If nothing else they should run less-fast, and I'd love to see someone make a three foot vertical leap from a standstill while carrying over 200 pounds of equipment. It can be done... but how rapidly?

Your description of the smoke sounds fine to me, so long as it's there I'll be happy.

[Amanichen]

Perfect Dark for N64 has these detials.

Most guns have to be locked (Cmp) and the falcon pistol when it's empty: the slide is back and you can see the barrel stick out the front.

Also you actually see animations of the weapon being reloaded (entire process from old clip to new clip).

[Lord FlatHead]

deadnail said:

If nothing else they should run less-fast, and I'd love to see someone make a three foot vertical leap from a standstill while carrying over 200 pounds of equipment. It can be done... but how rapidly?

Remember FlatHead's Second Law of Game Design : Realism should never get in the way of fun (unless intended).

[Lengis]

deadnail said:

Yeah, I have some marines in my family. I'd love to see them run and jump like crazy, never slowing down a bit no matter what, and having equal movement speed when carrying just a pistol or carrying ten weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammo for each, including fifty full size rocket propelled grenades.

If nothing else they should run less-fast, and I'd love to see someone make a three foot vertical leap from a standstill while carrying over 200 pounds of equipment. It can be done... but how rapidly?

Your description of the smoke sounds fine to me, so long as it's there I'll be happy.

Actually, becomeing tired and slowing down, has already been incorporated into some Half-Life Mods. FireArms is the most realistic game I have ever played. If you run too long, your character starts panting heavily, and u slow down to a crawl. You u jump a lot, u lose your endurance even faster. If you get shot, u start to bleed, and are required to bandage it or u die. Plus lots of other realistic things like, leg injuries, etc. However, these things shouldn't be put into Doom, because Doom isn't realistic, it's just fun, and I'm happy with that. However the reloading effects sounds good to me.

[Guest KilboypowerheaD]

dude, you have way too much time on your hands. but i agree (in part) they should make the weapons as realistic as possible, but for games pre-1998, give 'em a break, they had a hard enough time with all the light sourcing etc than worrying about little details like that. they have the technology now tho, so lets hope we see some of ur suggestions in Doom III

[Guest Employee 2-4601]

deadnail said:

I know practically everything I do about guns from MOVIES.

Same hear, I've also learnt most about guns from movies.