Weaponry - Fiction VS Reality

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  • Weaponry - Fiction VS Reality

    Do you agree with my opinion? 10

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    I have an important suggestion to make: all the weapon models I have seen thus far on the ModDB and otherwise seem to be based solely on the real life weapons, like the Spas and Deagle. My suggestion is to, instead, merely edit the original weapon models and add details to them that were previously not there, while also treating the sounds in that same way. The recognizeability of the Deagle and it's laser sight's sounds aren't worth throwing away for realism in my most honest opinion.

    As for things like the M249 SAW, which in OpFor had the reload happen off-screen because the bullets clipped through the gun, you can fix that without making it like a real M249 - just add a gap through which the bullet go through to get to their intended position. No need to remove the recoil that pushes Shephard back or the low accuracy, both just add to the usefulness of the weapon (you can shoot it while jumping backwards to gain momentum, fun stuff).

    Or the Shotgun/SPAS-12, just add an in-game explanation for how it works, such as that the tip of the chamber is separated from the back which has a mechanism to load both the barrel and the last part of the chamber, which serves as the secondary barrel, and which only gets fed if the primary barrel is fed as well, otherwise having the shell go back up to the primary barrel.

    The Deagle is one a lot of people miss the point of. Yes, it has no sights, that's why you have to use the laser sight to be accurate. Having it have iron sights but still be inaccurate makes no sense, and making it accurate without the sights breaks the balance and nearly inutilizes the laser sight.

    The Glock you simply have to have the see-through magazine and the other details from the original that make it different from an ordinary Glock.


    Things such as this are very important to me, and it would mean the world to have such imagery be faithfully conserved and remastered, especially considering how faithful the concept arts for the grunts themselves are.

    Opfor, or real life?
    Images

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  • You're quite a few years late if you hope to influence any decisions about the weapons, or really anything in general :P

    However, just to respond:
    We aim for gameplay over realism. However, we are remaking everything, yes, everything, from scratch.
    We are not modifying original weapons or sounds. We are totally remaking them from nothing.

    The majority of our weapons will be aesthetically realistic whenever possible. Although some will not function realistically. The shotgun is a great example. It will still have it's double fire ability, regardless of it being radically unrealistic.
    Also the fact that some guns don't use correct ammo types.

    Just because the original games failed to make their weapons look realistic does not mean we are going to follow suit - Which no doubt was simply a result of the low graphical fidelity in games at the time and the time constraint for the development. There is absolutely 0 doubt in my mind that if the devs could have made the guns look extremely realistic that they would have. The HD pack is actually a great example of them attempting to improve upon that.

    Idk where you are getting your information from, or if you are just assuming (which is rarely a good thing to do), but our deagle functions exactly like the original. The laser attachment is still there and alternate fire works the same way.
    The m249 still functions the same way as well. Has push-back and all.
    And as mentioned above, the shotgun functions exactly the same as well.

    You might be disappointed by this, but it just honestly doesn't make sense to make all the guns unrealistic and imaginary. Plus it would just result in them looking low definition.
    Most people, ourselves included, enjoy a high visual fidelity of realism, so that's what we are going for.

    I hope you will still stick around and enjoy the final product regardless :)
    Senior Level Designer | Environment Artist @ Operation Black Mesa & Guard Duty | My Website

  • Dev wrote:

    You're quite a few years late if you hope to influence any decisions about the weapons, or really anything in general
    Why have a suggestions and feedback board in the forum if that's the case? It's a huge waste of both parties' time and of the servers' storage.

    Dev wrote:

    However, just to respond:
    We aim for gameplay over realism. However, we are remaking everything, yes, everything, from scratch.
    We are not modifying original weapons or sounds. We are totally remaking them from nothing.
    Yes. I acknowledged that in my post. This is a suggestion. I am suggesting you do otherwise so as to not have OBM be another generic, realistic looking FPS remake like BM.

    Dev wrote:

    The majority of our weapons will be aesthetically realistic whenever possible. Although some will not function realistically. The shotgun is a great example. It will still have it's double fire ability, regardless of it being radically unrealistic.
    Also the fact that some guns don't use correct ammo types.
    Again, old news to me. I am suggesting you keep the original OpFor designs as this is a remake of a game with aliens, healing pools and giant worms. There is no reason for it to be hyper-realistic.

    Dev wrote:

    Just because the original games failed to make their weapons look realistic does not mean we are going to follow suit - Which no doubt was simply a result of the low graphical fidelity in games at the time and the time constraint for the development. There is absolutely 0 doubt in my mind that if the devs could have made the guns look extremely realistic that they would have. The HD pack is actually a great example of them attempting to improve upon that.
    That's BS. Mods and games from all times have had realistic portrails of firearms before, such as CS, DooM and Battlefield 1942. Not only that, but the HD pack was made by Gearbox, not Valve. Yes, OpFor was made by Gearbox, but most of the weapons in it were by Valve, from HL1, with few exceptions - namely the Deagle, SAW and M40A1. And those were stylized as well.

    Realism coming before style is a plague that's spread all over the games industry. Stop forcing realism and perfect visual accuracy into everything that shouldn't have it. When HL1 and OpFor were made, games were all about being stylish and recognizeable. That is the point of this article.

    The HD pack was made about 4 years later for Blue Shift, the Dreamcast HL game - making it available for the other expansions and HL1 was something Valve did much later for the Steam release of the HL series, after somebody sent them a letter asking for it. Not only that, but the HD pack is almost universally hated for being realistic and changing the weapons. So it's more of an argument for my point over one for yours.



    Dev wrote:

    Idk where you are getting your information from, or if you are just assuming (which is rarely a good thing to do), but our deagle functions exactly like the original. The laser attachment is still there and alternate fire works the same way.
    The m249 still functions the same way as well. Has push-back and all.
    And as mentioned above, the shotgun functions exactly the same as well.
    I didn't say it wasn't the case, I was just making a point about other aspects that are also not realistic for good reason, and how I would go about it - how I'm asking you to go about it.

    Dev wrote:

    You might be disappointed by this, but it just honestly doesn't make sense to make all the guns unrealistic and imaginary. Plus it would just result in them looking low definition.
    Most people, ourselves included, enjoy a high visual fidelity of realism, so that's what we are going for.
    That's just flat out wrong. Look at HL2's Crossbow, BM's new Shotgun, DOOM 2016's arsenal - you're pulling this "unrealistic and imaginary = bad and ugly and low def" shit out of your ass. Nobody I know would prefer it if HL's arsenals were all realistic copies of the real life things except in 3D model form. You're hanging around the wrong kind of people, people that are not Half-Life fans.

    Your reply has nearly killed my interest in OBM, and I truly hope you'll read this reply to your reply and have a change of mind.

    Good night.

    Post was edited 2 times, last by AlphaGarg: cleared out the gameplay bit ().

  • I understand your point. I´m also that kind of person who would like some games to be more stylized.

    In case of Half-Life, it is thin line here. While it was stylized, it still felt very realistic and honestly, I think first HL1´s weapons look the way they look is not only the style, but also general graphics possibilities they had that time. I personally also stick with weapons being as realistic as possible (by the look) with combination of stylized sci-fi high-tech weapons. I believe I speak not only for myself if I say these experimental/alien weapons are most memorable weapons, not MP5, no GLOCK.

    I believe the route we took is the best to keep the spirit of the original game. I can also say, the most suggestions I have personally got from fans was mostly in favour of realism here.

    We know this won´t make everyone happy, but we cannot do that. That´s why we also gonna support custom models and mods. If there is a lot of people asking for what you are asking for, then you can bet there will be addon soon enough after the release.

  • I dunno, most people don't even know OBM is still in-dev, due to the ModDB page's silence. And the idea that most people in general prefer realism sounds absurd to me, considering how much everyone hated CS:GO's realistic weapon sounds update and loved BM's HL1-style Shotgun update. Yes, the Spore Launcher and Hivehand are more memorable than the MP5 (or 9mm AR as it's called in-game) and Glock (or 9mm Handgun as it's called in-game), but those are still worthy of reproduction, or at least inspiration, in the case of BM's new Shotgun.

    The popularity of mods like Juniez's weapon pack and the Romka HECU pack for BM scream to me that most people *don't* want realism over style. But if the OBM crowd is really THAT different from, well, the entire rest of the Half-Life community, then that's just sad, since everyone I know in the general HL community has an interest in OBM.

    Another point I find worth making is the slippery slope, once you throw away the Handgun from HL1 and replace it with a generic, boring Glock 17, what'll be next? Will the Ospreys have a door in the back rather than on the sides? Will the HGrunts wear generic military uniform? Will OBM become another Black Mesa? From the looks of it... yes.

    BM didn't stop at the guns that resemble real firearms. BM redesigned the Gauss, Egon, the HEV suit, then redesigned entire levels, then redesigned Xen completely, and then redesigned the gameplay and it all went to shit. So I can only beg you to stay where you are and not slip down any further, I already saw you guys completely changed the Osprey and the HEV suit, and I really don't want it to get any worse than that. But hey, if you want to I guess you can. All I can do is ask, and if you think OBM would be a better game if every gun looked generic, then so be it.

  • AlphaGarg wrote:

    I dunno, most people don't even know OBM is still in-dev, due to the ModDB page's silence. And the idea that most people in general prefer realism sounds absurd to me, considering how much everyone hated CS:GO's realistic weapon sounds update and loved BM's HL1-style Shotgun update. Yes, the Spore Launcher and Hivehand are more memorable than the MP5 (or 9mm AR as it's called in-game) and Glock (or 9mm Handgun as it's called in-game), but those are still worthy of reproduction, or at least inspiration, in the case of BM's new Shotgun.

    The popularity of mods like Juniez's weapon pack and the Romka HECU pack for BM scream to me that most people *don't* want realism over style. But if the OBM crowd is really THAT different from, well, the entire rest of the Half-Life community, then that's just sad, since everyone I know in the general HL community has an interest in OBM.

    Another point I find worth making is the slippery slope, once you throw away the Handgun from HL1 and replace it with a generic, boring Glock 17, what'll be next? Will the Ospreys have a door in the back rather than on the sides? Will the HGrunts wear generic military uniform? Will OBM become another Black Mesa? From the looks of it... yes.

    BM didn't stop at the guns that resemble real firearms. BM redesigned the Gauss, Egon, the HEV suit, then redesigned entire levels, then redesigned Xen completely, and then redesigned the gameplay and it all went to shit. So I can only beg you to stay where you are and not slip down any further, I already saw you guys completely changed the Osprey and the HEV suit, and I really don't want it to get any worse than that. But hey, if you want to I guess you can. All I can do is ask, and if you think OBM would be a better game if every gun looked generic, then so be it.
    Moddb is silent, yet we are still active elsewhere, including Facebook. Also, we had longer "brakes" with updates than is this one and I can assure you there are good reasons for the current silent period. We are working hard.

    As for the topic, I personally got only the feedback I said I got. I also think we have received generally positive feedback when showing our weapons so far. That´s why we consider our current route as the right one. As I said, we know everyone won´t be happy, hence we want to support modders (just like BM devs do) so you guys can always make the game even better. This was, by no doubts, also huge part of success of the original game too.

    We (and BM team also) are in not very easy situation. Making a remake of a game is in many ways more complicated than making a game from scratch. We have certain boundaries and sometime, it´s hard to see where the limit is. We want to keep the spirit of the game, yet we know changes must be done.

    Speaking of Black Mesa, I think calling it shit is very unfair. They did actually very good work, maybe not perfect, but I mind you, the game is not finished and you definitely cannot judge it yet, especially not regarding XEN. Yes, that one will be redesigned a lot, but it doesn´t mean it will be bad, just saying...

  • At this point it seems like you are merely posting to continue whining, because you want your irrational opinion to be viewed as a universal fact.
    Plus in your OP you mention a ton of gameplay features, which i then responded about to tell you we aren't changing them in that regard - which you then responded to, acting as though you already knew all that info, but complained about it anyway. It made 0 sense in a rational persons mind and just further makes me feel like you have absolutely no clue what you are even talking about, whatsoever.

    So in the spirit of having a rebuttal to your opinion, here are some of my responses to your "points/facts":

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    while also treating the sounds in that same way. The recognizeability of the Deagle and it's laser sight's sounds aren't worth throwing away for realism
    Sooooo you want us to make our sounds super low quality, in outdated audio formats, and make them sound just over all really old and crappy? Right... got it....
    Apparently you don't realize this, but other than doing the above ^, or just copy/pasting the original sounds, we can't make them sound exactly the same. The era in which the original game was made is a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE reason why they sound the way they do.
    Fun fact: We still have sounds for the laser dot. If we did not, then it would be realistic. In real life, there is no beep sound, or buzz sound, or any of that when you toggle a laser. You are essentially complaining about nothing.
    In this case, you are better off just playing the original game.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    As for things like the M249 SAW, which in OpFor had the reload happen off-screen because the bullets clipped through the gun, you can fix that without making it like a real M249
    Sooooo you want us to make the M249 not look like an M249?... Ya, makes total sense. Why on Earth would we go through the trouble of making a M249 look like an imaginary weapon? It would then no longer be an M249. It would just look like a generic weapon.
    Again, clearly you do not realize that back in the day, game engines could not handle a lot of polys and high res textures on their weapons. You keep confusing technological restrictions, as well as time-constrictions, with design choices.
    Anyone who is not blind, not mentally handicapped, and not absolutely naive of guns or game design can easily realize this fact.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    the Shotgun/SPAS-12

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    The Deagle

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    M249 SAW

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    The Glock
    I find it funny that you keep mentioning the weapons with their real-life names. But then persist with the silly notion that they are all imaginary weapons and should not be realistic.
    Again like I said above, clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. You conflate technological restrictions with design choices to the point at which its immensely absurd.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    make it different from an ordinary Glock
    This is a perfect example that you have 0 idea what you are talking about. There are many different models of Glocks. The particular one used in the original game is a Glock 17.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    faithfully conserved and remastered
    It's either one or the other. You can't have both.
    Again, it sounds like you should stick with playing the original game. Don't worry, the original game is not going to disappear from existence when we release OBM.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    this is a remake of a game with aliens, healing pools and giant worms. There is no reason for it to be hyper-realistic.
    Good luck getting a "hyper-realistic" look using the Source engine... But anyways, there is also no reason to not make it look realistic. The best part about HL is that it puts the player in a believable real-world scenario and then thrusts completely abnormal and unrealistic scifi elements into it. It's like "imagine if aliens invaded earth". Not "imagine if we lived in a cartoon world or parallel dimension where everything is different and abnormal to reality and then just continue to have more strange things happen, which actually aren't that strange because this universe is already completely unrealistic".

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    Mods and games from all times have had realistic portrails of firearms before, such as CS, DooM and Battlefield 1942
    Thanks for completely proving my point :) HL, for it's time, had VERY realistic portrayals of weapons. Like i said before, you have to be blind or ignorant to not see that they are striving to make most of their weapons realistic.
    Idk if you are on drugs or something, but 99% of the weapons in Doom are entirely fictional and scifi.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    That's just flat out wrong. Look at HL2's Crossbow, BM's new Shotgun, DOOM 2016's arsenal
    Clearly you don't realize that the crossbow in hl2 is totally imaginary... It shoots a friggin' electrified bolt of some kind. Contrary to the majority of the Human weapons in HL1, which, as you keep hilariously stating repeatedly the real-life names of yourself, are based on real weapons.
    The BM shotgun redesign is one of the few, if not only, real-world weapons that can get way with a redesign and being unrealistic. Because the original was soooooo incredibly generic and unrealistic to begin with that you could potentially make it into anything you wanted.
    As for Doom 2016, it's quite amusing that you mentioned that. As said previously, 99% of the weapons in that game are entirely FICTIONAL/do not represent real weapons. By your own ridiculous regard, Doom 2016 is a total shit game because the weapons look nothing like the the previous games'. Those pesky developers keep adding detail to them trying to make them more believable.
    Prepare to watch this and get triggered over how much they changed every single weapon:

    The worst part is that they removed all the pixelation from everything. Don't those dumb developers realize the pixelation was a style/design choice and had nothing to do whatsoever with technology at the time?! Don't even get me started on the sounds.. /sarcasm

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    When HL1 and OpFor were made, games were all about being stylish and recognizeable
    They were certainly about being recognizable. The largest thing that made HL1 recognizable was just how damn realistic it was compared to everything else at the time. Again, you clearly don't understand the technological limitation of that era.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    You're hanging around the wrong kind of people, people that are not Half-Life fans
    I didn't realize the entire development team and myself were not HL fans.
    Fun fact: I played HL when it was first released, before you even existed. you don't get to determine who is and who is not a HL fan.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    most people don't even know OBM is still in-dev, due to the ModDB page's silence
    Did you take a poll or a survey? How did you come by this information? Or are you just a mind reader?
    If you actually look at our moddb page, you can clearly see we respond to tons and tons of comments on a almost daily basis. Claiming it's silent is just wrong and absurd.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    different from, well, the entire rest of the Half-Life community, then that's just sad
    Are you a liaison for the entire HL community? That's interesting, because you're only 16 and I've never heard of you.
    What's actually sad is that the most vocal opinions are those of people who enjoy whining and complaining and just being all around negative. Most people who are happy with a product don't bother to say anything. So of course the ones you are going to see are negative.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    Will OBM become another Black Mesa? From the looks of it... yes
    Oh God, I hope so!
    I'm glad you have that much faith in us! Being a project with high quality assets, levels, voice acting, and financially successful would be a dream come true.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    BM didn't stop at the guns that resemble real firearms. BM redesigned the Gauss, Egon, the HEV suit, then redesigned entire levels, then redesigned Xen completely, and then redesigned the gameplay and it all went to shit
    Personally i love every change they made, except for the limited (crouch) jumping. Again, it sounds like you should just stick with the original games. No one is forcing you to buy or play any of these games.
    Tip: I don't know if you are aware of this, but you can buy HL:Source on steam. It sounds exactly like what you want.

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    Will the Ospreys have a door in the back rather than on the sides?
    lol... dude.... *mega face palm*

    AlphaGarg wrote:

    and if you think OBM would be a better game if every gun looked generic, then so be it
    Clearly you do not know what generic means. Making a gun look like a specific model is not generic - it's specific.
    Making a gun look low-definition and unrecognizable as a specific model is generic - the shotgun in HL1 is a great example of something being extremely generic.
    I would face palm again, but my forehead hurts from that other one.


    But in closing, it sounds like you should just stick with the original game. Like sugar already said, there will be workshop support. So if that doesn't satisfy you, then idk what will and we can't please everyone; and we are fine with that.
    Senior Level Designer | Environment Artist @ Operation Black Mesa & Guard Duty | My Website

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