Nanite Weapon Holstering

Sirisian · 2012-02-25, 01:50 AM

In a recent tweet I made to T-Ray I tried to summarize a change to their holstering system in 140 characters.

Originally Posted by Sirisian

How are you doing holstering? Does the gun disappear? Make it dissolve into green glowing nanites and that's the holstering delay.

He clarified how their doing holstering right now:

Originally Posted by T-Ray

its just like gta

If anyone isn't familiar with GTA here's a video demonstrating the basic holstering and unholstering of many weapons. The idea is the weapon animates to a holstering position and the weapon disappears or appears in the player's hands.

Since we're in a science fiction world with nanites I think we could actually make the concept more believable. I explained the basic idea in the tweet, but I'll expand on it.

Say you you're holding a pistol and wanted switch to a MCG. The pistol would animate by dissolving toward the player's hands with a red/teal/blue glow along the borders depending on the faction. From a technical point of view it's a cheap GPU operation. You'll have to take my word for it. The time for the animation would define the holstering delay. The character would then move his hands into the position for the MCG as the weapon formed in his hands. (I haven't seen the movie, but there's a scene in the trailer for Green Lantern where the protagonist makes a MCG. It would be kind of like that probably but not as bright for the visual).

As a cheap visual (note, I'm not an artist) dissolving a pistol might look like:

Going from a MCG to a pistol would be similar. The MCG would dissolve into the player's armor then a pistol would form into their hand.

What this allows for is a way for large weapons (HA and AV) to get holstered by essentially going into the player's armor after dissolving so they aren't forced to just disappear instantly or fade away with no sci-fi explanation.

Any comments or similar ideas?

This is probably one of my more non-controversial topics.

Seems like win since we don't have visual holstering slots anymore.

VanuMAXGuy · 2012-02-25, 01:58 AM

If we can't have PS1 style weapon slinging over our backs, this would be a pretty rad alternative.

+1 from me.

VioletZero · 2012-02-25, 02:05 AM

How about "It's a design shortcut, don't think too hard about it."

FastAndFree · 2012-02-25, 02:50 AM

I really like this idea. Reminds me of the scene from Tron Legacy where the bad guys jumped out a window and summoned their Light Jets around themselves as they were falling. How awesome would it be if THAT was how vehicle spawning happened?

I can but dream

Although I guess if weapons just appeared out of thin air people might ask, not unreasonably, why you can't "carry" every single weapon in your empire's inventory

CutterJohn · 2012-02-25, 03:01 AM

That could be pretty sweet i think. Wouldn't be too hard to pull off either, just a particle effect and a moving transparency on the weapon.

Sifer2 · 2012-02-25, 03:14 AM

It still sucks they are taking all the little details out. Holstered weapons, vehicle enter/exit animations. But yeah since its Sci-Fi they could at least add an effect like this rather than just lazy weapons disappearing.

CutterJohn · 2012-02-25, 03:17 AM

Originally Posted by Sifer2

It still sucks they are taking all the little details out. Holstered weapons, vehicle enter/exit animations. But yeah since its Sci-Fi they could at least add an effect like this rather than just lazy weapons disappearing.

Honestly I'd prefer not having holstered weapons. I hate the look of giant weapons welded to someones back clipping through their backpacks. A single MA sized weapon looked ok, but dual HA/AV looked ridiculous.

DviddLeff · 2012-02-25, 03:37 AM

As long as the act of drawing your weapon doesn't make you light up like a Christmas tree I don't mind.

Bags · 2012-02-25, 03:47 AM

I like it.

Hermes · 2012-02-25, 03:57 AM

Mmm its a neat idea. But I don't really think I'm on board with it. You sort of have different levels of sci fi from gritty to glowy... and I like the fact that here we have a subtle combination of those elements - with the flashy extravagance mainly provided by the VS faction style.

In short I think it would alter the portrayal of TR/NC too much. If we can't have holstering I'd rather just let my mind ignore the seam than this.

Kudos on thinking outside the box though, I chewed it over mentally for a while

Death2All · 2012-02-25, 03:57 AM

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Honestly I'd prefer not having holstered weapons. I hate the look of giant weapons welded to someones back clipping through their backpacks. A single MA sized weapon looked ok, but dual HA/AV looked ridiculous.

Never thought I'd hear that, a TR CR5 with two MCGs on his back looked dumb? Hm...

I always love holstered weapons that you could visually see. I loved being able to tell what weapons someone had. It also gave a realism aspect to the game that everyone these forums seems to have a hard on for.

When I see a guy with HA and a Thumper and he retreats around the corner, I know to back off a little bit or else he's going to start pummeling me with his grenades.

If I'm in a MAX and I see a guy with AV on his back I know to be a little more careful when engaging him or he's going to rip me up.

I'm glad we can holster our weapons, though. I'd be really disappointed if we just constantly had our guns out and were for whatever reason incapable of putting them away. Especially since there's a lot of moments in PS where you don't always need your weapon out, I.E. waiting for a vehicle to spawn or organizing a raid in the sanc. I don't need to walk around with my weapon out like a mongoloid the whole time.

But holstering like "GTA" kind of worries me. Are we not going to be able to see weapons holstered on our backs? Say it ain't so

Bags · 2012-02-25, 04:13 AM

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

Never thought I'd hear that, a TR CR5 with two MCGs on his back looked dumb? Hm...

I always love holstered weapons that you could visually see. I loved being able to tell what weapons someone had. It also gave a realism aspect to the game that everyone these forums seems to have a hard on for.

This is the ironic part, since we are having classes because they want this goal... then they hide weapons.

Warborn · 2012-02-25, 05:06 AM

Originally Posted by Sifer2

It still sucks they are taking all the little details out. Holstered weapons, vehicle enter/exit animations. But yeah since its Sci-Fi they could at least add an effect like this rather than just lazy weapons disappearing.

It's not lazy, it's a consideration of system resources. If simply equipping a weapon creates some kind of particle effect, that's more of a strain on people's systems than otherwise, and for what? People are cool with guns just disappearing. Happens all the time in games. Not a huge deal. But if it means crappier looking explosions, or weapon fire effects, or whatever else, is it really worth it to have fancy effects for switching weapons? Or a lower frame rate?

SpLiTNuTz · 2012-02-25, 05:34 AM

Originally Posted by Bags

This is the ironic part, since we are having classes because they want this goal... then they hide weapons.

There uniform shows that class they are not the weapons. Plus once we've all played the game for a while we will all learn what guns certain classes can use.

FastAndFree · 2012-02-25, 07:01 AM

Originally Posted by SpLiTNuTz

There uniform shows that class they are not the weapons. Plus once we've all played the game for a while we will all learn what guns certain classes can use.

But say, it's a HA, he may or may not have a rocket launcher on him. No way to tell until he pulls it