A pity and somewhat a problem that some weapons (Immolator, Guard cannon, Rollerwand, Antlion thumper, SMG2, ML and frag grenades, normal physcannon, binoculars and… I think that's all of them) cannot fit in the XBOX weapon selection system (enabled automatically on the PC with a gamepad). Guess I'll have to figure it out… although there are 1 slot in the right and 2 more at the bottom and weapons can be regrouped via weapon scripts and xbox weapon slots settings, the only way to both keep (and even add more) weapons and distribute them properly is to make some of them occupy the same slot, like the crowbar and the iceaxe to be the only melee at the moment, or to make a player choose between the crossbow and the sniper rifle and so on. So… (re-)implementing the weapon drop system? Seems this way.
Ah, no, I forgot about the flaregun.
The weapon drop system is a must in every mod that tries to recreate the Beta. I mean... its the only choice! Are you seriously gonna make Gordon carry that absurd amount of weaponary and equipment? Such simple stuff such as selecting a weapon would be a nightmare.
I suggest a weapon system based on categories. One weapon per category is the max you can carry. There are special weapons you always carry with you (Gravity Gun).
The categories could be like this: Melee, Pistols, SMG's, Rifles, Heavy, and Special.
The actual and deep problem with console-type overlay is that it only allows 4 categories as opposed to 6, 7, 8 or even more for PC overlay.
I myself actually prefer to play games on a gamepad now, so I urge to make the system universal. And it seems that the way to do is to make categories for Melee, Pistols, Rifle and Heavy Weapon, and to bind things like binoculars or grenades on a separate button making it a function rather then an item.
Another way is to make, lets say, 2 weapon slots available for each category, making it, well, at least close to realistic, then make weapons occupy the same buckets and to hard-code whenever you can pick up a weapon or the engine recognize the slot as occupied and you can't equip a weapon until you drop the one you carry. So you have pairs, like I) Crowbar/Iceaxe/Stunstick + Physgun, II) USP/Alyxgun/Magnum + Flaregun/Stickylauncher, III) MP7/MP5 + Kalashnikov/OICW/AR2/Shotgun/Sniper rifle/Crossbow, IV) Tau cannon/Missile Launcher/HMG/Guard Cannon/Immolator + Frag grenades/Molotovs/Hopwire/Spoiler weapon that I am not a bit close to make yet. Something like that… Binoculars and Fire Extinguisher are outclassed from thath but I suppose these can bi bind at certain keys since G, Z, C are left unoccupied.
The thing I don't like about it is that current mod build can, like HL2, either have the 1-weapon-per-category system or the multiple-weapons-with-buckets system and not something in between.
The other thing is that hadrcoding which weapons go in what category by entity names is something inelegant.
Im not that much in coding, so I cant quite say my opinion about that.
Another idea Ive been thinking about for a while is to have weapons specific to certain chapters. The Guard Gun and the Hopwire would be great weapons for the Citadel levels, and the Ice Axe would be a great melee for the Borealis.
Just an idea though...
Well that is quite much what I've been planning already. Actual plan was to split the whole arsenal into three groups, ranging by weapon power, and to make so by using two centric moments when the character lose his equipment: Airex train wreck and C-130 crash. Maybe not all the stuff, but like that. So that 1 group is City-Depot and it includes crowbar, 9mm USP, CP MP7, shotgun, and a physgun given by Eli. Probably a couple more. Then Freeman loses pretty much all of it (physgun excluded) and then, for Airex-Kraken, acuires throughout the chapters OICW, sniper rifle (soldiers do also carry MP7 and shotguns but now you have to choose based on a new system), Tau cannon, iceaxe, flaregun, pistol… and for the last chapters, Vertigo-Citadel, you have nice guns like Guard cannon, HMG, RPG and stuff.
So it wouldn't be that you gradually get all the weapons together, but that you can use some part for some chapters and make a choice between weapons present, like shotgun<->sniper rifle, OICW<->Kalashnikov, MP7<->MP5 and so on.
Well, I finally got that idea covered — mixing the one-weapon-per-category system and the bucket based system (so the mod has now two weapons max in 1 category*). Not that I was bashing my head against it the whole time, just pretty occupied with other stuff on weapon system, AI and some features.
So what it took was just opening player.cpp (and player.h), changing Weapon_DropSlot function so it takes 2 attributes — int weaponSlot and int weaponPos, and further modifying it into taking pWeapon->GetSlot() AND pWeapon->GetPosition(), so all that is left is to slightly edit CHL2Player::Equip function found in hl2_player.cpp to send Weapon_DropSlot( pWeapon->GetSlot(), pWeapon->GetPosition() ). Oh and also define WEAPON_PRIMARY_POSITION 0 and WEAPON_SECONDARY_POSITION 2 on top of hl2_player.h, along with setting HL2_SINGLE_PRIMARY_WEAPON_MODE to 1. And that about does it, now all you need is to set interchangeable weapons to have same positions occupied (e.g. crowbar will have slot 0 and position 0 and so will iceaxe, or pistol and .357, etc.).
Well at least that's my way. Perhaps there is more efficient one?
The bonus here is that it takes a little effort to change it all to the old system — all that's needed is to change bucket and bucket_positions values back.
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* Although there are more than 2 'weapons' in some slots — e.g. melee, physgun and brickbat in the first one. That fully depends on developer.