Firearms:Source Mod for Half-Life 2 Firearms: Source Weapons Showcase: Vollmer and others news

Howdy folks, big update today! As you can see from the images below, we've finally added the Vollmer. We've been working on the Vollmer for a long time, and it's been one of the weapons which I have personally mandated as a top priority for official inclusion. For those who don't remember, the Vollmer was a featured weapon in Firearms: Half-Life up until around 2002, when it was cut from the lineup. We're proud to be including it in FAS, and I think you all will agree that the model and skin seen here do it justice.

Before I get too far into weapons, I want to mention a few community developments. First, server hosting company NuclearFallout.net has graciously offered to provide free voice server hosting for our alpha testers. They're now an official sponsor of Firearms: Source. This is exceptionally nice of them, and on behalf of the FAS team, I would like to thank them. We're already using the voice server, and I'm even scheduled to appear on the Radio channel for an interview on Friday by a member of the FAS Report.

Behind this effort is community member Skitz. As I said, we'd be bringing you more community-driven events in one of the last updates, and this is another part of that program. Skitz and the PR team are working hard on reaching out across the net and providing exclusive interviews, screenshots and information about FAS to sites like FPS Banana and Planet Half-Life. Since the team doesn't have time to rabidly push out PR beyond updating the webpage (we're much too busy making the game), volunteers like these are really doing us a great service. Thanks to guys like Skitz, we'll be getting better coverage and securing better file hosting for minimal problems on day one. Big thanks to the PR team - you guys are doing a hell of a job!

But back to death, chaos, mayhem and destruction.

The always-talented Schmung is the author of the model. This was one of the first projects he did after joining us as an Affiliated Developer, though it's certainly not been the last. Our military adviser, OIF veteran and former 11B TheUltra4sshole (aka U4), has provided his typical firearms expertise to help us get the Vollmer looking as accurate as possible. You'd be surprised, but there's not exactly a lot of references images for this weapon floating around the internet. Racer445 has busted his ass getting us the skin, which as you can see, is amazing. thisismyname09 has done the animations, though they're incomplete - we're planning on adding the 'remaining bullets in the link' so when you only have a few rounds left in the belt, you'll actually see them dangling out of the feed tray and slowly being consumed until they're all gone. Expect to see more of that in future updates.

Today's update isn't about just the Vollmer; we have a lot of other guns we'd like to talk about in a short recap of the last few posts. But before I talk about them, let me go into a bit of detail about the Vollmer and how it's going to be coded. First, a quick review of the credit system: As you should be aware, Firearms does not use a typical weapon slotting system. We're the only game I know of that lets the player completely customize their loadout in whatever way they choose. When joining a server, each player is given 30 credits to spend on whatever combination of firepower, body armor and items they want. With over 36 guns (and counting!), 3 vest types, 3 kinds of armor addons, and numerous misc items, there's an unfathomable amount of options available. With no resrictions other than the 30 credits, players can choose all kinds of setups from traditional primary/secondary/knife/grenade and "medium" amounts of body armor, to carrying five pistols and six grenades, two assault rifles and a helmet, a sniper rifle and a submachinegun, three submachineguns and a pistol, or just go full heavy armor and a shotgun.

The Vollmer fits into our lineup as a 12-credit automatic weapon. Thanks to its super-short barrel, light weight, 50-round box magazine and belt-fed feed system, combined with the fact that it fires the 7.62x51mm NATO round (yes, you heard that correctly), it's not going to function like any other weapon in our lineup. And we like that - cookie-cutter weapons that you see in every shooter on the market today are uninteresting. The Vollmer, on the other hand, will be anything but uninteresting in Firearms: Source.

Well, I said there'd be more than the Vollmer, didn't I? I'd like to recap on some of the last few updates we've done. First, the M16A2. Keep in mind as we go over these the concepts inherent in the credit system and the ways in which you can configure your player.

The M16A2 is implemented with semi-auto and 3-round burst only. As an 11-credit assault rifle, it falls on the cheaper side of the lineup, which is about in-line with the reduced capabilities given the lack of full-auto. However, it's still a beast at medium and long ranges, with exceptional accuracy. Good players will be able to take advantage of this for rapid headshots on burst at short range, and use the high accuracy of semi to pick people off at longer distances. Personally, I love the M16A2 - it's got a perfect mix of stability, range, accuracy and power to be useful no matter what map you're on, and yet plays very differently than the other weapons. Accuracy and shot placement, just like with the G3, are the key to success with the M16. Our M16A2 was modeled by SiD, skinned by Stoke and animated by thisismyname09.

Speaking of the G3, Schmung modeled us one a few months ago and racer skinned it for us. Truly amazing work, if I may say so - but then again, you saw their work above, so this should come as no surprise. The G3 is implemented much like the M16 in that shot placement is the key to winning firefights. The G3's full-auto mode is crippled by its massive recoil, meaning it's not useful beyond short distances. Semi-auto mode mitigates this to a good extent, but the ROF differential vs other automatic weapons means shot placement and headshots are crucial to survival. Those with great skill in aiming, or who to like to play "stand-off" and "pseudo-sniper" with their assault rifles should find the G3 a joy to use.

Then of course, there's the Beretta 92FS. This is yet another Stoke/SiD combination with brilliant animations by thisismyname09. You can see our video of the Beretta 92FS in action on either Moddb or our Renders page. The 92FS is currently the only silenced pistol in FAS, though we're planning on changing that. The silencer can be attached/detached with the alt-fire key, and does not need the Stealth skill to enable it. However, the stealth skill does hide your Beretta kills from the enemy team when you have the silencer attached, so it does provide a very useful purpose. For sneaking around the enemy's backfield, the 92FS can - when shot good placement is used - be the sneaky player's best friend. They'll literally never know who killed them.

And last but not least is the OTs-33, our first fully-automatic pistol. This one has been modeled and skinned by Naota with animations by thisismyname09. The update you saw earlier in September actually showed the OTs with an outdated skin. The renders you see here today fix that. As a full-auto 9x18mm double-stack handgun packing 18 rounds, this thing is a beast. It's about a credit shy of being on par with some of our lower-end submachineguns, making it a great alternative backup to the rest of the handguns, none of which have full-auto capability. Snipers who find themselves bushwhacked up close but not having the credits for a bigger gun will love the damage output potential of the OTs, whereas rushers will love being able to pour out firepower quickly when their primary runs dry.

As far as development progress goes, we've just accepted the very talented Stealth Silver as our newest player model skinner. He's actually been working with us on various projects since July, and I'll leave that to your imagination for the time being. We are VERY excited about showing off his work in a near-future news update, and I'm sure he is, too. Stealth has been busting his balls on getting us 2D artwork, and we on the team have been very impressed with his dedication and expertise. If you happen to see him in IRC or around the forums, please give him a "Welcome aboard!"

Pace is strong on all fronts. Weapons are still our weak point, as we started off the summer not having any weapon modelers and needing to cut around 70% of our lineup due to permission issues. But as you can see above, we're knocking them out about as fast as we possibly can. As far as the code goes, I'm hoping to show you all some features in the next update, due out in about 2-3 weeks.

And finally, we have an IRC channel. It's been around for a while, but we haven't really advertised it that much. The dev team actually hangs out there and talks to people when we're available, so if you want to hear more about the game or just be a more involved member of the community, feel free to stop by. Our channel is #firearms-source on GameSurge.

As usual, we're still looking for talent. Can you do quality maps? Can you do quality animations? Are you a sound artist looking for work? If so, don't hesitate to contact me at hitman@firearms-source.com.

What do you think of our update today? Do you have any ideas on how we can better communicate with the the community? What do you think of the Vollmer screenshots and renders? What are your thoughts on the Vollmer's implementation? Please post a comment and share your thoughts!