Guns, guns, guns, guns! news - Blaze

Speed modeling weapons was a great idea. One week for modeling the weapons. Another week for texturing. The textures are semi-temporary, at the very least I will eventually add some details into the handles.

The weapon functionality is not yet fully implemented, some of it is still just placeholder type of stuff. All the weapons fire projectiles, so you can't just point and click moving targets and hit.

Muzzle flashes and models for the projectiles are missing (except there's a rocket model). With muzzle flashes the projectiles could initially spawn invisible, and become visible after they've travelled a short distance. This should make things look better in the third person view.

Currently the player model has up/down aiming done with animations and pitching the model. The animations go in 15 degree steps up to 60, and pitching will add the last 30 degrees. Don't know yet if this will be the final solution for up/down aiming, but at least it didn't require the model to be splitted into legs and torso.

Read below for descriptions/plans about the weapons. The weapons have 5 classes: Melee, Automatic, Slow, Explosive, BFG. You can probably guess which ones are which... There could be some gameplay meaning for the classes in some gamemodes or difficulty settings.. like you could only carry one weapon from each class.

E-Blade:
You start with this weapon. It shoots a short range energy beam that can penetrate multiple enemies. Self-recharges 50 ammo.

Laser Rifle:
Fires red laser beams at a fast rate. The beams could go through a few enemies.

Minigun:
The minigun fires 2400 rounds per minute, so be prepared to find enough dakka.

Plasma Rifle:
Fires blue plasma bolts with small radius explosions. Slightly slower fire rate than the Laser Rifle.

Shotgun:
It shoots a bunch of orange pellets. The large ones bounce and explode into more orange pellets.

Railgun:
It accelerates metal slugs into high velocities that rip through enemies.

Grenade Launcher:
Launches incendiary grenades that explode on impact and burn for a while.

Rocket Launcher:
Launches high explosive rockets. The rockets accelerate into full speed after a short moment. The rockets could be guided (at the moment they're not).

Fire Blaster:
Fires a blob of napalm that continously burns and damages anything in its path.

Plasma Storm:
It shoots multiple large plasma bolts that rain down death and destruction all around. It's like christmas every time :P

In the previous news post I was going through/wonderd about all the artstyles/etc I had used.. and where to go next. By the looks of it, it seems I'm going for a pixelated sort of retro style. I'm using some modern features too, though the bump maps are just done by the DarkPlaces engine from the base textures, and specular is the same strength on everything. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so good. For the moment I have no plans to make actual bump/specular maps.

The engine stuff.. I've thought I'll make the game on DarkPlaces, and later make some model pack for Doom, which may include some minor modifications. The model pack would be an extra.