Weapons

Honestly, I think the layout isn't going to get much better than UT3. When playing it now, I'm amazed at how different yet complimentary and balanced they all are.

There's one idea I'm pretty fond of, though. It's about the melee weapon's alt fire:

* electric hammer: I thought this up this afternoon, but hear me out, please (or just vote for another one without reading it. I won't mind ). Let me first state that UT3's idea of dropping a player's power-ups is neat. But even then, it's near impossible to execute (besides: you're better off killing them with the primary...it's equally dangerous but scores you a frag and they'll drop the item that way as well). I believe it was Lecter who proposed that the melee weapon should let you immediately steal the power-up for yourself when you kill someone with it. I not only agree to that but like to take things a step further. My proposition is that the alt fire works much in the same way as the primary (meaning: you charge it up and touch an enemy with it), but the impact only damages your opponent's health, not the armor. If you kill your opponent this way, this automatically not only steals their power-ups, but all their armor as well.
Now...this alternative way of charging will do less damage (I'd say exactly 100 on a full charge). The idea is that you can either play relatively safe and charge with the primary (which deals more damage, but divided over both armor and health) or go in by charging the alternative fire and attempt to steal their armor...but chances are you may have to hit your opponent more than once. (note: all UT's had at least some way to tell whether your opponent was wearing armor).
The option of melee jumping will be exactly the same as on the primary, btw. The only difference is that the damage isn't divided over health and shield, it'll just be taken from your health total (which could be handy if you have armor you don't want to sacrifice but have a plethora of health pickups nearby).

(copy-pasted from my poll about the melee's alt fire).


@ambershee: which link gun are you talking about, exactly? I agree it was pretty weak in UT2004, but in UT3 it was anything but weak.
While it'd be interesting to have a starting weapon that can repair vehicles and nodes, I'm worried what this would do to TDM dynamics. That linking up would need to be seriously nerfed or even removed, or you'll end up with situations where teams just leave the other weapons be and dominate a match in a conga-line sense. :\

Taleweaver- it's largely irrelevant, as balance of previous games is not particularly relevant for a new game. The UE4 Link Gun can be tweaked appropriately. I shouldn't think it would affect TDM too much - I never really got the whole 'conga line' thing, because the Link Gun didn't actually work that way, it was a strict bonus on whether you were linked or not :/

rejecht said:

The UT3 Link Gun primary also had no dynamic light attached, while in UT2004 it did.

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I'm pretty sure the UT3 one did (as did almost all of the projectiles), but the radius was relatively small.

rejecht said:

Although lighting the entire path of a beam weapon would probably break a lot of frames, why not leave it as an option?

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UE4 uses a deferred renderer, so so long as it doesn't cast shadows, it may be totally viable, especially with some clever IES profiling.[/QUOTE]

I hope they bring back the lightning gun.

ambershee said:

I'm pretty sure the UT3 one did (as did almost all of the projectiles), but the radius was relatively small.

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I fired alongside a wall, but if the radius is small, I think it's a bit too small.

I hope they get rid of most of the generic dynamic light blobs, like when you fire a weapon.

ambershee said:

UE4 uses a deferred renderer, so so long as it doesn't cast shadows, it may be totally viable, especially with some clever IES profiling.

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Yeah someone on the forums pointed that out. My Laming PC probably won't handle it, but I'd like to have the option. Multipass!

Shadows might be a problem, though.. Some x-ray thing, or maybe catch player positions with a wider trace and spawn a dynamic light there, if they can cast player shadows.

And what about some new weapons, or ones returning from non ut franchise, as in the singleplayer games/early ideas for the weapons.
What about bringing back a melee closeup attack that was actually once implemented at Unreal but ultimately cut. Would work only with weapons that would be suited with it for example. Unreal had this kind of idea way before Halo etc made it "popular" and it certainly shouldn't be made the "Halo way". It should work bad-ass and be within the pace of the game.
Some more exotic/alien weapons wouldn't be bad for a change. Unreal 2 had few organic weapons(leech gun, turned into the spider gun, even though both based on the biorifle idea), the singularity cannon was entirely organic, izarian shock lance had alienish design as well as Impaler did (Unreal cut weapon) plus that had a massive blade and even the izarian shock lance was used for melee by the enemies but not by the player (in that way unreal2 feels odd there wasn't a closeup melee, i guess there wasn't to not make everyone say they would be copying halo again or something..). But why not a weapon which uses lightning/electricity more accurately? The 97 impaler alt fire produced an electric blast/shock upon impact of the fired charged crystal. In combination with water elements and such, this can be made to produce greater effects. What about flammable weapons? As evidenced by the u2 flamethrower and i guess the original stinger with the whole tarydium delayed burning/explosion effect after you pump someone
full of tarydium lead. There were enough old ideas like this that would work well, if you can't come up with something really new.
I liked that in UT3 some weapons were made more complex and slightly more real than their toy counterparts from ut2 times. So why not make it a little more varied here too but with different changes? I wouldn't say introduce all new weapons, but few new guns would be nice or replacement for the now dull old ones. If you say it wouldn't be ut anymore, that's open for interpretation. It would perhaps fit more into a real Unreal game and not UT. But why having UT stagnate completely when you can make some change? I certainly wouldn't stand a regular Unreal singleplayer game without some new weapon ideas/variations in play.

Changes why not but afaik the only weapon that people would probably like to see it changed or even wouldn't bother about its replacement I can say it's the GES

Yeah new weapons but the thing is about what weapons, some weapons were kind of bland in therms of function, Enforcer, GES, Minigun, RazorJack, UT2X rocket launcher, Unreal Stinger

I personally would like to see rocket launcher having accelerating rockets rather than constant speed ones and faster projectiles in general. The projectile speed was a major issue in UT2X because they are dams slow compared to the player's movement speed.

Damage over time weapons are kind of lacky in UT, yes. In therms of special weapons bechabious, we have two - three bouncers (Ripper/razor, flak and grenade launchers when they were implemented into ars / rocket launchers or as dedicated weapons) we have various explosives, hitscan and projectile weapons with some weapons combining the two (link/pulse, stinger minigun (ut3), shock rifle. but the thing is I think new weapons should be more solid than UT2004 extras or weapons like the Avril which have only one purpose -> being almost the sole anti vehicle weapon of vehicular modes, which is stupid imho.

Of course they should be more solid. I think the ut2004 new weapons were terrible too for most part. At least in UT3 avril could be used to kill player more easily other than just vehicle. In UT2004 its nearly impossible to kill anyone through all that smoke crap that's visible to them and impossible for you to really view the rocket trajectory (wtf).
I think you should see how more playful some of the original unreal weapons were before they were changed for example. Eightball originally shot rockets that bounced off wall before they ignited and their speed increased. You mentioned you'd like accelerating rockets for example.
The stinger was also very different as the developement went, the first version i know basically shoots slightly slower and alt fire has a spread-spray-fire of three shards(not the shotgun like burst-at-once of the later stinger) which makes enemies glow of pumped tarydium and if they get subsequently hit the tarydium in them slowly burns away, draining their health. The later stinger was basically a nailgun combined with shotgun and its damage and usefulness degraded over time too. I think those kind of ideas were really great for their time and fun too.

UT'99 weapons are better. In UT4 they're too slow. Reset time is too slow, feels like the mouse skips button clicks.

Psychomorph said:

UT'99 weapons are better. In UT4 they're too slow. Reset time is too slow, feels like the mouse skips button clicks.

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My opinion on the weapons specifically.

Sniper Rifle -> UT3 or UT4
Rocket Launcher -> UT4
Flak Cannon -> UT99
Minigun -> Toss up (I'd probably say UT4)
Ripper -> UT99
Pulse/Link -> UT4
BioRifle -> UT2004
Enforcer -> UT99
Impact Hammer -> UT4

I personally think that a sniper rifle or any bullet weapon shouldn't be hitscan anymore, but have some projectile speed. very fast at the point it won't be noticed at short range, but at range it would be noticed. I know this is kind of too realistic for an unreal game but in a way the sniper rifle wouldn't need to be slowed down because of this.
The only hitscan stuff should be those beam weapons like shock rifle, link alt, railgun type, lightning, lasers, etc ...
I think also bullet weapons should be able to ricochet from a 40° - 50° angle and less.
With this a weapon like the sniper rifle can be stealthy because at very long range it would be tricky to land a shot at someone moving, but still great against campers.

A minigun / enforcer type weapon will require more skill to use
Though I wonder aside of let's say fragmentary bullet for enforcer or explosive for minigun which kind of alt fire should be added to those. I mean something better than the use different ammo scheme or burst faster/ slower fire ones, also avoiding the boring idea of armor piercing because it doesn't change the function at all.

For the enforcer I have one idea aside of the fragmentary bullet (which makes it a sort of tiny shotgun) but I don't find it very fitting because it's a pistol and my idea just like the previous one fits more shotgun shells than bullets.

Okay, what about making the bullet weapons lose their damage the more distant they are from the player, not something too noticable but still. I mean it shouldn't be too lossy.
What about bringing back QUADSHOT also? It used to be just fine shotgun weapon before it lost the function and became dummy, with mods usually recreating it very badly, hence the need of quadshotgod to punish those INFEDELS...
For those who don't know what it's about, it inspired the four barrel shotgun in bulletstorm. The original however was pump action shotgun, reloading after four shots have been fired and altfire firing all what's left in the barrels currently. It was circular in design, making it a little bit like the eightball/rocket launcher. It had once a closeup melee function too/anim.
Flak cannon esnetially replaced this, even though its obviously not as devastating as flak.. But it used to be sort of cool fast paced shotgun weapon which worked better imo than the boring quake weapons, also the shells were very precise but lost damage the further away from target.
The idea of the fragmentary bullet by blade hunter could be used for this instead if it was ever remade.

There is many things that can be applied to the quadshot. Though the quadshot was originally an horror movie inspired weapon. While in Unreal, it was more a super nailgun inspired one from design perspective; the one from bulletstorm was more a direct inspiration from the phantasm 2 and 4 movies
[M]http://youtu.be/UkIgo4AnRdU[/M]

I fail to see how it's a super nailgun. Also if you only consider the 227 ou patch quadshot, that one has a way different model assigned which has been modified and that is not a pump shotgun anymore but works more like the quake 2 shotgun except in reloading it just rotates the barrels themselves but do not pump (it looks really odd imo). But I assume you did see the original quadshot mesh. In the upsx rework demo i released i used the original model plus some unused animations though this one isnt exacty how the original worked. I can link you to a video which has the original one working if you want.

dc said:

I hope they bring back the lightning gun.

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For me, the lightning gun is Q3A's weapon rather than UTs. Despite the fact they were used in different ways, I could never really overlook that. I'd rather see the sniper rifle return than the lightning gun.

The lightning gun was a weapon in the first Quake - but either way it's just a name, they don't function similarly at all.

The UT style lightning gun is a real thing, for the record. It's called an Electrolaser.

I've never played the original Quake, just Quake 3 Arena, so that's all I know it from. I know they have different functions, I said that in my first post, but it's just something I could never overlook.

A sniper rifle is a real thing too. I don't know, I just liked the 'feel' of the sniper rifle better. The lightning gun never felt quite right. I wouldn't be against it coming back, it's just a personal preference of the two.

The original Quake lightning gun was slightly more real than the q3a variant. It was also called the thunderbolt and is refered to as such in the game. It does function similarly except the original has the whole coil feel to it making it seem realistic a little more and gritty. The q3a version is just a doubled stick like thing which hardly feels like a gun, in fact it kinda reminds the first dispersion pistol upgrade when the gun "doubles"(and originally shot dual projectiles in the stage).

The Q3A lightening gun was basically two grey blocks that shot lightening. No colour whatsoever on the model, except for the horrible green casing.

The lightening gun makes everything brighter!

Until you die out of seeing too bright crap? And your eyes bleed? That's a really killer weapon.