Magazines/clips dont work like that

[vultures]

Sure, if I understand you. A bonus for protracted aiming and firiring at a predictable target wouldn't be out of line.fg

To sum up, if you're at your best (health-wise), and take some steps to ensure you don't get surrounded, there should not be any penalty to it. If you clumsily stumble into a trap and draw all sorts of b.a.d. upon you - and start firing, reloading an getting hit in midst of it, you're bound to have some trouble aiming. If you're just counting steps and placing shots - why is it so hard to be adept with shooting? That way, you're calling merely everything that's throwing the player a favor - a bliss: obstacles, walls, even fires. If I had a six feet long pole, and kept seven zombies at bay by swinging it while standing on a door tile, it'd draw some attention as an 'off', this way - it's just bullets and ammo, man. :-)

[ejseto]

Another example is the way spare magazines work glosses over the complication of magazines not being universal in the name of not having a profusion of magazines everywhere, and the way magazines are reloaded compromises natural interaction with them in the name of UI simplicity. I thought long and hard about how to have a maximally realistic and unobtrusive interface for the feature, and I’m still willing to revisit it months later.

I’d think it should be something like every gun is a RELOAD_ONE type, unless you have spare magazines. Reloading a single round would be a slightly faster action than reloading the entire magazine, but obviously you only get one round instead of a full mag. If you haven’t managed to find any spares for that weapon, then you’re stuck reloading one at a time. I don’t think there’s any way around the “profusion of magazines everywhere” while still being realistic. You’d just have to adjust their rarity so they’re not everywhere. The game would track how many rounds are in each magazine, and if your current mag was already full, reloading would reload a single round into the most-full spare. You could also limit “active” spare magazines to those you’re actually wearing on your person, at least once the container system is implemented. If you didn’t have any pockets, you’d be stuck reloading single rounds. Or, instead of limiting them, if different containers had different access times, then it would just become highly impractical to rummage for a magazine in your rucksack, while pockets meant specifically for holding spare magazines like on a tactical vest would be fastest.

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:17, topic:1959”]Another example is the way spare magazines work glosses over the complication of magazines not being universal in the name of not having a profusion of magazines everywhere, and the way magazines are reloaded compromises natural interaction with them in the name of UI simplicity. I thought long and hard about how to have a maximally realistic and unobtrusive interface for the feature, and I’m still willing to revisit it months later.

I’d think it should be something like every gun is a RELOAD_ONE type, unless you have spare magazines. Reloading a single round would be a slightly faster action than reloading the entire magazine, but obviously you only get one round instead of a full mag. If you haven’t managed to find any spares for that weapon, then you’re stuck reloading one at a time.[/quote]

Two issues with this. Reload-one for high-capacity magazines is a non-starter, it’s bearable for weapons that hold less than 10 or so rounds, but for extremely common weapons with 30+ round magazines, this would be a terrible UI. We could perhaps add an option to reload one, or reload X rounds instead of how it works now where you have to reload the entire magazine, but the default would still be a keypress or two (ammo type selection) to reload the entire magazine.

I don’t think there’s any way around the “profusion of magazines everywhere” while still being realistic. You’d just have to adjust their rarity so they’re not everywhere.

I think in practice it wouldn’t be that terrible, because you could strip magazines from guns, so if you found two Glock 19s, you can take one of them and the magazine from the other one. This would be OP if the magazines are generic, but if they’re gun-specific they’re exactly as common as their guns. The other issue is people having to worry about juggling multiple kinds of magazines, but again the default is to use the one you found with the gun (we’d spawn guns with magazines by default.), so probably not too bad.

The game would track how many rounds are in each magazine, and if your current mag was already full, reloading would reload a single round into the most-full spare.

Tracking the ammon is pretty much a non-issue, technically this is very simple to do, the UI is the only hard part. Reloading spare magazines a round at a time makes more sense, but again the default would be to fully reload a magazine, with single-round being an option in case it’s tactically preffereable. (like pop a few rounds into a spare magazine while a zombie shambles across the road toward you)

You could also limit “active” spare magazines to those you’re actually wearing on your person, at least once the container system is implemented. If you didn’t have any pockets, you’d be stuck reloading single rounds. Or, instead of limiting them, if different containers had different access times, then it would just become highly impractical to rummage for a magazine in your rucksack, while pockets meant specifically for holding spare magazines like on a tactical vest would be fastest.

Yea something like that, if we did magazines as items of course they wouldn’t be stored in the gun anymore (except double magazines I guess? have to decide if we want to mess with that, or possibly just gloss over it as a magazine with double capacity)

The main issue with all of this is keeping the UI streamlined enough to not irritate the hell out of everyone by having to micromanage ammo handling. I think it’s achievable with good default behavior, but we’ll just have to see how it pans out.

Re: recoil affecting all ranged weapons, yes everything I said about recoil management and aiming applies equally to archery.

[GlyphGryph]

A simple thing I want to do is have moving around significantly bump recoil, so to take really accurate shots you’ll have to stop moving, currently it’s backwards where you can fire, then move away from enemies while you’re waiting for recoil to drop.

Just as note, I think this will probably get rolled into the combat rewrite I outlined on github, assuming it isn’t already done by the time I start it. At that point, pausing and patience and whatnot will become a large part of combat for people either in ranged OR melee, so with a decent mechanics tutorial (practically required after the changes) I think it makes perfect sense.

[KA101]

@KevinGranade

Last I checked, the gun-porn game JA2 1.13 still assumes the mercs can magic up (an) empty mag(s) of the correct type for any weapon they can get, provided they’ve ammo for it. Unless you want to make mag starvation a serious part of the game (and you may well want to–just making sure), the current generic-mag system isn’t so bad.

[Morrigi]

[quote=“KA101, post:25, topic:1959”]@KevinGranade

Last I checked, the gun-porn game JA2 1.13 still assumes the mercs can magic up (an) empty mag(s) of the correct type for any weapon they can get, provided they’ve ammo for it. Unless you want to make mag starvation a serious part of the game (and you may well want to–just making sure), the current generic-mag system isn’t so bad.[/quote]
Ever played 7.62 High Caliber? It’s the spiritual successor to JA2 and indeed has unique magazines and separate boxes of ammo.

[Tee]

Id love to have seperate mags for each gun. Although id like a way to change a clip so it would work in a similar gun that uses the same ammo. Of course, itd require a high crafting skill and high firearms skill to do so.

[ejseto]

Two issues with this. Reload-one for high-capacity magazines is a non-starter, it’s bearable for weapons that hold less than 10 or so rounds, but for extremely common weapons with 30+ round magazines, this would be a terrible UI. We could perhaps add an option to reload one, or reload X rounds instead of how it works now where you have to reload the entire magazine, but the default would still be a keypress or two (ammo type selection) to reload the entire magazine.

I think you’re exaggerating the tedium a little bit, though it wouldn’t hurt to have a “reload X rounds” button either. The main thing I hate about RELOAD_ONE weapons is the fact that you’re basically a sitting duck for up to 19 turns (with the Marlin) since every reload takes at least one turn regardless of your speed or the actual move cost. Spamming ‘r’ wouldn’t be that bad, I tend to just spam the repeat last craft button rather than bother with the craft until out of materials one, for example. I suppose it might be disconcerting to new players though, who would probably expect Call of Duty reload mechanics.

[kevin.granade]

The main thing I hate about RELOAD_ONE weapons is the fact that you’re basically a sitting duck for up to 19 turns (with the Marlin) since every reload takes at least one turn regardless of your speed or the actual move cost.

If this is the case it’s a bug, you should be able to reload at the stated speed…
Just looked at the code, yea this is totally a bug.

ugh… this might be a generic bug with all of our extended activities, it’s zeroing out your remaining moves before queuing up the delayed action, which means you lose whatever fraction of a turn you have left in addition to the stated cost of the activity. It’s not going to be particularly noticeable with very long term activities, because the time is dominated by the normal time to take the action, but for very short actions like this it’s more than doubling the time the action takes.

[vache]

I’ve just skimmed through this, so forgive me if I missed something important, but I think a separate ammo/magazine management interface might be too much. I think using the same Unload/Reload system would work fairly well, ie: pistol magazine holds 10 rounds, pistol holds one clip, reloading the pistol encompasses the actions of removing empty clip and placing new one in. Granted this system needs a little bit of an overhaul too, but the way I see it, we already have several interfaces that kind of clutter things I think. There is a delicate balance between offering many options and not overwhelming the user. We have the inventory screen, the advanced inventory screen, the worn inventory screen, the crafting screen, the player screen, and so on, so that when I play, I feel like I spend just as much time managing my inventory and digging through my interfaces as I do actually playing the game. I would try to consolidate as many systems as possible into as few interfaces as possible as long as you can avoid kludginess and awkward workarounds. Maybe combine crafting/loading & unloading/weapon & ammo management into a generic item combination screen? It shouldn’t be a “horadric cube” type system as it sounds like, but it should be possible to work something out with it.

[Bladerock]

You reload a magazine which is used to reload a firearm faster.

Not unlike reloading a bone needle or any other item. Actually, not unlike reloading a firearm with the extra magazine mod twice. Except that you can carry more than one spare.

It’s not a separate interface.

[kevin.granade]

I’d probably be happy with a reload command that targets the inventory, I think the thing that’s bugging me is that you have to go i->item->r instead of r->item, I pretty much never use the former functionality, so it seems awkward to me.

Note this would be a new command, not replacing the current “reload wielded weapon” command.

[Morrigi]

In my opinion, all firearms requiring magazines to fire IRL should require realistically compatible magazines in-game. This would also give rise to fun things like Beta-C mags or, being in the future, quad column magazines. In addition, the missing mechanic of rounds left in the chamber by a partial reload would be a nice touch.

The new container system, when released, should minimize the inventory clutter of this mechanic to tolerable levels. It would be quite useful to be able to designate a specific container for, say, ammunition and have a weapon automatically reload from this container. Having seen another thread suggesting fabricators capable of creating items, it would also be easy to adapt that system to make magazines in case of a shortage.

Now, let it be said that ejecting and reloading an entire magazine takes an order of magnitude longer than simply reloading your weapon with a second, full magazine. This should be reflected and would make gunplay more interesting at earlier stages in the game due to limited magazines. It also might make revolvers more attractive due to their still-effective rate of fire without utilizing a magazine. Of course, speed-loaders should still be available.

[Tee]

You make a great point. Revolvers would suddenly seem a lot more useful. I mean, they wouldnt have as high of a fire rate, but you’d be able to keep sustained fire for a longer period of time. Eventually your character would get skilled enough in revolvers to reload one extremely quickly, too.

[ClaytonRISING]

I’ve been through the terrors of reloading handfuls of magazines (M16A2), I don’t know if I’d wish it upon my survivor lol.

[Tripsky]

in regards to reload time, i suggest a mechanic that when your character starts reloading you can watch the process of each reload/time as they desperately slam bullets into the clip… i mean magazine.

for example - you just unloaded your final round in your glock at the upcoming hoard. you hit reload. the text ‘you eject your magazine and start reloading’

then your character starts sliding bullets into the magazine, and with each bullet the appropriate time passes. that way you can see the hoard coming towards you. you might get up to six bullets before they’re almost on top of you and decide to stop, slam your magazine back in and hope that 6 is enough.

as far as the interface goes maybe hitting ‘wait’ to chamber the next bullet, or if it just ticks through automatically and you can interrupt it if you want to stop, like when you study a book, but obviously on a much shorter time frame.

i know some won’t like this because it will slow gametime down a little, and some guns can hold A LOT of bullets, so maybe a safe reload (by hitting ‘r’ again) will skip to the end of the full reload, for those meatier high capacity weapons.

for me though it will create a lot of realism with guns, plus give a better feel. you’ll develop sidearms you prefer for skirmishing because of their quick reload on the fly etc

[ballfairy]

its a good thing someone stepped in for me as I would not have been as merciful

having a individual magazine system would be neat, and this would also add to the way you can plan out your weapons, and the nice thing is you can still simplify it (IE .223/5.56x45mm magazines all fit the same guns like in real life with the exception of a handful of guns, thanks NATO) and this would also be neat to see as you could have Ready magazines and magazines in storage. (IE magazines/stripper clips for your sks or whatever in your backpack are harder to get to, but if you have some kind of bandolier/magazine pouch system/Kevlar vest with mag pouches you could have those mags ready to be quickly reloaded into the firearm, say like a Kevlar vest could have 2-4+ pistol magazine pouches and 6+ rifle magazine pouches or maybe some kind of belt system you could create, for instance equipping a regular old leather belt allows you to then wear holsters/magpouches/other allowing customization of loadouts and depending on how many pouches/attachments you have to the belt adds to the encumbrance (1-3 items only maybe 1 encumbrance or 0 but above that you take 2 and then a few more items and you bump it up to 3 etc) and without the belt holsters are basically useless, with the exception of a bootstrap ofc)

but that’s just what I typed up with lightly skimming over the thread if something has already been mentioned (Which it likely has)

[Iosyn]

[quote=“Endovior, post:6, topic:1959”]Yeah, they’re not terribly uncommon, though they are fully generic, so there’s no difference between gun types. Also, you can’t exactly scavenge the magazine from one gun to use in another, you need the generic spare magazine item.

Also, obligatory…

[/quote]

Just wait until we see speedloaders for revolvers.
Just use an automatic goddamnit.

As for the spare magazine mod we currently have, we should be able to make something similar/homebrew with duct tape.

[ClaytonRISING]

As for the spare magazine mod we currently have, we should be able to make something similar/homebrew with duct tape.

Duct tape? I uh…I don’t think that would work.

[Iosyn]

Magazine + Duct tape + Magazine.