So I don’t know a whole lot about bows and crossbows, but I love them in games, so I really enjoy playing archery characters in this game. I liked the selection of bows and arrows, but I found the selection of crossbows and bolts to be rather disappointing (though I find the bolt driver awesome and my current favorite weapon, it is not technically a crossbow). I was thinking about ways they could be expanded and did a little research, what I discovered was that crossbows and bolts are ridiculously misrepresented in this game (bows and arrows as well, but not quite as badly). Bolts especially seem to be unrealistic/simplified to the point of silliness. In this game bolts are portrayed as sharpened sticks. That’s basically it. Just thick little sticks with sharpened ends, that somehow manage to fly true and penetrate armor despite being pretty much equivalent to the unfletched fire hardened arrows(which have appropriately abysmal stats).
In reality basically all bolts have fletching and a head, just like arrows. In fact, they have a very wide variety of heads, some of which are far more devastating to body armor and flesh than small arms fire.
I’m basically suggesting reworking archery items in general to be more realistic, interesting, and rewarding, offering a wider variety of options than simply: bad, okay, better, best. A lot of effort has gone into diversifying guns, while archery seems to have been neglected.
Does anyone have opinions on this one way or another? Is there a reason why archery is in the state it’s in or is it simply that no one has thought to change it?
It’s not so much that we haven’t thought of how to change/improve it, it’s just that nobody has actually implemented said improvements/changes yet.
Well… I for one am all for new crossbow bolts.
It’s not so much that we haven’t thought of how to change/improve it, it’s just that nobody has actually implemented said improvements/changes yet.[/quote]
If I can work out how to go about doing it, would it be okay if I worked on this? I have some experience coding(college classes) and time to waste, but I’ve never worked on a collaborative project so I really don’t know where to start. Basically, are you guys open to relative newbies working on this or should I just leave it to the pros?
We’re always open to new people joining the project (in fact it’s sorta a requirement as some veterans drift away over time). The first step would be to setup a github fork and download the github compatible ap of your choice (I suggest the official one, but there are others out there). Then just setup your compiler of choice and you’re ready to make, test, and then submit your own changes for Pull Requests to be reviewed.
Thank you for the information!
Once I am ready to start seriously working on this, where should I go to discuss the balance and usefulness of my changes? While I’d intend to base the stats of the new and modified items on a mix of real life performance and the stats of similar in-game items, I would definitely want to discuss my decisions with others before going too far with them. Should I discuss them on the forums here, on github, or both?
Generally the best place for early/formative/idea-based discussion is here on the forums. Once you have the basics down and actually start you can make a [WIP] Pull request on github for more technically aimed discussion about things that you could do/change from how you are currently doing them/the intended development direction. Another potential discussion source is the IRC channel, which can sometimes reveal flaws/benefits to an idea that haven’t been thought of yet.
So generally:
Forums - basic idea discussion, basic balance
Github - technical implementation, fine-tuning balance, more dev discussion
IRC - random surveys and polls on your idea
It also will probably be worth it to run a search on the drawing board forum to read previous discussion on ideas, and you might also want to check out the Aiming system thread which IIRC had some small discussion on how future bows/crossbows may be implemented within that planned system.
A side note, IRC is also the best place to go for help building and implementing things.
for general help with setting up to work with git, take a look at github.com/help
They have very clear information on how to get things done in git and github.
Take a look at this thread, too.
Thanks a ton for pointing me at that thread, lots of good ideas/discussion there.