Hey guys,

I decided it was time to dust off COD4 and work on a realism mod for all the weapons. I'm a Soldier in the US Army, gun enthusiast, and all-around gun nut, so I'm using both my first hand experience firing many of the weapons used in the game, and as a gun owner. I'm also busting out some Army manuals on bullet penetration/impact power on materials, ranges, weapons, and so on. Basically in this mod you can expect:

-realistic damage values (some need to be lowered, so need to be increased)
-realistic accuracy settings
-realistic recoil settings
-All these weapons will be available for MP and SP
-MP-only weapons will also be converted for SP use
-M16 family will have a semi/burst option instead of only being on Auto
-from the hip spread rates will be decreased for more realism
-shotguns are no longer street howitzers, they will be combat shotguns by making the slug grouping smaller



So tell me what you think and what inputs you'd like to see to make weapons more realistic.


edited on Apr. 29, 2009 11:52 am by ArmorMaster

Sounds good to me, finally someone after some realism in a COD game!

Might be asking a bit much but how about random stoppages? I've seen it happen quite a lot in combat videos and it's even happened to me a few times at the range with well cared for firearms.

I noticed you didn't mention firing range, but I can't remember how call of duty handles bullets in that sense, a 9mm in COD can kill someone a mile away, obviously in the real world a pistol can't reach much more that 25 yards and still provide accuracy and power.

You should get a sound designer to help you as well (why do video game gun sounds always sound nothing like the real thing?).

Infinity Ward didn't use those settings for realism but for optimal gameplay, I hope the mod keeps the same level of fun.

As far as the weapon feel like in game I have so little (none to be precise) experience with their real life counter part that I can't say whether they are wrong or not to begin with. But if you take realism, I'd like to see 2 things:

1. the option to switch the weapon any rate of fire (single shot/burst/full auto).
2. a cartridge management as opposed to a pull of bullet like it is currently. I mean that for an example you get 6 clip of 20 bullets each for your assault rifle. This is 120 bullets distributed among the 6 clip. If you reload a clip half empty you will keep a half empty clip, not 10 bullets that you bag in your giant ammo pouch. This would be making every bullet count.

The second one is the hardest part for sure, but the most interesting imho.

Tam

Nice ideas!

I remember the first time I got exposed to the "6 clip" theory was in Red Orchestra, where you are given an "x" amount of magazines for your weapon, and when you reload you put a new, random magazine in the weapon. In Red Orchestra, they also don't have a counter telling you how ammo you have left in the "ammo bag" and how much you have left in the magazine. They have text that comes on the screen after every mag reload telling you how heavy the mag feels, and I thought that, as a Soldier myself, that was a nice touch, because we always guestimate how a mag has in it by how much it weighs.

I've had times where I thought I had about half a mag left, and next thing you know, the bolt is locked open, and I'm out. So I would like to the do the "6 clip theory" idea, I don't know how to go about that though.

I'd also like to get rid of the ammo counter hud display, you just got to learn to judge how much ammo is left in the mag, in the real deal you don't know what you got left, in the Army they tell us that the best time to reload is when you, the fighter, determine it is best to reload.

In terms of weapon jams and stopages, I don't know how I could accomplish that either. In reality, jams happen more than we'd like, and I don't know how I could replicate this. It'd probably require an anim to show the character clearing the jam. The best situation would be to have an anim of the character performing SPORTS, or TAP, RACK, and BANG after every jam.

Bullets lose their lethality with increased range, and deviate from the aimed path as well. I know COD has the "damage range" variables and damages min/max values, but in terms of that, it's just going to have to be how it is.

I'll do the best that I can. If there are any experienced animators, I'd be interested in talking to you to make a TAP, RACK AND BANG anim (assuming I can figure out how to script in random jams).


edited on Apr. 29, 2009 11:40 pm by ArmorMaster

I know a mod that did have that for CoD2: Wolfsbanes Realism Mod. Possibly other Mods have this feature (see eXtrem, AWE, OpenWarFare to name a few). You could ask the team to use their work to save you some hassle. ;)

Regards,

Tam

Sounds good. The best I can do right now I guess is work on realistic accuracy/damage settings, and also transfer mp-only weapons to sp and make every weapon open for both mp and sp. I'll try to find out how to take the hud off, I'll try to find a mod that does that.

The jamming is a cool thing, but I was reading on the forum about how some guy was complaining that his K98k jammed on him twice. I own a K98k and it's never jammed on me, and that's because bolt actions are impossible to jam (unless you really try very hard to make it so, then there's a 1/100 chance it might jam). So I would want to try to figure out how to make some weapons unable to jam.

Sounds good though I'll keep working on it when I have time!

I've been firing different bolt action rifles for the last 3-4 years and can't possible imagine how it can jam. (shell not ejecting properly? I suppose if you bring the bolt back really, really slow and didn't keep the chamber clean).

Anyway a jamming function was added to Armed Assault in a mod, its used with a probability function, it works really well as it rarely happens but when it does all you do is hit R and it reloads in order to fix it.

Could you also add the smell of spent cartridges? whatever happened to the idea of "smell-a-vision"...?!

Robbo's (aka Pedro) "Brothers" mod for COD:WaW has the clip feature from Red Orchestra.

edited on Apr. 30, 2009 01:19 pm by DemonSeed

Could anyone provide a link to that mod? I'll keep searching for it, thanks for the suggestion!