Nuclear Dawn Weapons Update

[Munro]

The Nuclear Dawn team have released some new media and information about their weapon features in the mod. The images showcase their new HUD weapon icons and the sticky grenade and stealth knife weapons.
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[br]You can read more about them at their site here.

 

[Ennui]

Ridiculously beautiful assets as usual.

 

[Irksome]

The first person hand models are absolutely gorgeous, the texturing is superb, as well as the rest of the models - so much detail in the textures.

 

[soulslicer]

The Mod is going to kick ass. I have been following it ever seen I played half life 2 in 2006...

 

[qdog]

It realy looks promissing. Good job and congrats to the team.
Looking forward to see all this ingame!

Marc

 

[jondy]

Nuclear Dawn. lol.

Hope it's good.

 

[ibex]

I await the forthcoming release of this game with renewed curiosity and a ridiculous amount of patience.

 

[Kadayi]

Nice stuff, only let down by the fact that that the dudes in the concept art aren't firing any of those guns (unless it;s the sniper rifle).

 

[605Scorpion]

Beautiful stuff models, textures etc., but this mod doesn't look very good IMO.

 

[[Matt]]

Not sure about the art direction of that particular knife model although its a fantastically modelled and skinned... but those arms are superbly done and perfectly portioned!!

Good work fella's!

 

[Gusdor]

release it already

 

[Dodo]

the models look really nice, textures too, but the weapons designs (concept art) are a bit generic...

-dodo

 

[Crispy]

the models look really nice, textures too, but the weapons designs (concept art) are a bit generic...

-dodo

MP500, generic? BAG90, generic? The concept artist who designed those is now working at Konami as a Lead Artist.

The mod is set in 2027 so there's no scope for laserprawntoasters or globularmass-splatterguns but scope enough to get away from the AK47s and Berettas that appear in 8 out of 10 FPS mods released these days.

 

[simon]

relax crispy, you might pop a vain...

 

[Drackard]

Well, I havn't been here in a while, let alone keeping up with the latest Mod's/News, But I have to say from what i've seen this looks to be immense. Models are beautiful.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

MP500, generic? BAG90, generic?

An SMG that looks similar to the MP5, named the MP500, no that can't possibly be generic...

The BAG92 looks like they took a standard Glock, added some pointless grip-like thing and named it after the Beretta M92. Seems generic to me.

Then you have the most obvious one, the SPAS12 Shotgun, apparently this was one of the last ones they got around to naming, they took a modern gun, but by then were too tired to edit the name slightly...

Only about half of those guns aren't generic.

 

[Forceflow]

Generic by function, hardly generic by design. It's in the details. Although I can understand your remark.

Did we mention the sticky nade sticks to people too ?

 

[Beerdude26]

Did we mention the sticky nade sticks to people too ?

Haha, we have that in Empires aswell, awesome innit

 

[Loke]

Did we mention the sticky nade sticks to people too ?

Haha, we have that in Empires aswell, awesome innit

SHADOW WARRIOR RIP-OFF! :hmph:



Looks awesome, release it already.

 

[Beerdude26]

SHADOW WARRIOR RIP-OFF! :hmph:



Looks awesome, release it already.

Eww. Absinthe is a bit too strong for me D:

 

[Crispy]

SHADOW WARRIOR RIP-OFF!

If someone ripped off Shadow Warrior and made it on Source I would play it until I collapsed of exhaustion. It is one of the coolest games ever made, and I'm surprised I never even saw that connection before. I think it's because the model only got made recently and until now we've been prancing about slapping horrible programmer art bricks on eachother.

 

[Majestic XII]

There's no question about the visual in this mod, but I'm eager to see something ingame.

 

[FoxFire]

Visuals look fantastic, let's hope the mod is just as good as it looks.

 

[mash]

Looks great but as usual, I can't help but feel this is another example of a mod prolonging release to try and ascertain perfection and by the time of release nobody will care.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I personally quite like the weapon designs; future weapons are so frequently shit that these are alright.

Otherwise:

Nuclear Dawn. lol.

 

[FriedchikenCamo]

Looks great but as usual, I can't help but feel this is another example of a mod prolonging release to try and ascertain perfection and by the time of release nobody will care.

That will depend on whether ND has gameplay that is fresh among competition or not.

If no other game has a gameplay experience similar and better, and if the graphics don't get in the way of gameplay, people will play ND.

I know it's controversial, but I'll put up Insurgency vs. Call of Duty 4 as an example of the debate people have on whether a mod was too late or not. Few people dispute that CoD4 looks better, but what's more interesting is whether Insurgency fills a niche that CoD4 doesn't.

I'm saying that because a lot of people complain that the Source engine is getting outdated for mods, when they should be asking whether the mods that are being developed are not being phased out gameplay-wise by any retail games that are out or coming.

 

[Praetorius]

This far in and they're still releasing weapon renders?

 

[mash]

That will depend on whether ND has gameplay that is fresh among competition or not.

If no other game has a gameplay experience similar and better, and if the graphics don't get in the way of gameplay, people will play ND.

I know it's controversial, but I'll put up Insurgency vs. Call of Duty 4 as an example of the debate people have on whether a mod was too late or not. Few people dispute that CoD4 looks better, but what's more interesting is whether Insurgency fills a niche that CoD4 doesn't.

I'm saying that because a lot of people complain that the Source engine is getting outdated for mods, when they should be asking whether the mods that are being developed are not being phased out gameplay-wise by any retail games that are out or coming.

The simple point is, if you spend too long developing a mod without releasing anything at all, people will lose interest. Mods are not meant to replace full commercial games, they're meant to be innovative and at first buggy, hidden source I think has gotten this mentality and that's why it's seen some moderate success.

I know I'm not paying for mods and I don't really have a right to complain but I think mods, or at least total conversions, have lost their way a little, piecemeal the thing.

 

[Dodo]

The concept artist who designed those is now working at Konami as a Lead Artist.

Well... its... its... just not fair !! /suicide.

An SMG that looks similar to the MP5, named the MP500, no that can't possibly be generic...

The BAG92 looks like they took a standard Glock, added some pointless grip-like thing and named it after the Beretta M92. Seems generic to me.

Then you have the most obvious one, the SPAS12 Shotgun, apparently this was one of the last ones they got around to naming, they took a modern gun, but by then were too tired to edit the name slightly...

Only about half of those guns aren't generic.

hahah i was about to say exactly the same thing.
Dont get me wrong Crispy, the models etc look really nice, but they are a bit generic.

As for 8 out of 10 mods having AKs Glocks and Berretas doesnt say anything, well maybe that 8/10 mods suck *ss and are a ripp-offs of other very generic shooter and will probably die a painfull untextured death.

: ) dont hate.

-dodo

 

[Crispy]

Well... its... its... just not fair !! /suicide.


hahah i was about to say exactly the same thing.
Dont get me wrong Crispy, the models etc look really nice, but they are a bit generic.

As for 8 out of 10 mods having AKs Glocks and Berretas doesnt say anything, well maybe that 8/10 mods suck *ss and are a ripp-offs of other very generic shooter and will probably die a painfull untextured death.

: ) dont hate.

-dodo

I'll explain a bit more about their design and hopefully it'll make more sense. I don't want to hate, I'm just struggling to understand your reasons for calling something generic.

All of those weapons (apart from maybe the sticky bomb which is purely focused on having an intuitive design that tells you what it does) are designed on realistic projections of military technology in the next 20 years. That means no lasers or pocket railguns. It also follows logically that the main weapons manufacturers are not going to go out of business (especially not in a military boom), and that iterations of weapon designs are going to be based on weapons designs that have stood the test of time and have proven themselves as solid designs.

The MP5 has an incredibly good design. With the MP500 se7en wanted to replace the conventional magazine with a drum barrel loading mag.

The pistol is actually called the BAG90 (the person who did the image labelled it incorrectly). The curved grip was added to make it at least look different. I'm not sure how you can make a pistol look dramatically different given 20 years technological advances where half the world is wiped out by a global nuclear fallout. Does that mean all pistol designs firing conventional rounds are generic? They all have a firing chamber that snaps back, a trigger with a guard and a handle with a grip. I'd like to see some of the amazing non-generic designs we're likely to see 20 years in the future. As for it looking like a glock, which Glock does it look like? Glocks have a solid square design with no external hammer and a squared-off trigger guard. Saying the BAG90 looks like a Glock is total, uninformed rubbish.

I think the reason they're getting labelled as 'generic' is because they look like guns, which is exactly what you want them to look like when a player is selecting them from a menu or picking it up from the ground, or running from someone wielding one. If an SMG looks like a bazooka or a sandwich toaster, the player is gonna get just a little confused. Sure it's definitely not generic if a sandwich toaster can shoot 20 9mm rounds a second, but it is just a little unintuitive.

Why does a sniper rifle look like a sniper rifle? Because it has a long barrel to give it accuracy and a long buttstock to allow the shooter to steady the weapon better. Of course we could make it look like a canoe, or a jelly bean, but neither of those have the mechanics required for the weapon to operate effectively as a sniper rifle.

I wonder if we played the sound files people would complain that the shotgun sound was 'generic' (because it sounds like a shotgun).

---

Basically it comes down to weapon recognition (how intuitive the design is) and a realistic approach to the technology of the era (would lasers have been invented by 2020 or would there have been dramatic, new breakthroughs in metallurgy or plastics?). I think if you tried to design a pistol that would be around in 20 years time you would probably find it more difficult than you give the mod's artists credit for.

 

[FriedchikenCamo]

The simple point is, if you spend too long developing a mod without releasing anything at all, people will lose interest. Mods are not meant to replace full commercial games, they're meant to be innovative and at first buggy, hidden source I think has gotten this mentality and that's why it's seen some moderate success.

I will agree that people lose interest in media releases when the game doesn't get released soon after. Why get interested in a mod if you aren't going to see it anytime soon?

However, some concepts are difficult to nail the first time. The important thing is that the mod has to be interesting when it comes out. If you are relying on a difficult to pull off feature as a bulk of your gameplay, you're going to have to nail it the first release or people will lose interest. To my fuzzy memory, ND is reliant on a complex commander system that would facilitate teamplay. That feature needs to be thouroughly developed and tested, otherwise ND is just a variant on Counter-Strike.

Lots of full-scale conversions like Empires mod and Dystopia need to implement their innovative features before they can be innovative on release. Unless you are willing to quit your job and go on a coding marathon, coding new features will take time, especially if you need to implement many of them as part of a whole.

And pardon my ignorance, but I think it's simpler to create a gamemode where one invisible guy lays waste to an entire team, than it is to make a gamemode where a commander controls other players like in an RTS. But my main point is that Hidden would not be innovative if the dev team did not finish developing the system which picks players to be the Hidden, the various movement systems the Hidden uses, etc.

 

[Dodo]

I'll explain a bit more about their design and hopefully it'll make more sense. I don't want to hate, I'm just struggling to understand your reasons for calling something generic.

Well, youve got a point. (I've retyped this post about 10 times now ! : / )
My point is that within a second you know what kind of weapons they are, you could say this is a good thing.
But its like there's this unwriten rule that all sci-fi weapons have too look like advanced evolved existing weapons, while new technology is suposed to inovate, not evolve.

The weapons look like modified desings of other weapons, like most weapons in games these days.
Im not saying they dont look good, but in a way too recognizible making them a bit "generic". JUST A BIT !!

As for 20 years in the future ... stealth suits ? walking tanks !? full body sexy armor ?!? ... but i guess thats what makes this mod cool ... in a good way !

-dodo <3

edit: btw sorry for my english vocabulary failing once again.

 

[Crispy]

Ah well, we live and learn. I think if anything that should be the mantra of modding. Not some 'if you don't release a perfect game that can compete with every commercial game out there you should burn in a fire and die' or something.

 

[Beerdude26]

Ah well, we live and learn. I think if anything that should be the mantra of modding. Not some 'if you don't release a perfect game that can compete with every commercial game out there you should burn in a fire and die' or something.

Too bad a lot of people think it's true (the bad mantra) . On gametrailers.com, people were comparing Empires to Crysis on a graphical level and thus dismissing it completely. Wut.

 

[Asknoone]

On gametrailers.com, people were comparing Empires to Crysis on a graphical level and thus dismissing it completely. Wut.

What?

 

[Crispy]

Too bad a lot of people think it's true (the bad mantra) . On gametrailers.com, people were comparing Empires to Crysis on a graphical level and thus dismissing it completely. Wut.

I dismiss people like that completely.

 

[Freols]

Well, youve got a point. (I've retyped this post about 10 times now ! : / )
My point is that within a second you know what kind of weapons they are, you could say this is a good thing.
But its like there's this unwriten rule that all sci-fi weapons have too look like advanced evolved existing weapons, while new technology is suposed to inovate, not evolve.

The weapons look like modified desings of other weapons, like most weapons in games these days.
Im not saying they dont look good, but in a way too recognizible making them a bit "generic". JUST A BIT !!

I agree there, but there are quite a few good reasons for just evolving current weapons rather than predicting innovations.

The most important of those reasons being that a weapon designer for H&K earns more than an artist working on a free game modification. If artists could come up with the innovative weapons people will be using in 20 years...

With that in mind, most artists and designers probably shudder at the thought of "strapping pointless crap" onto the gun or making a rocket launcher that looks like an effigy of Bob Dole... they want a gun that you could imagine being used in 20 years, if they innovate they enter the realm of distant future and distant technology (lasers, multi-nucleayic super titanium rounds etc.)

The next reason for just evolving current weapons is... why not? As said above future tech cannot be predicted, but what can be predicted is that people will most likely still be using AKs an L96 sniper rifles. If look at the time between the end of WW2 and now, we see that guns evolve for the most part. As they evolve the older ones end up in the third world.

The AK is a great example, from the 47, to the 74... the high precision western made AK look alikes are very different from the original Kalashnikovs. Yet they look the same and share a similar name.

If anything I would say ND has been too adventurous, the difference between the MP5 and the MP500 is almost as extreme as the difference between the MP40 and the MP5.

Even the BAG92 pistol, what I would call the most standard looking gun of the lot - what else would you expect from a pistol?

It looks similar to a modern handgun like a Glock... yes... just as a Glock looks similar to a pirate's hand musket. I cannot forsee any change in pistol design other than small changes in materials to achieve more power and accuracy.

All the weapons make perfect logical sense to me, aside from the minigun... the reason for this being that... it is a minigun. But ND wouldn't be ND without it

 

[FriedchikenCamo]

I've always found it strange that people think that titanium would make a better bullet alloy. Isn't the point of a bullet to transfer momentum with maximum wieght and speed? Then why use an expensive metal lighter than steel or even lighter than lead? Making a fully titanium weapon would be nice if you wanted an all metal rifle like an AA12, but you'd be better off using depleted uranium bullets (higher atomic mass), which would probably be fair game in Nuclear Dawn's irradiated setting. Plus if you wanted a lighter bullet, iron works fine and it's cheaper. Using an all too common radioactive waste product for bullet production makes more sense than wasting a valuable specialized contruction material.

Personal laser weapons are also seem far off simply because there is no efficient way to store the chemical energy in a light wieght battery. A cutting laser requires enormous amounts of energy that comes from a dedicated power source. I doubt there are going to be advances in portable energy sources any time soon, even in the field of fuel cells.

One direction of innovation is to make the recoil in weapons lighter, but often times the changes are not externally visible.

 

[Solaris]

Lol Nuclear Dawn is a joke.

They are aiming for something so complete and perfect it will never be released. Never mind the whole screenshot faking fiasco.

And what kind of mod has a Public relations officer lol.

 

[Crispy]

Lol Nuclear Dawn is a joke.

They are aiming for something so complete and perfect it will never be released. Never mind the whole screenshot faking fiasco.

And what kind of mod has a Public relations officer lol.

Where's your mod? Oh right you're a 17 year-old who clumsily lashes out at people who are trying to bring free entertainment to others.

Forgive me for not giving a damn what you think. And rest assured, that clumsy teenage angst will pass in time and you'll rediscover what it means to be a decent human being.