which came first?

[kacation_man]

I havent see it or played it, but the Doom 3 expantion pack supposedly has a grav gun called "the grabber". On wiki, it says it was orginally developed for the first doom 3 but didnt get made... so i simply want to know... did they steal this idea from valve, did valve steal it from ID, was it simple a quinidence that they made the same weapon?! Maybe valve "barrowed" the basic idea from some place else... im sure im not the first person to have brought this up on this forum before, but I'd still like to know who made it first and what its differences are... if any?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

HL2 was out well before they brought out the expansion pack for Doom 3, so theres no question in that area. If valve got the idea from them, i don't know, but they had been working on a physics engine for a very long time and wanted something to manipulate objects. The comparison between the two guns are leagues apart, in doom 3 you can pick up a can. The doom expansion gun is really poor in comparison to the gravity gun.

4 lines max in your signature too please.

 

[Solver]

Accusing Doom 3 of "stealing" the gravity gun, though, would be stupid. Heck, many games will have gravity guns soon!

Timeline wise, Doom 3 (the original) had similar functionality, if enabled in console, and was released three months before HL2. The Doom 3 expansion was released about half a year after HL2 and featured the grabber.

The difference is, in a word, that HL2 implements it much better. In Resurrection of Evil, there are much fewer objects you can pick up than in HL2. Mostly, all the grabber is good for is picking up fireballs enemies throw at you, and throwing them back. There weren't really places relying heavily on the grav gun, like HL2's Ravenholm.

Looking deeper into it though, there's nothing really so very knew about a gravity gun. Games did similar stuff before, well, tried to. In Half-Life, you could push and drag crates, in Deus Ex, you could pick up objects, and either throw them or put them back. What you could lift even was dependent on your strength. It's sort of a gravity fun, only with your hands, and no funky physics.

Another thing, the physics engine that the game uses does NOT, by itself, determine what the physics do in the game. HL2 uses the famous Havok engine, and it's critical to gameplay, as you well know. FEAR or SWAT 4 also use Havok, but in these games, there's a much smaller number of objects that can get affected, as in moved or thrown around, and in both these games, you can't pick stuff up or somesuch - it only moves if you run into it, or responding to explosions. So, the most important question remains that of how the game is designed. Doom 3, by the way, uses a custom physics engine.

Oh, and ragdoll graphics, historically, are also an old thing. I believe they date back to Hitman 2, or somesuch.

 

[giant384]

gravity manipulation gun has been used in many games. you cant copy it.

 

[Solver]

Has it? I'm not sure I can remember a game before HL2 with an actual gravity manipulation gun. Plenty of games where you picked up things with your hands, though.

 

[kacation_man]

well i knew there where, and have been such things in the past but I've never seen before hl2 a gun so blatantly simple as "pick up and throw really hard" as the gravity gun. I never did understand why a game need much of complex physics engine ( or at least a fps ) because before I never really saw anything that would require much of any physics other then throw a grenade, rag doll, and jumping...


the grav gun is definitely one of the best weapons and I'd like to take this thread in a little bit of a different direction... how does the grav gun compare to similar weapons and/or gadgets in other games, I believe destroy all humans 2 is supposed to have a kind of gravity gun in it...

P.S. sorry bout my sig... fixed it :cheese:

 

[Solver]

Try Deus Ex. It doesn't really have much of a physics engine, but you can pick up some stuff and throw/put it. And, it has a real impact on gameplay, in many situations. Quite unlike, say, ragdoll - even though everyone's really used to ragdoll right now, it's basically just eye candy, doesn't add much to the game gameplay wise.

 

[liPillON]

Timeline wise, Doom 3 (the original) had similar functionality, if enabled in console, and was released three months before HL2.

you forgot E3 2003

 

[Dan]

The zero point energy manipulator (or something along those lines, the actual gravity gun name) was in the Incredibles before HL2 I think. It probably came from an episode of Dexter's Laboratory.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

Which game started production before the other?

Thats the easiest way to get a clear answer.

 

[Solver]

That's not an aswer, really. It's obvious that the games were developed very differently, so it's in fact most likely that both ideas were independent. Although undoubtedly, when releasing the Doom3 XP, iD had the HL2 gravity gun in mind - as did anyone who had seen HL2.

BTW, in 2003 (or was that even 2002?), a very early version of Doom3 leaked to the Net, but it already had the custom iD physics engine, and you could use the console for "grav gun" functionality even back then. Now that version was something special, usually, leaks are nearly-full games, or at least playable games (HL2 beta leak). That Doom 3 leak was basically a leak of the engine, with barely any playability, and a few weird mock-up levels.

 

[Mesz]

Nothing will beat the HL2's gravity gun......EVER!!!! And can we please stop calling it the "Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator" Gravity gun or grav gun will do fine, we don't all have PhDs =D

 

[Para]

Nothing will beat the HL2's gravity gun......EVER!!!! And can we please stop calling it the "Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator" Gravity gun or grav gun will do fine, we don't all have PhDs =D

We're not all asshats either. It's a matter of preference just like Alyx said when you first time got the whole thing.

 

[kacation_man]

I'll say and type grav gun cuz its shorter... but you have to admit that zero point energy field manipulator sounds so much cooler! :naughty:

 

[Mesz]

I'll say and type grav gun cuz its shorter... but you have to admit that zero point energy field manipulator sounds so much cooler! :naughty:

I guess it does sound cooler but, I wouldn't ever bother writing it that way

 

[kacation_man]

isnt that what i said?