I've been playing Nexuiz for the last few weeks, and something that's been growing on me is how all the weapons seem less like distinct weapons, and more like simply different visual effects attached to damage. I feel like all the various weapons have in the way of flavor is their model and what their projectiles look like. Other than that, they're all just stand-ins for "decrease the HP of people in that area."
A major contributor to this is the fact that all damage dealt is represented in exactly the same way: blood, gibs. Even when the text that appears might be "antcow was vaporized by deathkilla", they're still just a bunch of blood and gibs. Something that would be interesting here might be to make certain weapons apply certain effects to the gibs, or even stop gibs from appearing at all.
For example, if someone has, say, a rocket launcher, and they kill someone, instead of just spewing gibs all over the place, spew *flaming* gibs all over the place. Or if someone has a weapon like the Crylink, and they frag someone else, don't spawn a bunch of gibs, but spawn some (harmless) purple blobbies that get pushed away from where the dead person was, and char the walls around them, and maybe even make some smoke appear where the fragged player was. For the sniper rifle (whatever the Nex will be called), you might just make it so that a player fragged by the weapon glows bright blue for a second, then gibs get flung in all directions extremely quickly, and leave a trail behind them like the normal Nex fire does. Another idea (perhaps for some weapon's alt-fire) would be to make plain old gibs spawn, but instead of the standard gib-physics, they're all flung rapidly toward where the firer was when they made the kill (ie. they were pulled toward the weapon and ripped to pieces at the same time) for some crazy-gory mayhem.
Something else that might be added to certain weapons (I think this might work really well with the Electro's alt-fire) would be to change damage-dealing from a quick, instantaneous thing, into a continuous wall-of-damage type mechanic. Fire a bunch of the Electro's grenade bobbers into a narrow hall or doorway, and have them linger longer than they do right now, but make them deal continuous damage instead of exploding. (Them being physics-controlled might imbalance this a bit, but making them, say, stick to walls instead of being able to careen through corridors might be a good decision.)
As an extension to the core idea here (that is, make the weapons' actual ammunition materials act like different materials), an interesting effect might be to make some weapons do more than just leave wall decals behind. Perhaps the Electro weapon might leave some blue-colored electrical-looking crackles on walls (and it'd be even cooler if they actually made crackling sounds), or the Crylink weapon could leave a lingering purple haze in its wake.
Making the weapons seem like they're actually firing different materials that behave unlike the other weapons, instead of projectiles just being HP-decreasing things in differently colored suits would go a long way to make the weapons all seem a lot more interesting, and it would make the combat feel a lot more intense, because instead of seeing the same old gibs, you'd see various different effects (flaming gibs, players just being disintegrated and turned to smoke, and room-illuminating blue people-splosions) being tossed around all over the place.
A major contributor to this is the fact that all damage dealt is represented in exactly the same way: blood, gibs. Even when the text that appears might be "antcow was vaporized by deathkilla", they're still just a bunch of blood and gibs. Something that would be interesting here might be to make certain weapons apply certain effects to the gibs, or even stop gibs from appearing at all.
For example, if someone has, say, a rocket launcher, and they kill someone, instead of just spewing gibs all over the place, spew *flaming* gibs all over the place. Or if someone has a weapon like the Crylink, and they frag someone else, don't spawn a bunch of gibs, but spawn some (harmless) purple blobbies that get pushed away from where the dead person was, and char the walls around them, and maybe even make some smoke appear where the fragged player was. For the sniper rifle (whatever the Nex will be called), you might just make it so that a player fragged by the weapon glows bright blue for a second, then gibs get flung in all directions extremely quickly, and leave a trail behind them like the normal Nex fire does. Another idea (perhaps for some weapon's alt-fire) would be to make plain old gibs spawn, but instead of the standard gib-physics, they're all flung rapidly toward where the firer was when they made the kill (ie. they were pulled toward the weapon and ripped to pieces at the same time) for some crazy-gory mayhem.
Something else that might be added to certain weapons (I think this might work really well with the Electro's alt-fire) would be to change damage-dealing from a quick, instantaneous thing, into a continuous wall-of-damage type mechanic. Fire a bunch of the Electro's grenade bobbers into a narrow hall or doorway, and have them linger longer than they do right now, but make them deal continuous damage instead of exploding. (Them being physics-controlled might imbalance this a bit, but making them, say, stick to walls instead of being able to careen through corridors might be a good decision.)
As an extension to the core idea here (that is, make the weapons' actual ammunition materials act like different materials), an interesting effect might be to make some weapons do more than just leave wall decals behind. Perhaps the Electro weapon might leave some blue-colored electrical-looking crackles on walls (and it'd be even cooler if they actually made crackling sounds), or the Crylink weapon could leave a lingering purple haze in its wake.
Making the weapons seem like they're actually firing different materials that behave unlike the other weapons, instead of projectiles just being HP-decreasing things in differently colored suits would go a long way to make the weapons all seem a lot more interesting, and it would make the combat feel a lot more intense, because instead of seeing the same old gibs, you'd see various different effects (flaming gibs, players just being disintegrated and turned to smoke, and room-illuminating blue people-splosions) being tossed around all over the place.
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