[SonOfABeep]

For some reason I thought of this while playing Goldeneye on Wii lately, because I would be sneaking, headshot a guard with one bullet, then want to reload every time.

I'm no gun enthusiast, but isn't it rather complicated to load bullets into a magazine? Otherwise you're swapping out the entire contents of the magazine for a full one. Every shooter i've ever played just has a quantity of bullets that are subtracted as if they were being poured into a hopper for the gun to use.

I guess it doesn't make the most sense from a gameplay/design sense - but at the same time I could see it making for some really tense situations where you have to choose your shots carefully and time your reloads with finding cover, or you waste a portion of the magazine for a new one.

I know games get all kinds of things wrong with technical stuff and guns but I really can't think of any games that handle this in a more realistic way.

Even the stalker series or Far Cry 2 or Fallout use this unrealistic method of ammunition use.

I'm pretty sure even the flashpoint and other super realistic sims use the "bullets in a hopper" method.

[_tetsuo_]

Red Orchestra

[Diebuster]

Neotokyo comes to mind:

[shintoki]

Good old Socom. You have your five mags and that was it.

Except you know... it was glitched so you'd never go through that 5th :lol

[Neuromancer]

For some reason I thought of this while playing Goldeneye on Wii lately, because I would be sneaking, headshot a guard with one bullet, then want to reload every time. I'm no gun enthusiast, but isn't it rather complicated to load bullets into a magazine? Otherwise you're swapping out the entire contents of the magazine for a full one. Every shooter i've ever played just has a quantity of bullets that are subtracted as if they were being poured into a hopper for the gun to use.

This is an issue but as long as people don't care and want their shooters super arcadey, games will always be this way.

I think a good system would be one in which a magazine with unspent ammo would get put back into rotation (eventually when you reload you'd have to reload magazines that weren't full.) I think that would teach players not to tap reload constantly.

And yes putting rounds into a magazine is a pain in the ass, it's certainly not anything you'd want to do (or maybe even be able to do) under fire.

[storl026]

Rainbow Six 3

[sfried]

Rainbow Six 3

Try Rainbow Six before 3 (Raven Shield). The Red Storm ones were great.

[duckroll]

Alien Swarm has this. It's not a FPS, but it's certain a shooter (top down shooter). You have a number of magazines, and each magazine contains a number of bullets. If you perform a manual reload before you run out of ammo on a mag, all the bullets in that mag are lost.

[bernardobri]

Rainbow Six Raven Sword?

Edit: Beaten :lol Still, seems like my memory isn't that bad :D

And yeah, Alien Swarm does this as well, it even tells you how much bullets did you lose.

[CaVaYeRo]

Just do like me and 'think' you HAVE to use every bullet before reloading :lol

[TheExodu5]

Day of Defeat

[Neuromancer]

Thing is in real life, even if you were down to one or two rounds in a magazine, you could pop it out, put in a fresh magazine, and then save that magazine with one or two rounds for later in case you really needed it. So throwing the magazine and its ammo away is a little extreme.

[SonOfABeep]

Yeah good to see there are some games that do it.

I'd really like to see it added into games like fallout and goldeneye and many others, where the focus isn't on pure action but survival or stealth or immersion.

Far Cry 2 could have used it to good effect too. STALKER seems made for this kind of thing. Managing magazines and such.

What if you only had a certain number of magazines and if you ran out of loaded magazines you were fucked in stalker.. that would be tense.

[Pylon_Trooper]

Alien Swarm has this. It's not a FPS, but it's certain a shooter (top down shooter). You have a number of magazines, and each magazine contains a number of bullets. If you perform a manual reload before you run out of ammo on a mag, all the bullets in that mag are lost.

What do you make of Alien Swarm, Duck? Thumbs up? Any caveats? Had my eye on it for a while.

[KareBear]

Arma?Project Reality?

[duckroll]

What do you make of Alien Swarm, Duck? Thumbs up? Any caveats? Had my eye on it for a while.

It's free, so there's zero monetary investment for trying it out. Get a few friends to download it, play through the campaign together over a weekend, etc. It's really pretty solid for a free product, and it's a good tech demo which shows how the Source engine can handle a top down shooter instead of a FPS, along with improved lighting effects, etc.

There isn't a ton of replay value though. After spending a few hours on it with different groups of friends and maxing out my level, there wasn't much to go back too. If Valve decides to monetize it in future by selling campaign packs, I might consider it.

[Gospel]

Rainbow Six 3

this

Rainbow Six Vegas quelled my nasty habit to reload before nearly emptying a clip in someone.

It's a great feeling in Multiplayer matches too.

[RustyO]

This always bugs me as well, but not being a big FPS guy, doesn't stress me.

Pity to hear about Stalker, (brought it on steam, still haven't even started it up), was hoping that it would be more realistic based on mate telling me about shooting physics.

[cazosozey]

Thing is in real life, even if you were down to one or two rounds in a magazine, you could pop it out, put in a fresh magazine, and then save that magazine with one or two rounds for later in case you really needed it. So throwing the magazine and its ammo away is a little extreme.

Yeah socom did this.
Ok im down to my last magazine, fuck 3 bullets...

[SonOfABeep]

It's not a big deal but some games could use this to really good effect. I wonder if developers talk about this or if the common ammo model is just taken for granted.

[amar212]

That particular thing would make MIRACLES for Call of Duty multiplayer, but it will just never happen.

[Swifty]

An old Half-life mod I used to play called Firearms had it such that reloading was merely an act of scrolling through your magazines. Any magazines were not empty stayed in your inventory and could be eventually reloaded into the weapon again.

[duckroll]

It's not a big deal but some games could use this to really good effect. I wonder if developers talk about this or if the common ammo model is just taken for granted.

I'm sure developers talk about this every time there is a new shooter being made (it's probably a non-issue if it's a sequel though).

The problem is, you have to weigh the pros and cons. Unless the shooter is aiming for a specific type of gameplay to set itself apart from other shooters and the reloading mechanic could seriously aid it in that aspect, there is very little reason to do it. Because gamers are already familiar with a type of reloading mechanic in most games, there has to be a good reason to force them to play your game differently in terms of ammo management.

This can be a good thing if the game is balanced around realism (see: Rainbow Six), and add an extra unique selling point to that game. It is usually a bad thing though, if the only reason it is done is because it is "more realistic". Adding realism for the sake of realism into a game when most other titles in that genre avoid that aspect, is not something that would benefit consumers.

[SonOfABeep]

Yeah, that's right. It's also not exactly a selling feature they can put on their PR schedule. :lol

I just keep thinking of potentially great applications to a STALKER or Fallout game.

[Cels]

That particular thing would make MIRACLES for Call of Duty multiplayer, but it will just never happen.

It wouldn't make any sense to have just THAT part of the game be realistic while the rest of the game is built particularly to be arcade-like.

[The_Dude]

Black had it, if I remember correctly.

[Instro]

Alien Swarm has this. It's not a FPS, but it's certain a shooter (top down shooter). You have a number of magazines, and each magazine contains a number of bullets. If you perform a manual reload before you run out of ammo on a mag, all the bullets in that mag are lost.

That kind of drove me nuts when I started playing the game, Im just not used to games penalizing you for reloading early.

[duckroll]

That kind of drove me nuts when I started playing the game, Im just not used to games penalizing you for reloading early.

Yeah well, for that game we just decided to stop manually reloading entirely. :lol

[Ellis Kim]

As someone mentioned, the SOCOM games were pretty good about this. Forced reload where you're actually swapping between a set number of clips is neat.

[ZoddGutts]

Red Orchestra

Red Orchestra 2 should have this as well when it finally comes out.

[Dilly]

Mafia 1

[Jackson]

That kind of drove me nuts when I started playing the game, Im just not used to games penalizing you for reloading early.

:lol Ya I had to train myself to stop reloading as the heavy weapons guy in that game. Losing like 80 ammo from reloading during a lull sucked, but you get used to it.

If people want to talk about realism though, soldiers almost never throw empty/half empty mags away, they have a "dump/drop pouch" on their waist/leg where they store their expended mags. Throwing away mags is a Hollywood thing.

Speaking of realism in shooters, I liked when Gears of War actually did a "pick up weapon from ground" animation when you got extra ammo instead of auto getting it by running over. That was a cool little polish item, I'd never seen in a shooter before Gears 1.

[SonOfABeep]

There's several ways to reload - emergency reloads are where you discard the clip, for reloading in the middle of combat.

I think it'd be interesting if you had the option of different types of reloads and such and had to choose appropriately for the situation. And retrieve the discarded clip after the firefight.

And it'd take longer to reload with the drop pouch, and you could pick up enemy magazines. I think that'd be a good compromise for more arcadey games. Enemies could drop magazines that you still have to manage or swap out for full ones.

Like you could only hold 5 or so full magazines and had to swap them out periodically or manually reload.

[mac]

Thing is in real life, even if you were down to one or two rounds in a magazine, you could pop it out, put in a fresh magazine, and then save that magazine with one or two rounds for later in case you really needed it. So throwing the magazine and its ammo away is a little extreme.

In real life you don't know how many bullets you have left. You just fire until it goes click-click-click. Even with a handgun it would be tough to count your bullets in a fire fight.

[Grayman]

Battlefield 2 and maybe Action Quake use the dumped mags method. Fewer games seem to go with the rotation of partially spent mags system.

[TheSeks]

Thing is in real life, even if you were down to one or two rounds in a magazine, you could pop it out, put in a fresh magazine, and then save that magazine with one or two rounds for later in case you really needed it. So throwing the magazine and its ammo away is a little extreme.

Or if not under fire/lull in the action and you need those rounds you'd pop them out of the clip, put them in another clip with the rest of the "saved" ammo and have a fresh clip ready to go.

Dropping the ammo is pretty stupid in a gameplay aspect, but I can see the appeal.

The rotational mag system sounds interesting in theory, but it seems like it would be extremely hard for the game to calculate all the time.

"One bullet wasted, reloaded. One bullet wasted, reloaded. Two bullets wasted, reloaded..."

Etc. etc. etc. until you have about 180+ (the reserved ammo counter, so that's about... 10 Clips?) separated magazines from someone being OCD in reloading.

In real life you don't know how many bullets you have left. You just fire until it goes click-click-click. Even with a handgun it would be tough to count your bullets in a fire fight.

This is true. Maybe the way to stop OCD reloading is to not have an ammo counter? Truly hardcore mode enabled!

[nico1982]

The rotational mag system sounds interesting in theory, but it seems like it would be extremely hard for the game to calculate all the time.

Hard for the game to calculate? It is few lines of code and Rainbow Six did it back in the '90 perfectly, were you reloaded the gun with the "less empty" mag available, which was also a good way to spare the player a tricky selection of the right magazine.

To be honest, few games also count the round in the chamber, Raven Shield did it, SWAT3 and 4 did (they also let you swap ammunition type in game), GRAW too also but Operation Flashpoint did not, IIRC.

It is not a technical problem, but developer being not aware or a deliberated design choice.

[Fender_Uk]

Mafia 1

yup, they removed it for 2 for some reason *cough consoles*

[Grayman]

Or if not under fire/lull in the action and you need those rounds you'd pop them out of the clip, put them in another clip with the rest of the "saved" ammo and have a fresh clip ready to go. Dropping the ammo is pretty stupid in a gameplay aspect, but I can see the appeal. The rotational mag system sounds interesting in theory, but it seems like it would be extremely hard for the game to calculate all the time. "One bullet wasted, reloaded. One bullet wasted, reloaded. Two bullets wasted, reloaded..." Etc. etc. etc. until you have about 180+ (the reserved ammo counter, so that's about... 10 Clips?) separated magazines from someone being OCD in reloading. This is true. Maybe the way to stop OCD reloading is to not have an ammo counter? Truly hardcore mode enabled!

the games that do it give a set number of mags which means reloading every shot does not create new mags it just changes the order of the 3-5 available.

[Zenith]

I'm pretty sure even the flashpoint and other super realistic sims use the "bullets in a hopper" method.

No they use the system where the half-empty mag is removed and stored, then the most full mag is inserted. So you can fire off a few shots, reload and have it go back to full ammo, but eventually you'll start loading mags with only 14 rounds in them and the like.

[Salacious Crumb]

No one has mentioned SWAT 4 yet? shame on you gaf.

*edit* well one guy did, but it took far too long.

[UnluckyKate]

Crysis had this half realistic system, but not about mag, about bullet in the chamber.

In every fps, you change mag, and put back a bullet in the chamber.

But when you change a mag, that isn't done, there's already a bullet in the chamber, so you don't need to load it again !

Crysis was the first game (just a month before CoD4 actually) to have this, if I can remember correctly.

You also could have 31 bullets in your gun (one bullet in the chamber, plus new mag with 30 bullets)

[54-46!]

LIGHTS... CAMERA... ACTION!

[jambo]

Red Orchestra

1at reply nails it usual

[ultron87]

Crysis had this half realistic system, but not about mag, about bullet in the chamber. In every fps, you change mag, and put back a bullet in the chamber. But when you change a mag, that isn't done, there's already a bullet in the chamber, so you don't need to load it again ! Crysis was the first game (just a month before CoD4 actually) to have this, if I can remember correctly. You also could have 31 bullets in your gun (one bullet in the chamber, plus new mag with 30 bullets)

Call of Duty (At least MW2 and Black Ops) have an extra animation where you load the first bullet into the chamber if you fired your entire clip. The animation is the only realistic part about the ammo system though.

[ZZMitch]

Red Orchestra 2 should have this as well when it finally comes out.

Oh god I am so ready.

[Yeef]

Condemned: Criminal Origins. I don't know that I'd classify it as a shooter though since you only get a gun once ina blue moon.

[Neuromancer]

There's several ways to reload - emergency reloads are where you discard the clip, for reloading in the middle of combat. I think it'd be interesting if you had the option of different types of reloads and such and had to choose appropriately for the situation. And retrieve the discarded clip after the firefight. And it'd take longer to reload with the drop pouch, and you could pick up enemy magazines. I think that'd be a good compromise for more arcadey games. Enemies could drop magazines that you still have to manage or swap out for full ones. Like you could only hold 5 or so full magazines and had to swap them out periodically or manually reload.

Good idea- tap X (or whatever) for an emergency reload (drop the magazine), or hold X for a tactical reload (eject the magazine but store it in a pocket for later use.)

In real life you don't know how many bullets you have left. You just fire until it goes click-click-click. Even with a handgun it would be tough to count your bullets in a fire fight.

Well, I'm a federal agent and everytime I do a firearms qualification (about 4x a year) we train with tactical reloads. It's just in case you're in a situation where you know you're low on rounds in your current magazine and you have a moment to reload safely. But yeah you're right, in a combat situation it's pretty likely you're just going to empty that magazine.

[Dave Long]

It would be interesting to have a game with a realistic reload time.

[Neuromancer]

Call of Duty (At least MW2 and Black Ops) have an extra animation where you load the first bullet into the chamber if you fired your entire clip. The animation is the only realistic part about the ammo system though.

Yeah CoD is pretty good about this. Disappointingly though I notice with the pump action shotgun in Black Ops, even when there's a round in the chamber your guy always racks the slide when he reloads. In real life he'd be ejecting a good round every time.