I've been having trouble learning how to write good weapon ideas. Does anybody know any resources that can help learn how to write good weapon ideas? I want to know how so I can design some good weapons for a mod.

Depends what you mean by weapons ideas and what time period your looking for. For instance if your trying to think up modern firearms then you might look at the information provided by firearm manufacturers or firearms magazines and use that as a basis for your ideas.

Yeah, depends on the time period. If you're looking for near-future weapons try watching some movies to get ideas. Ghost in the Shell is a good one for weapons of that time.

Check out this site. It's the best place to go for modern weapons-related research IMHO.

The best way for me to get into the frame of mind for making weapons, is to read the weapon section of a pen'n'paper RPG. You can select almost any time period. Dungeons'n'Dragons for fantasy setting, and a score of others for modern and future. I read a wonderful source book for a table top RPG a loooong time ago, that had tons of great weapons. It was set in the future, and most of the weapons were biological based. Not like we know bio-weaponry, but much more interesting.

For example, there was one weapon that consisted of seeds and a bag of bugs. You spread the seeds on the ground, and then let the bugs loose on them. The bugs will protect the seeds with their lives. Not very interesting, except that the bugs have extremely poisonous spikes on their backs, and will run under the feet of anyone passing by, therefore stabbing them in the foot with poison. a very neat game, I just which I could remember the name :P

Yep, using pen and paper RPG as a source is still the way to go, IMO. You should check out GURPS, for example. They have tons and tons of pages on all sorts of equipments for all sorts of periods and genres...

I also have a feeling that this should probably be in the Game Design forum, unless you are thinking of having a background story for your weapons ?

I'd also like to add that if you look at history, there are a number of different weapons that a lot of people completely forget about. But, if you look at them they can be quite cool and you could probably be able to change the weapon more to fit your need.

As a guiding rule, if the game is based more on playability than realism, I'd go by this rule:

The power of a weapon is inversely proportional (or nearly so) to its reload/cooldown time.

A minigun is weak, but fires like crazy. A rocket launcher is a gib-mobile, but fires pretty slowly.

Quote: Original post by Edward Ropple
As a guiding rule, if the game is based more on playability than realism, I'd go by this rule:

The power of a weapon is inversely proportional (or nearly so) to its reload/cooldown time.

A minigun is weak, but fires like crazy. A rocket launcher is a gib-mobile, but fires pretty slowly.

Not always. It can also go by this
the power of a weapon is inversely proportional (or nearly so) to the scaresness of its ammo, the reload/ cooldown time, or/and the range and speed of the weapon.

I'd add an "and" in there myself, but that's because I find low-powered weapons to create a far greater challenge. Though I'm perfectly capable of causing havoc in Unreal Tournament (the original, not the sequels) with the six-shot rocket launcher, I find skill, not the kaboom factor, more fun.

Case in point: The Opera, a Half-Life mod. Sure, there were a few powerful weapons, but since the game tracked based on cash and not by kills, blowing someone away with a shotgun netted you $500 whereas rolling and burying a throwing knife in their face got you $7500--so style and skill beat out kill percentages.

It's interesting to note that in those games the people that win are never those who stick to shotguns and big hairy .50-caliber pistols.