Weapons
The game has the scope for the following different weapons:
- Fists/bludgeon weapon - Something that almost every ped type will have available. Some peds will rely on their fists, others on baseball bats or truncheons.
- Pistols - Only one pistol type is likely to be required. A simple weapon that any weapon-wielding human can use, and may be readily available in some cities
- Machine gun - A much more deadly weapon, but with lower availability in the law-abiding world. Can be mounted to some vehicles as either a turret or fixed mount; is the default weapon that terminators and corporate drones are equipped with.
- Flamethrower - Excellent tool for eliminating large numbers of enemies, due to its ability to set peds and cars on fire. Metal objects will have a lower chance of catching fire, but it's still an effective weapon due to the heat damage it causes. Is equipped to some corporate drones and terminators; terminators favour it in particular when facing large groups of humans. Can also be very useful against zombies, as a burnt zombie will be unable to return from the dead. May be found equipped to some military or tribesman vehicles, in turret form.
- Rocket launcher - The best tool for commiting medium-to-long-range carnage. Effective against flesh and weakly armoured metal constructions; however some tougher armour (such as present on the largest terminators and certain military/special forces vehicles) may be need a bit more persuasion. Due to its destructive ability it's a hard to obtain weapon, and is best used from the confines of a tank to ensure you don't blow yourself up. May be found equipped to some of the heavier terminators and corporate drones.
- Car bomb - Can be fitted to cars and triggered remotely, or via a timer, or via the turn of the ignition. Due to the specialised nature of the weapon, it may not be classed as an official weapon per se, and just relegated to the ranks of coding for specific missions.
- Electrogun - An experimental weapon designed as a counter to the increasing terminator problem. Although it has limited effectiveness against pure flesh-and-blood humans, it is able to immobilise any electrical device within its wide firing cone - including most cyborgs. Although usually restricted to the military, it has become a favoured weapon of the genetics corp, due to its effectiveness in dispatching their cybernetically-enhanced arch-rivals. Maybe introduce an 'electrical immobilisation' timer, rather than cause insta-death to the affected parties? And can use a 'zappy lines of electricity' effect to show when something is first immobilised. Also need the zappy lines when driving across electrified rails, etc.
- Water cannon - Used on fire engines to tackle fires, and by some military vehicles for crowd control. Can also be effective in immobilising some models of terminator or security drone.
- EMP truck - a much more powerful version of the electrogun, which emmits a wide-area EMP field. Due to its size and energy requirement it is built into a military truck - but this makes it somewhat more difficult to use in battle, as the terminator enemy will be able to see it coming a mile off. It also has a significant charging delay and cooldown period.
- Chainsaw - Because no zombie game would be complete without one. Effective at ripping through flesh at close quarters - but may be tricky to use ingame unless it's given a significant range or the zombies are particularly slow?
- Glue/foam gun - For immobilising heavy machinery such as terminators and multiped tanks, ala GITS. Would need a 'goo amount' attribute adding to cars, indicating how stuck they are, and could use blobby blobs of colour to show the goo on the vehicles (together with some anti-blobbing technology to ensure a few large blobs appear instead of 1000s of small ones). Blobs would also need to move with the vehicle, adding to the complexity. Would also be an effective countermeasure to humans, if gruesome - death by suffocation, constriction, or starvation.
- Grenade - A more readily available explosive device, geared for personal use instead of vehicle mounting. However throwing grenades is never easy - the game would need a simple grenade throwing mechanic, ala GTA 2's where the amount of time you hold down the fire button has a direct correlation to how far the grenade is thrown. This would require code modifications to implement, including new object physics to get the grenades to bounce.
- Molotov cocktail - A simpler version of the grenade physics, since it doesn't need to worry about bouncing. Also a weapon that will be readily available to the tribes and mutants, as it can easily be constructed by almost anyone.
- Sick stick/electric baton - For effective crowd control by the police?
- R/C car - Whether mini or fullsize, these vehicles can be used to recon enemy territory or can be detonated as remote bombs. Current engine doesn't really support this - but could be implemented in mission scripts by swapping the player with a different ped stationed inside the car.
- Vehicle mines - Deployed by hand or vehicle, these are programmed to detonate whenever a vehicle (or large ped such as a terminator or cyborg?) passes above.
- Sentry turrets - Small security droids that can be deployed by hand. Limited intelligence will cause them to shoot at anything that moves in their path; limited ammo supply; and most likely limited to machine guns. Also a limited power supply. As far as the game is concerned, these are peds, so extra engine support will be needed for the ability to spawn them on command when the player fires the correct weapon.
- Oil slicks - deployed by hand or vehicle, these can cause trouble for any passing road-bound vehicle.
- Ejector seat - when combined with a car bomb, provides the player a last-ditch attempt to escape from a zombie swarm. Car gets surrounded, player ejects, car explodes killing zombies, player (hopefully) lands somewhere safe and continues on foot.
- Shotgun/spreadshot - wide-angle weapon that may have limited range.
Powerups
- Shield - Makes player invulnerable for a short time?
TODO:
MUST-DOCS: MED: More powerup ideas
MUST-DOCS: MED: Rationalise the above weapons & powerups into which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of.
MUST-CODE: MED: Implement them all!
MUST-CODE: QUICK: Upgrade rocket/explosions to have area-of-effect damage
MUST-CODE: MED: Finish implementing fire mechanic - make objects that touch each other set each other on fire, add object fires. Also prevent burning peds from entering cars
MUST-CODE: MED: Explosion function, to do area-of-effect damage and fire (extend existing explosion() function in objects.c to do this)
MUST-CODE: MED: Implement advanced car damage mechanics - area-of-effect explosion on death, engine overheating, etc.
CODE: UNKNOWN: Allow bullets to go up/down slopes! Maybe homogonize ped/object movement code?
CODE: QUICK: Update SETAMMO to clamp ammo values to class max, and allow -1 to be used for infinite ammo (bypassing max limit)
???
Profit!