What game disables your Gatling gun after five seconds of use? So I can know which game not to buy.

Doom 2016 has a pretty quick heat up on its gatling though i dont recall if it was 5 seconds.

Probably better than going for ammo realism.

"oops I ran out of money"

Left for Dead 2's minimum has a pretty short lifespan before overheating. Although a single 5 second burst is enough to kill every zombie on the screen

If only you could switch the Halo 3 Battle Rifle to semi-automatic...

I would like to introduce you to The Finals.

it costs two hundred thousand dollars to fire this gun... for twelve seconds.

I think the unmodded imperator in Warframe is pretty close.

Game: tat. Tat. Tat. Tat tat tat tat tat tat tat

Real life: brrrrrrrrt

In their defense, gun barrels getting red hot from use is cool as fuck.

I can't recall any for literally 5 seconds but I did play the recent demo for Toxic Commando and their turrets overheat bullshit fast.

Both are 5 seconds.

Irl bcs the truck of ammo you had behind you got depleted.

In game bcs of overheating.

There isn't a video game minigun in existence that will bankrupt you in seconds either, you just gotta suspend your disbelief and enjoy the fantasy

Except for maybe bloodborne. The most fantastical minigun but you become bankrupt in multiple lifetimes attempting to acquire it

To be fair, the ambient temps in hell are already pretty hot

minimum

It tickles me that, because I was expecting a different word, I read this as "mini-mum". 🙃

Pro: you're firing 50-100 rounds per second.

Con: you're firing 50-100 rounds per second.

"Realism" and "Man portable minigun without support battery and backpack"

To make the gun light enough for your character to handle it the barrels are made of aluminium foil.

In real life they're mounted to vehicles.

AFAIK, you can thank the 1987 movie Predator for the idea that someone could walk around with a minigun as a personal weapon

Now I'm going to have to go watch that movie again. Not only was it so influential that it introduced the idea of miniguns as human-portable weapons to games, it's the source of this meme and what's not to love about a movie with Ventura, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers.

Microdosing howitzer shells.

Someone on Reddit actually did the math on this 5 years ago.

The scene in Predator where someone holds down the trigger and fires continuously for 45 seconds is actually vaguely possible.

The gun weighs 39 kg or 85 lbs, so it's possible for a soldier to carry it, especially the soldiers in Predator who are shown to be much, much stronger than the average soldier. The ammo used in 45 seconds would weigh 25 kg, so it's still vaguely possible that the soldier could carry it along with the weapon. The volume of ammo wouldn't be that much of an issue. It's under 1000 rounds for 45 seconds of fire, which would fit in a backpack-sized box.

Another big issue is the recoil. On earth, someone experiences 9.8 newtons per kg of mass. We don't know how much Bill Duke weighs, because he's just an actor, but since Jesse Ventura used to be a "wrestler", we know his billed weight of 111 kg in his wrestling days. So, without any gear on he'd be experiencing 1088 N of force from gravity. Add the weight of the minigun and its ammo that's 175 kg, or 1715N.

The recoil generated by the gun is based purely on the rounds it fires. An online calculator puts the recoil impulse at 13.4 Ns of impulse per bullet. From that reddit post, they figured out the minigun in that scene had been slightly slowed down from the normal 2000 rounds per minute (33.3 rounds per second) to only about 20 rounds per second. But, even then, that means the gun would be generating 268N of force. So, just to avoid being moved, someone would have to lean atan(268/1715) = 8.8 or about 10 degrees forward. That may not sound like a lot, but when you're already carrying the equivalent of another person from the weight of the minigun and its ammo, that's a lot of extra force to deal with.

In many games, you can move normally while carrying a minigun, but as soon as you start firing it you slow to a crawl. They actually got that part right. It would be hard to move freely while this thing is shoving you back with such force.

Hmm, I wondered so I looked up some prices. Retail ammo costs for 7.62x51mm (used in the M134 minigun) costs about $1 USD per round. In the movie Predator, the gun fired at 20 rounds per second. So, that's $20/s or $1200 per minute. But, as soon as you start looting enemy bodies, you're not the one paying that cost.

Roughly $1 per bullet, roughly 20 rounds per second in the Predator movie, so only about $14,400 for 12 seconds minutes ($240 for 12 seconds). For $200k, you could shoot it for almost 3 minutes hours.

It would happen too, just not after a handful of seconds.

Miniguns use multiple barrels so that the barrels don't overheat. But then they increase the fire rate significantly. In Vietnam, a common machine gun mounted in the door of a helicopter was the M60 which has one barrel and fires at about 600 rounds per minute. Door mounted miniguns like the M134 have 6 barrels but fire at up to 6000 rounds per minute. So, the barrels would actually overheat even faster than an M60s would at the full rate of fire despite having multiple barrels. Of course, you couldn't actually shoot at 6000 rounds per minute while carrying one of those on foot, the recoil would not be possible to manage.

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Nice, I wonder how many rounds per second he was shooting. That looked like the force pushing him backwards was similar to the force of gravity pushing him down.

?? You’re not paying that cost either way lol

Uh... It famously costs the Heavy from TF2 $400,000 to fire his gun for 12 seconds.

For real. Complaining about the realism of a trope sparked by a T-800 ripping the minigun off of a helicopter due to superhuman strength is more than a little silly.

Ohp. Actually, it looks like Castle Wolfenstein did it first. Still, silly.

Plenty of games have ammo costs in some way. But a lot I can think of miniguns are one of the smaller weapons.

From the Depths, a minigun is often a secondary weapon. Missiles cost a fair bit more.

Wait, I don't get it. 20 rounds per second for 12 seconds is 240 rounds, right? So at $1 per bullet, that's $240, right?

What am I missing?

Something that used to be a thing in a lot of games with firearms, but is increasingly minimized or just absent:

To sustain full auto aim at one spot, you would actually have to keep pulling the mouse down, to basically keep fighting the recoil kick.

So, the analogous thing here would be pulling the mouse down whatever the ... arc/degree equivalent of ~9 degrees is, per second.

Given say a 75 horizontal FOV, 16:9 ratio, thats ~42 degrees vertical, 9/42 = ~ 21% of your total vertical view, or 42% of the 'below the center aimpoint' distsnce, so you'd have to pull the mouse down by almost half the distance of your screen, if that makes sense.

For a 90 FOV it works out to ~18% of the whole screen, ~ 36% if you go by the center to bottom of your view distance.

Nowadays, its much more common to have a very minor actual point of aim change from a shot, and most of the visual recoil effect is conveyed by a kind of oscilating viewpunch, that will pull the camera in a direction, but it will automatically return to the original aimpoint afterward.

(Also you shake the camera, roll it back and forth a bit, rapidly)

Ideally, imo, you use and blend both, but the ratio has very much shifted toward the viewpunch that auto resets, such that a short burst basically requires no 'fighting' it, when ... in real life...

...it depends on the weapon's ergonomics and weight and your level of training with it and the caliber and the barrel length etc etc, but generally speaking...

You do very much have to consciously and physically handle the recoil.

Another thing that would factor especially into weilding a minigun would be basically it 'clipping' on the surrounding environment, hitting walls, door frames, nearby plants, etc.

Theres a reason people don't tend to do room clearing with very long and large weapons.

But very few games even attempt to model this, so, you often get 'meta' weapons that... only are so because this element of reality is totally ignored.

The beginning of that movie always takes me out. So they fly in on a helicopter, there are 3 visible helipads (well, 2 and then sand) in a line and they land on the one to the right (from the water perspective).

They get out, get in jeeps, drive for a few seconds to the left side of the helipads driving onthe ocean side and then get out?! Movies used to just do random shit for vibes and logic could go to hell.

I mean, 2 of the jeeps go somewhere else but it's just Arnold and the driver in his.

Technically, it could be done. Someone did the math from the scene in the movie Predator. He could carry a weapon that heavy, including the ammo and batteries. It would be about 40kg for the gun and 25kg for the ammo. That's very high, but not absurd, as long as he's carrying almost nothing else. It could fire for 45s without running dry. And if you limited it to reasonable bursts of say 3s, that ammo would last a while.

It's not practical, but it's possible.

Are any of them so astoundingly expensive? Now that you mention it I do remember going into debt from bullet costs in armored core 4

Oh yeah, in a CUTSCENE 😜

I accidentally did the math for minutes instead of seconds. You're right, it's $20 per second, $240 for 12s.

Oh, prices are going down. Can it really just use any 7.62x51?

To sustain full auto aim at one spot, you would actually have to keep pulling the mouse down, to basically keep fighting the recoil kick.

Yeah, that was so annoying. I'm glad they stopped doing it. I don't mind if your accuracy goes down when you go full auto, or your aim point drifts in some random direction, but having to scroll down as you shot just sucked.

Another thing that would factor especially into weilding a minigun would be basically it 'clipping' on the surrounding environment, hitting walls, door frames, nearby plants, etc.

That should even be a factor with a regular rifle. Some games simulate that, but most of them do the ultra-simple thing of pretending the gun comes directly out of your nose and never interacts with the environment in any way.

I'll have to watch for that when I watch the movie again.

No idea. It would make sense though. It would be strange to use a standard NATO round specification but require special versions of that round. There's nothing about how it works that suggests it should need special bullets. The rotating barrel and firing mechanism are different, but otherwise it's just a machine gun.

OTOH, if you're trying to create an outpost near the enemy lines, maybe it makes more sense to have a soldier carry the minigun you want to use at that outpost through the jungle, rather than risk using a vehicle to deliver it.

A soldier lumbering through a jungle with a big weapon is a target, but a helicopter making a delivery, or a truck making a delivery is going to be a much bigger and more visible target with fewer things to hide behind.

You will receive the bill eventually. But it also operates on Valve Time, so it might be a while.

I don’t mind if your accuracy goes down when you go full auto, or your aim point drifts in some random direction, but having to scroll down as you shot just sucked.

It's not even that realistic. In real life, you need to apply constant pressure downward to keep a machine gun firing level, but not constant movement.

IMO, a realistic way to do it would be that when you fire the game machine gun in full auto, your point of aim gets shifted upward. To return it to where you attempted to aim, you'd then have to move the mouse downward slightly and then hold it there for the duration of the burst. (And the viewpoint/point of aim should suddenly dip back downward when you stop firing.)

It's not even that realistic. In real life, you need to apply constant pressure downward to keep a machine gun firing level, but not constant movement.

Yeah, exactly. Pushing downwards slightly with a thumb stick / joystick might be a reasonable approximation. But, the whole thing you're trying to do is to prevent any movement.

But, I like your idea for the shifting aim point. If they ever try to do one for a mouse again, that would make more sense.

Scroll down?

With a mouse wheel?

No.

I mean... pull down, like, move the mouse back, toward you, down.

I personally don't find it annoying at all, I find the near total lack of it very annoying.

Without it, being able to control recoil is no longer an actual skill that differentiates players.

I do see how this doesn't jive well with more casual shooters, and ... you can probably tell I prefer more complex and challenging gameplay, more detailed realism that serves a purpose.

But yes, modelling the gun as an element of the 3D space you are in does apply to literally any firearm.

Its why, IRL, there are different kinds of stances and aiming styles, especially so for pistols.

Yeah, most games don't model this at all, some have a system where if you get close to a wall, your gun will change anims into some kind of state to indicate you're too close, push it up against you or overhead or something.

You are describing what I described, the viewpunch primarily method, where the camera auto returns to nearly the original aimpoint, in a way that treats every shot after the first as... different.

What I am saying:

Each shot = view angle gets shifted upward by say 2 degrees (+/- range of 0.75) and then left/right -0.5 to 0.5, something like that.

So, for each shot, you feel the recoil and must adjust manually to return to your original point of aim.

Which is actually very realistic, if you've ever shot a gun. Thats... true for timed aimed single shots, not just full auto or bursts.

'Your' method, the viewpunch method, is basically this, but, the real recoil is 0 or much smaller for every shot after the first.

Which is kind of odd, from a realism perspective.

Typicially you have a crosshair, your 'cone of fire', that expands for each successive shot in rapid progression... that actually expands faster the more shots you fire in a given time frame, and then it usually maxes out at some max innaccuracy level.

But also typically... most games... do... what you are 'suggesting'. That's... the whole thing I am saying is basically 'easy mode'.

It makes sense for joycon users, they already need auto-aim to come anywhere near close to being able compete on par with MK users.

The fairly small number of FPS games that went cross platform and either did not have auto aim or allowed servers to turn it off showed this very quickly, you can see in RDR2 or GTAV online for more recent examples of this (assuming you can find and instance that isn't plauged with hackers...)

If you think that needing to physically account for each full auto, or rapidly repeated single/semi-auto shot... does not require actice physical effort for each shot... I don't think you've ever aimed and a shot a weapon accurately in rapid succession.

I'm one of the seemingly very small amount of people who has both shot real world firearms, and designed entire game systems that simulate firearms.

There's a fairly good chance half the advanced SWEP systems you may have ever encountered in Garry's Mod are... ultimately derivatives of my code, that I wrote almost 20 years ago now.

I guess that if I was trying to make realistic game, I would give the player multiple lives. Each mission, there is a large number of friendly troops trying to advance through each area. Whenever the player dies, they swap into one of the surviving soldiers. The game is over if the troops run dry. This allows us to have each and every weapon on the field be fully effective for both sides.

There are a lot of difficulties with this, since traditional game design doesn't account for a massive number of characters. It would probably be best to make a mod for Arma III and playtest the concept with D-Day and other operations.

It would be kinda like the isometric Army Men games or Cannon Fodder, but from a FPS perspective.