Of course, there will be the obvious issue of weapon balancing, but can it be done? Adding new weapons and ammo types for them throughout the Black Mesa campaign? Since we’re dealing with marines, some sort of M4 or M16 variant seems like a natural fit. The niche I could see it occupy is that of a more powerful automatic combat rifle with rarer ammunition. Maybe a semi and burst mode for the primary and secondary fire, respectively. Or only burst but with a scope mode, similar to the revolver’s ironsights or the crossbow’s optic.
Wow, a unique thread we don’t see every few months
There are no plans for the devs to add new weapon that were not present in Half-Life to Black Mesa at this time.
There is also not the ability for modders to add new weapons that aren’t direct replacements right now, as that would require source code access, which the devs have not released - I’m also unsure if they are legally able to, or if they have some kind of agreement with Valve that would allow it.
Well they could always add some code for it, like it’s really easy to add custom weapons for Obsidian Conflict as a mapper, just copy paste a .txt file.
Some kind of script system would be cool, but I don’t know that that sort of thing is under the pervue of “Recreate Half-Life in Source”
Maybe as a post-Xen update they could do that - if they do, I’d also much appreciate exposing a few entity parameters, such as models for HEV and Health chargers, pickups, the ability to choose which MP arms the player uses in SP maps, etc.
Not that I expect them to do that, as it’s a lot of work that wouldn’t improve the base game and would probably go underused by the community, but I can dream.
EDIT: Oh, and per-map character_manifest files. That’d be super useful. And while we’re dreaming here, a console command to launch -tools mode so you don’t have to mess around with the launch options, since there’s like, no feedback for making it work properly and I’m still unable to get it launching under that.
Ah that’s disappointing. The game is still one of the best first person single player experiences I’ve ever had, but there is always room for improvement, or, since improvement is often subjective, customization.