I back in the day wrote a Quake mod.
Actually, now I think about it, I wrote a HL2 mod too.
In both, I implemented efficient pick-up; a toggle, such that when active, an item would and would only be picked up if its full contents could be used.
You mean auto-pickup, right? Because this already works for stuff you pickup with action key (e.g. the grape juice)
What? He means that normal pickups (ammo, health) will only be auto picked up when their full contents could be used. Look:
EDIT:
I like Nate’s suggestion though to “force” the pickup via use key, though.
Yes I understand. For the record I was also referring to the juice pickups -from the vending machines- that heal you +1, and for which this is already implemented (if you are at 100 health, then you don’t pick them up -you kick them around). (i also thought that you needed to press E to use the juice, but I was wrong about that).
Anyway, for the OP, I agree. It would be a cool added feature.
Edited my post because I liked your suggestion to force a pickup.
If one for example has 76% health and will now leave that section for good you can force-pickup that 25% healthpack in the corner.
Or, if there is a toggle for efficient pick-up, toggle it off, which would return us to the behaviour we have now.
Interestingly, Half-Life 2 will allow you to pick up only the amount of ammo you can carry from a gun lying on the ground. If you fire off some ammo and walk over it again, you’ll pick up the rest. This doesn’t seem to be the case with ammo piles, however - these are consumed even on incomplete pick-ups.
I didn’t pay enough attention to supplies to tell one way or the other in Black Mesa, regrettably.
I like how L4D2, I think it was, did it with ammo piles. When you pick it up, your max reserve ammo is temporarily expanded by however much you need to fully reload your weapon.
I wrote a similar functionality for Quake 2 not too long ago, a simple convar that defines a pickup threshold. A value of 0.5 means you need to have at least 50% space in your inventory for the item, 1.1 110% and so on (1.1 of course makes no sense at all, but the range isn’t forced so you can do it if you want…). It would default to 0 if you don’t specify a value in the cfg files or the console. Would be neat to have in Black Mesa, as it always feels kinda painful to accidentally pick up an energy cell at 99 energy…
What about a partial pickup, like weapons in HL2 and BM, but for health too? Like, it won’t auto pickup the health if you can’t fully use it, but you can force pickup and it will use a fraction of it’s supplies? And you can save the remaining supplies for the next time you get it
The whole point of those items is that you can’t leave the surplus, that’s what the wall mounted chargers are for.
I may be wrong, but to me, that doesn’t make sense.
The game has an internally self-consistent narrative. In proportion to the deviation from that narrative, the loss of immersion (and so enjoyment, which is the point of all this).
If I see, say, a pack of shotgun shells, why does picking up one shell from a pack of however many it is, lead to the disappearence of the other shells?
This is not internally self-consistent within the realistic-world narrative presented by HL.
So it doesn’t make sense to me, in any way, to say this disappearence is okay because there are other items which by their different nature support partial use. Those other items have nothing to do with the issue in hand. It’s like saying running old people over is okay because there are chairs.
I was referring only to the health packs and power cells, ammunition should work on a round/shell by round/shell basis.
Actually, one BIG thing I want to give props to Black Mesa for is not reloading my weapons behind my back when I’m not using them. Half-Life 2 PISSED ME OFF with this. It doesn’t happen every time, but if I holster a weapon and walk over ammo, then reselect it, it shows up with full ammo. Talk about immersion-breaking…
Black Mesa is excellent about this. If I’m stupid and forget to reload my shotgun, then three maps from now when I pull it out with one round in the magazine, I have but myself to blame. Plus, I love going through a huge firefight, then sitting down to reload all my weapons. Pistol, magnum, shotgun, rifle, crossbow. It makes it that much more immersive and it makes me feel like the game isn’t treating me with kiddie gloves for every little thing.
Difficulty is one thing, but letting the player handle such minor things is something I simply love.
I agree with the OP suggestion here.
I get tremendously peeved when I have 100|100 and something taps me to 99|97, because that means the next medikit|battery I come across (in a box or on a body or somewhere accidental) will be completely spent.
And the game has a tendency to provide health|armor|ammo before a scene which will require it. I prefer to go into battle with 99|97, lose whatever health and armor I will, and then come back for the goodies I preserved so I can go into the next chapter fully stocked. Picking up a medikit|battery|magazine when most of it will be wasted … is quite upsetting for a strategic-attentive architect/mastermind like myself.