How are guns with attachments in FPS games broken up?

james swanson

So I'm currently modeling the Spas-12 for the monthly gun challenge. I'd like to do two variants of the Spas: The collapsable stock, and full stock.

Collapsable stock:


Full stock:


The full stock would offer the best accuracy and stability, but it would be a bit sluggish. The collapsable stock, when collapsed, would be fast and agile, but the accuracy would suffer, as well as the stability. When the collapsable stock is unfolded, it'd almost share the same stats as the full stock , but it'd be a little bit less accurate. If the player had the collapsable stock equipped, he'd be able to switch between modes while playing. The different stocks would be attachments.

Anyways, my questions is: How should I break up the models? Should I make two totally separate models, one for each stock? Or should I create every part of the gun that won't vary, such as the receiver, pump, heat guard, etc. And then unwrap each varying part as a separate object.

I'm not sure how devs break up their models and attachments. I'd appreciate any help!

Moosebish

You should go with the second method, everything the same except the stocks. I would also ensure that all attachments are on the same texture sheet. So that now matter how many variations of the shotgun there are, it always calls just one texture.

I'm sure different games do it different ways. Multi-player games will have less memory to work with while single player games could have the luxury of giving everything a unique model and texture..

If you're making it for a portfolio piece, I'd just try to make it look as awesome as possible and not worry about how its implemented in game..

Rick Stirling

Yeah, separate bits that can be attached. You can do this with simple things like scopes and mags, or take it the full way and start with a receiver and add the grip, barrel etc.

I'm sure there was a talk on how Borderlands did it, and there is also a video floating around from Army of Two.

kaptainkernals

Here is the thread that Rick was talking about:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120670