Clip Guns
What are Clip Guns?
Quite simple really, Clip guns are weapons with reloadable ammo clips. In
normal Unreal, you can just keep firing until you completely run out of ammo
(except for the Automag...) and you never have to reload your gun. Clip Guns
are the basic concept of adding the ability (and need) to reload the gun
in between firing.
Different Types Of Clip Guns
Different types? WTF?
Playing Unreal and the variously existing mods, you may here and there come
across a gun that requires reloading. However, if you watch closely, the
technical and playable details about the reload is not always precisely the
same.
For example, in both mods "Serpentine" and "Infiltration" you need to reload
your guns, however, in Infiltration you throw the clip away - with any remaining
ammo inside it being LOST - while in Serpentine you add in as many bullets into
the existing clip until it is full again!
This is just ONE example, I will be listing the differently supported features
now and also make examples as to where they apply (as seen in MODs):
- Clip Weapon
The only weapon with ammo clips at all in normal Unreal is the
Automag, all other weapons are no "clip weapons". In "real
weapon mods" like "Infiltration" or "Serpentine", practically all
weapons are "clip weapons".
- Clip Holds Ammo
This applies to no gun at all in normal Unreal. The Automag
has clips, but ammo is always directly reduced from your ammo stock,
not the clip. The clip for the Automag is fake in that way, that
the Automag simply plays a reload animation after 20 shots but there is
no real point to it.
In Infiltration or Serpentine, all clip weapons are "real" so that the
clip truly holds the ammo. So if you fire, ammo is deducted from the current
clip, not the complete ammo stock. If your clip is reloaded, ammo is
physically transferred from your ammo stock into the clip - thus, the
clip holds ammo. When firing you will notice only the number
of bullets in your CLIP run lower, your total ammo will stay the same
(not so with the Automag).
- Clip Waste
This is the difference between "throwing away the half-empty ammo clip"
thereby LOSING all remaining bullets it holds (ClipWaste), or "adding
new bullets until clip is full" (no ClipWaste).
Serpentine weapons always have no clipwaste while Infiltration weapons
have (except for the Benelli shotgun which is reloaded 1 shell at a
time).
In theory it is possible to set "Clip Holds No Ammo" and "Clip Waste",
however that would be extremely stupid, as reloading would then
deduct the number of bullets currently in the clip from your ammo
stock, and then just reset the counter to full.
Whether or not your weapons are "Clip Wasters" should determine a little
bit when to reload your weapon. In Serpentine it is wise to keep as many
bullets in your clips as possible at all times. In Infiltration, you may,
however, want to conserve ammo. If you only fired 5 shots from a 30 bullet
clip, reloading would make you throw away 25 bullets! That may be a
problem if ammo is scarce...
- Autoreload - Switch
This only applies to the "Automag", since it is a fake clip gun anyway.
When you fire a few shots with the mag, switch to another gun and then
switch back to the Automag, you will find you can again fire 20 shots with
it in a row, so obviously, the shotcounter was reset. In our terms, the
clip was silently reloaded on switching. No real gun does that, so if you
ever play with "real" Clip Guns in Unreal, never expect this.
- Autoreload - Empty
Whether or not the gun reloads automatically after firing its current clip
empty or not. In Infiltration this is settable I believe. Most players have
it on Autoreload because the "Reload Button" sometimes stops functioning,
so the only way to reload the gun is then to shoot out the remaining bullets.
In Serpentine, guns never autoreload, you are supposed to do this yourself
as in "real life".
- ClipSize / ClipSizeForceable
ClipSize is the normal amount of bullets that you can put into a clip to
make it 100% full. Serpentine tought us, that you can "squeeze in another
bullet" in some weapon clips, thus filling it over 100%. To do that, just
hit your reload again when the clip is already full. If the weapon accepts
an extra bullet, we are talking about a "ClipSizeForceable" because you
could force another bullet into it (ClipSizeForceable = ClipSize+1
in Serpentine sometimes). Naturally this only works WITHOUT CLIP WASTE
because if you threw away the clip you could never fill it over 100%.
All of these features are supported in general now by UTeamFix. 2 mutators come
along to demonstrate.
The (Anti)ClipGuns mutators
These 2 mutators come as standard with UTF-10. Clip Guns will add clips to
all normal guns, Anti Clip Guns will do the opposite, and remove clips from
guns which have them.
So logically, Anti Clip Guns is pretty useless in normal Unreal, because
the only affected gun by it would be the Automag which is a fake clip gun
only anyway. However, take the Serpentine Game Bridge and add this mutator and
you will find you no longer have to reload your "real guns" :-O
If you play Serpentine MonsterMash, clips are removed automatically.
The Clip Gun mutator is just a little demonstration, when used on normal
Unreal weapons you will find you have to reload your Rifle, ASMD etc etc...
Reloading is pretty fast, so there is not REALLY that much of a point to
playing this way, but it was included to demonstrate the feature which is often
used as base for mods.
The command in UTeamFix to reload a weapon is UTF_ReloadWeapon.
If you use Game Bridges that add in clip weapons from other mods, you will
usually be able to use the UTeamFix command -OR- the old mod's command to
reload your weapons - yes yes, both should work interchangeably!