An idea for weapon selection in console games

In an old post I talked about a small idea for console shooters: basically instead of the current system of reloading, where you can drop an almost-full magazine without losing any ammunition, you would tap the reload button to quickly drop the magazine and lose the ammunition (which could be picked up again manually later) and load a fresh one, or hold the button to remove the magazine and stow it before loading the new one - this would be much slower but you would keep the ammo. The idea is for use in games where ammo isn't plentiful and resource management is a bigger deal, obviously.

Well, I just finished Army of Two: Devil's Cartel, and one thing I really liked about that game was the weapon selection system. I had an idea for a slight tweak to the formula. The basic idea is that the player can carry a number of main weapons and a handgun. It would probably be two main weapons which would typically be long-guns that can be slung behind the player's back, while the handgun fits in a holster; that seems reasonably possible in real life (not necessarily practical, but possible). In a similar way to Rage, a single tap would quickly switch to the handgun and back while holding the button would open a weapon-wheel.

The twist is that when performing this quick-draw the player doesn't put away his primary weapon, instead he keeps carrying it in his off-hand while shooting the handgun one-handed. Because he doesn't need to hang up the primary weapon the draw can be extremely fast, but because he's firing the handgun one-handed he won't have as much control, meaning accuracy and rate-of-fire suffers. Of course he wouldn't be able to reload the pistol with both hands full, so hitting the reload button would holster the pistol and reload the primary. unless the character has some kind of rig that holds magazine up so that the handgun can be brought down onto them to reload, like Lara Croft sometimes uses - that could be an upgrade item you pick up later. When selecting the pistol using the weapon wheel, he holds in in both hands so he can fire and reload it normally of course.

If the primary weapon could reasonably be used one-handed - another pistol or perhaps even a small submachine gun - then quick-drawing the pistol would allow the user to dual-wield the two weapons. I think it would be reasonable to be able to reload while doing so (the animation could involve tucking one pistol under the arm while reloading the other, for example).


This probably all sounds quite complicated on paper, but I don't think it would be that complicated in use, and it would complement my older reloading idea. So why bother with all these complicated micro-management systems? Well, because they add depth to the basic shooter gameplay. They force you to make rapid tactical decisions on the fly: do you reload and risk getting shot or killed before you can return fire, or quick-draw a pistol to fight your way out of trouble but delay getting your primary weapon back up? Hopefully it would make the right game more engaging. At any rate I expect it would appeal to some gamers; unfortunately those are probably PC gamers.

Sean the Overzealous Cricket Player

The model is Dynamic Ray from Hasslefree Minis. I'm calling him Sean for no particular reason whatsoever.

My colour palette was based on some reference photos, so some of the colours were not quite what I might otherwise have chosen, but I really like how it turned out so no complaints.

This was my second attempt at black cloth; I used a black base, grey/white drybrushes then a mix of Badab Black and 'Ardcoat to shade. It came out a little better but next time I'll use a dark grey base rather than true black, which should look better. Not too happy about the white cloth either, but it looks good enough I guess.

The skin was the basic elf-flesh base followed by a mix of Gryphone Sepia and 'Ardcoat, then a pure sepia wash was applied in select areas (like inside the ears and between the arms) to further darken them. It looks good enough to me so I'm happy. The eyes were white with black dots but as usual the white disappeared after adding the sepia; still this is probably the best looking face I've ever managed, though that's largely down the to miniature itself having so much detail there (most models don't actually have eyebrows, for example; this one does).

I initially painted the hair in the same Elf Flesh as the skin, then drybrushed it white and glazed it yellow; I was trying to make the hair seem light and thin by using the same tones as the skin, but I decided it didn't have enough contrast. So I washed it with Devlan Mud, brushed it with more white then glazed yellow again, to get those darker areas. It's not perfect, but I think it's as good as I could have hoped for seeing as I haven't really tried to paint blonde hair before. I did make a mistake by trying to sand a little bit of the hair off the top before painting - it looked a little like a mohawk to me at the time, but I think it probably would have looked better if I hadn't as I created a solid ridge along the centre.

I mixed various browns with bleached bone until I found a colour I liked for the cricket bat. It's not obvious in the photos (or in real life for that matter), I painted on a subtle wood grain effect. It's hard to see, but I think the result looks very close to a real cricket bat so I'm very happy with it.

The watch doesn't look great as it lacks detail; in retrospect I think I could have added a bit more details with the paint (or possibly modelled some on) if I had thought things through better from the start. I think the tie and the belt came out quite nicely actually. I painted on a red name tag with white spots and a metal pocket clip; it's a bit flat up close but from the distance it adds a nice bit of detail.

Some bits do look a bit glossy; it's a problem I've been having lately, I'm not sure if I'm using too much Purity Seal or too little, or if I'm not quite using it right or something.


So yeah, overall I'm very happy with the model. I'm really starting to like the idea of more "recognisable" miniatures; though I do feel a little guilty about buying unlicensed ones - obviously if there were licensed models of the characters I want I would buy those.

Praying Paladin

This is Tiriel by Hasslefree Miniatures, sculpted by Kev White. I love the simple, no-nonsense character and pose of the model - totally fitting for a paladin.

While it was a quick and simple paint job, I was actually experimenting with skin and metal. I've found that brushing metal over black gives a very nice metal effect, but brushing it over white gives a slightly brighter final finish. So I tried to pre-shade the mini by priming it white, washing it black, and finally drybrushing white before brushing on Mithril Silver.

The result was subtle at best:

Mithril brushed over shaded basecoat.

So I ended up giving it another black wash then a Mithril drybrush:

Another wash and drybrush created better contrast.

I was hoping the armour would look brighter. Perhaps painting on Mithril in a more traditional fashion then using a wash and drybrush would give me a brighter overall tone? Actually, I once painted mithril over metallic primer and that came out quite bright, I might have to try that again.

I've been trying to come up with a paler, pinker skin tone than Elf Flesh to use with characters from colder climates - even Elf Flesh is a little tan. For a short while GW had a light pink "edge" paint, but they were not selling it when I went looking. Instead I picked up Changeling Pink, a GW drybrush paint of the same shade. I mixed this with white and a touch of Elf Flesh to come up with a pink skin tone:

Skin basecoated with custom pink mix.

While I was ultimately happy with the mixture's colour, I couldn't figure out how to shade it. I've been shading Elf Flesh with either Ogryn Flesh or Gryphone Sepia (lately mixed with a little 'Ardcoat to change how it spreads across the surface), but neither of those two complements the pink colour, nor do any of my other washes. I decided to try Ogryn Flesh, thinking that it's slightly redder colour would work better with pink than the slightly more yellow Gryphone Sepia. It was a catastrophe, the two did not work together and she just looked ill. In desperation I gave it a white drybrush to try to hide the pink, but that just made it worse; suddenly she looked like a reanimated corpse:

Undead paladin? That's just wrong.

In a last-ditched hail-Mary I glazed the skin with a couple of thin layers of Gryphone Sepia. This essentially killed the pink and white and I ended up with a more typical tanned skin tone:

Saved by the Sepia.

Her skin still looks kinda crappy, and the shading on the face is poor, but it's basically tolerable - especially since it's normally very hard to see her face because of her pose. Perhaps I should actually try to learn how to do proper shading and blending and stuff. Maybe someday.


Overall I'm not really happy with how she turned out. It looks a bit boring, being mostly just a single shade of metal, and of course the skin is rather poor. If I was to paint this figure again I would probably try to use some different colours for the armour, perhaps pick out some plates in gold or add some freehand decoration here and there. I've just been rushing too much; I'm just really tired of having all these great figures sitting around unpainted, and I want to get them done.

Nine for Mortal Men Doomed to Die

It took a long time, I finally got around to painting this guy. He's one of the GW Ringwraiths, from back when they were metal and GW sold them separately. The model came with the mounted version, which I have sitting around somewhere, but I don't really like that model so it'll probably never get painted.

He's basically a bit of a rush job. I considered replacing the bent sword with a better looking one, but decided to just use it as part of an "old and decayed" theme suggested by his rather ragged robes. I gave all the steel a mild rust effect by drybrushing boltgun over a brown basecoat, and tried to apply verdigris to the brass by painting/washing it with turquoise.

I experimented a lot to try to find a way of shading the robes, putting together various mixes of black washes or paints with varnishes and medium, to apply over a grey base with a white highlight. That failed, and it just ended up almost completely black, so I threw on a drybrush and gave up.

I had been looking for something to do with the bird figure, which had come as part of a pack, I settled on using it with this mini because of it's nomad-like robes and the suitability of the pose. I tried to paint it up as a falcon by applying a pattern of white dots over the brown base, though the bleached bone drybrush I used to highlight the feathers makes the dots less obvious. The eyes are painted red, but they are so small and surrounded by brown that they don't really stand out. I used quickshade to shade the feathers as my initial attempt to use devlan mud failed spectacularly - it darkened the spots so much that they were completely invisible, I ended up stripping the paint from the falcon and starting again.


While the falcon looks alright to me, I am very unhappy with the rest of the figure. He looks boring and messy, and the black robes really don't work well with my standard black bases. The only reason I don't strip the paint and start again is because I have so little time and so many figures that I want to paint, that I'd rather have a mediocre painted model than spend more time with no guarantee that it will turn out much better.

The Lady In Green

I've basically given up on the idea of ever having the time to invest in playing 40K properly. I haven't played since well before sixth edition came out, and it only seems to get harder to find time to devote to the hobby. The thing is, I've already sick of painting Space Marines. I'm not a fast painter, so painting large numbers of identical figures feels boring and pointless, even if I do occasionally like the look of small unit of matched models. I much prefer each model I paint to be unique and different. So now that I've given up on playing the game, I no longer feel the need to paint a matched army, meaning that I can finally start painting all the other minis I've picked up over time.

GW seems to have very few decent-looking female minis, in fact as far as I can tell not all that many miniature companies normally do, so when I saw this one it caught my eye. I really liked the relaxed pose and the fact that she's wearing actual practical clothes, plus it has a nice balance of detail and decoration - enough to make it interesting, not so much that it looks crowded or overdone.

Sharyn, Female Wizard by Julie Guthrie, from reapermini.com

So here it is, my first painted female miniature (the Seraphim doesn't count, I only helped with that one):

She didn't quite turn out the way I had planned. I wanted her to have a "forest" colour scheme, so I tried to stick with greens, yellows and browns, but they all came out a lot brighter than I had originally intended, I guess it came out less "forest" and more "rainforest". Incidentally, this is the first time I've looked up the miniature on the reaper website, and I've just realised that my colour scheme is surprisingly similar to one of the painted versions on the website. Pure coincidence I assure you; perhaps the nature of the mini just suggests certain colours?

From reapermini.com; painted by Leopardpixie

I decided to paint the feathers in a bright blue so they would stand out; I was hoping it would help the mini to "pop", although I was afraid they would look out of place and ruin the colour scheme. However, the other colours came out so bright that the feathers blend in a lot more than I expected them to; I have mixed feelings about that, but it's certainly better than if they stood out too much.

Her face isn't great, but I was lucky it came out as well as it did; I don't have particularly steady or precise hands, those eyes are more a result of divine intervention than skill, and I didn't have the courage to experiment much with the lips so once they looked passable I moved on.

I'm not a huge fan of opaque "crystals" at the best of times, and while I could have tried to replace the stone in her staff with something clear, I decided I wanted the piece to look more organic, so I cut it off and tried to re-sculpt the top of the staff with greenstuff. The results were not amazing, but I think it came out OK.

I tried to use a milliput wash to smooth the mini a little (mainly the coat), it worked out OK but I've since discovered that liquid greenstuff is much easier to use. There's just one thing to remember: while liquid greenstuff dries very quickly, just because it's dry doesn't mean it's set. If you try to sandpaper liquid greenstuff before it's properly set you'll end up pulling bits off the surface instead of sanding it down. Leave it a few hours at least and it should be fine. Also, it shrinks a bit when it dries, so I often apply a second coat before I start sanding.

There were a couple of other fixes involved: while moving her to the GW base I accidentally broke her foot off. Luckily it was an easy fix. Looking at it now, I've realised that she's not centred properly on the base, I think this was because I was pinning her to a base that already had a magnet installed in the center, so I couldn't put her feet as centrally as I would have liked. I also used a few drops of superglue to fill a gap in a strand of hair; for something small like that superglue is actually probably the easiest option.

You can see the re-sculpted staff and the break in her hair (lower right of the face).

I was experimenting with skill-free ways of shading cloth and skin. I've noticed in the past that Army Painter quickshade can work very well to shade organic surfaces like flesh and bone, the main problem being the colour. I tried using 'Ardcoat (gloss varnish) mixed with GW washes to replicate the effect, and found it actually works quite well (for a skill-free method that is).

I believe the coat was basecoated in Warpstone Glow, then drybrushed in camo green (I think) then white. After that I shaded her coat with about a 1:1 ratio of 'Ardcoat to Thraka Green wash. The results were decent, but not really dark enough; mixing in the varnish obviously lightens the mixture somewhat. I might need to experiment with a regular wash on top to further shade the recesses, or possibly allowing washes to dry a bit to intensify the colour before mixing in the varnish. In this case as I had initially drybrushed up to pure white and the shade didn't colour it enough, so I added a green glaze on top just to help bring that back down.

For the skin I worked up a solid coat of elf flesh then shaded it with a 1:1 mix of Gryphone Sepia to 'Ardcoat. The effects are quite subtle since her skin is quite flat and smooth; I find the mixure works better for defining musculature on male models I tested it with. Still, it seemed to work as she did seem to look flatter before I applied it. I might need to experiment with letting washes dry out a little before I add the varnish, in order to strengthen the colour.

Before the face was shaded.

Her tabbard took more work than I expected; I started off painting it camo green but a single green wash darkened it so much it blended in too much with the coat. So I worked it up to yellow - which took a lot more work than I expected, Sunburst Yellow does not have good coverage - then washed it again, the result isn't as smooth as I would have liked but I basically got sick of it and decided to leave well enough alone.

I started by painting the lips in Blood Red, but she looked like a clown, so I painted over them with Scab Red. Next time I'll try to mix red and flesh tones to get something that looks more natural. I had a lot of trouble finding a nice shade for her hair; I wanted a sort of reddish chestnut colour but couldn't seem to find it, so I settled for what I think is a carroty orange. I washed it with Baal Red, but in retrospect that wasn't dark enough and the results are too flat; I should have used something darker like Ogryn Flesh or maybe even Devlan Mud.

I have decided to call her Gwennyth. It's just the first thing that came to my head when I was searching for a name, and as it sounded somewhat "Arthurian" I decide to go for it. I can't say that I'm completely happy with the final piece, but I guess she looks OK and I am glad just to have actually finished a model for the first time in a while. Plus; we learn from our mistakes, and I made so many mistakes with her that I must have learned something, right?

Wide Solomon Bar belt

Another one for the sale. This one is a wide solomon bar, again from fusion knots. I don't really like how this one turned out; there's a few inconsistencies in the weave which are surprisingly obvious, the pattern "slipped" so that the two sides are slightly offset, and the end turned out quite messy. I'm also not sure about the colours. I was in a hurry when I made it, if I'd thought it throught better to begin with I would have used a single black strand rather than two (meaning two less end to deal with), and if I had spent longer on it I might have found a nicer way to tie it off.

I was saving this buckle for a belt that used black paracord.

You can see here how it narrows and "slips".

The end was very messy.

The inside actually looks nicer than the outside.

When I was planning this belt I discovered some of the modified versions I could do. I just wish I could stop the weave from slipping on one side, I think there might be a way to do it based on the steps in the weave and the tension on the cord, but I can't really be bothered to look into it right now.

Double T-Virus Belt

I mentioned in my post about the T-Virus belt that I thought it would be possible to weave a second row of knots along the outside. Well, that's exactly what I did:

I added an extra prong to the buckle.

The triange tie-off came out quite well.

The inside has a more "ordered" look.

Basically I wove the regular T-Virus sinnet from fusion knots, and then ran a second row of knots along each side. Rather than pull the entire cord through each of the outer knots, I tried to save time by pulling out the white cord out from the center, leaving me with two knotted "arms" of the light blue cord. This allowed me to pull the "arms" through the loops in the knots in the dark blue cord (OK, if you have no idea what I'm talking about then it might help to watch the instructional video so you understand how the knots are made). I then pushed the white cord back through the knots in the light blue cord using Perma Lok lacing needle.

This may have saved time, but it was fiddly and I had to be careful not to let the knots in the light blue cord unravel while I was working. I think just doing it the long way might be easier in the future.

I was able to modify the "triangle tie-off" to work with six strands, and the luckily the end turned out quite neat. I took the prong from one belt buckle and added it to another to create a mid-sized two-pronged buckle, which seemed more suitable to me, though in truth a regular buckle should work just find as the central strands take most of the strain anyway.

I really like how it came out; the colours work well (I used a brighter blue than the last time) and it's a great pattern, I just wish I'd had a nicer buckle to use. It does take significantly more than twice as long to make as the regular T-Virus though, so I don't know if I'll be making any more any time soon.