Graphics/Technology

Same as the single player

Unfortunately, the OEM build we played had exactly the same weapons as the single player demo. We didn't get a chance to see the bigger weapons like the silenced submachine gun, the flamethrower, rocket launcher, heavy machine gun, and microwave gun. Players spawn into a multiplayer match with the default weapons - throwing knives and 9mm semiautomatic pistols. All weapons in Soldier of Fortune carry a realistic amount of ammunition and must be reloaded before or when the clip runs dry. Don't expect to run around spraying bullets indiscriminately - at some point you're going to have to stop and reload, which takes a good deal of time. Getting caught while reloading can be very costly!

The standard 9mm holds 18 bullets per clip. The more powerful .44 magnum handgun holds only 9 and has a slower rate of fire. The other demo weapons are: combat shotgun (holds up to 8 shells at a time), submachine gun (holds 40 rounds per clip), and a sniper rifle with telescoping sight (6 shots at a time).

Reloading a magnum

Switching to 9mm - he pulls the slide back

In bounds, out of bounds

Getting used to the weapon feel in Soldier of Fortune required a little bit of time. One of the possible reasons for this is that damage to player models from guns is done on a per-poly basis rather than a bounding box system. This is not surprising because of the advanced locational based damage system in Soldier of Fortune. So what is meant by "per-poly" and "bounding box?" Recall that in most games, such as Quake 2 and Quake 3, every model has the same sized target area, no matter who skinny or fat they might be. Try loading up a game of Quake 3 with a friend, and have your friend pick one of the slimmer models like the skeleton, Bones. Shoot just off to the side of your friend with a machine gun and you'll notice that it still registers a hit. This makes it more "fair" to people who prefer using the bigger models like Tank Jr.

He's throwing a flashbang!

missing a limb - the white is residual effect from the flashbang

Per Poly

Soldier of Fortune chooses to crank up the realism a notch by requiring players to actually hit the model, instead of just getting the shot inside an arbitrary bounding box. Sounds good right? Well there's a problem with this. In a per poly system like Soldier of Fortune's it can advantageous to use a smaller female model instead of a muscle-bound male model. The smaller models are theoretically more difficult to hit because they have a smaller cross sectional area on screen. I asked Kenn Hoekstra of Raven about this and he responded with:

That is a fair assessment. HOWEVER...to compensate for the female models being harder to hit, they take more damage when they are hit. And if you play a huge, burly guy like "the butcher," he's easy to hit, but the hits don't do as much damage. It's all part of the multiplayer balancing system...

Wow, it sounds like they've really thought this through a lot. I was playing with a female character against the more muscular male models - it might explain why it seemed to take more shots to bring down the big boys, compared to the relatively low number of shots it took to bring me down. Even on arcade mode, the female model I used would die to one well placed shotgun blast (no armor).

Firing the monster magnum

The body armor art could use some work