This time we will be doing something a little different, this is the first in a series of interviews with Modders that have created pieces whose presence it known to most if not all of the players of Ready or Not that have dove into the wide world of modding.
To kick off our new series, we will be Interviewing Jerry the Weekend Gunfighter, author of the most wide-spread near total conversion on Nexus, leading the pack with 512k lifetime downloads since it’s re-Introduction with the 1.0 release of Ready or not.
The wonderful combination of modularity and sheer scope lets you modify just about any facet of the game you’d want to. In some cases making Ready or Not feel like an entirely different game once the entire package has been applied.
Download link: https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/mods/3160
The below section has been slightly edited from the original text interview for sentence flow and readability.
Q. Can you give us a short little introduction on who you are?
A. About myself, in the RON community, I usually call myself Jerry (the Weekend Gunfighter), of course. About the Weekend Gunfighter, this is because I am just an ordinary person you can see everywhere on the street. I have my own busy work, so I am more likely to "gunfight" in the games on weekends. I am a military/tactics enthusiast. It can be said that it was largely because of Operation Neptune Spear in 2011 that I started to study these and invested a lot of energy.
In the early years when I was not very busy, I would be happy to participate in some milsim activities and practice what I learned from there. At the same time, I also like to collect gucci gear.
Q. Did you have any sort of Background in modding or working on games before you started working on Gunfighter?
A. Yes, mainly in ARMA3 and an old air combat game released in the 2000-2010s called Strike Fighters 2. I don't have any famous and outstanding works, mainly kill time. Basically, some model, texture and scripting work. Making gunfighter was my first time using Unreal.
Q. What exactly made you want to create Gunfighter?
A. Hope you don't mind it being a little long. Over the past decade, I have been playing military/tactics style games such as ARMA3 and SWAT4. I think before Ready or Not was released, SWAT4 was the only game that specialized in CQB environment at that time, so ten years ago I was "dreaming" that it would be great if another CQB game could be produced on a more modern engine one day. When I first saw the trailer of RON around 2017, I said to myself "Finally, it's here". RON has become one of my favorite games over the years and I have been playing it all the time. For any game, I like to play it in a "close to reality" way. (Even though many aspects can only be based on assumptions, because I am not one of those who really put themselves in army to protect their families and country.) When I was playing RON, I always felt that there were some game designs that I didn't 100% agree with.
For example, in the game, the position of the weapon is very high. I understand that this is the traditional practice of almost all FPS, because it allows players to better appreciate the finely modeled guns, but it occupies a large part of the screen. Based on what I have learned and experienced, I hope it could be lower, closer to the height of "Depressed Ready". There are some other aspects that I want to make adjustments to. I mean, I am not dissatisfied, but I think that maybe some other ways is more suitable for me. So, in July 2022, I started thinking, hey, since I want a more "suitable" gameplay, why don't I try to modify it myself? At that time, I didn't know anything about Unreal Engine, so I had to learn it from scratch, and this is the origin of Gunfighter.
I think you may also ask me about my evaluation of this mod. So, about Gunfighter, I will say on the description page: "This mod is aiming to provide a realistic gunfight experience in theory (based on gameplay)." In fact, the core change of this mod is that based on my experience and learning materials, I changed the position of all weapons in the mod to make them closer to how the operators use weapons in reality. At the same time, I adjusted the capabilities of night vision goggles, the feedback after limb injuries, allowed us to use the hidden 9banger, and let us use NVG and gas masks at the same time, etc. etc. I would like to say that every coin has two sides. I said this mod's purpose is "Realism", but this is very subjective, and everyone has their own standards. Therefore, I will emphasize that this is "based on gameplay".
I have always believed that in many aspects, it is impossible to achieve true "Realism" in most game so far, and blindly pursuing "Realism" may have a counterproductive effect on gameplay, so games always have their own unique way to "reflect reality", just like the topic that always start war - recoil, it also applies to many other designs in the game. If you don't mind, I wrote a few articles here to explain some of the designs in the mod, and they all have reasons:
This mod aims to provide a realistic gunfight experience in theory (based on gameplay), covering some CQB concepts and tactical thinking in recent years.
Q. You're pretty reasonable, acknowledging that you're not making the game 'better' but just giving players a different way to play RoN. If you had the chance to add something [a new mechanic, set of equipment, map, etc.] to the game, what would it be?
A. I might need to send you a 50 meter long list about this, but let's keep it simple this time.
- 1. Mechanic: laser and flash combo, use one button to switch and another button to light up;
- 2. Equipment: I never complain about gears, as Void has gotten better and better in this regard, but I really need an option to mount an ATAK phone on my vest;
- 3. Map: Any map in RON is top quality, I never worry about it, but I wish the doors could opened more than 90° so we have more techniques available when doing door procedures; Especially point 1 is what I hope to achieve the most.
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I'd like to thank Jerry for their time and I can't wait to pick the brain of some of the other members of our modding community. If you have anyone you'd particular to hear from, please feel free to say so in the outputs Discussion thread.
Going forward, we can’t wait to see what else the community brings to the table as we update the game to give modders more functionality to play with and as they improve their own work.
Outside of our drops, you can find more of this wonderful content here:
https://discord.gg/TjyfbXTU28 or https://www.nexusmods.com/readyornot/
Keep your feet on the ground.
VOID Interactive
