(2020-2022) Design Portfolio
(2022-) Tactical RP / Garry’s Mod Modding
TacRP is a Garry’s Mod addon that leverages weapon assets from the now-defunct shooter Tactical Intervention. Originally created by Arctic, I took over development after release and released multiple expansion packs together with speedonerd, adding new features and weapons and tweaking balance.
My primary intention for this addon is to create a coherent, flexible and diverse arsenal that can serve as solid foundation for a variety of play styles, but most notably roleplay and sandbox. I had a distaste for the visual and design trend behind modern tactical shooters, and so TacRP is an explicitly satirical response to it, in addition to being a love letter for the Counter Strike: Source era of shooters.
In first-person shooters, your weapons are the main characters, and the diversity and behavior of weapons communicate a lot about the game’s feel. As an addon that isn’t self-serious in the slightest, TacRP includes gimmick mechanics that rarely give you an advantage, completely unrealistic mobility tools, wacky projectiles, and impractical small caliber weapons. In a competitive environment, these would be infuriating additions; but when playing with friends in a sandbox setting, it creates chaotic and funny shenanigans.
This short clip of me and my friends in a sandbox game showcases this nicely. A few of us started to impromptu barricading a room, and some others naturally decided to attack. Using the mobility mechanics and explosive gadgets from TacRP, someone breaks down the barricade and charges into someone in the room before getting mowed down, resulting in a funny moment.
The biggest challenge of this addon was actually weapon attributes, both in terms of maintaining balance and also communicating effectively with the player. TacRP is the middle child between ArcCW and ARC9, two other Garry’s Mod weapon addons with far greater popularity. The three bases share a customization and attribute system that allows weapon attachments and other systems to dynamically and easily modify a weapon’s performance. The more attributes to tweak on a weapon, the more in depth decisions players get to make with their customization, but having too many attributes makes it hard to understand. Both ArcCW and ARC9 automatically populate the attributes list with the stat changes, but this can become overwhelming in some situations, especially for ARC9 which has conditional modifiers.
When developing TacRP, I realized that concealing information can sometimes be more informative. I hid the stat changes made by attachments, and created a rating page to let the player know their weapon’s strengths and weaknesses at a glance.
Besides weapon mechanics, I also had to create some custom animations in order to include more exotic weapons into this project. Tactical Intervention’s weapon animations, created by CS:S animator Minh “Gooseman” Le, is uniquely identifiable by its fast and exaggerated movement, eagerness to show off fine details like chambered bullets and magazine eject buttons, and the fact that the weapons are still flipped horizontally. I tried to emulate this to the best of my ability.
Despite TacRP’s niche status even among its weapon base brethren, I am constantly surprised by friends and strangers alike telling me TacRP is their favorite addon on the Garry’s Mod Workshop. (This has happened to me a total of 0 times for ArcCW and ARC9 combined.) I am truly grateful for being in a position where I can change the shape of play in such an organic manner.