pulse weapon effect and armor effect?

[davidlallen]

There are two effects I want to achieve for part of my second mod. (I know, the first mod isn't done yet.)

 

1. a Weak Pulse Gun. I want the pulse effect, on a robot, to be visually much weaker and shorter than the regular pulse gun effect. Tracing the pulse gun effect, it leads through enchantment EMPPulseGunBeam, to spell PulseDisableSpell, to magic effect PulseDisableMagicEffect, to script PulseDisableEffectScript, and finally to PulseDisableFXShader. In the spell, there is a duration of 8 sec. In the shader, there are a huge number of variables on a huge dialog box. One of them is "full particle birth count" which looks promising.

 

I made a copy of all these forms, from the weapon down to the shader. Then I change some values on the copies, and test fire by lining up some robots, and shooting them with the original pulse gun and my weak one. I know the weak one is being used because I also cut the damage in half, and I can see that effect clearly.

 

The original value of "full particle birth count" is 6.0. I change it to 1.0 to make fewer particles. But in game, the effect is a *huge* number of particles, the effect is much more dense. So I change it to 36.0, maybe I have the units backwards. This also results in a *huge* number of particles.

 

Separately, I change the duration of the spell from 8 sec to 1 sec. This makes no difference to the duration of the effect.

 

How can I get a visually weaker effect, and how can I get a shorter duration?

 

2. One of the things I liked about Fallout Tactics was that your favorite weapon would change during the game. Initially you had pistols and shotguns, but they were useless against supermutants, so you changed over to machine guns and rockets. Those were useless against robots, so you switched over to energy weapons. I want to make robots like that. I want them basically immune to bullets, but less immune to energy weapons. I figure this can be done somehow with armor effects, but I cannot see enough to get started.

 

2a. Is there a way to have one DT against any kind of bullet, but a lower DT against energy weapons?

 

2b. Is there a way to replace the sound of all bullets, against my armor? I would like to find a sound like ricochets, for any bullet hit, so that the player will realize the gun is having basically no effect. Or alternatively, the immunity could be due to some kind of experimental force field, so a glow effect happening on any bullet (instead of a sound) would work too.

[davidlallen]

Bump. Can anybody point me to a place to read, or game examples, of (a) armors with different effects for different weapon types, (b) anything which explains about shaders and controlling particle effects?

[AWZ]

I think the category you posted it in might be the reason for nobdy seeing it. But what do i know ;)

[davidlallen]

Thank you for the feedback, but that is not very helpful by itself. What category do you recommend I post in?

[davidlallen]

Without actually understanding anything more, I have accomplished something "close enough" to what I wanted. On the shader screen, I lowered the "full particle birth time", along with ramp up and ramp down. This gives the effect a much shorter duration. By adjusting the five color swatches on the screen to darker versions, I can make the effect seem less.

 

For armors, I wasn't really able to find much. Maybe there aren't many "magical" armors in FO3/FNV. I searched for "magic armor" in the older oblivion forums, and there are hits, but nothing I could figure out. I will just use a "case statement" approach with two formlists, one for full strength and one for half strength. I guess this will be enough.

 

If anybody comes by and can point at documentation on shaders and magic armor, I'd still appreciate it.

[AWZ]

Hey why dont you add me in steam. I guess together we might find a solution.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/garrysnightmare/

[davidlallen]

Particle shader screen explanation here.