[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[kuzi127]

 

And we thought it was impossible... I wonder how he did it.

[ehtyeci]

 

And we thought it was impossible... I wonder how he did it.

Actually, animating isn't the hard part - there are enough magazine bones for animating up to 5 rounds excluding the magazine box, however, making a framework to change subgraphs depending on the ammo count requires new behavior and scripting currently obtainable. Ask yourself why he doesn't empty the magazine. Most likely because the belt is infinite and doesn't run out.

I would be even more impressed if he somehow showed how the belt disappeared into the gun to the last round - since that's been the core issue with beltfed magazines, not the cycled fire part. All that said, I have immense respect for his work. He's one of the reasons I got into animating. There's just nothing revolutionary about what the video showed.

[kuzi127]

From a layman's perspective it was pretty cool. While I could bumble my way around blender or 3ds max, I've never touched an animation file.

[ehtyeci]

Oh, definitely. Apologies if my post came across as dismissive. This animation could in fact be a suitable template for other LMGs using similar reloads. From a technical standpoint, I only wanted to point out that beltfed magazines in itself isn't the impossible part - Bethesda put in a lot of stuff on the skeletons which aren't used in the base game so it appears they accounted for a lot of things, but for some reason decided to leave out the logic for actual implementation. Maybe it was high hanging fruit, maybe it was impossible.

Sorry, if this is considered off-topic.

[Bottletopman]

Ooooh so visible bullet counts on magazines could actually be a thing in FO4? nice...

[antistar]

I just now saw the SA80 pics and it got me so hyped! There are L85/SA80 mods already here on the Nexus but they are far from finished and very amateur. Looking at the model and textures i can tell they are very well done and the iconic SA80 is exactly the gun we need in Fallout 4. What a great gun! I loved using it in STALKER, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Killing Floor, Battlefield, and Rainbow Six Siege!

 

I noticed there was links in the description pointing me to here. I thought WARS was going to be some kind of super high quality collection of guns we desperately need (L85, SKS, AA-12, SPAS-12, etc) , so of course I clicked only to be devastated when I found out its another overhaul mod with huge aspirations and a shopping list of changes.

 

The biggest problem being compatibility. I have a strong list right now of 200'ish or so mods and my game runs well - and overhauls like this are generally something im not going to download. I'd have to wait for a slew of compatibility patches for Better Locational Damage, See-Through Scopes, AWKCR, RadRose Usability Enhancements, Assorted Compatibility Patches, and who knows what else. What im saying is, big overhauls like these are scary to add to a already established and solid mod list.

 

No worries tho because surely this strong team (im going to assume strong because the SA80 looks great) will upload gun separately without any overwrites. NOPE no light at the end of the tunnel. Front page has already confirmed, take it or leave it, its either WARS or nothing. Oh well, sad days, too good to be true. I will go back to my poorly made SA80 that has recoil like a jack russell terrier made out of legos.

Well the first couple of posts also mention that the permissions will be there for others to make more vanilla implementations of the weapons, if they want to - along with covering why I'm not doing that myself; no need for me to repeat all that here.

 

I'm glad you're liking what you're seeing with the weapons themselves, though. :)

 

....when.....plz......im dying......

This is covered in the first couple of posts too! Specifically in the FAQ in the second post. Again though; I'm glad people are looking forward to it. :)

 

 

 

And we thought it was impossible... I wonder how he did it.

Damn, look at that. I guess I will have to include an M60 at some point after all.

 

 

Actually, animating isn't the hard part - there are enough magazine bones for animating up to 5 rounds excluding the magazine box, however, making a framework to change subgraphs depending on the ammo count requires new behavior and scripting currently obtainable. Ask yourself why he doesn't empty the magazine. Most likely because the belt is infinite and doesn't run out.

 

I would be even more impressed if he somehow showed how the belt disappeared into the gun to the last round - since that's been the core issue with beltfed magazines, not the cycled fire part. All that said, I have immense respect for his work. He's one of the reasons I got into animating. There's just nothing revolutionary about what the video showed.

Oh, definitely. Apologies if my post came across as dismissive. This animation could in fact be a suitable template for other LMGs using similar reloads. From a technical standpoint, I only wanted to point out that beltfed magazines in itself isn't the impossible part - Bethesda put in a lot of stuff on the skeletons which aren't used in the base game so it appears they accounted for a lot of things, but for some reason decided to leave out the logic for actual implementation. Maybe it was high hanging fruit, maybe it was impossible.

 

Sorry, if this is considered off-topic.

Beyond the general (very unfortunate) problems with FO4 not supporting different reload animations depending on (say) whether the weapon currently has a round chambered or not, only having five bones for animating a flexible ammo belt still seemed kind of limiting to me. Looks like War Daddy was clever and careful here in how the reload is animated, in order to hide that limitation. Looking closely, it appears that the belt is made of only two or three rigid pieces - just carefully animated.

 

With the "stuff on the skeletons that isn't used" - what sort of stuff are you talking about, out of interest?

[ehtyeci]

 

Beyond the general (very unfortunate) problems with FO4 not supporting different reload animations depending on (say) whether the weapon currently has a round chambered or not, only having five bones for animating a flexible ammo belt still seemed kind of limiting to me. Looks like War Daddy was clever and careful here in how the reload is animated, in order to hide that limitation. Looking closely, it appears that the belt is made of only two or three rigid pieces - just carefully animated.

 

With the "stuff on the skeletons that isn't used" - what sort of stuff are you talking about, out of interest?

 

On the human skeleton there are 8 AnimObject bones, two parented to Root, three for each hand. You can re-parent them anywhere and use them as extra armor bits, weapon bones, magazine bones, anything. There's a left hand weapon bone. Literally, the bone is called WeaponLeft and is parented to the left hand. A remnant from Skyrim, or maybe they had plans for something. Not much in the extracted archives that tells us about a left hand weapon, except for the assaultron, but that's a different skeleton.

There's also a number of auxiliary weapon bones intended for certain weapon functions that are rarely used, if at all. There are 3 WeaponExtra bones. Initially parented to the weapon itself, but as anything else can be re-parented to whatever. I'll wager that Wardaddy used at least one of these to animate the cover open/close on the m60. There are 2 WeaponOptics bones, same thing. Maybe they're used to animate some kind of mounted sight to fold up? Nothing I've come across in the files use these. And then there's the obvious 6 in total magazine bones.

These are what I know from working on the human rigs, but I haven't taken them apart as much as I want to. Power armor rigs have been more my thing.

[antistar]

Ah yes, some of that rings a bell from when I was setting certain things up for Hitman to animate. Thanks.

 

I remember vaguely hoping that Bethesda would adapt Skyrim's dual-wielding to FO4, but wasn't surprised when they didn't.

[ZOMKILL]

Nice!!

[ZOMKILL]

Antistar you should create a discord channel, it would be cool from my point of view :-)