[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[Tenurialrope3]

The SA80 looks simply fantastic, easily the best one for Fo4 that I know of.

 

Questions:

 

Are there more sights for the SA80 than what is shown in the pics? (I'm thinking of the C79 optic that was shown last year.)

 

Also, would the Docter sight (Is that what it's called? Talking about the one for the Glock and grenade launchers.) and/or the AR-15 flip-up iron sights be useable on the SA80?

(I don't care much for this "idea", but it just popped into my head so I thought I'd ask.)

 

Are there plans for the SA80 to get 3rd person animations?

 

You said earlier that you did plan to add the detached bayonets as melee weapons. What is the planned implementation "style"? Would it be by scripting or not?

 

Anyway, great work and my well-wishes to the project. :smile:

Edited July 30, 2018 by Tenurialrope3

[antistar]

Thanks. :)

 

I've been using the C79 for the "short" and "medium" scopes - i.e. the 4x and 6x magnification scopes - but for the SA80, that's what the SUSAT scope is used for. So I could give it the C79 as well, but it would be sort of redundant.

 

The Docter reflex sight currently used on the Glock, Skorpion and the grenade launchers could also go on any of the larger weapons that have Picatinny rails for optics, but it's pretty small so I've been saving it for small weapons - or weapons that only have room for a small Picatinny rail. On the larger weapons, the view through the Docter sight may be cluttered by bits and pieces of the gun, since the sight is relatively low down.

 

The flip-up iron-sights on the AR-15 could maybe theoretically fit on the rail adapter for the SA80, but the front and rear sights would be pretty close together and probably look kind of weird. The SA80 also already has its carry handle sights which are considered backup sights as I understand it.

 

Third-person animations are a pain to make, so Hitman didn't make any for the SA80. Maybe someone will make them at some point? I couldn't really speculate.

 

Isathar mentioned the other day that AmmoTweaks now incorporates a way to automatically swap the bayonet miscmod you get when detaching a bayonet weapon mod with an actual bayonet weapon, so that's something I'll set up when I do the AmmoTweaks integration. I'm hoping that will be fairly seamless and that from the player's point of view, "crafting" a bayonet attachment just requires a bayonet weapon - that you get back again when you detach it.

[Tenurialrope3]

Personally, I would recommend having the C79 as an option for the SA80, I think its more bulky nature would fit better aesthetically with the railed handguard (and maybe the more tricked-out versions of the gun in general).

 

I don't really think that the carry handle sights could be considered "back-up sights" since the carry handle (at least) can't stay attached to the gun when using any other sight.

Even if you carried it with you, it seems it would be inconvenient to swap out to it if something went wrong with the attached optic.

(This isn't written in support for the notion of adding the AR-15 flip-up sights to the SA80, as I said, I don't care much for the idea, I just thought it was worth saying.)

 

Speaking of back-up sights:

Will the AR-15's back-up sights have any ingame resource cost to "attach", since they seem to always be attached when you have any other sight except the carry-handle sights?

I feel that it would be nice and sensical if they were free to swap to from any other sight (again, except the carry-handle ones), though I understand that that might be clumsy to implement.

 

Edit: Actually, this idea would in many ways apply to a lot of guns in this mod, now that I think about it.

I suppose the question would then be: For the guns with iron sights that stay attached when an optical sight is attached to them,

would it be possible for the swapping to iron sights on those guns to be cost-free (i.e not needing any resources or omods)?

 

As for the bayonet bit, sounds great. :smile:

 

Another question:

Where will the SA80 be in terms of balancing? I vaguely remember you way back saying that it would be slightly weaker than the AR-15? (I could certainly be remembering wrong, in which case, my apologies.)

Edited July 31, 2018 by Tenurialrope3

[antistar]

I'll consider giving the SA80 the C79 as well. It's not hard to do, but I do have a ton of other work that needs doing.

 

In the research I did, the carry handle sights were described as backup sights - backups to the SUSAT. I agree with you though, really.

 

The AR-15's flip-up sights do have a component cost to craft, but it's pretty low. Just some steel or aluminium, screws and springs off the top of my head.

 

In WARS, for any weapon with iron-sights that are just always there and not replaced by other optics, those iron-sights cost nothing to "craft". (Vanilla weapons too; this is something I did during my rebalance pass.) With a Weapon Modification Kit (basically a TAS Tool Kit) you can do this away from workbenches too.

 

The SA80 is heavier than the AR-15, and being a bullpup, has faster aim speed but higher recoil. Same damage, though.

[Tenurialrope3]

I'm guessing having the AR-15 flip-up sights be cost-free to swap to from an optic (but not the carry-handle sights) would require scripting, in which case it's a bit sad, but quite understandable if it won't happen.

(Though I'm probably one of the few people petty enough to care, really.)

 

Edit:

(Sorry if this sounds/sounded demanding or dismissive, I don't intend it to.)

 

Maybe it could be done by having one "mod category" for selecting between the carry-handle sights and say a just bare sight rail,

and selecting the bare rail would open two extra "mod categories" (is there some specific term for these?), one for the flip-up sights, selecting whether they're attached or not and then if they're flipped up or not,

and then one category for optics.

 

I know the "Wasteland Melody's Service Rifle" mod's sights work somewhat like this, and when I used it, I tweaked them to work a lot like this.

So I suppose it's doable, though it's quite clumsy, so I don't know if it's worth it, it's certainly not a big deal.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Tenurialrope3

[antistar]

Theoretically it may be possible to have all the sights (besides the carry handle sights) as children of the flip-up sights, and then use material swaps on those "child" sights to control the visibility of the up/down parts on the flip-up sights as required.

 

Even if it did work though (getting the sight offsets for the reflex sights to work being the main concern), it'd be a lot of faffing around on my part for a fairly minor feature. But hey, I'll think about it.

[Tenurialrope3]

Yes, it's quite some work for a small feature that only a few people (would) care for.

 

Now, I may as well explain how my slightly tweaked version of the WM's Service Rifle handled sights (If I can fully remember, my graphics card is still screwed, so I still can't go in-game and check.) :

It has one category for "normal" sights (optics mostly) that actually included the flipped up back-up sights as the baseline sights, which I tweaked to have no model/be invisible, so that baseline is then just a bare rail.

So the mod choices there are then between (as I said) a just bare rail and optics.

Then it has a separate category for the flip-ups, for selecting between no back-up sights or one of three versions of the back-up sights:

 

The first is the back-up sights flipped up, this one has a normal resource cost.

The second is the back-up sights flipped down, this one uses the omod of the flipped-up sights to "build", so one has to detach the flipped-up sights to "build" the flipped down sights.

The third is the sights flipped up again, but this one's "build" requirement is the flipped down sight's omod,

so they can be swapped in the field without having to carry any resources or loose omods (except momentarily when detaching the sight to swap between flipped up and down during the actual crafting, obviously).

(I don't remember if this is the right order of the mod list. Doesn't matter technically anyway, I don't think.)

 

From what I saw, this system does work, and, well, it is script-free and fairly simple.

I think something similar could be applied to the AR-15 in this mod, with (as I said) one category selecting between the carry-handle sights and a bare sight rail,

with the latter option opening up two extra categories, one for optics (in which one mod option would be to have no optics mounted)

and one for the back-up iron sights, with those four (three for the actual sights) options that I listed.

 

Some potential (in-game) problems I could see is that it's a bit clumsy to swap between the sights with this,

(though it is done (obviously) at a crafting station (vanilla or mod), which is already a mite slow and can't be done in combat, so I don't think it's that big a problem. Of course, I'm not the ultimate judge of that.)

and making it possible for the back-ups to be flipped up while using an optic, inducing clipping with some of them and just generally looking odd.

Though, as for that issue, as I understand it you already have a combination that's a bit absurd (bayonets and suppressors), so what's one more? :-J

 

The only other in-game issue with this system I can think up right now, is that the flipped up back-up irons and optics combination could show up in levelled lists,

which wouldn't be great, but that would also apply to the bayonets and suppressors pairing, so I guess that's immaterial.

 

I hope all this was at least interesting or helpful in some way.

 

Now, as I said, this is a petty issue, and while I don't think I would be completely alone in caring about this, I can't justifiably claim that this is something important to implement.

It would just be a nice minor feature. From all I can see, the mod will be excellent regardless. :smile:

 

Edit:

I guess maybe another problem might be setting which sight(s) is/are actually aimed through if both the flip-ups and optics are mounted, making sure the optics have priority.

I don't remember that being an issue with the WM's SR, but I can't claim to know if that was a difficult thing to sort out during the making of that mod.

Edited August 3, 2018 by Tenurialrope3

[ehtyeci]

Beware that custom mod categories appear in random order in the crafting menu, which means sometimes a child category can appear above its parent. So when you change the parent mod, resulting in removal of the child category, the crafting menu shifts its index and you are force jumped into a viewing a different mod category (whichever was listed below the one you were currently in.) There's a way for preventing this involving adding the custom ap slots into the form list do_ModMenuSlotKeywordList, in order to get the mod slots to appear in order.

[PatriotGuy]

I'm assuming the npcs aren't going to be capable of swapping fire modes. With that being the case, will they fire semi weapons in semi and select-fire ones in auto?

[antistar]

Yes, it's quite some work for a small feature that only a few people (would) care for.

 

Now, I may as well explain how my slightly tweaked version of the WM's Service Rifle handled sights (If I can fully remember, my graphics card is still screwed, so I still can't go in-game and check.) :

 

(snip)

Assuming that it worked properly if I was to do it, the method I mentioned might be a little smoother in that from the player's point of view, it would go something like this:

 

Starting with an AR-15 with carry handle sights on it, I'd see two options for sights: the carry handle sights that are already attached, and the flip-up sights. Attaching the flip-up sights would unlock another slot in the crafting menu: the "Optics" slot, I guess I'd call it. I could just use the flip-up sights as-is, or attach one of the sights in that Optics slot; say a reflex sight. In doing so, the flip-up sights would dynamically switch to the down position (via material swaps toggling visibility). Later I could switch back to nothing on the Optics slot - in other words switching back to using the flip-up sights - or to the carry handle sights, which would automatically detach whatever was on the Optics slot since it's a child of the flip-up sights omod.

 

The main problem (assuming the sight offsets on the reflex sights worked properly) is a common-sense player perception thing: "why do I have to attach the flip-up sights before I can attach any of the reflex sights or scopes?". And that's why I likely won't do it; it is pretty awkward.

 

As it is, you can just carry a Flip-Up Sights weapon mod in your inventory - along with a Weapon Modification Kit - if you want to be able to switch to and from the flip-up sights whenever you want. That's possibly getting into capital R, capital P "Role-Play" territory, but hey, it's something you can do right now in the mod as it stands.

 

 

Beware that custom mod categories appear in random order in the crafting menu, which means sometimes a child category can appear above its parent. So when you change the parent mod, resulting in removal of the child category, the crafting menu shifts its index and you are force jumped into a viewing a different mod category (whichever was listed below the one you were currently in.) There's a way for preventing this involving adding the custom ap slots into the form list do_ModMenuSlotKeywordList, in order to get the mod slots to appear in order.

Thanks for reminding me about that list; I needed to add my new attach points to it. Not sure why I didn't do it earlier... though I've added more attach points since whenever I last looked at it anyway, so whatever.

 

 

I'm assuming the npcs aren't going to be capable of swapping fire modes. With that being the case, will they fire semi weapons in semi and select-fire ones in auto?

I imagine this could be scripted, but I also imagine that having scripts running often enough to be worthwhile in combat (i.e. almost all the time) on potentially a lot of individual NPCs at once - to evaluate whatever factors in order to know when to switch fire modes - might be a little rough on the old script engine.

 

So yeah, basically, enemies that spawn with semi-auto weapons will be firing semi-auto obviously, and enemies spawning with select-fire weapons will (almost?) always be firing full-auto. I say "almost" because previously I had made it possible for some weapons to sometimes spawn with select-fire trigger groups that were currently set to semi. (Usually the "Epic" sniper configurations.) Just in the last few days though I went through and tidied up the object templates a bit, a side-effect being that that's no longer the case, unless I missed some. I don't know, I might change that back for the sniper configurations specifically.