[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[antistar]

Bro. Can you release it this summer ?

I live in Australia, so "this summer" doesn't start until December - and thank frick for that. Just so you know what you're asking for there. :wink:

 

More seriously though, as ever this depends on when the pending AmmoTweaks update is released. Considering how rough things are in America with the pandemic, I'm definitely giving isathar some slack there.

 

 

As a general update though, I have been back on WARS lately after spending some time on PEACE. It's been stuff I was putting off for a while because it's perhaps not incredibly exciting - but still important:

 

I optimised the textures a little by re-saving (from source) all the diffuse textures in WARS as BC1 dds, rather than BC7. This halves their file-size, with usually no noticeable quality loss. It depends on the texture. (E.g. very subtle gradients can get some artefacting with BC1.) If anything ends up looking noticeably bad in-game I can go back to BC7 for that texture.

 

Overall this reduced the textures from 1.38 GB to 1.18 GB, which isn't huge in terms of HD space (unless you're on XB1, I suppose), but may make a difference when it comes to in-game texture memory usage.

 

Beyond that, I've been working on robot weapons - especially relating to ammo usage. I said previously that I was seeing some weird issues with the "recharger" laser weapons (half-damage, don't need ammo) I added as options for Automatron robots, where they wouldn't be used unless the robot specifically first ran out of ammo with another weapon. I ended up changing them around to be more like the Workshop laser turrets in WARS; they need MFC ammo, but will switch to "recharger mode" (technically invisibly switching to another weapon) if they run out.

 

In other words I removed the separate recharger robot weapons I added earlier, and instead made the existing robot laser weapons switch to recharger mode as needed.

 

The other player-built robot weapons all require ammo and that's it; no ammo and the weapon is useless. (With some exceptions like gas launchers that have no ammo type - though I could change that, I guess.) I'm about to do some testing to see how they behave if they (say) have two ranged weapons and run out of ammo for both while in combat - same for non-player-built robots.

 

With what I've been looking at, I'm feeling more confident that I'll be able to do away with NPC robots and turrets being an exception to the "everyone has limited ammo" rule in WARS. I noticed yesterday that robot "race" records all have an "unarmed" weapon record assigned to them, so my hope is that they'll use that unarmed attack if they run out of ammo.

 

Turrets by comparison will just do nothing if they run out of ammo (and I think that should be okay) - except for laser turrets; I'll give them "recharger" backups, as with the Workshop turrets.

 

 

Edit: Forgot to mention; when a robot/turret laser weapon switches to recharger mode, the laser beam colour changes from red to blue. The blue one is just the Institute laser beam effect. I'd use a different colour, but I don't actually know how to change the colours used in the laser beam effects. It doesn't appear that you can edit that in Nifskope, unless I'm missing something. If anyone knows better, let me know.

Edited May 27, 2020 by antistar

[frenkhitman]

Can You drop the beta version of this mod ?

[frenkhitman]

And have you got the discord server ?

[antistar]

WARS isn't at a beta stage yet. I'll have a closed beta when it is, and I'll be glad of people's help then.

 

No Discord server. I don't know what I'd even use it for, to be honest...

[Shanzyboo]

WARS won't reach a beta release until the AmmoTweaks update is released, doing so before hand would be a wasted effort wouldn't it Antistar.

[antistar]

Yes, not waiting for AmmoTweaks v2 would instead mean using Loads of Ammo or AmmoTweaks v1, and integrating either of them across all the weapons and levelled lists and whatnot would be a lot of effort - which I would then have to painstakingly reverse if I wanted to switch to AmmoTweaks v2 once it was available.

 

Any saves made prior to that switch would almost certainly have to be chucked out, too - so it would be a royal mess.

 

 

As a minor update to what I was talking about above, since I'm here; I've rejiggered all the robot weapons so that they require ammo now, and from my testing so far it seems to work fine. Robots will switch to melee attacks if they run out of ammo. Turns out sentry bots can give you a real wallop with their miniguns, damn.

 

I'll do the turrets next.

[Shanzyboo]

Yes, not waiting for AmmoTweaks v2 would instead mean using Loads of Ammo or AmmoTweaks v1, and integrating either of them across all the weapons and levelled lists and whatnot would be a lot of effort - which I would then have to painstakingly reverse if I wanted to switch to AmmoTweaks v2 once it was available.

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Any saves made prior to that switch would almost certainly have to be chucked out, too - so it would be a royal mess.

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As a minor update to what I was talking about above, since I'm here; I've rejiggered all the robot weapons so that they require ammo now, and from my testing so far it seems to work fine. Robots will switch to melee attacks if they run out of ammo. Turns out sentry bots can give you a real wallop with their miniguns, damn.

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I'll do the turrets next.

Me personally I already knew that part, plus there'd be an additional beta test period for switching it to AmmoTweaks V2, a lot of ridiculous integrating and reversing and reintegrating for a mod you already have planned out for AmmoTweaks V2 being the framework for WARS, never heard of a mod having two beta test periods, I love rhetorical questions sometimes lol.

 

Robots running out of ammunition is a nifty idea, and immersive, with Modern Firearms I could see that making robots too easy though, unless you significantly increase their armor (which I did consider doing), I already upped the damage of Skibadas Vindicator minigun to be on par with Modern Firearms, because it's chambered in 7.62x51 NATO, and because the Vindicator is visually appealing compared to Bethesdas, but I might live to regret that decision (super mutant with a Vindicator comes to mind LMAO).

[antistar]

WARS does increase DR/ER on robots (and turrets and vertibirds). I'll almost certainly need to tweak the values based on testing, but the hope is that you'll go "oh crap, a robot; better switch to AP ammo". (Or explosives or pulse grenades/ammo maybe.)

[Shanzyboo]

WARS does increase DR/ER on robots (and turrets and vertibirds). I'll almost certainly need to tweak the values based on testing, but the hope is that you'll go "oh crap, a robot; better switch to AP ammo". (Or explosives or pulse grenades/ammo maybe.)

Come to think of it even completely vanilla game you never really were like "oh crap a robot", in New Vegas a lot of those robots were even challenging with an anti material rifle because they were hardened.

 

Come to also think of it I should get that mod that makes deathclaws very very dangerous since I'm running Modern Firearms, and I want "Fu" and I'm dead lol.

[antistar]

To give an update on what I'm working on at the moment:

 

I've said for a while that I'd like to include an M1911 in WARS, and recently the urge became strong enough that I decided to go ahead and do it. Unsurprisingly, when I really want to work on a particular thing, it usually makes for an efficient use of time because I work harder on it.

 

I'm using this gorgeous M1911 resource by Isildur as the base, and then doing my own changes and additions as usual. There are a few things I'm aiming to make possible with it, via weapon mods:

 

- Configuring it like a Hardballer Longslide with LPC laser sight, as in the classic pistol from The Terminator that I've mentioned before. I've already done the laser sight of course; just need to do the mount (and the longslide part). I may also do a classic metal torch/flashlight a bit like this one to use the same mount and act as a tac-light. Getting this Hardballer look will also require a stainless steel skin for the pistol and a bunch of its weapon mods. I'm not planning any other alternate skins at the moment, but we'll see.

 

- A machine pistol based on the M1911s customised by Hyman Lebman for the likes of John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. I'll probably also give it a pistol stock (and extended mag) option like this one. For the vertical foregrip and Cutts compensator I can obviously just adapt the assets from the Thompson (and already have, mostly). It will need an extra animation set, but only to handle the different left-hand grip position, which will be a little tedious but not difficult. Speaking of animations, I'll probably adapt Hitman's Glock set to fit the M1911.

 

- Maybe a "knife gripped in the left hand" option, as in Metal Gear Solid 3 - like I've mentioned before. This would require another set of animations that would be a bit more work than the vertical foregrip ones, so we'll see how things go.

 

 

There'll be several other weapon mods too; a suppressor or two (there's the Osprey one already used by the Glock in WARS, and I may do another more classic-style one), maybe another compensator besides the Cutts compensator, and a compact barrel/slide option (an "officer's model") besides the standard "government" model and longslide options. Probably also the small reflex sight from the Glock, put on the mount made for the LPC laser sight.

 

Probably not trench sights like on A Light Shining In Darkness unfortunately - I think Moldy was asking for that? That would be an incredible pain to implement, creating conflicts between the barrel and sight omods. I did some tests on this stuff the other day, and if a weapon has sight offsets in more than one attached omod at once, the game appears to use the offsets from the most recently attached omod - which isn't always what you want. I think it's already going to take a bit of finagling to get the different sights on the longslide working; I'll have to make them the same height as the standard iron sights.

Edited June 12, 2020 by antistar