[WIP] Weapon Addition and Replacement Suite (WARS)

[antistar]

I have, but that was back in 2016; 5 or so years ago. I was kind of hoping for a more up to date answer. :confused:

It's still the up to date answer. If I had an ETA that wasn't essentially as useful as a random number, I would have given it already. :wink:

 

(Also you can see at the bottom of the second post that it was updated earlier this year.)

 

 

I wonder if there's a way to unflag the patches model as a skinned object for the editing, using 3DS Max isn't tangible for me since I can't afford it.

There isn't, as far as I know. I mean, you can delete the skinning information - which would mean you could translate/rotate/scale it in Nifskope - but it would also mean that it would no longer work as armour/clothing.

[antistar]

If you're like me and have the kind of niche interest in how weapon mechanics are modelled in computer games, you may have already seen the series of videos on Gamespot's YouTube channel where they have Jonathan Ferguson, weapons expert at the Royal Armouries, comment on how weapons are implemented in various games.

 

They just did one on Fallout 4's weapons, and it covers a lot of the reasons I started making WARS! Jonathan is possibly more generous/positive about the weapon silliness in FO4 than I am. ;)

 

He did mention how the Broadsider notably lacks a way to actually propel its cannonballs, since you just drop them in there without any powder or anything - and that's something I was working on recently, actually. I made it possible to recover solid cannonballs that have been fired, but to fire them again you need to craft them into proper cannonball rounds that include an explosive charge.

 

I haven't done the art assets for the new cannonball rounds yet. Probably soon. It's not something I'm planning to spend an awful lot of time on - the Broadsider/Swivel Gun is one of what I think of as silly gimmick weapons in FO4 - so there'll probably be a bit of clipping in the reload animation with these rounds.

 

 

For a more general update: I finally finished the factory-based crafting system in WARS. Lots of work, very tedious - but (among other things) there's now a New Vegas inspired ammo crafting system that relies on an ecosystem of factory machines.

 

Want to break down tiny .380 ACP rounds, and then break the casings and primers down into brass and (a small amount of) explosives, before making some bigger casings and primers out of it and reassembling everything into .44 Magnum rounds or something? Now you can. Want to similarly transform hand grenades into missiles, or 40x46mm grenades, or whatever? Yep. Want to transform (a lot of) Microfusion Cells into a Fusion Core (if your settlement has a lot of Power to spare to run the process)? Sure!

 

Weapon crafting is also now more interesting and involved since you need to build (or otherwise supply) all the standard object mods for a weapon (receiver, barrel, grip, etc) and then assemble those into the finished weapon.

 

All the machines that looked the same but did different things now have signs to differentiate them! Holy moly that was a pain to do! Especially considering that WARS adds ~70 new factory machines. I extended this treatment with the signs across Manufacturing Extended and Better Manufacturing, too - via the WARS patch that supports those mods. I supported those because the new "logistics"-type machines they introduce should be very useful in making the more complex factories required by this crafting system in WARS.

 

 

I've been undecided on how to show this factory crafting stuff off. It seems like building a demo factory setup with it and showing it in a video would be ideal, but I think that would really need commentary, and I don't have a decent microphone. Plus it would mean I'd have to hear my recorded voice. So I don't know; we'll see.

[antistar]

Okay, I added a range of "bulk ammo" items to WARS. If you remember the bulk ammo boxes in New Vegas, that's basically what this is:

 

- Bulk Ammo 01

- Bulk Ammo 02

- Bulk Ammo 03

One difference here though is that they're Aid items; you use them to open the container and unpack the ammo - as opposed to that happening automatically when you buy them. That means you can stick them in your settlements as decoration, if you want.

These are all based on real-world "spam cans" and "battle packs" of surplus ammo; including the amount of ammo they hold:

- Ammo - Can - .38 Spc Surplus x600
- Ammo - Can - 9x19mm Surplus x800
- Ammo - Can - .45 ACP Surplus x600
- Ammo - Can - 12 Ga 00 Shot x120
- Ammo - Can - 7.62x39mm Surplus x700
- Ammo - Battle Pack - 5.56x45mm Surplus x300
- Ammo - Battle Pack - 7.62x51mm Surplus x140

That's a lot of ammo in each one! It's a lot of crappy surplus ammo, though: it's not as good as other ammo sub-types and will gunk up your weapon more quickly. So why would you want so much crappy surplus ammo?

This ties into other features in WARS, and it's why I added these bulk ammo items. NPCs no longer have infinite ammo, so if you find one of these cans/packs at a shop or (rarely) in some loot, you may want to lug it back to one of your settlements and distribute it amongst your settlers. Or maybe you'd prefer to break it down in WARS' Ammo Scrapper factory machine and feed the casings, primers, powder, lead, etc into your ammo factory to make the specific ammo you want to use.

(You can also package up surplus ammo into these cans/packs in another factory machine yourself, if you want - though again this would really only be if you wanted to use them as decoration.)

Speaking of factory machines, after all that tedious work on them mentioned above, I needed a bit of a break to do something more fun, so I made these bulk ammo items. :)

[nexusguy]

Nice to see progress! How you're doing Antistar? Hope you and your family are fine.

[vaultboy200798]

cant wait for this thanks for your hard work antistar

[antistar]

Thanks. :smile:

Nice to see progress! How you're doing Antistar? Hope you and your family are fine.

Things could be better here, actually. We've been in lockdown since mid-August, ever since the Delta strain finally reached the capital; ending a whole year without cases here. It's preferable to what's been happening in Sydney and Melbourne - and definitely better than what's happened in many parts of the world - but obviously it does come with challenges.

 

Besides some pretty minor (but still demoralising) things like birthdays and other celebrations among friends and family having to be truncated, video conference things, in that time my grandmother died and my father got the news that the immunotherapy treatment for his cancer wasn't working.

 

My grandmother made it to 90, which is pretty damn good, but it's still very sad. Having to watch her funeral via livestream was a very "plague years" experience.

 

We're currently waiting to hear if my dad has the right cell receptors (I think it was) to be eligible for an experimental cancer treatment - and if not, he'll be back on chemotherapy soon. So there's still things to try, but it's a scary and uncertain time.

 

This all does have an effect on my work on the mods. I'm doing my best, as always, but stuff like this is going to slow me down.

[nexusguy]

I'm sorry to hear all of this, I hope your father gets well soon and may your grandmother rest in peace.

 

We got lucky here, the Delta strain didn't have much effect on our routine, also, vaccination rates are really high and, hopefully, a third dose will be sufficient to suppress the spread of Delta, things are getting better.

 

Don't strain yourself in times likes this, take your time, enjoy your family, support your father and rest periodically. Hope things get better for you, cheers mate!

[antistar]

Thanks - and after what is widely regarded as a bungled vaccine rollout in Australia, vaccination numbers are finally getting high enough (in Canberra, at least) that they've announced the end of the lockdown here in a couple of weeks. So there's that, at least. Hopefully they know what they're doing there, and it's not just to let people out in time to spend lots of money in the lead-up to Christmas.

[Crylec]

Hi Antistar, been following your mod development since 2018 and enjoyed the teasers. Hopefully things are going well for you and the family, as well the situation in Kangaroo Kingdom. I do have a question about WARS and PEACE, will they drop together or are you releasing one before the other?

[antistar]

Thanks. :)

 

I wonder if it's possible to be offended by "Kangaroo Kingdom"? I typically see dozens of kangaroos every day though (since I go for a walk in the nearby nature reserve every day), so... maybe it's fair enough. ;)

 

I've always planned to release WARS and PEACE at the same time, since it's possible to use them separately, but they're really intended to be used together if you want the full picture when it comes to my changes/additions to FO4. I'll be testing them together (and notably not separately), and anyone who would like to help with the closed beta with either WARS or PEACE will probably get access to both - and they can choose which one/s they want to use.

 

I guess that might change depending on how testing goes, or something, but yeah; most likely at the same time.