Resurrecting Pulse Weapons

[jkruse05]

Well, originally I wanted to resurrect the gauss weapons, but Beth is bringing at least the rifle back in Op. Anchorage. So I decided we need more energy weapons, and since the pulse rifle and pistol that were in Fallout 1 and 2 are m.i.a. in 3, I figured I'd take a shot at putting them back in. The pistol will have around 20 shots per battery, and reload more or less like the sawn-off shotgun. The rifle will have around 10 shots per battery. Their damage will be between the laser and plasma weapons, or possibly slightly above plasmas. The ammunition used is the opposite of the other energy weapons, with the pistol using the larger battery and the rifle using the smaller one. Critical effect used to be burning flesh off bones, so I'm planning to use the laser disintegrate effect, with a purplish blue color, and making lasers dismember instead (like they used to). Oh, and they'll do extra damage to robots, which will just explode on crit.

 

Old one

http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4179/pulsepstmp1.gif

 

Mine

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/2839/pulsepisttt6.png

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3543/pulsepist2gd5.png

 

Old Rifle

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/7885/pulserifio4.gif

 

Mine

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/640/pulserifleqc9.png

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5514/pulserifle2qd6.png

 

The meshes are pretty much done, both need to be UV mapped and textured. I'll try running them in the game with a test texture, to check the animations and such. If everything works I'll start on the UV's.

 

So if anyone would like to help with texturing, let me know. I'll be making the models, can UV map if you like (although I usually find it easier to texture if I make my own), and I'll get them into the game. If anyone wants to make projectile, impact, and critical effects, let me know. I can and will do it all on my own if nobody wants to help, but they'll turn out much better with someone that can texture better than myself.

 

Let me know what you think, C&C is appreciated here.

[jsnider193]

I think the model looks nice .. no lets say v good. I'd help but my skills at this level or approaching diminishing returns, so I hope someone else signs on.

[jkruse05]

Well, the rifle model is about 50% done, I'll throw up a picture when it's more like 85%. I think I'll also have to go back and redo the pistol, I screwed up origin locations and scales of some parts, so now animations don't line up quite right. It'll look more or less the same, just with the main body and cylinder scaled down a bit.

[jkruse05]

and here's the rifle. It's pretty much done, I may add some details, but most of that could be added with the texture. The animations for this one line up perfectly, so no redos on this, here's to learning from your mistakes :thumbsup: .

 

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/563/pulseriflebo5.png

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/8013/pulserifle2ac2.png

 

I also decided to simplify the pistol a bit, it'll still look similar, but rather than the .44 reload animation it will use the sawed off shotgun, which means fewer parts to mess up. It will still use the larger energy cells.

[BanjoOz]

Looking good! Sure, not spot on clones of the F2 originals, but in some ways it's maybe better that way, at least since if Bethesda had bothered to add these guns, they would have "reimagined" them anyway. Your models get the point across and suit the very retro "ray gun" looks of the originals.

 

I missed these guns in F3 (and the gauss ones too!) and look forward to this mod VERY much!

[tr0ubl3mak3r]

Nice! How long did it take you to make each model?

 

Offtopic: What program did you use to make them and what's the learning curve to learn to use it? I've been modding random games for 8 years or so now, but never learned how to model :wacko:. PM me or reply back sometime if you want. Or not, it's cool either way, I don't want to sound like a beggar or be a thread hijacker. :D

[jkruse05]

Personally I use Blender, each of these took around, oh, probably 3 hours total (not in a single sitting). Some people say it has a high learning curve, but I pretty much taught it to myself, so I'm kinda partial to it. If you want to make models for Fallout 3 or Oblivion, Blender is the way to go, not so much if you want to do Source models though.

 

@ banjo_oz, yeah, that's kinda how I figured it too. I like the old designs, but since everything else is new, I thought it'd fit better if I 'reimagined' them.

[Strofkocz]

I like those models, specially the rifle, only thing I would suggest is adding more tesla coils.

 

on the pistol a nice big one at the base of the barrel would be nice,

 

for the rifle I would strongly suggest replacing the tip with a tesla coil and perhaps adding one to the base of the barrel yet again.

 

The tesla coil is the defining feature of pulse weapons, it needs to be there to make your new models akin to the old ones.

 

hope I m no being too much of a %&$! xD

[jkruse05]

I think the rifle will be staying the way it is, but I'm going to be redoing the pistol. I'll put up a picture of the new design when I have some decent progress. I had wanted to us the .44 mag reload, but the scale is wrong, so I'm trying something different. And thank you for the input, I always appreciate it.

[youreviltwinSA]

Awesome to see someone resurrecting pulse weapons, and thanks for commenting in my request thread. :)

 

I seem to recall that the old pulse effect was to reduce someone to a skeleton and then disintergrate the skeleton as well, so actually the Fallout 3 ash-pile effect isn't bad, it's just that it is missing an intermediate skeleton stage.

 

Kudos to you if you can succeed in adding an extra skeleton stage, though of course that would not really be possible in the case of animals since Fallout 3 doesn't include any skeleton models for them and making a skeleton for every type of animal would be a lot of work!

 

If you use the "realistic dismemberment" mod (which came about thanks to my request!) then lasers slice limbs off rather than turning people to ash. This means that if pulse weapons do turn people to ash, it will once again be a cool unique effect, rather than something the player will have already seen a 100 times thanks to regular laser weapons.

 

I very strongly approve of the idea of making the damage inbetween the laser and plasma weapons. :) While I thought pulse weapons were undeniably COOL in Fallout 2, I also thought it was a bit lame that pulse weapons were so incredibly powerful and yet had the same ammo, ammo capacity, range and AP cost as plasma rifles. It meant that the mighty Turbo Plasma Rifle, one of the most kick-arse weapons of Fallout 1, was totally redundant. It was a rather poor case of weapon balance, the plasma rifle simply became an inferior relative of the pulse rifle.

 

Since your pulse weapons are obviously different models to the ones seen in Fallout 2, there's no obligation for them to similarly do such extreme damage. (Plus, there's the fact that Fallout 3's laser and plasma weapons are different models too. So it's perfectly OK to adjust the weapon balance.)

 

Interesting idea, having the pistol use microfusion cells and the rifle use small energy cells. I guess your reasoning behind that is that small energy cells don't get much use. (Once you've found a laser rifle or plasma rifle there's not much reason to use a laser pistol or plasma pistol.)

 

One problem though - small energy cells are very plentiful! I've used the laser pistol quite a bit (whenever I wanted accuracy rather than raw damage) and yet ended up with a large stockpile of small energy cells. Once I switched to using a laser rifle that stockpile became massive. I didn't sell them because I knew the game had unique laser pistols and plasma pistols and I wanted ammo for them later in the game. I now have enough small energy cells to equip an army of energy weapon users! You especially get loads if you do a quest that involves robots (such as the Robco robot factory place), since every dead robot gives you small energy cells, and there's lots in ammo boxes too.

 

This means that if your pulse rifle uses small energy cells, many players will have tons of ammunition for an energy weapon almost as strong as a plasma rifle. Plus, small energy cells are cheaper to buy than microfusion cells.

 

THE SOLULTION: Each pulse rifle shot could use up several small energy ammo in each shot. Instead of giving it an ammo capacity of 10, give it an ammo capacity of 20, but make the weapon use 2 ammo each shot. Or even a capacity of 30 and 3 ammo each shot. That way it will really burn through small energy cells.

 

Also, it would probably make more sense for the pulse pistol to also use small energy cells too. (A shame if you have already animated it with a microfusion cell!) It seems unlikely that either the company or the Enclave would be able to build a super-sophisticated pistol that uses microfusion and yet not use that technology in the rifle. I find it easier to believe that the pistol would use small energy cells and then for the rifle they'd simply upscale that same technology.

 

So for the pistol, you could have a capacity of 30 and use 2 cells every shot, resulting in 15 shots. And for the rifle have the same capacity of 30, and use 3 cells every shot, resulting in 10 shots. The rifle would be a "super-charged" version of the pistol, draining more energy with each shot.