Why hello everyone. I was following Mehman's test weapon thread when Weegee said And that got me thinking.

Now what I hope to achieve, as an end result, is a store similar to that in Cortex Shock. However, this store will sell a list of random weapons with randomly generated traits and properties.


So, brainstorming:



This is all I can think of for now.

If anyone can tell me how much of this is possible that would be fantastic. I've started spriting the different weapons, and have almost done the pistols. If anyone is willing to help, we can try it out on the pistols before we move onto the other guns (if we indeed do get that far).



I think this would be a wonderful addition to any scene, thanks for reading over it, anyhow.

As possible as it is interesting.

I might want to take part of this, cause it seems very very interesting.

I was mulling over a similar concept, but using multiple attachables and an "invisible" base gun to assemble them literally Borderlands style, using seperate grips, barrels, scopes, stocks, and so on, assuming that's actually possible.

My concept was a little different in one way; on the shoplist, you could buy a weapon based on the manufacturer (eg Vladof Machinegun, Tediore SMG, etc.) and you'd get a random gun each time.

Either way, there should probably be a pie menu option that pops up a sheet of gun data - ROF in RPM, scope quality, reload time in seconds, and so on. Damage would be hard to represent accurately, so you could just specify caliber instead, and maybe number of shots (for multishot guns like shotguns and multibarrel SMGs) per trigger-pull. This information should also be prominently displayed at the vendor.

I have all the Borderlands weapon sounds floating around here somewhere (inc. elemental fx) as well, if needed.

This sounds like an interesting project. If you guys supply sprites, ini, and other effects, I'd be happy to supply the Lua.

Wait a minute... why just the stats? Didn't we have a script for changing heads? Why don't we use that to add random attachments (or modify existing attachments' sprites) on them weapons?

As I remember Borderlands also randomized stock, barrel, scope, etc. which would be cool to emulate as well.

EDIT: So, what I'm thinking is to have a 'bare' gun as base, and then add its barrel, stock, scope and other accessories to it using said script. Of course, guns with long muzzles would have separate bases from the pistols (unless we can change MuzzleOffset via Lua).
So, maybe the 'bare' guns would be:
-bare pistol
-bare assault rifle (maybe split it into front magazines vs bullpup config)
-bare shotgun
-bare rocket launcher
-bare sniper
Because each 'class' of weapon would probably have the same kind of magazine graphic and location.

Spawn the bullets via Lua, maybe? That seems like the most prudent way of handling multiple barrel lengths.

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Assuming you skip Iridian alien whatever guns, then Borderlands has;

Pistols (aka Repeaters)
Machine Pistols (Rapid-fire Repeaters; tend to have lots of ammo and high ROF, but awful accuracy)
Revolvers
Submachineguns (all bullpup config, IIRC)
Combat Rifle
Machinegun (a subclass of the Combat Rifle with larger magazines and some other unique components)
Combat Shotguns (Revolver-type)
Assault Shotguns (box-mags)
Rocket Launcher
Semi-Auto Sniper Rifle (box-mag fed)
Revolver Sniper Rifle (self explanatory- 2, 3, or 6 rounds)

Of those, Pistols and Machine Pistols can be merged, as can Combat Rifles and Machineguns. Most of the differences lie in the components available; Machineguns can have parts that never appear on Combat Rifles, and vice versa.

Technically it also has Grenade Launchers, but you could only get those by editing your save file... and they automatically get removed from your inventory in newer patches.

You can experiment with a weapon 'designer' here. A lot of the entries for weapons are special cases for unique drops. This page and its subpages demonstrate the various bonuses and penalties given by parts. This page on grip restrictions also has some nice side-on shots of various parts.

Thanks for the link, Arcalane, that will help a tonne with spriting. And if you could supply the sounds at a later stage, that would be fantastic, too.
The problems that I can think of with your proposed method carrion, are that
a) I'm not to sure on the draw order of MOs vs HDFirearms, so idk if the attachments and other parts will be drawn behind or in front of the gun.
b) Collisions would be messed up if we used separate particles for each attachment.


I think it would be easiest to have perhaps three different weapons for each class, each with one to five 'elemental' (basic, incendiary, shock, acid, and explosive) types, and each elemental type with three different sprites.

For example, a hastily sprited Assault Rifle combination set based off a single weapon:


All have the same offsets, and can be based off the same .ini defined weapon. The rifle shown above doesn't have a fifth damage variant (yet), so will only have 12 possible sprites as opposed to a maximum of 15.
This would be one of three(?) Assault Rifle combination sets.

@Coops and / or CC48,
Excellent, I've got some school work to do but I'll try and get as much spriting in as possible.
If you could, would it be possible to offer some ideas on actually implementing the randomized variables onto the weapons? Would it be best if I were to leave the variables as 0 for the Mass, RoundCount, SharpLength etc?

Thanks to you all for the offers and input so far.

What if, perhaps, each gun had a null sprite, but had attachments on it with barrel, grip, stock, and other parts? Each of those attachments have as many frames as there are part variants so they can change appearance easily via Lua, and since they're all initially attached to the gun, draw order and collisions aren't going to be an issue.

I thought you might find it handy.

Sent a PM regarding the sound files, put it in your saved messages folder or something.

Ed: Unless you want to mess with % modifiers, I'd suggest leaving most vars at 0.

Elemental based weapons should be strict, or more spread out, effect wise. Incendiary and Acid would both mostly have the same effect in game (Damage over time, Penetration, AOE) other than visuals. However, something like Incendiary and Highly Explosive or Poison/Toxic would have a noticeable and separate effect from each other.

Also, Maybe there could be certain manufacturers that produce a couple types of weapons with certain traits, like one makes snipers and AR's, whereas another would make pistols and submachine guns.

As for Elemental stats, either the weapons have a random chance to have the stat added or even have a separate store, or option in one store, with these power ups for purchase to be added to the selected weapon for a higher price.

I might be getting a little out of hand here, but upgrading could even come to mind, not just attachment wise, but stat wise too. Just like the latter suggestion of elemental additions, there could be another option or store that provides the service to do so.

As for the ini variables, Roundcount won't be a problem. Sharplength will be something to work around, so make it what it would be normally for the weapon. Mass I don't usually mess around with in lua so up to CC48 about that.

For elementals, wouldn't incendiary have more particles but they wouldn't penetrate metal and acid have less particles but go through armor easily?

Makes sense. You could also have it so incendiary effects would be a fairly short-lived and powerful burn, whereas acid/toxic/chemical burn would be a weaker but longer-lasting effect.

why do you all forget Shock element?
also, the special powers from the main characters woulden't be too bad.....especially the bird.

This sounds like the best solution, I'll try and come up with a standard assault rifle set.

@Arcalane: Received, thanks a tonne Arky (should I call you Arky? Idk.)

Sounds good, and (hopefully) shouldn't be to hard to just stick a logo on the shop UI. If we're talking about different sprite styles for different companies though, I don't think I'll survive 0_o
I really do like this idea. Depending on how hard it will be to do, we could have, as you stated, ammunition with further (and probably elemental) effect multipliers, available to purchase for an extra price. And I can finally use those sprites from the other thread!


Hopefully, yes. If we were to go all the way we could use akblabla's acid sprayer script for the acid particles.




We were just debating the differences between incendiary and acidic ammo types.
I'm afraid this mod won't incorporate the special abilities or any actors, it's mainly just to see how many different weapons we can get and how much variety we can achieve, whilst still providing (price)balanced and interesting guns each time.

Manufacturer only determined the grip style and textures/materials available, at least in Borderlands. There were a bunch of different manufacturers, for example;

Jakobs makes very powerful guns, but they tend to have low rates of fire and high recoil. Hyperion's guns are very very accurate. Vladof? Rate of fire is king with these guys. Maliwan weapons always have elemental effects.

This page gives more details on that topic.

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Arc or Arca are much less awkward-sounding.

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This page covers the Elemental/Tech system in more detail. It's... surprisingly complicated.