How do inf guns work?

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krate

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I have my meshs and my code for my new gun, and I can make stuff work in Unreal, but the gun system in Inf is far more complicated. Can anyone give me some pointers? I have printed out over a hundred pages of code, and I still can't see how they work exactly.
Specifically:

How can I summon my new gun into Inf? I can summon into Unreal.

How can I place Inf guns on a map?

I found a mutator file that Inf uses to replace all the Unreal guns with Inf guns. Is this used in the current implementation of Inf, or is this an Inf lite thing?

Which scripts contain gun info? I have found little bits of gun code all over the place, with gun-specific stuff wired into all sorts of files. I wish there was some sort of general overview of how guns go in.

I think I would like to add my new gun as a mutator. Has anyone tried to do this for Inf before? Is there any example code I can use as a starting point?

Thanks for any help!
 

bastard_o

Lead Designer
You need to email Beppo directly for this type of information.

If you have played INF at all you would know that there are NO weapons in levels they are selected from your loadout... !

Another thing is that I think that you CAN'T mod a mod we don't allow it... Sorry.
 

krate

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Several servers start with maps strewn with weapons. I'm sure there is a mutator that can do it. And what do you mean modifying a mod isn't allowed? People do that all the time. And it is difficult to "not allow" it. All the code is hanging out in the open, so anyone can get in and start making changes at will.
 

Silver_Ibex

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I cannot believe the Infiltration team, after being so cutting edged and cool for so many years would suddenly be so short sighted as to not allow mutators to be made for their Mod, especially after telling everyone who suggested weapon ideas that if they really wanted that weapon they would have to do the work and stop whining and complaining in the suggestion forum,

If it is a weapon mutator people want to use, then let them, they will not waste their time playing poor quality mutators, and good ones that really shine should be adopted by Infiltration.

What’s next? Not allowing unofficial maps to be played in infiltration because they might be low quality, not very realistic, or made by non team members???

Infiltration should encourage people to create new character models and skins, and support weapon mutator development, maybe have a new forum for such things.
 

bastard_o

Lead Designer
Errrr, Sorry I must have had a bad day...

Of course anybody can tweak/modify any of the infiltration code or add their own code or create there own mutators and change or modify inf to be what they want...

I told the guy what he needs to do email Beppo.

I must have forgotten that you can't summon a rocket laucher into inf when on-line that is what I meant by NOT allowing...

The placing of weapons in levels is NOT coded for I believe if you do that they will just be removed... again NOT allowed...

I only make maps what do I know...
 

Silver_Ibex

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Hey sorry guys if I sounded a little upset, I just misunderstood that bit about support for community contributions. Glad to hear every thing is still cool.
 
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Slava(Spetsnaz)

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Hmmm Phatcat, don't you think his point was well made? read the messages in context first. Before Bastard_o's second message I too was under the impression that INF team would try to enforce a "no mutator for INF" rule! With Bastard_o's comment I was about to respond too, as I saw my current work completely wasted. I started on my rather large mutator because I've seen the INF team encourage mutation.
Anyway Krate you should be able to spawn your items into INF, I have no problems with this, as long as it's offline. But if you really want to do a weapon for INF, subclass it off infc_weapon in INF_Core. There's a lot of neafty add on features, and if you don't at least your weapon will seriously lack precision. infc_Weapon also has a fine setup for mutliple ammo or attachments. Also how much animation do you do with your weapon? Do you have both hip and aim animation... In that case, if you're feeling the need for some more exercise I have weapon meshes but I can't animate ;-)
 

krate

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Thanks for the reply Slava!
Summon doesn't seem to work well for me. Of course I am using it in single player mode... if summon worked in multiplayer mode, that would be a serious problem!

If I summon an infc_weapon, nothing shows up. If I summon a warheadlauncher or a sniperrifle however, an Infc weapon shows up instead!

My new gun is a child of infc_weapon, but it doesn't have any loadout info, so the only way I expect to get it for now is by summoning.

I have started to experiment with mutators, and they work fine in Inf. I made a clone of the M9 arena mutator, and that drops an M9 into the map. I changed it to my new weapon, which is essentially a clone of the DE at this point, but with my new mesh. That didn't work. Nothing at all apears on the map. I am going to try to clone the DE exactly for troubleshooting.

My intention for this is to make a demo mutator, which lets people try my new gun design, and so I can debug it. If it works and looks great, then maybe the Inf team would like to fold it into a release at some point, or if not, people could play with it on my server. I am completely behind the Inf team in making strong and careful editorial decisions on what weapons to include in the general release. I also hope that they will facilitate contributions from fans. Fan contribution is what makes Unreal so great, after all.

Another thing I would like to do is to make a comprehensive gun tutorial, that includes all of the files used in the process. It took me a month of weekends to figure it all out. UnrealEd is complicated, Photoshop is complicated, 3DS Max is very complicated. Making a mesh, making a skin, getting the skin onto the mesh, importing the model into Unreal, making a package, are all challenging for a novice. I would have loved it if I had all the files, and step-by-step instructions for how they were made.
 

Slava(Spetsnaz)

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I just tried summoning a few items. First off you can't summon a regular UT item, since they are replaced by INF (Yes also in regular INF not just INF lite). I supose this is done with IsA, in which case you can't subclass a specific UT weapon either.

I could summon INF weapons like INF_CORE.INFc_AKMSU and also my own stuff that's subclassed off the grenade, the 40mm grenade, and the HK69. Furthermore I tried to summon some TO weapons since I have that installed as well. You shouldn't need any loadout info to summon you weapon, also the INFc_Weapon itself isn't really a weapon as such it's just the parent class of all the INF weapons - I think it misses important stuff as Mesh, PickupViewMesh, ThirdPersonMesh, PlayerViewMesh. These are also the only real important properties I can come up with that would cause your weapon not to show.

Otherwise try subclassing an INF weapon like INFc_HK69 or whatever, change some basic stuff at first (Try also replacing the pickup mesh) and summon it. In case you want the weapon to be compatible with all kind of mods and still be able to be summoned in INF, you should be able to subclass your weapon off TournamentWeapon.
 

krate

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I sent Beppo email right after you posted that I should write him directly, but he hasn't responded. I am making pretty good progress in figuring it out, and I've found Slava's posts especially useful.
I started coding a mod, and I am starting to have some success.

Slava, when I said I couldn't summon any INFc_weapons, I meant the children of that, not the generic itself. I was trying stuff like
>summon INFc_AKMSU
and I would get nothing
>summon WarheadLauncher
and I would get a Desert Eagle.

I will try
>summon INF_CORE.INFc_AKMSU
to see if that works.

I am guessing that Inf uses a mutator that intercepts UT weapon spawns and trys to replace them with Inf stuff, so UT maps are automatically converted.

Also, as I mentioned before, I have been on servers before that have the standard maps start strewn with weapons. Some of the weapons are up on unreachable building roofs and places like that, so I assume the used some mutator that sprinkles the weapons onto the map at random. Anyone know what they used?
 

Slava(Spetsnaz)

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I think the whole process of INF replacing weapons is located in the InfiltrationUT package in the class InfilWeapons.

Also I can confirm that the problem is you didn't specify the package name before class. I didn't even think of it earlier. I hope it works out so you can get on with the creative process.
 

krate

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Slava,

Thanks so much for all the useful advice! I made a huge amount of progress on my new gun this weekend. Summoning from inf_core works correctly.
I made a child of the DE, put in my new mesh, and summoned it. After tweaking the scale and the position, it looks pretty good, albeit disembodied, floating and motionless, but at least it shoots! So, I am getting close. Next, I used a mesh extraction utility to get the original mesh with hands for the DE, and I can use the DE meshes as a guide for my new meshes. This is where I should have started in the first place.
I almost understand the hands. They have two special textures that get replaced at run time. They get the camo texture and the skintone texture. I am not quite sure how to specify these textures, but I think I can figure it out.
All I have to do now is a whole pile of animations, the pickup mesh, the third person mesh, the ammo mesh, the attachment, and merge in the code for the attachment.
I can see why there are not many tutorials on this stuff! It is so involved, a tutorial would be a big project. If I get this all to work, I am thinking of making a basic gun from scratch on a clean install, while dictating every mouse click in the whole process. Then provide the notes with all the files created in the process, and links to all of the utils I needed.
Now for an editorial digression: None of this is very difficult once you understand the process, but you are almost on your own for figuring it out from the source code. Any time I post a technical question, I brace myself for flames and useless responses. Why do people who don't know the first thing about the topic feel compelled to put in their negative $0.02, even on a purely technical thread? E.g., the reply to my thread about damage types just made me laugh. "U R st00pid d00d, u cant program?!?! And U in Cafalornia?! What up w dat?" :) And my suggestion for trying some minor rules changes was literally "Hitlered" in the first few responses. I suppose that is to be expected. If you use the word "Gun" in a post on the Internet, you are never more than three posts away from a post that uses the word "Hitler." It is like some fundamental law of information theory.
THANK YOU SLAVA for actual coherent, accurate, and useful answers! You saved me a ton of time.
 

Slava(Spetsnaz)

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Congratulations on your progress Krate! I gotta ask you what program do you use to extract the hand animation? Once I get my other stuff finished I was thinking about trying to do a weapon, but I see how this requires the original hands.... and all the positioning stuff is gonna take some time. Although I'm not a 100% sure on the weapon stuff maybe the SET <class> <variable> <value> console command might be a good help. I toyed a bit with attachments and found this a good way to find the correct values for proper positioning in game. Also I send you a PM.
 

krate

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To export models, I used Unreal Package Export Tool:
http://unreal.acordero.org/UTilities/utpt/
Also check out WOTgreal, which looks pretty cool. I have not gotten it to work for export yet, but it does so much more than export.

With UTPT, I couldn't open the files with 3dsmax for some reason. I couldn't double click them open, I couldn't load or import them... but for some reason they will import if I drag and drop them into an open 3dsmax session. Go figure.