More ****ing With Unreal 1

I recently started working on an old mod of mine for Unreal again. Check the first screen. Laser sight and a masked skin that makes the sniper rifle mesh look different. Not that big a deal, right? Check out the second one. I "programmed" a reload animation for the gun by messing with its location and rotation. Using those offsets, I was able to keep the laser sight in sync instead of just turning it off for the reload sequence. I think it's pretty slick. Programming animations like that adds a bit more versatility to the old Unreal weapon models.

Anyway, one of the main ideas behind the mod was to give the weapons as much personality as possible, so I've been trying to keep working toward that since I got back to the mod. The first thing I did was to add a second fire mode to the default weapon I'd made, and spiffing up its primary a bit. I'm really satisfied with the weapon now. There's also a chaingun that's completely unruly to begin with, but rather powerful after being upgraded a bit. It'd be awesome if I could come up with a good secondary fire, but I haven't been able to so far. The SMG in the screenshots can be loaded with chaingun ammo for extra punch but with a big increase in recoil. I might make that capability into an upgrade.

There's a pistol that I think's pretty lame. I'm not really sure how to make it interesting. I'm thikin' really elaborate, exotic powerups might be a good way to go. I wonder if I could render it twice, once with the hand masked and fatness up, another time with the gun masked and the fatness normal, to make the gun seem beefier...
Anyway, the sniper rifle also sucks. The RPG wants to be cool, but isn't quite there yet. It's a big shoulder-mounted beast. The shotgun's kinda cool, but still feels a little generic. I might add explosive shells as an alternate ammo type or as an upgrade to try to make it more interesting.

BTW, if anyone wants to play with the Ninja mod against some bots, le'me know and I'll upload it one some webspace I got. IIRC everything was working pretty well in botmatches. I doubt anyone really cares about that or this mod, though.

Maybe. PM about it.


I gave the shotgun a flashlight to help you aim. No magical floating crosshairs in this mod. I think it makes the shotgun more interesting.

No. Three are using the rifle mesh in one form or another right now. The sniper rifle doesn't have the barrel cut off, and has the scope that wasn't used in the final game up. It still needs a good skin. Everything else so far has its own mesh, though I may end up using the stinger mesh twice (oriented completely differently).

Ghost3021 said:

(BTW: http://hellscrag.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2161 )

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I could code for you, but I see that coop is one of the features of the mod. I can't for the life of me get my stuff to work properly in multiplay. I know basically nothing about replication.

Ghost3021 said:

What would a list of the weapons be? Anything I can try to help with?

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So far I have a combat gauntlet, revolver, SMG, shotgun, chaingun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher. Some of them need work, and some I may mess with more. I need three more for a complete set. I have some ideas, but I'm not really sure what I'll do. It's hard to decide what original weapon each new weapon should replace.

What exactly do you want to help with?

Ghost3021 said:

Don't worry about the coop, I have another coder who has alot of experience with replication working on that.
As for multiplay code...neither can I lol. I'm trying to learn though...

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So, what, he would go and screw with everything I coded to make it work in multiplayer?

I think replication, new sounds and graphics, and ballance are my weaknesses. I also know very little about mapping, so if I ever make new pawns I don't know if I'll need to do anything special to make them work with tags or triggers or whatever in the levels (right now I'm intending to just stick all my new stuff into the regular Unreal SP campaign in place of the originals).

New graphics aren't that big of a deal, I think I'm managing decently with Unreal content. Sound is tougher, Unreal doesn't have a whole lot to choose from. Ballance isn't reall that big of a deal 'cause I doubt anyone'll really ever play with this other than me. The same kinda goes for replication.

I liked the idea of tarydium crystals but didn't like the old Stinger, so I'm makin' a Stinger Mk 2. Primary's gonna shoot a single shard at a high speed. Secondary grinds up the crystals and sprays the chunks out at a high rate of fire. Here's a shot of the secondary fire in its current form shattering tarydium against a wall. Glowy! :3

I'm attaching sprites where appropriate. The magnum and gauntlet have meshes attached. :b It works great with the gauntlet, but the magnum still needs a lot of work. I'll probably get back to it after I throw the Stinger Mk 2's primary together. One issue I'm encountering is how to aim some weapons precisely. I'd prefer not to put laser sights on everything, 'cause then the SMG will lose some of its individuality. D:

Or iron sights, but then you can't see the gun, and it's all awkward and stuff. For the Stinger Mk 2 I was thinking of having a light shine through the loaded crystal, acting as a sort of blue laser sight that wouldn't work while firing secondary fire, but I d'know... I was also thinking of giving the magnum a blue laser sight. :/ Bah. XO

I was thinking of doing something like that, but if it's too unfocused it'll either be useless at long ranges like the shotgun's flashlight, or it'll look weird 'cause the laser spot graphic will be so big that you can see it hanging off the edges of surfaces and stuff. I'll mess with it some.

I fire a trace to figure out where to put the dot, then line up a linked list of short cylindrical meshes from the gun to the laser. Yay linked lists!