The Blue Sun Mod

[safoolfool]

Originally Posted by Chortles

Also, I'm looking at the ITEMINFO (where weapons' display names and Info are kept... but what's "a SUM rifle"?), WEAPONINFO and WEAPONINFO_ALT (can't tell which is entirely yours, though I see that they have different weapon stats), but how much of the weapon attributes are editable by text editor? For example, I'm guessing that I can change the HK416's default magazine to a standard "M16" magazine instead of a "C-Mag (M16)," as well as allow a MP5A5 RIS to accept "Weaver Rail" (should be called Picatinny) optics?...

First of all, as far as I know, SUM stands for a Stephan Uribe modified (or something).

As for the iteminfo question, as far as I can see if you open up an entry (say G36) you'll find this:
ATT Laser 1 "Rifle Laser"
ATT Light 1 "Rifle Light"
ATT Scope 3 "G36 sight""G36E sight""HK G36 Scope"
ATT Bipod 1 "G36_bipod" blocks Bayonet and ILauncher
ATT Silencer 1 "Supressor - 5,56" blocks Bayonet
ATT ILauncher 2 "M203""M203PI" blocks Bayonet and Bipod
ATT Bayonet 1 "StdBayonet" blocks ILauncher and Silencer
ATT Magazine 1 "G36 mag"

Some things seem to be listed in groups (e.g. this lists only 1 type of magazine, but the g36 can take double mags and cmags, as well as (I think) reduced size ones (e.g. 20 instead of 30, but I'm not sure if there are g36 20s)). If you wanted it to take WR sights, I think you'd add "WR" in the scopes list. So the new scopes line would be:
ATT Scope 4 "G36 sight""G36E sight""HK G36 Scope""WR"
or, if you only wanted WR sights, it'd be
ATT Scope 1 "WR"
Additionally, it looks like you could delete the "blocks" part of those lines to allow you to have a bipod, suppressor, launcher, and bayonet all at once.
I don't see why you couldn't add in the m16 magazines to the ATT Magazine line, but I have no idea what would happen if you tried letting it use magazines of a different caliber (e.g. enable .458 socom magazines on the g36). It might work fine, and calculate damage as if it was a 5.56, but since I think damage is based on bullets, and not the gun firing them (not sure though, since different guns of the same caliber have different damage ranges on their in-game info pages).
I'm not sure what the number before the list of what you can attach means, but it seems to always be exactly the same as the number of things listed (e.g. g36 takes one magazine family, the number is 1; it takes 3 scopes, the number is 3; 2 launchers, the number is 2 etc.)
For changing the store default attachments and magazines, I think you go to the line
StdPlug "Rifle ammo clip (G36/30)"
and change the thing in quotes to whatever you want.

What I'd love to know about iteminfo, is how range is calculated. It seems to be based off of 3 numbers, max, effective, and curve. I think max is where the "standard" curve on the in-game info page touches 0, but effective I'm not sure. I'd assume it's the halfway mark (range where hit probability is 50%), but I don't think it always is. I know that the higher the range curvature, the faster range drops off. For example, the AS VAL has an 11 curvature, and its accuracy goes from something like 100% at 0m, 75% at 75m (so not much dropoff), then drops really fast, to the point where the hit probability is like 10% at 87.5 meters. On the other hand, guns with low curvatures, like 1, seem to drop linearly, or even experience (slow) exponential decay when less than 1. I'd guess it's using some function that varies by three parameters (max, effective, and curve) but I wish I knew what it actually was.

For now, I'm gonna go test letting a g36 use WR sights, and stop the blocking, and try a Beretta that accepts socom mags.

Edit: so I got the g36 to both use WR sights and take everything on it at once (despite the fact that the bayonet is shorter than the silencer, maybe you can use it as a polearm, instead of a spear? Putting socom magazines in the Beretta also worked fine (and looked hilarious, since it puts the magazine in the same place as a pistol mag, but its bigger than the grip, so it looked like a barrel and trigger sticking out of a box mag). I'm not sure if it was actually doing .458 damage though. Shooting an unarmored merc in the chest with both a .458 and a 9mm from the Beretta did the same damage (in HP and bleeding), but so did having a guy with an HK chambered naturally in .458 shooting at one of my guys. I did notice that everyone I shot with the .458 got their chest to show up red (as in a special injury, like when you're immobilized in the legs) and none of the 9mm guys got that injured. From that it makes me think that a Beretta loaded with a socom mag actually was doing socom damage, which is also pretty funny. I think the problem might be that I'm playing with critical hits on the player off. I just tried shooting an unarmored merc in the chest with the KS23's car-stopping round, which did the same damage (15 to health, ~45 bleeding). I guess "no criticals" just caps the amount of damage you can take from any one shot. I though criticals were like in other games, where you'd have a random variation in damage, so sometimes you do triple damage (to simulate hitting something important). Maybe in this game damage doesn't vary that randomly, and its just 0-5 damage = slightly hit, 5-10 = hit, 10-15 = heavily hit, 15+ = critically hit (or something). This really makes me rethink turning it off. I'm fine with not having criticals if they mean that luck becomes a huge factor (i.e. it's annoying to lose a merc because some asshole happened

As for effective range: I tried also editing the Beretta's effective range to 100m (from 41) while leaving curve at 6 and max at 150. The numbers I got for the "standard" hit curve in the info screen were: 87.5% @ 50m, 75% @ 85m, 50% @ 92m, 25% @ 100m. So effective range is definitely not the 50% mark.
When I then changed it by keeping effective at 100 and curve at 6, but made max 300, I got 87.5% @ 38m, 75% @ 60m, 50% @ 90m, 25% at 105m. So increasing max range actually made the guns less accurate at almost all ranges, up to about 100m, which doesn't really make any sense to me.

[R@S]

First off, the reason there are so many types of weapons that have very similar stats is to make the looting more fun. The more weapons you add to the game, the more variations in enemy load-outs there will be and you can create factions with a specific weapon suopplyer wihout them all carrying the same weapons. How would you like it if after an encounter all you would find was 18 AK-74's and 2 RPK's? It would make the game pretty boring after a while, at least I think so. One can of course set the percentage chance of a weapon turing up in a shop to prevent the cluttering of the screen, having some weapons only have a 10% chance. In my experience that woul mean running around trying to find a trader that sells the weapon I want. I made a compromise in the BSM and gave all the weapons a 50% chance, it reduces the clutter and there's still no need to run around too much.

I read somewhere that damage is calculated with a formula that also takes the distance to the target. This means that if you shoot someone at point blank range their damage would be bigger than if you shot them from a distance. Then there's the various settings in the AMMOINFO file that are added to the formula, like caliber, tumbling and whatnot. The more you play around whith these figures, the more you'll realize what a impressive and complex system it is.

Take the 5.56x45 and the.458 as an example. If you gave a weapon with the same stats the ability to fire both these rounds, you'd find that the range of the 5.56 round is far greater. This is becase the calculations for them includes their weight, and other attibutes. And since the .458 weighs more it also decreses the accuracy, range and several other things. Do as Safoolfool, play around with it a bit and you'll get a better idea of what I'm trying to say

And yes, SUM stands for Stefan Uribe Modified, him being the weapon smitty from BE5 that I added to 7.62 for sentimental reasons

[Chortles]

I'd love it if you could somehow create a gun range "area"/"mission" to let us hop straight to the in-game "live fire" ballistics testing.

[R@S]

I'll prolly add that when the testing of the new global AI and the new reloaded maps starts. If you help with that you'll be given a chance to do your testing. I'll add a map guide that will send you directly to selected map and as the testing progresses I'll add enemies as well. It's my usual progress, just ask the testers of the ARM project

[Chortles]

What could I do on that front? (Yes, I consider this "hop in on the closed beta." )

I don't know if you've ever heard of Op7, but that game (free-to-play+microtransactions online FPS) has a Preview function for weapons and (primary weapon) attachments you're checking out; when you click the Preview button, your character is sent to a basement shooting range with three stalls (differing in distance to the target), armed with the chosen weapons and attachments... something like that'd be great for playtesting the in-game ballistics. I've actually just made my own first "adjustment" -- made the M1911A1 able to support a suppressor (for simplicity's sake the .45 USP Tactical's) along with a laser or flashlight... unfortunately, those are appearing on the front of the pistol grip, instead of under the barrel.

[R@S]

Originally Posted by Chortles

I've actually just made my own first "adjustment" -- made the M1911A1 able to support a suppressor (for simplicity's sake the .45 USP Tactical's) along with a laser or flashlight... unfortunately, those are appearing on the front of the pistol grip, instead of under the barrel.

This is where the \GameDir\Actors\Items\*.ACT.INF files come into play. By adjusting the values for the attachments you'll be able to move them into their right place. It's the last 3 numbers you should alter, the control Front/Back, Up/Down and Left/right. But that might vary depending on how the model was created, the only ne that is always the same is the Up/down one, the 2 others might switch places but it's easy to figure that out with a little testing.

Never played any games online, I have too slow Internet connection speed. But I did think about adding such a feature as trying before buying, but since one can alway test all the weapons by cheating it would be too much work for something already easily done.

Now I'm off to work, laterz

[Chortles]

So it has nothing to do with, say, the order in which I add the attachment slot to ITEMBONES? That should be nice, except for one problem... there isn't an Items subfolder in the Actors directory post-patch! All that's there is the "Monsters" subfolder... unless I botched the unofficial patch+BSM installation??

Regarding my experimenting methodology thusfar: In general my "attachment/gear" tinkering mainly involves the inventory editor and Notepad, but if I need a "live fire" test, I tend to just start up a game and go straight towards the Weird Looking Hooker to take that quest -- since BSM's disabled the vanilla game's starting ambush (I guess because of your lack of starting gear), it's the quickest way I can get a relatively "open air" firefight going.

[R@S]

Use the AZP.EXE in the mod kit to extract the ACT files. I'm sure i've posted the link to it here somewhere, but to make it easy, here it is again:
7.62 - Mod-kit and Source Code

The files you're looking for should be in the Patch_1_12.azp archive.

If you wanna ease the testing, open up the console and write enter_dev_mode, hit enter then write shop then enter, and you'll get to the cheater shop. Once you've chosen your gear, exit the shop and shoot the nearest cop/guard and go nut

[Kyle]

Ever since I started playtesting the Class System mod, my time's so tight that I stopped visiting this thread--a big mistake on my part!

The Reloaded maps look AMAZING. I got a pit in my gut every time I saw a new screenshot. Those look like some pretty intimidating regions to fight in.

In regards to having a million variants of a weapon system, all I'll state is this: when I playtested for the Super Mod Pack for the original STALKER, there were literally DOZENS of AK variants, most of which had very similar performance characteristics.

My play experience with them (and of MANY others, even those slavishly and rightfully devoted to the AK) was one of mainly annoyance. Don't get me wrong, I'm open to having like 7 variants of each of the different calibers in-game, but if it comes down to choice, let's pick the ones that are the MOST different from one another, otherwise, what's the point?

I LOVE the idea of repo men! A new faction to the game, so to speak and sensible. Very cool.

[Chortles]

I saw no AZP.EXE in the modkit folder or "E1P" (whatever that is, I guess the to-date released source code)... I've also had "MFC71.DLL missing" pop up when I try to run the INI and Shop editors, but I've read on Yahoo! Answers that apparently the DLL is malware or at least a tracker...

Originally Posted by R@S

I use Total Commander for that search function since it's possible to add a plugin that allows browsing inside AZP archives. You can find it here:
Total Commander

Unfortunately, the use thereof... the only source I've found for how to successfully use it is here, and the link to the preconfigured plugins there is down.

I've actually been trying out the "dev mode shop," but so far I've only been getting into fights with either the Hooligans or the Wino's Brothers... still, so far, it's given me the chance to playtest some gear, as well as some ideas... one good thing about this "dev mode" is that I can use it to clear out/move magazines, for example, to get rid of the empty magazine that all of the firearms come with (which adds on time), or to get rid of the stuff in my character's starting inventory so that I can right-away playtest starting particular items (i.e. a machine pistol and different-sized magazines for it, or time taken to add a suppressor); unfortunately, I eventually had a CTD when removing a body.

Unfortunately, even on Easy difficulty, I've had a few instances where the Hooligans or Wino's Brothers (particularly the latter) would stun/KO (by draining the purple bar) my character and then beat him to death.. heck, one time it was a mortally-wounded attacker.

EDIT: Can the repo men be optional too? ;D