Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:44 pm Posts: 1916 Location: Flint Hills
Shadow Echelon [Low Filesize Version]
Updated to B27! [V0.1] And with some minor fixes! [V0.11] And with a new machine gun, the Cerberus! [V0.12] Until the version number exceeds 1.0, this is to be considered a public beta and I can't guarantee everything will be working quite right.
New stuff: (v0.1 or newer) --New shown name, "Echelon Tech." "Shadow Echelon Tech" is too long I think, and without "Tech" it's not a campaign faction. Still known as "Shadow Echelon" or "[SE]," though. --Loadouts for the campaign. --Ammo system revamp. Several different types of cartridges for guns, ammo is interchangeable between them and can be bought. Ammo still can't be "pooled," though. --VisInv reverted to actor-based; the campaign seems to like breaking attachable scripting. --Chambered Rounds. Reloading is faster and you get an extra shot loaded if you reload before emptying a mag. --AI won't try to shoot empty guns. --AI won't get to shoot the last round of a mag for free.
--Cerberus addition! A new revolver-type machine gun. Can fire all three types of SE 6mm ammo by swapping cylinders with the pie menu. --Old Faithfuls are dual wieldable via pi menu, (this means you don't have to special-order an offhand one from the pie menu; just use any two of them) and now have limited ammo. --AutoMags now have limited ammo. --MP7 addition! A new SMG, not particularly special or interesting but it fills a gap in the arsenal. Needs renaming. --Pribor Tribarrel addition! Triple barrel SMG, replacing the AA12. --Korobov is now the standard [SE] assault rifle, and is full auto only. --Lightning is now the Nikonov, and is burst mode only. --Koksharov is replacing the Assailant, and is a speedy infantry automatic rifle, an assault rifle/LMG hybrid. --Combatant is now burst only. --Flatline has a bipod! Overlap it with the ground to see farther and decrease recoil. --Hexad is... still pretty janky, sorry. --AntiMat replaces the Bulldog, and is now "single shot." (actually infinite mags with super slow cyclic speed) --Neck Breaker converted to work in B27. --Entrencher tool. A digger that's not for mining or infiltration, just for hiding from bullets. Needs sprites and all that jazz. Any unmentioned devices are now deactivated and neglected, or don't exist yet, sorry.
General features to be aware of: --The weapons have limited ammo. An extra HUD element displays your total ammo. You can buy more ammo, or get the ammo from other guns that use the same cartridge. --Some of the weapons, particularly the automatics, have recoil, including muzzle rise. Pay attention to where your bullets are going, and adjust your aim or rate of fire accordingly. The point of this is to make shooting a little more user-involved, and less point & spray. --The weapons reload faster and get a capacity bonus of 1 round if you reload before emptying the weapon, representing whether a round was already chambered when you reloaded. --The 'biggest' sidearm and 'biggest' primary you have in your inventory, unequipped, will show up on your back and leg, respectively, as if holstered or slung. This does NOT limit your inventory to slots or anything like that. It's mostly aesthetic, but it is handy for player enemies, since your inventory's not hidden.
Spoiler contains credits, usage guidelines, known problems, and an update log.
Update Log V0.01 - Rifleman actor, pretty standard guy V0.02 - Assailant assault rifle and Old Faithful pistol added. Limited ammo! Recoil! Select Fire! V0.03 - Functional Ammo Counter V0.04 - Hexad grenade launcher V0.05 - Wrist Breaker revolver, Boberg compact pistol, Visible Inventory! V0.06 - Grande Launcher, AutoMag, (replaces wristbreaker) Tweaks V0.07 "Aim For the Head" - ROATS Rifle DMR, Laser Sight Variant, Neck Breaker buyable for anyone, Neck Snapper always in a rifleman's inventory V0.075 - Much better fading laser sight effect. Also includes scripts for a continuous beam, and a black beam, if you change the script reference in the .ini. V0.08 - Sentinel defensive actor, Ironsides shotgun, Behemoth auto shotgun, Nanogun micro minigun [deactivated], Wrist Breaker, [deactivated] and various scripting improvement/bugfixes V0.081 - Tiny but important bugfix, v0.08 had a crash-inducing error. V0.09 "The Rifle Release" - Added some content, reworked some content V0.1 B27 - ammo revamp, chambered round, ai weapon usage fixes, loadouts, pribor, mp7, entrencher V0.11 - bugfixes, better categorization of items V0.12 - Cerberus addition
Stuff I already know I should do --Lower audio quality, they're making file sizes crazy --New manual cycling sounds for each weapon --Fix the Hexad so the grenades break without exploding less --Update VisInv so it covers the new stuff and maybe vanilla stuff. --Give MP7 new sounds, gibs, and a new name. Please no one complain that I got the caliber and capacity "wrong." Like all other [SE] weapons, this is their 'redesign' of a real life weapon, it's not supposed to be an exact duplicate of the real thing. --Korobov Gibs --Pribor Gibs and sounds --Balance the AutoMag's ballistics (external and terminal) --Add another 12x25mm weapon, maybe reintegrate the "Meat Tenderizer" in this way. --Possibly reintegrate American 180 and Nanogun, have them share a new 5x20mm round. --Possibly revert the AntiMat to the semi auto Bulldog, make it short range, and add another single shot super long range non-bullpup 12x120mm rifle under the name of AntiMat. --Maybe a sentry turret that also serves as an ammo factory for players to resupply at
Stuff I'd like to do but is impractical/impossible to script by my knowledge --Pooled ammo --The whole "AI won't shoot empty guns" thing repairs the gun of any wounds it had. If I could fix that it'd be great. --Resale value of weapons dependent on ammo reserve. --Make AI seek ammo when they have an empty weapon and no full weapon
Credits Azukki - Stuff (Lua, ini, sprites, some sounds) Roast Veg - Visible inventory script optimization Abdul - I made the recoil scripts myself, but I referenced his recoil scripts to do so akblabla - Took the basic idea of editing guns' sharp lengths for a recoil effect from his GMG CC48 - Vague concepts of round-by-round reloading via pie menu, although no scripts were copied or even referenced. Probably some other little tidbits, too. Lizard - Visible inventory general idea Killing Floor - Sounds Left 4 Dead - Sounds Resident Evil 4 - Sounds Various youtube uploaders - Sounds DRL - CC DRLFF - Stuff (ideas, little bits of script, feedback)
If you want to use something from this mod for your mod: Sounds: Credit whoever made it, ask me via PM if you don't know. Sprites: Don't reuse my sprites, please. Lua Scripts / Ini Code: If it's more than several lines, I'd ask that you credit me accordingly. Permission is not needed, but I would be interested to hear what you're making in a PM. The Whole Mod: If you want to make your own edition of Shadow Echelon and distribute it, please copy over the credits above. Don't post it in this thread, though, that could get confusing. Don't redistribute the mod loaded with viruses, or for money, obviously.
Feedback, suggestions, complaints, comments, bug reports, and other such things are all highly appreciated.
Last edited by Azukki on Sun Apr 28, 2013 6:35 pm, edited 81 times in total.
Mon May 16, 2011 2:22 am
Asklar
Data Realms Elite
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2011 8:01 am Posts: 6211 Location: In your office, earning your salary.
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Hey, it is that blue guy Azukki posts all the bloody time! Like when he snapped the neck of Dimitri!
I always wanted to use this guy.
Mon May 16, 2011 4:32 am
Azukki
Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:44 pm Posts: 1916 Location: Flint Hills
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Hmm, maybe I should give him the neckbreaker technique to use when he's otherwise unarmed? I think that would be a befitting last-ditch special ability for an infantry guy.
Another thing I was wanting input on is limited ammo. I'm definitely going to have a couple specialty weapons with limited ammo, but I was wondering what people would think if everything in the faction had limited ammo. Would that be too misfitting, in a game where everyone else has unlimited ammo?
Mon May 16, 2011 4:44 am
Asklar
Data Realms Elite
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2011 8:01 am Posts: 6211 Location: In your office, earning your salary.
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Maybe limited ammo with the your own actors? Giving him the neckbreaker when un-armed is an awesome idea.
Mon May 16, 2011 4:52 am
Major
Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 5:30 am Posts: 853 Location: Auckland, NZ
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Limited ammo would be amzing, but some hater will hate, so you could always make and on/off button for the limited ammo.
Mon May 16, 2011 5:14 am
Grif
REAL AMERICAN HERO
Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:25 pm Posts: 5655
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Limited ammo isn't really going to work from a gameplay standpoint if you're playing against opponents without limited ammunition.
Limited ammo only works as a nerf to otherwise significantly overpowered actors, in my experience.
I'm all for the concept, but it's basically impossible to pull off, unfortunately.
Mon May 16, 2011 5:27 am
Major
Joined: Sun May 30, 2010 5:30 am Posts: 853 Location: Auckland, NZ
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Seeing as the AI is basically retarded, I don't see a problem with them having unlimited ammo, also, can't you impose the same limits on them?
Mon May 16, 2011 5:30 am
ramonimbao
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:53 am Posts: 79 Location: Philippines
Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:44 pm Posts: 1916 Location: Flint Hills
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.01
Yeah, I'm thinking the same as Grif. All weapons having limited ammo when the enemy isn't under the same burden probably can't really be balanced out. It could be a good feature for a game mode where it applies to both teams, or for specialty weapons, though, so I'll be fiddling with the concept anyways.
V0.02 --Old Faithful, a pistol with proper recoil. It can either be pretty fast, or pretty accurate, but not both at once. Also durable and expensive. --Assailant, a select fire assault rifle with a consistent muzzle rise, select fire, [see in-game description for controls] and limited ammo. --Assailant Actor renamed to [SE] Rifleman. (I changed my mind, the name is more befitting of an assault rifle than its wielder) --Rifleman now has an ammo counter GUI element, which displays the ammo remaining of his current weapon, (its Sharpness, actually) if he has a limited ammo weapon.
To Do: -Give these guns proper gibs and sounds and muzzle flashes and such -Balance them better after getting some feedback, probably including removal of limited ammo -Make the ammo counter script not cause a bunch of crashes and/or remove it -Test more before future releases
Yeah the ammo counter is totally broken. If you or the gun are gibbed, it crashes. And now I've got it down to just crashing when the gun gibs out of your hands, but that's no good either. Disable the script by opening the actor's ini and deleting the line for the script if you want to actually play with the actor. Or wait until tomorrow and redownload, when I'll either find a solution to the crashing, or disable the problematic script. Sorry about this.
Mon May 16, 2011 6:12 am
Neutrality
Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 5:35 am Posts: 11
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.02
On the topic of limited ammo, wouldnt you just make the AI have limited ammo as well? Or is the limited script actor based?
And another point, you might want to give your actors holsters for their own weapons.
Mon May 16, 2011 6:15 pm
Azukki
Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:44 pm Posts: 1916 Location: Flint Hills
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.02
The limited ammo is weapon-based, so for the enemies to have it, they'd need to be equipped with custom weapons. But really, AI enemies tend to not survive long enough to run out of ammo anyways, so maybe them having unlimited ammo wouldn't make a lot of difference anyways.
Yeah, I will reincorporate visible inventory, but I decided to wait until I had a least two primaries and two sidearms in the mod first.
I'm working on fixing that script, now, and if I can't get it in 2 hours, I'll just disable limited ammo as-is and worry about it when I'm actually make a limited ammo specialty weapon.
V0.03 is out; the ammo counter script no longer causes crashing.
Next, I'll probably polish the existing weapons, add another pair of them, give Rifleman the neckbreaker, and/or reincorporate visible inventory.
Last edited by Azukki on Mon May 16, 2011 7:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Mon May 16, 2011 6:23 pm
Xery
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:29 am Posts: 163
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.02
Some of the scripts' really simple but beautiful! I shall find if anything can be used in mine.
Mon May 16, 2011 7:00 pm
Jackal
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2011 2:23 am Posts: 213 Location: Somewhere over the rainbow of public acceptance.
Re: Shadow Echelon Beta V0.03
The only way to pull of limited ammo without destroying the faction's chances at survival would be to make a clip available for each weapon. For example, while a clip is in the actors inventory for a certain weapon, that weapon can fire x number of rounds before the clip is removed from the actor's inventory. The reload would only commence if another clip is in the actor's inventory, and then you could start shooting again. So, the ammo's limit is the number of clips the actor has on them. I would love to have that, since it wouldn't completely nerf the faction. Also, I love the idea of neck-snapping as a last resort. Nice job on the faction thus far!
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum