I love this mod so much I want to take it to dinner. And buy it a car.

I'll PM you my mailing address.

So, a little discussion of things to come, as I work on them.

For the past couple days I've been working away at the assault rifle. I have both firemode-switching working, as well as the "dual mag" setup I was talking about. The gun basically has two separate magazines. You can fire from one or the other individually, or you can set the gun to just fire from both, automatically alternating between them. The "fire from both" setting is the default one, and each magazine holds 20 round for a total of 40. Also, when you reload, BOTH magazines get reloaded, and it doesn't take any longer than reloading the single magazine did before. So, you have these new features, but they don't really cause a huge hindrance, and the gun on default settings (full-auto and auto-switch) with default ammo pretty much functions exactly the way the old one did.

The dual-magazine setup is to support the new ammo types. I haven't really implemented this yet, but the idea I have right now is that when you buy a gun, you also can buy separate ammo packs that go in your inventory. Then when you activate the "change ammo type" function, the gun searches your inventory for an ammo pack, and then switches to the ammo type of the pack if it finds one. The ammo packs are only for non-normal ammo though. The gun automatically comes with normal ammo.

The next feature that I'm currently working on is recoil. Now, my initial plan was to just give the weapon a basic natural "spray" that never changes, and then have the gun screw with your aim every time you fire it. Problem is, screwing with an actor's aim only works when the actor isn't sharp-aiming. If they're sharp aiming, any attempts to change their aim angle is overridden and discarded. So unfortunately that won't work.

So now I'm going at it in a different way, which is this: when you first fire the gun, the first shot is affected by the gun's base "spray" only. But every time you fire, an internal "shake" value gets increased based on the recoil of then gun. The shake value increases as you fire, and decreases as you don't. The higher the shake value, the more the gun sprays wildly. So, it encourages "controlled bursts," or the use of semi-auto at moderate ranges.

Expanding upon that, I was kinda thinking that I could do something cool with the shake recovery and recoil resistance, and actually base it off of the actor's own mass and/or strength. Looking over attachable properties, it looks like the only variables I have available to me are Mass and JointStiffness. I would have liked access to JointStrength, but... oh well. Maybe I'll base it entirely off of mass. Regardless, the idea is that bigger and tougher actors will be able to handle the recoil better. Oh, also I want to make it so sharp aim and crouch/prone increases recoil resistance.

Finally, I've been thinking about how to handle attachments and accessories. I think I might do something similar to the ammo packs where you buy the accessories separately. Then when you switch to the gun, it automatically finds and equips the accessories in your inventory. As for the actual accessories, not only will there be underslung weapons, but there will also be a scope that increases your sharp aim distance, a laser pointer that gives you a laser dot kinda like the laser weapons do already, and a vertical fore grip that helps you resist recoil.

So, any thoughts on any of this is welcome. Especially the spray/recoil issue, if any other modders have any ideas for interesting ways to handle all that.

I don't remember if the Chaff grenades were in the build 24 version, if they're not, bring them back. They were useful.

I think a Samurai Mech is in order.
Also, M is the wrist mounted knife?
And N is the second trigger?

You don't announce these things and it frustrates people man.
Make the buttons easier to press, IE near WASD.

This is the best idea I've ever read on the recoil thing. I've never been much of a fan for recoil, but I guess this sort of compensates it.

That will be great, I can really imaginate a Tengu firing an assault rifle spraying at 180° and at the same time an Oni firing the same rifle having a moderate recoil.

I love how DarkStorm is finally reaching it's max potential.

I don't think we say that we love you enough Darlos.
Seriously, DarkStorm with all the new fancy stuff is the only thing that'll really get me CCing again.

That recoil idea sounds like it will really bring the Oni into it's own.

Ammo types and optional attachments sound like a lot of fun, but why stop there? It sounds like the droppable ammo packs for the Oni can be neatly wrapped up into these new features, but what about expanding on that original idea for other attachments? What I'm thinking is instead of a scope on the weapon, an Oni may have the option of an expanded optics suite mounted to the helmet, which extends the sharp aim range of all its weapons. You could also possibly trim out the four varieties of each suit and instead give the option of taking a certain type of protection system for the vanilla suits. That would expand on the 'modular' feel of the whole DS force, where you start with your actor and weapon of choice, and kit out the extras to suit your situation.

Can i use this with B25?

Yes, and please try to use it with B25 before asking if it does. That was a useless post.

I think it would be cool if there was another unit like the D6, but not quite as stealth-oriented. Maybe she could have a stronger melee, and a speedboost instead of active camo. Also, it seems like the wall jumping for the D6 doesn't work, or maybe I just can't figure put how to do it. I can cling to a wall, but then she just falls instead of kicking off. And it seems like she can't climb ladders either.

Let's go down this one thing at a time.

@BigBomb: First of all, awesome avatar. Unfortunately, no mech of any kind is in order. But you have to realize that my aim is to basically set it up so the Oni power armor IS the mech, in compact form.

@Asklar: More like the Oni fires the assualt rifle with NO recoil. The damn thing is a machine pistol in its hands. Remember, this unit has to be able to handle a minigun with ease. Which it can.

I do in fact have the recoil system implemented completely. It's working out pretty great. I even have an extra element added to the sharp aim reticle (the three yellow dots you see when you aim) that widens away from the central portion as you experience more recoil, so you can see the general "cone" you're firing through. Also creating this system makes me really friggin wish the vanilla game ran on a similar principle, because it REALLY causes you to stop and consider what guns you give to who.

@The Gunslinger: I know what you mean. But unfortunately, as it turns out sharp aim distance is a read-only property. I can't affect it in any way. This means there will be no dynamic adding or removing of optics of any kind. And this definitely means that an actor itself can't cause a weapon to have greater aim distance.

@kexus:

Hey, look who's been paying attention. Hell, I almost said "he" in reference to my own units a couple times in writing this post. It's easy to forget, especially since they don't look or sound feminine at all.

I'm afraid I'll have to decline requests for any new major units. As far as wall jumping goes, if I remember correctly, you hit the up/jumpjet button while clinging to a wall in order to kick off of it. Hitting the melee button just makes you fall down. Also, the direction you kick off in is dependent on where you're looking/aiming.

As for climbing ladders... yeah, that's sort of a problem my units have in general, probably because of how I have them more hunched over. Try just getting used to the wall clinging. You should be bounding up vertical shafts in no time, if you jump back and forth between walls.

And now for something of an update: I'm pleased to say that I have all of the currently existing weapons completely re-implemented in lua. The guns are 100% scripted now. That means no weird hacky stuff with lasers or ammo switching, where the gun fires a particle which then has to attempt to figure out who fired it. Instead, the gun itself just figures everything out. Much cleaner and practically error-free.

I have fire modes, dual magazines, and ammo switching working for every gun where it's applicable. All of the weapon's current settings can be seen clearly above the actor's HUD, in a custom HUD with white lettering. The HUD is made from glows rather than MOSRotatings or MOSParticles or anything like that, which means you can actually see the HUD through terrain! Same thing with the aiming reticle HUD elements.

As far as the weapons themselves go, for non-Oni weapons I have three flavors of pistol (6 and 8mm semiauto pistols, and a bigass 12mm revolver), three flavors of rifle (the current 6mm assault rifle, an 8mm battle rifle, and a 12mm sniper rifle, all with dual magazines), a semi-automatic 12-round combat shotgun (again, with dual magazines), the grenade launcher, the missile launcher, the assault and long-range lasers (the electrolaser is going to be an attachment for the regular lasers, rather than a weapon of its own), and a chemical sprayer that combines the cryo gun and flamethrower into one (depending on what ammo you load).

For Oni weapons, I have the gatling gun (which now uses larger 8mm rounds, and has dual magazines), the revolver laser, the grenade machine gun (which also has dual magazines), a much MUCH more insanely powerful version of the coil gun (it doesn't require a backpack, but the recoil makes most average actors explode into a fine bloody mist when they try to fire it), and I JUST got done today creating the new Nuclear Laser.

As far as ammo types go, there's FMJ/slugs (available for everything except the grenade launchers), subsonic (which should work in tandem with a suppressor, available only in 6mm), hollow-point (does more damage to less armored targets, 6 and 8mm), armor piercing (6, 8, and 12mm), high explosive armor piercing (12mm only), high explosive and EMP, (shotgun and grenades) and Incendiary and Cryo (shotgun, grenades, and chemical sprayer).

The nice thing is that if you have multiple weapons that use the same type of ammo, you only need to buy one ammo pack of a certain type in that calibur, and then you can load all of them with that type of ammo. This is even true between normal and Oni weapons. So, the 8mm Hollow Point Ammo Pack will let you load those rounds into the 8mm Pistol, the Battle rifle, or the Gatling Gun.

Next I need to work on a back-mounted missile battery for the Oni. Then, I have to figure out how I'm handling mortars. Then I should be just about done with the weapons (aside from attachments, which I'm still thinking about how to implement).

tl;dr: I'm, like, halfway done.

Ohhhh duuude, when is the next release coming?

I Everyone wants it badly.

Too bad I change it every 5 minutes.
Shame, I wanted a super bushitstorm. GEDDIT.

Can't wait to see what you cook up and serv us with in the long run Dar.

I can't wait.