So I've made some Guns (*NEW DOWNLOAD*)

[Clonehunter]

I've decided that I'm going to try and restart a wad that mysteriously deleted itself off of my computer some time ago. While this may not exactly be going "Balls Out," I'm starting this project by creating some custom weapons, which basically serve the same functions as the base weapons, sort of.

The mod was originally inspired by the tagline for the album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, which reads "The story of a man, a woman, and the corpses of a thousand evil men..." Odd tagline, as the majority of the songs have nothing to do with this story line, except for some real brief mentions here and there. The visual style of the mod is meant to invoke the album's cover. The story in the mod is also loose, but I probably won't explain that until I can muster up an actual project thread (Though this could very well be retooled into one).

I guess, for the moment, I'm sort of looking for either comments, insults, and money. All of the weapons are based off of actual props and my hands, because... I don't know really... I kind of just wanted to make this a part of the mod, to make it stand out? Hmm... It'll require ZDoom in the end, because of Decorate coding. Here's a quick run down of what I got, though:





The Pistol replacement is this C96 Mauser, based on a broken airsoft pistol have (If you look closely, you'll notice this toy lacks the hammer, which snapped off, not that it was useful for anything). The video below shows how it operates. Originally, ti fired a lot faster, and although I'm pretty sure the C96 was one of the first machine pistols (Or auto pistols?), the fast rate of fire I originally had for this weapon didn't work too well for me. So I duplicated some frames to slow down the fire and make the animation smoother. I still wonder if their should be another frame in the recoil, though. PhantomBeta is a member of the ZDoom Forums. Personally, I think this turned out to be one of the better ones out what I have done, so far.




(^Updated frames)

The shotgun, based on a Tootsietoy shotgun, like the original Doom shotgun. It's angled here, though. This also shows that our main character is ambidextrous. The action might look weird here, but it seems alright once animated. I'm not sure, but I think the pumping frames needed to be bigger? Power wise, it's weaker than the default shotgun. I haven't seen it kill an Imp in one hit yet, but I think I want it to be a tad weaker. The first muzzleflash is also by PhantomBeta, and the second one was on a big sprite sheet and as far as I know has an unknown author. It matches with PB's though, which makes it look cool, imo. Graphics wise, I think it looks fairly good.

*UPDATED*



A Double Barreled shotgun, based on a painted and sawed off Nerf gun of some type. Not technically finished yet, so a WIP still. I'm thinking of redoing the first frame. Due to issues with focusing on the camera, actually took two photos and combined them: A shot focused on the reciever, and another one focused on the barrels. Not in the video. I think, what I'll do is, make each barrel fire independently, but all done with one click of the button. I'm not sure yet. This needs shells drawn in, and a hand t place shells into the barrels. Originally, this weapon was going to be shown being held by just the left hand, where a flick of the wrist would open the whole thing, instead of using the release, as seen here. I might also add a secondary fire.

Updates: Full animations. The shells are actually blue Nerf bullets, until they're in the gun. The shells in the gun are drawn. I realize that Shotgun shells aren't generally one solid color, usually the casing is one color, oftentimes red but some variations are green, and then the primer (?) is brass or something similar. For the sake of adding color to a B&W mod, I just made the whole shell red, ignoring the brass.

===Videos===

This is the video showcasing the custom palette, the Mauser, and the Shotgun. The map was made for this test.

This is the SawedOff in action on E3M7. Also shows off more of the palette. The idea is to create a weapon with some strategy to it. A single blast is enough to take out most zombies or an Imp (Usually). It isn't as powerful as the SSG, so usually three blasts will be needed to finish a Pinky off. The idea is that the weapon works well against groups of weaker enemies who may be farther apart than what a single shell could do. If you're fast enough, you can blast one enemy and then swing the gun to the next to take him out with the second blast. It's a tricky tactic, but it might work. Once I get a download up, I think it'd be better for some to see for themselves. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe it's a good one. In addition, the double blast can invoke more pain states perhaps, if I understand those correctly.

DOWNLOAD a test wad here (Dropbox)

The other weapons to eventually make is a Knife, which is what the player will start off with (Done!), and I ordered an airsoft Sten Gun replica to act as the machine gun. I'm not sure about other weapons yet. So far, all of the sounds come from FreeSound.org and the specific authors are listed in a credits file within the wad.

No download as of yet, but once I get some form of the DBSG done I might prepare one for anyone who would like to try it, as I'm curious about balancing issues. So far, all of the weapons are in a single Wad. The entire project may be found in the form of a .PK3 file, though I'm not sure as of yet.

Whenever I start mapping, I'll probably continue to use this thread. Cheers!

[Gifty]

Hey, super nice! I always like when people create new weapon sprites using the same digitization methods as the originals.

[nxGangrel]

This is some interesting stuff you've got here. The models/sprites look really cool. Can't wait to see more.

[Xaser]

Hmm, the styling is kinda nifty, though the weapon animations could use some work. I'm not meaning in terms of "take more in-between frames" or anything; rather some better offsets and variable state delays (i.e. not making each frame take the same number of tics to execute).

Definitely continue whatever this is, though. :P

[Hoodie]

The Mauser looks really nice.

[Clonehunter]

One thing I didn't mention, and it's barely visible in the video, s that the gun pickups are rather blurry in-game. Is this because they're also sourced from photos, and it would be better to just draw them from hand? Or is there something that can be done to make the pickups crisp?

[nxGangrel]

Clonehunter said:

One thing I didn't mention, and it's barely visible in the video, s that the gun pickups are rather blurry in-game.

At first I thought it was a design choice. It may be your settings or just your source port in general. I don't think re-drawing it would help, but I'm not really the guy to ask.

[Pencil of Doom]

So this is going to be a WW2 guns based mod?
Other than that, those guns look good.

[joe-ilya]

The shotgun reload fingers look awkward. Did you paint your nails?

[nxGangrel]

It's probably just the discoloring or something.

[Clonehunter]

I darkened them in post. I thought it looked better that way, and gave it a kind of dirty look to it. The idea is that protag was dead, originally.

J.B.R said:

So this is going to be a WW2 guns based mod?
Other than that, those guns look good.

Story wise (loose as it is), no. I just like the look of WW2 era weapons, and thought that they would look fitting. Before settling a Sten replica, and almost opted for a much cheaper Micro Uzi toy, and other things in that ballpark.

[Clonehunter]

Pretty much all of the frames for the Double Barreled Shotgun.



I'll have a video for it later, which will show how it works and what order these go in.

[Doomkid]

I really like the pistol animation, and that SSG is coming along awesomely. For some reason, I feel like the shotgun seems to move too much when it's reloading, for whatever reason.. It's hard to explain. Either way though this is coming together nicely, keep it up!

[Clonehunter]

The Sawed-Off in action, demonstrating one idea for it's operation. It fires one shell at a time, with the idea being that if your wrist is fast enough, you can hit two targets in two different places in quick succession. The feature is best reserved for weaker enemies, while the double shot has a better chance at forcing a tougher monster into its pain state.

[Hoodie]

Fix the reload sound.

By that I mean change it.

[Clonehunter]

Okay, I'll try. Surprisingly, Freesound only had one good clip of someone reloading a (single barreled) shotgun. Maybe somewhere else will have something better.

What do you not like about it specifically, though?

[Velvetic]

Hey, if you want help with sound effects i can help you with that.

[Clonehunter]

Uh, alright, sure. Whaddyah got?

[Velvetic]

I've made some quick sound fx for the super shotgun, see if you like something in there:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ciskh0nq7wboof/test.wad?dl=0

[Clonehunter]

Hm, alright. It'll be a number of hours before I can look at it, but I can't wait. An arbitrary question, are they sourced from something or made by hand (If that's a sensible question :P) ?

[Velvetic]

Clonehunter said:

Hm, alright. It'll be a number of hours before I can look at it, but I can't wait. An arbitrary question, are they sourced from something or made by hand (If that's a sensible question :P) ?

A little bit of both, i took some old gun sound effects packs, conbined some of them and modified the sounds to fit a little bit with your artwork while maintaining a doom style to it.

[Havoc Crow]

The shotgun muzzle flash looks weird to me, specifically its shape which, to my eyes, looks more like something a machine gun would have.

[nxGangrel]

I agree with JudgeDeadd. It looks a bit odd. One smaller issue I have with the shotgun is it looks a bit too skiny. But regardless it's a good job.

[Clonehunter]

It is a skinny toy. I think that Adrian or whomever resized Cloud's hands on their shotgun photos, in order to make it look bigger. Looking at it again, I kind of agree with you guys on the muzzle-flash. I think the one reason I went with it is because the second sprite sheet I mentioned had what looked to be a deteriorated version of the flash by PhantomBeta. I think I will change that, and maybe reserve the star for the Sten Gun, if it looks good on that. Otherwise I might just ditch it, which is fine too. It does look a lot different anyways from the round flashes on the SawedOff and the Mauser.

Edit: Also of note: I drew the SawedOff pickup from scratch, and redid the Shotgun pickup. The shotgun pickup looks better design wise, but is still blurry. However, the SawedOff, drawn from scratch, doesn't look blurry at all. It's crisp and clear, as you can briefly see in the video. Weird, but now I might redraw the other sprites from scratch, but I'll probably just trace over the existing pickups.

[Velvetic]

Ok, i've updated the link of the wad file for the super shotgun sounds cause i've modified the firing sound and added sounds for the normal shotgun too.

[Clonehunter]

Yah, after a comparison, the sounds I had for loading the SawedOff were not too great after all. Kevin, yours are much better.

As for the other shotgun, I like the firing sound, but I'm not sure about the pumping sound. I don't know, I'll play around with it I guess.


Also, new, rounder bursts. By PhantomBeta, taken from this thread.

[Velvetic]

The pumping sound was a little bit weird, didn't feel it either, probably because the quality of it is much better than the firing and it seems of, i'll play around with it too.

Hey, if you need any help with sounds, just let me know. xD

[Clonehunter]

Most definitely. The new reload sounds work wonders.

Also, I mentioned the blurry pickup sprites before, so I drew over them from scratch using a pencil tool, and now they're not blurry in game anymore. Strange. I don't know the tech aspect behind that, however.

[Clonehunter]

I changed the angle of the shotgun to match the other two weapons. Also, due to how the hand moves during the pumping, this looks more fluid when in motion. The barrel is a bit lighter than the rest, though.




Redone pickup sprites. The shotgun has a bright barrel again. Apparently, drawing these from scratch (Tracing over the photos with a pencil tool) makes them cleaner around the edges. I've made several changes to the shotgun pickup, including cutting down on the shell magazine, giving it a more defined pistol grip, and lighting up the barrel, for some reason. The C96 pickup is the same and unchanged, just traced.

[Hoodie]

You should add some bonus "lighter" squares to the pickup sprites.

Like, useless stuff that adds shading or whatever, cause so far they look really bland.