Mod: New weapon balance

[MirceaKitsune]

After weeks of testing I feel ready to share my overhaul of the weapon system. This mod provides a custom config which radically changes the functionality and appearance of all the weapons: From weapon colors which were redistributed to feel better and make more sense, to either tweaked or completely unique firing modes and projectiles with special properties. The goal was to put aside the classic configuration of RE and try something completely different, giving each gun its own unique gimmick and making it feel more like its intended counterpart with a special property. Other game settings were also modified, changes to player physics were planned but not made to avoid breaking things like some map jumps and jump pads. Description of how each weapon works with the new functionality and color:

• 🖤 Claw - No changes other than color.
• 🤍 Pistol - Slightly faster firing rate which is now continuous.
• ❤️ SMG - Mostly unchanged behavior, bullets last longer and bounce around a lot for both firing modes. Alt fire has the same explosive fragmentation but can now be shot at a much faster rate similar to the primary.
• 🧡 Shotgun - Slightly longer lasting bullets and elasticity, not as fast and bouncy as the SMG. Alt fire explodes on impact similar to the vanilla configuration, however the resulting pebbles last longer and bounce around for a bit until settling to the ground: Enemies have to be on the lookout for them on the floor, stepping on the fragments can induce the bleed status.
• 💛 Flamethrower - Primary fire is a bit slower which makes aiming it in advance more interesting. Alt fire has been repurposed, now launching a large and slow fireball which releases smaller fireballs on impact. The resulting flames follow the player's crosshair.
• 💚 Corroder - Primary uses more rays to shoot many droplets that frag on impact, secondary creates more blobs and launches them further the longer you hold down the charge. Blobs sticking to walls will also break into smaller blobs after a while.
• 🩵 Sword - The sword uses ammo without reloading, its primary fire launching a ball of light that bounces around while alt fire spawns a plasma field that draws enemies (Plasma alt fire in vanilla): Powerful but don't aim too close or you may shock yourself.
• 💙 Rifle - Mostly unchanged functionality, primary fire shoots whereas alt fire zooms.
• 💙 Zapper - Much faster firing rate for primary fire making it act like a continuous ray gun, alt fire shoots more rays depending on charge amount. Both firing modes have a few special properties: The point of impact briefly emanates arcs of electricity which deal a slight amount of damage and pull players toward them, damage dealt directly will be transferred to the player who can use it to gain health, it can now also be used to heal team mates.
• 🩷 Plasma - Primary fire remains mostly unchanged, secondary fire now launches a larger plasma ball the longer it is charged. On impact the primary spawns a smaller bouncy plasma ball, secondary spawns multiple. The resulting projectiles seek out enemies and attach themselves to them, causing a constant amount of damage that lasts for a few seconds.
• 💚 Grenade - Greater weight for grenades which actually fall to the ground and bounce instead of floating into nothingness. The amount of charge when throwing now affects both throw distance and lifetime: Charge for a longer time to throw further with a quicker explosion, shorter to throw it close but give it more time before it explodes... the middle point is usually the best distribution. In addition you can now hold 4 grenades instead of just 2 like the Mine.
• 💜 Mine - No changes other than color.
• 🩶 Rocket - No significant changes so far, the rocket is slower but damage radius is a little larger.

Installation: Place the zip in the Red Eclipse user directory and it should work automatically. Note that I haven't tested the mod system yet to confirm it works as intended: The package.cfg file should execute automatically, if not you may have to unpack the archive into a directory called weapons then create an autoexec.cfg containing the line exec mods/weapons/package.cfg. Needless to say you'll need the Red Eclipse development version compiled from Github, this won't work with the 2.0 release but will be compatible with the upcoming 2.1 version. Also note that changes are made to some client side vars such as the weapon crosshairs, backup your config.cfg just in case.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think! Below is the zip and screenshots of some firing modes that stand out. I had half a mind to suggest making this the new RE balance, but my changes are likely too radical for this to ever be accepted, even if I by far feel they are better and make RE feel a lot more AAA and close to something like Quake or Unreal Tournament.

• mod_weapons_1.0.zip Initial version.

• mod_weapons_2.0.zip Make the mod compatible with latest Git master and changed weapon vars. Include settings for the new Corroder weapon. Many changes to weapon behavior and reassign some weapon colors to accommodate the Corroder.

• mod_weapons_3.0.zip Numerous updates and various changes to the firing modes done over the months.