How to add new weapon calibers

[dude_obj]

I figured out how to add new weapon calibers, but it requires manual editing of both the weapon and ammo proto files.
The ammo caliber is stored at hex offset 3C in ammo type item protos, and at hex offset 70 in weapon type item protos.

The "valid" values (supported by the mapper proto editor) are:

00 None
01 Rocket
02 Flamethrower Fuel
03 C Energy Cell
04 D Energy Cell
05 .223
06 5mm
07 .40 cal
08 10mm
09 .44 cal
0A 14mm
0B 12-guage
0C 9mm
0D BB
0E .45
0F 2mm
10 4.7mm caseless
11 HN Needler
12 7.62mm

Those are the names that appear as possible choices in the menu when picking ammo caliber for either weapons or ammo in the mapper proto editor. Note the .40 cal entry, I don't think that was actually used for any ammo or weapons in the game.

When I initially set up the FoT weapons, I had 4 new calibers for 40mm grenade, .308, 30.06, and speargun bolt. Since I couldn't select a new ammo caliber I set the ammo caliber to None for these. Incidentally, that's how the BB guns seem to be configured (caliber None) even though there is a BB caliber, strange. The problem with having multiple weapons and ammo set to caliber None is that the weapon will load any of them. So for example my grenade launcher would load spear gun bolts

But it seems that simply editing the proto manually and assigning new values works. So I added these 4 new values:

13 40mm grenade
14 30.06
15 .308
16 Speargun Bolt

The mapper isn't aware of those values, so they appear as <ERROR> in the prototype editor. But if I actually use the weapons, they seem to work properly. And now grenade launchers will only load 40mm grenades and spearguns will only load bolts.

So it looks like new calibers can be added, and there is lots of room in that one byte ...
maxed out at hex value FF is 255 possibilities, so we can have lots of calibers.

 

[Ashmo]

Nifty. I smell a good way to make crap guns more useful there (if there are many calibres and the overall ammo is very limited you won't discard guns for weak calibres just because you got something better using a rarer calibre).

 

[Wild_qwerty]

I figured out how to add new weapon calibers, but it requires manual editing of both the weapon and ammo proto files.
The ammo caliber is stored at hex offset 3C in ammo type item protos, and at hex offset 70 in weapon type item protos.

......

So it looks like new calibers can be added, and there is lots of room in that one byte ...
maxed out at hex value FF is 255 possibilities, so we can have lots of calibers.

Great work! I think Ashmo has a good point too, at least now if different guns have different calabers assigned to them people wouldnt just throw away ammo and guns, it would all help to add to a real wasteland/mad max feel where every bullet is to be treasured.

 

[dude_obj]

Wild_qwerty ran into a mapper limitation with new calibers. The mapper originally accomodated calibers 00-12 (hex). As mentioned above, its possible to add more by hex editing the ammo and weapon protos. I added new calibers 13-18 with no problem, and was still able to change ammo configuration in the mapper (the caliber shows up as <ERROR> but I was still able to change ammo stats, images, etc).

But Wild_qwerty discovered that any ammo caliber value 19 or greater causes the mapper to crash if you try to edit the ammo proto. I tested and got the same results. However, calibers 19 and higher still seem to work as long as you don't need to edit the ammo proto. I tested caliber FF to see if that worked, and it does.

So it looks like we can still use many new calibers, but the ammo settings need to be done first and the proto saved, then the proto is edited manually to change the caliber. If a proto with a high caliber number ( >18 ) needs to be changed in the future (in the mapper), you can set the caliber to 00 (by hex editing), make the changes to the ammo proto in the mapper, then change the caliber back to its real value (by hex editing).

 

[Wild_qwerty]

this is talking about 'hex-decimal' offsets of the proto files when opened with a hex editor, the frms offsets is where they are located within the game hexagon