Does anyone know if a 'Solar Scorcher' model weapon has been made yet? I have been looking but have not found one.

I have a script that will charge it during the daylight, only in exterior locations, up to 6 shots per game hour, to a maximum charge of 100. It must be in your inventory. It will automatically 'load' the 6 charges per hour to the weapon.

If you drop the weapon, the solar energy will be removed from your inventory and will be stored with the weapon. So, if you pick up the weapon again, it will retain the amount of charges it had when you dropped it and add it to your inventory.


In the meantime, I am using the alien blaster. It sure would be neat to go with the 'real' solar scorcher from Fallout 2. Any takers?

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_Scorcher

I'd be interested in the model, but I can't texture much at all.

I can texture fairly well.

Its tough to get a good view of what the solar scorcher should look like though!

I got sharp eyes. I got a good idea what it should look like.

I can handle the normal maps if you give me a good relief map of it. I got CrazyBump.

Basically, do a grayscale map of it with 50% gray as the baseline, darker for recessed parts, and brighter for raised parts. I can bake a normal map off of that instead of a halfassed one baked straight off the diffuse... Unless you have ZBrush...

What about a beam? I'm presuming it'll be a beam weapon. Have you picked one out? Perhaps the Protectron head laser? There may be a way to ramp up its gloweyness to brilliantly bright levels.

Should it have an environmental shine? If so, it'll need a mask for that so only the desired parts are shiny.

If you provide a UV map for the model, I could whip up a basic texture for it. If you provide the NIF I can fine tune the texture.

I use Adobe Photoshop to make my textures and normal maps. The texture I would make at DXT5 and the normal map half size at 8.8.8.8
This gives a very nice look to objects.

For the 'beam' I thought the alien blaster was about right. Or a red beam, I never really thought about that part. And then the target would catch fire when hit!...

As for glow map, there look to be three glowing sections. The front ring, the center-front-bottom part, and a lesser glow on the top solar array area. Does that sound about right?

If they could be seperate sections I think they could also be made emissive as well. It depends on how complex you want to make the weapon. But it would make it look better!

[EDIT] Its late and I am about to turn in. I will be back tomorrow evening.

Trust me, CB is better and quicker than the nV plugin at baking normal maps. I can do realtime tuning of stuff, blend stuff together and even control different blending layers' magnitudes separately.

Also, the Alien Blaster doesn't have a beam, it has a bolt. We have true beams in FO3, something that FO1 and 2 didn't have; let's give the Solar Scorcher the beam projectile it was always meant to have.

It looks like the protectron head beam can be tweeked in the manner I predicted too. Jacking up the emissive mult will probably make the beam brilliant. Having a bright muzzle flash light object will probably

Wow...a laser weapon I could actually stand to use!

I look forward to seeing this out and about. Yay for Fallout 2, as well! For, if there were no FO2, there would be no FO3 or a WillieSea and a MadCat to make guns from FO2.

Yeah, a red beam ah'la' star trek phaser style. And burn the body to ash on criticals but at minimum set them on fire. In Zeta, I think one of the weapons sets things on fire when hit. I will check that tomorrow.

Can the 'reload' animation be removed with no ill effects?

The only thing I dont really like about the script is when I force the weapon to be unequiped and then equiped 1/10th of a second later. This is done to force the newly aquired charges to be loaded into the weapon. There is no other command I know of to accomplish the same thing. Unless we make the player press the R key to load the solar cell capacitor energy into the weapon firing capacitor?

Any ideas there from anyone?

Hmm hmm hmm.... I got some ideas, maybe it can be conformed to the Laser Pistol mesh. I can take some liberties with the shape of the gun and add a little hatch on the side, where to "reload", the player maybe fumbles with a cappy or something inside this hatch (corresponding with the "slide E-cell out and in" part). I was thinking of trying my hand at making a firing sound, maybe I can chop up the laser reload sound effect to have a "bleep" or something else instead of the sound of the new E-cell sliding in. And maybe a "tweeeeee" powerup sound when the hatch closes. Maybe there are two cappys: one is a main reservoir that links to the solar panel and stores the energy gathered, the second is the "magazine" that actually links to the more ill-intended components of the gun. All inside the gun.

Thataway, the reload problem is artfully handled instead of causing monumental frustration.

I'd recommend checking it to be "Player Only"... unless you wanna wrestle with scripting for NPCs.

Also, the weapon that sets enemies on fire is a vanilla gun; http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Firelance.



Whatchoo have against lasers? :toughninja:

My script currently does not allow the 'reload' animation, unless the player does some 'special' tactics which I cannot do anything about since I cannot put a scirpt on 'Ammo' objects.

Since I force the 'reloading' of the weapon inside the players inventory, there is no visible clue that it happens other than the numbers go from the spare ammo column to the active ammo column.

Yes, the firelance. It just seems right for a solar scorcher to burn its target!

And yes, player only. But I could make it usable by NPC's too, it would just need a bit more code which should not be too much of a problem. I could check in an OnActivate block or OnAdd block. Perhaps tomorrow!

I have nothing against lasers - I'm just more of a shotgun diplomat. (That, and I use loads of E-Cells to power my Nightvision goggles.) So, if it comes down to convenience, I pick ballistic guns. Everyone and their mother uses one, it seems, easier to keep repaired, and a lot more reliable in my opinion.
(Some of that opinion comes from real life, not just in-game.)

The Scorcher would make an awesome tactics gun, as well. Low on ammo, break out the scorcher and go to town. Keep my old sniper rifle for nighttime operations, and keep a lot more of my .32 ammo around. I go through it almost as fast as I do soda. Which is fast.

I don't know if it could be done, but if you made a switch type thing and a couple buttons on the left hand side near where the energy cell in the laser pistol would go, you could make it appear that when you reload you flip the switch and or press some buttons to transfer the stored up energy into the guns main energy storage bank from its secondary which is where the power is accumulated from the I'm guessing "solar panels."

By the way, does that look like a super soaker to anyone else?

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Water_Gun

I was making a quests mod that revolved around going back in time to visit the Los Angeles Demonstration Vault in an intact state. It would have been a time altering event and I was planning to have a solar scorcher weapon as a reward. My idea about it was:

- Every 30 seconds, you get one shot that does a good amount of damage
- The weapon only charges if you have the weapon in your hand
- The beam would have had an extremely wide spread, so that multiple enemies could be hit by it
- No matter how much of the beam hit your enemy, they received the same amount of damage
- If the enemy was facing you, there would be temporary blindness effect on the enemy that would be accomplished by using concussion effects

My solar scorcher also used the alien blaster model, but I stretched the little thing on top to the weapon to make it look like a solar panel. The problem was i couldn't get the thing to stop auto reloading. I just thought you might like my input. If anybody likes my mod idea (I got quite far but never finished) I might work some more on it.

I was actually thinking about modeling this. I can take a wake at it if there any nice side images of the weapon.

Modelings the only thing I can do though. I wouldn't know how to take it past a model in blender and someone would have to UV map, set the animations and get it in game.

Not sure how your scripting it but can't you jsut do a script that starts when the weapon is equipped and every so often if the time is during the day the script ads the ammo to your inventory?

Edit: If anyone knows where i can get a nice clean image i could have a model fairly quickly, I'd use the original laser pistol or possibly the alien one to start me off with the trigger and a place for a reload animation... up to you guys how that thing should reload. But ya, i'll try and get a clean big image and get to work if you'd like.

I got it covered from first primitive to export. I got a good feel for its general shape, even from that tiny little image. Gonna take a few liberties to make it a little more interesting though. What's gonna be real fun is setting up materials shaders for it.

Gonna take a crack at it tomorrow when I have a good block of open time (essentially the whole day).

Awsome, I can't wait for it man!

The look and the way it is used reminds me more of the Hammer of Dawn from Gears.

I am making the Solar Scorcher about the same way it was in Fallout 2. With some creative lisence.


I have the script set up and working exactly as I explained in the first post. But it will change depending on how development goes.

Hey, MadCat221, if you want my script I can send it your way along with how to create the ammo used and the weapon settings I made.

Okay, send it to Madcat221 at gmail.

PM sent with setup instructions and script.

Any screenshots of your model?

That starts tomorrow. Tonight, I'm setting up a http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/5324/stealthlaser.jpg.

Uh, wouldn't that be because in "real life" no one actually uses laser weapons?

Technically not true - laser weapons just aren't exactly Gun Shop common yet. We have them - it just takes time.

But, I prefer the recoil of a rifle when I shoot paper targets rather than beating someone to a pulp with a paintball gun. There's something satisfying about pulling the trigger of a live weapon. I guess it's hard to explain.

I think its much more satisfying to pull the trigger without getting your shoulder bruised from the recoil. And then watching as the laser lights your target up on fire. Yeah!

I can't wait to see what you come up with MadCat221.