Mojave, Nos' Style - Weapons

A good while ago, I mentioned some work I had been doing on a custom-ish revolver in FNV: a .44 version of the .357 revolver. It's always bugged me that they didn't include one in FNV, since here in the real world Ruger has been building both guns on the same frame since the early '60s. At the time, the results I had to show were somewhat mixed -- normal map issues were obvious, the 'NosCo' logo on the ejector rod housing was reversed, and the silver front/silver rear sight arrangement was hard as hell to see clearly.

Well, I haven't been sitting idle; and have indeed made some more progress. The logo on the ERH is fixed and readable now; I've cleaned up those craptastic engravings in the cylinder flutes; and the normal map has been swapped out for the base .357 revolver map, which makes it look like dinged up wood -- but at least the reflection doesn't show the ace of spades anymore. One of the bigger things I did was 'paint' the sights; so that they actually stand out. This, as seemingly always, has had mixed results:



While the sight is painted correctly on the texture, it's either not wrapped onto the mesh right, or the weapon model doesn't align correctly in first person (like half the other models in the game):





If you look close, you can see that the red front sight isn't perfectly centered in the rear sight. I'm inclined to believe that the model doesn't align correctly, since I've long had accuracy problems with the revolver (and the base game .357 model too) while NPCs have no such problem. That I have the issue and they don't suggests to me it isn't an overall accuracy setting or "cone of fire" issue; but that the weapon isn't aiming straight for me. Since NPCs don't aim based on the alignment of the model, it makes sense that they wouldn't have issues with such things. It may be placebo effect, but once I noted the misalignment, I corrected my aim slightly on the bottles in my target range, and found much better hit rates.

I still have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing.

On the up side, I've also been working on a custom-ish Ranger Sequoia, and have been having better luck with it.



The engravings or whatever they are on the recoil shield look like shit; but it at least took the rosewood stocks well, and the sights line up correctly for the painted sights to work worth a damn.

Red front and white rear is a personal favorite here in the real world, because it shows up beautifully against the widest variety of backgrounds. It's way easier to hit something if you can tell where the hell your gun is pointed.

I was pleased to see that the color scheme works in FNV, as well:





From a cosmetic standpoint, it still needs a lot of work; but in practice, I've found it easy to use this revolver to tag radscorpions from nearly a hundred paces out -- with a Guns skill below fifty, no less. It seems that also like in real life, the 45-70 in FNV is a stupidly powerful cartridge, with killing power far beyond what the numbers say it should have. Not quite the hammer of Thor; but used correctly it'll do for damned near any game on Earth -- including the kind that shoots back. Using the NosCo "BFR" (named after the Magnum Research revolver of the same name and chambering; save that where they claim the acronym stands for "Biggest, Finest Revolver" I use the much more common interpretation: "Big Fucking Revolver") indoors on Raiders and such is hilarious; as even limb hits take people right out. Smacks Nightstalkers down like the hand of an angry God.

Lastly, longtime readers will probably know I'm a fan of the 1911, both here in real life and in video games. Obsidian screwed us in the base game with that stupid "10mm Pistol"; but made up for it in Honest Hearts with the "45 Auto" (seriously, guys; it's okay to name guns! Manufacturers do it all the time). I decided I couldn't let that one sit out of my companion plugin, since my girls loves them some 1911-A1s. So, I ripped the meshes and textures from the HH BSA, edited the meshes to reflect the new texture path, and worked over the textures. I made the weapon in 10mm for the base mod, because I have a policy that my personal plugin has zero masters aside from FNV.esm. A 'DLC plugin' I've since created adds a second version in proper .45acp. Here was the result:






I used the heavy-duty slide and upgraded sights meshes as standard (as is standard form these days on "factory custom" 1911's like my Springfields), and worked over the texture. I didn't fix the beat-up finish, but did switch the stocks to green -- was supposed to be olive drab, but the GIMP didn't cooperate -- changed the trigger to a three-hole lightweight match type, swapped the sights' glow effect from green to red, brightened up the barrel hood (which rubs on the inside of the slide and is impossible to keep blue here in real life), and added a white outline to the rear sight. Lastly, I redid the markings on the slide, and serrated the mainspring housing to keep it from slipping around in the palm, and the hammer spur for easier cocking.






The slide markings are nothing outlandish. The right side says simply: "NosCo Arms", and below that on the frame is a serial number. The left side of the slide says "1911-A1". Normally they also carry a chambering marking, but I decided to leave that out so I could be lazy and use the same textures for all versions of the pistol.

The pistol also has a suppressor mod:



Though it's a custom version of the one from HH made for the pistol, and not simply the existing 10mm pistol suppressor mod. In retrospect, I may need to change that just for simplicity's sake.

I set the girls up to each start with one, and fifty rounds of ammo for it; rather than rolling the dice with random weapon spawns as they used to. I figure hey, we have our own underground compound; why not assume they were carrying decent weapons before I got jumped and shot in the head?

While Mystery-chan's a devout revolver practitioner, Maeva seems much more comfortable with a good auto:



Which she used to great effect on the mantises in Big Mountain State Park, after running dry on ammo for her M14...



I wonder if the Weaver she's using is from the base game, or one of the weapon animation replacers I've installed? I really can't remember at this point. Either way, the bugs were decimated in pretty short order; though keeping three companions and myself in 10mm ammo is hard as hell at level two, straight out of Goodsprings.

The four rounds of ammo you see on my HUD in that last screenshot were for a varmint rifle. After crossing through the pass and dealing with the hordes of cazadores, we were already running low of ammo; and I had switched to the looted peashooter to save the .308 for the Fiends I knew were coming in West Vegas. .308 is inordinately hard to come by as loot at such low levels.

And yes, there are M14's as well; but no real screens since they aren't customed or anything -- just copied to my plugin to ease headaches on adding them to starting inventories, and the girls' case-saving lists. Well, one's going to get worked over minorly -- whoever made the original texture stamped the receiver heel of the sniper variant 'Polytech'. Urg. Chicom "M14". Bad enough here in the real world, but n Fallout, where China is the great red menace? Sacrilege. I also stripped out the select fire NVSE code during the copy over, because that stuff is needless and silly and I don't like NVSE on the best of days anyhow.

Yeah; I know I said I'd get them all in today... and it's 2330PST, but give me a break -- I started this post almost eight hours ago, but had to take off and just got home around an hour ago. Stupid life, interfering.