Originally posted by Crafting | cTF2w:

I am always curious, what custom attributes have you gotten to work?

My best one thus far is probably "primary fire spawn projectile". The value string defines what projectile the weapon should spawn on attack, as well as the projectile velocity, random spread, damage, etc. There's a lot of different stuff that can be done with this one attribute; I've made both a pistol that shoots a continuous stream of jarate and a scattergun that shoots a burst of rockets.

There's also a handful of attributes that effect the weapon's projectiles, such as ones that cause rockets to bounce off walls or for the projectile to heal buildings it hits.

I've made a few attributes that are based around addition a condition to a player (like with the addcond command), all of which take an integer for the condition id. These include adding a condition while the weapon is held, when the player gets a kill with the weapon, etc.

Then there are a few miscellaneous ones. I've got an attribute for knives that makes them attack automatically when you get behind someone, an attribute that makes a weapon use the player's cloak meter as ammo, an attribute that makes a weapon more accurate while the player is crouching, an attribute that causes the weapon to launch the player in the direction it is fired, an attribute that lets the player disguise as a dispenser while crouching, and a handful I haven't gotten around to testing out yet.

And then there are ones that aren't working, but seem to be pretty close. An attribute that transforms the weapon into a random custom weapon for the same class and slot each time it runs out of ammo, for example, is one attribute that seems to work sometimes and not others. An attribute that makes the weapon fire random projectiles from a list defined by the value works for about 2 seconds before the server crashes for some unknown reason. It could be something else entirely that actually causes the problem, but I need to do more testing to really be sure.

And my computer is now pissing off the V.A.C. system for some reason.
Thanks valve.

Disclaimer: I'm not very familiar with steam group discussions, so let me know if I'm doing something wrong here.
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Hi everyone!

So I got into TF2 modding recently, and the first thing I did was an attributes plugin for Custom Weapons 2. It was more an exercise in learning the language than anything else, but I kept working on it and adding more, so now it’s a bit… big. The code itself is a complete mess, because it was mostly a result of me experimenting, but the important thing is that it works, eh? And it does! Well, some of the attributes do.

Point is, I’ve gotten this monstrosity to the point where it’s usable. Only a handful of the attributes I’m absolutely certain work, but you can do a lot with them. Want to make a gun that fires any projectile in the game you want it to, with fully customizable stats for those projectiles? Sure, go for it. I made a jarate gun that heals buildings. Among more sensible things, of course :P. Most of the attributes I’m just not sure whether work or not, because there’s a lot of them by now, I haven’t been able to really test them thoroughly enough to feel confident about them.

So… yeah. I’m kinda proud of this thing, and it’s gotten to the point where enough of the attributes are functional that I feel like I should start doing something with it, rather than just let it gather dust on my hard drive. I’ll probably be making some demonstration videos on YouTube or something, but I do eventually want to release this so people can play it.

So now comes the fun bit: Questions and confusion. There is of course the question of custom weapons 3. Will incorporating attribute plugins work basically the same way? I would assume so, but I’d like to be prepared. The main issues I have right now, however, are that I can’t run a server reliably, and the newest version of CW2 that I could find doesn’t seem to be very up-to-date. Letting people play with these attributes isn’t something I’m really clear on how to do. What are the options there? Now that I've created this thing, what should I do with it?

Thanks for reading this great big discussion topic. Good lord, that ended up being more words than I was expecting. I appreciate any advice or comments people can give. Like I said, I’ll probably get around to making a few demonstration videos at some point, so you can see what the hell I’m talking about. I’ve got a few other little custom-weapon-related projects that may show up in that form as well, but they’re a secret for the moment ;)


-Tobias / The_Evil_Pickle


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Oh, one last thing! A small request to the developers, if there are any reading, for a very simple feature that could be added to Custom Weapons 3: A keyvalue that can be placed in weapon config files - sort of like that “nobots” one from CW2 – that just makes it so that the weapon doesn’t appear on the menu. CW3 would still know it exists and would store the data for it normally, but players wouldn’t be able to actually equip it manually. I want this because of reasons. I know you all get like ~38 requests to add something each day, so I’m not trying to pressure you or anything, just keep it in mind; it would open up some nice opportunities for making use of the natives in ways attribute plugins can’t right now.

Just going to note my opinion here.

I think that class limits are a good idea. Having too many of a single class, especially the support ones, can completely ruin a team. It's been hard to play on custom weapon servers recently, because each team seems to have 3-4 spies at almost all times. I'm a spy main, but even though I love playing the class, I know all too well that it becomes impossible for spies to accomplish anything if there are too many of them. I think that class limits on non-support classes are probably a good idea, just for the sake of variety, but I doubt they will make nearly as much a difference.

Now on to weapon restrictions: This, I've got mixed feelings about. I understand the logic here, I really do. It's hard to balance these new weapons when you have to account for all the existing weapons that could be used alongside or against them, so it makes sense to want to limit them. The charge n' targe with the #13, for example, arguably makes the #13 overpowered. Same for the rocket-launcher-I-forgot-the-name-of-that-does-more-damage-when-you-are-in-the-air combined with the B.A.S.E. jumper, although I may just be overracting to being killed by it too much. But when playing on this server, my favorite thing to do is try out a single weapon with various loadouts I'm already familiar with. I think a notable part of the appeal of this mod comes from the ability to customise your loadout to match how you want to play at any given time, and that can be done to a much greater degree of percision if the existing weapons are mixed in with the new ones. Of course, this is not much of a problem if you keep "unique" weapons and, as you plan to do, move some of the functionality of existing weapons to new ones.

But that is not the only concern; a player who is new to the mod would definetley want to use the weapons they are comfortable with while getting used to the ones they've only just learned of. If a weapon someone is used to using is locked, it can mess up thier playstyle. Even if a simmilar one exists, that would allow them to do what they are used to in some way, a new player wouldn't find it. Of course, I'm making a lot of assumptions here as well. I'm not new to the mod, so I'm just sort of guessing. However, there is one type of player I'm familiar with that would stop playing the mod if this restriction was imposed.

My brother comes onto these servers occationally, mainly because I play on them so often. He almost never uses custom weapons. Which may seem like a total waste, because that is the entire point of the mod. However, I must admit there is some fun to be had from using what you know of the game already to combat a completely new environment. I've seen plenty of players using entirely or almost entirely weapons from the unmodded game. It's a very interesting way for an experianced player who doesn't have too much interest in the mod itself to practice in an entirely new landscape. I've seen a lot of underused weapons or loadouts making an appearance to combat this mod's custom weaponry. It's not what this mod is intended to be used for, but it's something to be considered.

Overall, I think the weapon limitiation could be done well. Keeping the more "unique" weapons and the stock weapons is obviously essential, but as for the others, there are positives and negatives to thier removal. If there are new weapons that can fill the roles of the old ones, then there probably isn't much to worry about. Balancing will be easier with more controll over the environment, but any balance flaws will also have more impact. I really don't know what the right path is here. I wrote waaaaay more than I inteneded to, so I'm just going to stop here.


TL;DR:
-Class limits are good
-Weapon limitations could be bad or good, it's pretty uncertain
-Weapon limits may chase off some players
-I write too much and then don't spellcheck very well
-My whole team is spies pls help ;_;

I've got some ideas I've accumulated over time, here they are: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N3w0w_J15a5ebJ2h2y4uloZQSPqFYAWy_UNEH5dN7ws/edit?usp=sharing