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[WOTC] TF2 Melee Arsenal Ghost Templates

A great big cache of melee weapons stolen graciously donated to XCOM's arsenal by Mann Co. Industries.

In this shipment, we found a variety of swords, shovels, machetes, and axes that we could give to our melee users. There's even a garden rake thrown in there for good measure.

Infact, there's a few oddities in here. We found this wooden plank with a giant railroad spike sticking out at the top, barely held together by two strips of duct tape. It's not exactly... "safe", but it'll get the job done, at least.

There's also this battle axe with a pumpkin face carved into the blade. We assumed this was some kind of halloween prop at first, but Tygan volunteered to test it during an autopsy on a sectoid (don't ask why). He reports the blade "became possessed" and proceeded to guide itself over the neck of the sectoid and swung downwards with "inconceivable force", cutting off its' head with ease. So apparently, it's also haunted.

The shipment came with a few "ballistic shields", and by that they mean a pair of looted museum pieces designed half a millenium ago and what appears to be the broken off steering wheel of a pirate ship. I suppose when you're an underground resistance movement going up against a star-spanning alien empire, you'll take what you can get. Maybe we can cosplay as medieval knights or pirates with them or something.

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These weapons are a series of ghost template re-skins that use Template Master to function.

A "template" refers to how the game's items are set-up in the code, they're called Templates internally.

A "ghost template" is a weapon that technically exists, but isn't selectable in the arsenal. It's a re-skin meant to be applied to other weapons using external mods, such as these:

• XSkin (easiest to use) - Re-skin any weapon you want directly in the armory.
  
  
• Template Master itself - Replace aspects of other weapons via config.
  
  
• Weapon Skin Replacer - Similar to Template Master, but older and with fewer features.

If you use XSkin, the "Owned" filter needs to be turned off to see the weapons in the re-skin menu, since the player doesn't count as actually "owning" these. If doing cross-category skinning, you'll also want the "Category" filter off.

The categories i've assigned the weapons don't matter as much as you'd think. You can skin any of the two-handed swords into LW2 knives, and the Spy's knives into Ranger swords, it "just works".

• Boston Basher (TF2_Boston_Basher)

• Escape Plan* (TF2_Equalizer)
  
• Market Gardener (TF2_Market_Gardener)
  
• Soldier's Shovel (TF2_Soldier_Shovel)

(*i forgot they split the equalizer into two weapons while making this, so internally it's referred to as the equalizer while in-game it's named the escape plan. oops lmao)

• Axtinguisher (TF2_Axtinguisher)
  
• Back Scratcher (TF2_Back_Scratcher)
  
• Pyro's Fire Axe (TF2_Pyro_Fire_Axe)

• Claidheamh Mòr (TF2_Zweihander)
  
• Eyelander (TF2_Eyelander)
  
• Headless Horsemann's Headtaker (TF2_Headtaker)
  
• Persian Persuader (TF2_Persian_Persuader)
  
• Scotsman's Skullcutter (TF2_Skullcutter)

• The Jag (TF2_The_Jag)
  
• Southern Hospitality (TF2_Hospitality)

• Bushwacka (TF2_Bushwacka)
  
• Sniper's Kukri (TF2_Sniper_Kukri)
  
• Shahanshah (TF2_Shahanshah)
  
• Tribalman's Shiv (TF2_Tribalmans_Shiv)

• Butterfly Knife (TF2_Spy_Knife)
  
• Your Eternal Reward (TF2_Eternal_Reward)
  
• Big Earner (TF2_Big_Earner)

• Half-Zatoichi (TF2_Half_Zatoichi)
  
• Pain Train (TF2_Pain_Train)

• Chargin' Targe (TF2_Chargin_Targe)
  
• Splendid Screen (TF2_Splendid_Screen)
  
• Tide Turner (TF2_Tide_Turner)

The names in parenthesis represent that weapon's internal template name, which'll be relevant to you if working with config files that require use of the weapons' template names.

All melee weapons are categorized as Swords except Spy's knives, which are categorized as Combat Knives from the LW2 Secondary Weapons pack.

Currently, only sharp/bladed weapons are included since it'd be stupid to have something like the Frying Pan using the sword slicing SFX in-game. These sounds aren't easy to change as they're handled in the soldier's animation set for a given weapon rather than the weapon's animation set, which is where you'd usually insert SFX for a firearm, but this doesn't work for melee weapon impact SFX, which is what's most important here.

And even if i DID change every sound in the soldier animations to fit a particular weapon, there's stuff like Primary Secondaries which have their own animations and thus their own SFX, rendering the effort pointless.

• Template Master - REQUIRED for this mod to work at all, obviously.
  
  
• Stormrider Class - Turn any soldier you want into XCOM's version of a Demoknight.
  
  
• Ballistic Shields - This allows you to utilize the shields this mod comes with. Stormriders can also utilize these.

• N/A.

• Valve Software - Creators of Team Fortress 2 and most of the assets used in this mod. I say "most" because some of these weapons were community-made, and were created by their respective designers.