The pump action was inferior to the assault rifle before. I think it needed to be buffed pretty badly. The auto shotgun had its damage buffed in line with the pump-action, but it's now less ammo efficient and had its range nerfed pretty significantly. And you get less ammo per pickup, in exchange for the damage buffs.

Having said all that, a buff is a buff. I don't feel like the shotguns are overpowered, but they do probably take some of the pressure off your ammo supplies for other guns. I don't think hampering weapon viability is really the best way to create challenge, though. For example, enemies are faster on Hard to make them less lethargic, without being totally hyper like on Hardcore. Maybe more could be done; it's just a matter of coming up with mechanics that are both fun and viable.

The assault rifle might not be quite right, though. I've been second-guessing it ever since I made it. Some possible changes I've thought of are:

- Reduce pistol range; reduce AR DPS, but improve accuracy when firing in controlled bursts
- Revert to burst fire, and change pistol upgrade to full-auto with even worse accuracy and ammo efficiency than current full-auto AR
- Split pistol and AR into two ammo types

Probably gonna experiment with the first one some time. I'm also gonna make an addon to revert the pistol and AR to their original forms eventually, for the puritists.

If you're still working on this mod, I had three ideas you could consider for future updates since you're working on alt-fires for other weapons, now.

1. You should make the Minigun inaccurate at long-range (like the Shotgun) and give it a slower, accurate alt-fire on par with the Pistol's rate of fire. That way, the new Assault Rifle is more effective at long-range while the Minigun beats it up-close.
2. Following up on that, you should make the pistol inaccurate at long-range (like you said) to now emphasize the Minigun's slower, accurate alt-fire.
3. This would really be useful; split the 4 rocket pickup into 4 actual rockets and give the Rocket Launcher an alt-fire that launches a single, accurate rocket with about the same damage output as the Grenade Launcher. Coding around situations where you only have 3 rockets left might be an issue, though.

Again, great work on this mod. It really makes Turok 1 on-par with its sequel (which I need to pick up soon).

Sorry, never got a notification. Apparently I wasn't subscribed to this thread.

Here's some stuff that's coming in the next version:
AR ROF reduced, accuracy increased
minigun ROF ramps up as the barrels accelerate
reduced enemy hit boxes (most noticable with humans)

The way I think about the weapons' roles is:
Pistol: low DPS, but higher burst damage than the AR makes it favorable against poachers. Requires a bit more consistent aim than the shotgun, but has better range and ROF.
AR: better DPS for stuff like raptors, but lower ammo efficiency discourages punching above its weight class, and expanding spread pushes you toward stuff like the pulse rifle for smaller targets like shamans.
Minigun: high, sustained DPS, for when you really want enemies to ♥♥♥♥ OFF.

The lousy accuracy of the current AR is to trade off against the pulse rifle -- their DPS is similar, but the AR uses more common ammo and has faster projectiles, so it needed another downside. Now that its DPS is more in line, it doesn't need to be so inaccurate anymore, which allows it to feel a bit more assault rifle-like, and makes the burst/DPS tradeoff with the pistol more pronounced. I'm not necessarily against reducing the pistol's range a bit to distinguish it from the AR more, but I want to let these upcoming changes settle a bit first before re-evaluating it.

Regarding the minigun, projectile spread has a significantly bigger impact on smaller -- generally weaker -- enemies. The new ROF rampup does the same thing, and I think managing your bullet output with a varying fire rate is more mechanically interesting than a mode toggle, and more thematically coherent with the minigun's characteristics.

I've considered a single-shot mode for the rocket launcher. I don't use the rocket launcher a lot, so I don't have a really strong feel for its niche. I've also considered raising its damage a bit, so a single salvo can kill, e.g., red robots, with maybe less ammo per pickup. The reload is so long, that anything that takes one salvo plus just a bit more is probably better dealt with using the grenade launcher, which I think pushes the rocket launcher too far up to only the absolute toughest enemies, like the yellow robots.

A single-shot mode might actually complement those changes nicely: less ammo per pickup, but you're no longer forced to use 4 rockets at a time. It'd make it more useful on the upper end, and could expand its utility down into some more common situations. On the other hand, maybe I'm underutilizing it against stuff like cyborg sergeants, and more damage is unnecessary. I'll have to experiment with it a bit.

You know, I forgot that Turok 1's hitboxes are ridiculously huge. Yeah, that's a much better way of handling the Minigun. If you split the rocket into a single-shot and multi-burst fire, then you'd probably use it a lot more too. On Normal, a single servo actually can kill some of the strongest enemies so I'd advise against raising the damage too high. It should be stronger than a grenade but weaker than the charging weapon whose name I can't remember because I never use it.

All I know is, Turok will never be a truly balanced game until someone makes a breakthrough that makes those Pulse Rifle bastards a cinch. Level 8 is the worst even on Normal simply because there's so many of those jokers running around. Speaking of that, did you do anything to the robots? I played part of Level 8 recently and it seems like they now fire way too fast on Hard. I went from 250 health to 32 in less than 3 seconds! Was it always like that?

I just did some testing, and red robots and cyborg sergeants only take a few AR bullets to finish off after a missile salvo on Hard, so it shouldn't take much of a buff. I really feel like it's fairly useless against enemies like these, which I think it should be the natural choice for. It might nudge it to the point of one-shotting yellow robots on Normal, though. I've actually considered using different damage values on different difficulties, to reduce the damage stratification, because it can kind screw with the interplay between weapons. Bumping an enemy from 1 to 2 rocket salvoes makes a much bigger difference than 2 to 3 bullets, for example. In this case it might be better to buff the yellow robots' health a bit, though.

I haven't done a direct comparison of robot damage, but they do fire faster on Hard now. Something to keep in mind, though, is how utterly random enemy bullet damage output is in this game. Before even taking into account the wide projectile spread, robots have a 60% chance of firing no projectile, 20% chance to fire 1, and 20% chance to fire 2. Might be good to rework that. I've also experience a bug where a robot shooting a cyborg dealt damage to me, which was pretty bizarre and killed me very quickly. Only seen that once, though.

What's the problem with sergeants? They're only really dangerous up close, where dragon's breath can make quick work of them.

Level 8 has several sections where you're put in a tiny hallway and there's a sergeant either directly behind a door or right behind a corner and all you can do without having your health drained instantly on Hard or Hardcore is to stop in your tracks and shoot grenades until you run out.

It's not that they're exceptionally hard, mind you. It's just that they're annoying and ruin the gameplay flow. I remember on one playthrough I wasted Fusion Cannon shots on them just because I was so sick of dealing with them in every other room. Really, though, it's Iguana's fault for shoddy enemy placement in the final level.

On a side note, when I was testing my latest mod I actually got one-shot by the falling boulders in Level 2 when dealing with the sergeant there. Never knew that could happen, honestly.

Played through the last two levels with togglable single/salvo fire modes. It definitely makes the weapon more versatile, but I worry that it may be too much. 48 rockets go a long way when you can fire them individually. It kinda renders explosive shells redundant.

I could lower its ammo, but that might hamper its use as a power weapon, which I feel like is its natural role. Maybe I could raise its damage, so a single salvo could one-shot even yellow robots, but fairly heavily reduce its ammo. That might make the fusion cannon even less relevant than it already is on the upper end, and the grenade launcher less relevant on the lower end, though.