ECLIPSE ROLEPLAY - Gun Update (July 19th, 2023)

[Osvaldon]

Dear Eclipse Community,

The long-awaited gun update is finally out! I do hope that all of you enjoy the changes and the new content. Initially, I had only planned to release a quick update that only included the addition of a few new guns that got introduced by some newer GTA V updates, but then I proceeded to change some scripts here and some other ones elsewhere, and before I knew it, a simple update had grown into a major one with many of the outdated features getting an upgrade and a bunch of new ones being added. Nevertheless, I had hoped to release the gun update much sooner, as I had already made good progress by November 2022. However, my entire progress on the gun update had to be delayed by a lengthy 6 months due to personal reasons and important events happening in my life during that period. At the time, I could only perform minor updates, fixes, and server maintenance. Luckily, everything that had been holding me back got resolved by late spring. I finally had enough time to devote to the development of the server, and I had been extremely eager to finish the update. I had to work long hours to make the gun update playable as soon as possible. I got really tired in the process, but now I am satisfied as the effort has paid off. However, due to rushing the update, some planned features are still in development and should be released in August. Let us have a look at what has been done already.

Gun Store UI

The gun store UI has been completely overhauled and now uses a similar style to the style of the vehicle customization menu. It provides much more detailed and accurate information on each firearm. It also includes customization and ammunition options, so the player can customize their new weapon and buy ammunition before completing the purchasing process.

Gun store owners will also notice new or upgraded business management features, such as business and business money logs, manager permissions, finance management, or just being able to build and review one single order that includes multiple different items before finalizing and sending the import order to the truckers. Gun stores can now order any amount of ammunition and other small items rather than being forced to order them in stacks. As a result, the trucker cargo capacity for gun store import orders has been readjusted, so the capacity is dependent on the total inventory weight of the ordered items instead of being based purely on the item count.

P.S. Gun stores are the only businesses that I had ever made myself a very long time ago, so they got a lot of love in this update.

New Available Weapons

Civilians, police officers, and criminals now have access to new weapons that can be obtained from gun stores, legal faction lockers, or illegal shipments. The most notable additions include pump shotguns, revolvers, and Mk II firearms. New pistols, rifles, MGs, SMGs, and shotguns can also be obtained from illegal shipments. Prices of said items got updated to better reflect their performance and DPS, and gun store prices have also been lowered to match those of criminals (gun store owners still pay taxes, so their merchandise is still more expensive).

Weapon Customization

Prior to the gun update, our scripts had supported just a few weapon components (attachments). After the gun update, all GTA V weapon components have become supported. In addition, our modder team has created new specialized ammunition magazines for "non-Mk II" firearms. Finally, players can now also purchase and apply cosmetic upgrades to their weapons, such as, tint colors, liveries, and skins.

Ammunition & Special Types

Before the update, each gun had its own unique ammunition. As more new weapons and ammunition types have been made available, I have also decided to assign a caliber (or ammunition type) for each gun, and then I have merged all old ammunition items according to the caliber of their respective weapon. This enables players to use the same ammunition for multiple compatible guns and also makes the inventory easier to manage.

Furthermore, I have implemented special ammunition types, such as Tracer, AP, HP and FMJ rounds (incendiary and explosive rounds are supported, however, they are unavailable to mortals due to balance issues). Note that these rounds require an ammo mod clip component.

• Tracer rounds are cosmetic and add bright tracers (trails) to your shots (the tracer color depends on the weapon's tint color);
• Armor-piercing rounds deal normal damage to armored players and a bit of bonus penetration damage to the target's health, however, these rounds deal reduced damage against unarmored players.
• Hollow-point rounds deal increased damage against unarmored players but do less damage to armored targets.
• FMJ rounds deal increased damage to vehicles and can penetrate bullet-resistant glass; however, they do reduced damage to players.

These special rounds are intentionally designed to be situational (being both bad and good in certain situations), so players may want to have 2 or more guns with different special ammunition types in their loadout if they want to use them efficiently.

Inventory Item Indicators

I needed to name all these new items and special ammunition types, but the texts were just too long. To reduce the amount of text in the inventory, I have added indicator icons to weapon, component, and ammunition items to help players identify which weapons have components on them and what kind of special ammunition type an inventory item is associated with.

Firearm Damage

All firearms now use our custom damage system. This new damage system has allowed us to nerf and introduce previously overpowered firearms, such as revolvers. The damage output is calculated taking multiple factors into account. This includes the weapon itself, the type of ammunition used, the body area hit (3 categories: head, torso, limbs), the distance to the target, whether the target has armor, etc.. You can expect different guns to be affected differently by these factors. For example, rifles and snipers are far better at retaining their damage output at greater distances than say MGs, SMGs, or pistols, while shotguns are powerful at close range but have extremely low effective range and low maximum range overall.

Firearm Licensing

Firearms used to have two licences (one called a weapon permit and the other one a firearm's licence), which I always found confusing. I have removed the weapon permit entirely. In order to purchase guns from a gun store, players now only need to apply for a firearm's licence at their local police station. A police officer can now scriptly specify (authorize) the exact gun models that can be purchased by the player.

[Osvaldon]

I have noted that not all of my plans have yet been completed. I intend to continue work on the update and customize the damage of melee weapons, add AP, HP and FMJ ammunition to illegal shipments, create weapon presets (with weapon customization support) for legal factions, add an option to customize old guns at gun stores, add an option to purchase lone components at gun stores, add an option for criminals to color their weapons without exposing themselves, and work on some more gun store UI improvements.

[BlueFlame]

W update finally!!