All For Fun

The black hole update wouldn't be complete without the weapons to combat the black hole spawns. Initially, we opted on using the preexisting guns I had created beforehand, the Hotline Miami inspired bases. We threw ideas out in the air on how players will acquire the weapons themselves. At first, they were going to be borrowed from the gun wall in the secret hideout room but BlazerC made a joke about them being bought from vending machines. I had first thought he meant those really old ones with shotguns piercing through them but then he explained he meant like those found in Borderlands. Disregarding the time it would take to make them, I decided to do it anyways, with some help of course.

Everyone do the Michigan rag!

Luckily for us, Rhysmon was capable of making a pretty good replica of the gun machine. BlazerC then made the cover of the gun machine to tie it together, giving it its own Animation Studio flavor to it.

Probably my favorite sentence said between the four of us during the update was "I just need to draw a gun over this frog."

Now, a machine that dispenses guns would be nothing without the guns and in true Borderlands fashion, the guns were randomly generated with stats and rarities. I decided to add a black quality to be put below Borderland's white rarity, making an absolute trash quality to add more variety. The guns had the same stats as those in Borderlands, minus the extra bits like elemental damage and extra shots or extra ammo consumption. With 27 names, 7 brands, 6 weapon types, 6 qualities and 5 stats, every time the store restocked, the store always contained unique weapons.

The guns had the same stats from Borderlands: damage, accuracy, fire rate, reload speed and capacity. Each stat was affected by the quality of the gun, the multipliers being 0.5 poor, 0.75 for low,1 for average, 1.2 for rare, 1.5 for epic and 2 for legendary. The final modifier for the weapon stats was the weapon's brand, each designed by BlazerC. The brands were based on brands found in the game along with a different player.

Nothing like competitive firearm brands.

Each brand had their own effects and can be viewed with this screenshot of my text document:

The best part of the machine, in my opinion, was the accuracy. BlazerC did an outstanding job on the drawing the HUD from Borderlands for us to use. We even had a rotating Rhys head in place of Marcus's. Upon opening the machine you're greeted by Rhys reciting Marcus's lines, all uploaded on one audio track!

There was an item of the day for every stock which had a higher chance of getting good rolls while also increasing its price by 75%. There was also only one in stock and was the only way to obtain a legendary quality item. Hell, you could even press A and D to rotate your camera.

Top notch

The guns were a hit during the update. Many people asked if they could keep their weapons. Luckily for them their save data will always be with the game so we have the freedom to bring them back whenever we need them. Some players even got their own custom weapons with unique effects and flavor text. All in all, I'm very proud with how this came out. There isn't much to say about how I scripted it all, it was for the most part a lot of tables storing info with that info being randomly generated numbers whose range is pulled from more tables. If I ever get requests to go more indepth I'd be happy to.

Now all that's left is to explain the finale.