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Video Game: Ballistic Weapons
A popular mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, made by RuneStorm. Instead of focusing on game modes, they focused on guns.

Lots and lots of guns.

Even better, the whole mod can be added to any game type with a single mutator.

Can be downloaded from the homepage here.

Ballistic Weapons includes examples of:

  • A.K.A.-47: A number of weapons are based on real-world weapons, given alternate names.
    • The M50 and M30 are obviously based on an M16, but lack several features (no forward assist, for one); the M46 Jackal is also similar to an M4 or M4A1, but again is missing several features and has a barrel assembly that looks more like a SCAR-H than an M4 variant and uses wood furniture, not to mention it's in a caliber that simply isn't used with the M4 (.310).
      • The MJ51, however, is a straight-up M4.
      • Yet another variant, the yet-to-be-released LK05, mashes together bits and pieces of the Magpul Masada and the SCAR-L (mostly the stock).
    • The RS8 is rather obviously a Colt 1911 derivative (Smith & Wesson 1006). Similarly, the GRS9 is a 9mm Glock.
    • The XK2 SMG looks like an MP5, but has a massively different action - it has no cocking handle, instead it has an ambidextrous ejection port that's also used to prime the weapon.
    • The Fifty-9 SMG looks like a heavily-customized and stylized Uzi mashed up with various other SMGs, with a folding stock and an attached blade you can Pistol Whip with. The XRS10, meanwhile, is a barely-modified AB-10.
    • The SRS-900 and its variants are rather blatant Mk 14 Mod 0 EBRs.
    • The Wilson 41-DB is a modernized LeMat Revolver.
    • The T9CN Hammer is based on the Beretta 92FS Inox (stainless steel finish included).
    • The RS04 has a P99 cocking indicator in the back. Its initial model was another Smith & Wesson 1006.
    • The Puma-77 Repeater is a H&K UMP. Bizarrely enough, it launches airburst grenades and comes with an energy shield deployer.
    • The upcoming FMP-2012 is the MP-40.
      • Similarly, the FSSG-50 and FG50 are the FG-42, rechambered for .50-cal bullets and IN SPACE!.
    • The upcoming Mk. 781 is a Benelli M1014.
    • The upcoming AT40 STREAK is the M202 FLASH.
    • The AK490 is mashup of various AK derivations.
    • The wait-for-it-please MARS and MARS-2 are FN F2000s.
    • The coming-soon Conqueror is a chopped-up Milkor MGL.
    • It's hard to tell from the sides and front, but the SK-410 is a dressed-up Saiga-12, with a bigger magazine, prettied-up space-age barrel and handguard, and rails. It's more obvious when you hold it.
    • The Redwood is a Marlin lever-action rifle.
  • All Or Nothing Reloads: Averted. Skipping the reload via weapon switch will leave the gun in the state of reloading it was in (i.e. skip pulling the charging handle, you'll have to take time to do so before you can fire the weapon next time you switch to it). This still allows noticeable amounts of time to be shaved off of some weapons' reloads, particularly the D49's.
  • All There in the Manual: The flavor text of each gun alludes to some sort of war between what's essentially a cross of the UNSC and the Alliance, against various alien races, namely, the plasma-firing Skrith (who appear to be some sort of cross between the Yautja and the Covenant as a whole), the Cryon, where the info from the flavor text of the Spectre states they're synthetics of some sort, and the Krao, who we don't know much about, except that the machine guns slaughtered millions of them in a particularly bloody battle. Word of God is that zeerust ballistic weapons were fielded because they penetrated Skrith shields, which are made for deflecting plasma and lasers, far easier than their regular guns. In addition, it's implied that the weapons in-game are mostly outdated: the anti-materiel rifle says it's been supplanted by two other, modern anti-materiel sniper rifles, which aren't in-game.
  • Ammunition Backpack: A few of the heavy weapons have visible backpacks for storing their ammo. The RX22A's backpack is particularly vulnerable to enemy weapons; if it gets so much as stabbed by an opponent, the user ends up rocketing into the air and exploding in a shower of gibs.
  • And Now For Something Completely Different: The Dark Star and Nova Staff. They're essentially magic staffs. One has a chainsaw.
  • BFG: The XMV-850 minigun, SKAS-21 super shotgun, JL-21 MRL 'Peacemaker' rocket launcher, J2329 HAMR portable mortar, RX22A flamethrower, HVC-MK9 lightning gun, M75-TIC Railgun, R20 Bulldog Assault Cannon, and the E-V 9000 Plasma Cannon (which is a Shout-Out to the original BFG).
    • The HAMR is particularly Big - the recoil is so bad firing it unmounted damages you.
  • Bling Bling Bang: The AK490 has a Golden variant. There's also the GRSXX, a GRS9 with a gold-plated slide, slightly larger mag capacity, and a laser that deals more damage in return for faster rate of power consumption.
    • Various weapons added through Sergeant Kelly's bonus packs have multiple potential camo patterns. In the case of the RS04 Compact, the rare Red Tiger Stripe one actually changes how the gun works - it becomes fully-automatic and reloads in half a second.
  • Deadly Gas: The T10 Toxin Grenade. The G28 Medicinal Aerosol grenade inverts this by putting out healing gas... and plays it straight by giving it the ability to be ignited to damage enemy players. The same gas serves as the Spectre's secondary fire, and can be selected to heal or cook.
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: The MD24 pistol's magazine shows if it's been emptied entirely when reloaded, the J2329 HAMR's remaining rounds are all clearly visible, and the two belt-fed machineguns both show their belts getting shorter when very few rounds remain in their magazines - they even have alternate reload animations for those situations.
    • The D49 revolver's mechanics are incredibly well thought-out. You can see which shells have been fired and which are unused during reloads (complete with only the number of fired shells being left on the ground), secondary fire can only be used if the top and bottom shells in the chamber are both unfired, and hitting an empty chamber after using secondary fire is a real possibility (though this never will happen to you more than once in a row, even if there should be more than one fired chamber between a fresh bullet and the hammer). The Wilson 41-DB is much the same, with the added ability to continue dry-firing like a real double-action revolver, if you want to do so for whatever reason.
    • All weapons have the ability to only have their secondary fire reloaded, if it was used.
    • Most weapons have a specialized kill message depending on where the killshot hit - the chest, an arm, a leg, the head, and so on.
  • Dirty Communists: The SK-410 and AK490 kill notifications are all parodies of Soviet militarism.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: By default, you can't, as the game halves the walking speed. The devs, however, included a Ballistic Sprint mutator that allows you to... guess. This also applies to jumping. Interestingly enough, weapons can still be fired while running - but they're terribly off-target, making it impossible to aim. Bots don't get the message, though, so at long ranges they're typically harmless.
  • Dramatic Gun Cock: There's an optional keybinding in the menu for doing this. It never costs any of your ammo, even though a lot of the guns have an actual bullet ejected when you use it.
  • Emergency Weapon: Most of the melee weapons, though they're useful in surprise attacks. They also ignore the target's armor.
    • Sergeant Kelly's weapon pack adds fists, which are almost totally useless... except when used with the Berserk adrenalin combo, at which point they become the Berserk Fists.
  • Every Bullet is a Tracer: Averted in that most guns have a random tracer chance. Some heavy weapons will always leave visible trails, though.
  • Everything Fades: Dropped weapons begin to sink into the ground very shortly after being dropped by their user. And depending on your settings, so do dead bodies.
  • Flare Gun: the BORT-85, which can also fire grenades; its flares follow a fairly realistic trajectory, too. Oh, and it can be dual-wielded.
  • Game Mod: Which has mods itself; most notable is Sergeant Kelly's Weapon Pack, which is basically a community effort to add even more guns.
  • Gatling Good: The XMV-850; an interesting example in that it has a realistic max fire rate of 3600 RPM, at which point anyone on the receiving end may as well kiss their ass goodbye. It also doesn't overheat, but ammo is very limited - it only holds 900 rounds in a magazine, with 1800 spare, so you don't even have a minute of full-speed fire. The heavy recoil can be mitigated by mounting it using secondary fire. There's also the "Personal Minigun" that is much more man portable and has less recoil, at the cost of firing rate.
  • Gun Accessories: The M50 has a grenade launcher and a small screen for use with the tertiary-fire camera, while the M46 has a proximity mine launcher.
    • The LK05 has a suppressor, laser, flashlight, vertical grip, AND a holosight! And all can be used!
    • A number of pistols have a Laser Sight. The XRS-10 and S-AR 12 do, as well, the former combining with a detachable suppressor and the latter with an adjustable stock.
    • The SRS-900 has a mid-range scope with a rangefinder and height detector. The SRS Mod 2 replaces that with a holographic sight; both can also accept a suppressor.
  • Gun Porn: Ballistic Weapons V2.5 - without extra packs - has thirty unique weapons.
  • Guns Akimbo: Most pistols and submachineguns can be used in pairs - even different ones. Don't expect to be accurate if the server's using realistic settings, though. Reloading is handled a la Marathon - one gun at a time - which makes dual-wielding with pistols easiest due to their short reload time.
  • Hand Cannon: The AH-104 'Pounder' assault pistol, which is somewhat over the top even for this trope: it fires .60 caliber explosive rounds. A torso shot with it is a one- or two-hit kill.
    • The revolvers also qualify, as they both have two barrels. Secondary for the D49 fires both at once for a two-bullet hit, while the 41-DB's second barrel loads shotgun shells.
  • Hit Scan: Played straight, but the illusion of bullet travel is faked very well; the effects for bullet weapons, including wall and object damage, are done after the original trace for damage.
  • Homing Projectile: The G5 rocket launcher in mortar mode, by keeping an enemy in the zoom crosshairs for long enough to lock on.
  • Improbable Weapon User/Abnormal Ammo: The AK490's secondary fire launches a ballistic knife.
    • The Defibrillators are compact enough to be fitted onto fists. That's right, you have electric punching gloves that shock people to life. Or not, as the description states they're overpowered to the point that they kill people instead of saving them.
    • The MJ51 can mount and launch MOA-C chaff grenades from its barrel. You can also imitate a Demoman with the Ullapool Caber by bashing people over the head with the chaff grenades themselves (exploding on contact optional).
    • The upcoming Spectre uses flechettes, and its secondary fire sprays healing gas. Which you can ignite to damage enemies.
  • Kill Streak: An unofficial patch to the base mod adds these when using the Ballistic Loadout mutator - make a certain number of kills without dying, and you can press a button to give yourself a new weapon.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Played with; most energy weapons fire visible and slow-moving projectiles, but they tend to do a good bit of damage or have other useful attributes. For instance, the E-23 ViPeR plasma rifle is also capable of acting as an assault rifle, a shotgun, a repair tool (a la the Link Gun), and a marksman rifle with nightvision scope. This is also justified in-universe, as kinetic weapons are the only thing that get through Skrith shields.
  • Laser Sight: Several weapons come with one; though it gives away your position, shots will always hit the aiming dot.
    • The GRS9 and GRSXX take this to the next level, where their attached lasers are actual anti-personnel lasers, with either solid cutting beam or a single high-powered blast.
  • Lightning Gun: the HVC-MK9 lightning gun; primary fires short-ranged streams of lightning which do little damage, but can fling those it has locked on to. Secondary is a 'red lightning' charged shot.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: A new gore system was added to deal with new weapon effects, making dismemberment a little more... visceral than it was by default. Have fun smearing the walls with blood!
  • Macross Missile Massacre: The JL-21 MRL 'Peacemaker' rocket launcher. Primary rapid-fires mini rockets; secondary fires so fast the loading system can't keep up, at the cost of many rockets going off-course, potentially injuring the user and those nearby.
  • More Dakka: The entire purpose of the XMV-850 minigun, though the M353 light machine gun can also put out a respectable amount of dakka.
  • No Scope: Possible, but not easy by default. Less realistic settings make it easier.
  • One-Hit Polykill: the G5 RPG does enough splash damage to instantly kill non-vehicle targets with a close miss. One can only imagine what it could do against clustered targets...
    • The M75 Tactical Infantry Cannon can overpenetrate tanks and still retain enough power to kill someone on the other side, as long as it's fully charged when firing.
    • The STREAK's secondary fire dumps out all four barrels, which can shower a hallway in napalm and roast any poor bastard in the way.
  • Overheating: Happens to some weapons. The HVC-MK9 lightning gun hurts the user if it overheats, while the plasma cannons explode - the HV-9000 in particular detonates like a Redeemer missile.
    • The Firestorm IV overheats as well due to using caseless incendiary ammo. It also slows down as it overheats, making bursts much more useful. In Ballistic Pro, it will explode if you push it too far.
  • Pistol-Whipping: Secondary fire of the MD24 pistol, though it's implied the weapon was designed to do that. Some weapons have blades attached to them, making it much more effective.
    • The Redwood Coach Gun has a stock bash attack.
    • The MRS138 shotgun has a taser mounted below the barrel for this purpose.
    • The Fifty-9 SMG has an underbarrel blade. Dual-wielding a pair of these results in a flurry of attacks that chops down the target's health quite rapidly.
  • Player Guided Missile: The G5 launcher's Secondary Fire in Rocket mode allows the player to laser-guide the missile.
  • Recoil Boost: Possible with the XMV-850 minigun, the M290 Double Shotgun, and the MRT6 Shotgun Sidearm. The M925 Machinegun also has limited usage in this role - firing it downwards while falling will slow your fall.
  • Removable Turret Gun: Both machine guns, the miniguns, the J2329 HAMR, and the two anti-materiel sniper rifles can be 'mounted' as turrets. They can be abandoned by the user, which will always happen if they're killed. Unlike most instances, these turret guns have limited ammo and need to be reloaded, but can be placed just about anywhere. Killing the user and picking it up yourself if you already have the same gun also gives you all its ammo.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Somewhat averted: while powerful and accurate, the D49 revolver has a very long reload for a pistol, making it of somewhat dubious use as a sidearm. The Wilson 41-DB isn't much better, as it's slightly weaker outside of an extremely close-range shot with the secondary barrel, and has to be reloaded twice to fully replenish if it's totally empty.
  • Sawn Off Shotgun: The MRT6 Shotgun Sidearm is an odd example. It's very short - small enough to be holstered - and is very inaccurate, but packs a large punch because it fires two shells at once. The recoil's heavy enough that it can be used as an extra jump, too.
    • Sergeant Kelly's Weapon Pack adds a proper sawn-off, which can be dual-wielded; accuracy and recoil are even worse than the MRT6, however.
  • Schmuck Bait: Try firing an airburst grenade from the Puma-77 while the shield is deployed. Go ahead.
  • Secondary Fire: Several weapons have these, and some even have a tertiary fire.
  • Short Range Shotgun: Somewhat averted with the M763, which has a relatively tight spread compared with the other shotguns, which play this perfectly straight. It's somewhat weak, however, but that's for balance reasons.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Swiss Army Gun: the E-23 ViPeR, to some extent - it has a shotgun mode, a continuous laser, a rapid-fire mode, and, when zoomed in, turns into a sniper rifle.
  • Standard FPS Guns: Some weapons fall under this (mostly human weapons), but quite a few don't (usually energy, magic, or Skrith guns).
  • Too Dumb to Live: Overcharging your heavy weapons.
    • Walking into a hallway filled with napalm you just shot off.
    • Firing your RPG into the wall in front of you.
  • Universal Ammunition: Mostly averted; only a few weapons share ammo. Most of the 12 gauge shotguns do, but they're (with one exception) loaded from loose shells.
    • Played straight with any magazine-based weapons using the same caliber - 5.56 weapons, for example, all share ammo, but without the addon packs, very few weapons are affected by this.
  • Unorthodox Reload: The MD24's reload has the player flick the magazine out of the weapon.
  • Used Future: Nearly all projectile weapons are 20th/21st century weapons yanked out of mothballs and given higher-tech internals in a last-ditch attempt to fight off the Skrith, whose shields stopped all laser or plasma weaponry, but not old projectile weapons. It's implied there are much newer guns that aren't desperation weapons, but we only see mostly outdated weapon models, with the exception of the cutting-edge Spectre, the stylized machine pistols, and LK-05.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted; the RX22A flamethrower, while not actually projecting napalm due to the limitations of the UT2004 engine, is quite long-ranged. This is balanced by the rather volatile fuel tank on the user's back, which tends to rocket upwards when shot. The Spectre's flamethrower doesn't explode, thankfully, and deals a lot of damage, but it has a small capacity - not enough to kill an enemy by itself, but useful for softening up targets to shower them with the Spectre's flechettes, or finishing them off if your magazine runs dry or the burst didn't do the trick.
  • Weak Turret Gun: Very, very averted. The four mountable weapons in the base mod are the XMV-850 minigun, the J2329 HAMR mortar, the M353 LMG, and the M925 .50 caliber machine gun. If gun sway is increased to realistic levels, this is the only way to actually hit anything.

Transcendence Extended 2Game Mod IndexKilling Floor
Area 51 FPSFirst-Person ShooterBattlefield

alternative title(s): Ballistic Weapons
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