How do I go about making a weapon upgrade system where you can level up your gun line on Advanced Warfare zombies?  Do I just do the same process as making an upgraded version but do it 25 times and just add an extra  _upgraded for each level, 1-25?

you will hit the weapon limit in no time doing 25 weapon files for every gun

The limit for weapons are 128 right? So give or take, you could only add 5 guns before running into that limit, right?

epic waste

and no, the complete weapon limit is 128 yes, but a bunch are taken up with stock items like perk bottles, revive tool etc

but youll almost certainly hit the memory limit or fx limit etc long before the weapon limit

Well, there must be a way to bypass the developers, bad decicision, and make the limit higher for the number of weapon entities and memory?  I swear I played a couple good maps where there was way more weapons.   But, if there isn't, thanks anyway, I will make do with the little there is.

If you use T4m the weapon limit is increased, but you're going to have other problems as well. I doubt you can have a file-name with 25x _upgraded, it's simply waaaaay too long.

You could use the model-slots inside the weapon-files for your upgrade models, and then script the upgrades yourself by just storing it in a variable on the player, and going from there.

With the stock system you are going to run into other problems as well, like not being able to wall-buy ammo for those weapons unless you re-script some stuff etc. The amount of things you need to do to get this working, will make it esier to start from scratch and build your own upgrade-system.

Like a pack-a-punch with a script that simply changes reload times, fire times, damage, and camo with the regular weapon file without having _upgraded x25?

Like a pack-a-punch with a script that simply changes reload times, fire times, damage, and camo with the regular weapon file without having _upgraded x25?

Yes, but there's some limitations. You cant change anything in the weaponfile from script, you can mess with the dvar used for speed-cola and increase the reload time that way for example, and add extra damage in a script etc.
I think there's 12 or 14 model slots, so you can have that many camo's for each weaponfile. You can't use attachments unless they use the same animations, so adding a red-dot or something still requires another weapon-file because it uses other ADS-anims. Changing things like muzzleflash etc can be done through clientscript.

It's def possible, but it would require some creative solutions here and there

unless something changed without me knowing, last i checked it was confirmed the only limit that failed to increase the assetpool despite t4m was the weaponfiles

regardless youd hit the fx limit immediately anyway unless you removed the fx from the weapon files and scripted instead

the developers, bad decicision, and make the limit higher for the number of weapon entities and memory

like before with the "ff exporters" you seem to not grasp the technicalities of this statement