Abstract Population synthesis relies on semi-analytic formulae to determine masses of compact objects from the (helium or carbon-oxygen) cores of collapsing stars. Such formulae are combined across mass ranges that span different explosion mechanisms, potentialy introducing artificial features in the compact object mass distribution. Such artifacts impair the interpretation of gravitational-wave observations. We propose a “top-down” remnant mass prescription where we remove mass from the star for each possible mass-loss mechanism, instead of relying on the fallback onto a “proto-compact-object” to get the final mass. For one of these mass-loss mechanisms, we fit the metallicity-dependent mass lost to pulsational-pair instability supernovae from numerical simulations. By imposing no mass loss in the absence of pulses, our approach recovers the existing compact object masses at the low mass end and ensures continuity across the core-collapse/pulsational-pair-instability regime.