FewWeapon changes

[WhiteTech]

Ive been thinking about some weapon gameplay mechanics. I think the only hitscan weapons should be the MD and lasgun, weapons such as the rifle, shotty, chaingun ect. could have a travel time, although their bullets would still be very quick, as any actual bullet is, it shouldn't make too much of a difference up close. But be a bit tougher to hit from far away. This would give some chance for some smaller aliens to get down those long sometimes unfair hallways.

Nearly all the weapons in BF 2142 are non-hitscan, and they seem to work well, although you're not exactly shooting at small blazing fast aliens... Mostly infantry, tanks or huge battle walkers.

[kharnov]

Some of these quirks would probably be resolved once we implement bullet physics.

[Viech]

First I wrote this:
I don't think this is a good idea. The speed of a realistic bullet is so high that it will have a significantly lower impact on gameplay than the network delay (which we try to avoid with the the unlagged feature) so I don't think the necessary physics calculations are worthwile. I don't even know if the effect is desireable since a lot of players like the Quake 3 and Half Life engines for their unmatched simplicity and the feeling of a direct conversion of input to ingame actions.

But then I did some calculations:
Wikipedia says the initial bullet speed of a 9x19 mm round is 300–580 m/s. If we say that Unvguy is 1.85m tall and compare that with his ingame height of 56 qu (quake units) that means 1 qu = 0.033 m. The reactor build range is 1000 qu = 33 m. So shooting at a dretch at the other end of the human base would lead to a delay of 60-110 ms. The corridor named long hall on parpax is about 2100 qu long qhich means roughly 70 m and a delay of 230 ms at maximum.

I'm not sure if there's some flaw in my calculations but it seems like realistic bullet speed does make some serious difference. I'm a bit confused, I always thought bullet speed was neglible for computer games with indoor maps.

Still, I'm not sure if we want this feature but if we do want it, we should generally aim for more realism in weapon behaviour (recoil, dynamic spread, etc.) to produce a coherent experience.

[velociostrich]

Them's some pretty startling figures. I will say that in BFBC2, it takes close to a second (possibly more!) for a round to fly a few hundred meters--the longest line of sight in BFBC2 that I can think of being about a half a mile (800m). I don't know how well that compares to real-world physics.

[ViruS]

In BF3, on some of the biggest maps it takes about 2-3 seconds for the bullet to reach the other side [Xbox] with one of the first few sniper rifles you can get in the game. It's quite enjoyable to watch. A good map to view similar things in tremulous would be z_slide due to how long the actual map is. I think it took about 3 seconds for my pulse to land when travelling at a speed of 192000 ups [see below] so yeah.
I've noticed a few things about how "dodgy" the particles from BF3 work though, i noticed from one of those tanks with missiles that you can control by aiming the barrel. On a high ping server, if i aim down and just fire, the rocket travels straight, then lands ahead of where i aimed it towards, but a few miliseconds later, a impact mark is made where i aimed. Also, i can get rockets to visually go through walls which sounds awkward, but it's all just client side graphics.

Btw viech, most guns have their bullets travel 500-800 m/s from my knowledge. Even WWII rifle bullets travel this fast.

We can always just use visuals-only like the shotgun particle system. I've edited my shotgun muzzle p.system long time ago so that the pellets fall towards gravity and travels approximately 600m/s or so.
Actually i'll just copy+paste it here:

Code: Select all

  ejector
  {
    particle //used to have no shader
    {
      shader sync gfx/blaster/orange_particle //good eyes mate? See if you can see the bullet!
      displacement		2 0 0 ~1 //8 too fuzzy
      velocityType		cent //Specified by model direction
      velocityDir		linear
      velocityMagnitude		19200 //600 metres per second (realistic)
      velocity			1 0 0 ~9

  accelerationType		static
  accelerationDir   	linear
  accelerationMagnitude	700 //real gravity's 668, game's 800
  acceleration		0 0 -1 0
  parentVelocityFraction 0.0

  radius 0 1 3 //get bigger for noticeability
  alpha 0 1.0 0.0
  bounce 0.0001~0.03 //stop at the object, maybe bounce... ( Derp, 0.0 = noclip)

  lifeTime 2700 //Don't have it exist too long, or it'll screw up the particle/trail system [maxcount]
  childTrailSystem		shotgunsparks
}
count 11 //shotgun fires 11 pellets per shot, NOT SYNCHRONISED
delay 0
period 0 - 0
  }

[ViruS]

Today i edited my 1.1 mod(s) [GPP-1.1 merge and Lolards]'s mass driver with false bullet physics [Just a fast missile that falls to gravity] and it works fine, except i remembered you can't score "headshots" with againts teammates with missile-type weapons, so if a human is wearing light armour, it would take more than "just" 2 shots to kill him.
I've also prepared a particle and trail system to make it noticeable when your range is a little too long.

The only few maps where the "delay" for it to land is noticeable are in super big maps, apart from that it seems okay for me. It's just that shots aren't garanteed as much mid-range like in atcs hallways.

[WhiteTech]

Today i edited my 1.1 mod(s) [GPP-1.1 merge and Lolards]'s mass driver with false bullet physics [Just a fast missile that falls to gravity] and it works fine, except i remembered you can't score "headshots" with againts teammates with missile-type weapons, so if a human is wearing light armour, it would take more than "just" 2 shots to kill him.
I've also prepared a particle and trail system to make it noticeable when your range is a little too long.

The only few maps where the "delay" for it to land is noticeable are in super big maps, apart from that it seems okay for me. It's just that shots aren't garanteed as much mid-range like in atcs hallways.

Im confused with the mass driver statement, was it a test? Mass drivers theoretically shoot at the speed of light. Pretty much hitscan.

As for the rest of bullet travel, I think we'd would have to test it out a bunch, as the feature could possibly throw balancing off by a substantial amount. Games like BF 2, 3 2142, Planet Side 2 ect are all relativity large targets. They are however very large compared to a dretch and have the ability to shoot from an equal distance.

As for anti-lag, Im going to continue to compare to these other games. They all have a ping as well, but still implement this feature and it works well.

My theory still stands, dretch have nearly no chance in a long alway. This travel time should help slightly, and yet still keep close range combat and hitting the big aliens relatively the same.

[ViruS]

Who cares. It's just a test. I haven't figured out how to make missile "launchers" fire with a random angle yet and rifle, shotgun, chaingun would be overpowered as hell and "lasgun" has a name of "las" which relates to "lasers" so yeah. Mass drivers shoot "minor nuclear reactive particles" or something like that. I'll upload a video of me shooting it later...
EDIT: Internet's back up, i've uploaded it here:

phpBB [video]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39wB1VlT ... e=youtu.be[/video]

[WhiteTech]

Very neat, Up close it didn't look too difficult. The more I think about this the more I like the whole idea