To me, this is more or less the holy grail of Fallout modding, and I'm surprised there's been so little discussion about it (at least, if my checking just about every single thread with the word "burst" in it is any indication). Bursts are simultaneously the most amusing part of the game, and the most elusive part modding-wise. I mean, how cool would it be to be able to make it not be useless over greater range, or to be able to override the only 1/3rd of bullets can hit the target rule (at least, if there even is such a rule, I'm not even sure), or to be able to adjust the cone width for different weapons. I'll just lay out some things below, which might have already been gone through ages ago in some carefully hidden part of the forum:
Anyway, what I know is possible is crudely mapping where every critter is on the map: the critter listing feature in Sfall helpfully always scrolls through the critters in the same order, so it's easy to figure out the tile number for each critter and the distance between them.
The problem is that this info doesn't seem precise enough for making a cone; after all, I can tell I'm shooting at a target 6 hexes away and that there's another critter 2 hexes away, but is this critter safely behind me or in the bullet's path? The key would seem to be the "tile_num_in_direction" function, which at it most basic would allow you to calculate if anyone is in the bullet path to the target, and combined with a bit more info, say, the hex to the "right" of the target, and to the "left" of the target, allow you to make a cone.
Of course, a lot of this is already speculation, and what you would do with this info is even more unclear. You would think that you would use the hs_afterhitroll hook script, because you can decide a new target for every bullet there, but of course that one only gets run once with every burst (the game doesn't feel like calculating for every bullet whether it's a hit, miss or critical). So I assume Timeslip would have to supply us with some tool to allow us to manipulate which bullets hit, and who they hit. Did anyone ever ask him about this?
Anyway, what I know is possible is crudely mapping where every critter is on the map: the critter listing feature in Sfall helpfully always scrolls through the critters in the same order, so it's easy to figure out the tile number for each critter and the distance between them.
The problem is that this info doesn't seem precise enough for making a cone; after all, I can tell I'm shooting at a target 6 hexes away and that there's another critter 2 hexes away, but is this critter safely behind me or in the bullet's path? The key would seem to be the "tile_num_in_direction" function, which at it most basic would allow you to calculate if anyone is in the bullet path to the target, and combined with a bit more info, say, the hex to the "right" of the target, and to the "left" of the target, allow you to make a cone.
Of course, a lot of this is already speculation, and what you would do with this info is even more unclear. You would think that you would use the hs_afterhitroll hook script, because you can decide a new target for every bullet there, but of course that one only gets run once with every burst (the game doesn't feel like calculating for every bullet whether it's a hit, miss or critical). So I assume Timeslip would have to supply us with some tool to allow us to manipulate which bullets hit, and who they hit. Did anyone ever ask him about this?
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