Multiple Impact Bursts (with impactfx) Test Map up!

[Forty-six & Two]

A) the insane ACs means sentry mode and overwatch are very strange. The game thinks that 0% chance to hit actually is 0% chance to hit and doesn't fire when it could.

Hmm, that is really an issue I didn't think off. This is also the reason that it works badly with CTB, so I should have thought of it really, hehe.

Anyway, this will mean that overwatch doesn't make characters fire in certain situations, mostly when far away from a target as this is times your % to hit goes below 1%.

If you set sentry mode to shot on 1% to hit, most weapons will still shoot in overwatch at closer ranges. But it defintely hampers this feature alot when targets are more then 20 clicks away.
The problem is that without the negative values, bullets simply just wont spread and there wouldn't be much difference. So it's hard to work around.

 

[freepower]

Why not seriously ramp up the realism? Ditch the negative numbers and vastly increase the ranges?

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I know that when AI enters combat they will either fight or follow waypoints if their priority is high enough and agression is low.

If their aggression is low enough and movement priority high enough they'll try both to sometimes comical effect. A bit like watching the ai move during combat in JA2. But unless their target is along the path of the waypoints they'll still leave the path to attack and most probably bunch up.

Hmm, that is really an issue I didn't think off. This is also the reason that it works badly with CTB, so I should have thought of it really, hehe.

There's another problem with using this in a campaign, the main character will have a normal ac value and would be better off not wearing armour at all. In fact they'll probably be near invulnerable compared to everyone else. You'll have to force the player to use a prefab.

Why not seriously ramp up the realism? Ditch the negative numbers and vastly increase the ranges?

It needs the negative accuracy to make the bullets spread, without the penalty whether you got the impact fx on a miss would probably be much more random and if you did see the fx you'd see they were grouped much closer together. Without the lower ac to offset the accuracy no shot would be able to hit any target.

The ranges can't be increased, while any value over 100 can be entered the game calculates anything over 100 as 100, whether it's 110 or 1100. Plus beyond a certain number of tiles, IIRC 64ish, the game doesn't even render other sprites making it impossible to target an actor at a realistic range.

 

[Forty-six & Two]

Hmm, actually I tried without the negative armor values before making the test map for you and it worked almost the same. I just checked up on it using my old backups of the weapons in the testmap.

Note: You do need to have lower some armor values slightly on armor pieces to make things more smoother. Dgm reduction will come more into play alongside cover and thoughtfull play.

Edit: Hmm, armor values might come into play when firing against enemies behind a half-wall, but im not sure. Still testing things.

I just put armor in negative cause I thought it might help glitchy stuff, but comes down it, all you need to do is have some negative values on the weapons and pref short as range option (unless its a minigun or heavy support weapon, then I would use OnlyLong, same with rocket launchers I suppose.)

It still means that players will have 0% chance to hit most of the time at ranges beyond 20. This is abit of a gripe for Overwatch I suppose, but I don't think it would mean that much (for myself when creating play content. Might be a problem for others style.)

 

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Hmm when I reset the armour class back to normal in your test no one could hit the side of the proverbial barn. Every character ran out of ammo without hitting anyone.

 

[Forty-six & Two]

Hmm when I reset the armour class back to normal in your test no one could hit the side of the proverbial barn. Every character ran out of ammo without hitting anyone.

That's cause the negatives on the weapons need to be taken down -100 each to account for the -100 armor class. Like in the testmap rifles have -175 accuracy while my old backups have -75 for use with normal armor class.

Actually I don't know how this makes sense, but it works, lol.


Edit :
But after testing more I think the negative values might actually help with glitchy stuff after all, but they don't seem to be mandatory at all to create the effect and still hit, at least not when there is no cover involved.


Edit 2:
Ok, after further testing I find that if all half walls are window and you aim just behind your target, you can hit consistntently in a random fashion.

If you click directly at an opponent with partial cover you might not always be able to hit them if there are height difference between the point of fire and the head stance of the enemy.

So in specific situations this mod will require you to aim bullet weapons like you might aim a grenade or a rocket launcher.

Overwatch will work at ranges out to 20ish and sometimes beyond if the character has good perception or the weapon is onlyLong.

I thought up an idea for a campaign and will be starting work slowly. As you know, this is never a quick process .


Edit:
AI have big trouble hitting enemies behind half walls, even if they are window flagged. This is a big problem. Im starting to think this won't work out to well in a campaign. But on the other hand I sort of don't feel it's worth it without, since the standard system is so buggy and linear

 

[jarekfall]

Right now my main issue is single shot weapons, as sometimes when you fire at a certain angle bullets will just hit the ground infront of the target every time.
This problem becomes less frequent if your character isn't prone, but shooting from prone is an important feature and I do hate to break that.

Edit: Actually the only way to fix this problem is to just remove projectile fire from single shot weapon and be done with the problem entirely.

The beginning coordinates of a projectile may have important meaning in this case. They are specified in each fire animation in sprite files.

 

[Forty-six & Two]

Edit: Actually the only way to fix this problem is to just remove projectile fire from single shot weapon and be done with the problem entirely.

The beginning coordinates of a projectile may have important meaning in this case. They are specified in each fire animation in sprite files.

Is this something you would know how to change? Maybe teach?

 

[freepower]

Well, if you dl his sprite editor it becomes pretty obvious. However, you'll find that you'd have to modify at least every player character model, and those sprites are pretty hefty in size, making the mod a bit large...

To give you an idea, my mod stands at around 26MB - half of which is one sprite.

 

[jarekfall]

Is this something you would know how to change? Maybe teach?

In order to change three (x, y, z) beginning Cartesian coordinates which can be negative you will have to download from my website the latest version of Sprite Creator. This app. will allow you to modify sequence frames and special actions that control the game sequence player. Edit several existing actor sprites and analyze how they are constructed. Read the Readme file. If you will have some problems, ask.

However, you'll find that you'd have to modify at least every player character model, and those sprites are pretty hefty in size, making the mod a bit large...

We can make a patch which would only modify sequences.

 

[freepower]

That sounds cool!

Thanks for your sprite editor and tips, by the way, it's been invaluable to me.

 

[Forty-six & Two]

This editor is brilliant and easy to use. Great work.

I don't have the sligthest idea/skill how to make custom sprites for it though

I suppose bounding box ranges are only full numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. ?

How does the "Cover" value work?

EDIT:

In order to change three (x, y, z) beginning Cartesian coordinates which can be negative.

Im not sure what your referring to here? I can't find a z value anywhere. I found the Fire(x args) frame, but im not sure how to do what I want to do...

Could you explain how I could make all firing positions use the
same projectile offset as standing or an even higher offset?

I think a change like this might have a positive impact on the impacts. Pardon the pun.

 

[jarekfall]

I would like to create some tutorials about sprite creating. Maybe this summer, but can't promise. Did you read the courses on my site? They concern bitmap creating in Photoshop. Bitmaps can also be exported from 3D modeling program and imported into SC.

Yes, bounding box ranges must be integers.

The Cover is the one parameter which meaning is unknown to me. It's placed in sprite header so I suppose it concerns whole sprite and all sprites have this parameter set to 100 (decimally), maybe this mean 100% of something, I was testing it (casually) but didn't find any dependencies in the game. Maybe it was used in older versions of FT (current sprites have their version set to 4). The name is taken from Spray program.

Yes, it's the Fire action which has three parameters (x, y, z), in my program they are named (Arg1, Arg2, Arg3). Coordinate values are shown below the "Fire(3 args)" action. This is the description from the Readme:
Character shoots a projectile. Three parameters define offset of an initial point (x,y,z) of a projectile. Parameter 1: offset along axis X, parameter 2: offset along axis Y, parameter 3: offset along axis Z. Offsets can be negative numbers.
The beginning of Cartesian system should be in middle of the bounding box, but I didn't test it. Like bounding box parameters these offsets must be integers.
To change these values first select a sequence, click on the "sequence frames" tab, locate and select "Fire" action (remember its index) and delete it (use "Delete" button). Next Click on "Add" button type the index you remembered in "Frame index", select proper "Action type" and insert three offsets in three "Edit" components. That's all. By the way, if you set for the prone sequences Y coordinate to high value this won't be looking so good, for example, you won't be able to shoot in rooms of low height, because the projectile could be placed above the roof and would explode immediately.

You could try reduce bounding box size of a projectile, this would reduce the chance of missing (rocket projectile explodes often, it gets caught in objects because it has very large bounding box (8x8x8)), but after this, like in gauss projectile it will be leaving rubbish on the screen while it will be moving. B. box draws the border for screen repainting.

 

[Forty-six & Two]

I didn't read any courses. Don't have photoshop installed right now and my artistry skills in that department are poor.

I don't think this projectile "mod" will ever work properly. Thank you for the advice on how to use the editor Jarek, but as you pointed out it doesn't help me much. It's just not possible to improve this thing anymore I guess.

So i'll have to decide whether or not to use it at all or trash my campaign idea altogether.

 

[jarekfall]

What do you think about projectiles speed? In my opinion they are to slow, laser and gauss projectile should move faster than bullet projectile. This can be changed.

I checked, that beginning coordinates of a projectile really have important meaning in shooting. The game calculates the trajectory of a projectile and the hit depends on a place in which a projectile will hit. Change of Y value (height) has no meaning in hit chance, important are X and Z values. Also changing a projectile bounding box size has no meaning. When I set X to 0 and Z to 0, the character has been missing very rarely and only in different angles then before. Of course the projectile is placed in the middle of character's bounding box, height value is added from the bottom of the bounding box. This can be fixed, but require changing of image offsets in projectile sprite file. I've been shooting by clicking on an enemy, not behind of it.

Here you can download a save from your map, use Peterson and try to hit one of four dogs, you will miss in each case, but when you change the beginning coordinates, you won't miss.