[Caliban]

I'm trying to work out how to get bullet-drop into the game.

It works fine if I use a .prj, but then I have to have it detonate to kill anyone.

Is there a way to get it to work without detonation?

or

Is there a way to get rid of the 'shaking' from the detonation when you're close to the target?

I'm happy with the .prj method for long shots, but then close up shooting sucks.

Thanks,

-Doc

[Caliban]

I suppose it's no surprise that I've missed the boat on GR1 information. The game has been out for, what, 30 years now?

Still, there is a lot of good info to mine in the forums.

This post has been edited by Caliban: 21 August 2008 - 01:14 PM

[Sup]

GR, while user-friendly for a lot of things, is actually not a very moddable game. Aside from external, configurable statistics -- weapon stats, and the like -- it's pretty much either hardcoded or just locked out of modders' reach.

[Rocky]

Sup, on Aug 21 2008, 04:51 PM, said:

GR, while user-friendly for a lot of things, is actually not a very moddable game. Aside from external, configurable statistics -- weapon stats, and the like -- it's pretty much either hardcoded or just locked out of modders' reach.

Huh? IGOR anyone? Boasting over 700 mods, I'd say it's fairly moddable LOL.

Bullet drop is unfortunately outwith modding abilities though

[Sup]

Rocky, on Aug 21 2008, 06:42 PM, said:

Sup, on Aug 21 2008, 04:51 PM, said:

GR, while user-friendly for a lot of things, is actually not a very moddable game. Aside from external, configurable statistics -- weapon stats, and the like -- it's pretty much either hardcoded or just locked out of modders' reach.

Huh? IGOR anyone? Boasting over 700 mods, I'd say it's fairly moddable LOL.

I think this is a misunderstanding in terminology. Igor is a good toolset, that has allowed a lot of enjoyable mods to be made pretty easily. However, it allows only very shallow modding of the game. When i say a game is very moddable, i don't mean it's easy to make new content for -- i mean it can be changed very dramatically. As i said, GR is user friendly. But i haven't seen any mods that seriously altered the gameplay. It's always a first person tactical shooter sharing GR's main gameplay characteristics. With some creativity in the limited scripting system modders have created some pretty impressive stuff, but the fact remains that most of GR's gameplay is locked out of the reach of modders. We can only change stats and scripts.

Basically (and this is an oversimplification, but) game modding goes in shallowness-depth from...

1.Assets, (art and sound)
->
2.scripts, and external stats, (where most GR modding takes place)
->
3.Gameplay code, (the laws of how the 'world' works, and what can be changed in scripts)
->
4. engine code, (the gears that turn under all of this. The basic mechanical structure all of the gameplay/more nuanced rendering code sits on top of)


With Ghost Recon, we're locked out of all but 1 and 2. This means we cannot change the actual game very dramatically at all.

Most moddable games reach into that third level, and open up some of their gameplay code. I'm sure you've heard of Half Life mods that wildly change the product -- there are HL2 mods that emulate RPGs, RTS games, and Adventure games. This requires radical alterations to the gameplay code, more than just different scripting of stats and missions. And, sadly, it isn't doable in Ghost Recon. Open source games, by releasing their entire code, can be changed or cannibalized into just about anything. This is the level game developers work at when they license an engine.
Splinter Cell doesn't have much in common with unreal tournament 2, does it? Just some of the basic engine code.

Maybe we'll get sourcecode or something, someday. If UBI ever chills out about that stuff.

[Rocky]

Sup, on Aug 22 2008, 01:45 AM, said:

Rocky, on Aug 21 2008, 06:42 PM, said:

Sup, on Aug 21 2008, 04:51 PM, said:

GR, while user-friendly for a lot of things, is actually not a very moddable game. Aside from external, configurable statistics -- weapon stats, and the like -- it's pretty much either hardcoded or just locked out of modders' reach.

Huh? IGOR anyone? Boasting over 700 mods, I'd say it's fairly moddable LOL.

I think this is a misunderstanding in terminology.

Not really, you just made a bold statement saying that GR was not very moddable, and then tried to justify that by changing the goal posts completely by coming up with an alternative definition for moddable.

In GR we have new missions, new weapons, new maps, new gametypes, new skins etc etc, plus we have a custom official tool for modding and the game has built in mod support, something many of todays games do not even have. GR is very moddable.

Now, if this thread had been posted in the GRAW forum, then you would have had a point.

Anyway, we are drifting off the OPs point, if you want to debate further whether or not GR is moddable gane or not feel free to start a new topic.

[Sup]

As i clarified to rocky in PMs, i didn't mean 'not very moddable' as a criticism at all, I was just using the term as i'm used to in my normal company without really taking into account that not everyone looks at it the same way.

I was only referring to the limited scope of the alterations we can make to GR -- scripts and art, for the most part, no code. In many ways this has been a blessing more than a curse, it's fostered a kind of focused, collaborative modding community that you don't see very often, but it comes with a few nagging frustrations.

Mainly bullet drop and reload time.

[Caliban]

Sup, on Aug 21 2008, 03:51 PM, said:

GR, while user-friendly for a lot of things, is actually not a very moddable game. Aside from external, configurable statistics -- weapon stats, and the like -- it's pretty much either hardcoded or just locked out of modders' reach.

Absolutely. There are a lot of little things in the game that we just live with.

Many times, however, there are solutions via the xml files for what we want to do, so it's always worth asking.

[Caliban]

Rocky, on Aug 21 2008, 10:42 PM, said:

Bullet drop is unfortunately out with modding abilities though

Ah, but it's not!

There are a few weapon mods that have rifles using weapon type 4 and .prj files. From what I've seen, the desired result was to have a bigger effect on the target such as blowing a door out, throwing a man, taking out a vehicle, etc.

What I decided to do was apply the same idea to any sniper weapon that I use for the sole purpose of getting a true bullet-drop and a flight time for the projectile so that moving targets are not just point-and-click simple.

So far it's been great!

My original post was just questioning if the 'shake' of a detonating projectile is hard coded, and if so, if there is any sneaky way to get around it. Because of the shake, it's not practice to apply the same modification to anything other than long-range use weapons. If I had it my way, I'd mod all of my weapons to use .prj files with 'real life' velocities and trajectories.

If anyone is interested in talking about the specifics of my intended application, that would be great. I have questions about a few things, like textures for instance, that apply to this issue, and I know that there are a lot of people here with that kind of experience.

-Doc

This post has been edited by Caliban: 24 August 2008 - 04:40 PM

[thales100]

Caliban, on Aug 24 2008, 01:27 PM, said:

Rocky, on Aug 21 2008, 10:42 PM, said:

Bullet drop is unfortunately out with modding abilities though

Ah, but it's not!

What can be done (and ive included in some mods like Sniper Cannon, Sniper Cannon 2 and the NTW20 in Sniper Team) is to make a grenade launcher with an invisible grenade and using a rifle or whatever model.
In fact the projectile will drop, but the"shake" effect is hardcoded. Thats why ive always prefered to use it with sniper rifles.
I released a mod sometime ago called "LW15.499 Assault Rifle" including this feature to an assault rifle, but this "shake" effect makes all weird in game.
This also brings some limits, like you wont have scope masks as a "sniper rifle" coded as a grenade launcher.
Also itll be a "one shot one kill" weapon, wherever it hits the enemy.
One more thing : dont forget that GR maps are generally limited to 400m x 400m, so youll have a range limit of 300 meters +/- to shoot, cant add much drop effect in such limited distance, like a LR shot using a .50 in r/l.

This post has been edited by thales100: 24 August 2008 - 04:59 PM

[Caliban]

thales100, on Aug 24 2008, 04:56 PM, said:

What can be done (and ive included in some mods like Sniper Cannon, Sniper Cannon 2 and the NTW20 in Sniper Team) is to make a grenade launcher with an invisible grenade and using a rifle or whatever model. <snip>

Precisely.

This is what I'm doing, though I have some questions about the limitation of the values in the .prj file and the physics of the game.

I have the initial velocity set to a value that is in line with a 7.62x51mm cartridge out of a 20" barrel and I've set the weight of the projectile to the actual weight of the bullet. I've tried to affect the trajectory by changing the bullet weight and air resistance but have not had any noticeable results. I want to leave the velocity alone so that a somewhat realistic flight time is maintained.

I want to massage the numbers until I'm getting a trajectory as close as possible to the real thing: ~-25"@400m, ~-52"@500m, etc. (assuming a zero of 200m) Being able to do this assumes certain things about the accuracy of the game physics, but as long as they are constant, if not accurate, I should still be able to get some trajectory changes made.

What I'm running into it that at the given velocity, I don't get any changes by making changes to the other two factors. Are they in there but moot? There are other examples of such unused data in configuration files so it's not impossible that the trajectory is set based on the initial velocity only.

Does anyone know if all of the factors (velocity/weight/air resistance) are actually factored by the game engine?

Does anyone know what the acceptable data ranges are for these entries?

[Caliban]

thales100, on Aug 24 2008, 04:56 PM, said:

One more thing : dont forget that GR maps are generally limited to 400m x 400m, so youll have a range limit of 300 meters +/- to shoot, cant add much drop effect in such limited distance, like a LR shot using a .50 in r/l.

I've been taking the fog out of some missions and increasing the draw range to 2,000m since the true need of the fog and clipping distances were due to the graphics cards that were available when the game launched. Granted, some missions need the fog for realistic weather effects, but otherwise it's reasonable to expect truly clear days. I've had several 500m-800m+ shots in these cases.

All of our co-op missions are played with a 2-man team so the .50 caliber weapons are rarely used as a semi-auto 7.62x51 adds less weight and a bit more versatility. Because of that, my ballistic goals are placed on that caliber. A 200m zero has you around 2" high @ 100m, 9" low @ 300m, 26" low @ 400m, and 52" low @ 500m. That's a good range to have to consider, especially if your target is presenting a small target area such as being prone or partially behind cover.

The real fun is when they start moving @400m+ and you have to consider hold-over AND lead distance. Good stuff!

I still love this game.

EDIT: On the maps that I've removed the fog from, I increase the spotting distance as well so you can't just run willy-nilly around in the open and expect no one to see and come after you.

This post has been edited by Caliban: 24 August 2008 - 05:25 PM

[thales100]

Caliban, on Aug 24 2008, 02:21 PM, said:

thales100, on Aug 24 2008, 04:56 PM, said:

One more thing : dont forget that GR maps are generally limited to 400m x 400m, so youll have a range limit of 300 meters +/- to shoot, cant add much drop effect in such limited distance, like a LR shot using a .50 in r/l.

I've been taking the fog out of some missions and increasing the draw range to 2,000m since the true need of the fog and clipping distances were due to the graphics cards that were available when the game launched. Granted, some missions need the fog for realistic weather effects, but otherwise it's reasonable to expect truly clear days. I've had several 500m-800m+ shots in these cases.

Can you tell wich maps you are having 500 - 800 meters to shoot playing GR ?
You can edit the draw distance to "2000m" but maps will still have a limit of 400 x 400 meters due to CM limit. Some custom maps are bigger, like CMC map and some maps from Centcom mod if i can remember, but you certainly wont have all this distance to shoot.

This post has been edited by thales100: 24 August 2008 - 05:33 PM

[Caliban]

thales100, on Aug 24 2008, 05:32 PM, said:

Can you tell wich maps you are having 500 - 800 meters to shoot playing GR ?
You can edit the draw distance to "2000m" but maps will still have a limit of 400 x 400 meters due to CM limit. Some custom maps are bigger, like CMC map and some maps from Centcom mod if i can remember, but you certainly wont have all this distance to shoot.

I just started messing around with this last week, but I know that I've got some missions on Riverbed and the Airbase where the insertion zone is outside of the little 'game zone' of the map so that I can set up my partner as a sniper well outside of and above the action to provide cover for me while I go in to do the work. Those two maps at least have shots well over 500m, and if you place patrols out on the other end, you can get right out to a kilometer. That's fun for testing the trajectories of the weapons, but just being able to start a mission on high ground for sniper placement is nice. It's one way of getting around the game limitation of being a supposed special forces operator who can't cut through or climb a fence. )

[thales100]

Caliban, on Aug 24 2008, 03:19 PM, said:

thales100, on Aug 24 2008, 05:32 PM, said:

Can you tell wich maps you are having 500 - 800 meters to shoot playing GR ?
You can edit the draw distance to "2000m" but maps will still have a limit of 400 x 400 meters due to CM limit. Some custom maps are bigger, like CMC map and some maps from Centcom mod if i can remember, but you certainly wont have all this distance to shoot.

I just started messing around with this last week, but I know that I've got some missions on Riverbed and the Airbase where the insertion zone is outside of the little 'game zone' of the map so that I can set up my partner as a sniper well outside of and above the action to provide cover for me while I go in to do the work. Those two maps at least have shots well over 500m, and if you place patrols out on the other end, you can get right out to a kilometer.

Sry but youre wrong, this is impossible, you are having at max 250 - 320 meters of effective spot range probably, how are you measuring it ? These maps have the 400m limit.

This post has been edited by thales100: 24 August 2008 - 06:30 PM