Your name with one "Z" was already taken I guess?

Well, glad to hear from a like minded individual. It happens occasionaly when your exists in the virtual worl multi milion cyber entities.

Must admit I would have liked to get some info on this unexpected discovery of mine but I guess it might still be a mystery to most.

Well... hmm.

In my experiments with weapons... to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I've observed what you're talking about. First, we must take into consideration the ALE/beamspear disparity.

Everybody who's done extensive weapon modding knows that the ALEs, which are the big, flashy parts of one's shots, do not correspond to the fired angle of the beamspears, especially at high shot velocities- the beamspears are accurate, but the ALEs aren't.

My observations with shots that are just beamspears... is that they go where you aim them, and that point is defined by the center of the aiming circle.

But... who knows? My experiments were almost entirely bent upon getting Warriors of the Sky working properly, and maybe this phenomenon is true. If so... then it should be relatively easy to set up a mod that replaces the standard li01_mark01 beams with simple beamspears, give them a high velocity (let's say 1000) and high refire rate, so that we can get a screenshot from a stationary ship firing on a moving target.

It's always possible that DA put this into the code to aid aiming, because they found that making the shots go absolutely straight out've the guns was a little too difficult for playtesters. If so... I suspect that this isn't something we can change very easily.

I've noticed it lots. I've got a beam weapon (looks bad, but it works) that jumps from target to target, and it's not set to home. I think it has something to do with the aiming code for all weapons, AI included. I've never tryed to change it tho, so I don't really know.

(This site is best viewed with your eyes open)

[Munition
nickname = li_gun01_mark01_ammo
hp_type = hp_gun
requires_ammo = false
hit_pts = 2
hull_damage = 16.299999
energy_damage = 0
weapon_type = W_Laser01
one_shot_sound = fire_laser1
munition_hit_effect = li_laser_01_impact
const_effect = li_laser_01_proj
lifetime = 0.800000
force_gun_ori = false
mass = 1
volume = 0.000100

Nothing in the codding says that they should "Track" so it is probably in the aiming funtion of the engine.

Edited by - Loso on 3/26/2005 9:28:18 PM

yeah - I've looked into this myself, And I think It must be a hard-coded aim assist in the game. You don't notice it so much in the game unless your sitting still and watching your shots, but without it It'd be ALOT harder to hit your targets - especially other players as they thrust around you . I also notice it alot in missions, where a wing of enemies is flying towards you, and when you shoot at one of them, the shots sometimes curve off and hit the guy next to him with very good accuracy instead...Wierd, but useful .

L.D.

_____________________________
I feel a new generation of modding coming - Look at them, Warriors of the Sky (Argh & Crew), The Sol Mod (Mephistopheles)...Total Conversions, to the highest quality...

could it be linked to the constant MUZZLE_CONE_ANGLE? If you really want to make people take more careful aim this variable might help do that,an interesting sideeffect could be that you could give gun heavy ships fixed mounts,so they are more reliant on maneuver to acquire a target than light fighters - however reducing this variable does make the AI miss a lot more(or so i heard,from someone with much more knowledge in this area

Edited by - Cold_Void on 3/27/2005 9:24:36 AM

One solution to Cold Void's idea would be set up two entries for the ship and have two different types of guns. One entry would be the NPC version that would allow their shots to move around a bit more, and the other for players with a fixed weapon position. You should only need one model for it still, so it won't increase the size of your mod by much either to do it that way. Off course, this would also whack the difficulty of fighting NPC's up a few notches at the same time.

Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station

'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'

Try a little experiment.
Set you gun turn_rate
to
turn_rate = 250

and see if you still see this phenomenon.

Glock36
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