agrash on 6/7/2009 at 16:15

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Kinda unrealistic but cool i guess.. °_°"
to bad the wto have the good parts so far like that special weapon & now the greenhouse mission

DDL on 7/7/2009 at 23:38

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Tis a variable in scriptedpawn: bTickVisibleOnly, and it's defaulted to true.

Basically, it means they only tick() (and thus do a ton of enemyhandling/reaction code) when they're visible (or rendered recently), and it saved a shitload of processor time, back when that was important. Plus it means that you don't always arrive after everyone's dead and the battle is over. But yeah: looks silly. Specially since they don't set up their weapons until that happens, so you get a ton of standing troops facing standing NSF who SUDDENLY pull out guns as if surprised and then go all rambo.

DDL on 1/6/2011 at 19:17

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Health values:

Every human in the game has separate health values for head, torso, arms (each) and legs (each), so six total health 'slots'. They also have a globla value called 'health'.

To calculate actual death, every time the NPC takes damage the various current location values are evaluated to produce a new value for the global health, and if this is zero or below: u be ded.

Actually, screw it, I'll post the code commenting (tis easier):



Also note that while they refer to the various values as having "100 points", this is the default for NPCs, not necessarily the actual values individual NPCs might have.

Actual health values are as follows (value applies to all locations except where indicated)

Troops and general civvies (UNATCO, NSF, MJ12, Riot Cops, bums, doctors etc): 100
Jojo: 150 (head) 100 (everywhere else)
MIBs: 350
WIBs: 300
Commandos: 250
Anna: 400 (head) 300 (everywhere else)
Gunther: 600 (head) 400 (everywhere else)
Walton Simons: 900 (head) 600 (everywhere else)

Think that's most of the important ones. Oh, and animals/bots have a single value which you simply damage by shooting them anywhere, and in the case of bots, also have an EMP hitpoints value which you damage with EMPnades (obviously):

CleanerBot: 20 (EMP: 20)
MilBot: 600 (EMP: 200)
WalkerBot: 250 (EMP: 100)
SecurityBot: 150 (EMP: 40)
Big SpiderBot: 400 (EMP: 100)
Small SpiderBot: 80 (EMP: 25)

Greasel: 100
Gray: 50 (I had no idea it was this low)
Karkian: 400
Baby Karkian: 75

So that's health values. I'll post this and then start on damage code, coz it's a big confusing mess.

Ostriig on 1/6/2011 at 21:24

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Damn, all this time I'd thought Deus Ex got it right. I can understand why it might make for a good approach to convey character progression to the player, but in a game that gives you direct control over the aim of your weapon it just seems incongruous as a concept - what does it simulate? The modification of accuracy makes sense because it compensates for the unrealistic pinpoint targeting provided by the mouse, you can say it simulates the natural sway of the arm. The modification of reload times also makes sense, it makes the character's supposed familiarity with the weapon a factor in this automated action, the performance of which is outside the player's direct control. But damage? What, are the bullets getting faster? I guess that, to its credit, I didn't really take note with Deus Ex at least. I do remember Fallout 3 rubbing me the wrong way with it.

But yeah, interesting to know, thanks DDL.

DDL on 2/6/2011 at 12:53

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Ok, takedamagebase() in scriptedpawn uses an int value for damage, so 3.6 would be treated as 4, as far as I'm aware (pretty sure unreal rounding is reasonably sensible).

Accuracy I'm not entirely sure about: they had to fudge an awful lot to make "what happens in game" somehow be reflected in "raw numbers you can understand".

Accuracy ranges from 1.0 (fucking terrible) to 0.0 (dead on). Weapons have a base accuracy, which can then be modified down by mods or skills (mods reduce by 0.1, skills by 0.0, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5 respecitively). AugTarget reduces by a further 0.2 at max.

If your inventory reports 100%, that means it's 0.0. If 0%, that means it's 1.0.

The way it is applied is as follows (and try not to laugh, coz it is really, really silly):

Calculate where bullet trace begins. This is the starttrace vector.
Now, move that point either up or down by 0-500 unreal units (determined randomly) multiplied by your accuracy.
Then move that point either left or right by 0-500 unreal units (determined randomly) multiplied by your accuracy.
Then extend that point forwards to the max range of your weapon, or 1024 units, whichever is larger.
This is the endtrace vector.

The gun then traces from start to end and applies damage to the first thing that line runs into.

So.

First thing to note: 500 uunits is a LOT: that's about 5 JC heights, or 30 feet.
Second thing: because the endtrace point is determined by weapon range, the longer this is, the more the deviation effects of inaccuracy are minimised. A short ranged weapon at 50% accuracy will be a LOT less accurate than a long ranged weapon at 50% acc.
A weapon with a max range of 1000000 or so would essentially make accuracy meaningless, since at that range small deviations in endpoint location are largely indistinguishable from 100% accuracy. The sniper rifle is 48000, the pistol 4800: max deviation angle is thus

Pistol: 8 degrees
Rifle: 0.8 degrees

Third thing: the "deviation range allowable" describes a square, not a circle as might be expected, so if your deviation is only straight up/down or straight left/right (which can happen, it's random after all), the above figures become 6 degrees and 0.6 degrees, respectively. Only if it's max up/down and max left/right does it become 8 degrees/0.8 degrees.

Silly, no?


Finally, sure, hitting the legs is fine. The way it's actually calculated (I shit you not) is raw distance between hitter and hittee, which (both being pawns) means roughly bellybutton to bellybutton distance. Pawn radius is 20 on average, meaning you have about 24 spare uunits of leeway to account for relative angle/distance between the two of you.

This theoretically means that if JC was a fat bastard, or was hitting a fat bastard (making the centre/centre distance greater than 64), it would be impossible to get stealth kills.

I only suggest hitting the torso because 140 damage to a 100 health torso will result in a kill/KO, whereas 140 damage to the legs will not (see damage calcs, prev post). If you've got some lowtech skill/aug combat, you might get away with leg shots: if you do more damage than they have legs (a sentence I never thought I'd write), the excess gets delivered to the torso.

A hit of 280 (max skill, or max augcombat, or a combination of lower values of the two) would take 100 points of the leg you hit, the next 100 points would be delivered to the adjacent leg (coz that's how it's coded), and the final 80 would be delivered to the torso, getting you above your magic "kill" threshold.


EDIT: almost forgot. Shotguns etc that are AOE_Cone weapons fire 5 traces. Each is treated in the same manner as a single shot. The inventory screen shows the summed damage, not the per shot damage, so 25 dam means each individual trace does 5 dam. This can be important for getting over door "mindamagethreshold" values.