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Alot of NICE feats for UT99!?!

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Even though bullet penetration would be cool, I dont really think it would work out so hot.

Even if it could be perfected to run realistically and not make the game lag our of control, I dont really feel that allowing players to randomally shoot through different types of walls would be in the best interest of gameplay.

Sure it would be fun and cool, but then I try and imagine a game where it would be possible, and what I see is a tangled mess of random players spraying entire clips into walls hoping to kill someone, I see players trying to hide to get the jump on someone or use some form of tactic but getting easily killed despite their best efforts, I see wallhackers having the best time of their lives once they start to beat the VAC anti-cheat, and I see rational and normal tactics being thrown out the window for somthing that, to me, looks more akin to Quake 3 or even CS. (From what I've heard about it.)

I would love to see a mod or mutator, I even suggest that you guys at TW make the mutator yourselves, but as for a permanent game addition, I dont think this game is right for somthing that can change the game so drastically.

But as for the other Infiltration suggestions such as freeaim-ironsights and weapon models colliding with the environment, THOSE suggestions sound absolutily SWEET and just what RO could use that wouldn't change the game too much.

In the name of gameplay, Isaak signing off.
 
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Geogob, why not work up a mutator that would include a basic ballistic system? I'm sure there are several server admins that would be willing to run it to see how well it handles 'in the real world'. There's a huge difference between an isolated test on one machine and running something on a server that's sending information all over the world.
 
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Geogob, why not work up a mutator that would include a basic ballistic system? I'm sure there are several server admins that would be willing to run it to see how well it handles 'in the real world'. There's a huge difference between an isolated test on one machine and running something on a server that's sending information all over the world.

Do you mean penetration system? The game already included a full ballistics system.
 
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Do you mean penetration system? The game already included a full ballistics system.
I guess this depends on what you define a "full ballistics system" as.

Red Orchestra models basic external ballistics. It has extremely limited modeling of terminal ballistics. Thus, saying that it includes a "full ballistics system" is misleading because it doesn't model the true behavior of a bullet from the time it leaves the barrel until the point at which it comes to rest. The RO model is that once a bullet hits a surface, that's it. It does damage at the point of impact and does not ricochet or penetrate. Tank shells have better terminal ballistics, but aside from them there is nothing to speak of aside from the superficial tracer ricochet effect that is absolutely harmless and purely a visual touch.

Red Orchestra models bullet drop due to gravity and wind resistance, and time-of-flight. That's good, and I'm always happy to see a game model that, but to say that that is a "full ballistics system", as I said, is misleading.
 
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Tak: A huge part of the INF community is pressing me to work on finishing the experiment I was working on with bone-like hit detection system, advanced external and terminal ballistics and so on.

As I don't really play RO anymore, I hardly see why I should do what you suggest. Although I feel compelled to buy RO and take the challenge do a quick mutator to demonstrate basic penetration :D

Ramm: What does "full ballistics" imply. First I assume you are refering to external ballistics. So what does full mean? Drop due to gravity and speed reduction? More?

EDIT: Damn I always get instaposted on BUF, and now here too... bleh you Dslyecxi :p

Just a quick note, I worked out all the math and have pseudo code ready for the experiement I was working on regarding external ballistics. My idea was to implement a complete external ballistic system. This was originally planed for UT/INF, but I might keep it in my drawer for the next great modern tactical shooter.

That would include a fully vector-based model, gravity, stability due to giroscopic effect, change of path and drag due to loss of stability, wind effect, air density effect (pressure, humidy and temperature). All these parameters would influence speed and postion, taking into account bullet type and aerodynamic characteristics. All this together would eventually influence penetration and wounding. This is the level of realism I am looking to implement in either as a coder or 3rd party coder in a realitic tactical shooter. I might even push the idea forward in INF if the INF team doesn't get back together for a great Unreal 3 project.

Somehow, judging from other posts (please tell me if I am wrong), I doupt we have the same definition of "full ballistics". ;)
 
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Having shot a scoped rifle (one of the most accurate models in the world infact) I can tell you that it is really the one thing in ROO that I find too easy. Sniping is so damned much harder than any other kind of shooting, even when resting. I could care less about penetration, because ATM it seems sort of pointless at this point. Wait for a future game. "Real" penetration is so much more complicated and IRL it is pretty amazing to see what happens when for example a bullet goes through a tree or a metal bar and then hits the ground (I actually found one :x). Also dont forget that it goes hand in hand with a ricochet system (and if you're REALLY serious, a bullet deformation and air resistance system). So get to it if you want to see it, or just wait and see what comes without demanding something.
 
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First and foremost, thnx devs for taking the time to go "in-depth" about penetration with the ballistics system. Like Teq said the crossfire of posts have opened up a small window on how you guys work and that's always interesting to come upon.

Secondly, to Geogob, I know I wouldn't be the only one interested in seeing a penetration mutator being implemented into the game! You seem to know what your talking about, and it would be a pretty relevant/possibly revolutionary mutator if you got it to work.

And finally to Isaak Johnson's reply, I see what your saying, I even thought of the same "gamey" scenarios happening with a fully working penetration system. But in all honestly, IMHO it's worth the risk, because it comes with it's own degree of realism. And that degree of "realism" becomes subjective again. I personally would rather like to see it applied because even though there might be some nut hiding in a room with an MG42 spraying through walls, doors etc. that wouldn't be an upset for me, it's just more immersive for me because I know that this guy is firing a gun, which in turn fires a round, that could go through material "x" and still be lethal. Furthermore I would appreciate the fact that the ballistics was modeled so accurately. For me not adding this feature in because of fears of balance and such is being more "gamey". A good player would try to never get himself into a position like that anyways.

Aren't you/anyone else sick of the whole "I'm safe in this room, I can't get shot through walls, better go prone and camp the door, watch windows for nades scenario" I know I am. Situations like these are crutches and everybody knows it, like when your hiding behind that picket fence and you know your safe, from that one guy who is firing at you. It's sorta being cheap without purposley trying to be just that. I would like to see that change, at least experience what it would be like.
 
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New to RO, maybe... but revolutionary, no.

What I want to do is only bring one step further what was already implemented in Infiltration (again, i take this as an example as this is where I have the most experience). INF already has basic external ballistics, penetration and riochets. All I did up to now is push this system a bit further. My future project ideas are to push it even further, to be as close to real life physics as possible. But it's already going well into that direction, so I wouldn't call it revolutionary.
 
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One of the key points is also thinking about what is COMMERCIALLY viable and worthwhile. I know everyone hates the thought - but if we don't make money, we don't stay in business and RO dies.

There is, therefore, the question of "is it worth it?"

Our view(s) run something like this on the topic:

1. We want the game to be as realistic as possible, while still being playable.
2. There is very limited return (money) in building complex stuff that only 5 people will even notice, never mind understand.
3. We also have to load-balance: there is a ton of things it might be fun to implement, but it all adds up to more load on servers that are already stretched.

So - ballistics.

We don't model internal ballistics - realistic, but an utter waste of time. I'm sure some people might like us to, but we simply aren't going to bother.

We model the major characteristics of external ballistics, including speed, air density/temp and round shape (as characterised by the ballistic coefficent) and some other odds and sods that John can remember. We don't bother with the odd first few milliseconds before the bullet fully stabilises in flight, nor do we model the effects as the round starts to destabilise again down-range. Firstly, these effects are really only of interest at very long ranges, or to specialists. 99.9% of the playing public (and shooters) will never even notice the millimetric differences involved. Some way off in the future, we may add some additional detail on large-sized rounds at long ranges - but we need ranges of well over 1,000 metres for those to become even vaguely visible, even with an 88mm round. And we probably aren't going to get on to such ranges until we get on to UT3. Another consideration is that we are playing this on screen, not with the naked eye - there is more than enough inaccuracy in a single pixel at that range to make the exercise pretty pointless. We'll see in the future :)

And terminal ballistics... we provide a basic level of terminal ballistics modelling for main gun rounds - more than most other games have ever done. We don't bother with anything clever on small arms rounds. Fun as it might be to model the tumbling of a round when it hits "meat", the glancing and shattering, it simply isn't worth the CPU cycles. For game purposes we are only interested to see if the hit is disabling or not. We have stated many times that we will continue to improve on the terminal ballistics/damage model for main gun rounds. It will take time - we have to find ways to do it without crippling the servers which, frankly, is the biggest challenge. We have to do it bit-by-bit, test it out, blah blah. We're not a big development house with $5m and 2 years to play with.

So - if there are aspects that people would like to model - go do it! You'll find plenty of the source code around to play with (not for the engine - Epic obviously don't allow it!). Just because we didn't encourage people to mod-the-mod years ago has nothing to do with today's situation. In case people hadn't noticed, we've got Valve to list RO mods in Steam - we WANT people to mod the game.

And penetration of objects: of course it can be done. But, as the engine doesn't have it built in, it is a complex job to code WELL. As John says, it is also potentially a big load on server CPUs. Again - if you think it can be done easily, then go do it. If it is easy, light load on CPU and really works well in the game, we'd probably buy it off you :p

Summary: it is very easy to talk of building many of these things in - but we have to live with the commercial realities. Our internal aim is to follow a "90-10" rule - make the game "90% realistic" for 10% of the cost (and this hasn't been a small 10% over the last couple of years!) - the remaining 10% would cost a further 90% and we'd go broke!

Don't get us wrong: some of these things would be fun to do - just that we don't think they'd add enough to the game to pay back. Therefore they are actually best done by those who don't NEED to make it pay back - go make the mod :)

Edit: simple definition of terms:

1. Internal ballistics - the performance of the round in the barrel
2. External ballistics - the performance of the round from when it leaves the barrel until impact
3. Terminal ballistics - the performance of the round after it impacts whatever it hits; this is the charming catch-all term for damage modelling, including how a round rips up bits of people...
 
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Tak: A huge part of the INF community is pressing me to work on finishing the experiment I was working on with bone-like hit detection system, advanced external and terminal ballistics and so on.

As I don't really play RO anymore, I hardly see why I should do what you suggest. Although I feel compelled to buy RO and take the challenge do a quick mutator to demonstrate basic penetration :D
Someone get that man a copy!

This thread... wow... I didn't know INF and RO players and devs hated eachother THAT much.

Anyway, the hype about INF needs to be tamed down a bit. I played it for quite some time and my personal judgement is that, unfortunately the game is not much more than the sum of its qualities: Sure it has penetration, x-times the speed modes of RO (half of which should be removed for playabilites sake imo), breathing, exploding ammo (why?) etc... but it still feels no more realistic than RO. People that love INF often seem to think that the harder a game gets and the more controls it has the more realistic it is. I beg to differ. While INF's recoil seems about right concerning the amount of kick, its non-recovering recoil system is plain unrealistic. The oh-so cheered for free-aim in iron sights is plain bull**** too, but I don't want to go into detail. I often asked myself, why was this implemented? And my only conclusions are: a) someone with no clue about firing guns made that feature, or b) someone thought he needed to make the game harder and more challenging for the elitists... you choose.

Even so, some of the features ARE really nice, but mixed together they still make a somehow mediocre game. INF is like I said before, the sum of it's ingredients.

BUT, to be honest, at times I don't feel much different about RO.

I started with version 1.1. From the first few moments of playing I thought: "Wow, this has potential!"

Then, they kind of went the same road as INF, albeit more successful. Feature after feature came: free-aim, sway, inertia, tanks...
But in my opinion there's still something fundamentally flawed with the game system. RO, just like INF, still plays like every other 3D shooter. Is it that notorious fear of death that RO lacks? Should we have limited player lives? I really don't know.


However, I'm glad that the devs DO NOT continue the road of implementing feature after feature in hope to accidently open pandora's box. That what INF tried and they failed.

Focussing on fixing up the existing bugs and making the game more fluid is the much better choice.
 
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..RO, just like INF, still plays like every other 3D shooter. Is it that notorious fear of death that RO lacks? Should we have limited player lives? I really don't know... That what INF tried and they failed..
Enough of these Inf vs RO statements that are incorrect anyway. Inf archieved what it ment to archieve, same goes for RO. The RO devs made it to what it is now and, fair enough, made it salesworthy. Inf dev's made exactly what they wanted and we've been playing it since <1999 now. The only thing that failed is your perception of Inf.

Anway, there is finally a more detailed discussion on certain aspects like penetration going on, or has been going on anyway, enough of the bashing.

Geo is very talented and a big contributor in our community. I wish he'd feel better about RO because then we would already have had some nice mutators to play with. Who knows what the future will bring..
 
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I beleive that Penetration would add the following to the game:

1) Increased suppression effect -
Due to the fact that you are only safe behind solid material.
2) Make sure you differ cover from conceilment - You are not safe behind a wooden wall anymore.
3) Tactical suppression fire - You can fire at wooden walls and be sure to supress the enemy inside or deny a passage for him.
4) Infantry will cooperate with armour for cover and protection - Infantry will defend armour from panzershrek and armour will work as a shield for the infantry.
5) Tanks and MG suppression will be key factors for assault & defense - If the enemy has a MG firing at you, and you dont, your team will have a hard time advancing.
6) Penetreation will defeat rambo behaviour
7) No "clipping" in windows (only gun is shown and the gunner can shoot you, but you cant hit him.
With penetration you simply shoot through the wall he is leaning behind.
8) Tank shells will be devastating!! Nobody will feel safe in a buildning with the 88 firing at you.
So if you see a tank, you have to hit the floor
9) Game speed will slow down abit, people will think abit more before they make a move.


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Theese ideas are the major positive factors I can up with right now.
If TWI fix the MG according to the public wishlist in addition to this, I think we will be able to
experience a pretty realistic and adrenaline filled experience on the battlefield in the future :)
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Negative effect I predict: ( but can be countered with some smart sollutions)

1) At small maps people will fire at buildnings/walls where they know alot of enemy has to pass, making it impossible to enter or cross that bottleneck, and the enemy will not be able fire back.
2) The tanks will be so powerfull that if a noob is controlling your team's tank, and the enemy have a experienced driver, the enemy will have a great advantage in terms over supression and freedom of movement.
3) MG may be overpowered.at certain maps (where the majority of buildings and hideouts is wood.
Some of you mentioned a few negative issues, so I dont bother to repeat them.

What do you think guys?
 
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Carefull with penetration. It's not something as easy as saying "bullets will go through everything".

Shooting with a machine pistol or with a .50 high power rifle doesn't have the same effect penetration wise. There is no way to viably implement a penetration system without taking into account factors like bullet energy, bullet type an caliber into account. Material type is also crucial to a viable penetration system. You can't expect a wooden door to give the same level of "protection" as the equivalent thickness of armor plating.

If you do not make it right, it's going to be use abusively. If you do not make it right, it's going to be a major source of "BS!" calls in your game.
 
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Enough of these Inf vs RO statements that are incorrect anyway. Inf archieved what it ment to archieve, same goes for RO. The RO devs made it to what it is now and, fair enough, made it salesworthy. Inf dev's made exactly what they wanted and we've been playing it since <1999 now. The only thing that failed is your perception of Inf.
Sure live in lala-land:rolleyes: . The mod didn't catch on with enough players. It never had a real base besides very few die hard fans. And don't tell me that was intentional or due to the game being realistic or something. Because other games like OFP and Rainbow Six series did a lot better and realism mods like RO did a lot better too, even though a lot less people played UT2k3 than the original.
 
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Wow this thread grew lots!


Yes, I meant penetration, and that's cool Geo. I thought the name was familiar (I played INF for a while, never did a whole lot on the forums though :))

If you have some time in the future though, I do hope you consider looking at RO's code and finding the magic to make a well formed penetration system happen. Someone with some extra cash get that man a copy :)
 
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