Random and DECORATE

Let me recap so far what I've learned. In ACS you can randomize stuff with random(lo,hi). Can this be done in DECORATE? Like this. Normally a military person with a chaingun would fire bursts of 3 - 7 shots at the time and then visually check if the target is killed. This is because all smoke makes it hard for the MiP to see the target. I was thinking about adding this behaviour to a HWD to make him more realistic.

I like the idea, but because of the way Doom does everything ELSE, I have suspicions about it being convincing. Three to seven shots, pause, move, reacquire, fire, pause... if he were able to take cover and things like that, or act in any smart way, that'd help, but this is pretty much just going to make the chaingunner a less formidable opponent. Compensate by using more of them. :D

However, the smoke idea is nice, too -- i like the idea of player weapons and enemy weapons firing smoke puffs upward to dissolve... Working the translucency might hurt a bit, unless used in GZDoom.

I'm gonna compensate thru enhanced firerate + very short delays. Shouldn't be to hard to do. Thru the delay the chaingunner will sprint a few steps to avoid your fire. then face the player and fire again. Naturally the delays will be random lengthed as well.

jobro said:

Let me recap so far what I've learned. In ACS you can randomize stuff with random(lo,hi). Can this be done in DECORATE? Like this. Normally a military person with a chaingun would fire bursts of 3 - 7 shots at the time and then visually check if the target is killed. This is because all smoke makes it hard for the MiP to see the target. I was thinking about adding this behaviour to a HWD to make him more realistic.

Modern firearms (i.e. since about 1900) use smokeless powders, there only is a small puff of vapor coming out of the end of the barrel. The real reason soldiers are trained to fire automatic weapons in bursts is because:

A. The recoil takes the gun off target.
B. Conservation of ammunition.

Most games have the rate of fire of automatic weapons severely reduced. Most assault rifles in real life have a cyclic rate of around ten rounds a second. Both submachine guns and true machine guns tend to be higher. Rotating miniguns as displayed in Doom (which are NOT man portable, despite how they are shown in pop culture) have a rate of fire of up to sixty rounds a second.

C. So the barrels don't melt.

I'm not a gun nut so I don't know for sure but I also think:
D. so rounds don't 'cook off' while in the receiver.

Shtbag667 said:

C. So the barrels don't melt.

I'm not a gun nut so I don't know for sure but I also think:
D. so rounds don't 'cook off' while in the receiver.

Yeah, those too. C isn't so much the melting as you can essentially heat treat the barrel, making it brittle and thus likely to explode in your face.

In D the round cooks off in the chamber. This is why many machine guns fire from an open bolt, as the round stay in the magazine or belt until the trigger is pulled, whenceforth it is chambered and immediately fired.

Cooks off in the chamber? So it explodes or what? I'm not really that much into guns so I dunno about this. Can someone explain a bit further? All I'm trying to do is to make the chaingun a bit more realistic.

Just out of curiousity: How much weights a Minigun in kilogram? I'm from sweden so we don't use pounds and stones. :D

Cooking off is when a round fires due to excessive heat without the trigger getting pulled.

Honestly I don't think there is anyway to make the chaingun realistic. I mean, despite the name it isn't even technically a chaingun, it's a minigun. Real life miniguns are only mounted on vehicles, as they are quite large and need a strong battery or generator to power the electric motor that spins the barrel assembly. Not to mention the prodigious amounts of ammunition they consume.

EDIT: http://world.guns.ru/machine/minigun-e.htm

This is a good overview of miniguns. The English can be kind of funky, as the page is written by a Russian.

Thanks for the explanation. Yeah I know russians have quite a funky english dialect.

Dr. Zin said:

Honestly I don't think there is anyway to make the chaingun realistic.

While everything you said is certainly true, you could do better than Doom's "chaingun" at least, which is a glorified pistol. A real minigun should at least spin up and down, have a better rate of fire, and not sound like a toy cap gun.

I second that, I wasn't intrested in modifying the chaingun in itself, rather enhance the chaingunner to fit some more realistic military style.

If realism is important the chaingun should be changed to a submachine gun. Then the similarity between it and the pistol makes more sense.

Realism isn't needed in Doom. It has destroyed far too many modern games. At least Doom's weapons are tailored to the needs of the game - something that can't be said for newer games.