Weapon modding with EDGE question

[Tyockell]

Hey everyone, alright heres the Deal. I want to make the shotguns more realistic in Doom. My plan is to have the normal SHOT attack for A shotgun set to unlimited range.
Is it possible to also have another set of shot or a few set that would only be deadly within a short range.

Say 6-7 pellets at 4-8 HP's out to 20 feet and 4-5 pellets at 2-4HP's out to 40 feet. Just an example of course. I would be doing this in EDGE obviously.
Someone else came up with the idea and I think its possible to do somehow but so far I have not gotten it to work.
I have been trying to use custom attacks set with certain ATTACKRANGE around say 30 and the other group of shot is 45.

Then I put these into my weapons code using the EJECT script just like when you make weapons eject smoke or empty shells.

So far the shotguns still work with their primary ATTACK, its just that no short range shot comes out unless I change the ATTACKRANGE back to 1024.

There must be a way to make the SHOT harmless after a certain distance is there not?

Thanks for your time guys and I really hope someone can help me out on this.

[andrewj]

I think this is related to how DOOM (and EDGE) does hitscan detection.

Firstly the hitscan starts at the middle of the player thing, so you "lose" 16 units of the range then and there.

Secondly it tries to hit the thing by checking a line from one corner of the thing to the other (from a top-down 2D view). This can make you "lose" more of the range, the thing's radius (R) for the middle case (e.g. 20 units of a ZOMBIEMAN) and upto 2*R units for the worst case.

Hence the shortest ATTACKRANGE to guarantee to hit a ZOMBIEMAN at point-blank range would be 16+40 = 56 units.

EDIT: a third factor just came to mind. Since objects in DOOM are square, if a monster was standing next to you but on a diagonal angle away (i.e. the squares were touching at a corner) you would need another 40% of range to reach it. So you may need 72 units to guarantee to hit a ZOMBIEMAN at point-blank range.

[Tyockell]

Thank you very much!!, I see what the problem is now, I was keeping the ranges way to short.
I did not realise that just impacting a target took up that much range pointsl, Great info.
I will go back to experimenting and then let you know how it goes :).
Cheers.

[Tyockell]

Alright its working now, and quite well. I have each shotgun fireing two alternate pellet patterns.
One that is short range at about 350 and the medium range at about 500 or so. It works very well for making the shotguns deadly up close and just an annoyance at long ranges.

Its pretty amazing what you can do with edge.

[Nick Perrin]

Tyockell said:

Alright its working now, and quite well. I have each shotgun fireing two alternate pellet patterns.
One that is short range at about 350 and the medium range at about 500 or so. It works very well for making the shotguns deadly up close and just an annoyance at long ranges.

So I take it you figured it out then? :) Sounds good. I don't think I've ever used a shotgun with realisitic ballistics like that in ANY doom mod, EVER. It's going to force you to use the gun at close range, without destroying the usefulness of the weapon... smart stuff for specialized gameplay even forgetting about realism...

[Tyockell]

Nick Perrin said:

So I take it you figured it out then? :) Sounds good. I don't think I've ever used a shotgun with realisitic ballistics like that in ANY doom mod, EVER. It's going to force you to use the gun at close range, without destroying the usefulness of the weapon... smart stuff for specialized gameplay even forgetting about realism...

Yup I figured it out :), I don't know why I didnt check to see what the Attack ranges were for say the chainsaw or whatever which is around 70 I think.
I kind of thought perhaps there was a difference in the way the ranges was scaled for melee and hitscan weapons.
Anyway, yup it works very well and feels alot more realistic now.

I'd also like to try sometime and see if I can get the shotguns to fire a bunch of individual projectiles that would be affected by gravity and have a high enough speed that they go far enough. This way you would have to slightly lead your target and slightly aim up over distance which you deffinatly have to do with shotguns as the shot is only traveling at about 1/2 to 1/3 the speed of a rifle round.
I'll start experimenting with this soon.