Jamming weapons

[dslyecxi 23]

I have a few concerns about this. Haven't had an opportunity to test it yet, but from the description there are a two items in particular that worry me.

1) The fact that you have to manually select the "Immediate Action" drill option from the action menu doesn't make sense. Why was this chosen/can you justify the choice with regard to realism? I'll save my thoughts for now so that my reasoning isn't an influence.

2) The fact that a slow reload animation is used for the immediate action drill is another confusing element of it. Is there no way to speed this up or change it to a faster animation, or do you think the slow method is justifiable somehow?

I am not against the idea of jamming weapons, don't get me wrong. I just don't currently like that #1 and #2 are seemingly issues with this method of doing it. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on them.

On a somewhat related topic, what's your personal firearms experience, Q1184?

[Abbe 0]

Puh...step down from that big white horse Dslyecxi...

1) If a weapon jams you gotta do something about it. It the mag gets empty you have to change mag. There should, in a game, be actions to do so. With this mod there are.

2) Maybe check this thread first: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=69721

I've got no problem with #1, a small issue with #2 since imho there should be several different animations regarding different weapons and what would most likely malfunction with that specific weapon and the action to fix it. Some animations would be pretty fast, like for m16, some animations would take quite a bit longer, like m240.

...and yes, I've had jams with the mentioned weapons.  

/Abbe

[dslyecxi 23]

Quote[/b] ]Puh...step down from that big white horse Dslyecxi...

If you want to read an attitude into it that wasn't there, fine... I won't follow you down that road, though.

Quote[/b] ]1) If a weapon jams you gotta do something about it. It the mag gets empty you have to change mag. There should, in a game, be actions to do so. With this mod there are.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The question is more oriented towards why it shows up in the action menu versus it showing up as an icon on screen, already selected.

[-Snafu- 78]

Quote[/b] ]Puh...step down from that big white horse Dslyecxi...

If you want to read an attitude into it that wasn't there, fine... I won't follow you down that road, though.

Quote[/b] ]1) If a weapon jams you gotta do something about it. It the mag gets empty you have to change mag. There should, in a game, be actions to do so. With this mod there are.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. The question is more oriented towards why it shows up in the action menu versus it showing up as an icon on screen, already selected.

The winking smiley suggests he was saying that comment in jest or in a light hearted way. No need to take it seriously.

Second of all if I remember correctly people complained about the action popping up in front of them so q11 switched it to the action menu (maybe I imagined it.). The answer is probably in this thread somewhere. Have a read through and see.

[Q1184 0]

1) The fact that you have to manually select the "Immediate Action" drill option from the action menu doesn't make sense. Why was this chosen/can you justify the choice with regard to realism? I'll save my thoughts for now so that my reasoning isn't an influence.

2) The fact that a slow reload animation is used for the immediate action drill is another confusing element of it. Is there no way to speed this up or change it to a faster animation, or do you think the slow method is justifiable somehow?

I am not against the idea of jamming weapons, don't get me wrong. I just don't currently like that #1 and #2 are seemingly issues with this method of doing it. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on them.

On a somewhat related topic, what's your personal firearms experience, Q1184?

1) I decided it was more appropriate due to the way fired eventhandler works in Arma. In simple words, my script launches each time a weapon fires. It creates a random number, and if it's less then the jamming probability, the weapon will jam. To sum this up, the weapon jams after a shot, not instead of it. It's allright if you fire with bursts, but if you fire with single shots with long pauses between them, a big message in the center of your screen telling you to unjam after one of your shots seemed to me a bit strange. I didn't want the player to know he has a jam until he tries to fire that next shot. I realize there can be very distinctive signs of a jam after a shot, like unextracted case, but there are also malfunctions you don't notice until you try to fire. So, in other words, I either have this message pop up and the player knows about the jam too soon, or I keep it to the action menu and some marines get angry at me because they can't unjam as quickly as they do in real life Which leads us to

2) I completely understand and share your thoughts about the animations and their speeds. They are inappropriate. They are slow. But they are the best I could think of, being relatively new to Arma editing. I put them in as placeholders from the beginning, and been busy with the actual script up until now. I will look into it and see if I can speed them up.

As for my firearms experience, it's pretty limited and includes occasional fun with my friends' 12 gauge shotguns and a 308 hunting carbine.  

[manzilla 1]

I agree with the animations being sped up and the action menu can be a bit difficult every once and a while. Although usually I'm on it pretty quickly unless I bump the mouse wheel. Although, I gotta say as far as realism I could give a shit. Just a personal opinion, it's a video game. Regardless of what people do it will never come close to mirroring my experiences and I don't think I'd want it to. But it's obvious others search for a realistic feel. That's cool with me since changes like these undoubtedly make the game much more fun.

But Q1184 I find it ridiculous people would get mad at you because it's not as quick as real life. If people actually get mad at you for something like that I feel terrible for you. I would hope people would step back and be grateful that you would take your own personal time to improve this game for us all... out of charity. If I was in your shoes, I'd tell em to F off and stop releasing things publicly. I thank you for not being as stubborn as myself.

That said. I hope the anger towards you will not continue but instead, those people provide constructive criticism as Dslyecxi. In my opinion, everything he said is something I hope you consider implementing.... and he wasn't a prick about pointing it out.

Anyway, thanks for these improvements. They make the game much more fun for me. I hope you continue on with this and I hope those Marines leave the anger on the range or in theatre. It would be a loss to us all if you got tired of it and stopped releasing improvements.

Just my 2 pence

Edit- Oh, by the way Dslyecxi, your website is fantastic. I've been a fan for a long while but until now, it never hit me to say anything. Long over due thanks

[dslyecxi 23]

Quote[/b] ], or I keep it to the action menu and some marines get angry at me because they can't unjam as quickly as they do in real life

I'm really not angry with you. Curious about how it works - yes. Angry? No. Unless you're talking about someone else, in which case I'm not familiar with the incident.

So, is there no way to prompt after "the loudest sound in a gunfight" happens? Meaning - you fire a few rounds, get a jam, there's no indication (no action menu option, no icon in the middle of the screen), and then when attempting to fire the next round you get an audible indication (ie: click) as well as an action prompt on your screen?

The problem is basically that, in reality, the reaction to "Weapon No Go Bang" is called "Immediate Action" for a reason - it happens instantly. Adding in the necessity to scroll to select an option to perform something that should happen instantly as a mindless, muscle-memory reaction to stimulus ("No boom"), serves to add a level of cumbersomeness to it all that distances it a bit from reality. If that's the best you can do, that's one thing, but if you think you can change it, it would certainly be worth looking into.

Re: #2, one thing that might be worth seriously considering is removing the animation from it entirely. I think that in this case in particular you really have to come to grips with the fact that forcing an animation, with ArmA's animation system, results in behavior that is counter to what you would see in reality. With ArmA2's animation system - ie reloading on the move - I can see it being acceptable. In ArmA, though, locking the player in place in yet another situation (aside from the countless ones already present, such as reloading) is painful and can result in death in many situations where a real person would have more flexible options available to them. At the very least it would be worth experimenting with a version that removes the animations to see how that influences the gameplay. I would side with gameplay over graphics in this case, and when ArmA2 comes out, you would be able to have the best of both worlds thanks to the animation changes.

Quote[/b] ]As for my firearms experience, it's pretty limited and includes occasional fun with my friends' 12 gauge shotguns and a 308 hunting carbine.

If you want any reference footage of immediate action applied to an AR-15 (or Glock 19 for that matter), let me know, and I can film some stuff next time I head to the range.

Also - when transitioning from immediate action to remedial action, the key difference should be (and excuse me if this is already in) that the magazine is not retained when doing remedial action. By the time you get to remedial, you assume that the magazine is potentially the source of your issues, so you rip it out and discard it before moving on to the next steps in remedial action.

Quote[/b] ]Edit- Oh, by the way Dslyecxi, your website is fantastic. I've been a fan for a long while but until now, it never hit me to say anything. Long over due thanks

Thanks, glad you like it. Sorry I haven't been able to put anything new up on there in awhile.

[cross 1]

How about adding a sound file? Something like;

"shit...jammed again..."

and you know its jammed and you can go to action menu to unjam..

[The_Captain 0]

A few thoughts:

1) Could the IA action be added upon the attempt to fire the next shot? IE, the weapon is considered "jammed" after the shot that actually jammed the weapon, but the player doesn't realize this until he takes his next shot. After attempting the next shot, the weapon enters the jammed state and the player is allowed to clear it with the unjam action. This could be when the icon pops up in the center of the screen, providing immediate feedback.

2) could the action be bound using actionkeys to an existing key? 'R' for reload is a possible candidate, if you could override the reload that happened when the player tried to clear the jam. (Or, heck, you could just have reloading be the trick that 'clears' the jam, and give the player the original magazine when the jam is cleared). This might make the unjamming process more fluid.

3) Could you start an animation, such as the reload animation, and cancel it partway through using switchmove "" or playmove ""? This might speed up the process if arma doesn't try to finish the old animation...

Random thoughts..

[wipman 1]

Hi, about the jammings is some weapons... sometimes isn't really

about the dirt/mud/sand inside the chamber or in the the bolt.

Check this out:

CETME Ameli 5.56x45

Seems that that LMG have serious construction problems and

materials too, that makes it less reliable than a junkie with the

monkey; assaul rifles like the Cetme L/LC/LV thrown so much

dirt in to the chamber that was really weird to don't have to

unjamm 'em after fire just 2 or 3 mags; like 4 jamms per each

two or three mags, apart of the wreckless materials of the shit

of cetme's that finaly were constructed and sent to the companys.

This kind of deadly failures wasn't pressent on the 1St series,

with HK style sights; they only had small problems with the

M16 x30 rounds mags (too much use) apart of the mag springs

that loosen resistence/force with the use. That even with just

20 rounds on 'em... don't had force enough to puch up the next

round into the chamber on time. Let's C ya

[Q1184 0]

Ok, thanks everybody for the input and suggestions. I tried a couple of things, so I can answer some questions:

Quote[/b] ]So, is there no way to prompt after "the loudest sound in a gunfight" happens? Meaning - you fire a few rounds, get a jam, there's no indication (no action menu option, no icon in the middle of the screen), and then when attempting to fire the next round you get an audible indication (ie: click) as well as an action prompt on your screen?

Quote[/b] ]1) Could the IA action be added upon the attempt to fire the next shot? IE, the weapon is considered "jammed" after the shot that actually jammed the weapon, but the player doesn't realize this until he takes his next shot. After attempting the next shot, the weapon enters the jammed state and the player is allowed to clear it with the unjam action. This could be when the icon pops up in the center of the screen, providing immediate feedback.

The problem is, when you attempt to fire the jammed weapon (which is an empty weapon with no magazine in it), this is not considered a shot, and therefore fired eventhandler doesn't set off. This means I can't determine when the player "pulls the trigger". It might be possible to detect mouseclick using "displaySetEventHandler", but it only appears to be working with keyboard keys. So no, I'm afraid it's either impossible or requires some specific knowledge I don't posess. As for the click, it's there, the default BIS drySound.

Quote[/b] ]Re: #2, one thing that might be worth seriously considering is removing the animation from it entirely. I think that in this case in particular you really have to come to grips with the fact that forcing an animation, with ArmA's animation system, results in behavior that is counter to what you would see in reality. With ArmA2's animation system - ie reloading on the move - I can see it being acceptable. In ArmA, though, locking the player in place in yet another situation (aside from the countless ones already present, such as reloading) is painful and can result in death in many situations where a real person would have more flexible options available to them. At the very least it would be worth experimenting with a version that removes the animations to see how that influences the gameplay. I would side with gameplay over graphics in this case, and when ArmA2 comes out, you would be able to have the best of both worlds thanks to the animation changes.

Quote[/b] ]3) Could you start an animation, such as the reload animation, and cancel it partway through using switchmove "" or playmove ""? This might speed up the process if arma doesn't try to finish the old animation...

I'll remove the animations for IA in the next version. I tried it ingame, and it feels allright. At least you can move while performing it lol.

Quote[/b] ]2) could the action be bound using actionkeys to an existing key? 'R' for reload is a possible candidate, if you could override the reload that happened when the player tried to clear the jam. (Or, heck, you could just have reloading be the trick that 'clears' the jam, and give the player the original magazine when the jam is cleared). This might make the unjamming process more fluid.

You read my thoughts. After reading Dyslexci's post, in an attempt to speed up the immediate action I bound the 'R' key to it (and to remedial action too), so now if you experience a stoppage, just hit 'R' and try again. I think it's immediate enough The actions can still be selected through the actions menu. I set their priority so they always appear on top of the list, so double-tapping middle mouse button is also enough to activate them.

Quote[/b] ]Also - when transitioning from immediate action to remedial action, the key difference should be (and excuse me if this is already in) that the magazine is not retained when doing remedial action. By the time you get to remedial, you assume that the magazine is potentially the source of your issues, so you rip it out and discard it before moving on to the next steps in remedial action.

I implemented it for assault rifles. Would be strange to discard the whole belt if your MG jammed I think.

Quote[/b] ]If you want any reference footage of immediate action applied to an AR-15 (or Glock 19 for that matter), let me know, and I can film some stuff next time I head to the range.

Well, you've already made quite an exhaustive instructional video which I happened to see Btw, in this mod handguns don't jam (they're used too rarely to justify the extra work of including them).

Quote[/b] ]How about adding a sound file? Something like;

"shit...jammed again..."

and you know its jammed and you can go to action menu to unjam..

I don't know, let the player say those words instead of his character

Wipman: Nice gun lol. Why didn't they buy MG36 to couple with their G36's?

[Inkompetent 0]

Well, on the sound part a simple click would do nicely, and possibly the sound of a mantle movement at the 'immediate action'. What weapon the sound comes from doesn't matter much, but it's some kind of feedback to the player, and with a simple pause in script you can wait with putting the ammo back into the rifle until the sound of the immediate action is finished.

I don't think that sound should be too hard to come by, even though I don't know how easy/hard it is to fix it up good enough for ArmA.

[manberries 0]

handguns jam regularly as well but 98% of the time its a shell casing caught in the breach. the better justification is that pistols are more rarely used in arma than they even jam lol so no worries about them. glad to see u have updated ideas involving the unjamming process a good response to the community and a good starting idea will leave u as one of the favorite modders of this community. keep up the good work and thanks for ur efforts

[wipman 1]

Hi, i guess that our "army" don't bough MG36's because of the budged,

only remain few Ameli's in the army, that one of the video seens to

be from la legión; but they should had been already replaced, i guess

that they've some arround there in some companys, now we use

the FN-Minimi in the Marine Infatry as LMG and the MG3 as GPMG.

Let's C ya

[The_Captain 0]

Re: Barrel overheating

Will it be coded roughly so that:

each fire of the weapon increases the "heat" of the weapon, while an equation lowers the heat by a steady rate after the firing? Will a higher heat amount increase the likelihood that the weapon "runs away" on its own, or 'jams'? Will a critical heat amount cause the weapon to be inoperable until the barrel is changed, or even permanently inoperable?

I'd think these two would be good starting points, while barrel changes should be fairly easy to code as long as the gunner has unlimited barrels, or is assumed to be switching between two (ie, no barrels stored in inventory). A "barrel change" action similar to the remedial action, with a reload animation, would seem appropriate.

I know from anecdotal evidence that the M60 (original model) was suggested to have a barrel change if 200 rounds were fired in a minute, and a burst length of 5-7 was the most an operator should fire at once. The M60E3 with a lighter barrel needed a change after 100 rounds. I don't have any data offhand for the M240, pk, or M249, but I'd assume they'd have similar operating parameters:sustained rate of fire at 100rpm, and rapid at about 200 (changing barrels every minute or so). Afaik, once a weapon like the M60 starts running away (chamber is hot enough to cook off rounds), the weapon will continue to overheat as more rounds are fired and the small parts inside (sears, springs, etc) may melt, seizing the weapon.

200 rounds a minute, with 5 round bursts, translates to 40 bursts in a minute. With a cyclic rate of 600rpm (550-650), a 5 round burst takes a half second to fire (10 rounds/sec). With 40 bursts in a minute, that means a new burst is fired roughly every 1.5 seconds. On average, this would mean .5 seconds of firing with 1 second of cooldown. After 40 iterations, the weapon's heat level would be raised to near the critical amount that would suggest a barrel change. (this could be represented by the weapon smoking)

I think from here an equation could be found that would provide the amount of heat per shot, that given the average parameters above, would lead to a critical heat value being reached after one minute. I'd guess each weapon would need an amount of "heat" that each bullet added, a rate the heat would decrease (linear, geometric, exponential), and critical values for weapon stoppages.

Using the M60 example, if each round added 1 "heat", and 100 heat was a "good idea" for having a barrel change, and firing at an average of 100 rpm in 5 round bursts would leave the heat at acceptable levels (close enough to 0), but firing at 200 rpm in 5 round bursts would raise the heat to the critical value after 1 minute, then you could assume the barrel would cool completely after waiting 2.5 seconds after firing, and the barrel would cool partway waiting 1 second after firing.

The simple equation I cooked up is that each bullet adds 1 heat, and the barrel cools 1.5 heat per second (or .15 every 1/10th a second). One shot every 1.5 seconds would leave your barrel completely cool, while firing 100 continuous rounds would leave you at 85 heat (You'd need to wait almost 2 minutes for the barrel to cool back to 0 after that). Firing three belts in a row with 4 second reload pauses would leave you at something like 350 heat. To suggest players don't just fire on cyclic, maybe this hypothetical M60 would have overheating issues around 100, and start breaking down around 150-200 heat.

I also think all rifles should be subject to overheating, not just MG's. Rifles have lighter barrels, can't have barrel changes, but the need to reload does limit their rate of fire. A hot barrel (esp for rifles) should increase the chances of a weapon malfunction.

Just some ideas for overheating. The numbers are just wild guesstimates, of course. I agree that actual data should be used for determining what rate different weapons heat up when fired, after how many rounds they might seize up, and how long it takes them to dissipate heat. I know, for example, that some modern MG's have special barrel designs to allow much longer periods of sustained fire (anyone seen the youtube video of the mk43 firing 800 rounds in cyclic? woowee...)

[Makake 0]

I still get errors "can't find sound: Jam..." [something].

I don't use GMJ sights addon. What's wrong?

[Q1184 0]

I still get errors "can't find sound: Jam..." [something].

I don't use GMJ sights addon. What's wrong?

Can you give me the list of the addons you use? As well as the mission you played? I bet either one of the addons or the mission had a CfgSounds section which of course overrode mine  

@The_Captain

Thanks, i've been also thinking along these lines. The rough data for M249 and M240 is available in respective FM's, but sadly it's pretty hard to find equations or graphs that would describe the correlation between the rate of fire and the barrel temperature. I'll experiment with different sorts of dependencies (starting from linear). I'm not sure it's possible to make a "runaway weapon", but occasional single "cookoffs" are easy to do. I definitely want to implement smoke, but I know nothing about effects, so we'll see.

[Inkompetent 0]

Can't one just write a loop for runoffs that uses the fire action until the magazine is empty?

[Q1184 0]

Probably, I'll think about it when I'm done with the basics  Btw, good news - by trial and error I managed to squash that sound bug. If you make a CfgSounds section in your config.cpp, better not use the line

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">sounds[] = {};

at all.

[dmarkwick 261]

Probably, I'll think about it when I'm done with the basics Btw, good news - by trial and error I managed to squash that sound bug. If you make a CfgSounds section in your config.cpp, better not use the line

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">sounds[] = {};

at all.

Oo, that might fix a sound problem I had too

[Second 0]

Hard to say about barrel heating and it affecting to malfunctions.

Here's data what i've heard from... How do you say it in english... Officer who takes care of repairing arms:

PKM: shot about 3000 rounds. No remarkable changes in barrel or in lock and no malfunctions.

7.62 LMG 62 (using 7.62x39 round, not uber reliable weapon): Theoretical rate of fire 1000-1100 round per minute. about 2500 rounds fired. No changes in the barrel or in lock, atleast that much that barrel should be wasted, and no malfunctions, besides user's mistake when loading (feeding) new belt to weapon. I quess these weapons (2) were pretty new when tests were conducted, as when getting more used it gets much more unreliable (if some finn notices this post).

Both weapons were shot without changing barrel and using almost maximum rate of fire.

[manberries 0]

do u mean shot 2500 rounds continuously or over a test period of time?

[The_Captain 0]

Though this weapon is .50 caliber (solenoid fired version of the M2), it seems to have some good overheating information:

M296 .50 Cal. (12.7mm) MACHINE GUN: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/equip/m296.htm

The key bits I picked up were that for this weapon, 50 rounds in a minute is the normal maximum, and by firing 150 rounds in a minute, you must wait ten minutes for the weapon to cool. So firing too much over the maximum means you need to wait a long time for the cooling process... 50 rounds, you should wait the remainder of a minute, but 150 rounds, you should wait ten...

I think 7.62 weapons are more forgiving, but there's also a good description of the effects of overheating: bore wear, accuracy loss, weapon seizure, and rounds cooking off...

[manzilla 1]

Hard to say about barrel heating and it affecting to malfunctions.

Here's data what i've heard from... How do you say it in english... Officer who takes care of repairing arms:

PKM: shot about 3000 rounds. No remarkable changes in barrel or in lock and no malfunctions.

7.62 LMG 62 (using 7.62x39 round, not uber reliable weapon): Theoretical rate of fire 1000-1100 round per minute. about 2500 rounds fired. No changes in the barrel or in lock, atleast that much that barrel should be wasted, and no malfunctions, besides user's mistake when loading (feeding) new belt to weapon. I quess these weapons (2) were pretty new when tests were conducted, as when getting more used it gets much more unreliable (if some finn notices this post).

Both weapons were shot without changing barrel and using almost maximum rate of fire.

Huh? If that is consecutive that is utterly incredible.

[manberries 0]

i dont think its continuous because the m60e4 is praised for firing 800 rounds continuously without overheating. I believe he is speaking about barrel life, and the effects of constant overheating of a gun.