very low velocity ammo - howto?

[mr burns 133]

Hey lads

Back in ArmA1 i tried making a paintballgun, but when i found that very low initspeed values do some funky stuff to the bullet trajectory - i shelved it.

Now we´re (there´s a team now) back at it in ArmA2, progressing at ludicrous speed - there´s just this issue with the funky bullets which might cause terrible problems.

Haven´t found the exact switching point yet, but roughly any value below 200 will cause the bullet to fly upwards instead of straight, it looks really stupid and of course also totally messes up your aim.

I´m trying to overcome this issue by setting higher airfriction, but somehow it hasn´t worked out as intended (yet).

Here´s a small excerpt from the wip config

	class cal68_Ball: BulletBase
{
	airFriction = 0.001000;
	typicalSpeed = 110;
	timeToLive=2;
	deflecting = 15;
	model = "\cal68w\paintball.p3d"; 
	tracerStartTime = 0.0001;
	tracerEndTime = 2.9;
};
class cal68_fieldpaint: cal68_Ball {
	hit = 1;
	indirectHit = 1;
	indirectHitRange = 2;
	airFriction = 0.007000;
};
};
class CfgMagazines {
/*extern*/ class CA_Magazine;
class cal68_basemag: CA_Magazine {
	tracersEvery = 1;
	initSpeed = 130;
};
class cal68_50FP: cal68_basemag {
	displayName = "50 Balls FP";
	ammo = "cal68_fieldpaint";
	count = 50;
	initSpeed = 150;
	picture = "\cal68w\t\fieldpaint_icon.paa";
};

Also there´s a HUGE ammount of lag when numerous paintballs are fired, especially if fired into the air. But that might just be the custom ball objects putting enormous strain on the CPU - unless someone knows better and is willing to tell me what went wrong.

On a sidenote:

I experienced the strangest thing ever with kronzkys target range. Activated bullet cam, fired a paintball round into the sky (to see if it really is dependant on timetolive) and after a few seconds the bullet cam went all shaky and boosted towards space. When the cam ended, back with my player model, i was suddenly stuck with 2 concentrical shadow layers - the 1st with a radius of about 10 meters and the 2nd about 25 meters around my player model. Ending the mission & restarting it didn´t help, had to restart ArmA in order to convince myself that i had´nt just fried my GFX card *phew*

The issue is reproducable, pictures and sample mission can be provided

Has somebody made similar findings, and/or even found solutions to simulate very low velocity bullets in ArmA?

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers

[Q1184 0]

1. Airfriction value should be negative. Positive values will be accelerating the bullet as it flies, which coupled with initial elevation angle (set with distanceZoomMin/Max in gun config) leads to the result you're experiencing.

2. As far as performance goes, it might be either due to an unoptimized ball model or the positive airfriction value making the engine go crazy :)

[mr burns 133]

Thank you thank you thank you

Negative airfriction did the trick, performance is good again too.

A huge step forward for the mod!

Also thx for pointing me at distanceZoomMin/Max :bounce3: