[UTRP] "UT 2341" port into Unreal Tournament

[papercoffee]

I'm about to ask you guys one thing.
What if i should make all the HitScan weapons (except Shock Rifle) projectile shooting?
I mean to let Enforcer, Minigun and Sniper rifle shoot projectiles (bullets), not trace?

I'm asking because projectiles are more interesting for work on and more configurable and editable comparing to Trace function.
I can make them so carefully that you will never found the difference if will not know that thitscan weps become projectile-shooting. And it's possible and more easy to add more FX stuff for projectiles.

How do you look at this? Asking for opinion of everybody who read this.

Well, the hit-scan system is maybe less resource intensive (just a guess) because imagine hundreds of projectiles come out of the mini-gun ...and that's only one player wielding this weapon ... more often are there 4-5 player using the mini-gun at the same time.
But as far as I know are projectiles not affected by a zone-portal ... you can't reach an enemy on the other side of a portal with a hit-scan weapon ...but you can with every projectile based weapon.

[Torax]

Well, the hit-scan system is maybe less resource intensive (just a guess) because imagine hundreds of projectiles come out of the mini-gun ...and that's only one player wielding this weapon ... more often are there 4-5 player using the mini-gun at the same time.
But as far as I know are projectiles not affected by a zone-portal ... you can't reach an enemy on the other side of a portal with a hit-scan weapon ...but you can with every projectile based weapon.

I see some kind of dilemma.

But i don't need to render all projectiles. I don't even need to set them as DrawType_Mesh.
For minigun, in your example, i can code it so it will render projectile only once per 3-5 shots, just like original minigun spawns tracers. Or even just spawn a tracer for visual effect only, when "real" bullets will be invisible, not rendered. That will save performance on slower machines i think. In that cause that most of performance drops appears when there are a lot of visuals displayed on the screen.

Correct me somebody where and if i'm wrong.

EDIT
And trace functions are also expensive for engine. I know that exactly from fairly old but still good tutorials which i'd found long time ago, when played mostly Unreal 1.

EDIT 2
I think we will need an experiment. I should code some stuff, and drop it for independent performance test.

And i still waiting for more thoughts about my question - make 3 of 4 hitscan weapons projectile-shooting.

[Feralidragon]

A projectile is several times overall more expensive than a trace, to not mention that using a projectile where a trace is more fit will severally hurt the gameplay experience.

A trace is just a rather straightforward native function call, which is not that expensive anymore (I do several in my mod for example, both "fast" traces and "slow" traces, the "slow" ones are Trace(...) ones).

A projectile however is a class, and when you spawn it you create an instance from it (occupying a good deal of memory and calling a huge chain of functions), and which has to be updated every single tick to update its physics and check collisions (making something close to traces itself), to not even mention that it has to be replicated to the client occupying bandwidth and contributing to a longer latency and passed to the render for rendering purposes (if it's not hidden).
And the fact that is an actor, also has even more implications than these.

Anything you can translate to a trace is preferable, even because you can make hundreds of them without any major sweat for the engine.

[Torax]

Ok.
In this cause, question revoked.

[Shadow]

Projectiles use tracing whatsoever, every actor does... but it's still more expensive spawning tons of projectiles USING collision again (traces), than just one "single" trace.

[Dr.Flay]

I thought I would poke around the Chaos mod, as the rifle in that has ammo you can hear.

snipe_sound.png

They went the obvious route, which for a low fire-rate weapon is fine (well no-one has complained over the last 15 years ).
This is the standard bouncing projectile.
To hear it properly for testing, stand facing a wall and shoot so the bullet comes back at you.
If you get it right and there is a parallel surface behind you, you can hear it as it bounces back and forth.
Get it wrong and you shoot yourself in the face. God mode is advisable

Could a mutator be made to add this to the normal rifle ?

[papercoffee]

Well ...I know that UT-Rockets from wormbo has this razor-rocket ...And I know a mod for bouncing rockets, I think it was called pool or something like this, have to search it.
But the rifle has no projectiles ...only hit-scan.

[Torax]

Could a mutator be made to add this to the normal rifle ?

It's only more possible and easy to do for a projectile. Mutator for original rifle one will require advanced coding, as code proposed by Feraly in earlier posts of this topic.
I played once with idea about making projectile shooting rifle. Even created workable code that allows projectile penetrate walls with defined thickness. It still had some bugs, but worked fine.
That was a part of work related to ideas about adding more realism for UT (realistical ballistics for bullets, bullet fly sounds, different sounds when you hit armoured and non armoured targets, air and water bullet trails and much more).

But i found once this ideas mostly useless....don't think that someone should found this stuff useful and interesting

[papercoffee]

Could a mutator be made to add this to the normal rifle ?

It's only more possible and easy to do for a projectile. Mutator for original rifle one will require advanced coding, as code proposed by Feraly in earlier posts of this topic.
I played once with idea about making projectile shooting rifle. Even created workable code that allows projectile penetrate walls with defined thickness. It still had some bugs, but worked fine.
That was a part of work related to ideas about adding more realism for UT (realistical ballistics for bullets, bullet fly sounds, different sounds when you hit armoured and non armoured targets, air and water bullet trails and much more).

But i found once this ideas mostly useless....don't think that someone should found this stuff useful and interesting

Well, for a pure sniper match would this be pretty cool ...but in UT is this useless because you will not notice it in a fight.
To much work for an unnoticeable improvement.

[Torax]

Some new WIP screenshots for you


Collaborative work of guy known as UnReAlEditOr (cant remember how he write letters in nickname ) and me.

[ASLY]

Oh woow, cool! Amazing job.

[Torax]

Oh woow, cool! Amazing job.

Tnx.
Will be more amazing for me to texture whole this stuff

[papercoffee]

Some details are unnecessary detailed ...the damper or the cooling ribs on the Flack Gun.
But some details are just right ...I like the Rocket Launcher version or the Redeemer, even the Pulse Rifle looks good.

Edit---------------
Oh ...noticed it right now ...where is the handhold of the Rocket Launcher?
Or the Flack Gun?

[Feralidragon]

Nice job, those are indeed some great models for UT weapons, but just 2 things I must point out though:
- It seems to me that the flak cannon is almost too "squashed" in height and too long in the X axis. If you check the original Flak cannon, you see that it occupies the space around it more equally, giving it a more robust weapon body.
- I don't like much the finish of the back of the Redeemer, it looks epic until you look at the back and it looks like it has been chopped off. It needs a better and more detailed finish imho.

[[rev]rato.skt]

Torax @ nice job man, congratulation!!