Battle Cry of Freedom - Developer Blog 31 Content - Bullet System

Bullets no longer leave the gun at random angles like some horribly inaccurate laser rifle as you might have experienced in earlier games of this period. Your shot will now fly in accordance with an advanced ballistics system we have been working on, which realistically simulates real life bullet physics. Artillery and small arms will also both use the same system. In real life there is no difference between a smoothbore cannon and a smoothbore musket, they both fire a ball of lead at high speeds and are both subject to the same laws of physics, a cannon can simply haul more lead through the air at once. Each weapon has unique settings for muzzle velocity and twist rate. A muzzle velocity deviation setting can be used to represent larger or smaller touch holes through which pressure can escape and make the gun less reliable (think flintlocks, for example). There is a random firing delay, that can be changed for each gun. Flintlocks will have a significantly longer delay than percussion rifles. Each gun also has a unique range of loadable ammo. With other 100 unique weapons currently implemented in the game, each with their own gameplay, it will take some time for the player to get known to all of them. In addition to that, ammo has a muzzle velocity modifier to represent quality of the ammunition. High quality ammunition does not modify the muzzle velocity, but low quality ammunition might lower it randomly and make the rifle less reliable. Each type of ammunition refers to a projectile, this is the bullet that leaves the barrel when fired. Bullets all have proper graphics and will visibly (to the more keen eyed amongst you) fly through the air in the game. Projectiles have many variables which are modeled by our ballistics system, such as drag coefficient, size and weight. When a projectile is fired, it spawns at the tip of the barrel and the system then calculates a trajectory, using the above settings as a base. It will also look for the local humidity, temperature, air density, gravity, wind direction and wind strength plus some other factors. Taking all of this into account, our system creates a fairly realistic bullet trajectory. The unique settings on each gun mean that all of them will perform differently, guns with a higher twist rate will be more accurate than guns with a lower twist rate. Smoothbore guns are therefore much less accurate on long ranges than rifles, but both smoothbore and rifled guns will still be deadly accurate on short distances. Accuracy of guns gets increasingly worse the further away the target is. Accurate long range shots become impossible with smoothbores, but rifles also loose a lot of their accuracy. All of the above is without any aiming sway, with that added into the mix, the player will quickly notice that accurately shooting long distances will require much more skill, experience and also a little bit of luck. Click on the image above to see a higher resolution copy of it. Additionally, upon impact with an object, the system checks whether the bullet will get stuck in, ricochet off, or pass through the object. Should it be able to pass through or ricochet, the system will calculate its new trajectory and velocity and keep going. Passing through and ricocheting is heavily Dependant on the impact angle and force. Larger calibers will have a much easier time passing through objects than smaller ones (Assuming they are traveling with the same velocity). Damage delivered to players or objects is equal to the velocity lost upon impact, multiplied by the size and weight of the projectile. Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/battlecryoffreedom/ Our Forums: https://www.fsegames.eu/forum/index.php