I coded up a new version of shot_manipulator.h this morning which some people might be intersted in using. What it does is replace the calculation method for random shot point generation with a biased calculation that statistically puts more bullets in the middle of the circle than on the edges. It's probably closer to what a real gun does in terms of bullet spread, plus gives players more accuracy while at the same time allowing for "off" bullets at times. "Nerfing" a gun by just increasing the shot spread using a pure random shot pattern is too... shall we say random in the eyes of some :^)
The calculation is done by generating a random polar coordinate and converting it to X, Y - which introduces an interesting bias in the shots. Links to two articles that describe why at the end of email. Check out http://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/eps-gif/CircularDistribution_1000.gif for a picture that's representative of what it can do. The pattern on left is like what this code does, the pattern on right what Valve's default code does. The source code is available at http://www.orst.edu/~holtt/shot_manipulator.h You'll see that it has two versions of ApplySpread - one named ApplySpreadBIAS and the other ApplySpreadVALVE. ApplySpreadBIAS returns the biased shot pattern and ApplySpreadVALVE is the default purely random distribution one. ApplySpread is also defined, and just in turn calls either ApplySpreadBIAS or ApplySpreadVALVE. Check out http://home.wlu.edu/~mcraea/GeometricProbabilityFolder/ApplicationsConvexSets/Problem16/Problem16.html for an article describing methods of calculating random points in/on a circle which goes over how the bias can be introduced. Also see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DiskPointPicking.html as well. _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
