Forum Gun-sight Section

[Randy1]

Would it be possible to give Gun-Sights its own section on the forum?  Like custom sounds, gun-sights have quite a few contributors and followers.

[Lab Rat 3947]

+1 


LtngRydr

[Tinkles]

+1

Tinkles

<<S>>

[wpeters]

+5

[bustr]

Bluberry would win the most artful and artistic in the game. Anyone who can make the Duke into a gunsight as a motivational wins the artful crown.

I doubt my Historic would be of use in that forum. Most players are looking for someone's tried and true point and click solution to this game's physics versus being forced to actually practice gunnery, glide bombing and rocketry. That's understandable with the limited time many have other than to login and start shooting.

The manuals from which I researched my Historic reticle all state the need to practice at some point. Even after enough theory and pictures to turn a robot into a gunnery master.

I freely admit after going through the trouble to produce point and click gunsights through 8 generations of them. I was the only person in my squad who could point them and go click because I worked with them so often during development. Even Messiah had to modify one to fit his mental picture of the game versus my calculations from the game. At this point, I'm not sure if he even uses modified, any of my Gen(X) or Acm(X) gunsights.

Could be an interesting forum to see and share how others perceive Hitech's physics described visa the coad as collimator optical properties. Might even be able to collect together the ww2 principles of "the why" associated with reticles in one place now. And the results of using the offline target to gather the data and present it to help newer players more easily visualize their gunnery rather than me spewing garbage like this at them:

 xMil @ ydistance = aWingspan

xMil radii @ yholdover dependant on speed and G(of circle radii described by your fighter) = BOOM

Ever wondered why reticles were constructed the way they are? And absolutely meaningless to pointing and clicking to get BOOM in our game.

The real question would be: If Hitech made such a forum available. Would anyone be willing to give up their perceived secrets to everyone else?

My squad has joked they don't like that I've given out my Gen and Acm gunsights to players not in the squad. In this game a good shot can use anything as a gunsight including a sheep's rear end. Baaaaaaaaaa............

[Tinkles]

<snip>

My squad has joked they don't like that I've given out my Gen and Acm gunsights to players not in the squad. In this game a good shot can use anything as a gunsight including a sheep's rear end. Baaaaaaaaaa............

I don't mind giving credit where it is due.   It's nice to share   

Tinkles

<<S>>

[Nashorn]

on all of the 1 in a million shots I have made, I find I use other parts of the plane to use as reference as opposed to even looking at the gun sight

[bustr]

It's up to you guys to sell this to Hitech.

Very few players simply open a post and offer their creations. More often they are offered as personal or squad treasures after someone opens a post enquiring about a gunsight or something related. I suspect a clearing house for them would make it easier to "share recipe's". And the games historic offerings are 13 years old.

Consider that HTC won't act as a file repository, so links will age rapidly and become unavailable in time. There is a way around that. Describing gunsights with a common pixel grid language so anyone with access to a paint program can pull lines and circles from starting to finish coordinates like putting together an Ikea piece of furniture.

In a 512x512 bitmap mask the start and enponits for pulling a 100Mil circle with 256, 256 as its center are:

Start - 156, 156
End   - 355, 355

Center Dot - 256, 256

These are the start and end coordinates for the 100Mil ring in the N9 AAF gunsight drawn on a 512x512 mask. Without using a gradient blur effect, pull the ring with a 2 or 3 pixel wide line. The center is 9pixel in diameter. The cuts in the ring are made by pulling black lines at horizontal and 90 degrees on center 7pixel wide. The two 45 degree lower quadrant were 7 pixel wide lines pulled to the bottom corners of the mask starting at 256, 256. When you save this file do so as an 8bit bmp. Name it whatever.bmp then create a text file whatever.mil.txt and put 256 in it. After you save that, rename to whatever.mil.

Copy whatever.bmp and whatever.mil to your sights folder. Whatever is now available from the gunsight menu in the game. All gunsights created by players can be described this way so anyone can reproduce them in a bare bones format with MS Paint.

The reasons and theory for Mil sizes of rings and reticle structures is another thing all together. Anyone can make gunsights for our game otherwise.