Physics-based Artillery

[Luke]

Despite it being the school year and me being in Advanced Placement (College-level Classes in High School) Physics, we have still not learned terribly much about the effect air friction on projectiles.

To overcome this, I have worked on an arty script that spawns a shell changes its velocity as per physics of a projectile in a vacuum.

It is a WIP, and is still subject to the limits of my scripting knowledge.

It is fairly accurate, I have only tested on Rahmadi map, but at the largest distances on there, it still is accurate to 2m.

as of now it can only fire in high angle mode.

Will continue to work on this.

Any help, comments, questions, suggestions are all welcome.

Hope this comes to fruition.

Luke

EDIT: Use the radio commands in the demo mission.

[USM-CPT.Dyson]

Heh, it is pretty awesome. I hope that this greatness doesn't turn into another click here for your instant artillery. Something likes Jones artillery, but a script only version. Plus a modern computerized system.

[Luke]

What is Jones' artillery?

Plus it is a 'click here' and the shell will land here.

However there is a ballistic lag allowing you to move if you know its coming.

As before stated it is a WIP, and any help is welcome, so feel free to take it apart and modify it.

Just do the following:

A). be sure to keep an original unmodified copy,
B). do give credit where due, and
C). show me the changes, not to be approved, but if I like them I will keep them!   

If anyone can sort out the case: function, need values explained,
can make a dialog for this (PLEASE!), et cetera, feel completely free to do so.

Thanx again to all the community!

Luke

EDIT: Also if anyone can help with counterbattery stuff,
or other ideas like that, let me know.

[USM-CPT.Dyson]

Jones artillery requires players to man the Howitzers.

- First, a spotter relays the azimuth from the target location, to the battery location. The range is also given.
- The battery must then do a back azimuth to get the degree to aim the guns.
- Next, depending on range, you must load the proper power in.
- You must aim the barrel to the correct elevation and degree. High and low angle shots can be taken as well.

I would have to look into it, but judging by all of the NATO countries smart munitions I'll assume that todays batteries have computerized systems. A 6 digit grid coordinate can be relayed giving the crew distance, elevation, and azimuth (degrees btw). The fact that the player must send coordinates to players that have to set their guns would make it much more realistic.

I'm away from my home computer to test, but does the sound work correctly with the incoming shell. As in can you hear the shell coming in from it's direction. If you can hear where is comes from you can preform some type of counter battery operation.

Edit (Wiki stuff)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery#Modern_era_-_age_of_rifled_guns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-battery_fire

The 1st one is long, but if you skim down to modern day stuff you will see them talk about using laser guided artillery and GPS/ computers. The country battery one is short enough to read all of.

[Luke]

Holy Cow! It has been a while since I have visited ofpec.

Anyway just keeping this topic alive.

I have an arty pack, just not on me at the moment.

It's not complete, but I plan to complete it soon.

Please, please, please! if you download it, be sure to give your opinion, as I consider everything.

Also if anyone is willing to help me with this, it would be greatly appreciated.

I will try to post it ASAP.

Thanx as always,

Luke

[Luke]

Sorry it took so long, but here is the test mission and pack.

Thanx, as always.

Luke

[kju]

Some feedback as a start.

Project looks very promising. 
Tried it with a private effects pack and your sample mission looks very good for the most part.

ToDo:

• Add more details to test mission
• What is Laser Designator useful for in the test mission?
• Some of the radio trigger have no good name - give them name to understand what arty they do call
• Script error at the start:

Code: [Select]

Error in expression <le (_pathS + "MatrixCeff.sqf");
"Logic" CreateUnit [getPos server,group server,">
  Error position: <CreateUnit [getPos server,group server,">
  Error 0 elements provided, 3 expected
File MAP_Misc\scripts\MAP_MiscInit.sqf, line 21
* Remove addon dependency from mission sqm (xvehicles and class brdm2_aa).

Will closely monitor your progress Luke. Good job. 


Here is the readme to give people a better idea:

All the stuff in this folder, in either normal or compressed state, is copyright of myself, Luke, and no one else.  Ask before changing for public redistribution, and give credit where credit is due.


format of scripts is

[_launcher_unit,_target_unit,_initialspeed,_vertical_angle,_azimuth(horizontal_angle),_warhead,_fuze] execvm "script";


scripts include "mort_mon.sqf","arty_mon.sqf", "xcal_mon.sqf", "Clgp_mon.sqf", and "Strx_mon.sqf";

Mort_mon scripting for standard mortar;
Arty_mon scripting for 155mm artillery;
xcal_mon scripting for 155mm GPS guided Shell (does not track moving targets), guides self to target's coords at launch;
clgp_mon scripting for 155mm laser guided Shell (tracks only a laser dot of same side);
strx_mon scripting for 120mm IR guided Shell (tracks moving land vehicles, or vehicles with engines on.);

_warhead working types include "HE", "SAD", "ICM", "DPICM", "SM", "IL", & "WP"
"NUKE" type still in the works;

HE warhead is a standard shell, strength varies from script used;
SAD warhead is a SADARM shell, deploying to sens and destroy armor disks, works only against vehicles with engines on;
ICM warhead is an anti-personnel, anti-light vehicle cluster round, scatters over a wide area.
DPICM warhead is an anti-vehicle, anti-tank (verry effective against infantry) cluster round, scatters over a wide area.
SM warhead is a smoke warhead;
IL warhead is an illumination warhead;
WP warhead is a White Phosphorous round, effective against infantry;
NUKE warhead is a 72 ton TNT-equivalent yield tactical 155mm nuclear warhead;

Fuze types are "PD" and "AB";
So far used with just "HE" warheads in xcal_mon and arty_mon scripts.

PD point-detonating or impact fuze;
AB air-burst fuse, explodes about 3 meters above target area;

There are all sorts of hint values in there, as this **is** a work in progress.

Do let me know what you think of this, and PM me if you would like to help with this.

Thanx, as always.

Luke

[Apocal]

Nevermind.

It's pretty cool. Is WP going to last a bit longer in the finished version?

[Luke]

Thanx for the feedback, and copious amount of d-loads.

Do not misinterpret silence for apathy.  That version was rife with problems that I am hurrying to fix.

New shell types added:
FASCAM, spreads 36 anti infantry mines (scripting),
and RAAMS, spreads 9 anti-armour mines (to-do),

As well as fixing/improving the demo mission, the readme, checking & double checking scripts, etc.

The nuke will likely be one of the later things I do, so... yeah.

Anyway, Local time (for me) at posting is approx 7:30 PM April 28th.

Plan to get next pack out sometime on April 30th, or May 1st.

If anyone that has dialog experience would be willing to create one,
or a skeleton of one, that would be fantastic.

Be sure to let me via PM or post.

And lastly,

@ Apocal:

Depends on feedback.

Keep in mind the following:
This is to be pretty realistic,
This should make people happy/be a welcome addition to ARMA,
Needs to be balanced.

I hope to find a good overlap between the three.

Note: this means as per item two, suggestions help.

In other words: sure!

I however am a quantitative person,
so if you can slap a number on "a bit longer," that would help immensely.

Thanx for the feedback, as always, guys!
Am looking forward to completing this.

Luke

[kju]

Looking forward to the next version. 

[Apocal]

I however am a quantitative person,
so if you can slap a number on "a bit longer," that would help immensely.

I can't recall exactly which FM this is taken from, but here's the address of the PDF

www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1998/Annexf.pdf

Not really overpowering, but combined with morale effect of burning WP, effective enough.

[Luke]

Yes,

however after some research of my own, I have found they use WP for, as you have shown, concealment purposes.

I do not know for certain if those values are for the smoke round, or the much more painful incendiary round.

I did lengthen the effect by about 25 seconds so I hope that works. Also lowered the damage rate some.

Kju, the reason for the designator is much more apparent, now. 0-0-1 FTW

Added more radio options to the mission, with more detailed names.

But with some, after teleporting, you may be in the line of fire.
Yet if you don't you cant see the effects.

I'll leave you to figure out which radios those are. 

Anyway still working,

Let me know what you think.

Thanx, as always.

Luke

[kju]

Very nice update 

Gorgeous  effects there. 

I am using a private effects pack, yet I assume also with Maddmatt it looks great. 
Only grip here is that the dust settles way too fast, yet this must be tweaked separately
of course.

1,2 and 5,6 cause my system to halt for a moment.
Yet I assume this can be improved with time. 

Some indication would be good where the effects is
gonna happen. Hard to catch at first. Had to redo
the mission a couple of times.

Also what about adding slowmotion mode to look
at the effects with the attention they deserve.

Another idea would be to call a camera looking
at the scene from some angle from above.

Another idea would be to add a radio trigger to
repair / revive all dummy objects. 


Bugs:

* If you place the player at a different location via
the editor, some effects will have that movement
vector as offset of desired impact.

* Warning Message: Script Sad_nofire.sqf not found


I would love to see you interested in a project space
at dev heaven. SVN/git (version control) would be useful
to see your changes/update on the code level and give
others an easy and transparent way to look at the code.

Issue tracking would help you manage bugs and suggestions.

Wiki could be used to create easy nice documentation.

Feel free to contact me if interested. 

[Vigilante]

The 'new' WP round is classified as Smokeshell but it still has the secondary role of incendiary... its actually more a legal reason to classify that as smokeshell ... HC rounds are still the better smoke WP smoke disperses/rises too quickly, so for smokemissions a mix of HC and WP is used. WP on the other hand especially the 'burster' type WP shells create smokescreens quicker ..

[Luke]

The halting is caused by the fragmentation effects. 
If you look under Frageffects.sqf and count the number of interval loops,
you'll end up with, like, over 600 fragments being spawned for one shell.

I guess I could tone that down a bit.

However, that is a crucial effect.
Not only does it serve functionally as fragmentation,
but the spawned tracers look a lot like glowing bits of metal flying around,

If you watch the center stationary tank with radio 0-0-2, you'll see what I mean.

Also be sure to teleport before using the fascam (0-0-8) and watch the soldiers.
Tell me what you think.

@kju

One thing however, I ask of you is to comment on how my effects look, with nothing external.

And I will try and get more visual effects as time goes on (i.e. fountains dirt thrown up in the air, dirt clouds from shell impacts, etc.).

#Sad_nofire.sqf noted. 

@ Apocal

Looks very interesting, will see how to implement this, in the meantime your request has been considered,
WP time has been lenghtened.

@ Any/Everyone

If you are interested in helping, that would be fantastic.
Plans for a Rocket Assisted Projectile are in the works, along with scripting a delayed fuze.

For those who don't know, that equates to a buttload of math and scripting on my part,
so if anyone is willing to help script, do math, or just suggest something, every help is appreciated.

As before, post or PM me.

Thanx, as always.

Luke

Edit:
Should I change the smoke color for the WP to be more orange-ish?

I feel something should be done to separate WP Smoke effects from the regular Smoke effects,
else there is potential for people to use smoke shells for psycological purposes.

(i.e. is that just smoke, or WP?
I don't know, so I'll just stand still/spend extra time to run around a possible non-threat.)

Dunno whether you guys think it should be or not.

Let me know.

Luke

[Vigilante]

No WP has the whitest (?) colour of all smokegenerating mixtures around.. pure white will be perfect, the burning stuff itself has yellowish orange glow though ... in bursttype shells it will also rise quite quickly due to the heat generated below i.e. the thermics will make it rise very quickly, compared to other smokerounds. Otherwise its more persistant than the other smokes..
 HC smoke is a greyish/white colour. Those two should be separated since HC aint as poisonous/harmful as WP smoke is, WP has the added 'benefit' of being a incendiary, actually mainly used because of that since it isnt the cheapest stuff around for smoking... *g* aehm i mean creating smokescreens...

[Luke]

Still working, but the next big step is done. 
A script that finds the angle and direction for you, and launches the shell that way.
Details in the readme.
Also we moved to Sahrani, so you could test exactly how accurate this can be.

ENJOY!!
And post thoughts and suggestions, too!

Thanx for the support, guys.

Luke

P.S. If anyone knows how to detect an imaginary number,
and make a boolean out of it, let me know or post a snippet of code.

[kju]

gday Luke  

you may want to consider using a project space at dev heaven to host
your project. The benefit would be having the code in the repository
allows people to follow your code changes closely, especially if
you comment your commits (changes).

Also IMO you need to work on your readme. Just attaching the whole
text again and again and alterting some bits makes it near to impossible
to get what was changes unless one uses diff tools.
So here are the changes from the readme for interest folks:

Except for this fantastic new script called "Preprocess.sqf"!
That's right, if will find angle and direction to the target for you!!
Use as follows
[_launcher_unit,_target_**POS**,_initialspeed,_warhead,_fuzetype,_angletype] execvm "preprocess.sqf";
for the angle type 1 for high 0 for low.

By the way, if you ever see -1.#IND!!! or something like that, it means it cannont hit the target from where it is,
at that start velocity. Still working to fix that.

If anyone knows how to detect that let me know, cause I have tried everything I have thought of.

Also if an xcal shell is launched at a high time compression, (>2) it tends to run in a circle for a while,
So try to keep that to a minimum until I can fix that.

...

RAM is an cluster munition that scatters 9 ARMA vanilla anti-armor mines, two with (now properly working) anti-handling device (try it, I dare you!)

...

Other changes include minor tweaks and fixes, outsourcing the demo mission (We're going to SAHRANI!!! YAY!), and fixing some xcal stuff.

...

Do let me know what you think of this, and PM me if you would like to help me with this project.

Also frag fragment numbers reduced, so the lag from an HE hit should clear up now.

To fix:

* Remove "nwd_7xbinoculars", from mission.sqm.
* Laserguided causes the mission to freeze for a while - used the LD to target the t72, once it said "looking" the game freezed completely. The second call had no freeze.
* XCAL DPICM is quite cool - still 2-3 freezed once the effects are drawn.
* For any: Warning Message: Script VisEffects.sqf not found
* Not sure if thats yours:
** Cannot create non-ai vehicle Sh_120,
** Cannot create non-ai vehicle Sh_105,
* from arty ICM

Code: [Select]

Error in expression <os select 1))^2);

_tti= abs(_shelltargd/_xvel);
if ((_shelltargd > _oldshelltar>
  Error position: </_xvel);
if ((_shelltargd > _oldshelltar>
  Error Zero divisor
File Profiles\Users\kju\missions\arty.Sara\arty_mon.sqf, line 201
* SetFire HE does not work for me. Always #IND values.


Possible to add?

* player setCaptive true;
* Marker of flying objects on the map to get an idea where they are coming from.

Questions:

* What does "set target" do?
* What about the other area at the airport?
* What about the other area in the south?

Conclusion

The effects rock. 

[DeanosBeano]

 Hi Luke,
  Have you thought about addon based version ?
     I have started one for MLRS myself and its alot easier than scriptng , because you can use the init velocity of the projectile  and angle of the turret to determine the final destination/target.
 you can simply start with mlod of artillery piece  and config , then make ammo in config.

  The trick is to make the Maingun and MainTurret "user anim" and then you can get co-ordinates of a laser designator or click on map and turn turret to face those co-ordinates. then angle turret to correct one , load correct ammo and fire.

  if you want to try that way let me know i have alot of stuff i did already on my p drive ,but cant see me developing it until i see how good the arma2 arty is.

[Luke]

Kju, your points, with my responses in bold.

* Remove "nwd_7xbinoculars", from mission.sqm. -got it.  
* Laserguided causes the mission to freeze for a while - used the LD to target the t72, once it said "looking" the game freezed completely. The second call had no freeze. -okay, probably a frag thing.
* XCAL DPICM is quite cool - still 2-3 freezed once the effects are drawn. -once again, probably a frag thing.
* For any: Warning Message: Script VisEffects.sqf not found. -oops, you shouldn't know about that yet.
* Not sure if thats yours:
** Cannot create non-ai vehicle Sh_120,
** Cannot create non-ai vehicle Sh_105,
* from arty ICM -are you sure that's ICM? It's not in my ICM, but it is in DPICM. Dunno what it means, though.  

Code: [Select]

Error in expression <os select 1))^2);

_tti= abs(_shelltargd/_xvel);
if ((_shelltargd > _oldshelltar>
  Error position: </_xvel);
if ((_shelltargd > _oldshelltar>
  Error Zero divisor
File Profiles\Users\kju\missions\arty.Sara\arty_mon.sqf, line 201
-Dunno, my guess is _xvel may be at 0 so you get a X/0 error.

* SetFire HE does not work for me. Always #IND values.
-Check the mission, it's initvel is at 50. Change it to 350.

Possible to add?

* player setCaptive true; - sure, but it would be less of a challenge.  
* Marker of flying objects on the map to get an idea where they are coming from. -Need your help 4 that one, m8.

Questions:

* What does "set target" do? -Radio it, click on you location on the map and radio delta. you'll find out pretty quick.  
* What about the other area at the airport?
* What about the other area in the south?
Last two questions, see answer to first question.

Conclusion

The effects rock.  -Thanx!  

@The Dean:
Yeah, but don't have the tools or knowledge. Or much time.
Plus there is a slight drag that my current math education cannot account for,
So my scripts generally act in a uniform gravity vacuum.
&
ARMA 2, Is out? :Jealous:
saw the vehicles and it looks COOL.
Hope they ship to the U.S.

But would be willing to work with you for that.
Just a point, It was my intention of this being addon-free,
but I would like to have the script suite for that venue,
any addons are welcome, but secondary.

Anyway guys, thanx so much for all the support!

Though I am in slightly over my head.
Any snippets of code, suggestions, or better, a dialog (thankyouthankyouthankyou!) would be appreciated.

Thanx for your support, as always.

Luke

[kju]

How about your porting efforts to A2? 

[Luke]

Uh.. how? 

Besides, if the two would interact so well, why not port arma2 stuff into the original?

I am currently stuck in a rut.

What I need is a way to organise the fire missions and execute them.

All the math is there for the actual firing,
I just need a way to set them in a hierarchy of priority and run them from their.

And a dialog would be nice.

Point is these are beyond my ability and I need help in these areas if I ever hope to finish.
Period.

As for arma 2, I'm up in the US so I don't know if it hit local shelves yet. 

Anyway, I'll look, but I was really hoping to put this into arma for those who are unable to get the sequel.

If you could think of any way for that asset organisation that would help immensely.

Thanx, as always.

Luke

[kju]

Well there only very few people into dialog coding.
I fear you need to make use of some existing code,
or get into it yourself. 

[Luke]

Well that still doesn't address my issue of how to organize the missions,
and if I were to do that myself, circular logic states I'm stuck here unless there's intervention.

Please see if ideas concerning this pop into your head.

Luke

[Luke]

Just to remind you gentlemen that this project is still live.
I am at an impasse, currently adding a simulated m270 MLRS.

Quick Poll:
Which would you rather see for its simulated armament?
A cluster warhead or
A unitary warhead?

Also, if you are interested in helping me, I need a dialog.
The attachment below holds a Doc File detailing how it should look.
If you are interested in helping in any aspect of the project,
PM me, please! This is difficult work for one person!!

Thanx for the replies to come! (if anyone does )
Luke