The BitBull Blog

This week’s project has been to add an R.P.G. And of course in this context that stands for ‘Rocket-Propelled Grenade’ rather than ‘Role Playing Game’.

In theory the R.P.G. is a very straightforward weapon to code. Shoot a projectile in a straight line that explodes when it hits something – job done. There’s nothing particularly complex about the mechanics of it at all.

What took the time in practice was tweaking the visuals. Because the R.P.G is a powerful weapon it needs to have a certain ‘wow’ factor attached, consequently I spent considerably more time animating the rocket’s travel and detonation than I have for any other projectile in the game.

When in flight the rocket has a spin animation and two particle generators, one that leaves a ‘thrust trail’ and one that generates a ‘flare’ at the rocket’s exhaust. For the explosions I made use of my new geometric shaders described in this post.

Another difference to other weapons is that the rocket is displayed ‘loaded’ into the launcher before it is fired. This means I have to cope with the scenario where the user is out of ammo (no rocket displayed) and also create an animation for when the next rocket loads. None of this was particularly complicated but it necessitated some changes in the way I deal with weapon attachments for the jetboard.

One area where the mechanics of the R.P.G. needed a bit of specialised treatment was in the distribution of damage when the rocket explodes. I had been working on a similar principle to the bombs and grenades in that damage would be applied equally around the rocket depending on how far away the enemy/player is. The problem with this was that, as the rocket detonates with a very powerful explosion, it was simply too easy to commit suicide by firing into a building or opponent at close range. To rectify this I created a kind of ‘safety zone’ behind the rocket. Characters positioned directly behind the rocket take significantly less damage, characters behind but above or below the rocket are still offered some protection but less so depending on how far away they are. You still have to be careful firing R.P.G.s when you’re low on health though!

Dev Time: 2 days
Total Dev Time: approx 125 days

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