Need graphics editor advice to make weapons range/arc visual guide!

[Atruejedi]

Hello all,

Last night I did a ton of math to create a visual guide for GOI weapon ranges and arcs. I want to make a guide like this for all regularly-flown (and my personal pet) loadouts. Below, starting one kilometer (two squares) from the bottom center of the map and facing north, is a representation of the Artemis (in red) and Mercury (in yellow) displaying their arcs and ranges on the front of a Pyramidion (one of my favorite loadouts). The overlap is, well, where the guns overlap. Ammunition is normal in this image.



The issue is, it's taking me FOREVER to do this because there's no real automation. I figured I could just click at an origin, drag my cursor to a point, then "fan out" to a certain angle... but it isn't that simple. Not by any means...

I mean, this would be doable for me to create for more loadouts, but goodness, before I sink a ton of time into it, I wanted to know if anybody had any experience in GIMP that could make it easier or if anybody even cared for a guide like this. Here are the numbers in image form...



All the weapon statistics come from the GOI Wikia (http://gunsoficarusonline.wikia.com/wiki/Guns_of_Icarus_Online_Wikia) which I assume is accurate. I was going to attach the LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet to the post as well if anybody was interested but the forums won't let me. If anybody wants it, hit me up.

So... any help?

[Atrusario]

I'll start work on a "Guns of Icarus Scenario Developer" program. The plan is for it to allow you to choose a map, place ships, and edit the guns and their ammo types. From there you can move the ships around, save scenarios, and show / hide gun arcs. I'll post any updates to the project in this thread for now. Once it's in a working state, I'll make it's own thread.

All ideas are not only WELCOME, but NECESSARY to make this project all it can be! Feel free to post yours in this thread!

[Atruejedi]

Here's a link to a downloadable range data table.

Also, poached from this thread out of interest and as a potential resource for others interested in this project:

Here's a comparison of map sizes. All maps in the game are the same size as Battle on the Dunes EXCEPT Duel at Dawn, Northern Fjords, and Paritan Rumble. Below those maps are superimposed on Dunes. Duel at Dawn is on the bottom left, Fjords is on the top, and Paritan is on the bottom right. Interesting stuff.



And absolutely against Atrusario's wishes, here are resized images to make all map squares roughly 80 pixels

Fjords:


Paritan:


Duel at Dawn:


How adorable!

[Dementio]

A friend of mine once did this arc thing a long time ago in MatLab, here is an example of a build with all its horizontal and vertical arcs and even the guns' actual positions on the ship:
http://i.imgur.com/k7dNZ5N.gifv

You can't really see that the guns' actual position is taken into account, because it isn't zoomed it, but you can see it on this one here:



Obviously these images are not up to date anymore, since they were made from before the arc changes on the Mobula.

[Atruejedi]

Thanks to Shas'ui making me a polar grid (his nerd words, not mine), I've managed to "program" in all of the weapons of GOI with normal ammos and a few with lesmok and greased ammunition. Here are the results...

Normal ammo Gatling (yellow) and normal ammo Light Flak (red) with overlap (orange).



As you can see, there's barely any overlap, so a Gatling with a Light Flak with no special ammo is, honestly, pretty ineffective. But watch what happens with the miracle of proper ammunition...

Lesmok Gatling (yellow) and Greased Light Flak (red) with overlap (orange).



Look at that massive orange overlap! The singular yellow near the origin is there because the flak (red) has a minimum effective range. Only the Gatling is effective at that range.

Suggestions? Thoughts? Compliments? Ideas? Questions? Words?

[Richard LeMoon]

You would have to make a fade out for effective range as well. Effective range being the range where all shots from recoil will group on another ship.

The effective range of a mortar, for example, is very short even though it has reasonable range.

For program, I was personally using Blender to figure out spread on guns for my falloff project.

[Atruejedi]

You would have to make a fade out for effective range as well. Effective range being the range where all shots from recoil will group on another ship.

The effective range of a mortar, for example, is very short even though it has reasonable range.

Just pretend everybody has heavy clip and never misses. This project, to me, is all about map awareness and theoretical scenarios. So I'm pleased as punch to complete it like this. If it helps somebody... good! If it misleads somebody... disclaimer!