Grenades and mines are Lobber-type projectiles, which are physics-enabled and can't function with the hitscan flag.
Most bullets in Fallout 4 don't actually use the hitscan flag, but they are beam-type projectiles, so they follow a straight line cast from the gun to the target and don't actually have a bullet model, just a tracer beam. Each one does have a missile-type VATS variant (defined in the VATS Projectile field at the bottom of the projectile form), which is modeled as a bullet and doesn't use hitscan, so don't enable hitscan on those unless you want to break the VATS bullet view. I've never tried that before, but I presume that it would do weird things with the slow-mo camera, since it has no projectile to follow.
I kept the VATS projectiles as missiles since I imagined it would break the cinematic effects otherwise. I am not familiar enough with this game's inner workings yet to have known (without testing) that the lobbers would break, but I suppose I could've given them insane velocity. The mod works by changing most projectile to use Beam. And I think the difference between hitscan and beam's raycast is negligible when the upside is the fancy marketing gamers love tho :D
The difference between beam and raycast is that the beam "bullets" always have a visible tracer effect mesh ( Effects\DefaultTracerBeam.nif ), so they look like discount lasers; this is independent from the Tracer Frequency value near the bottom of the projectile form. The actual difference in performance is negligible, yes.
Giving Lobber projectiles higher velocity leads to them ricocheting uncontrollably, because the engine has weird physics and really weird friction variables. See New Vegas's dynamite sticks and frag grenades that bounce like rubber balls on every surface from concrete to desert sand.
The crucial thing about Lobber projectiles is that they need to physically stop on impact for the mines to be usable; they have a low velocity, so they appear to fall more slowly than you'd expect from something affected by gravity, but this is done to avoid the bouncing problem. The Timed Mini Nukes and 25mm grenades in New Vegas have the same problem: You can make them go faster, but that makes them nearly unusable, since they just ricochet far beyond wherever you want them to detonate.
If you have any questions about this sort of thing, ask away. I can't answer everything, but I've been fiddling with NV's and F4's weapon systems since 2012, so I've learned a lot of weird lessons, and most of the projectile stuff from Gamebryo works the same way in the Creation Engine.
I see, well I guess the uncontrollable physics would be hilarious but I don't think I'm going for a Source game vibe just yet so I'll leave them as is.
6 comments
Most bullets in Fallout 4 don't actually use the hitscan flag, but they are beam-type projectiles, so they follow a straight line cast from the gun to the target and don't actually have a bullet model, just a tracer beam. Each one does have a missile-type VATS variant (defined in the VATS Projectile field at the bottom of the projectile form), which is modeled as a bullet and doesn't use hitscan, so don't enable hitscan on those unless you want to break the VATS bullet view. I've never tried that before, but I presume that it would do weird things with the slow-mo camera, since it has no projectile to follow.
Giving Lobber projectiles higher velocity leads to them ricocheting uncontrollably, because the engine has weird physics and really weird friction variables. See New Vegas's dynamite sticks and frag grenades that bounce like rubber balls on every surface from concrete to desert sand.
The crucial thing about Lobber projectiles is that they need to physically stop on impact for the mines to be usable; they have a low velocity, so they appear to fall more slowly than you'd expect from something affected by gravity, but this is done to avoid the bouncing problem. The Timed Mini Nukes and 25mm grenades in New Vegas have the same problem: You can make them go faster, but that makes them nearly unusable, since they just ricochet far beyond wherever you want them to detonate.
If you have any questions about this sort of thing, ask away. I can't answer everything, but I've been fiddling with NV's and F4's weapon systems since 2012, so I've learned a lot of weird lessons, and most of the projectile stuff from Gamebryo works the same way in the Creation Engine.