[Baldo_the_Don]

I present to you, the latest symptom of my reticle editing addiction:

The Springfield Armory 4-14x56 1st Generation Government Model 7.62mm Patented Reticle.







I went into this one with a specific criterion: the reticle is in imperial units, and I'm sticking to them. Aspects of this decision have forced me to make some frustrating adaptations.

The elevation is locked at 200 yards. That's 183m. Not being adjustable, I saw little need for the elevation to be displayed on the HUD, and removed it on this rifle to spare me the confusion. Similarly, the distance is displayed in meters on the HUD, and barring memorizing 100 yard intervals in meters, which I refuse to do with any conviction, I've removed that HUD element from this weapon (the M24) as well.

So rangefinding is exclusively a reticle element system on this one. I think it works like this: viewing the attachment, I've positioned myself 366m, or 400 yds from the target. It seems to me that you set the baseline of a ranging (rangeing? both spellings look wrong) bracket on the target's belt line, trying likely ranges 'til the shoulders snug up into the upper line of the bracket, like you see in the attachment. Now, with the range established, adjust to the corresponding aimpoint, and take the shot.

I find the rangeing out to 600 yds almost easy, but the 700 to 1000 yard brackets are all too similar to each other at 14x magnification and the necessary resolution for it. I might just suck at sniping, though.

The illuminated cross is my artistic license. The black pixel at the upper tip of the cross is the 100 yd POA. The lower tip is the 300 yd POA. The cross is head width at 200 yds. It's neat, but this reticle should be completely illuminated in green, and I'm working on that.

I trial-and-errored the drops for ammo velocity 852m/s and drag 0.395, even though the documentation I found states the reticle is calibrated for 777m/s and whatever the drag is for boat-tailed match grade .308 in 7.62mm cartridges is. Might fix that later, I dunno.

Playtesting within 600 yds has been fun enough, so far.

And I'm not sure, but with my adaptation of the Springfield Govm'nt, I just might have done all the reticles. * shrugs *

//////////////<- Is there no BBcode for an hr? ->\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Edit: I've got four things for you here. I spent hours today preparing the first three:











But I think I got a nice green illuminated reticle as good as this game can get it. 'Cause there's a multiplyat targa, an add targa, and 510 possible shades of green for each, and I didn't test all 260,100 combinations to see which one works best in all lighting conditions, but I did try a lot of them.

And adding this line of code to the .wac:

if elapse 1 then add v1 24 then tod v1 endif

...causes 24-minute skips in the time of day once a second, so the entire diurnal cycle lasts one minute. A useful trick for testing reticles in different lighting conditions. If your map is already using v1 for something, switch to variable v2 up to v65535*. Whatever is free, you know?

Apparently in JO, maybe DFX1 and DFX2, you can .wac up the time of day for, as an example, 10:17 PM with:

if [TRIGGER] then
tod(22:17)
endif

But:

if [TRIGGER] then
tod(1337)
endif

will do the same 'cause 10:17 PM is minute 1337 of a 1440 minute day.

Maybe. I haven't really tested this much.

Oops: You have to set a variable (v0 to v65535*) to 1337 first, then use the variable as tod. So if you set v99 to 1337, then trigger tod(v99), then the game will accept 1337 as 10:37 PM. Sorry for the suboptimized info.



*I just tried the .wac with v999999999. Worked fine. In JO, there seems to be no unreasonable limit on how high you can number a mission variable. Huh.

////////////<- There should be BBcode for an hr ->\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Edit again: Testing fog manipulation .wac scripting on my test range map, I had an idea, tried it out, and, for all intents and purposes and well within military specs, if you back the magnification from the max 14x to 12x on the M24 with the Springfield Gubm'nt reticle that has POAs in hundred-yard intervals, the drops then align almost perfectly with hundred-meter POIs. Fun!

I've reinstated the 'Distance:' and 'Elevation:' lines on the HUD. It's weird to see 183m for the elevation, but I'll deal with it.