I have no problem helping out. Freezing cold conditions? This is going to be very interesting.
You need my email address or do you already have it?

I don't know what you mean by Infiltration (UT mod).

I believe you put your email in your initial post.

Infiltration is a mod for Unreal Tournament that is in my opinion the best infantry simulator out there (perhaps the only one). Though far from life-like it's still worlds better than any FPS out there (save for maybe one), and I've played a good number of them. It's one of the few that uses real life firearm factors to naturally balance the gameplay instead of changing the firearms to suite the gameplay. I'd check it out. I've been wanting to clone their system for a long time, it's brilliant on so many levels.

As far as my novel goes I'll draft up a new story board and contact you once I have some cash to spare. It use to be the story to a game project of mine, so I have chop it down and create new action bits.

Yeah cold whether does get interesting. I honestly don't know how much or how little it would handicap a soldier. None of the soldiers I've talked to had worked in cold whether (all Iraq or Afghanistan veterans, though not the mountainous parts.) I could really use your help.

Have you ever played ARMA? Its based off a the military VBS1 simulator.

I've been on cold weather bivouacs with my unit, not in combat. According to past history fighting in snow would be a nightmare.

The hardcore Infiltration players think it did a number of things better than ARMA II. You have to play it to understand. I'll have to try Operation Flash Point at some point. ARMA II doesn't look that good, i.e. nothing like Infiltration. That game made me a bit of a snob lol

I definitely want your advice, but later when I have cash to spare and time to draft up a new story board. There's a number of things that happen that are probably impossible in real life, but expected in a video game. Of course, it's not a game anymore.

I have to look intoi that game.

When you are ready to start let me know.

What is the status with the book?

Don't forget , your project will attract only few people !

I remember playing Armed Assault , and after a difficult progression, i stoped, caus of it's simulation factor.
One , or two shots and sometimes you are out and you must
retry from your last safety save.

I abandonned, the goal fo FPS game is to have fun.
There are games that allow for example to adjust difficulty
when you retry, or some rare games using auto balancing difficulty depending on how player plays !
Well only few people will be attracted, caus they don't care to be frustrated , or to not have explosions, fun etc ...


Well it was just my opinion about realistic Vs Non realistic and fun.

Theres alot of people that like battle-sims.

Ironically enough, a battle sim, as opposed to a pure FPS which treats the subject in a more gameplay-friendly way, is something where the previously mentioned topics of ammunition calibre and remote trauma effects from bullet wounds could have an interesting bearing on a computer game that might serve to make things more realistic, albeit somewhat grim and depressing too. Thus it's an interesting subject where game design is concerned. That said, realism is one thing, but having personally seen people get shot and killed, I can promise you that going for ultra-realism on that front in a combat game might actually not always be that advisable depending on what kind of reception you want your game to receive, although for a battle sim featuring the wider consequences of combat, it would undoubtedly be realistic to do so.

You'll easily start a heated debate between trauma surgeons if you broach that subject with them, since there are several conflicting medical theories about just how much remote shock injury is possible for various types of projectile wounds. Nevertheless, one of the earliest studies which attempts a scientific approach to the matter, was compiled by Colonel Frank Chamberlin; he was a trauma surgeon in WW2 who treated many battle injuries from that conflict. In fact, it may be Chamberlin's work which is the source of something mentioned earlier in this thread, i.e. that of organs 'exploding', since two of the terms Chamberlin used in his writings on gun shot wounds were 'explosive effects' and 'hydraulic reaction'. Chamberlin deliberately used those terms to describe bullet impact shock effects in order to differentiate from the medical condition 'shock', notably the later progressive and refractory stages of medical shock, which are the ones that damage tissue permanently, since Chamberlin wanted to discuss purely energy-based causes for tissue damage.

There has been a lot of (rather cruel) testing done in relation to the subject of extended damage from bullet impacts on tissue; most of it involving shooting pigs or dogs in the thighs whilst monitoring their EEG and ECG traces, and it has been found that what appear to be hydrostatic shockwaves can cause brain damage even when the bullet impact is actually a long way from the brain, such as in the chest or a limb.

Somewhat ironically again, given how cruel such testing is, the fact that hydrostatic shock was thought cruel is in fact one of the reasons for the adoption of the lighter NATO 5.56mm round (also the Eastern Bloc 5.45mm round found in the AKM and AK-74). Beyond simply being lighter (thus easier to transport in larger quantities and easier to hold on a target in burst fire modes, from causing less recoil), the 5.56mm round is known to cause less hydrostatic shock effect, but it does cause more localised wounding owing to tumbling and fragmentation as opposed to simply powering through a target, which means it actually tends to put more energy into causing medical damage at the point of impact rather than wasting energy by carrying on down the road for a mile after having gone though a target. Despite this being a bad thing in the moment of battle, owing to the lack of 'immediate stopping power' that a 5.56 round has, in fact, the military have pretty much always preferred to wound enemies in this way on a battlefield rather than kill them, since a wounded man is more of a burden to the enemy than a dead one. Wounded men require many resources: evacuation, transport, doctors and nurses, plasma, medical care facilities, counseling, food, repatriation, pensions etc, etc. Moreover, their presence in a wounded state is psychologically damaging to the morale of their comrades, so causing severe wounding of your enemies, rather than death is militarily quite preferable. Conversely, a special forces soldier, police SWAT guy or some other more specialised armed combatant is going to want to drop someone in their tracks and not really be concerned about causing long-term problems for the opposition.

One of the big determining factors on how that kind of thing works in reality is of course adrenaline, which could conceivably cause someone with quite severe gunshot wounds to keep going when you might reasonably expect them to be rolling around on the floor screaming in agony. However, I know of one guy who was shot in the hip, leaving barely a trickle of blood, yet it killed him pretty much instantly; a post mortem revealed that the bullet had ricocheted off his pelvis and been directed up into his ribcage, where it then hit his spine, shattered and the bullet and bone fragments peppered his heart and lungs. All major injuries being internal and therefore not visible, it looked like he should have been merely wounded.

This is why the military have for years been keen on trying to develop a 'laser rifle' for battlefield soldiers, with a beam which could permanently blind enemy troops, since they would be effectively rendered helpless and heavily traumatised by having been permanently disabled in such a fashion. Needless to say, the International Red Cross is understandably not quite so keen on such a notion, which is why the military don't tend to publicise the fact that they would like such a capability, and it is that kind of opposition which means they'll probably be using 5.56 conventional ammo for quite some time to come.

On the subject of which, the M-16, which is another topic that this thread hit upon when discussing the 5.56 round, is rather an unusual weapon in some respects beyond its lighter calibre. The first time you ever aim one, you'll probably be surprised how high the stock comes up on your shoulder in comparison to a lot of other rifles, so it's not what you would call well placed as far as getting the butt right into your shoulder is concerned. If you've never actually held an M-16, you can instead compare a side view of an AK-47 with a side-view of an M-16, and this feature becomes rather apparent.

That M-16 stock was the cause of other woes too when if was introduced (in Vietnam). Being partially plastic, it was rather fragile in comparison to the more traditional wooden furniture found on preceding military rifles in use in SE Asia (most commonly the M-14), and there were complaints from soldiers that in hand to hand fighting, the M-16 would not make a very good impromptu club to smash into an enemy's face - a grim notion, but one which does crop up in the reality of close combat.

Additionally, that lightweight construction means that the M-16 becomes very poorly balanced when you attach a bayonet on the end of it, which is another drawback of it in CQB. More recent (i.e AR-15 etc) derivatives of the M-16 have of course got rid of the M-16's original plastic buttstock, but in practical terms, the tighter tolerances of such weapons have often led soldiers in the field to drop them and pick up an AK-47/AK-74 if they could do so, since although it is not as accurate, its looser tolerances mean that it is far less likely to jam at an inconvenient juncture. In actual combat use however, the accuracy and tissue damage aspects of weapons such as M-16 and AK-47 variants is rarely an issue, as they are weapons that are more about keeping the enemy pinned during fire and maneuver tactics than actually hitting something with every shot you fire, which is why grenade launchers such as the M79, M203 and GP-25 etc were developed.

As an interesting aside, in the Vietnam conflict, there was another altogether darker reason for grabbing an AK-47 if you could do so, and that was so that you could kill your commanding officer with it and thus make it look like an NVA soldier had done so during a firefight. Broadly known by the term 'fragging' (from the practice of rolling a fragmentation grenade into the offending officer's hut), the AK-47 was a favourite choice for killing an incompetent officer when out on patrol, whereas grenade fragging usually occurred on bases at night when the target was sleeping. This became fairly rife in the later stages of the Vietnam conflict, when the lack of suitably experienced officers led the army to rush second lieutenants through training in three months rather than the more traditional four year period (which is where the term 90-day wonder comes from). Such poorly-trained officers were often woefully incompetent on combat patrols and if they performed so badly as to end up losing a lot of their own men, fragging them or shooting them was often regarded as entirely righteous amongst the enlisted men, and it was rarely reported, since to do so was a sure way to invite being similarly dealt with.

In the very late stages of the Vietnam war, the practice became widespread enough to scare some officers into deliberately taking their men no more than just a couple of miles from their base, setting up a camp in the bush and waiting a few days before returning to base claiming they had done a full patrol. Others would simply lead their troops about in a circle in a relatively safe area of the jungle so as not to encounter the enemy, thus lose no men and therefore not risk being fragged.

Back on topic, of course if you put such things in a battle computer sim, it might be realistic, but it would also be rather controversial, so whether anyone would choose to do so is another matter entirely.

Al