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OpenTS Manual

Gravity

The downward pull applied each frame to ballistic shots, hover cushions and particles.

Specification
Applies to
global rules
File
rules.ini
Section
[AudioVisual]
Value
integer
When omitted
3
rules.ini
[AudioVisual]
Gravity=6

The figure is subtracted from a falling object’s vertical speed once per game frame, so it is an acceleration measured in leptons rather than a distance. Three unrelated systems read it, and one of them divides it in whole numbers.

  • Ballistic shots. A projectile in flight loses this much vertical speed each frame. A Floater=yes projectile loses half as much, which is what gives it its drifting arc. The same figure gates the shot before it is taken: an Arcing=yes weapon reports a target it has no ballistic solution against as out of range however close it stands, and a firing structure solves its launch speed and barrel pitch from it as well. Every weapon that throws an unguided projectile also has its launch speed solved from this figure once, as the rules are read, so changing it retunes the reach of every such weapon in the game.
  • Hover cushions. A hovering or levitating object loses this much of its cushion every frame and pushes back in proportion once it has sunk below HoverHeight, with HoverDampen settling the result. Below a quarter of that height it is given one extra shove of a third of this figure — and because the setting is stored as a whole number, so is the third. With the 6 the shipped rules assign, the shove is 2; a figure of 3 to 5 gives 1; 2 or less gives nothing at all, so the low-clearance recovery disappears entirely on a very light gravity.
  • Particles. A gas or weak-gas particle’s velocity is rebuilt from nothing every other frame as two leptons plus this figure, straight down, so the setting is the whole of such a cloud’s fall and nothing it inherited from its launch survives. The two share one routine, so a weak-gas particle takes the pull on the same terms. A spark is pulled down by it too, with the qualification below.

Thrown debris and bouncing animations do not read the setting. They fall at a fixed rate of their own, so raising or lowering this figure leaves wreckage and bouncing shells behaving exactly as they did.

See also — Arcing, Floater, HoverHeight, HoverDampen, Elasticity