Place background weapon fire

Tested

Under Fire places invisible shooters for bolts, muzzle flashes and weapon sounds without adding an NPC.

You need community admin or above when nobody is directing. While anyone is directing, you need director mode.

In the menus: ESC → Direct → Scene → UNDER FIRE

Place a shooter

Select PLACE IN WORLD. You enter noclip: fly to the firing point, aim down the line the shots should follow, then use the controls along the bottom of the screen.

  • MOUSE1 places a shooter with a fixed aim line
  • SHIFT+MOUSE1 places one that follows the player under your crosshair
  • the wheel adjusts the active dial, and TAB moves to the next
  • R removes your last placement
  • MOUSE2 returns to the panel

The mode stays open after a placement so you can build fire from several positions. A new shooter starts firing immediately.

Set the firing pattern

TAB walks the dials in this order:

  • Rate is the time between shots, from 0.10 to 5 seconds. It starts at 0.25
  • Spread is 0 to 30 degrees of fresh aim error on each shot. It starts at 5
  • Weapon is blaster, pistol, bryar, disruptor, bowcaster, repeater, demp2 or flechette
  • Burst is 1 to 20 shots, or cont for continuous fire. It starts continuous
  • Rest is the pause between bursts, 0 to 20 seconds, and appears only when Burst is not continuous
  • Damage is off, light or full. It starts off

light deals one quarter of the weapon's normal damage. Leave damage off for harmless background fire.

Control placed shooters

The roster shows every shooter's id, weapon, rate, state and target. Select a row, then use START, STOP or REMOVE. STOP ALL stops every shooter at once.

Things to note

  • The server holds 8 shooters. An armed shooter skips its shot while nobody is within 3,000 units, so a distant ambush can wait without filling the world with bolts.
  • REMOVE ALL does not touch these. Use STOP ALL to make the scene quiet or /underfire remove all to delete every shooter.

Prefer the console?

/underfire edit <id> <weapon|rate|burst|rest|spread|damage> <value>
/underfire edit <id> angles <pitch> <yaw>
/underfire follow <id> <player|crosshair|none>
/underfire on <id>
/underfire off <id>