Bone based damage system (feature vote and debate)

The box thing has always annoyed me as GoldenEye 007 (which did not use hit boxes) was the first FPS I really got into, however I don't really like the idea of specific limb based damage in an arena shooter either. I think if the damage system stayed pretty much the same as it is now (only awarding extra damage for headshots), but had the requirement that you ACTUALLY HIT THE PLAYER MODEL we'd have one really kick ass set up. Only issue I see is that models aren't identical, but if the skeletons in them is what your actually hitting then it wouldn't really be an issue. Hit scan and precision weapons would become more challenging to use as well, but I don't think that would become a balance issue if the shots were given some sort of expanded damage area around them.

I agree with this. Although it's usually not noticeable, shots explode when you hit the bounding box, not the model. So you can't eg: Have a grenade thrown between the player's legs. My separate idea for fixing this was attempting to set all player models to SOLID_BSP someday. But without major changes to the engines, this might be a crazy thing to do. I still wonder if anyone tried it, and how much it decreased the performance.

Just set it up so that the closest bone takes ALL of the damage in the event of a nex shot or similar weapon that crosses through you. As for splash damage, just make it to where the closest bone takes most of the damage while others take less. You will still need to figure out how to make hitting multiple targets in a straight line with the nex possible while only one bone per target absorbs damage.

That's exactly what I planned. Hitscan shots will only damage the closest bone fully (they have no radius either way). Splash damage is the one that damages multiple bones, and what I was talking about with the bone culling. So if all goes well, that's exactly what will happen.

And you also sponsor new cpus for the server hosters?

The loop isn't that bad. Like I said, damage effects already use it (as well as my sandbox) with no noticeable decrease in performance. A way to avoid looping the bones you don't need would be good however.