Except when you're working with radians you're working on a 0-pi*2(~6.28) scale, as opposed to degrees that are on a 0-360 scale. It's much easier to take a quick glimpse and see that a 5degree spread is favorable instead of 0.001 equivalent of radians. Just larger scale = simpler digestion.

Also, 38 degrees doesn't seem like too much for a shotgun :)

You could just make it a visual display. EG: Next to the weapon image in some form of information display, the range (Spread) is shown at min-max degrees visually, like so:

Attachment 50426

No numbers, no conversions, just a visual representation of the min-max spread within say a 20 tile radius scaled down.

You should've been a Graphic Artists, Squirt is desperately in-need of some, you're awesome.

Graphic representations of spread are pretty useless, you can't easily compare them between guns.

As Demisis said, players will just compare the spread of one gun to another, not actually think about the angle. Converting between radians and degrees is just subject to rounding errors and inaccuracy.

I think he meant for sake of displaying it publicly...you'd still use radians in the actual script. Degrees are much easier to compare than radians, and it doesn't really have to be perfect so roundoff errors are not an issue.

I understand that he was talking about public display, but like I said, I don't think it's a problem. Players are just going to compare it against other guns.

I don't think spread-display is really a necessity, I mean spread is based on preference.
While freezetime, rate of fire and such really are a one-way street for players. Less, Less, Less.

Actually you want more rate of fire,not less.

Spread can be a defining factor between two automatic(or even non-automatic) guns when all their other stats are similar. It's basically the accuracy of the gun.

Darow, you'd want less sleeptime (= Higher Rate of Fire) is what I meant.

And, Dusty... I was saying pertaining to Era. If all the stats are completely the same, its based on the preference of the user as to whether he wants less spread or more spread.
In other words, it can't be said factually, that more spread on Era is better than less or none or vice-versa. Its based on the user, which varies.

All the more reason to have it shown, no?

Also... how is spread any different on Era than any other implementation? Spread is spread... pretty sure Era implements it on a similar way -- a max value for the random angle applied to the projectiles. Why exactly someone would WANT a higher spread(besides weapons like shotguns) is a little baffling, but moot nonetheless.

I've added spread to the stats display, in both radians and degrees (note that the measure of radians is the angle at which they can go either direction, and that the actual angle it can go is twice that; I've doubled the number when converting to degrees for simplicity)

That's cool- too bad there's not enough space for it in the inventory :(