PAINTBALL

Paintball is a sport,first played in 1981 in New Hampshire, in which players compete, in teams or individually, to eliminate opponents by hitting them with capsules containing paint (referred to as paintballs) from a device called a paintball marker. The game is regularly played in organized competition with worldwide leagues, tournaments, professional teams, and players, but is also used by armies to supplement military training, Some of its technologies are harnessed for riot response and non lethal suppression of dangerous suspects as well.

Games are played on indoor or outdoor fields of varying sizes. A game field is scattered with natural or artificial terrain, which players use for strategic play. Rules for playing paintball vary, but can include capture the flag, elimination, defending or attacking a particular point or area, or capturing objects of interest hidden in the playing area. Depending on the variant played, games can last from seconds to hours, or even days in scenario play.

The legality of paintball varies among countries and regions. In most areas where regulated play is offered, players are required to wear protective masks, and game rules are strictly enforced.

In 1976, Hayes Noel, a stock trader, Bob Gurnsey, and author Charles Gaines were discussing Gaines' recent trip to Africa and his experiences hunting buffalo. Inspired in part by Richard Connell's short story The Most Dangerous Game, they created a game where they would stalk and hunt each other; recreating the same adrenaline rush that came with animal hunting. In 1981 in New Hampshire, the group used a "Nel-spot 007" pistol (normally used by farmers and ranchers for marking trees and livestock) to fire balls of paint. Twelve people participated in this first game, which was a "capture the flag" scenario between two teams. The winner captured all flags without firing a shot.

As national interest in the game steadily built, Bob Gurnsey formed the National Survival Game company, and entered a contract with Nelson Paint Company to be the sole distributor of their paintball equipment.Thereafter, they licensed to franchises in other states the right to sell their guns, paint, and goggles. As a result of their monopoly on equipment, they turned a profit in only six months.
The first games of paintball made use of Nelspot pistols, which were the only guns available at the time.

They used 12-gram CO2 cartridges, held only ten rounds, and had to be tilted to roll the ball into the chamber and then recocked after each shot. Dedicated paintball masks had not yet been created, so players wore shop glasses that left the rest of their faces exposed. The first paintballs were oil-based and thus not water soluble; "turpentine parties" were common after a day of play. Games often lasted for hours as players stalked each other, and since each player had only a limited number of rounds, shooting was rare.

Between 1981 and 1983, rival manufacturers such as PMI began to create competing products, and it was during those years that the game took off. Paintball technology gradually developed as manufacturers added a front-mounted pump in order to make recocking easier, then replaced the 12-gram cartridges with larger air tanks, commonly referred to as "constant air". These innovations were followed by gravity feed hoppers and 45-degree elbows to facilitate loading from the hopper. In 1984, paintball was established in other countries outside the United States; with Skirmish Paintball setting up fields in Australia and England.

Technology continued to advance in the 1990s and 2000s with the introduction and acceptance of electronically-controlled markers, beginning with the Smart Parts Shocker and WDP Angel. Unlike purely mechanical designs which usually utilize a sear directly manipulated by the trigger, electronic markers replace this mechanical linkage with a simple electronic or optical switch and circuitry that controls the cycling action of the marker. This dramatically increases rate of fire as the trigger's weight and travel are much reduced, and also allows for programmable "automatic" firing modes allowed in some tournament formats. Roughly coinciding with the introduction of electropneumatic markers was that of high-pressure air systems (HPA, sometimes called N2), which solve some problems inherent in using CO2 "constant air". Some mechanical and virtually all electropneumatic designs require the use of an HPA system. Motorized loaders were also developed, first to reduce the occurrence of hopper jams by incorporating an agitator, then by using belts or rotary feeders to "force-feed" a reliable stream of paintballs faster than gravity alone can feed them into the marker.

As paintball teams and tournament promoters began to market the idea of the game as a spectator sport, paintball fields began to transition from heavily forested areas with more natural terrain (known today as "woodsball") to open, flat arenas with artificial forms of cover (known as "speedball"). This allowed officials, spectators and television cameras to more easily see the action. It also allowed for symmetrical field designs, reducing the advantage one team may have over another due to terrain. "Bunkers" made from oil drums, plywood, plastic drainage conduit, and similar materials were common at first, and allowed creation of a wide variety of "scenario" fields containing houses or forts. However, such fields were difficult to reconfigure once set up, and injuries from collisions with these hard objects became more common as the pace of the game increased. Modern fields for most tournament formats now use inflatable bunkers tethered to the ground, a format known as "airball"; these features are easy to reconfigure, and being softer than wooden or metal bunkers are less prone to cause injury. Though "woodsball" and other more traditional fields with permanent terrain features are still very popular in recreational play, most paintball parks today, especially "home fields" of tournament teams, have at least one inflatable setup.

The paintball equipment used depends on the game type, for example: woodsball, speedball, or scenarioball, as well as on how much money one is willing to spend on equipment. Every player, however, is required to have three basic pieces of equipment:

1. Paintball marking:
also known as a paintball gun, this is the primary piece of equipment, used to tag an opposing player with paintballs. The paintball marker must have attached a loader or "hopper" to keep the marker fed with ammunition, and will be either gravity-fed (where balls drop into the loading chamber), or electronically force-fed. A marker will require a compressed air bottle or carbon dioxide for propellant.

2. Paintballs:
The ammunition used in the marker, paintballs are spherical gelatin capsules containing primarily polyethylene glycol, other non-toxic and water-soluble substances, and dye. The quality of paintballs is dependent on the brittleness of the ball's shell, the roundness of the sphere, and the thickness of the fill; higher-quality balls are almost perfectly spherical, with a very thin shell to guarantee breaking upon impact, and a thick, brightly-colored fill that is difficult to hide or wipe off during the game.

3. Mask or goggles:
Masks are safety devices players are required to wear at all times on the field, to protect them from paintballs.[13] They completely cover the eyes, mouth, ears and nostrils of the wearer, and masks can also feature throat guards. Modern masks have evolved to be less bulky compared with older designs.

4. "Pods" and "Pod packs":
With the advent of semi-automatic paintball markers, the number of shots fired in a game increased, eventually surpassing the capacity of most hoppers (generally 200 rounds). To increase carrying capacity, manufacturers started marketing "pods" with a rigid shell and flip-top lid that could carry 100 or 140 extra paintballs. To carry and quickly access these pods, various "pouches" that clip to a player's belt, or "harnesses" that incorporate a belt, are made that can carry any number of pods the player wishes, from one or two up to several.

5. Pads:
Playing paintball usually involves running, jumping, sliding, kneeling, and crawling in outdoor fields, sometimes in unkempt areas containing rocks, gravel and compacted dirt. To protect players' knees, elbows and hands, protective pads and gloves are often used, and specialized designs for paintball are marketed to provide protection without adding bulk or restricting movement. In addition, more sensitive areas of player's bodies such as the neck, collarbone, groin and similar can be given protective padding to prevent or reduce bruising. The use of such padding often increases the likelihood that shots will bounce off instead of breaking, so most tournament leagues strictly specify the type and amount of padding that is allowed.

6. Apparel:
Though virtually any clothing is acceptable, players tend to wear long pants and long sleeve shirts made of durable fabrics, to protect skin from abrasion with the ground or foliage and from direct impact of paintballs. Clothing that breathes well and wicks moisture away is preferable, as it is for most outdoor sports. A specialized set of clothing for speedball has been designed, derived from motocross apparel, and is produced by many manufacturers for both professional and amateur players. In woodsball and scenario games, camoflauge is common, and army-surplus BDU clothing is a common choice for the purpose. Some companies also produce paintball-specific camoflauge apparel for woodsball.

Regulated games are overseen by referees (or marshals[citation needed]) , who patrol the course to ensure enforcement of the rules and the safety of the players. If a player is marked with paint, they will call them out, but competitors may also be expected to follow the honor code; a broken ball means elimination. Field operators may specify variations to this rule, such as requiring a tag to certain body locations only – such as the head and torso only. There are game rules that can be enforced depending on the venue, in order to ensure safety, balance the fairness of the game or eliminate cheating.

a. Masks On
Even when a game is not in progress, virtually all venues enforce a "masks-on" rule while players are within the playing area. More generally, within any given area of the park, either all players'/spectators'/officials' masks must be on, or all players' markers must either have a barrel block in place or be disconnected from their gas source, to ensure that a paintball cannot be fired from any nearby marker and cause eye injury. Some fields encourage players to aim away from opponents' heads during play if possible; splatter from mask hits can penetrate ventilation holes in the goggles and cause eye irritation, close-range hits to the mask can cause improperly-maintained lenses to fail, and hits to unprotected areas of the face, head and neck are especially painful and can cause more serious injury.

b. Minimum distance
When being tagged, depending on the distance from where the shot was fired, getting marked can feel like a firm pinch. Being marked may even leave a welt. Because of the pain associated with being hit by a paintball, commercial venues may enforce a minimum distance rule; such as 15 feet (7.6 m), whereby players cannot shoot an opponent if they are closer than this distance. Many fields enforce a modified minimum distance rule called the "surrender rule"; a player who advances to within minimum range must offer his opponent the chance to surrender before shooting. This generally prevents injury and dischord at recreational games, however it is seldom used in tournaments as it confers a real disadvantage to the attacking player; he must hesitate while his opponent is free to shoot immediately. The act of shooting a player at close range is colloquially called "bunkering"; it happens most often when a player uses covering fire to force his opponent behind a bunker, then advances on that bunker while still shooting to eliminate the opponent point-blank.

c. Overshooting
Fields may discourage players from overshooting (also regarded as bonus balling, "overkill" or lighting up), which is to repeatedly shoot a player after they are eliminated from the game. It is also considered overshooting if a player knew the opponent was eliminated but continued to shoot, disregarding the safety of the opposing player and risking dangerous injury to others.

d. Ramping
Ramping is a feature of many electronic markers, where after a certain number of rapid shots or upon a threshold rate-of-fire being achieved by the player, the gun will begin firing faster than the trigger is being pulled. Ramping of rate of fire is widely prohibited at most paintball fields, however it is allowed in some tournament formats under specific conditions.

e. Wiping
Players may attempt to cheat by wiping paint from themselves, to pretend they were not hit and stay in the game.

(from any sources)