gunplay: recoil + aim-down-sights + spread

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kharnov
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Re: gunplay: recoil + aim-down-sights + spread

Post by kharnov »

Yeah, I want to know about this too.

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ViruS
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Re: gunplay: recoil + aim-down-sights + spread

Post by ViruS »

First person sights... I tried it by editing gun position scripts a while back..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT1v0lBaH5g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOKEBvPGpg4

It's available through my old Lolards mod, which is probably not compatible with the current unv version.

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illwieckz
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Re: gunplay: recoil + aim-down-sights + spread

Post by illwieckz »

Hey, Sorry to haven't get the time to read that thread before. I just want to say first that work is awesome. By the way, I don't know yet if it's what I want for Unvanquished, but I want a game with that. :thumbup:

I really like iron sight mechanism, that's why I like playing True Combat for example. But there is a important point to not miss : I like the ironsight mechanism in True Combat but I don't want to see it in Urban Terror, I like Urban Terror because there is no iron sight mechanism, and I like True Combat because there is iron sight mechanism, that's why (with other reasons) they are different games, and that's why I can enjoy playing both, because they have different gameplays, so I don't get the same fun while playing one game or the other one. :human:

So I like a lot your changes because they are sexy stuff. By the way, I want to warn against two bad fashion that affect many games these days.

Many games are adding some effects because it's expected to be in modern games, and it looks cool, or it looks realistic, and it's exciting to expect.

So I will talk about 4 things. 1. Realism, 2. Cool effects, 3. Expectation, 4. Fun.

Realism is cool, it blows your eyes, so it leads to expectation. It's really fun to watch realistic screenshot, realistic video etc. So, you dream about realism. So you have fun to dream about what you expect. By the way, if is realism is fun and if it's fun to dream and if it's fun to expect your dream, it does not mean you will get fun playing the game.

Cool effects are fun to watch, they are cool on promotional material and they are cool in game too. It can amaze you when you are playing, cool effects can add so much to user experience. But it can also change gameplay drastically. Realism is a kind of cool effect family among many. One day you start a game, you click your right mouse button and you see your character aiming through the iron sight and you feel « wow, I'm a baddass », that's cool and it helps a lot to get a good gaming experience, but it can also be incompatible with other things that can give you a good gaming experience (like gaming speed), so it can deal some gameplay stuff against some other gameplay stuff. And if cool effects are fun to watch and if it can add fun to the game, cool effects do not mean the game will be fun.

Expectation is fun to live with. Realism and cool effects give great expectation which is very fun to live with. By the way, it does not mean the game will be fun to play with.

Fun. Some unrealistic things can be more fun than realism. It's also why we play : in real life there is no telenode if you die… Sometime we just want things that are not realistic, like being able to shoot some dretches in midair without recoil. Even TrueCombat gives Akimbo firing which is not realistic at all, because it's very fun and we all want to do that in a terrorist game like in the movies. :cool:

So, I will now compare two games in another special genre: wild west first person shooter. I will compare the “Fistful of Frag” source engine based game to the “Smokin' Guns” idtech3 based game. Regardless the engine, the two games are very different and I don't feel the first to be fun.

Fistful of frags have probably a wider player base (thanks to the popularity of the Source engine and the Steam platform) than Smokin' Guns and that's why you can get fun playing Fistful of frags. Yes, the last time I played Fistful of frags I had a nice time. But the reason is simplistic : a multiplayer game can always be fun when you are playing with and against real players. I mean, the fun is to play with humans.

There is many things unrealistic in Smokin' Guns, (some inherited from Quake 3) : no recoil, you still aim precisely while running, akimbo mode. Smokin Guns also have some realism mechanism you will not find in Fistful of frags, for example you can't recover health. At all. If you can buy a new boiler plate (the steel shield used as body armor in the movie “A fistful of dollars”), you can't recover health. Yes, it's the exact same mechanism you can find in the GoldenEye 64 game (same in the Source engine port). So, even if the boiler plate is not very realistic (it's a movie thing), the way you can't recover life is a realism stuff that adds fun to the game (you don't expose yourself the same way) :thumbup: .

There is realistic fun stuff to see, and unrealistic fun stuff to see, there is realistic fun stuff to play, there is unrealistic fun stuff to play, there is realistic fun stuff to expect, there is unrealistic fun stuff to expect. There is realistic stuff that are fun to play, and realistic stuff that are not fun to play. There is unrealistic stuff that are fun to play, and unrealistic stuff that are not fun to play. And there is stuff that are fun to expect that are not fun to play, and so on.

For example If you like speed in game the realism of not being able to recover health like in Smokin’ guns will not affect the fun of the game, since it does not affect speed. By the way, if you need to slow down to aim, it will affect fun if you want to have fun with speed.

So, Fistful of frags also have unrealistic things, for example you can recover health drinking some whisky and that is fun. (Hee hay ! Yippee ki hay). There is also some realistic things that can be fun, for example you can choose if you are left handled or right handled, and the precision of your weapon is not the same if you shoot with the hand you're best with. But there is many realistic things that are not fun at all in my point of view, for example, all is made to slow down you. To get a new weapon, you have to crounch next to a box on the ground and wait to open the lock. If you run, you can't aim, so you must stop before shooting, etc. In fact, all these cool mechanisms (in our dreams for realism) just lead to slow down yourself every time. In fact, Fistful of frag is a game you can't play if you don't stop. The most you want to play fistful of frags, the most you have to stop. All the gaming curve is about to stop, and it's not fun at all.

In Smokin' Guns you also have to stop to buy a gun, but it's not in a case on the ground you have to unlock, it's on your hud. Having to buy your weapons with money your earn or picked up is realistic (in the train map, even in death match, you can blow the safe to rob money to buy guns). So, having to buy your weapon with money you robbed is realistic, buying it from the hud is unrealistic. That is the Smokin' Guns way. Having a weapon in a box you have to unlock while crounching on the floor is realistic, having a box that automatically refill itself with a new weapon after some amount of time is unrealistic. That is the Fistful of frags way. Both games decided to have some realism and some unrealism. Smokin Guns chosen the fun realistic mechanisms and the fun unrealistic mechanisms, and Fistful of frags chosen the not fun realistic mechanism, and a neutral unrealistic mechanism, so you only get not fun.

So, there is two dangerous fashion : 1. It's expected in modern games. 2 Slowing down mechanism.

Badly, it's expected to be a modern game to implement slowing down mechanism, it's a meta-fashion.

Your changes are very cool and I like them so much, I want to see them in a dæmon based game, I want to see them in an Unvanquished-based game, but I don't know if it must be in Unvanquished itself. Recoil, iron sight etc. are some stuff expected in modern games. If you don't do that, you look like « old games that had not these mechanism back in time ». Tetris don't have recoil, average aiming, neither slowing down mechanism (ahah). So, it's not because slowing down mechanism are a modern fashion they must be implemented in Unvanquished. Perhaps it will be awesome, perhaps not.

So, the other dangerous fashion in gaming currently is slowing down realistic mechanisms. Hey, I like slow games. I liked a lot infiltration games like Splinter Cell (this was the first game I played where you get better aiming while stopping and crounching, and I'm still amazed by that). I like a lot hide and stealth games like The Dark Mod. There is games where you enjoy to hide, to crounch, to take a lot of time to unlock a box and aim some target, and there is games where you enjoy to run and gun. Some games have a moving inaccurate aim, there is games where you need to hold your breath to aim better, there is games where you need to stop to aim better, and you need to crounch to aim even better.

I like these games, I will probably enjoy an game in the Unvanquished universe with mechanisms like that, where you slowly capture zones hiding from corners (that could be awesome), but I still want to be able to play Unvanquished the fast way, where you run and jump with a chaingun, firing without recoil.

By the way I talked about the chaingun, that is the Unvanquished weapon that have inacurrate aiming and is the Unvanquished weapon you need to crounch with to aim precisely, so you see, there is a place in Unvanquished for mechanism like that since this chaingun mechanism is there since the beginning, and it was already there in Tremulous back in time. :bsuit:

So, I like a lot your changes, there is place for many things like that in Unvanquished, but I just want to be careful: we must be careful with the fashions that leads to deal realism against fun, and be lucid that many effects just add slow-down to games, sometime without adding fun.

So keep up the good work, I hope I will be able to try that soon (I will probably compile your branch), and I hope to be able to play a game with mechanisms like that a day. But there will be some more talks about these changes, for sure. :tongue:

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