Suggestion: asking for Weapon handling code from TC:E?

[poVoq]

When recently testing Unvanquished, I though the overall feel and handling (movement sway, iron-sights, recoil and all that) of the human weapons really felt odd. Now I know it is a work in progress, and will probably get better soon (and the weapon models look awesome for the most part already)... but one Enemy Territory mod (e.g. same legacy code base) that really got that right is/was True Combat: Elite ( http://www.truecombatelite.com/ ).

Now the problem isn't a technical one (the W:ET mod code should run on the Unvanqished engine fine more or less), but rather that the source-code was never released. The original developer (Coroner) sadly also expressed that he would not open-source it at all, and by now the game is dieing a slow death, with Coroner playing around modding COD4 a bit and all the players being sort of desperate for some update to the WET code.

Now this maybe a shot in the dark, but I could imagine a friendly request from developer to developer, to make just the weapons handling code available for Unvanquished integration (which is a totally non-competing game type) might be worth a shot...

I am not overly optimistic about it, but there is nothing to lose, and having that code in Unvanqished would immediately make it quite awesome in regards to human weapon's handling and so on.

Anyways... just a thought. If you try and he declines don't be too unhappy about it, open-sourcing the full mod has been tried really hard before :(

[danmal]

Can you find a short youtube video or provide a description of how the weapons handle in True Combat: Elite?

[poVoq]

Well, this is a bit hard to capture in videos or description... you know some games just feel right (and fun) when it comes to weapons handling and others don't.

The latest innovation of TC:E (the so called CQB version) was "free-view" as can be seen in these two videos, but it is probably too realistic for Unvanquished (but would make for a really good start if one would implement Occulus Rift support ;) ).
http://youtu.be/1kZU3ARtHbc
http://youtu.be/cyVEkawGiA8

However it is probably more fruitful and better fitting to ask for the "outdated" handling from the regular TC:E which you can somewhat see here:
http://youtu.be/YDFeFXfO3AY

I am not saying that it should be take 1:1 for Unvanquished, but it would be an really nice start with lots of nice features (including also things like leaning around corners etc.).

Anyways... just as I said, download and play it to get a real feeling of "how the weapons handle" ;)

[seana11]

Could you be more specific about what handles better about the weapons? I can see that the current weapons need improvement, but it seems more like an animation/sound thing to me. Keep in mind that the devs have expressed their opinion that this should stay semi-realistic.

[poVoq]

As I said, hard to describe... it is something that has to do with weapon sway, recoil, reactiveness of input for iron-sights etc, but also player "movement" options like leaning etc.
It is something that needs a lot of work on refining and testing (and goes along with nice animations and sound effects), so what I am saying is that it might be good to start from a nice setup instead of reinventing the wheel.

Of course Unvanquished isn't really trying to go after the "realism" feel (which really isn't that realistic either), but in my opinion something that feels "right" is a much better starting point for a "better than real" system, then one that tries to go there directly (kind of like you need a sound understanding of real anatomy drawing, to draw a highly stylized one... otherwise you end up with garbage).

[ViruS]

In xonotic, if you jerk the camera, there's a bit of lag in the weapon [it shifts slightly later] although gameplay isn't effected. In most modern games, the gun also changes "apparent relative Z positions" from the camera when the user looks up or down.

Also, leaning around corners: That'll be more useless than the dodge function we already have.

[Amazonian1515]

But I wuv the dodge function. It's how I dance with goons, or use a shotgun against a goon, or be a goon...

[danmal]

Dodge is massively underrated by the community. It's literally the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[Amazonian1515]

+1

+2 for my comment, because goons are sexier than bread.

[KenuR]

Sliced bread is pretty overrated IMHO.