Revision to Muzzlepoints

[Lessen]

The Current State of Things
- All viewmodels (first person gun models) are positioned the same way. aside from dual pistols
- The "original guns" – E-11 and Pistol – have muzzlepoints that are lined up with the viewmodels at FOV 80. They are misaligned at FOV 97.
- The "new guns" – T-21 and CR – have muzzlepoints that are lined up with the viewmodels at FOV 97 (the max FOV).
- The "scoped guns" – EE-3, Westar M5, A280, and DLT-20a – have muzzlepoints in the center of the first person screen, so that when you scope, the shot flies straight down the scope. This also means they're completely disconnected from the viewmodels.
- "Unscoped" SBD has the same muzzlepoint as T-21, or possibly E-11, not sure.
- "Scoped" SBD has the same muzzlepoint as scoped guns. The muzzlepoint changes dramatically when you scope.

The Problem
- All guns except the "new guns" have muzzlepoints inconsistent with the viewmodels.
- Gun muzzlepoints are also inconsistent with each other, an unnecessary complication for a newbie to have to make sense of.

The Solution
- Change all default blaster muzzlepoints to the "new gun" muzzlepoint, which is what lines up with the first person viewmodels at FOV 97.
- Have "scoped gun" muzzlepoints change to center-screen when scoped, the same way that SBD scope works.
(I know SBD's scope is an ability rather than an alt-fire. I don't know whether this affects the difficulty of implementing this.)

The Result
- Simpler blaster muzzlepoint rules. (Unscoped is always in the same place, scoped is always in the same place, consistent across all guns.)
- Accurate first person viewmodels, cementing first person as the absolute "most intuitive" aiming experience.

footnote: This fix does not apply to dual pistols nor to proj/ruptor. Although... it COULD apply to ruptor, now that I think of it. Not that anyone ever uses unscoped ruptor, since unscoped ruptor is 20 damage shots every... second, or whatever.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

I think this would be a good thing to do, but I think your solution just runs into the same problems. It shouldn't be accurate to individual FOV settings and should be accurate regardless of what people have it set to. Scoped vs not scoped should definitely change the fire point.

 

[Lessen]

I think this would be a good thing to do, but I think your solution just runs into the same problems. It shouldn't be accurate to individual FOV settings and should be accurate regardless of what people have it set to. Scoped vs not scoped should definitely change the fire point.

My described fix is as much of a fix as is possible without adding a new cvar. The complete fix would be to additionally implement viewmodel_fov and lock/default it at whatever value lines things up properly. viewmodel_fov is a variable in Source Engine games and possibly Quake Live.

Spoiler: Original, longer, ramblier reply

Ideally (which is probably what you're thinking since you're the Eridan Crisis dev so you can think in terms of ideal solutions, since you can redo everything from the ground up) yes, the viewmodel shouldn't be accurate only to particular FOVs.

But of course, right now it's just split so some guns are accurate in one FOV, some are accurate in the other, and all the scoped guns are completely inaccurate in any FOV. The decision was already made years ago for T-21 and CR muzzlepoints to be accurate at 97 FOV instead of 80 FOV. This is just a complete follow-through on that decision. My solution at least allows for consistency, at the right FOV setting. Right now consistency is simply impossible.

I would expect any serious player to use the highest FOV available (although to be fair, low FOV can help for target identification at long range), so flipping all the muzzlepoints to the 97 location makes the most sense. To make consistency possible.

Certainly, if the devs wanted to make a big ol' project of it, it would be more ideal to redesign the whole viewmodel system to be accurate at all FOVs

(I suppose the way to do that would be to implement viewmodel_fov, which is a variable in Source Engine games and possibly in Quake Live...)

(But that fix would have to be on top of my fix.)

 

[Lessen]

Illustrated version for accessibility.

 

[Lessen]

Bump reminder of this request since I consider it super important (the kinda thing where looking back from post-fix to pre-fix, people will go "why the hell was it ever any other way?")

Also, bonus request to remove visible character arms from the few viewmodels that have them (T-21, droid E-11, dunno what else), since it creates incongruity, especially in the case of the T-21 (which always shows a stormtrooper arm although there are many many non-stormie Commander models)

 

[Lessen]

Double Bump because I'm an obnoxious bastard.

I'm probably a significant minority in considering first person a good aiming environment, and perhaps even more of a minority in considering viewmodels an important part of the value of first person, but, I do, so, I'm gonna keep hoping for more response to this idea.

(I modded my P1 viewmodel to be accurate, even though P1's viewmodel is only slightly inaccurate, and I definitely believe that it improved my aim with P1 in first person, because of how it reduces my thought process to "point the visible gun at the visible enemy.")

(If all the muzzlepoints actually lined up with the viewmodels that would be dreamy, so much more intuitive.)

 

[Lessen]

Important Bump:
I just realized that Bowcaster already works this way. First person is accurate to the viewmodel, scoping changes the muzzlepoint to be accurate to the scope. Which proves that this idea is not only possible, but already implemented.

(I almost never use bowcaster and frequently forget it exists, but while lying in bed trying to fall asleep I was like "Wait a second.... doesn't bowcaster fire like an E-11 but have a scope?" Then I tested it and was like "whoa.")

Also: While the muzzlepoint does change, Bowcaster's first person muzzlepoint is actually uniquely misaligned to the left of the viewmodel, as if it's configured for an ultra-wide screen. So it's needs an adjustment to suit my suggestion of standardizing all muzzlepoints to be aligned at 16:9, cuz 16:9 is the most popular screen dimensions by far.

 

[Damn Polak]

this all seems like a good idea, but how much effort do you think it would take to implement a fix like this for all the guns in open mode?
if it's a quick and easy and there's no potential side effects/extra bugs then i'd say it's worth it
otherwise it's not enough of a big deal and it'd be more reasonable to focus on playermodel LOD optimization or something

 

[Lessen]

Based on the fact that it's already implemented for Bowcaster, and based on the fact that it would be a standardization of all the guns, I'm picturing it not taking terribly long. Ideally it would just be a matter of designing the one bunch of settings (basically just the bowcaster settings, but with the slight alignment fix for unscoped) and applying them to all the other guns.

But for all I know the code is so very crazily spaghetti-ish that even this kind of thing is complicated.

As far as I can tell it's not any kind of behavioral change, just a change of some positional values, so there shouldn't be much risk of bugs. (But I know sometimes touching one thing can seem to break other, completely unrelated things. Or so reports Tempest.)

As for side effects there's the very slight side effect that now all guns will have the same corner-peek capacity (in terms of firing around right-side corners without exposing too much of your body). But this'll actually reduce the corner-shot capacity of E-11 and Pistol.

 

[Liniyka_xddd]

I think the bottomline is devs have enough things to worry about as is, and this issue is too minor to have any sort of priority.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

Just gonna repeat what I said on discord a little over a week ago I think? Several of our weapon models like our player models at the very least need an optimization pass. I would honestly like to see most of our weapons just redone instead of optimized because some of them just don't look that great anymore. That is probably the only time I would see time being dedicated to doing this because we have so much other things to do.

 

[Lessen]

huh. I consider this a... relatively major gameplay optimization, that also seems relatively easy to code given that Bowcaster already implements it. It seems to have a high Positive Impact : Difficulty ratio.

edit: I mean, if this change were made, it would have a dramatic effect on the ease-of-use of most weapons, for me. Dramatic, I say. Not minor.

And by "most weapons" I mean "every weapon that isn't T-21/CR" (or dual pistols, since they'd be unaffected)

(Other suggestion I consider slightly less important but still really important: Make it possible to turn off the red pain flash / camera-jostle that happens when you get hurt in first person. It's an unnecessary and major disadvantage to first person. Again: From my perspective a fairly important change. Not just a tiny tweak. But surely not terribly hard to implement.)

But seriously, I consider this "Essential" not "Minor." A sort of "fundamental" kind of "polish."

 

[Damn Polak]

Make it possible to turn off the red pain flash / camera-jostle that happens when you get hurt in first person

iirc there's already a cvar for this
don't remember the name though

I consider this "Essential"

funny, i always thought the fpp gunners are in the minority

 

[Lessen]

iirc there's already a cvar for this
don't remember the name though

Huh, if there IS a cvar for that, I gotta know. I've looked over the whole cvarlist before in search of interesting things, but I'll look over it again in search of this thing specifically. I hope it exists.

(Edit: Found "cg_drawHitEffects" but setting it to 0 did not seem to prevent pain visuals. Googling that cvar only brings up MB2-related results, but I'm not sure what it's supposed to do. Maybe it's... the scorch marks visible on someone when they get shot?)

(Messing with this made me realize the camera jostle at least has the value of indicating where you got hit from, since the camera gets jostled away from the damage. Still annoying in a gunfight having my visuals fucked with when that doesn't happen in third person.)

(Googling indicates that Quake Live has cg_screenDamage and cg_kickScale to adjust these pain effects. There's a moviebattles.org thread with eksha suggesting adding these vars to MB2.)

funny, i always thought the fpp gunners are in the minority

I believe gunners that make use of first person (including switching between 1p and 3p like I do) ARE very much a minority, but I also believe first person is itself an essential tool for serious gunners. I just think most gunners are mistaken in not using it more. I haven't polled widely but I've seen agreement from a few other high-skill gunners that first person helps a ton. I'm the only person I'm aware of who's so bothered that viewmodels are inaccurate, but even if other people don't directly notice the issue, I think everyone who makes use of first person would benefit from this change. And given that I think every gunner oughta make use of first person, I think this would have a very strong "potential" positive effect.

Also worth noting that this change isn't entirely a first-person-exclusive change. It's changing the actual muzzlepoints (the places the shots come from) for all guns to be the same, so it would also have an effect on third person, or rather on blaster combat in general. It's just that the most interesting effect of it would be that the first person visuals for all guns would suddenly become accurate and useful and intuitive.