Freeze! Have you ever seen this happen in a game?

170

June 19, 2008 04:14 PM

Quote:Original post by Tangireon
I just thought up another way to do this; what if we married the two systems, and took a look at the child that they would bear? It would be a hybrid between the circular crosshair system that is so familiar with FPSers, yet with the more specified and separated gun-nozzle/body aiming system that you desire. I'd like to call it the Liquid Crosshair system, or just the Deformable Crosshair system.

Basically, the Liquid Crosshair acts very much like a sphere or ball of highly viscous liquid or slime - it's shape or aiming/shooting area deforms as you move your mouse. The faster you displace your mouse, the more deformed it becomes, which parts of it lag from its previous position. For example, if you were to swing your gun from the left to the right, the Liquid Crosshair would for several moments take on the deformity that you have made, but then return to normal after those moments have passed.

When Recoiling, the Liquid Crosshair would deform upwards, almost looking like a inverted drop of water, before returning back to normal again after you've stopped firing. The more you fire, the larger this crosshair becomes.

Trembling. The more your hands tremble, the shakier and wobblier your Liquid Crosshair becomes. Optimally, you would want this to be none, so that the crosshair is as still and small as possible. Any sudden body movements will make the crosshair wobble, forcing the player to crouch and shoot if they desire that aimed accurate shot.

And to note, only the outside circle of the crosshair would deform; the cross itself stays the same as it is the indicator to the center of your mouse cursor's aim.

Basically, it is the same circular crosshair in standard FPSes, but except it also takes into account the aiming inaccuracies/lag of moving your arm to aim at nonadjacent targets (such as a sudden motion from the far right to the far left).

Haha, I would love to see this implemented in a game.

Sounds like a fluid version of the accuracy bars you see in most modern FPS games. I'd love to see it implemented.

Gyrthok

412

June 19, 2008 05:14 PM

Quote:Have you ever seen this happen in a game?

You sneak up behind your enemy without him knowing.

You point your gun at him and shout "Don't move a muscle!"

"Drop your weapon."

"SLOWLY!"

"Now move away from it..."

Postal 2. If you managed to get into trouble with the law (say, by smashing a pedestrians face in with a shovel) any nearby cops would shout "freeze!". If you don't move they'll take out a pair of handcuffs and walk up to you slowly and then "arrest" you, at which point your warped in to a cell in the police precinct with nothing but a box of matches (which you use to set off the fire alarm to escape). One of the interesting things though is that depending on how far you are in the game, when you set off the alarm to escape, you'd also open the other cells holding various badguy's from previous level's (like Gary Coleman), and since you have no weapons, well, it makes it quite interesting.

As for the desire for a player to surrender, thats probably one of the larger obstacles to such a mechanic. There really is no reason in current games for a player to want to surrender, unless they either had no ammunition, or dying imparted some penalty or effect the player didn't want. The level of violence a game imparts could also have an effect on the players desire to surrender, if your commiting genocide every 5 minutes, the thought of surrendering seems like less of an option, such as "if i can kill billions, why should i surrender to one?!".

Maybe if there were greater tactical reasons the player may want to be captured, for example being captured might strip you of your weapons, but it would allow you to bypass all of the enemy bases forward defenses, getting you closer to your objective. For PvP players could be encouraged by altering some game rules. For example, if you surrender your team gets X points every X minutes your in prison, but they'll be outnumbered vs the opposing team, which may have an easier time in taking out your team without you there.

Quote:A general approach to the resolution to this is pretty obvious. You have to limit how fast players can move/accelerate their aim or turn around. It should definitely matter whether you are holding a 50kg rocket launcher or a pistol.

They did this in Planetside with the MAX Suit turning rates, everyones answer was to crank mouse sensitivity, as one would expect. I do find the idea of a "body" turning limitation rather interesting and have thought of something similar before (tangireon's "liquid" cursor seems quite interesting as well). I don't picture it being used in FPS's like counter-strike or UT2004 though, but more in "adventure" style games where violence is less of a direct priority.

GyrthokNeed an artist? Pixeljoint, Pixelation, PixelDam, DeviantArt, ConceptArt.org, GFXArtist, CGHub, CGTalk, Polycount, SteelDolphin, Game-Artist.net, Threedy.

JvdWulp

191

June 19, 2008 05:43 PM

Well do you do see that kind of action in shooters like Metal gear solid 4(okay a tactical shooter).

Anyway the appropriate ending would be *snap* there goes the neck of the enemy :P

Hodgman

52,717

June 19, 2008 06:09 PM

Quote:Original post by shurcool
Have you ever seen this happen in a game?
...
Also important to consider: Assume the aforementioned situation did occur in a multiplayer game (e.g. COD4 or Counter-Strike); Question: What would happen next, after the guy discards his weapon? Is this a wanted or unwanted potential situation? Would it have a negative effect on the dead players who are spectating, assuming it's a round based game, waiting for one of the teams to kill the other?

I actually tried to implement this in a HL (tactical-shooter) mod once! (so yes, I think it's a great idea ;))

Players could gain XP from kills, but would lose half their XP from dying. As an alternative you had a surrender button, which dropped all your guns and put your hands up in the air. Surrendering and being captured was the same as dying, but you didn't lose any XP at all.
If someone had their hands up, you could press "use" to capture them. In order to encourage this, capturing people gave you much more experience than killing people.

In actual games though, it never worked as I intended, or as you described. Occasionally people surrendered, but only after diving behind some cover or something and realising that they were out of ammo...
Also, griefers would exploit the surrender option! If you shot someone who had their hands up, you lost a bit of XP (for being so brutal), so some people would surrender at the start of a round, and then run around as a human shield for their buddies!

I also tried to fix the rifle/pistol imbalance that you describe, but instead of limiting the turning rates, I just made pistols do a lot more damage than the rifles while being much less accurate (which made them awesome close-quarters weapons).

. 22 Racing Series .

WavyVirus

885

June 19, 2008 09:43 PM

The surrender option... Gameplay wise I think something like Halo's beat-down assasinations allowing effectively an instant kill from behind, but basically with a fast stick-up/disarming animation would be a good compromise. In a fast paced multiplayer game people wouldn't put up with a delay in silencing an enemy as they'd probably get killed from behind themselves before they finished. Human shields, hostages etc. are all great in single player though.

As for the aiming.. Growing crosshairs seems to be the current standard but comes across as fairly limp and arbitrary in most games I've played which include it. I liked things like breath-holding to steady aim in some games now. A semi-transparent crosshair which interpolates smoothly to (quickly) follow the main crosshair would be better in my opinion. This can also model recoil and differences between weapons quite nicely, and a skilled player who reacts in time can still fire as they turn accurately by timing their shot.

On a console as opposed to keyboard and mouse, I already feel that a lot of the skill is in swinging your crosshair around with somewhat limited control and pulling the trigger at the right moment - you don't often have time to take a proper "aimed" shot.

shurcool

439

Author

June 19, 2008 10:18 PM

Quote:Original post by stonemetal
Amusingly enough non realistic shooters tend to do what you describe better.

Indeed. Ironic, isn't it.

Quote:Original post by Tangireon
I just thought up another way to do this; ... the Liquid Crosshair system.

You've described your idea very well, and I can picture exactly what you mean in my head with ease. A working implementation would certainly be interesting to see (but unlikely as professional companies rarely try to innovate or try something daring and unproven/risky).

Quote:Original post by Andruil
Sounds like a fluid version of the accuracy bars you see in most modern FPS games.

Exactly, except it does a much better job of showing you the region where your bullets may go.

Quote:Original post by Hodgman
I actually tried to implement this in a HL (tactical-shooter) mod once!

It's great to hear someone speak from their experience.

Quote:As an alternative you had a surrender button, which dropped all your guns and put your hands up in the air.

In actual games though, it never worked as I intended, or as you described.

Quote:Original post by Gyrthok
As for the desire for a player to surrender, thats probably one of the larger obstacles to such a mechanic. There really is no reason in current games for a player to want to surrender...

However, I'm not sure if most people are catching my subtle intentions.

I don't want to add a 'surrender button' or do anything to directly implement this gameplay mechanic.

Instead, I want it to be a natural side-effect, an emergent property of changes made to the aiming system to make it more realistic.

In other words, I don't even want players to do this. I just think it'd be a good indicator of the realism of your aiming system if they could do it. Make it a potential possible scenario, simply a result of a natural advantage you have when you've sneaked up behind someone.

Quote:Original post by WavyVirus
In a fast paced multiplayer game people wouldn't put up with a delay in silencing an enemy as they'd probably get killed from behind themselves before they finished.

I've seen it quite often in Counter-Strike people attempt to kill others with a knife whenever they have the opportunity. It's a risky move, but it adds to the humiliation of the other player so some players risk it sometimes. It's fun to be able to vary your gameplay style. It could be fun to have the option to hold-up the last guy on the other team and make him do stuff if he wants to live.

Quote:Human shields, hostages etc. are all great in single player though.

I agree, but I'm only talking about multiplayer here.

Quote:A semi-transparent crosshair which interpolates smoothly to (quickly) follow the main crosshair would be better in my opinion. This can also model recoil and differences between weapons quite nicely, and a skilled player who reacts in time can still fire as they turn accurately by timing their shot.

Congratulations! You've got it. That, right there, is my *main* motivation to go through the whole trouble of trying to make aiming more realistic vs. the current standard of an ambiguous growing crosshair.

Quote:On a console as opposed to keyboard and mouse, I already feel that a lot of the skill is in swinging your crosshair around with somewhat limited control and pulling the trigger at the right moment - you don't often have time to take a proper "aimed" shot.

Also true. I certainly only considered the PC combination of keyboard+mouse in this thread. It's a whole lot easier to do an insta-180-and-headshot move with a mouse vs. a gamepad.

Tangireon

239

June 19, 2008 11:17 PM

There is also another example that I saw this concept implemented in a working and pretty popular game - Half Life's Day of Defeat Mod.

In DoD, there are basically two things you have to focus on when shooting - there was your aimed direction (mouse cursor crosshair), and your actual shooting direction (gun/hand/body, represented by a moving circle). One of the most notable side effects of this system is that when you started walking, the moving circle to which represents the gun would start swinging around the mouse cursor crosshair in a sideways figure-eight manner. If you were to shoot while walking, the bullet would be shot where the circle is pointed rather than where your mouse cursor was pointed.

If you wanted to make an aimed shot, you would have crouch and wait until the moving circle (your gun) stopped swinging around enough that you can predict and control it.

This, however, doesn't really take into account of bodily-turning lags, but it sort of does by making it more inaccurate; if you do a large-degree turn with your character, it would simply make the circle swing more further out from the main mouse cursor.

Just throwing a system that is already out there that sort of does what you wanted.

[url="http://groupgame.50.forumer.com/index.php"][/url]

Wavinator

2,020

June 19, 2008 11:23 PM

Quote:Original post by Tangireon
I just thought up another way to do this; what if we married the two systems, and took a look at the child that they would bear? It would be a hybrid between the circular crosshair system that is so familiar with FPSers, yet with the more specified and separated gun-nozzle/body aiming system that you desire. I'd like to call it the Liquid Crosshair system, or just the Deformable Crosshair system.

Whoa. That's... just... cool sounding.

The possibilities are so rich for what you could do in terms of status effects that something like this truly deserves to go into an FPS RPG (Deus Ex 3 or whatever)

You'd have to do something to prevent it from obstructing the view, which is less a problem with the standard growing crosshair. And you'd have to get past that annoying sense that you get in games (like Morrowind) when the cursor is right on a target but you're still not hitting due to background calculations. If there was always something like tracer rounds I see this as not being a problem.

Again: Just... cool sounding. :)

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Wavinator

2,020

June 19, 2008 11:34 PM

Quote:Original post by shurcool
I don't want to add a 'surrender button' or do anything to directly implement this gameplay mechanic.

Instead, I want it to be a natural side-effect, an emergent property of changes made to the aiming system to make it more realistic.

I think I'm in that camp that doesn't yet get it.

You want the naturally occuring possibility of surrendering due to the UI. But what incentive do I have not to simply blast the guy? And what incentive do I have not to suicide turn so I can respawn and keep playing.

Quote:
In other words, I don't even want players to do this. I just think it'd be a good indicator of the realism of your aiming system if they could do it. Make it a potential possible scenario, simply a result of a natural advantage you have when you've sneaked up behind someone.

I don't see the UI itself bringing this about. Imagine a fictional suit of armor that covers you in bullet protection from head to toe. Even if you're caught flatfooted, what's to stop you from turning around? Or a disposable machine is probably a closer analogy-- why should you want to live?

I get the impression that you feel that the UI itself will bring this about.

Quote:
I've seen it quite often in Counter-Strike people attempt to kill others with a knife whenever they have the opportunity. It's a risky move, but it adds to the humiliation of the other player so some players risk it sometimes. It's fun to be able to vary your gameplay style. It could be fun to have the option to hold-up the last guy on the other team and make him do stuff if he wants to live.

You're right about this, and every time I did this I killed the guy and moved on. I think it loses something if it's a canned animation, even if it's completely safe to do. If you could, for instance, make the guy drop his pants, it might be funny a few times, but ultimately hollow (he's not doing it, the anim's doing it) and ultimately a waste of animator time-- I'd prefer more attacks / costumes / guns instead.

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

Krohm

5,051

June 20, 2008 01:38 AM

Quote:Original post by Hodgman
Quote:Original post by shurcool
Have you ever seen this happen in a game?
...
Also important to consider: Assume the aforementioned situation did occur in a multiplayer game (e.g. COD4 or Counter-Strike); Question: What would happen next, after the guy discards his weapon? Is this a wanted or unwanted potential situation? Would it have a negative effect on the dead players who are spectating, assuming it's a round based game, waiting for one of the teams to kill the other?
I actually tried to implement this in a HL (tactical-shooter) mod once! (so yes, I think it's a great idea ;))

Players could gain XP from kills, but would lose half their XP from dying. ... Surrendering and being captured was the same as dying, but you didn't lose any XP at all.

In actual games though, it never worked as I intended, or as you described. Occasionally people surrendered, but only after diving behind some cover or something and realising that they were out of ammo...
Also, griefers would exploit the surrender option! If you shot someone who had their hands up, you lost a bit of XP (for being so brutal), so some people would surrender at the start of a round, and then run around as a human shield for their buddies!

I also think it's an interesting idea to be investigated for some games. I quote Hodgman because I think he makes a point clear: there must be some common interest and the thing could show some - say - emergent exploits.

Previously "Krohm"

Freeze! Have you ever seen this happen in a game?

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