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Line of Fire

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NQue:
Hey all,

Firstly, I've got to say, along with a lot of other people I think, that this game is phenomenal. Very much looking forward to the next release (already), and of course, the completed version.

I was just thinking though, doesn't it really annoy you when you're aiming the weapon (a good example would be the sniper rifle, or single-shot equivalent) at an alien, and the top of a chair, or a piece of building support wood gets in the way? When clearly, the soldier is more than able to shoot the alien.

Could perhaps a higher starting point for the weapon projectile (such as near the eyes or shoulders, rather than stomach; which, for most weapons would be logical) help out in a lot of the cases? Or maybe (and i know this would require a lot of work) make the crosshairs available to aim at any point on the body? For example, the cross hair would cling (as it does at the moment) to any solid surface, but instead of having to aim at a single square, could aim at variable points in the square. So. moving the pointer along the body of an alien would move the crosshair (in much the same fashion as a real-life sniper moving laser targeting along someone) along the alien's body.

Doctor J:
It would require a whole different hit mechanism - although one that would be suitable for snipers.  The current system is based on hitting the whole body - a 'man-sized' target.  To call shots for a subsection of that would require more complicated firing code and body data for all races.  Then the AI would have to be modified to use it.  It's an amount of work that i don't see getting done any time soon.  Then again, the smaller the target [like the chest only], the harder it would be to hit; so it wouldn't be as beneficial as it initially appears.

nemchenk:
I'd have to second the idea of moving the aim-from point to head-height, though. Although shooting "from the hip" is cool, it causes both an in-game problem (LOS and line-of-fire are different), and a metagame problem (people tend to aim by drawing a line from their eyes to the target.)

I think the shooting animations would need to be redone then?


PS. Try pressing SHIFT as you aim -- you will aim at different heights of the target square.

BTAxis:
I think shooting from the hip still applies for some weapons, though, like the flamer. So basically we'll need a new animation for shooting from the shoulder, but I think we should keep the one we have now.

Silver:
For most weapons, it makes far more sense to move the firing point-of-origin to the head area.  The flamethrower is the only exception I can think of.  The most annoying side effect of "shooting from the hip", in my opinion, comes when a soldier is crouched behind a window or other cover.  Realistically, this is an ideal shooting position, since the object in front of the soldier can be used for support while providing cover.  Furthermore, the first-person viewpoint shows a nice perspective on your target while in this position.  But if you fire your weapon, the soldier will plant every round into the wall in front of him.  Moving the point-of-origin to the head would open up a wider array of tactical options, and would be far more realistic.

Or, if you wanted to get really fancy, perhaps the point-of-origin could be fire-mode dependent.  For instance, while firing an assault rifle a snap shot would be fired from the hip, while an aimed shot would be fired from the shoulder.  That way you could account for weapons like the flamethrower by only giving it "from-the-hip" fire-modes.

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