Line of Fire

[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.

[SpaceWombat]

While some weapons -like the flamer- CAN be fired from the hip they probably will not be used this way if the soldier wants to fire through a window. Line of fire should always avoid obstacles if the shot would be a good hit or the aiming cross should indicate that the "perfect" line of fire is blocked (by a chair, wall, whatever).
I know its difficult to make this thing accurate but its not only annoying but ridiculously unrealistic to let a professional gunman hammer his shots directly into the wall in front of him.
Since even small and lightweight obstacles like chairs are made of indestructable DU I think the aiming mechanism should be improved even if that means lots of work or complicated coding. Its worth some effort in my opinion.

How about some kind of flexible line of fire? A standing soldier can lean left or right or get up or down a bit while aiming and you do not need to aim exactly at a certain point of the opponent. Would that be possible?

If that is too complicated at least the aiming cross should indicate whether it is likely to hit the chair instead of an enemy (blue line instead of a green one or something).

Something needs to be done. It is not intuitive enough right now.
My two cents on this

[Doctor J]

While some weapons -like the flamer- CAN be fired from the hip they probably will not be used this way if the soldier wants to fire through a window.

Other than "Close Combat" type weapons and weapons where you can easily see the point of impact [flamer, laser], the line of sight should be from the head.  In fact, i can't think of a single reason why the default LOS shouldn't be from the head.

[BTAxis]

While some weapons -like the flamer- CAN be fired from the hip they probably will not be used this way if the soldier wants to fire through a window.

Let's get something straight: firing from the shoulder should never EVER happen for the flamer, and not for fire modes of projectile weapons that fire more than one shot (automatic fire on the assault rifle, MG, SMG, minigun, PBW...). That stuff is all from the hip. And I don't care if you happen to be standing in front of a window. We can't take that sort of thing into account, or it'll all become way too tedious and complicated.

Line of fire should always avoid obstacles if the shot would be a good hit or the aiming cross should indicate that the "perfect" line of fire is blocked (by a chair, wall, whatever).

This technically already happens, but it doesn't happen correctly. See below.

I know its difficult to make this thing accurate but its not only annoying but ridiculously unrealistic to let a professional gunman hammer his shots directly into the wall in front of him.
Since even small and lightweight obstacles like chairs are made of indestructable DU I think the aiming mechanism should be improved even if that means lots of work or complicated coding. Its worth some effort in my opinion.

How about some kind of flexible line of fire? A standing soldier can lean left or right or get up or down a bit while aiming and you do not need to aim exactly at a certain point of the opponent. Would that be possible?

If that is too complicated at least the aiming cross should indicate whether it is likely to hit the chair instead of an enemy (blue line instead of a green one or something).

Something needs to be done. It is not intuitive enough right now.
My two cents on this

Here's how the LOF system is most likely going to be improved, in a nutshell.

1) A change will be made so that the origin of fire is exactly at the weapon's muzzle. Right now, it is a fixed position for all weapons.
2) With the above, we can more easily allow weapons to be fired from the shoulder.
3) A small change in the accuracy code should allow for an accurate "perfect" line of fire, which should help with deciding if a shot is possible or not.

If this isn't enough for you, it's up to you to come up with something else, concretely.

[Doctor J]

The nutshell looks good.  Approximately when can we see this?

[BTAxis]

When it's done. It's on the TODO, but there's 500 other things on the TODO...

If someone wants to take it on right now, though, don't hesitate to speak up.

[SpaceWombat]

Let's get something straight: firing from the shoulder should never EVER happen for the flamer, and not for fire modes of projectile weapons that fire more than one shot (automatic fire on the assault rifle, MG, SMG, minigun, PBW...). That stuff is all from the hip. And I don't care if you happen to be standing in front of a window. We can't take that sort of thing into account, or it'll all become way too tedious and complicated.

This technically already happens, but it doesn't happen correctly. See below.

Here's how the LOF system is most likely going to be improved, in a nutshell.

1) A change will be made so that the origin of fire is exactly at the weapon's muzzle. Right now, it is a fixed position for all weapons.
2) With the above, we can more easily allow weapons to be fired from the shoulder.
3) A small change in the accuracy code should allow for an accurate "perfect" line of fire, which should help with deciding if a shot is possible or not.

If this isn't enough for you, it's up to you to come up with something else, concretely.

Ok, I'll get 80% of what I want. While I can agree to your point with the flamer (because it's REALLY heavy  ) I don't see how you want to fire an assault rifle/standard mg in auto mode from the hip. 
Especially using autofire on an assault rifle you need to fire it from the shoulder to hit anything (anyone who ever used an automatic weapon knows what I'm talking about).
If you are going to change this in a way that different weapons can use different LOF please take this into account at least for the standard weapons.

I'm fine with the correct LOS/LOF calculation. There is no need to make it too complicated I sometimes have ideas about the impossible. 

Actually I think it's part of the challenge to position the soldier correctly for an incoming enemy. The only thing that bothered me was the fact that I took extreme care of correct positioning and when my guy fired he just hit the chair while I was thinking it should have hit perfectly (ok, my fault but really annoying) as long as the LOF indicating crosshair is going to be a good estimator in the future I have no problem with the rest of the aiming systematics.