Author Topic: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback  (Read 32555 times)

Offline Kev4000

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Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« on: 13-09-2009, 01:09:02 »
Give me feedback on the 3D ironsights here.
To let me explain, there are 4 animations for each of the 3D ironsights, 6 animations for guns with rifle calibers (for sway).

Generic animations:
-tozoom: the transition between standing and zoom_stand. Bren and BAR for example have a longer animation than M1 Garand of Enfields tozoom.
-zoom_stand: the main ironsight animation. Rifles: have sway here, +/- 0.15 degrees. SMGs: usually have an up/down sway, mostly irrelevant to gameplay since they're not accurate enough for sway to make a difference.
-zoom run: animation that moves the gun right/down, back to center, then left/down.
-Zoom fire: The animation played when firing. Cycles the bolt, makes the weapon bounce full of recoil.

Rifle caliber only animations:
-zoom_crouch: the ironsight animation played when crouching. Only rifles have this one. +/- 0.10 degree sway
-zoom_prone: ironsight animation with no sway. Makes shooting prone extremely accurate.

Note about sway: it goes down/right, back to center, down/left, back to center, and loops. The bullet will always shoot center!
Technical notes sway: It rotates down .15 degrees, and right/left .15 degrees, pivoting from the camera.
Technical notes M1 Garand/G43 zoom_fire: It rotates, pivoting from the camera, upwards 4.5 degrees. It returns to normal after 9 frames, which means 0.36 seconds after firing, the ironsight will return to center. I can supply more technical data on other guns by request.

Keep to constructive criticism, and try to keep it technical. For example, if you want less sway, tell me how many degrees of sway you want. I'll add good suggestions to our internal build for gameplay testing by our testers, however I will not guarantee anything will make it into the public version unless the testers approve of it.

Offline Ionizer

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #1 on: 13-09-2009, 01:09:29 »
Out of curiosity:  All Sniper Rifles have zero sway when prone now, correct?  In 2.15, the No.4 Sniper would still sway while prone, while the K98 ZF would not.  From my observations so far, the K98 ZF, No.4 Sniper, Pattern 14 Sniper, and Springfield 1903A4 all have zero sway while prone.  What about the StG44 ZF and Gewehr 43 ZF?  Are there any other sniper rifles?  Does the K98 ZF41 count as a sniper rifle, and does it have zero sway while prone?

Also, do the M1 (and M1A1) Carbine, StG44, and Carcano 91/38 Carbine count as "Rifle Caliber" weapons for purposes of sway?  Since technically, I think they use smaller rounds than rifles...
 

Offline Kev4000

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #2 on: 13-09-2009, 01:09:21 »
All sniper rifles now have zero sway when prone. All of them should be using the same animations (thus the same amount of sway). I'll make sure they're all up to date for the next public version, perhaps even tone down the sway a bit. Only difference for the snipers between standing and crouching is the speed of the sway, not the amount. A vital fact for standing and sniping is knowing the bullet will still go center, so wait with shooting till its at the top of the /\ shaped sway.

Offline Archimonday

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #3 on: 13-09-2009, 04:09:21 »
Zoom_Stand/crouch/prone - Fine

tozoom - fine

Zoom_run - While it is plausible to move the gun when someone is moving, the fact of the matter is the avatar of the player is walking, there is no real need for the drastic back and forth bounce that the guns have now. While I agree there should be movement while the avatar is in motion, the back and forth bounce is a bit too much. Rather a very slight, and I emphasize the very, and slight, up and down movement. As a shooter myself, walking and looking down the sights is easy, there is no drastic change in sight picture.

Zoom_fire - You already know my thoughts.

Offline Fuchs

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #4 on: 13-09-2009, 18:09:13 »
Also, do the M1 (and M1A1) Carbine, StG44, and Carcano 91/38 Carbine count as "Rifle Caliber" weapons for purposes of sway?  Since technically, I think they use smaller rounds than rifles...
Not smaller, M1 Carbine is 7,62mm, StG44 is 7,92mm, Carcano 91/38 has even got a larger calibre then it's ancestor, the 91, being 7,35mm.
Only the M1 Carbine and StG44 use shorter variants in the means of gunpowder. So definately not smaller, even bigger with 1 weapon :P
"Force answers force, war breeds war, and death only brings death.
To break this vicious circle one must do more than act without thought or doubt."

Offline Kev4000

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #5 on: 13-09-2009, 22:09:36 »
How do you feel about using the same animation for zoom_run as for zoom_stand, just with a .30 degree sway instead of a .15?

Yes, M1 Carbine and StG44 have the same sway as rifles.

Offline Archimonday

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #6 on: 13-09-2009, 22:09:36 »
sounds fine to me

Offline FlyGuy45

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #7 on: 14-09-2009, 00:09:50 »
So, when zoomed in, the bullet will always go to the center of the screen?

Offline Archimonday

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #8 on: 14-09-2009, 00:09:28 »
Yes, thats what FireInCameraDOF does...or is supposed to do. The DICE explanation even says that checking that code or typing it into a weapon makes the bullet come from the cross-hair and now the weapon. However I've used it in a number of configurations and even with it disabled the bullet still seems to come from the crosshair.

Offline Kev4000

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #9 on: 14-09-2009, 02:09:04 »
I also tried moving the camerabone for the sway (so the sight is always center), didn't work as I hoped, so we're stuck with the current sway for now. Not realistic, but it serves its purpose.

Offline Archimonday

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #10 on: 14-09-2009, 04:09:04 »
Its hard to judge whether it works...I can't really say. I mean how do we judge where the bullet is coming from without guessing? The only way I could see is with a large dummy, like a mortar round, and a really low muzzle velocity.\

ediT:

well tried a few things...tis official. Doesnt work. DAMN YOU EA
« Last Edit: 14-09-2009, 04:09:37 by Archimonday »

Offline VonMudra

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #11 on: 14-09-2009, 05:09:31 »

Offline Chuc

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #12 on: 14-09-2009, 06:09:45 »
Just a few words about the work you guys have done.

There's a very distinct lack of "snap" with the firing animation that unfortunately plagues a lot of other games. At the moment the fire animation is simply on the first frame, pulling the weapon back and having it take about 8 frames to settle back to neutral. Speaking just from experience and experimenting for over a year on the technique, what I've settled on for PR (God forbid) was the system I described to you. It's not perfect, but it should give you some ideas. (technical description of the technique is in the PM I sent you)

Resulting effect on the M1 Garand and the M1 Carbine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CQNZ76-SLk

Also regarding your shift animations, I think it's a shame that you guys didn't implement a 'zoom_shift' animation when working the bolts. The transistion between firing and bolting at the moment seems quite jarring, something that can be remedied with the 'zoom_shift' solution. For example, your kindly donated No. 4 rifle as seen in the third part of the video.

This may have the greatest bearing on gameplay, something I would rather stay out of the dicussion of.. but aesthetically I also suggest you guys lengthen your 'tozoom' animations and the delays for virtually every small arm that has a value of around 0.08 (or basically a super split second). But I've also noticed a discrepancy between the delay set in the tweak file (which has been standardised to 0.125) and the value in the animation system file (which seems to be all over the shop, values of like 0.08, 0.208333 etc etc). It's best you guys match those values to avoid any odd visual glitching and mismatching of timing. Also the benefit of a extended tozoom animation (matching the 0.125 value) is that you can have a nice smooth-looking (and also potentially more interesting) transistion from hip to sighted in. In the video I've slowed it down to PR's standard of 0.4 seconds (which I don't expect you guys to adopt).

With bolt cycling, I suggest there should be a standard timing for the moving of the working parts. I've just noticed on the Garand that it's about 4 frames from open to closed, and on the Carbine it's about 3. I recommend 3 frames max.

It'll also be nice if your modellers could also align the rifles for you, rather than the animators having to rotate the weapon to get the sights to align ;)

Bear in mind these are all just things I think would really lift the standard of presentation of an already well polished mod, however in terms of animation there are still quite a number of things that need to be perfected I'm sure you know.

- Chuc

Offline Kev4000

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #13 on: 14-09-2009, 08:09:18 »
Already noted Chuc. I've made four new different M1 Garand animations already. Once betatesting starts up again we'll try them all out. One of them, using the techniques you described, is extremely similar to the M1 Garand animation in your video.

Noted the tozoom times in the .tweak vs animation. Added to my todo list.

We also tested using a zoom_shift animation. However, it was disliked because you have to cock your rifle before being able to sprint or run.

Keep the feedback coming!

Offline Archimonday

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Re: Weapon 3D ironsights/sway feedback
« Reply #14 on: 14-09-2009, 12:09:03 »
Chuc makes a-lot of good points, my main thing is that as I read what you type about reasoning for many of the animations I become confused. Such as shot dispersion being the reason for the extremely over the top zoom_fire animations, that in an artistic sense are not all that great to look at, but in a technical sense are making the weapons hard to use. Shot Dispersion is handled by deviation code, let the code handle it, there's no need to add things to these animations that don't exist in the code and have no effect on the weapon.

The random muzzle climbs and awkward bouncing of some of the weapons when fired doesn't effect where  the bullets are going, so there is no need for those movements to be there. It just doesn't make sense to me why it has to be FH2's ultimate goal to confuse the player, rather than make easily recognizable and adaptable game-play mechanics.