73 replies to this topic

[Juni Ori]

I know and actually have always thought that it's the only realistic way to simulate aiming, however OFP does it even better, as it goes more randomly the faster you move and gives you freedom of "aiming" your gun in significant angle compared to your running direction. In games you don't need to give orders with mouse pointer (nearly all others than OFP, that is) I think it can be removed, but in OFP I don't see any reason behind that...

[Doubler]

Oh, like that. No worries, the pointer remains in the command modes, and you can use number keys for selections (you need to do this anyway to be even slightly effective, unless you're a serious mousing wizard ).

It's just the "your bullet goes just about here" indicator you use for aiming. The rifle indicates the way the bullet will travel, and your intuition does a lot too. Someone experienced with OFP won't always need to check his bullet trajectory after aiming.

[Juni Ori]

Okay, well then I kind of understand you can learn for it, but I still miss the point, as it is far from accurate even with the roughly-aiming-here-indicator. I nearly ever fire my gun without aim. Only mg's have potential bullets-per-hitting-something-on-continuous-fire-ratio. Without continuous fire you could as well try hitting something in 1km with pistol... Unless the target is very close. I've shot "from the hip" enemy with a Dragunov. Lucky hit, perhaps, but we almost ran on each other in thick woods. Believing the forest was empty I didn't even consider switching into sidearm. Dragunov vs. M16 in closecombat and I won, yay!

[DannyMc252]

I have a habit of always being the driver when playing OFP.. yet commander at the same time..

I get in as commander, get my crew in, switch to driver, then drive and still have tank commander control. It's mostly because the AI drivers haven't worked out the use of the "Fast" button or the theory that "Tank + Speed + Static object = Tank + speed - static object"

That, and I feel unsafe going anywhere without a rocket launcher, and only ever use single shot fire - while firing faster than automatic fire. Clickclickclickclick... xD

[DeathDude]

That sort of reminds me in Tribes, I like to be the gunner rather than the driver, just don't have the best of confidence in my driving abilities with some of the vehicles in that game.

[Juni Ori]

Little off-topic, but in OFP it's pretty damn nice playing with couple of your friends and taking control of tank. Really working and disciplined crew can be excellent killing force. This requires absolutely staying silent, unless you have important thing to say. To get this even better, it's even greater fun to play mp against other tank crew!!! Take a map, drop several tanks there between relatively small distance and script airstrike /driving into mine if you go too far from your own base!! This reduces the chance that first (or any after that) duel's winner can get right next to enemy base and destroy all the tanks like in shooting range and you can't get too far away from the battlezone. However, it's always good idea to mark these areas clearly...
Then again, we have this one strange habit of shouting into headset and partying whenever we get kill!

[Potatoe]

Yeah, I too sometime put the crosshair on.(Oooh, neato, a spell checker in firefox)
But not to worry about guessing where to shoot, most of the games now days have shot from the hip and the shot from up close(bringing up the gun), making the game more realistic and making there a point in not having a crosshair(shooting from the hip is waaaay innaccurate).

[PrejudiceSucks]

Juni Ori, on Nov 17 2006, 01:49 PM, said:

Hmm... is that so? Don't have OFP on hd now, so I can't check it, but anyways, why on earth would you play without "crosshair"??? All target giving etc... Guessing? Sounds pretty challenging and really pointless, no offence meant. Perhaps I just don't get it...

It's in "difficulty", I turn almost everything off in there myself, and play in Veteran mode, so I don't get useful yellow boxes telling me where to go, I simply navigate.

And you give targetting orders in the same way, and you identify your targets by right clicking with your sights up.

[Juni Ori]

Then again, light machine guns are totally different story. In constructed area bursts from the hip - please understand that finnish KvKK62 (LMG62) and many other lmg weigh easily over ten kilos with full belt and thus keeping it against your shoulder all the time is quite exhausting and thus reducing gunners efficiency - can be devastating. It's actually pretty easy to learn to keep the weapon vertically in right degree and aiming isn't too difficult to short distances. That's up to 50m or so. I bet I could hit to 100m after taking short training (I've been holding KvKK62 over 10 years ago), but it might require few more rounds. Pro would do it with couple. Of course real combat situation is always different, heart bouncing, frightened, etc, so we can reduce the distances to 25 and 50m. Still, in the constructed area, they are realistic.

Immediate edit: However I do not wish to see any more games where you can shoot accurately without proper aim. As in some games there are certain 'classes' - I don't understand why they just don't let you choose what training you've had - and in my example being gunner would give you some advantage in vertical aiming and you wouldn't be hitting ground in front of you. And I'd really want to see some penalty holding weapon of that weight up, aiming for long time. Smaller, rifle, smg, etc, is easy to hold up long. On the other hand I'd love to see more accurate fire when the weapon is on bipod or otherwise supported.

Immediate edit2: So all in short, I want realism.

[Japofran]

I never remove the crosshair in FPS and I don't consider it more realistic. Because when you're actually carrying a gun in real life, even if you don't have it against the eye your nervous system is telling you where would the bullet go; whereas in a game you've got to find the geometric centre of the screen, which is not intuitive. So my opinion is that right, in real life you wouldn't have a crosshair, but you'd have an intuition which works pretty much as one --okay that intuition is better for some people than for others--, and playing a FPS without crosshair is IMO nothing like shooting in real life even from the hip. I mean I've played those arcade videogames which include an actual infra-red gun, I never ever put the gun against the eye in those, and yet where I put the eye I put the bullet --those games are always close-range.

Anyway in Operation Flashpoint 99 per cent of my shots are aimed --it's nearly never close-range-- so it would't make a difference.

[Juni Ori]

Out of curiosity, how much have you shot from the hip irl, Japo?

[Japofran]

Juni Ori, on Nov 18 2006, 01:54 PM, said:

Out of curiosity, how much have you shot from the hip irl, Japo?

Well actually nothing with real killing weapons, even the compulsory military service was removed here in Spain right before I had to serve. But shooting seems to be one of the things I'm good at even if I've never done it for real. I'm not saying that training wouldn't make a great additional difference, but still there's an innate skill as well. In those infra-red gun games I own everybody else, then again I've never played with somebody trained.

When I was a kid I liked to shoot with air-compressed rifles at fairs, in that cases it was aimed shooting, and I was also pretty good at it. Recently I felt nostalgia and did it again at a fair, the game was to hit a metal button from pretty close, but the button was only some 1 cm in diameter. I hit 6 out of 6 and got 6 rather stupid and useless prizes but a bit of satisfaction as well.

Come to think of it I once did shoot with a real gun, a low-recoil rifle of an uncle's when I was a kid. My uncle --actually my mother's cousin-- set a small target, an amorphous pice of plastic some 15x8 cm at about... well I'm lousy estimating distances but it was pretty far, I guess it was enough for my uncle to think of it as a challenge, the target was damn tiny in my field of vision. (I remember there was a two-lane road and the target was set across the road and a waste ground, maybe like 2x-3x the distance across the road altogether?) Hell I don't know, the case is that I hit every time I shot, can't remember how many times it was. Now that I think of it I was standing then, at fairs I always rested my left elbow on the counter if I could.

[Juni Ori]

Well, not meaning to offend, but sounds a little strange that you even compare IR-games to real shooting. Distance makes a huge difference, which I'm pretty sure you know, as you've apparently really shot into further distance. And you're in a sense correct that some are far more better shooters than others. I know a guy who has been shooting for years now and I'm still better - thanks to my military service over ten years ago and occasional shooting after that. And I'm not good, perhaps average with rifles. He just don't get it.

Holding >10kg killing machine hanging from your shoulder and trying to get the bullets hit where you want them to hit is a little different thing than holding <0,5kg plastic gun on your chest level (as I suppose you did). What I mean to say, is that the heavier the weapon and more you've practiced, more accurate fire can be shot from the hip. Lightweight weapons are far more difficult to aim into greater distances, even assault rifles, if we're speaking of shooting from hip. Most important factor is the distance between your hands holding the weapon. Thus lmg as a long weapon has huge advantage. And now I'm speaking of not only my own experience, but I remember several articles I've read about the issue in military magazines. This is the reason why I'd like to see a game, which takes it well into account.

However, rifle can be held higher even in while running fast and this balances the difference, as you have better angle for aiming. Summa summarum, this is only nitpicking, as 99%, as you said, Japo, of the combat situations in games with even some realism doesn't happen in that fast speed. Assaults inside a building can be performed weapon on shoulder, even lmg. As said, this is nitpicking, but to widen the (off-topic-)issue games lack realistic exhaustion overall.

Back to topic: In turn-based strategy games I usually stand up and walk back and forth watching monitor, when it's enemy turn, especially when the situation is very critical or I'm taking big risks. At worst I can go to me knees and if sfx tells the result at the same time as graphical info comes, I can bow my head and close my eyes - almost like in prayer. If I win I go up hitting the roof and partying like some severely mentally ill person - higher the bets, higher I jump and more I party.

Another stupid habit: I even drink to AI (or better said people who programmed it) after long and challenging battle.

[Blood-Pigggy]

Uh, there's a difference between realism and the illusion of realism.

[Juni Ori]

Your point being?