Centred or Angled Weapon Sprites

[wildweasel]

I say, realism be damned. Neither centered nor angled weapons "truly" make any sense, since no matter what your default shooting stance looks like, your eyes are never going to be in the same place at the same angle all the time. So when idle, the gun could pretty much be anywhere. Off to the right, centered as if you're hunched forward, pointing off to the left "at rest," anything. Centering and angling are very much a video game abstraction. The only truly realistic view is down the sights, and I don't mean the Brutal-esque "the gun takes up most of the bottom of the screen but the sights still aren't aligned" - I'm talking about stuff like this:

The front and rear sights are ALIGNED, indicating that whatever is behind the center post is where the shot will more or less go. Of course, this is not going to be a comfortable view for the weapon to be at 100% of the time, which is why most of the time it's off to the side.

Whether I prefer the "centered" abstraction versus the "angled" abstraction, well, neither one. I don't care which one a mod opts to go for (I've used both, in my time as a modder), as long as it's consistent about which one it uses.

[Hellser]

I agree with wildweasel; I don't care. As long as it's consistent.

[Voros]

Just like the Carnivores games! Excluding Cityscape.

[LkMax]

I personally think the angled view makes the guns look better, so if I have the choice (like in Doom 2016) I'll go for angled, but obviously that's not a deal breaker.

[Drake Raider]

I like a low centered perspective. I never use crosshairs because I find it easier to aim spacially, so I think a low centered looks realistic for a non-ads setup. Perhaps raised while firing. Only time I can do angled is the shoulder weapons, like rocket launchers or similar.

[Amuscaria]

From a spriters point of view, centered weapons are much easier to draw and a lot of its perspective effects from recoil can be faked with little effort. Angled weapons has the potential for better detail and form because you're seeing it from both the top and side, and generally look cooler.

[nazakomu]

I have a neutral perspective on this sort of thing. If it's done right—centered or angled—it'll look good to me!

I've always felt like centered weapon sprites were amazing but then I realized that DN3D doesn't quite center all of the weapons and the weapon sprites in D4D are done vastly well, too.