Doom [ Is keyhole? / Free-aiming possible? ]

[doomfiend]

I wonder how well the original doom would handle this kind of aiming method, got the inspiration of trying to find an adequate? example after recently Playing Metroid Prime Trilogy.

[Big C]

I THINK Vaecrius managed to pull it off in an old, old mod of his that was a prototype to Hideous Destructor.

It should still be available somewhere in the non-Hideous Destructor portion of his website.

[Nash]

Yeah I think when the Rift becomes mainstream, free aiming should be a standard feature (as standard as lighting and shadows are in modern games).

For (G)ZDoom however... not sure how it would look like if the 2D sprite is moved around like that on the screen.

[The Zombie Killer]

I'd imagine that the weapon's movement would be rather limited vertically, but not so much horizontally (a la Realms of the Haunting)

[Dark-Assassin]

I really like that sort of aiming system. Too bad there is hardly any games that use it, or even have mods for it.

If something similar becomes possible in ZDoom natively, I would be so happy.

[Gez]

Haha:



(skip to gameplay part)


(then go back and watch the glorious cinematics)

[doomfiend]

you know, that looks awesome, if one is to have it like that one would have to do quite a few angled sprites hah

[Matt]

The best way I can think of to implement it in ZDoom is as follows:

1. Place a camera at player height plus player Z position minus whatever. (It needs to be set up this way to deal with crouch)
2. Always play that camera.
3. HUDMessage your entire status bar.
4. Instead of HUDMessaging your gun, as I had done with my previous attempt, create 2-3 weapon sprites, one for each section of the gun, as viewed from the player. Name them all as "___A1" with the other rotations blank and invisible. (This way only the player wielding the weapon should see these sprites except in extreme situations)
5. Take those actors and have each player spawn them and keep them in front of the player using trigonometry to make sure they're always pointing where the playerpawn is pointing.
6. Every tic:
(a) The gun-sprite actors are repositioned to show the player's true direction and each one's angle updated accordingly.
(b) The head-camera actor is repositioned to show the player's position.
(c) If the head-camera actor's angle and pitch are different from the player's by more than x, is repositioned to show the player's direction less x, with position adjusted accordingly if you've set it up that way.

It would be a huge fucking pain to set up and the payoff seems dubious to me.

(HUDMessaging the gun would also work, but 6(b) and 6(c) still need to apply, and (a) you've got the additional problem of trying to line up the HUDMessaged gun sprite with the actual shot direction; (b) you're stuck with a definitely flat sprite (so no fancy sight-alignment effects) unless you want all the spaghetti from (a) reduplicated; and (c) your gun would always be fullbright.)

[mallo]

This aiming method reminds me of those old flash games where you stand in one place and shoot at enemies that jump out.