Cover Systems, Lean & Realism

[Liquihigh]

The Medal of Honor one is pretty cool, but I definitely have to toss my support hat in for Red Orchestra 2's, if you haven't seen it, here's a little demo:

watch?v=ra2Yh8b0qyI

*can't post the link because it's my first post

[Rye]

MOH one is too quick and clumsy to me. Red Orchestra one just demonstrates blind firing more than anything.
I think animations will sort this stuff out, a good solid and fluid animation will help when leaning are corners or quick-peeking without overly exposing us.

@antoineflemming
Duck, maybe, how would it work?
"why not just have objects that actually block, or slow down bullets" - What do you mean by this?

[Defunkt]

Anything that locks you to map geometry must be avoided, that's over-the-shoulder, low-wall shooter, console stuff.

Rediscovered the video of the 'fluid stance' thing, much more in keeping with ArmA's integrity...

[Liquidpinky]

Anything that locks you to map geometry must be avoided, that's over-the-shoulder, low-wall shooter, console stuff.

Rediscovered the video of the 'fluid stance' thing, much more in keeping with ArmA's integrity...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9139238743886#

You had similar with MGS3 in first person view, it was also analogue control so you could control how high or how much to the side you could lean out.
Quite handy in use.

MGS did also have lock onto geometry type cover system, but it wasn't too bad and I would be happy with similar in A3 if you had to hold down a key to engage it as automaticaly doing it can be a pain in the ass.

[[FHA]Dynamo]

heres an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qqUrjajTaw

um.. no thanks.. look at the 1:20 mark.. notice how the sight line of the scope is hardly an inch above the rock not even 2 feet in front of him? where the hell is the muzzle of the rifle? thats right.. clipping through the rock, as games like those don't properly simulate weapons. they simply have a camera right in the middle of the player's forehead (thats right, not even eye level), so when the player peaks over an object, just the very top of their heads are visible(known in the industry as eye level exploit). this lets the player shoot from behind cover without exposing them selfs.. screw that! every game with the exception of BIS games use this crap. since the shot is calculated from the center of the camera's view, as long as the center pixel clears an object, you can shoot over it.. NOT REALISTIC! keep that crap the hell away from my ArmA!

[MadDogX]

Nice to see a mostly constructive discussion on this topic. I thought it would be impossible on these forums.

Anyway, I agree with Defunkt that "sticky" cover systems are to be avoided (currently the only thing I'm hating in Mass Effect 3), but there are alternatives. One good example I always feel the need to mention is the cover system in Vietcong - firefights in that game were always awesome, because you could quickly pop up from behind cover to fire off a few shots.

Generally speaking, I would like to see at least one thing in Arma that could be classified as a "cover system":

When crouched behind a wall or object and looking toward that wall/object, bringing up iron sights should make your avatar dynamically shift his stance (analogue) so that the barrel of the gun is "looking over" the geometry, if possible. This should also work for windows, holes in a wall etc. Coming out of iron sights or moving away from the wall would return you to your previous stance. Note that this is "non-sticky" - only your height is adjusted dependent on the situation.

Otherwise I'm not sure what else would make sense.

[NoRailgunner]

What about using the mousewheel for more fluid movement/stance so the player can adjust it easily? Imo power-sliding, bunny-jumping and automatic cover-clip-systems should be left to mainstream shooters and console crowd. Let the player decide what he wants to do incl. stop/break current animation/movement. Of course a feedback should be also implemented so he "feels" and knows that some cool looking stuff is only effective in action movies/games.

[MadDogX]

What about using the mousewheel for more fluid movement/stance so the player can adjust it easily? Imo power-sliding, bunny-jumping and automatic cover-clip-systems should be left to mainstream shooters and console crowd. Let the player decide what he wants to do incl. stop/break current animation/movement. Of course a feedback should be also implemented so he "feels" and knows that some cool looking stuff is only effective in action movies/games.

And there it is...

No one here is talking about power sliding and bunny hopping - except for you of course.

As for using the mouse wheel for fluid stance changes, it seems like an interesting idea, but what is it really good for? You suggest it as an alternative for what you refer to (derogatively) as a "cover clip" system, but from a game design perspective your suggestion seems overly cumbersome. The way I see it, 99% of the time such a fluid stance feature would be used to achieve a firing position with minimal exposure behind cover. That means players will be trying to find the right height to shoot over the cover they are behind anyway, which will result in similar situations to what we have now: occasionally you will end up too low, resulting in your shots hitting the cover, and most of the time you will be too high (read: higher than necessary), since the level of the barrel is difficult to judge without haptic feedback. I predict that this would result in a lot of awkward adjustments in order to find an ideal position, making it anything but useful in a combat situation.

Now consider the "cover clip" system:

A player is situated behind medium sized cover (a wall, an object or perhaps a window), looks toward said cover and presses the "iron sight" key. I content that this player will be wanting to fire over that cover 100% of the time, since pointing your gun at a solid object at point blank range does not seem very sensible in any situation. With this in mind, what's wrong with automatically elevating the player's position so that his gun rests on said cover? This seems like something that will feel natural and intuitive, as it does in Vietcong. In addition, this could emulate the weapon resting feature than many have been requesting.

[DMarkwick]

IMO the ideal cover system control mechanism would be the TrackIR, although that rather obviously excludes most people. I might suggest however that a keypress would allow the mouse to control extra axes for as long as the key is pressed, snapping back to normal once the key is released or double-tapped or some similar mechanism. I seem to remember Raven Shield had such an analogue lean mechanism that was usable and useful. I'm going to make the assumption that a reasonable analogue to TrackIR can be worked out.

I guess we can mostly all agree that hardcoded hardpoint cover positions can be disregarded, and that the cover system be entirely stance based? I think that an analogue control system of lean and crouch can be implemented and improved on. Lean works to a small degree in ArmA2 but it's too "shallow" a lean to have much tactical effect against enemy, particularly when crouched. Hidden & Dangerous 2 had an effective crouched lean that involved an animation that basically had you kind of step out for a good look while crouched. You sort of reached your leg out, then you were able to shift your bulk to over the stretched leg, then back again. It seemed very realistic to me.

Analogue crouched control I guess would work using each of the 3 basic stances as base viewpoints. The unused TrackIR Y-axis could be used to inch your view up and down from these 3 positions, giving you the opportunity to hide or peep over in long grass when prone, duck down or peep over walls & vehicles when crouched, and to hunch or tiptoe to see over walls when standing. (Anyone noticed that you already can sort of do this in ArmA2, by lowering your weapon? When you lower your weapon, you gain a few inches in height which can allow you to see over walls sometimes.)

---------- Post added at 12:55 ---------- Previous post was at 12:51 ----------

A player is situated behind medium sized cover (a wall, an object or perhaps a window), looks toward said cover and presses the "iron sight" key. I content that this player will be wanting to fire over that cover 100% of the time, since pointing your gun at a solid object at point blank range does not seem very sensible in any situation. With this in mind, what's wrong with automatically elevating the player's position so that his gun rests on said cover? This seems like something that will feel natural and intuitive, as it does in Vietcong. In addition, this could emulate the weapon resting feature than many have been requesting.

This is a good idea. I might suggest that a hotkey (as implemented in ACE2) activate a rest-on-surface function that places you in the correct stance to be as low as possible and still be in a firing position.

[NoRailgunner]

Let the player adjust his position and his rifle how and where he likes it instead of "clipping" him into a certain place. Otherwise the feeling of beeing "guided" or "controlled" by gameplay design is awkward and nonnatural. But maybe mindless fanbois are just too comfy using a key/button to get into the right position or to select what they actually want? Perhaps its better to implement an "UltraAuto" mode so those players have only to decided to shoot or to reload? Seriously where gaming is gone if the player can't controll and move his ingame character how he likes??