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bcwood16

Auto Aim on/off

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Hello,

Just doing a bit of research a moment about auto Aim

I know vanilla Doom or ports such as 'Chocolate Doom' (I presume) need Auto aim as you cant look up or down and so need a way to shoot monsters above you etc

However, for those who use Doom ports and allow free-look do you turn auto aim off or just leave it on?

This would be good as a poll, but I have no idea how to do that, so just a general idea would be cool :)

EDIT - Ok, as there are many different ports and people use them for different experiences/play style. I should add im thinking of Doomsday specifically, but its also interesting what people use in other ports too. I think I also presumed people play ports like Doomsday with mouse look on, when in fact its perfectly reasonable people play with no mouse look and auto aim.

Cheers

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In most cases, playing with full autoaim off adds an extra layer of difficulty, exactly because you now have to aim so precisely in two dimensions. This does have its uses, but normal vs monsters gameplay is not one of them. Aiming the RL or the Railgun through small openings or at extreme ranges is also not typical Doom gameplay.

Also, full freeaim without crosshairs is pretty much impossible, as the weapon perspective in Doom looks horrible when looking up/down. They are really designed only to look kinda good when pointed forward. Pointing down/up makes the perspeptive look skewed/confusing.

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I play it the way it was originally designed. No mouselook or manual aim for me. I'll mouselook in Heretic etc, as they had thebability to look up or down, but if the game had auto aim originally, I use it.

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Maes said:

Also, full freeaim without crosshairs is pretty much impossible, as the weapon perspective in Doom looks horrible when looking up/down. They are really designed only to look kinda good when pointed forward. Pointing down/up makes the perspeptive look skewed/confusing.


Oh yes, no cross hairs would be impossible :(

As for the view looking skewed I know that happens on some ports, but I guess im specifically thinking of the Doomsday engine were this does not happen.

I find having Auto-aim off in this port works fine just like any other FPS. Mouse is accurate enough. I don't actually find there is much difference in this instance.

I find the autoaim can be a bit annoying like when its on in xbox to PC ports. You shoot a guy in the head and the guy next to him gets hit in the chest instead...doh!

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In most cases, playing with full autoaim off adds an extra layer of difficulty, exactly because you now have to aim so precisely in two dimensions. This does have its uses, but normal vs monsters gameplay is not one of them.


I can't agree. Past a certain skill threshold, which most people interested enough in Doom to still post here in 2013 probably have reached as it is not particularly high to start with, the extra precision required to aim in two dimensions rather than one is so minimal it's essentially insignificant. Doom doesn't require precision shooting in the first place; hitboxes are large, layouts are relatively compact, there is no localized damage.

Add to that being able to shoot exactly where you want has numerous advantages against monsters. Hitting rockets on the ground to ensure optimal splash damage, taking out a more threatening monster rather than a closer one autoaim would snap to, anticipating enemy movement with plasma, the list goes on.

(Needless to say, I always play with autoaim off in ports allowing that.)

I'll give you there is perhaps an advantage to autoaim on an unconscious level; as inconsequential as it might be, it's still one less thing to worry about, so your mind is free to focus more on other areas, you're less likely to disorient yourself with quick spins, etc.. However, those benefits can't compare to the extra control freeaim gives you, nor make up for the hurdles coming with autoaim.

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Phml said:

Add to that being able to shoot exactly where you want has numerous advantages against monsters. Hitting rockets on the ground to ensure optimal splash damage, taking out a more threatening monster rather than a closer one autoaim would snap to, anticipating enemy movement with plasma, the list goes on.


This is true, I've kinda altered the way I play Doom because of autoaim as opposed to how I'd normally play it autoaim is no concern. I've come to terms with the fact that autoaim will always target the closest monster first, so I always look twice before standing on a high ledge to sink a cacodemon from faraway, lest I blow myself up. and naturally I avoid lining up monsters of varying difficulty and juking around the easy ones to get to the tougher ones first. Autoaim can be a pain in the butt trying to get a distant monster with the rocket launcher or plasma gun if they keep fidgeting around too. Or worse, shooting your buddies on coop.

I always thought it was silly when I used to join a skulltag coop server that deliberately disabled autoaiming. When I'd ask about it they'd badger me about not being skilled enough, when the issue about skill wasn't my concern as much as it was me being discriminated for not using a mouse to aim up and down. Having the freedom to have that extra level of precision doesn't make Doom any harder than say, having to flash a target with a flash light or with a laser pointer. I've never had any trouble clicking on my desktop icons for example.

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If I play on a port with possibility for vertical aiming, I disable autoaim. Crosshair I like to keep as a small half transparent dot, with green or red color depending a bit on the level/textures used.

But I'm fine with playing without vertical aiming, and with autoaim...

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I play with autoaim on, mouselook off and crosshair off, because freelook looks like crap in idTech1, and I like the challenges of autoaim as described by 40oz. The crosshair is unnecessary since I use Marine's face as a targeter — it's right in the middle of the status bar. To say nothing that Doom should be played with Doom(2)(p).exe, but sometimes I'm lazy and just use Eternity even for vanilla maps.

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Can't agree with Phml, just standing under an enemy and pressing fire is a lot easier than having to wiggle my mouse all over the place to get the correct angle. I just tried shooting at the faraway shotgunner in this situation and I kept missing from time to time. Of course it would be much easier with crosshair but I don't like crosshairs and it would take me extra time/effort to aim anyway. Not having to aim is easier than having to aim, it's kind of obvious lol.

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Memfis said:

Can't agree with Phml, just standing under an enemy and pressing fire is a lot easier than having to wiggle my mouse all over the place to get the correct angle. I just tried shooting at the faraway shotgunner in this situation and I kept missing from time to time. Of course it would be much easier with crosshair but I don't like crosshairs and it would take me extra time/effort to aim anyway. Not having to aim is easier than having to aim, it's kind of obvious lol.


I see both points....but in this case you wanted to shoot that far away dude. You missed a few times because you had no cross hair, if you had that on you most likely would have got him. If you used Auto-aim then he most likely would not have been targeted as the other dudes would have got it first.

So guess it all depends on style, I like being able to shoot what I want and not being dictated by auto-aim, but that comes at the price of having to aim more.

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DoomUK said:

Mouse look on, crosshairs on, auto aim off.

.

Unless I'm toying with third-person mode, in which case auto aim goes back on, since I don't trust third-person free aim.

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I used to go back and forth, but for demo purposes and such I've settled on auto-aim and have grown accustomed to it, plus it feels less like I'm breaking the game that way.

some things are a tad annoying though

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Not having to aim is easier than having to aim, it's kind of obvious lol.


If I had to make the exact shot you posted using PrBoom+, I'd probably end up hitting the wall two or three times, simply because I wouldn't be at the correct distance for autoaim to snap to the target.

Autoaim still requires aim when monsters are on higher heights. It just happens to be aiming with the doomguy's position rather than, more intuitively, by pointing the mouse at the target.

I honestly can't understand how could anyone feel the screenshot shot you posted would be easier with autoaim. Ok, maybe if you're extremely skilled at playing Doom with autoaim, while at the same time having little experience with other FPS/TPS. I'm not saying this is you, but this is the only way I can rationalize what you're saying, personally.

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Phml said:

If I had to make the exact shot you posted using PrBoom+, I'd probably end up hitting the wall two or three times, simply because I wouldn't be at the correct distance for autoaim to snap to the target.


Haha another thing that I have so deeply engraved in my subconcious that I didn't even think to mention it in this thread.

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I use freelook without auto-aim and the dot crosshair only on zdoom maps. Vanilla/boom maps I use prboom-plus.

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Phml said:

Ok, maybe if you're extremely skilled at playing Doom with autoaim, while at the same time having little experience with other FPS/TPS.

I guess that's the case with me, I haven't played any other FPS in years. Outside of Doom I mostly play platformers or non-gameplay stuff like visual novels.

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I've never turned autoaim off, nor have I ever used mouselook or crosshairs in Doom. These things make it a completely different game, from the one I learned to play under DOS. Simplicity is one of the main reasons I enjoy this game so much.

The screenshot posted by Memfis would probably be easier with mouselook off and autoaim on, but there are a multitude of places where mouselook helps so much that it distorts the intended gameplay. Take Abattoire, Plutonia's map09. The last room is one of the most interesting and the most devious traps ever, which definitely requires a level of dexterity and situation awareness, but mouselook makes it piss easy. Just kill every moster one after the other and go to the exit, huh.

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For many years I played singleplayer with freelook on and autoaim off (in ZDoom, and its derivatives), but for past 18 months or so I've been using the keyboard more or less exclusively, and so have autoaim on.

It's not clear to me that it makes things any easier - certainly, it makes playing with the keyboard easier than it would otherwise be - but it's certainly not easier than playing with freelook and without autoaim, although of course playing with the mouse is easier (for me) than with just the keyboard anyway.

But on the rare occasions that I do play with mouse, I still play with freelook and without autoaim - it just feels more natural - but I agree the sentiment expressed above that - with the original IWADs - it feels more or less like cheating. Having that additional level of control really confers an advantage. But with contemporary PWADs that have been designed with that style of play in mind, it's obviously much more appropriate, and essential for DM.

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Phml said:

I can't agree. Past a certain skill threshold, which most people interested enough in Doom to still post here in 2013 probably have reached as it is not particularly high to start with, the extra precision required to aim in two dimensions rather than one is so minimal it's essentially insignificant. Doom doesn't require precision shooting in the first place; hitboxes are large, layouts are relatively compact, there is no localized damage.

Add to that being able to shoot exactly where you want has numerous advantages against monsters. Hitting rockets on the ground to ensure optimal splash damage, taking out a more threatening monster rather than a closer one autoaim would snap to, anticipating enemy movement with plasma, the list goes on.

(Needless to say, I always play with autoaim off in ports allowing that.)

I'll give you there is perhaps an advantage to autoaim on an unconscious level; as inconsequential as it might be, it's still one less thing to worry about, so your mind is free to focus more on other areas, you're less likely to disorient yourself with quick spins, etc.. However, those benefits can't compare to the extra control freeaim gives you, nor make up for the hurdles coming with autoaim.

ok, erm. *cough cough*, mic check... one two, one two...

WHAT A PILE OF BULLSHIT

go play a duel, you nublet. autoaim is ALWAYS a must, i don't care what you think. there are always upsides to having autoaim unless you specifically need it turned off (shooting across targets on a specific target, rocketjumping). there's also the slight horizontal autoaim, so robbing yourself of your default aimbot will always be detrimental in the long run.

you may think otherwise, but you just shoot bfg at hundreds of masterminds, so you have no idea what you are talking about. try a 1on1 match sometimes, bwahahaha.

EDIT: goddamit. "past a certain skill threshold"... oh god, what an ego.

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Those points can be easily countered by for example myself not having halfdecent internet connection and friends to duel with. I suppose I'll have to stick to masterminds.

I've been lately playing some wads with freelook and autoaim off, it's surprisingly fun change after not touching zdoom for quite a lenghty while.

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sure, there are 1000+1 reasons why autoaim doesn't play a significant role in singleplayer (z)doom. then there are 500+0.5 reasons why it does matter a lot in doom as a whole. i guess my point is: don't make generalizing, sweeping arguments about matters larger than your scope or your ignorance might make other people mad. i certainly saw red when phml claimed autoaim didn't matter after you've got skilled enough.

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I play mainly alone and mainly for leisure, and in ports with the requisite functionality, my preferred settings are freelook on/default autoaim/no crosshair. In fact, I normally have the screensize maximized to the point where no status bar shows either, but of course I snap it down a peg every now and then if I need to check my health or ammo.

The reason for these choices is that I've been playing Doom since before the advent of mouselook-enabled sourceports, and so I'm so used to the quirks of the original autoaim behavior (e.g. having to make sure you don't throw a rocket into your feet if you're standing on a high ledge and a cacodemon is floating up towards you from a certain angle) that I simply feel more at home with it on. Freelook, of course, makes a relevant impact on this, in that it naturally invites one to aim vertically as well as horizontally, but I generally find myself aiming precisely on the horizontal axis and rather roughly on the vertical one, letting autoaim handle the finer points there....in other words, similar to how it helped in the original game (and it is an indispensable help in some situations, undeniably). Why do I use freelook at all? Well, it's actually mainly because I like to look at the scenery. As a matter of some kind of ersatz personal honor code, I try to refrain from doing things like chaingun-pecking snipers who are miles away (e.g. well outside the purview of autoaim) to death, or exploiting it in situations like the Plutonia example described by Feniks, unless it's the sort of map/mapset where doing that kind of thing is explicitly part of the intended experience. The lack of crosshairs is also an aesthetic thing, though I'm not above temporarily turning it on (or indeed, autoaim off) in ZDooM maps were you're supposed to hit tiny buttons across huge chasms or whatnot.

Do freelook/autoaim configurations drastically alter the difficulty level of the game? In some specific situations they can, certainly, to the point where I'd be disinclined to agree that either one renders the other obsolete; e.g. autoaim is indispensable in some situations in Doom, Boom, whatnot; and direct aim is very useful (or even mandatory) in specialized ZDoom situations, although one could probably learn to make due with either setting to a more or less adequate degree in the majority of situations, with enough practice. Incidentally, I can drop freelook and be back in the swing of playing well without it in the course of a map or so, but keeping freelook and disabling autoaim takes me a little longer to get acclimated to, as least as far as ordinary combat goes. What I have a harder time adjusting to these days, though, is playing with infinite-tallness enabled (which I still do sometimes just to remember how it feels).

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I found auto-aim irritating when I first started. It constantly sent shots in directions that I did not intend. That is a failure of the user interface. As soon as I found DoomLegacy, I turned off auto-aim and would not go back to using it.

I find it intolerable for missiles to be wasted because auto-aim did not find those monsters on the high wall.
When I aim them myself, those missiles always have some effect.
If they miss or hit a pillar instead, it is my fault then.

I agree with Phml that when your skill gets good enough, you can play without auto-aim easily.
Auto-aim helps the beginner. But it does not take long for it to become a hinderance.

A definition of skill relating to mastering a bad playing interface is one of the reasons I have nothing to do with twitch games
(games where 1000's of hours training yourself to a control interface is the only criteria for winning).
This was most of the 2d side-scrollers.

Some fighter games did something similar with an automated rudder, that is irritating for similar reasons.

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The parts I quoted and replied to, both times, and hence my replies, were specifically and explicitely discussing player vs monster situations.

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Well, I can understand that using ZDoom with mouselook off and autoaim on may be quite painful in places. Since ZDoom fixed the bug that allows projectiles to pass through decorations, shooting rockets at monsters high above can often be desperately futile and way too ammo-consuming. This is one of the reasons I stopped using ZDoom at all, I no longer even play any ZDoom-only wads. It just makes the gameplay unbalanced, even though mancubi are far less threatening.

Truth be told, ZDoom is apparently intended to be played modern style.

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Thanks guys for all feedback.

Pretty much helped me decide some stuff for something im working on.

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