Sticky weapon bobbing and firing

I had never really noticed that in all those years of playing Doom, and using source ports (particularly ZDoom) must have concealed this.

However, during Mocha's development, at some point I had a way too exagerrated weapon bobbing, and noticed that when moving and firing the weapon got "stuck" off center during the firing sequence, resulting e.g. in Doomguy's hand and gun firing way off center. This was VERY distracting when aiming.

I was fairly sure that it should return to dead-center the very moment you shoot, instead, like (I think) happens in ZDoom. The exagerrated bobbing just made this even more evident. Plus, there's no evidence of any checks or forced centering in the LinuxDoom code. In any case, I let this slip by after I finetuned the bobbing width which made it less noticeable, although I was reminded of it from time to time.

Out of curiosity, I recently fired up Chocolate Doom and Vanilla to cross-check, and lo and behold, they ALSO let the weapon "stick" in this manner (Jodwin reports that this is also prBoom(plus)'s behavior).

So which behavior is the "correct" one? "Sticky bobbing" or "instant centering"? Which one you'd rather have? Shareware doom.exe does have "sticky bobbing and firing", dunno if there are differences between doom2.exe and ultimate doom/tnt/plutonia in that respect.

Yeah it is annoying. I know some alternate ports of Doom such as GBA Doom 2 has the weapons bob while they're shooting which looks pretty cool. I think Risen3D does this too.

You mean continuing the bobbing motion even during the firing frames? That would be a good compromise, and arguably more realistic too than having the weapon either "stick" (although that does give a fake recoil sensation) or suddenly "jump" in mid screen and full view, regardless of how far it was swinging.

I've never tried GBA Doom2, but I somehow imagine I'd find bobbing and firing even more distracting than the sticking.

Now that I think about it, I actually find the snap back to centre from sticking quite satisfying. Cos I only ever keep fire held down in the middle of a large fight, I guess I associate the snap back from stuckness with a wind down in intensity, gameplay wise.

I would sooner have the weapon snap to centre position upon firing, but that may just be me. As it stands, I still fall under the false impression that with a weapon askew the round would fire from the sprite's position rather than the centre of the screen. It's immeasurably irritating.

Maes said:

So which behavior is the "correct" one?

Define "correct". What do you want, accuracy of emulation or intuitive behavior?

For accuracy of emulation, the answer is obvious. For popular demand, not so obvious ;-)

It's really annoying when aiming, but like someone suggested a while back I use Doomguy's head to aim.