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KVELLER

What do you think about centered weapons?

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Personally, I don't like it at all. It just doesn't make any sense to fire a shotgun with the back of it in your stomach. I suppose it was to aim easily, since they kept this until Quake 2, where they intoduced crosshairs.

 

It's also interesting that most game developers did the same thing back in the day (I guess they were influenced by id?) and that apparently 3D Realms were one of the first in saying "Fuck that" and start putting weapons in the right side of the screen instead.

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I think more than likely id weren't really aware of how exactly perspective behaves when a weapon is seen from someone's POV. The pistol kind of gets away with it because you kind of want to center it somewhat in order to aim accurately, but the others should be slightly more to the left or right. I mean, practically every shooter before Doom, and quite a few after, had this insistence on centering the weapons, so it seems to just be a product of naïveté. The advent of real-time 3D rendering demonstrated how perspective actually works in a POV setup and that was that.

 

Then again, even the original Quake had centered weapons. It's kind of funny that just a year later Quake 2 had everything angled to the right.

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It is supposed to be a constant view of staring down the sights.  

 

The perspective argument that Goat is making is true, but the offcenter perspective shows what hipfiring looks like from the shooter's perspective, not what actual aiming looks like. 

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I imagine they centered the weapons to help with aiming. It makes lining up shots with enemies easier when there is no crosshair.

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2 hours ago, GoatLord said:

I think more than likely id weren't really aware of how exactly perspective behaves when a weapon is seen from someone's POV.

They had the toys on which Doom's weapon sprites were based on. It must have happened at some point before the sprites were made that someone held the toy in front of himself like a gun and checked how it looks like from his POV.

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Centered weapons are the only acceptable weapons in Doom. All these custom wads that change this are atrocious.

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Why does everyone assume that the shotgun is rested on Doomguy's chest? How do you know that he doesn't have his body angled, with the shotgun resting against his shoulder? That's always been my interpretation.

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Lol both the shotgun and super shotgun are hilarious if you try to imagine how the heck does he manage to reload them while still keeping his head the same place ready to look down sight again after he reloads. Also fist looks extremely stupid as hell, the moment demons learn kung fu doomguy is gonna get rip and teared.

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I've always assumed the shotguns and plasma rifle were held like this:

hunter-with-double-barrel-shotgun-in-the

 

Or at least, somehow similar enough, so that they do look centered. The chaingun and BFG still look odd because you shouldn't hold them like that, but...

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It only works in 2D games. Try enabling the option in Doom 2016. It's weird as fuck.

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Also the "realistic" panel isn't realistic at all. Who shoots with their arm fully extended like that? Why are they not bracing with the left hand?

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3 hours ago, Tracer said:

It is supposed to be a constant view of staring down the sights. 

Even if this was the case, the weapon should look much bigger, and it shouldn't be so low either.

 

2 hours ago, Blastfrog said:

Why does everyone assume that the shotgun is rested on Doomguy's chest? How do you know that he doesn't have his body angled, with the shotgun resting against his shoulder? That's always been my interpretation.

Well, this actually makes some sense. Still, if it was resting on his shoulder it should be way higher in the camera. He could be just holding it with without a supporting point, though.

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3 hours ago, Memfis said:

Centered weapons are the only acceptable weapons in Doom. All these custom wads that change this are atrocious.

 

And while we're at it, Doomguy needs to learn how to punch directly out of the middle of his chest, and hold the chainsaw with the blade perpendicular to his body.

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1 hour ago, KVELLER said:

Even if this was the case, the weapon should look much bigger, and it shouldn't be so low either.

But it would look much worse.

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I always prefer it to angled stuff like Duke3D. Especially since a lot of custom spriters don't know how perspective works.

 

Besides which, someone who understands firearms (like Doomguy presumably would) would know how to hold them. As in, not off to his side at a 45 degree angle. He'd keep the weapon up and ready.

 

Stuff like the fist and chainsaw are fine because they aren't handled the same way as a firearm.

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Easier to aim.

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Old games are fine. New games are kind of weird to me. Like Doom (2016), the classic weapon pose gives me strange feeling, but old school games, no matter how they look are fine by me.

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If the weapons are 2D, they tend to look fine, if not fitting, when centred and angled. For weapons that are 3D models, angled looks better. I guess it's because it's 3D, hence more realistic looking, compared to a 2D picture.

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It's funny how the word "realistic" appears in a doom forum. A game which take place on Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars, both with far less gravitation than Earth moon, where military complexes where build, which are invaded by cybernetic enhanced demons from hell.

 

Centered weapons or not is a matter of taste.

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There are different kinds of realistic. Fiction tells all kinds of "lies" about the worlds the characters inhabit. The bigger the lie is - the easier it is to believe, strangely enough. I believe Spielberg said that in regards to how Jurassic Park was able to get away with its explanation of how the characters managed to bring dinosaurs back to life, but not with a more trivial suspension of realism - I don't remember which one.

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I think the term realism in games does not fit completely, and mostly in movies too. I think the question is if something is believable. Does it work within the rules of the game or movie?

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After a certain point throwing realism completely out of the window causes it to be a clusterfuck shitshow. I don't care if the weapons are angled or not as long as they aren't jumping all over the place or filling 50% of my screen, GODDAMN THE PLASMA RIFLE COOLING DOWN!!

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Centered view is infinitely easier to make custom weapons around. 

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Centered weapons were already the norm when Doom was developed. Wolfenstein had 'em and earlier shooters did as well. There have been several comments about aiming down the sights, which is what you would want to do in a combat situation if you have the precious few seconds to actually do so. But in most instances, FPS's have you running-and-gunning, in which case, realistically speaking, shooting from the hip and estimating the direction of the projectile would be your best bet.

 

Quake 2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and its sequel, Seeds of Evil, Goldeneye, two heavily overlooked Terminator games (Terminator: Future Shock and Terminator: Skynet), Chasm: The Rift and the "classic" Build games (Duke 3D, Redneck Rampage, Shadow Warrior, Blood and Powerslave/Exhumed) and others I'm sure I failed to mention used an angled perspective for most or all weapons. Keep in mind, all of these games were released between 1995 and 1997, meaning that within a two year period, artists had completely abandoned the idea of arsenals of centered weapons that had been staple of FPS aesthetic for years. Clearly, to the devs, it made more sense to assume you were holding the weapon from the shoulder rather than aiming down the sights. I'm not sure when they started implementing iron sights as a way of visually conveying precision aiming.

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