Zandronum

It has come to my attention that some people are not completely satisfied with the hit detection on instagib or similar modes when using railguns or single hitscan weapons. I must admit it does feel a little bit off, at least compared to games like quake 3 and up or unreal tournament. It just seems to be harder, as if you need to be much more precise; auto aim does not seem to help. I am not sure exactly what it is, but do you think there is anything we can do to make it work better? There are a few possibilities:

1) Other games, such as quake 3, use "thicker" rail shots, which means you can aim a tiny bit to the left or right (or above or below) your target and still make contact, making the experience less laborious and more enjoyable in general. If this is the case (I have no idea how it works in the other games), is there anything that can be done to make rail shots/hitscans "thicker"? There does not appear to be any parameters in decorate, I have experimented with firing two rail shots off center from each other at the same time but it looks a little silly.

2) This is just a general idiosyncrasy or limitation of the doom engine and its hit detection. If this is the case, can anyone provide detail and possible remedies?

3) It is all in our heads and hit detection for singular hitscan/rail shots are no worse than in other arena combat style games. In which case, why do such thoughts arise in the first place?

Well, for one, autoaim doesn't affect rails in any way, shape, or form. Pretty sure that's done for competitive reasons. As for actually hitting folks, I imagine a lot of it are the subconscious difficulties in aiming at flat sprites in a 3d environment (3d spatial models are much easier to perceive in position/direction/speed relative to you), the running speed of Doom vs. other arena styled games, and in many cases instagib maps makes distances extreme to the point where you're aiming at a few pixels.

I don't personally think the rails are notably "thicker" in Q3 or UT, but the hitboxes for players are larger in those games. Hitboxes for Doomguys are pretty narrow as far as I've noticed.

Is there a delay of a few tics before a railgun shot? That can cause weirdness.

I noticed that hitscan/railguns are really fickle in doom.

I don't think the Skulltag weapons have any "trigger pull," actually. IIRC, the only weapons that had any delay before firing were the Grenade Launcher - and even that, it was animated and lack the "trigger pull," though I forget if the Rocket Launcher had that as well - and the BFG10k, which had to charge. Even then, I doubt a weapon based off of precision would have a delay, since that'd be kind of odd.

Medicris wrote: I don't personally think the rails are notably "thicker" in Q3 or UT, but the hitboxes for players are larger in those games. Hitboxes for Doomguys are pretty narrow as far as I've noticed.

Are you sure? If so, would making hitboxes wider for doomguys be a solution?

The ssg is fine but the railgun should be slowed down for instagib

Btw, I am not talking about the suitability of the stock weapons. I am dealing with custom made weapons for freeze tag in my particular case, that has no trigger delay.

Based on the decorate:
There is this frame: RHTG A 3
Which provides a 3 tic delay before the rail comes out. I wonder what it would be like without this? Those 3 tics can allow for a player with the small hitbox on the doomguy to move out of range on a well placed shot.

Oh good point, still I very much doubt it would make a difference, 3 tics is a tiny amount of time.

Hypnotoad wrote: Oh good point, still I very much doubt it would make a difference, 3 tics is a tiny amount of time.

It's a lot of time for someone to move out of your crosshair when everyone's running around at 20 meters per second.

Or, more precisely, around 16~ map units per tic, if they aren't straferunning for some reason. If you aim at the center of a player, you're highly likely to miss with a one-tic delay, since the radius of a player is 16 map units. If you considering straferunning and Zandronum's added bunnyhopping, one tic is a very large different.

Certainly explains why it feels a lot easier to hit but a lot harder to compensate in Quickshot compared to stock, because you don't.

Okay, next release of freezetag will remove that 3 tic delay, see if that improves anything (but I doubt it still!).

Do you think it's possible to switch between the weapon types? I mean Rail V hitscan changed the gameplay quite a bit. It went from being able to hide behind your ally to not get hit by hitscans to getting double killed, along with autoaim working v not working.

Razgriz wrote: Do you think it's possible to switch between the weapon types? I mean Rail V hitscan changed the gameplay quite a bit. It went from being able to hide behind your ally to not get hit by hitscans to getting double killed

But does this change the gameplay for better or for worse? Also I can just put the RGF_NOPIERCING on a_railattack to prevent that.

along with autoaim working v not working.

Is the lack of autoaim noticeable in this case, does it make it harder?

Hypnotoad wrote: But does this change the gameplay for better or for worse? Also I can just put the RGF_NOPIERCING on a_railattack to prevent that.

I can't really say, it's a change but I know the only thing is that unfreezing is rather difficult unless you crouch (and even then a quarter of the people were crouching in the server) so you were asking to die when trying to unfreeze someone. But I am sure people were delighted to get two people with one rail. Maybe you can't shoot through a frozen player? I'm not sure.

Is the lack of autoaim noticeable in this case, does it make it harder?

I know a few players were used to having autoaim (for non freelook players) and in their case it helped a lot. We'd have to have another run with the updated wad to see what more people think (or have them at least say what they think about the rail). I guess in the main thread and in some IRC channels you can ask around to see how people feel about the new freeze rail.

I think you shouldn't make the freezegun penetrate with a rail, because as mentioned above, it turns it from "Shoot your enemies, but unfreeze your friends for a big advantage" more into normal instagib; "Shoot your enemies because if you try to unfreeze your teamates you are pretty fucked." Being able to use your comrades as cover proved very useful and I used it all the time.