How Do Bullets Work in Video Games? (gamasutra.com) 92
FPS (first-person shooter) games have been a staple in the video game industry ever since the explosion of Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992. Since then, the genre has been evolving with graphical upgrades, huge budgets, and an eSports ecosystem. But what about its core, the shooting mechanics? How have we progressed on that front? Why do some guns feel like it's the real thing, while others feel like toys?
REALLY well (Score:5, Funny)
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One of the worst examples is Doom 3.
And one of the best is Doom 1. Go figure.
(Doom 1 ... shotgunning a whole pack of imps ... gameplay has gone downhill since then)
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Why do some guns feel like it's the real thing, while others feel like toys?
Perhaps you should ask the folks at Bad Dragon [bad-dragon.com]
Re:REALLY well (Score:5, Interesting)
This raises the need to separate bullet physics from weapon feel. Doom 1 had great weapon feel but garbage bullet physics, and unless you want a highly realistic sniper game, that's fine. In most games bullets essentially travel like lasers - in a perfectly straight line and at infinite speed - and that's fine for most games. If you're taking long shots with a sniper rifle, then the discrepancy will become apparent, some games like the Sniper series realistically model the effects of wind, gravity, rifling, the Coriolis effect etc. on a bullet's travel.
Weapon feel is basically a UX issue, it's about the sounds and motions a gun makes, the damage it does, the rate of fire etc. Many of the most fun videogame weapons are sci-fi bordering on fantasy - like Doom's BFG or the concussion rifle from Dark Forces.
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The success of the Sniper Elite series suggests that there are people that think they are.
Sure, you can play the game on easier levels with the physics turned off, or with aim assist features, but there are a lot of players that find that too easy and dull, and make 400m shots that do take into account wind, gravity, the movement of the target while the bullet is in flight.. It's the big differentiator of the whole series, and yes, it's damn good fun.
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I remember how contrived it was in Goldeneye on the N64. You had guns that fired 100 rounds a minute but they had to nerf them by making only one hit every few seconds count. You could use that on multiplayer to rush people while they uselessly unloaded into you.
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Well, they basically had to do something like that, otherwise it comes down to who gets their opponent in their sights first, and the loser is dead before they even know what happened.
GoldenEye actually did have something like that - there was the golden gun which you could turn on in multiplayer which would actually one-hit kill whoever you shot with it. It was more realistic but was decidedly less fun than playing with the regular multiplayer with the nerfed guns.
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You could actually survive the golden gun if you had armour and got shot in the leg!
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One of the worst examples is Doom 3. All of the weapons feel weak and detached. The shotgun should kill most enemies with one or two shots at point blank, but it almost never does.
That's because they've replaced the original guns with airsoft ones [airsoftstation.com] due to gun control laws in some of the countries it's played in.
Gonna guess (Score:5, Interesting)
Before Ring-TFA:
- Sound effects play a major part; both the sound of the gun and the sound of things being shot. Solid sound design makes a big difference.
- The way objects react to being shot. If an enemy just soaks up bullets without flinching... or worse, stuttering as if stunned... it makes the weapons feel like toys. Enemies should react in expected ways, flinching appropriately, maybe staggering.
- Appropriate physics. Hitscan weapons that damage in the same frame as the shot is weird. A slight delay is a minimum. Bullet drop, spread and aero effects are essential for more simulator-like games.
*Reads article*
Apparently my score is 300%. I was right about the physics, but apparently I put a lot more thought into this than the article author.
=Smidge=
=Smidge=
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Before Ring-TFA:
- Sound effects play a major part; both the sound of the gun and the sound of things being shot. Solid sound design makes a big difference.
Yep.
Doom 1 again: The imp-being-hit-by-shotgun sound is perfect.
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It's a Gamasutra article, what did you expect? They're the origin of the disease that infected polytaku et al.
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Do you really think anybody reads more than two words of that?
It's like a Microsoft EULA.
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> When you see that message, nobody will ever hear or see you on that site ever again
Can't wait for this to get to SlashDot...
Casual vs hardcore (Score:2)
Why do some guns feel like it's the real thing, while others feel like toys?
It boils down to casual vs hardcore, twitch style games vs "slower" games. With games like CoD, especially with multiplayer, the focus is on close combat, quick reactions, etc. So things like bullet drop isn't an issue, and they all have gun attachments that reduce/change things like bullet spread or recoil. Then you have games like Red Orchestra, Verdun, etc where combat is generally much slower and carried out over longer ranges and the ability to accurately line up shots and account for travel time/bu
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There are three shot bolt actions??? I'm curious, what guns are these supposed to be? Even in WW1 bolt-actions generally held 5-10 rounds....
Note also that the AK-47 wasn't really designed for hitting anything at 150-200m except by blind chance. It was never terribly accurate, and the low-power round made long-distance shooting iffy, at best.
Yeah, I know - it's a game....
Re: Casual vs hardcore (Score:2, Interesting)
The Berthier carbine was a 3 shot rifle issued by the French in WWI. One of my favorite rifles in the game Verdun(partly because of the sound), but that 3 round capacity is limiting. The French really liked to hamstring their soldiers-the Lebel was tube fed so took forever to reload and the Berthier only held 3 rounds.
And true, in real life the AK wasnt greatly accurate at long range, but it used a larger round than the M-16.
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Larger in bore, but that's about all. The AR in 5.56 is effective to around 400m depending on factors and definitions.
Re: Casual vs hardcore (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah definitions matter. I've used 5.56 out to 600m; if you're a decent shot even at that range you'll still have about a 50/50 chance of hitting a human-sized target. Not stellar, but I'd still call it effective.
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The primary reason for the switch to 5.56 was that statistics showed that the probability of the enemy being hit was directly proportional to the number of rounds put down-range. 5.56 rounds are significantly lighter than 7.62, thus allowing a soldier to carry more rounds for a given weight, which means more rounds they can put down range, and thus have a higher probability of hitting something.
Assuming you’re fighting an enemy that cares for their wounded/injured, a slightly higher probability of wou
Re: Casual vs hardcore (Score:1)
Yeah. That's why most armies teach that the effective range is 300-400 metres for an individual shooter, but 500-600 for a group firing on the same target. Put enough rounds down range and you'll hit it eventually.
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But the 5,56 doesn't have the stopping power to disable a zombie without blowing through half a clip. Even if the effective range is shorter, it doesn't do you any good unless the zombie is actually disabled before it can reach you...
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Yep, those friggin' Barbie guns are pretty useless vs. zombies.
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You have that the wrong way around. The bunny hopping, rocket jumping games are the hardcore ones. The ones you like are for casuals who don't have the reflexes or skill to keep up in the former style of game.
This is gaming the system, and shame on the system for allowing it. It's appropriate for Splatoon but not much else.
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TF2 has rocket and sticky jumping built-in as a mechanic. If you can't deal with soldiers and demomen flying around the battlefield, you generally lose. A lot.
It's not to say that games like TF2 couldn't benefit from better bullet physics. At least they only have one hitscan weapon class (sniper rifle).
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You have that the wrong way around. The bunny hopping, rocket jumping games are the hardcore ones. The ones you like are for casuals who don't have the reflexes or skill to keep up in the former style of game.
The games I play don't have jumping (although you can climb over things) and the animation to prone/stand up takes a second or 2. No bunny hopping or dolphin diving.
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By "hardcore" do you mean, doesn't shower? Because haven't won yet?
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I mean a game that would make someone like you whine and accuse everyone else of cheating because you suck at it and can't admit it.
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Oh please. Bunny hopping is a lame mechanic that any decent game engineers out because it's so shitty.
Movement in shooters is good. Bunny hopping is for children.
Hardcore my arse. Hardcore if you're 12 maybe.
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red orchestra is a horrible example for accuracy, the underlying mechanics for shooting were practically rolling dice. I can fire my mosin one handed better than their soldiers can prone, supported, with both hands.
BFG 9000 (Score:2)
BFG 9000 did it 2 ways.
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When the weapons were not always hitscan like on 2D games or ID titles etc.. there were trade offs, strategies, enemy patterns etc.. Now with realistic weapons, is quite very hard to not fall into "just make the same darn hitscan gun but with different damage/firing rate/random chance to hit" trap that many, many, many games do and are all very boring for it.
Question in the title (Score:4, Insightful)
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That puts limits on what an average home "computer" can do for that game
That fun, instant, direct "arcade" setting on a ww2 flying game? Vs the advanced physics of the simulator setting?
WW2, Vietnam game? What to do with the sniper rifle physics over long distances? Make it too easy? Very difficult?
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I recall that the original Homeworld used actual bullet physics, but then its sequels used random number generator to-hit roll mechanics.
So the arguments about limited development time is bullshit, and computational efficiency, etc, are also bullshit.
Defender wall with 100 ships firing multiple bullets at a time each... bullets that are tracked from frame to frame... testing for hit collisions with hundreds of other ships... was done on... no better than single core 500MHz Pentium 3's and singl
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Re "computational efficiency' - yet decades of games had some "maths" to do just that if so needed...
ie the "bullets that are tracked from frame to frame" shows just that
Re 'random number generator to-hit roll mechanics."... make the staff not do the work and they dont have to worry about physics... for reasons...
Welcome to the ho
Re:Question in the title (Score:5, Informative)
For the 3rd installment of the game there's the ACE3 mod with comes with an advanced ballistics simulation.
In addition to the already above average bullet simulation, they add dynamic wind, which is affected by the terrain and also affects the bullts, Magnus effect, drag from air resistance (pressure, temperature, moisture) affects the trajectory and makes the bullets unstable as they get slowed, Earth rotation (Coriolis and Eötvös effects), powder burn rates which affect muzzle velocity.
The mod is popular but also hated by many. They hate it not only because the additional simulation takes its toll on the game's (already bad) performance, but because the advanced ballistics make it (appropriately) difficult for snipers to be effective at longer ranges.
There appears to be a point where the realism just becomes a little bit too much even for the Arma 3 type of player.
But then again the first indicator for this would be how rare 1st person only servers are. Most people apparently just can't get by without a disembodied 3rd person camera, that allows them to look around obstacles without having to expose themselves.
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The problem with extreme realism is that you are playing with a mouse and keyboard. In real life you get a lot of feedback from the feel of things, the wind blowing against you, the g forces you experience when driving or flying.
Absent those things it's harder to judge some stuff and easier to judge other things.
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But I don't think that is a major factor in what I was trying to convey here.
For example feelings like the wind blowing against you only help you marginally.
The ACE3 mod even provides the player with appropriate equipment like the Kestrel 4500, which can measure a lot of weather features that are relevant for the shooter. You also have tools to measure the distance between you and t
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Do I see a market opening for a mouse with programmable recoil?
Hell, its Christmas - lets go whole hog and have keyboards with actual, exploding keys!
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I don't see why not, game controllers have vibrational feedback. As long it can be turned off for normal computer use.
It might be a little weird if they put that in a keyboard too though... then again, a space bar that shudders when you jump off and land might be kinda cool.
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However I wonder how you could replicate this faithfully. You do not have a lot of reaction mass to accelerate around in the finite space of a mouse. On top of that you do not hold a mouse like you would hold a pistol or straight grip.
I suppose you could conceive a controller that uses a pistol grip and is mounted to some kind of modified electrodynamic shaker. Such a shaker is essentially a large software controlled and super powered speaker. We use such a device in our lab to test the
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USB powered fan pointing at your face.
Hmm. I think I'll email Logitech..
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if you want to hit a target 2000m away from you/quote ..then you shouldn't be pretending you're playing realistically.
Yes, I know snipers have done this in real life. No, most snipers have never even tried a 2km shot, let alone landed one, and the ones that have didn't get it with their first bullet.
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The vanilla game lets you zero up and own in a gamified version of 100m steps, which magically takes into account what kind of cartridge in what kind of barrel is used. And if you use the mildots provided by the scope in addition to that you can pull off 2500m hits somewhat reliably with the CheyTac M200 Intervention (chambered in
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Left out Tribes 2 as well. Arcing a disc to where some jerkwad is about to land and ruining his day is one of simple joys in life.
Most video games you are a good marksman. (Score:4, Insightful)
Firing a real gun vs a video game has a big difference.
Video Games normally have a point in a general direction and shoot the targets will get his, while the bi standards will miss.
Real life you need a lot of practice to fire a gun at the target. And in actual stressful conditions you may be moving at lot more then you think.
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That went dark, I was thinking of Target Practice (With a Paper Target), and Hunting Licensed to Hunt wildlife.
Re:Most video games you are a good marksman. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Most video games you are a good marksman. (Score:3)
It's not the force required that most new shooters have problems with, it's jerking the damn trigger. Doesn't matter whether the pull is 1lb or 8lbs, if you don't have proper trigger control you're going to be all over the place.
Re:Most video games you are a good marksman. (Score:5, Informative)
During WWII [shootingra...stries.com], about 45,000 bullets were fired for every combatant killed. In Iraq and Afghanistan [independent.org], that number is estimated to be 250,000 bullets per insurgent killed. It's actually pretty hard to be killed by someone shooting a gun at you (unless you're standing still or running away in a straight line while exposed).
The same was true in ancient times. The Romans are estimated to have lost 855,000 battlefield casualties [necrometrics.com] during 9 centuries of combat, or about 1000 per year. Considering the Roman army numbered about 250,000 to 500,000 men, your chances of surviving combat were actually pretty good. Nothing at all like the gory scenes portrayed in movies and TV. The fighting ended not when one side was killed, but when they lost their nerve and fled from battle. (Historically, most combatant deaths have been due to disease, exposure, and starvation, not actual combat.)
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That's why I got a 1911-pattern handgun, the sweet-ass trigger feel. Nothing else readily available is so easy to fire. That's probably why they are so commonly used by shooting champs. I tried out a few different guns before buying one. I also have a Peruvian Mauser with a sporting trigger that's super duper easy to shoot compared to the cheap junk (by comparison) that it came with.
In some games all of this stuff is modeled, though. Different guns have different spreads to account for the ease (or lack the
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I think one of the things that people don't get from playing a video game is the difficulty level of actually pulling a trigger while keeping the weapon on target, especially with a pistol/handgun.
Even just a bow and arrow, it is really hard to release the string without introducing a slight bounce to the weapon arm. That's true even under no-stress situations with lots of time.
It seems like pulling the trigger would be easy, but it engages the forearm muscles and naturally the arm will move a bit. Plus you expect the recoil, and that makes it hard not to yank on the trigger. It takes a lot of practices to stay relaxed and then squeeze smoothly without twitching, and ending with a tight grip to keep
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Only video games I've seen that have gotten even close to what shooting a real firearm is like have all been quarter eaters in the mall arcade.
Now of those.... quite a few with Uzi or Mac10 or Mac11 type auto pistols. Surprisingly similar to shooting a real Uzi or Mac11 (I have a friend who is a tax stamp collector so shooting full auto stuff is a somewhat regular thing for me.... )
I also remember one from the late 70s/early 80s that was a video projector screen, and had O/U shotguns attached that would fi
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"Only video games I've seen that have gotten even close to what shooting a real firearm is like have all been quarter eaters in the mall arcade."
Operation Wolf!
Bullets don't ricochet in games (Score:3)
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Accurate ricochet physics would be extremely difficult to model, The bullet, unless it is bouncing off a liquid surface, is going to deform drastically and more than likely will fragment. The surface will chip or spallate, and in a thin surface or one composed of layers, the surface will essentially bounce back and explode (note: really mangling shockwave physics here to keep it short). It might be most easily modeled as a combination of a shotgun blast and a bullet of a smaller caliber reflecting the us
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No idea why game companies like EA can't be bothered to implement this, as it is dead simple.
I don't know why they don't either, but I do know that in real life that's not how it works at all. See some experiments with the 'simple' case of a driver shooting through a windshield for example.
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Because it'd either be predictable and then you'd have people practicing to "shoot around corners" or it'd be realistic and pretty damn random which makes it more of a button masher and less about skills. Yes in real life it would be more chaos but I think in this case more realism is less fun. Much like realistic injuries, I'd never run around so gung-ho with a real gun as in a game. Nobody wants to play a game that's so dull, or well not dull because I'd be trying to save the one life I have, but where so
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Back in grad school my supervisor caught us all playing Warcraft on the lab network. He didn't want to play Warcraft so he bought Medal of Honour. One undergrad was pretty good at FPSs, good enough that the supervisor got frustrated. So he installed a realism patch. Now when he got shot from across the map he died in one or two shots, instead of ten.
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Destiny 2 does have some guns with optional ricochet rounds.
Re: Bullets don't ricochet in games (Score:2)
It really depends on the game (Score:3)
No. Because the real thing sucks. (Score:2)
In the real world you do not go around and murder a few hundred people.
FPS games are either real time puzzle games (where a single hit is game over), agility games, or anything between. No where in there are you actually ending anything's life, nor "defending" your lawn.
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No where in there are you actually... "defending" your lawn.
Speak for yourself, Sonny. Oh, yeah, and get off my lawn. No seriously, the sprinklers are about to come on.
Gravity and physics (Score:1)
Unless art work, plot, lack of CPU and GPU skills needed some real limits put on that decade of game design.
Hire really smart people, get really good game design.
Cant hire the skilled staff? Get less ability to "think" about world and game physics...
Study more, learn more, if the "word" design needs gravity, code for it...
Did not consider that? Hire much better staff and start again.
At it's most basic (Score:2)
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--Heh, the "homing darts" assault rifle always reminds me of the Zorg ZF1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Too realistic hurts (Score:2)
There is a line where "too realistic" hurts gameplay. I've been trying to master The Hunter: Call of the Wild. Very, very hard game to get proficient at. Bullet drop, wind, and then vital organ hits (or mostly miss), blood loss, then tracking for non-critical hits. Not to mention ammo type and firearm - Don't shoot a blackbear with a .243 unless you're going to get very, very lucky - and most likely you're just going to get dead from being mulled to death after making it mad. Wow, very hard, but then s
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Rifles/pistols/shotguns don't take wind into account in COTW. Bows do.
But yeah, you do get much better at it. Avoid moose as they'll run for miles (literally) if you wound them and get the 'hit F to change zero' perk/skill as quickly as you can, then you'll start getting better very fast.
E.g. I bought the latest DLC (Spain), picked up the new 6.5mm rifle that comes with it, found a nice viewpoint to test its accuracy and made a judgement call on bullet drop. Lung shot instakill on a deer at just over 400m.
I
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Hah, bears will maul the mess out of you. Deer will kick you to death. It's not as simple as you make it out to be.
Its hard to make bullets fly in a game (Score:2)
Here is a talk from GDC about how to make bullets fly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
In Quake, There Were 12 Shotgun Pellets (Score:2)
realism requested (Score:1)
It is very disturbing that ... (Score:2)
I bet the person who wrote that comment was an American gun-nut (the two classes, "American" and "gun-nut", largely overlap) who wants children in potty-training (or earlier) school to learn how to kill people before they learn to control their excretion organs. Or, just execute the motherfuckers, as Tarantino would put it.
Games (Score:1)