Skip to main content

Shooter Mechanics Investigation

When I began my new project, the first gameplay mechanic I attempted to make was a first person weapon firing. From my knowledge of shooter games, I knew that I could choose from two main categories of firing:

  • Hitscan: As soon as the player presses the fire input, the target in their crosshairs is hit instantly.
  • Projectile: When the fire input is pressed, a projectile is fired from the weapon, travelling in the direction of the destination in the crosshairs.
To investigate this, I looked into the game Overwatch, as I knew there were some hitscan weapons and some projectile weapons and I wanted to look into exactly how it worked. Below is an example of the firing system for the character Baptiste, who has a hitscan fire to deal damage to enemies and a projectile fire to heal teammates.


What this video shows is that, for both hitscan and projectile fire, the shot reaches its target, regardless of whether it logically looks to the player like it should. If the player stands behind a wall, so there is an obstruction between them and the location indicated by the crosshair, they can still hit that location. The way I think this works is that two things happening with each shot. For hitscan fire, the hit is detected at the location of the crosshair, and the visuals are drawn between the player and the target. For projectile fire, a projectile is launched from the player camera to the target. I think the way this works is by using separate actors for collision and visuals. For hitscan, the target is damaged when the players fires, and some form of visual show the player's bullet movement. For projectiles, a colliding projectile is fired and a separate visual element is moved from the fire point of the weapon but to the same destination as the collider. 

There is second type of projectile that must be accounted for, which is demonstrated by the character Junkrat. He fires a grenade that bounces off walls and floors. For this type of projectile, it would not work as a collision projectile and a visual to go with it, as the visual would behave unpredictably on bounces. Instead, I think these projectiles are fired directly from the fire point of the weapon and only consist of a single actor containing collision and visuals, instead of two separate ones.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Semester 2 Submission

Project Outline This project is an exploration into player feedback and player reward in game mechanics. I have explored this by creating mechanics in Unreal Engine, imagining how they might be used in a game, and how a player might feel when using them. This exploration progressed into player reward in puzzle scenarios, which links into my current area of research. I looked into how visuals can create a language that the player will learn to understand while playing the game, and will guide them through problem solving in the game.  Project Context My semester 1 project was a core puzzle game, meaning the game was centred on a central puzzle mechanic and expanded from that point. I wanted to explore a mechanic that was more of a peripheral puzzle that exists as side quests to the main gameplay. Many popular game series have main gameplay mechanics with puzzles along the way, such as Batman Arkham, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider. As these types of games are extremely popular and (a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Design Inspiration Semester 2

First person adaptation I decided to switch the view of my game from third person to first person. I made this decision because movement around the levels would sometimes give the player a confusing perspective (if they had their back to a wall for example). I moved the camera to instead hover above a pair of arms, that would be used to show the hand movements from a first person perspective. The challenge now was to recreate every animation in first person instead. I looked into first person games that think have good first person hand animations. I think Dishonored (2012) is one of the best example, as it relies heavy on the tools and abilities that centre around the player character's hands. One of my favourite aspects of the design is the way the knife moves from a regular to a reversed grip when entering stealth. The knife is clearly visible and serves its purpose in both grips and it tells the player they are in stealth mode without the need for another visual prompt (there i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Semester 2 Project Progress

13th January 2025 To begin this project, I am experimenting with creating different game mechanics. This is to build up a repertoire of skills in Unreal Engine and also see if any mechanics seem as if they can be adapted or incorporated into a game. I began by using free assets to make a character that can run around and execute an attack pattern. This was just to experiment with the assets and create a character that I could test other mechanics with. The first mechanic I created was one that lets the player grab an object and pull it toward them. When within a defined range, the player's reticle changes shape to indicate to them the object they're looking at can be grabbed. Grabbing it moves the object on an arcing trajectory toward the player. This could be used to grab a weapon to use, to bring an enemy closer to be attacked, etc. 14th January 2025 I added functionality for the player to hold an object and attack with it. When an object is pulled toward the player and reach...
Post a Comment
Read more