Compileable version of Alien Breed 3D II - The Killing Grounds

[Karlos]

I mean I guess we could see what happens if we render some text, call out to Vid_Present() before going into the loop. It might be possible to do something with it beyond just asking "is it pressed yet?"

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I mean I guess we could see what happens if we render some text, call out to Vid_Present() before going into the loop. It might be possible to do something with it beyond just asking "is it pressed yet?"

for sure, it could be a good point to show mission stats/objectives or what not.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by abu_the_monkey

for sure, it could be a good point to show mission stats/objectives or what not.

I'd be happy to add some motivational text like:




"You know you're messing this up, right?"



"Carter Burke could do better than this!"



"HINT: Try to make the projectiles collide with the aliens."


or


"Andy Clitheroe wants you to know there's a game called Fears available."

[Karlos]

Maybe that's one for dying lol....

[Karlos]

This reminds me of my Quake mod. I added so many death messages. Depending on how high you fell from, you might see "Well, <player name> certainly made a big impression!" and similar sarky stuff. Another was something like "Hey, <player name>, how's the mineral bath?" when dying in lava.

[Karlos]

@abu_the_momkey just killed another longstanding bug that has existed since the original release. Now, when you aim up and down in fullscreen, any non-assisted projectile goes in the direction you reasonably expect and not at an exaggerated angle. That's a couple of decades of muscle memory to reprogram

This paves the way for adding options to turn aim assistamce off and crosshairs on.

[abu_the_monkey]

from that (and the fact you have merged the changes) I guess you did not find any issues when testing?

the crosshair will probably need to be a little more complex than just a pointer drawn the the dead centre of the render area as I have already tested that and it (the projectiles) to not always hit the centre depending on how far up/down you are looking.

disabling the auto aim for projectiles is simple enough but the instant effect weapons will need some additional code work.

[Karlos]

Only the somewhat predictable small drift over larger distances. I checked fullscreen 1x1, 1x2 and both with and without vertical margins and the behaviour was pretty consistent.

The crosshair doesn't have to be pixel perfect and it could even depend on the weapon (that would require some mod properties assistance). For example a cross hair for the grenade or mine seems a bit pointless.

There might be some systematic drift, which means we might be able to compensate, but right now, without any crosshair aiming, it's significantly improved in fullscreen. There's noticeably more precision over your aim.

[abu_the_monkey]

top stuff

[abu_the_monkey]

@Karlos

here is a kludge with a 'corrected' crosshair (your green dot) when 'auto aim off' is selected in the options menu and you have mouse controls selected (in keyboard and joystick/pad control auto aim is always on and there is no green dot)

may not be the correct way to do it, but give it a try.

*the auto aim off only applies to projectile weapons

[Karlos]

I'll have to test it out tomorrow.

[Karlos]

I am not sure about the crosshair still, it doesn't track so well over longer views.

Maybe there are still some numerical issues to solve. Ideally no vertical adjustment of the crosshair would be needed for vanilla projectiles.


Here the projectile tracks very well.


At maximum pitch, the projectile seems to rise above the crosshair.


At minimum pitch, the adjusted crosshair moves quite far below.

The crosshair is a point at infinite distance, dead centre of the viewport and the projectile starts are the bottom of the viewport. Under ideal circumstances, it would always appear to approach the crosshair from below as it recedes and never rise above it (assuming the player view pitch doesnt change).

How is it without moving the crosshair?

[Karlos]

I wonder if this is a cumulutative error in the movement of the projectile that causes this? It's not hard to imagine that small rounding errors at each timestep are compounding as it travels.

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

How is it without moving the crosshair?

looking full down it is the opposite. the projectile hits well below the crosshair.

Originally Posted by Karlos

I wonder if this is a cumulutative error in the movement of the projectile that causes this? It's not hard to imagine that small rounding errors at each timestep are compounding as it travels.

I think this is the most likely cause as it is different depending on how close the wall is.

attached is a build without the moving crosshair.

[Karlos]

I get that the impact point might be off for a very close wall, but for a sufficiently far wall it should become vanishingly close to the target.
I'm going be AFK and likely incommunicado from Friday for a week and a bit.

Without the crosshair, it's quite playable and you don't really notice the drift. The current maxlook is already much better than it was. We don't need an imminent solution to this... IMHO.

[abu_the_monkey]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Without the crosshair, it's quite playable and you don't really notice the drift. The current maxlook is already much better than it was. We don't need an imminent solution to this... IMHO.

I agree

[Karlos]

We might need to revise the movement code to get this "right". One of the nice things about how it works now is that, at least for a constant velocity, what's cumulative error might exist is the same person time step, so the movement doesn't seem erratic.

The other alternative could be that this is just the angular precision killing us. I remember quake having issues with that and it uses 32-bit floats.

[abu_the_monkey]

it does seem more accurate in the 2/3 screen size.

either way we will find a solution eventually and as you said, it plays ok without a crosshair so can wait for now.

[coachman]

Good job with the full screen vertical aiming, thank you abu!

Practically, crosshair is most important for long-range shots with scarce ammo (e.g., rocket launcher). Thus, if you make it work precisely for "infinite" distance, any close-range deviations would be well acceptable. But if the deviation is caused by numerical inaccuracies that sum up with the distance, that will be tough.

[Karlos]

I just had a different thought....

What if the vertical aim was making use of something related to the original screen aspect ratio?