Scaled weapons

[GreEn`mArine]

I found out that the weapons have recently been scaled up in the first person view - and I am not sure whether this was intended or not. In the end, for me personally, it is VERY annoying, as the weapons take away more space from my view.

In case you want to respond, please avoid giving "useful" tips such as "have you tried turning it off and on again?" or "use r_drawviewmodel 0 if you don't like it", they do not actually help me or others

Please keep in mind: I respect all the work that was done on the models, and I'm aware these were needed to finally have proper positioning of the weapon models, also regarding the fact to have g_shootfromcenter being reflected by the weapons being centered. However, apart from the fact that this (i.e. show weapon in center when g_shootfromcenter is 1 and the resulting model changes) is a new feature that was relentlessy added after feature freeze, I'm just asking for the sense of all this, and I'd like to hear more opinions about this change.

If anything of the following comes across as "rant" or anything: it isn't, it's just my sarcastic comment .

When I asked around in the devs channel about this issue I got different responses, such as:

- "they are bigger? I haven't noticed"
- "yeah they are a bit bigger but I like it"

As I feel as if I'm in the wrong movie, I'd like you to judge it yourself. The shots were taken with fov 110, at fov 90 this issue gets even worse - the left screenshot is taken from nexuiz20090224.zip, the (first) v2.5 beta build advertised here in the forums. The right screenshot is taken from SVN, 5 minutes old.

Shotgun:

One of the very few examples where the weapons didn't change much. Of course orientation changed a bit, but that's fine imo.

Laser:

The new laser is certainly 30% bigger and looks too big for me. Apparently, to the devs, it's just me... well well

Crylink:

Also here you can notice that the crylink grew quite a bit, and is also much closer to the crosshair which is quite annoying imo.

Rocket launcher:

This is the only other weapon, aside from the shotgun, that now looks better in SVN.

Machine gun:

I'm wondering what the intentions were to only show 75% of that weapon.

Nexgun:

Just as MG, only parts of the weapon are show. It is positiioned relatively low and looks just weird to me.

Camping rifle:

The CR was done completely the other way round. More parts are now shown of the weapon. The reasons remain unknown. Apart from that, no problem from my side, you'll just see more of the weapon. But this shows the randomness of this change, which actually is a feature introduced after feature freeze was set, btw - but anyways, let's have a look at the real "crackers"

Mortar:

The weapon got at least 30-40% bigger and is now also closer to the crosshair. Severely distracting when I'm looking at it.

Hagar:

Same as mortar.

Electro:

Same as mortar.

Kind regards

[esteel]

Not wanting to judge, but i like most of those changes, seems more in line altogether now.
Especially in the line of fire If you compare the old guns and the direction they should shoot at they would never ever hit were you aim at with the crosshair

Its a personal preference but i have no problem with the slightly larger guns. Makes them look more powerful Especially that laser looks more like a gun now.. not a 'magically flying around toy' (hell you did not even see a hand holding it)

The crifle looks a bit strange to me, too small to be exact.

The changed positions are a result of the 'now-correct' handle locations. And i'm not sure if its wise to change them just ot have 'better displayed' guns.

[ai]

I also noticed this change when playing on the .de green server. First I thought it was my fov that was messed up, checked it and I was surprised to see that I still had it set to 110.
Don't make me go to 130 or something
This change is bad IMO. I however do not know the reasons why it was implemented, could be good ones, but for now I'm gonna stick with bad.
With fov 90 you barely see some weapons. If this is a change that stays then the default fov has to be changed to 110.

[divVerent]

It's not like they're scaled.

A completely different modeller had to reanimate them all from scratch, thanks to their original author not providing source but instead providing quite buggy models that don't even point in the right direction, ignoring criticism on this, and then leaving for now over a week.

Just look at this:

http://emptyset.endoftheinternet.org/~rpolzer/img/uploaded/54bb38a1a1bf6abb9ca346e8ca48b30d.jpg

And it was not possible to "simply rotate" the model due to no source files existing.

So in the end, the weapon system had to be changed to support a different way of storing animation, and all animations redone from scratch.

Now to the single screenshots.

Laser is NOT much bigger, but appears like it because it's closer. Other than that, it's less than a mouse pointer size difference. Some however really are, especially hagar, electro and mortar, but it matches their strength.

But basically, the only reason was "another artist did it, and no access to the original data".

[ai]

What artist? Who re-did these? I thought pretty much only Morphed knew how to do that.

[GreEn`mArine]

Still, I think it would be wise to either make the "bigger" weapons smaller, or allow the client to "scale" them down (there is a cvar for that without a function, cl_viewmodel_scale, maybe use this one?).

My personal issues are these:
- some weapons are shown in their full length (or almost), like SG, RL and CR, some others were basically cropped, like MG and Nex - inconsistency looks bad
- a few weapons appear to be bigger now since they are very close to the player (I am aware that the weapons were not actually "scaled", they just appear bigger). Maybe move them away a bit? Reason: they just take too much space now, imo

Some however really are, especially hagar, electro and mortar, but it matches their strength.

In this case, CR has to use much more space, since it is Nexuiz' BFG with its headshot-damage. Apart from that the mortar looks now even more powerful than the RL, which is a lie (considering one fired projectile)

[divVerent]

Tell that to the guy who made them (motorsep), but keep in mind that it's quite some work to move them again and re-export them all. Plus, it DOES look good in my opinion (and yes, the CR does look a bit too lightweight, but it actually IS that way, when you e.g. compare to the third person models).

Why don't YOU do that, now that this can be done entirely with open source tools (motorsep was using Blender), instead of complaining about every single change?

[GreEn`mArine]

I might try to get a hold of him and ask him how to do the movement so that I can do it myself. You should know that I am not lazy when it comes to doing something myself, given the requirement that I already can do it or it is somewhat easy to learn (with guidance).

[Red Dragon]

Here is what i think:

positive:
- alignment is much better now and weapons are pointing at the crosshair
- position of some models is moved slightly to the left, i have now more the impression of someone actually holding a weapon

negative:
- "size": distance of some weapons are really too close, reducing vision
- some weapons are cropped quite much (minstanex, porto, hook)

hope that helps evaluating

[divVerent]

Minstanex, Porto, Hook are actually pretty short to begin with, and only looked right because the first person model was artificially made longer (on the other hand, long weapons were artificially made shorter in the first person model). Now, no separate first person model is used any more.

See the third-person shots on

http://svn.icculus.org/*checkout*/nexuiz/trunk/Docs/basics.html

(note that the third person view of the weapons has not changed)