Does anyone else think the aiming mechanics in this game sucks?

[South8028]

16 hours ago, DiodeLadder said:

Karna, I'm sorry but I'm not seeing what you are saying in your video, or in my video. 

Here's my findings from my own testing :  Third person shots actually go a little off to the left from where the reticle is on a few Bethesda guns in the unmodded game, if I remember correctly, but I think it is to do with the wrong AnimTextData for those particular guns (they probably updated the animations for those guns without updating the AnimTextData - this does not affect the first person).  Third person anim actually calculates the bullet trajectory from the center of the screen as if the shooter is at the center of screen, and not where you see the player character model is on screen (this only affects shots if the target is very very close).  Also, there are a few Bethesda gun models with iron sight not properly aligned on 3D models, but compensated in the first person animations (which is the reason why using Deliverer as the base for animating custom gun can make it really difficult to align the sight properly in game).  

I've tested specifically for the accuracy of aimed shots on guns extensively, and aimed shots always go to where I'm pointing at.  In my video, I've actually made some 60-80 m shots to demonstrate this.  Aimed shots are definitely not luck based.  I happen to be showing my own custom gun in the video, but the aiming works the same way for any vanilla guns with no mods used.  If the aimed shots hat cone of accuracy, or "luck based system" which I don't think exists in aimed shots, I'd have noticed while testing.  I disagree with all of you, lol, but this is after I've done countless hours of testing guns in FO4 specifically on the subject.

I do agree that Far Cry is much easier, though, but I think that is because the hit box in that game seems to be more forgiving while characters are moving.  In FC6, I found it ridiculously easy to make headshots, but that is because the game is compensating for my shots and not because I'm any good, lol.

Also an interesting experience. I don't know if a similar method exists for weapons, but animObject can be synchronized without textData. If animObjUnequip is inserted not into the last frame, but into frame 0. Before Load and Draw. I recently discovered this. If this annotation is in frame 0, then the gamebryo animation is always perfectly in sync with havok without generating any text data.

Edited April 30 by South8028

[DiodeLadder]

Thanks South, that's interesting!

In the case of weapon 3rd person anims, though, by nature they are layered unlike the animObject use.  For example, a regular pistol 3rd person animation would have 1) walking / running animation, 2) the base pistol archetype animation (which takes over the upper body), 3) an "assembly pose" which would specify how a particular gun is held for use with the #2 base pistol animation.  These layers are blended using the layer masks (which would control which part of the layer would be blended into the main anim, like, only right arm layered on top of another base anim, for example) and most of us working on gun mods are only adding the Assembly Pose, which is literally a pose made of 1 frame.  We don't have much control over the 3rd person animations when working like this.  

So I think the issue using your idea with weapons would be, blending and transitioning of multiple layers may not work correctly without the TextData, and also, I wouldn't go that deep to override the base anims to make use of the annotation hack you suggest.   I'd rather not mess with how Bethesda did things because this part is frustrating enough as it is, lol.

3rd person gun animations actually involves a fair amount of guess work as to which part we have control over.  For example, it took me a while before realizing that I can't change the rotation of right hand in a pistol assembly pose, because the hand rotation is hardwired in the base animation for recoil handling.

Totally off topic.  Sorry guys.

[Karna5]

That's interesting theory that the animations of third person weapon animations affect aiming mechanics. I don't know if it's true, but I use Girly Animations which does replace all my weapon animations. Regardless, when F4SE and its dependent mods get ported to the new client, I'll definitely do a new batch of accuracy testing.

[DiodeLadder]

Karna, just so that there's no misunderstanding, what I wanted to say was :

1) There are a couple of unmodded Bethesda guns that would shoot off to the left of reticle in the third person.  I'm suspecting this to be caused by wrong metadata (AnimTextData) in the shipped game.  You can see what this metadata is at the bottom of this page :

https://falloutck.uesp.net/wiki/Subgraphs

I say this because, I can take the same Bethesda animations and use them with freshly generated metadata without any issues.

2) There are Bethesda gun models with iron sights not properly aligned in X axis, and they need to be tilted slightly in the animations to look aligned in game, in first person view.  

So, I'm not saying that the animation affects the aiming mechanics of the game.  

[Karna5]

2 hours ago, DiodeLadder said:

There are a couple of unmodded Bethesda guns that would shoot off to the left of reticle in the third person

I tried to read the text in that link, but I can't make out the words (visual impairment). Still, I wonder if the laser musket is one of the firearms of which you speak. I've long been aware it's absolutely impossible to hit anything with it (at least in third person aiming by reticule) without VATS.

[DiodeLadder]

On 5/2/2024 at 12:49 AM, Karna5 said:

Still, I wonder if the laser musket is one of the firearms of which you speak. I've long been aware it's absolutely impossible to hit anything with it (at least in third person aiming by reticule) without VATS.

Honestly, I don't remember.  I said "a couple of vanilla guns", but I can't say I've tested everything, since I'm more of a first person player.  It's been a long time since when I was testing, but I think it was Deliverer that had the problem with third person aimed shots landing a little off to the left of reticle, and another one was also ballistic.  

I wouldn't be surprised if there were more guns behaving like that in third person, though, and the Musket is one of them. 

[Karna5]

17 minutes ago, DiodeLadder said:

but I think it was Deliverer that had the problem with third person aimed shots landing a little off to the left of reticle, and another one was also ballistic.

That's incredibly interesting to me because the deliverer is one of the handguns I had in mind as the most accurate, but it's still currently not something I can test until the F4SE suite of mods gets updated to the new game version. I still can't play Fallout 4. But there's a room in the Problems of Survivor mod which I have in mind for testing. It has several people you can use for target practice, and I plan to log in there to test the accuracy of various firearms. I'll come back once I can test. Thanks.