Wolfire Games Forums

If anyone here is a player of True Combat, you may have seen a recent post on their development blog about a new "tactical aiming system", which is basically iron sights that aren't locked to the center of your screen.
I read this on the day it was posted, thought "awesome, can't wait for that" and didn't think much more of it... then today I fired up Black Shades for a little retro action, and guess what I noticed...
Black shades already has this feature =D
I wonder if any of the TC:E devs have played Black Shades, or if it was a completely independent idea.

that's hella funny! Maybe they should do some better research !

I never really noticed anything special in Black Shades, and the description of this new 'tactical aiming system' confused me ... anyone care to explain?

NickD wrote: that's hella funny! Maybe they should do some better research !

To be fair, Black Shades is not exactly mainstream, particularly outside of the Mac world.

Well, I guess, but still... Black Shades still did come out with it before them .

I think David should polish up Black shades by making high poly models, Give the Guys shot comments like "AAAH, my Legs! I cant feel my legs!" and throw in a Story that makes you more involved. then Sell it!

If I make a sequel to Black Shades, the models would probably stay more or less the same. There are a lot of other things I would like to change however.

Please Tell us!
What would you change?

Viking Zippy wrote:I never really noticed anything special in Black Shades, and the description of this new 'tactical aiming system' confused me ... anyone care to explain?

First, their tactical aiming system consisted of hip (where you just fire from any position) and iron sight aiming. In hip shooting, they didn't put in a crosshair, you just had to guess where the bullet would go, somewhere in the middle. Like all these other shooters, they made it so the longer you fired from the hip or iron sights, the bigger your invisible crosshair would get, and the more innacurate your shots would be, called cone spread.

Everyone complained about cone spread, so they took it out entirely. But iron sight aiming became too good without some kind of shot displacement. They added in weapon sway to iron sight aiming, but this couldn't simulate inaccuracies due to side-stepping around and from recoil from sustained fire, which cone spray had eariler simulated.

So for hip shooting, they used free-aim (something you'll see in games like red orchestra), where you still have an invisible crosshair, but it's no longer nailed directly in the middle of the screen, it free-moves around independently near the center of the screen.

For Iron sight aiming, they switched to vector aiming, which blackshades and tresspasser had used. This is where things are simulated like in real life. It's no longer about crosshairs because bullets come out of the actual barrel. This means when you fire you can get realistic hop-up that effects your next shots, and moving around, having the gun sway side to side is perfectly simulated.

Blackshades is special because it does all of this. Iron sight shooting, hip shooting, are seamlessly blended together. When you walk your gun moves with your steps, your breathing is accurately effecting your aim, and when you aim you aim with your arms and your body follows. It's just so smooth and awesome in blackshades, there's nothing like it. I'll have to try out True Combat, but the only thing that's simulated like this is the Iron Sight Aiming that you have to switch to.

Thanks for showing me this. It's my new favorite shooter!

Too bad playing any q3-engine made game online never has worked,
doesn't work, and never will work for me