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Eye Contact, Facial Expressions, and Morale

Wesreidau

Grizzled Veteran
Jun 10, 2011
254
197
Most shooters have players who amount to steely-eyed supermen, never taking a moment out of their busy day to look at the new guy who just walked in the room and give him so much as a nod. May I suggest for the purposes of atmospherics, immersion, and a direct visual indicator of morale that when two players come close together and neither are looking down their sights or otherwise busy, characters might turn their heads toward one another, make eye contact, give a nod or a grin or a scowl or a wide-eyed look of raw unbridled terror, and then go back to what they were doing.


Consider; you run into the kitchen of some godforsaken apartment where Fritz is in cover peeking over the kitchen table. You walk past him, and for a second his eyes follow you (triggered by a teammate in close proximity entering his field of view). Suddenly a spatter of pistol rounds smack into the table, and Fritz's eyes go wide with sudden terror (triggered by supression). He starts shooting furiously and you hear a Russian slump over just past the door, falling through the doorway and his eyes wandering to the toes of your boots (you're imagining things, or maybe he actually did look at you?!). Fritz gets a maniac grin (a kill scored in good team morale), hops up, and runs through to the next room. Now compare the possibility for an emotional, human connection with both teammates and enemies with the current status quo of robotic, unemotional characters. Also consider the possibilities for the enemy; if two targets pull up beside eachother, and one nods to the other, you suddenly know who outranks who in that foxhole and can aim accordingly.

Of course, these animations wouldn't be seen first-person; your view won't change even if your character turns his head a little to the left. And they would need to be fairly subtle and not too common, to keep from overwhelming the player. But if TWI wants to add real polish to the game and make teammates feel like they're human beings in the same experience rather than characters in a game, I think something like this would make the game have some really unforgetable moments.
 
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Also, there is the problem of when these "eye contact moments" would be used. It would look quite stupid if a character is looking over his shoulder or to the side when the player suddenly starts shooting where he isn't looking.

I don't see how this could be implemented in a good way. Actual free look and gestures would be cooler imho.
 
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about the Facial Expressions:

As you can see in the HOS trailer facical expressions are already ingame:
At 1.13 you can see the soviet sniper suprised by the german tank.

hossniper2.jpg


I really hope this was not just done for the trailer, if something like this is not ingame I would be dissapointed.
 
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about the Facial Expressions:

As you can see in the HOS trailer facical expressions are already ingame:
At 1.13 you can see the soviet sniper suprised by the german tank.

I really hope this was not just done for the trailer, if something like this is not ingame I would be dissapointed.


I doubt its in game but it may be. I personally never take what I see in a trailer to be in game. there are hand signals just before this and we already know they are not in.
 
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Head turns would be a little awkward I agree...

But facial expressions are an awesome thing to have in an FPS
one example being TF2 - seeing the Heavy start to grin as he winds up, grimace as he takes hits, etc

It was done to a certain extent as well in BFBC2 - u could see people grimacing as they took fire
and it had a system (not quite sure how it worked) but say if you turned to the right slightly without aiming - in 3rd person only your head would turn
ones you turned more or took on ur iron sights your gun/body would then align

it made for some pretty funny moments, having an enemy look over his shoulder to notice you and then a BAM in the face
Never found too much mention/discussion of it
but it really made the characters move more fluidly and human
 
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about the Facial Expressions:

As you can see in the HOS trailer facical expressions are already ingame:
At 1.13 you can see the soviet sniper suprised by the german tank.

hossniper2.jpg


I really hope this was not just done for the trailer, if something like this is not ingame I would be dissapointed.

Obviously created for the trailer, what makes you think otherwise..?
Like mentioned before, even if its a cool idea it doesn't work very well for a multiplayer scenario.

Like seriously, how would you decide if your avatar is surprised or not?
No thanks, besides i wouldn't want myself doing random animations on random occasions in mp.
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that whole trailer heavily scripted? I'm pretty sure I've read it somewhere.

I read TWI said it wasn't scripted (in the sense of animations). I understand that was just use of the idle animations and in game animations.

If it was, I'm sure they would have made better looking death animations for the Germans that got MGed down.
 
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the animations are scripted, obviously. the artillery charge looks like it's from the russian campaign. and the german death animations are good, what are you smoking? for obviously scripted death animations, they're perfect and movie-like. the gameplay will of course use rag doll.
 
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