I find that walking around with your gun constantly ready to fire gets un-immersive after a bit and id like you character to either lean your weapon against you like people do in real life or in the picture above, or if you are carrying a RPG or other big weapon you just sling it over your back for the time being. Then maybe when you are in combat mode your character doesn’t do that since it would be bad to be unprepared while you are in combat.
On one hand that could look cool indeed, but on the other hand … Shouldn’t we always be ready to fight in that world?
Imagine sneaking around, then suddenly roaming machines come into sight, spot you and attack you… You want to defend yourself immediatly, but your character isn’t ready and has to put the gun into the right place first to become able to aim or shoot from the hip.
For me it seems to be hard to make it look good with perfect transitions between idling, shooting from the hip or aiming down with iron sights / scopes.
Additionally, what about if you switch weapon? Is that maybe even faster than waiting for the end of the idling animation?
Or what if you change stance or movement speed? That should affect the animation, too.
Don’t get me wrong, I just think that it would be very difficult to make it look and feel as good that it really improves immersion and doesn’t slow down going into combat.
Well, I’m no 3D artist or animator and have no idea how to make it work as intended by your suggestion and maybe there is a way. I just have doubts.
I quite like the idea as I manually do a similar thing already by switching to the binoculars. Might be tricky to implement well though. As a possibly simpler solution, I’d be happy if it was easy to re-use the to/from sprinting animation after a short period of inactivity.
I would prefer to leave how we hold the weapons the way they are.
When I am hunting for machines, I also switch to my binoculars. They have a wider view than any of the scopes and even after spotting a machine or two, I scan the area for other targets with them.
There could be a function where you keep one slot empty of anything, but can still select that slot so you are not holding anything, so hands are empty too. Seems that would be very useful for some. The animation would be the same as switching from one slot to another.
Plenty of other games do a fair to fine job of including the sorts of animations the OP speaks of.
METRO games call it “holstered” and have a button for it, at least EXODUS, but they might also have a time-delayed idle trigger for it. For handguns I think it does actually holster them, while the long gun in the player’s hands will just be held down and away, relaxed, rather than being permanently shouldered at the ready. I forget whether the STALKER games had a separate button for it, but the NPCs in those games DID take offense to you pointing a gun at them and reacted much better if you at least put your gun away and swapped to your binoculars or something less threatening to speak to them. Those were effectively FPS games, similar gameplay perspective as GZ.
Likewise for NPCs in the Elder Scrolls titles—Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc. Same, again, for the Fallout games. Better off talking to them with weapons put away, and that meant sheathed, holstered, slung… Those allowed for both first and third person perspectives, at least to an extent…
The Division games have both a “holstered” state (inside safehouses, etc) and a “down but ready” state for when the player is just wandering around and isn’t in immediate danger. Those are pretty much pure third-person shooters.
Pretty sure the Army of Two games had holstered and relaxed states.
The two most recent Ghost Recon games have relaxed states as well, with the weapon down. I think it doesn’t work in first person mode, but does work in third person mode. I forget if those games also have separate holstered states.
Getting these holstered and relaxed states to look right is just a matter of scripting and animation work. It IS a lot of work, but it really isn’t or shouldn’t be terribly difficult… It’s just a matter of whether the devs themselves consider the added immersion to be worth the time and effort to animate and script.
In reality, even a soldier in an active combat zone, even immediately under fire, does not always go around with their weapon shouldered. It is very difficult to move around, with some weapons, if it is constantly held up, shouldered, at the ready. You can’t run well, you can’t navigate narrow passageways well, you can’t enter and exit vehicles like that, or slip through narrow gaps where debris renders an otherwise easily traversed passageway or street/alley partially obstructed, etc…
Echo, I love that example from DOOM. Doom guy’s arm has been thrust through the camera man’s chest, to put the gun in that position…
lol lol lol, 