Headbobbing in an FPS: Yay or Nay?

I find it quite endearing myself, given it's presence in old shooters such as Quake and DOOM.

 

Giving players the option to choose is the ideal solution here.

 

don't do anything if you can't answer "why?"

so why yes? how does it fit your game?

still, even if all roads point to yes, allow an option to turn off because many people hate it.

 

The question is flawed. The question isn't if you want to use it, the question is why, as @BIGTIMEMASTER stated.
A little help to understand:

 

Please ALWAYS give a player the way to turn this feature off. There are many of us who suffer from video game motion sickness for whom a bobbing camera will make the game completely unplayable.

 

@TheDuples Or make a headbob, that bobs less, than the average headbob.
Or if possible, make an option that can do that.

 

I use a slider when I implement headbob. Some people like a lot, some like very little, so I just multiply the bob curve by a value between 0 and 1. That way people can use it however they like.

 

I hate head bob. Doom didn’t have it, I always turned it off in in Quake. I think for people how said yay it’s probably a “meh, yeah I guess” but for people who said no it’s a very hard no. Most people don’t like it and some dislike it so much that if we’re giving an u known game a shot and it has it by default, we’ll quit.

 

Citation needed for "most people don't like it."

 

I've never understood head bob. When a real person walks their head remains fairly stable unless they are walking through something like mud or snow.

 

Totally, you get the feel of motion from a little sway in the arms, maybe like super minor noise.

what is called "head bobbing" is like a combo between running and skipping imo (or mud/snow like you've said)

@newjerseyrunner I on the hard no side too, I just don't like it, but some people get motion sickness from that (not even talking about VR )

 

Actually that's not really true, it depends on the build of the person. When you're building movement it's great to study real people without them knowing that you observe, so I started to watch weird Youtube videos where people just walk on the streets or other environments. Some people are bobbing very wildly, some people walk like a giraffe (head is in a stable point moving forward without swaying).

 

Awesome video !!!!!

 

This is highly misleading though because most animals are designed to counter the Y movement of the bob with the eye rotation pitch as it tracks the target.

How a person walks is already proven to have very minimal effect on if they see bobbing or not, because the eyes refuse to lock on something that causes bobbing. You are designed and made to reduce bobbing perceptually.

To bob perceptually you need to bounce a ball in the distance, stare at the ball, and adjust your Y position to match the ball.

Even when jogging it will be really hard for you to notice bobbing.

TLDR:
Camera bobbing is idiotic and not indicative of real world unless you are in a suit of mechanised armour or vehicle.

 

Yes, I know that, and good point I forgot to mention that. Although it only reduces the bobbing, and the remainder, the perceived bobbing will be lost in your brain (you don't see it because the brain just ignores it).

And I don't advocate for extreme head-bob for every characters, usually I turn it off if possible and if it does not feel right. Although I like the head-bobs in Overwatch (mention above). Feeling of power and/or greatness can come from head-bob if you do it right (talking about FPS perspective).

 

There's absolutely no good reason not to just make it an option.

It's a simple bool.

That said, if you do include it, just make sure to emphasis movement on the arms and guns rather than the camera.

 

We're making videogames.

 

I retract what I said about it never having a use. I found some instances where it worked.

In goldeneye, there is subtle headbobbing and this is fine because of how forgiving the aim assist was. It does make high precision shots very difficult though. I’d love to be able to shoot the lock in Dam every time from a distance as I speedrun, the headbob makes this quite difficult.

In Quake it helped accentuate the speed of the player. The player moves around so fast that everything is swinging around, including the head. I think it works because the screen also rotated as you turn.

Both of these games are in what’s I’d consider the awkward teen years of 3D gaming. The step in between DOOM clones and Halo where experimentation was all over the place and there really was no “standard practices.”


Ask yourself what your game involves more of: precision fire or good movement? Fast movement would probably benefit from head bobbing, you can turn it off in Quake and it just feels wrong. It makes it hard to do pixel-perfect aiming though.

 

The context tho. The context is "it's realistic to bob" therefore indicative of real world is that in game it would be actually bad for game and real world (it should happen in neither for humanoids unless you are a robot).

 

Here's the thing about the context of fiction though: it's not about what is real nearly as much as if is about what feels real.

 

I'm super aware of how games should present their own realities. I'm saying that the previous argument from someone else that bobbing is "realistic" is not. Because we've evolved that out. My own feeling on the matter is irrelevant.

 

Yeah, it did.

However, they were unrealistic, huge, gentle, loping strides, as opposed to the frenetic side-to-side jiggle of a sprinting person.

Personally, without head-bob of some kind I feel like a character is "floating" rather than actually walking or running throught he world. However, it has to be subtle enough that my brain can tune it out. Once it's there and I'm tuning it out, then it feels right... to me.

 

Some of the older bobbing was a bit much, but I agree that no bob at all would be essentially like floating. There has to be some movement to show movement of the character.

 

Limb animation mostly, a little noise on the head, but most if it is from the arm swing

 

Two things I really like in the 'We happy few': the 60-ies setting and the arm movement. It worth studying that too. The game is a train wreck in many aspects, but these are very good ones.