Question About Importance of Reload Animation for FPS

Hey there Unity Community,

I've been working on a horror FPS as a side project and I've been using UFPS as the base for the FPS system, I've created my own custom "animations" for movemement and so on. I was wondering, how important is it for visual feedback to add rigged reload animations that you see the clips and bullets and so on in this type of game?

I am a lone dev and doing this as a hobby. I'd like to release the game at some point and wanted some feedback on this. Would this be important or just using the custom movement in UFPS be enough? I am trying to focus my energy on the enemy animations. I could later on add it in if I have the time/energy.

 

I would say it's very important not to make the game feel like an asset flip.
I have used umotion to tweak animations but it can also make animations from scratch

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/umotion-pro-animation-editor-95991

 

I'm comfortable enough to make animations in Blender, I am totally changing the default behaviors as well of the movement. It was more as a visual feedback. I could understand if this was a big gun focused action FPS like Metro. My game would be more along the lines of say Resident Evil 7 or maybe Bioshock. Atmospheric horror. In an atmospheric horror game, I was wondering if it is as important to have all the fancy animations for weapons. Or something more minimal would be acceptable, if I remember correctly, Dishonored had simple reload animations.

EDIT: I'm just trying to put my energy to good use, since I don't have that much time on my hands.

Thanks for taking time to respond.

 

I don't think its important whatsoever. The game being fun has nothing to do with the quality or uniqueness of reload animations. As a small studio or solo developer, priority based time management is essential. AAA-level visual polish should not be on the list.

Seeing a game as features and parts and sticking to dogmatic principles is a guarantee to not finish on time and get left behind competitors who have stronger prioritization skill and time management. A game is one thing and one thing only -- an experience for a player. If you treat it like a resume piece that ticks lots of boxes for the sake of ticking boxes.... that's not a game. Though you build it in bits and pieces, they all only have value when brought together as a cohesive whole.

Estimate the time it'd take to work on reload animations, and see where you can put that time into something that will make a big difference in moment-to-moment fun and replay-ability. Level design, enemy behaviors, play-testing to refine pacing....

 

Thanks for your comments, I was leaning towards that but wanted to see what people thought. I'm always impressed with some of the unique gun animations I see in games but at the same time I don't feel for the time I have it would be good spent on this type of detail.

 

It has two functions give visual feedback on the progress of reload. Second is getting that right feel. Getting firearms with the right feel is hard, reload animations are part of that feel, so is sound, recoil, etc

To me a first person shooter without it would look incomplete. But that's my personal opinion. I'm glad I'm doing a VR shooter so the player does his own animations

 

One of my earliest reflections on firearm animations are the pump shotgun in Doom. It's really satasfying timing the shots between reloads

 

I see where you come from and why I ask the question, I quite like gun animations but I have also played some great games that had very minimal reload animations as I've stated I think Dishonored was one of them and it's one of my favorite games. If the gameplay is well done, I won't notice until I actually stop and think about it. If I can make it so that it's not noticeable and make it not feel lame. That could work for me. I could patch it in later on if I feel the need to. I'm just trying to focus my time. I tend to get stuck on details which I shouldn't.

 

I know what you mean with getting stuck on details, I'm the same. It's both a blessing and a curse

 

Thanks for letting me know your point of view. Just gathering info on if this is something worth investing some time on, I might just put it as an "extras" once my game is mostly done and if I feel by then it' something that is missing.

 

opposite end of the spectrum -- old ghost recon games that had GUI reload -- not even weapons on screen. Those games were tense as hell. Few modern shooters have replicated that.

Another tense shooter, Rainbow Six Siege, has run of the mill animations. Simply isn't much of a factor in gameplay whatsoever.

 

Good Point, now that you mention it. When playing R6 Siege, the animations were pretty basic and it didn't affect the feel of the game. That's what I want to make sure of. Not loose the immersion while playing my game.

 

Sure, but the sequals had it. Plus another cool detail is that while reloading you still have one in the chamber that you can discharge if needed. Not many games get this right (Ours do offcourse)

 

Keep in mind, my game is not an action/military shooter. It's an atmospheric horror game along the lines of resident evil 7. Definitely if it was any kind of action shooter, the animations are important in my mind.

 

I love single player horror first person "shooters" like Alien Isolation etc. But alot of the love is the details I'm not saying your game will fail without reload animations, and if you design it flexible you can add them later like you said yourself

 

All of those games are made with millions of dollars and huge teams.

Priorities. Got to stay focused.

 

Agreed, I am trying to tell a story and need to keep focus on that with my limited resources. Gameplay is still important but the little details don't always matter.

 

The answer is fairly simple, but won't directly say yes or no. Because it depends. If your game's main focus is the shooting mechanic it's very important to get it right. And no, forget realism. You don't play games for realism. Go for what feels awesome. What is fun to look at.
If the shooting is a second-thought in the game, you can give it less attention and can concentrate more on your core mechanics. But, as always: it should feel cool/awesome/good, that's the main rule. And usually it's not explainable, you know when you see it, when you feel it and it is heavily dependent on the other stuff happening in the same time.
Advice: build the simple, play it, get people to play it (more than one!), people who is your primary audience and ask them for feedback, how it feels, is something missing?
If they say it's awesome, feels good, you're on the right track, if they say you should add XYZ or something is missing, then you have a problem (obviously you will not add XYZ, but you will have to think through, why they feel the need of XYZ).

 

The shooting is not the main focus, it is not DOOM lol. But I agree, it should still feel good or else it will hinder the player's experience. I guess in a way you can kinda compare it gameplay wise to Half Life 2, there will be puzzles and story progression, secrets and interactive elements and so on that will be the bigger focus and the shooting encounters won't be the main focus.

 

Most important when building a fps is the feel of the character rig. I stop playing a fps almost right away if it as a sluggish feel. So that's alot more important than reload animations.

And if you have AI, that is also a downer if the AI is dumb

 

I agree those are very important.

Thank you all for your comments.

 

Satisfying visual and audio feedback is hardly ever a bad thing. How you implement it is less important. There are a lot of attempts at 'realism' in games that are not satisfying (such as silent bullets in space) and a lot of unrealistic things that are very satisfying nonetheless (such as being able to run around at 30km/h without getting tired).

Do what feels good.

 

First dead space had some cool concepts like the silence when in space.

edit: Though the character rig had some latency on the mouse movement to simulate the weight of the suit. That was not a good idea

 

Can I fire my gun while it is "reloading"? If not, there needs to be some sort of feedback that tells me both when I am reloading and when I am done.

If my character pulled the gun down and out of sight, with sound effects and perhaps some arm motion, like he was reloading at waist level just beyond the camera's view, that would take care of all the indication needed to give players feedback.



Of course, being me, if I were working on an FPS, I'd probably leave that kind of thing to very last, just putting a yellow circle over the gun with "reloading" written in it till I finally got around to those details.

 

Exactly this.

Visual polish is just that -- polish. The final thing you do. If the game isn't delivering, it's not gonna be because of the quality of your reload animations. It will be because you suck at level design, or your controls are clunky, or the pacing is inconsistent, or the gameplay is repetitive, or boring, or because the overall artistic composition is bad...just as you work from large to small wiht your coding infrastructure, the same must be done with the art. The large components are composition, lighting, color theory. Small potatoes is "juiciness" level polish.

You need a structured plan with layers of components preordained to be chopped. Minimum viable product is layer one, secondary content is layer two, visual polish doo-dads is layer three, etc. Mark out time for reassessments along your development, and during those reassessments you determine what you'll need to chop to make it to the finish on time.

To put it very simply: You are going for a hike. You take everything but the sink, right? Cause you like to be cozy. But then you get lost. It becomes a real effing adventure. So you stop, layout your gear, and you decide which things you absolute must have, and which tings you can survive without. This cannot be a matter of emotioins -- it's life and death. Toss the stinking sleeping bag. It's heavy and you don't need it to survive. Depending on good you are or how lucky you are, maybe you'll get out of the wilderness without having to toss everything except a water purifier and a knife. But if you got to trim down to that level, do it. Don't be one of these dummies who can't let go and walks in circles until they die.

If you fail to prioritize and put your small art components before the big ones, just forget finishing on time. Or ever.

 

I have to disagree with you there. I'm keeping the sleeping bag. A good hiking bag isn't all that heavy and I'm just too old and cranky to sleep on the bare ground. *evil grin*

 

Thanks all, gives me some good pointers and ideas on what to do and when.

 

Old, and presumably wise enough to not get into a situation where you have to consider tossing the fart-sack in the first place.