[Duke of Hazzard]

I used to play only old FPS, so I've never really developed a use for the mouse, but, since games like Doom and Duke Nukem have autoaim, there's really no need for mouselook for gameplay.

However, I've decided to try Shadow Warrior on DOS (through DOSBox of course) with mouselook and, while it's great fun, you can never have true manual aiming unless you somehow disable it in the code. I always feel like the game is correcting my aim, and it's not nice to be trying to hit a far away enemy and hit the nearby rabbit instead. Feels a bit like cheating to still have aided manual aim.

With Doom I've noticed that the limitations of the engine make environments distorted when you look up and down, even though many mods (like Brutal Doom) support headshots, which require mouse aiming of course.

Somehow I feel that in older FPS (except for fully 3D games like Descent) mouselook wasn't supposed to be used, since it distorts the sprites and the environment and you can't disable autoaim unless you play with a source port like EDuke32.

What's your opinion?

[Kyanos]

I have had people complain to me that using auto aim during dm is cheating. lol, you know who you are

Anyways, I like being able to turn it off. I usually play auto-aim on for bullets off for rpg.

[MrFlibble]

Duke of Hazzard, on 11 April 2014 - 08:09 AM, said:

However, I've decided to try Shadow Warrior on DOS (through DOSBox of course) with mouselook and, while it's great fun, you can never have true manual aiming unless you somehow disable it in the code. I always feel like the game is correcting my aim, and it's not nice to be trying to hit a far away enemy and hit the nearby rabbit instead. Feels a bit like cheating to still have aided manual aim.

Actually, I think it's possible to turn off auto aim in Shadow Warrior (at least, in v1.2). Not sure if it can be done via the in-game options menu or only by editing SW.CFG, but here's the relevant part of the file:

[Options]
BorderNum = 1
Brightness = 0
BorderTile = 0
Bobbing = 1
Tilting = 0
Shadows = 1
AutoRun = 0
Crosshair = 1
AutoAim = 1

[Edit] Yup, you can turn it off in the options:

[Micky C]

For the record I don't think you can look up and down in the original Doom.

The mouse support in the original build games is slightly jagged. It's there as an option to be used, but I think they expected most people at the time to play with a keyboard. Mouse aiming is much better in source ports like eduke32 though.

[MrFlibble]

Well, games like Descent or Radix (the latter being quite comparable to Duke Nukem 3D in terms of engine capabilities) were already much more playable with the mouse rather than keyboard only, if not designed to play with a mouse (or a joystick).

[MetHy]

Autoaim VERSUS mouselook? Why? I use both, even in Doom. I used to play Doom without the Y axis on but after playing many wads I decided to turn it on and it feels much better like this. Plenty of wads feel like they were made with being able to look up/down in mind, they often are a lot more Y axis oriented than the original game maps.

As for "authenticity" and "how it was designed to be for back then" I say that's bullshit. AFAIK Marathan was a FPS using a mouse by default pretty early on. Also, even back in 1996-1997 plenty of people quickly got rid of keyboard only, at least anyone who played online. Most people played using keyboard+joystick though but that's pretty similar to keyboard+mouse which I'm sure tons of people used to.
As for mosuelook, I totally understand playing Doom without it since it didn't have it; but as for any Build engine game, there was a key to enable it by default as well as keys set by default to look up and down if you played keyboard only. Considering how Y axis oriented Duke3D is (especially with its jetpack...) you can't really say it was designed without it in mind, if that was the case, it just wouldn't have been there.

Fun fact though, mouselook was called "rat aiming" in redneck rampage

[Jimmy]

Micky C, on 12 April 2014 - 02:50 AM, said:

For the record I don't think you can look up and down in the original Doom.

The mouse support in the original build games is slightly jagged. It's there as an option to be used, but I think they expected most people at the time to play with a keyboard. Mouse aiming is much better in source ports like eduke32 though.

bMouse solves all these problems. I always hear people bitching about Blood's mouselook and I'm like "What? It's perfect."

Then I remember I play with bMouse.

[Kyanos]

"bmouse makes better sandwiches than eduke32 and muffins. "
^
Lmao

[Corvin]

I don't understand this BMouse as desired thing. Mouselook works perfect without it. You just have to let the default settings for the mouse stand without assigning any movement. Then adjust in the config file the X and Y if necessary.

I should add this: http://dukertcm.com/...p-cfg-file.html

Mouse Look (for duke3d, similar settings available for other games)

-To get mouse look to the default settings; delete the config file and run setup.exe and select Keyboard and Mouse without assigning any movement. This will give or restore your mouse look to the defaults allowing you to turn it on or off with the U key. Mouse Look has no other settings than those below.

MouseSensitivity = 32768 (This is an actual value of 1.00 in setup.exe)

MouseAnalogScale1 = 65536 (Apparently the Up and Down Aiming Acceleration and speed is setup by the Mouse Y Axis Scale(MouseAnalogScale1) , NOT by the Adjust Sensitivity(MouseSensitivity) which only works for the horizontal.

MouseAiming = 0 (Sets it for all the time mouse aiming)
MouseAimingFlipped = 0 (0 might work for you, if not flip it with 1)
GameMouseAiming = 1 (still unsure what this does, keep it at the default 1, for RR use 0)
AimingFlag = 1 (This will start the game as if you already hit the U key)

[Hank]

Corvin, on 12 April 2014 - 04:23 PM, said:

I don't understand this BMouse as desired thing. Mouselook works perfect without it.

I just tried to do as you suggested.
In Redneck Rampage, the Mouse Aiming is reversed. It does not matter if the flag is set to 0 or 1, moving the mouse in the forward direction will aim down and backward does aim up.
If you want to play in always-mouse-aim-mode, you need to go to Advanced Mouse Setup, and set Mouse Forward to Aim_Up and Mouse Backward to Aim Down. The catch, there is no difference now between mouselook and not mouselook.

As for bmouse, never used though, did not need to, the simple setup above worked for me since the Duke 3D days.

[TerminX]

Mouselook works like shit without bMouse as it drops all kinds of input. Basically, it looks at which axis has the most movement at any given time and then takes the input for the other axis and divides it by 8 or something. The result is that if you try to move the mouse in a diagonal line, even if you move the mouse as close to perfectly as possible the best you'll get is 100% movement on one axis and 12.5% on the other. There might be other problems, can't really remember at the moment. It's really, really bad.

[MetHy]

Hank, on 12 April 2014 - 09:20 PM, said:

I just tried to do as you suggested.
In Redneck Rampage, the Mouse Aiming is reversed. It does not matter if the flag is set to 0 or 1, moving the mouse in the forward direction will aim down and backward does aim up.
If you want to play in always-mouse-aim-mode, you need to go to Advanced Mouse Setup, and set Mouse Forward to Aim_Up and Mouse Backward to Aim Down. The catch, there is no difference now between mouselook and not mouselook.

As for bmouse, never used though, did not need to, the simple setup above worked for me since the Duke 3D days.

Hm what, I got "normal" mouselook to work fine in redneck rampage. You can flip up/down aiming both in setup.exe and in the ingame options.

[Hank]

MetHy, on 13 April 2014 - 12:28 AM, said:

Hm what, I got "normal" mouselook to work fine in redneck rampage. You can flip up/down aiming both in setup.exe and in the ingame options.

Perhaps it's a GoG version? If yes, my Duke from GoG works fine too.. The Redneck I use is the original, and mouselook simply does not work in it, so I'll stand behind what I wrote.

[MrFlibble]

Hank, on 12 April 2014 - 09:20 PM, said:

I just tried to do as you suggested.
In Redneck Rampage, the Mouse Aiming is reversed. It does not matter if the flag is set to 0 or 1, moving the mouse in the forward direction will aim down and backward does aim up.
If you want to play in always-mouse-aim-mode, you need to go to Advanced Mouse Setup, and set Mouse Forward to Aim_Up and Mouse Backward to Aim Down. The catch, there is no difference now between mouselook and not mouselook.

Some time ago I have discussed a similar issue with Duke3D shareware v1.3 (which does not have the invert mouse Y axis option) in an old gaming forum, and a user there helpfully told me that the simplest thing to do with Duke3D was to set the Y axis sensitivity to a negative value (i.e. -1), which will effectively invert the Y axis.

Conversely, if you set forward and backward movement of the mouse to Aim_Up and Aim_Down respectively, you will have an equivalent of pressing PgUp and PgDn on the keyboard (default configuration), rather than smooth upward and downward movement of true mouse aiming.

[Hank]

MrFlibble, on 13 April 2014 - 03:55 AM, said:

Some time ago I have discussed a similar issue with Duke3D shareware v1.3 (which does not have the invert mouse Y axis option) in an old gaming forum, and a user there helpfully told me that the simplest thing to do with Duke3D was to set the Y axis sensitivity to a negative value (i.e. -1), which will effectively invert the Y axis.

Conversely, if you set forward and backward movement of the mouse to Aim_Up and Aim_Down respectively, you will have an equivalent of pressing PgUp and PgDn on the keyboard (default configuration), rather than smooth upward and downward movement of true mouse aiming.

That is true, all true, yet once more, it worked for me.

I installed bmouse, and it is smooth, in fact it's the first time I use mouselook for any of Build games.

[Corvin]

You do not set any movement to the mouse, no aim up or down. Real mouse look doesn't need that, in fact I think that is the mistake everyone does, hence why they have shitty mouse look.
Also the RR uses MouseFlip= instead to invert the mouse, sorry my mistake on that one. They left in the mouseaimingflipped and it confused me. RR improved on dukes1.3D faulty invert.

Anyhow here's revised instructions. Remember do Not assign aiming_up or down to the mouse.


-Mouse Look (for duke3d, similar settings available for other games)

To get mouse look to the default settings; delete or rename your config file and run setup.exe and select Keyboard and Mouse with-OUT assigning any movement. This will give or restore your mouse look to the defaults allowing you to turn it on or off with the U key. Mouse Look has no other settings than those below.

MouseSensitivity = 32768 (This is an actual value of 1.00 in setup.exe)

MouseAnalogScale1 = 65536 (Apparently the Up and Down Aiming Acceleration and speed is setup by the Mouse Y Axis Scale(MouseAnalogScale1) , NOT by the Adjust Sensitivity(MouseSensitivity) which only works for the horizontal.
MouseAiming = 0 (Sets it for all the time mouse aiming)

MouseAimingFlipped = 0 (0 might work for you, if not flip it with 1) (For RR use MouseFlip instead.)

GameMouseAiming = 1 (still unsure what this does, keep it at the default 1, for RR use 0)

AimingFlag = 1 (This will start the game as if you already hit the U key)

[Hank]

Corvin, on 13 April 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

GameMouseAiming = 1 (still unsure what this does, keep it at the default 1, for RR use 0)

GameMouseAiming is the Mouse Aiming, either on/off. Thus in RR, setting it to 1 gives "Rat Aimin' On"

[Corvin]

Really, hmmm, seems to do nothing in duke. I'll have to try it out.
I thought AimingFlag = does that function. very confusing between those two games. They each got their own setup, but left remembrance of old shit.

Edit: choosing 1 for GameMouseAiming in RR didn't give me the mouselook upon startup of a new game.(not a saved game)
So I don't know whats going on for sure there.

Well it appears atleast for RR (didnt try RA) there is no aimingflag setting so theres no auto start for it when a new game is made.

[Duke of Hazzard]

Sorry for bumping.

Corvin, I followed your instructions but I still have the problem TerminX described, so I think the mouselook in Build games really doesn't work that well. It's not horrible, but it doesn't have the right feel like in EDuke32 for example.

I've also tried bMouse but it makes aiming way too sensitive for my liking.

[Corvin]

That's alright, I haven't played EDuke32 in along time so I can't say truly. Not that I hate it, I had an ATI card when I played it, so I had trouble. Just not enough time these days I guess.

Anyhow, Most people I guess where assigning aim_up etc to the mouse and it really messed with mouselook. So I wrote those instructions hoping people wouldn't do it anymore, including myself.

But I can see now where the diagonal movement is poor. But not real bad, very much playable.

I haven't tried bmouse so I can't say anything about it, but from what I gather people have adjusted there sensitivity decently. Maybe I'll research it some day and see what and if there's problems with it.

[Gameplay Nut]

Auto aim or aim assistance gets turned off no matter the game or platform, if it is possible to do so.
RPG suicides due to aim assist in Duke 3D is the worst.

With PC games I always use mouselook. It works great in Doom (especially with Brutal Doom) and it works great in Duke 3D also.
Fuck aiming with the keyboard.

[Jblade]

Auto-aim sucks because it always aims for center of mass, which doesn't matter in older games but most games past Half-life era have headshots do extra or even fatal damage so it can get you killed quite easily. Singularity had it on by default and turning it off made things way easier.

[Duke of Hazzard]

I've found that in Shadow Warrior disabling autoaim is a big no-no because the enemies move too fast and there are enemies like hornets which are really hard to hit without it. So I keep it on.

[Hank]

I say otherwise. 'cause I never play auto aim. Especially Shadow Warrior. They enemies come in hordes. I want to finish the big fishes first, and not waste heavy ammo on a bee or whatever. Just move quicker. Even so the actors shot well, they need time to aim, so keep moving, always.

[Lunick]

Use a Gas Grenade on the hornets...

[Hendricks266]

I usually used my shurikens on them (and nothing else besides gas barrels), or the fists due to their high rate of fire.

[Duke of Hazzard]

Lunick, on 10 May 2014 - 08:32 PM, said:

Use a Gas Grenade on the hornets...

There's a place in the third level where you face a swarm of hornets on a small platform, so gassing them isn't a good option at all.