Aim down sights has been overhauled!

The game features a unique gunplay system where the bullet goes where the weapon points and the crosshair is dynamic. While this system allows for some awesome skill based shooting and makes for a unique, engaging and thoughtful shooting experience, it has some pitfalls.

1. Aim down sights is useless at long range. The gun swaying or moving at all with the animation throws off the shot in ways that are impossible to tell with the sight picture.

2. It's hard to use slow-shooting guns like the revolver in hipfire, because you're trying to time the motion of the crosshair. 

3. When aimed down sights, the procedural recoil can look really funky on pistols.

Problem 2 really only is a problem because of problem 1, which makes both modes of aiming the revolver, and similar weapons in the future, cumbersome and annoying. Without problem 1, problem 2 becomes a mechanic: certain weapons which you are better off being careful and placing shots with, and certain kinds of shots, should always be made while aiming, giving the player a reason to slow down and prepare shots. With the existing system a lighter weight or even fully automatic weapon which holds more ammo and shoots a smaller calibre, will, in turn, be more effective in hipfire, and combatting spread becomes about skill fighting the crosshair to stay on the enemy throughout the spray instead of RNG.

So, how do we solve problem 1, without compromising the aiming system, or the flow?

Simple, we have 2 modes for firing. While aiming, we use the traditional fake way, we trace from the eyes of the player. Then, we trace from the gun up to the point that is in front of the player's eyes. This can sometimes look weird, like if you're crazy close to a wall, but we already solve that pulling the gun away from the wall and breaking the player out of the ADS state.

We already have a separate Bloom and ADS Bloom value, though these are kept low for most weapons because the animation system provides all the inaccuracy needed, except for cases like shotguns. In the ADS mode, we rely on the ADS bloom value for the inaccuracy instead. 

And then, to tie it together, Visual Recoil that is not there in hipfire is added in ADS mode, causing the view to jolt with the gun. This increases to a set multiplier if you fire the gun fast, and that multiplier decreases back to 1 over time.

This system allows you to place shots while aiming much more reliably and achieves the best of both worlds 

Here is a video example with the revolver, using the new system.

Stay stealthy,

The Shadows Dev Team