Re: Designing an Audio FPS
Here are the three main methods I personally know of for vertical aiming.
1. Pitch, lowering and raising the gun's angle changes a sounds pitch by increments and when lined up properly there is a small audio indicator. To make things more fare, you could also indicate to the targeted player that they are being lined up in someone's sights. Obviously the vertical hitbox and maximum angle would be determined by the weapon type, just as normal range and hit radius would be.
2. Weapons have a small radius of effect (a 3D hitbox) extending only a handful of tiles on all three axis, with melee weapons having a smaller one. Either A. This is a function of the standard hitbox for each weapon when firing at a ranged target and applies the same way when firing at a very close player (may not be large enough accept for things like shotguns because making the long range hit box too big would reduce the challenge) B. You enter a CQB mode for a preset extended close range radius as compared to your smaller normal hitbox (you could make this only apply to certain weapons to add variability) or C. The hitbox size decreases based on distance (may already be the case) so it should be widest at the player anyway (might be tricky to balance for player challenge).
3. You can only aim up and down on 90 degree angles (this is what we do now...)
Method 3 of course would be easiest and still better than nothing, but ideally you would combine both method 1 and 2 by using the first for long ranged weapons like hunting rifles, scoped assault rifles, and snipers and the second for things like shotguns, pistols, and knives.
To indicate that a player is moving above or below you without using HRtF (and honestly even then I've so rarely heard this done properly) you may want to use a slightly higher or lower pitch on the footsteps. It doesn't even need to be a sliding scale, just a noticeable change.
The biggest issue with that would be people with hearing issues (a not insignificant subset of the blind community) rely on lower pitch to indicate that an object (or in this case a player) is behind them.
So instead, maybe you could make the behind sound muffled in some way, or have a subtle thrumming/pinging noise for when they get close like how they do it in the GMA Games titles.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
