Project Reality Forums

When you zoomed in the weapon the indicator for firemode disappears. Oft times I zoom in to fire at a target a few hundred meters away and fire 3 shots. That's a minor problem compared to when it's the other way around, I go to spray a target and end up firing 1 shot.
The only way to check it is to fire a shot or unzoom.

It's a necessary piece of GUI because there's no other way to determine it ingame. I'm sure IRL soldiers can finger it to figure out what position it's in.

True, it should be made so, if possible.

I have this problem everytime I play. Would be so much win, if it would be shown while zoomed in.

its lways the same, you crouch through urban environment, zoomed in, ready to shoot anything that comes around the corner, then you remember, "shit! am I on auto or semi?" you zoom-out, check the firemode and some guy comes around and sprays you down while most of your shots don't hit him, since you are not zoomed in and distracted

Well, in real life you also cannot see the selector position while aiming down the sights.

ComradeHX wrote:Well, in real life you also cannot see the selector position while aiming down the sights.

What? just what...?

As a trained soldier, I'm pretty sure you'd know in what position the selector should be in for which firing mode. Even if you don't see it.
Do you look down at the shift stick every time you shift gear in a car?

ComradeHX wrote:Well, in real life you also cannot see the selector position while aiming down the sights.

Fillsson is right - you can simply FEEL in which position your fire selector is, no need to look at it while doing so.

Unless people start to create weapons with buttons and a screen showing you the firing mode, you will always be able to feel the position of the selector, never mind which shape it has.

And as the fire selector usually is located close to the trigger of your weapon, I would be against any other solution, which has any negative effects while checking the fire mode, like lower precision or being unable to fire or the like. Just display it all the time.

fillsson wrote:What? just what...?

As a trained soldier, I'm pretty sure you'd know in what position the selector should be in for which firing mode. Even if you don't see it.
Do you look down at the shift stick every time you shift gear in a car?

Yeah, so you are supposed to remember what selector position you have IN GAME as well...

At least you will fire something when left clicking because firearms in-game lacks safety...

Maybe people should be trained to remember which firing mode they have instead of having more stuff to look at in corner of screen WHILE looking down the sights.

I set it by default on semi, and auto when I enter a building. Always works, and you'll do it automatically after a while.

ComradeHX wrote:Yeah, so you are supposed to remember what selector position you have IN GAME as well...

I'm talking about feeling the selector on your gun. What position it is in, not remembering what you set it to previously.

ComradeHX wrote:Yeah, so you are supposed to remember what selector position you have IN GAME as well...

[...]

Maybe people should be trained to remember which firing mode they have instead of having more stuff to look at in corner of screen WHILE looking down the sights.

Why should they be trained? Not even in real life you need to remember which fire mode you are in, because you can feel it. A lot of guns even have fire selectors and visual indicators to show you which fire mode it is in or whether it is cocked/loaded or not.

I agree that you should remember the rounds you have in your magazine, because you need to do so in real life as well. But as we said, the fire selecotr can always be touched without even looking at it, and you know it. Aiming or not.

And by the way, you can even change your fire mode while aiming ingame, but you the game doesn't give you any feedback how it felt like. But to switch firemode you need to know in which direction, and if you know in which direction you know the fire mode.

So please, implement something which helps recognizing the fire mode. The fact that there is nothing to tell the player is neither a feature (!) nor a bug, just an oversight. I would say.

If you don't like the average 1/B/A display you have usually, change the "aiming" display to something else. How about a stylized display of the selector position? One longer arrow for the barrel and the gun in general, another, smaller line for the fire selector.

For example:




The upper figure symbolizes semi, the lower full auto/burst. (depends whether Insurgent M4 or BLUFOR AR-15-weapon)
Edit: I made a mistake there. The line on the lower figure should point to the left side, not the right side. What I have drawn there is a saved weapon.





The upper figure symbolizes full auto, the lower semi.

As you can see, the pictures are totally different, and you need to know how the fire selector for the weapon looks like to be able to tell the fire mode without looking at the weapon. This way the player would be forced to learn the weapons, but not remind the fire mode all the time. I think this would be a nice compromise.a

fillsson wrote:I'm talking about feeling the selector on your gun. What position it is in, not remembering what you set it to previously.

Zoom/Unzoom simulate time to put finger onto selector switch and feel it.
Even though it may be a little long.

Joker86 wrote:Why should they be trained? Not even in real life you need to remember which fire mode you are in, because you can feel it. A lot of guns even have fire selectors and visual indicators to show you which fire mode it is in or whether it is cocked/loaded or not.

I agree that you should remember the rounds you have in your magazine, because you need to do so in real life as well. But as we said, the fire selecotr can always be touched without even looking at it, and you know it. Aiming or not.

And by the way, you can even change your fire mode while aiming ingame, but you the game doesn't give you any feedback how it felt like. But to switch firemode you need to know in which direction, and if you know in which direction you know the fire mode.

So please, implement something which helps recognizing the fire mode. The fact that there is nothing to tell the player is neither a feature (!) nor a bug, just an oversight. I would say.

If you don't like the average 1/B/A display you have usually, change the "aiming" display to something else. How about a stylized display of the selector position? One longer arrow for the barrel and the gun in general, another, smaller line for the fire selector.

For example:




The upper figure symbolizes semi, the lower full auto/burst. (depends whether Insurgent M4 or BLUFOR AR-15-weapon)
Edit: I made a mistake there. The line on the lower figure should point to the left side, not the right side. What I have drawn there is a saved weapon.

The upper figure symbolizes full auto, the lower semi.

As you can see, the pictures are totally different, and you need to know how the fire selector for the weapon looks like to be able to tell the fire mode without looking at the weapon. This way the player would be forced to learn the weapons, but not remind the fire mode all the time. I think this would be a nice compromise.a

As if no one else ever touched firearms...

Especially on AK, try firing while fondling the selector switch with the same hand...it does not work so well.
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Zoom/Unzoom time with regular rifles is not THAT slow.

Best you can do is add a button in-game that shows firing mode when pressed.

ComradeHX wrote:Zoom/Unzoom simulate time to put finger onto selector

It doesn't simulate it percisely, because it is done much faster (as you already stated), and you don't need to lose track on your target, you can do it blindly.

ComradeHX wrote:Especially on AK, try firing while fondling the selector switch with the same hand...it does not work so well.

From what I remember I could do it relatively well. It's releasing the trigger for a split second, which in no way is adequately represented by unscoping.

ComradeHX wrote:Zoom/Unzoom time with regular rifles is not THAT slow.

Still slower than moving your trigger finger to the selector and back. Putting the weapon off your shoulder and raising your head again (which is the movement if you stop aiming) is in no way comparable to this.

ComradeHX wrote:Best you can do is add a button in-game that shows firing mode when pressed.

Well, agreed, but I don't want any negative effect on it.

I think that info about firing mod can by shown for few seconds after switching firing mode.

ComradeHX wrote:Yeah, so you are supposed to remember what selector position you have IN GAME as well...

At least you will fire something when left clicking because firearms in-game lacks safety...

Maybe people should be trained to remember which firing mode they have instead of having more stuff to look at in corner of screen WHILE looking down the sights.

Bu you know, you should remember how many mags you have left, because in real life, there is no indicator. Yet they didnt remove the indicator for some reason...

On-screen UI indicators such as fire mode should be shown at all times simply because those are meant to be a replacement for real-world tactile feedback you would get from other senses. If such an indicator is missing, it might have just been an oversight or was left out/removed for good reason. But personally, I feel that those indicators should be present.

In the real world, as others have mentioned, the majority of firearms are designed to place the safety or fire mode selector close enough to the trigger that you can change modes with minimal movement of the hands. With the M16/AR15 family for example, you just need to move your thumb ever so slightly to feel which of the positions the selector is in. Even with the AK series you can raise your trigger finger slightly and feel the selector's position, although on that series of weapon it's not so easy to actually manipulate it with the same finger. The point is that nearly every weapon I have ever used has had the selector within reach of the firing hand, and allows the operator to obtain physical non-visual feedback of the weapon's fire mode at any time, without having to lose sight picture or shift his body in any way. Even most pistols offer a "Round Loaded" indicator by use of an extended extractor or other simple indicator that can be felt with the finger tip without having to manipulate the weapon or adjust your aim/stance.

If I recall correctly, this was already a feature in the "vanilla" game, showing you a number on the screen to represent the fire mode. A "1" meant semi-automatic, a "3" meant 3-round burst, a "30" meant full-automatic on a weapon using a 30-round magazine, and a "100" meant full-automatic on a weapon using a 100-round belt or drum.


Using the number system as mentioned above is the best option, as it's much easier to add and easier to read/understand. Not everyone is going to understand what the real-world selector positions stand for, so using some style of graphic interface like ComradeHX described is pointless. It would basically require an entire section of the Wiki/manual be devoted to every firearm in the game that features a selector/fire mode switch/button, and a description of what each position does.

Most firearms will progress their fire mode sequentially from SAFE, to SEMI, to BURST, to AUTO. With the M16A1/M4A1 series for example, the modes of operation are SAFE/SEMI/AUTO in that order, rotating the selector to positions at 90-degree increments clockwise. Yet the AK-47 series on the other hand uses more of a lever-like selector (due to its fulcrum), which has the automatic setting in the middle instead. And with the diverse selection of firearms families and variants, selector styles and position modes is just too many to try and include a graphic indicator.


As for something like magazines, conventional forces always issue the same number of magazines to all soldiers within a unit according to their SOP. In my first infantry unit for example, all soldiers were issued 7 magazines for our M16A2's. Grenadiers were usually issued out 5 magazines in addition to their loadout of 40mm, and AR's usually carried 3 boxes for their SAW. You didn't just run up to a crate and start stuffing your pockets with as many magazines as you could carry.

But in regards to knowing how many rounds were left in each magazine, or which magazines were full and which were empty, that's another story. In general, you can estimate a magazine's current capacity level by weight, but that usually only works by taking the magazine out of its pouch and holding it. If your weapon used a belt box or pouch, you would estimate weight by holding it, or you could try shaking it to feel how much belt is rattling around inside. Different units had their own methods of managing their loadouts, and I helped my own unit develop a pretty reliable method of managing our magazines.

At no time should the game show how many rounds are left in each magazine, but I don't mind having an on-screen indicator of how many loaded magazines you are carrying. Unfortunately, BF2 doesn't manage magazines in a realistic manner, meaning individual magazine counts (rounds in each magazine) are not "saved" into memory. If you perform a combat reload and had half of your magazine remaining, the game doesn't remember that fact. If you do a combat reload here, to lose what ever rounds were previously in that magazine. As long as partially-used magazines are considered dry, I don't see a problem with an on-screen indicator showing how many "fresh" magazines we have left.

[R-DEV]Ninja2dan wrote:Most firearms will progress their fire mode sequentially from SAFE, to SEMI, to BURST, to AUTO. With the M16A1/M4A1 series for example, the modes of operation are SAFE/SEMI/AUTO in that order, rotating the selector to positions at 90-degree increments clockwise. Yet the AK-47 series on the other hand uses more of a lever-like selector (due to its fulcrum), which has the automatic setting in the middle instead. And with the diverse selection of firearms families and variants, selector styles and position modes is just too many to try and include a graphic indicator.

The idea was basicaly, that you only have the graphic indicator while aiming, and the normal one the rest of the time. This is to represent how you can only touch the selector, and thus the screen only telling you what you feel. But if you are not aiming down your weapon, you can read what the selector says. The fact that some weapons have totally different selector system like AK and AR-15, makes it interesting at all. For the WWII submod the Thompson could be interesting, for example, because if I remember correctly, it had to selectors: one for safe and armed, the other one for full auto or semi.

That way, if a new player "touches" the selector, but doesn't know what this position stands for, he needs to stop aiming at take a look at it. He has to do it until he learns the positions. Which adds some kind of small, relatively unimportant "player experience" element to the game.

Arnoldio wrote:Bu you know, you should remember how many mags you have left, because in real life, there is no indicator. Yet they didnt remove the indicator for some reason...

Just tilt your head down and look how many there are in your vest? There's an indicator because obviously you can't do this in PR...

In RL I used to use my magazines from right to left, and to put the used ones back head up, so that I can always see how much ammo I got left.

Edit: Softair, of course. I have no real military education

Arnoldio wrote:Bu you know, you should remember how many mags you have left, because in real life, there is no indicator. Yet they didnt remove the indicator for some reason...

Because in this game you had to have something to tell you whether you are getting ammunition from crates...etc. since there are other weapons, such as grenades, with different reload rate(and reload icon appear for all of them).

Thank you for creating this thread.

I don't know how many times I've died because I had to unscope to check which fire mode I was.