UDK's Gameplay & Fluidity

[Hex0n]

Hi there,

My question isn't really a "problem" in a classical way, but it's something that keep disturb me while testing my game.

Basically when I play games like Call of Duty MW or Battlefield BC2, there is a real pleasure in playing because aiming is so smooth, soft, responsive and fluid. That's also why Counter-Strike is so popular, because the aiming is so smooth that you can easily aim a target located in the corner of the screen in about a half of a second without missing it.

In UDK and other UDK-based game, the game might be fluid but the aiming is quite jerky, you can't really have an accurate shot. This force you to move the mouse upper, then a bit to the left, then correct it to the right, etc...

I don't know if it's because of my computer since it's a laptop with an Intel I7 4x2.7Ghz, 16GB of RAM and Intel HD 4000, but as I said, other modern games have a very smooth aiming while games in UDK are quite jerky.

So what I would be interested about is :

1/ Are there people who find the same things as me with aiming ?
2/ Does UT or UDK have some "lag-compensation" or some features like this in the code for multiplayer that could be responsible for a jerky aiming & gameplay ?

Thanks for reading

[Graylord]

Hi there,
1/ Are there people who find the same things as me with aiming ?

Nope.

But you do realize how the aiming is performed is entirely up to how you program it?

[DGUnreal]

Which other UDK or UE3 based games are you seeing jerky aiming in?
I play/have played a number of UE3 based games and never noticed this.

I did recently upgrade one of my main gaming rigs from a Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical 5-button 400dpi to an ASUS GX900 Gaming Mouse 4000dpi, and it did make a noticeable difference in mouse movement.

Check your mouse resolution and control panel settings for mouse options such as acceleration.
Check if the game has mouse smoothing or mouse acceleration on (some games expose these options).

Also, as mentioned, weapon aim code can be adjusted with features such as weapon aim bobbing, etc., which are typically sine functions
Some military simulation games also use steady aim features such as breath holding, etc. which most arcade style first-person-shooters do not support.

[ambershee]

Hex0n is correct - pretty much all UE3 games have something about them where the mouse doesn't quite behave properly. I wouldn't describe it as 'jerky', but it is finicky and it does feel like there's some kind of resistance. The effect is quite negative, but I've never been able to work out exactly what's going on to cause it.

Unreal Tournament 3 genuinely suffered for it - if you dig the depths of the web around when the game came out, you'll find a lot of complaints about this very issue.

[WilliamDocherty]

HI

Yep, there's a potentially incredible number of areas in which "aiming" can go awry - it can become quite complex to do to create a decent system (beyond the simple point/fire).
The difficulty can be frequently underestimated as there can be a lot going on under the hood that's not even noticed by your average player when it's all done well; everyone notices it when it's done poorly.

You've not really specified exactly what the problem is, so I can only really suggest a vague list of things to look at:

Try looking into the settings/code for:

1. Mouse smoothing
2. Vsync/framerate smoothing
3. your mouse driver settings
4. Input smoothing
5. Input deadzones
6. Camera smoothing
7. DeltaTime being used correctly
8. Any momentum/weight applied to cursor motion
9. Where the "aim" is being performed, what tick group is it in, what rate is it being ticked at
10. Any kind of "aim assist" or "snapping" being applied (lots of games do this and don't advertise the fact - makes gamers think they're great, when they've actually missed by a mile)
11. Code that's deprojecting the crosshairs onto the screen (especially if you're taking line of sight from a 1st/3rd person animated weapon)
12. Any kind of one-frame-out rendering lag for crosshair hud
13. Make sure distances travelled/speed scale properly when resolution changes
14. Making it all work with different mice/controllers

Cheers
William

[zinggi57]

The only thing I noticed where aiming is off in UDK is when you shoot on a near object, the projectile won't land on the crosshair location, but slightly off (in both first and third person).
However this can be easily fixed.

[DGUnreal]

I only ever found UT3 a bit jerky when the game first came out and it was being played on a low spec computer that could not muster more than 20 to 30fps.
Low framerate can affect mouse aiming in a twitch first-person-shooter.

Also, if the system settings and game config/design are using either/both delayed-frame-input and/or frame-ahead-rendering*, this can affect camera motion and weapon aim.
* "Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames" or "Max Frames to Render Ahead" on NVidia cards.

I also play a lot of BF3, and I don't find it any better or worse than UE3 games such as UT3 or Borderlands/BL2, etc.
My game rig that I usually play on has a 120Hz monitor which I typically get >90-120fps in UE3 games and the mousing is smooth, easily per-pixel aim movement.
A friend that usually plays on my big monitor rig (Dell U3011 30in 2560x1600), when I asked yesterday said the same, he finds UE3 games are just as smooth in aiming as any other game we play together on the network/internet (BF3, BL, BL2, Arma3, L4D2, GTA4, etc. etc.).

For anyone experiencing issues I would question about their system hardware, installed software, and configuration.

[Hex0n]

Okay so I have tried to investigate this issue, and it's seems that my Intel HD Graphics 4000 is mostly responsible of this. Look at this video. The guy has the same graphic card as me and couldn't barely hit anything and mostly used the keyboard to aim. Thus, I will try to test my udk game in another computer with normal graphics (Nvidia/ATI and not Intel).

Otherwise, I have discovered that UT3 has by default some deep mouse acceleration features that can be disabled by editing a bunch of lines in the .ini .

But it's strange how some games with high graphics like Battlefield Bad Company 2 are playing smoothly while UDK is quite jerky on my computer... Maybe because UDK is very much relaying on the graphic card rather of the processor ?

[darthviper107]

One issue could also be your GPU, Intel 4000 is ****

[DGUnreal]

Keep in mind that UE3 in UDK has changed a lot since UT3.

What is your UT3 fps? (option menu or stat fps on the console).
There are many many threads on configuring UT3 for lower-end video cards.

There are numerous settings that you could try to improve the overall performance.
Start with lower quality settings and work your way back up to see what affects your input lag.

Screen Mode = Fullscreen
Screen Percentage = 100%
Enable V-Sync = OFF
Motion Blur = OFF
Framerate Smoothing =OFF
Reduced Gore = On
Subtitles = Off
Hardware Physics = Off
Texture Detail = 2
World Detail = 2

If you are sub-60fps then lower the Screen Resolution.

[Hyrage]

Honestly, it's a BIG problem with Unreal Engine 3 and UDK that Epic Games should address and fix. Just go on google, on almost every UE3 games there are issues with the mouse (aiming). If it can be fixed with UnrealScript, well... the community should get together and find a solution. If it can only be fixed in C++, then Epic Games should do their job and fix this problem that should have bee nadressed years ago already.

[Henrik]

Unreal Engine and Intel graphics were never optimized to get along, so there's your problem.

[ambershee]

I'm not convinced it's a graphical issue. There is something about UE3 games and the way they behave with respect to the mouse that simply doesn't feel right.

[Solid Snake]

It may also have to do with the number of times input is polled and when it is being updated. There is always heavy debate in the order that things should be done.