Why Crosshairs Are Surprisingly Difficult for Game Developers

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I took down the original upload of this this morning because most commenters were distracted by my terrible audio balancing. Plus it's unforgivable that I did flowerhead's music dirty like that. This one is for real!

if you have to make the crosshair close to the barrel, you just have to comically increase the length of the gun to reach it

As someone who plays splatoon, like, a LOT, the reactive crosshairs are actually really detailed and well made! They're especially well done on weapons with charge-up, and especially weapons like Chargers (Splatoon's version of snipers) that get more range as they charge their shots, meaning the reactive crosshair becomes a way to track how charged up your gun is too, not only letting you know where you're aiming, but also how far your shot will go! Also, as an aspiring indie dev myself, this video most certainly did save me a headache, I now know to simply not have a crosshair and make the bullets spawn randomly all over the screen to avoid coding a workaround!

Lol, the "stiff and uncomfortable" chair is actually the same chair model I just purchased to upgrade from my uncomfortable and slightly lopsided old desk chair

"what could be so hard about it? it is just a lil image on your screen" "oh wait, it needs to work ..."

TF2 actually doesn't have that simple of a crosshair/aiming system. For projectiles at short to medium ranges it has an aim-assist. And hitscan weapons use the camera. You can look at the video "tf2 projectiles have aim assist" by shounic where he goes super in-depth.

When the world needed him most, chonky Uncle Dane returned.

I like that the sponsor spot is for a seemingly comfortable and usable office chair and not a “gaming” that tends to be worse for your overall posture.

as someone whos never devolped a shooter i would have NEVER expected it would be this complicated, i honestly just thought it was "putting a png on the center of the screen"

A downside to lowering the crosshair is evident around the 12:20 mark, when you're ascending the Gravelpit tower. Your view of the ground below the tower is restricted by the raised camera, artificially obscuring the 3D space for no good reason. And given that your camera is only over the character's right shoulder, at certain angles it will be very difficult (if not impossible) for the player to angle the camera to see everything below them properly. Sure, you're getting a great view of the skyline, but in a game that's highly vertical, you also need to account for looking downwards.

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I really appreciate that you took time to make good subtitles, thanks!

as a developer who is newly trying to do 3d game stuff, this was really a great video. i probably would've been exactly that developer thinking "why does this feel so bad" without any tangible idea of what is wrong. also i love your video's avatar style

I tend to choose to have a ray cast or projectile spawn from the camera for first-person shooters, but it can become much more complicated for third-person shooters.

the ONLY shooters i've ever played were the portal games, so i didn't know many of the intricacies you highlighted. near the middle of the video i was thinking "why not just bring the gun in line with the camera when you shoot?" and then that turned out to be what games do! i LOVE the irony of the gun coming back around to center screen i think that's perfect. i also feel like the crosshair lying when you're shooting "from the hip" or equivalent is. fine? that's supposed to be a hard thing to do, requiring some mental effort! definitely feel like its the correct move over drawing imaginary bullets (unless you're going for a much more casual game.) was not expecting the lowered crosshair tho! that really blew me away. all the shots you used to show it off looked so beautiful- it makes me actually want to play fps games hehe this is such a lovely, insightful video jay <3 keep doing what you do

i love the fact that you put little secrets on the youtube searchbar

I liked Kid Icarus Uprising's in-world reticule approach

That intro with a lot of different crosshairs from popular games is amazing! 🔥 Love your videos, I hope to play your game one day

how cool is to follow your development journey AND learning stuff about game design and game development at the same time