In the wake of the release of my Ballistic System and its integration into the Shooter Sandbox I’ve been trying to expand my horizons and explore a broader range of shooter subgenres.
There are a lot of amazing games out there from which to draw inspiration, and I’ve almost inevitably fallen into the rabbit hole of the modern milsim. For better or worse, my recent experience with games like Insurgency: Sandstorm and Ready or Not has given my recent work a distinctly tactical lean.
These games can be a lot of fun, but there is definitely a learning curve.
This has been a welcome shift in perspective for me, and has provided the opportunity to get excited for a range of different systems and mechanics I’d never previously considered for the Sandbox. One of these is Insurgency’s ‘Free Aim, an entirely unique approach to mouse-look that some players love and others hate with a passion.
I just think its neat.
What is ‘Free Aim’?
In most first-person games I’ve played the term ‘free aim’ is used to describe the axis-based camera control that comes from moving your mouse or control stick, also commonly called ‘mouse look’ or ‘mouse aim’.
When called free aim (or free aim mode) it’s usually in direct contrast to ‘aim down sights’ mode, or ADS, where your character’s view locks in behind the sight of your character’s weapon.
In Insurgency it’s a little different as the developers have chosen to implement an additional layer of aim offset that will cause your weapon to drift off-center when you move the mouse/control stick. This causes your weapon to ‘lead’ your look movement, with this extra motion clamped to a tight zone in the centre of the screen.
This offset is also applied to the trajectory of any projectiles you fire, so an understanding of free aim quickly becomes necessary to play competitively.
This extra movement is best demonstrated by adding in a non-diegetic crosshair that normally wouldn’t be present in Insurgency.
At first this mechanic is a seemingly minor addition for the sake of realistic movement, but it has a number of really interesting consequences that I’ve just not see in other milsims:
- An additional layer of immersive realism is applied to all camera movement. Sweeping your mouse across a space as you clear a room really does feel like you’re authentically directing your avatar’s attention.
- As changing your look direction will offset your weapon’s relative orientation, hip-firing is much harder to control and predict. ADS becomes a lot more powerful as a result.
- Optical attachments like laser sights have a lot more utility in Insurgency than they would in a game like Battlefield, because they give you a much better idea of where your shots will actually land.
- It’s a lot more difficult to meta game around the lack of crosshair by just sticking a small dot to your monitor. Back in my day this was a common hack to get an edge in more realistic shooters.
It’s worth reiterating that these consequences only matter because Insurgency doesn’t have a non-diegetic crosshair that dictates bullet trajectory. Applying the same free aim mechanic to Call of Duty or Counter-Strike without removing the crosshair would have minimal effect on gameplay.
You can see from this fake gameplay I recorded that even small camera movements can make your weapon sweep across the screen. It makes the game feel a lot more dynamic and engaging, even when nothing is really happening.
Most excitingly for me, and the reason I latched onto this mechanic in the first place, weapon recoil will also affect the orientation of your weapon within the bounds of free aim.
As you fire the weapon will physically jump around within the free aim zone. This makes the spread of shots much clearer to the player and easier to counteract.
It’s a completely different implementation to my Competitive Recoil project, which more closely follows the Valorant model. One day soon I’d like to be able to offer both.
Do you want to see free aim in the Shooter Sandbox?
If you jump on the Steam forums or google ‘Insurgency Sandstorm Free Aim’ you’ll quickly find that the mechanic has proven controversial. For some it’s actually been a dealbreaker and they’ve moved onto other games, which is a huge shame because Insurgency is a really authentic tactical shooter and has a lot to offer.
I really want to implement free aim into the Shooter Sandbox, but I acknowledge this is just a personal preference. It would have knock-on effects to other systems and would likely shift the project away from where some of you would like to see it go.
The Sandbox exists to provide a space for experimentation and to offer features that are not commonly found within the other first-person shooter templates, but at the same time I don’t want to waste time on features that are not maximally useful.
What do you think?
In the meantime, I’ll just have to keep practicing.
