Thread by @netrunnernobody

two-dimensional dual wielding: the most failed game mechanic in all of #gamedev.

it's not exactly hard to understand why game developers love dual wielded weapons. but in case you're blissfully unaware, i'll give you the very simple answer: because it's fucking awesome.

is it realistic? fuck no. but arnold @schwarzenegger is holding two shotguns, and his sheer badassery is enough to distract you from that fact. this is what writers commonly refer to as the rule of cool.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.…

look at keanu. he's not even looking where he's firing. but no one watching the matrix's infamous lobby shootout stops to criticize neo's trigger discipline, because somewhere within all of our ancient, primitive, lizard brains is "if someone is that badass, don't ask questions."

legend has it that ever since the dawn of time, man has attempted to recreate the glory of guns akimbo badassery in a video game.

imagine it: instead of saying "the terminator is so badass!", the player says "i'm so badass!"

it would be the digital equivalent of crack-cocaine.

guns akimbo is pretty much an instant cheat code to invoke the rule of cool and inspire awe in your audience.

with ninety-five percent of shooter games being little more than a violent power fantasy, why haven't game developers figured out that one gun simply isn't enough?

the most iconic instance of dual wielded weapons in video games as a whole is probably the silverballer weapons from the hitman series. at the beginning of hitman: blood money, you own a single pistol. by the end of hitman: blood money, you're rocking two of these bad boys:

aside from being comically cheesy, the endgame silverballers are completely badass. you've got a ridiculous scope, a suppressor, a laser sight, an extended magazine... it successfully invokes the rule of cool, but fails the game developer dual wield challenge for one sole reason.

they don't do anything.

i mean, technically, they do something, in the sense that they double your ammo and rate of fire. but that's not what makes guns akimbo cool. guns akimbo is cool because of the ability to shoot two baddies at once, in two completely different directions.

anything else is complete sacrilege.

but unfortunately, guns akimbo sacrilege is not uncommon. in fact, out of the many, many 3D games that i've played with dual wielding possibilities, only one of them has gotten it exactly, perfectly right.

superhot vr is, as the name implies, a virtual reality based game where the player is given two controllers, both of which can pick up and fire weapons. that's nothing too special — plenty of virtual reality games allow for that sort of thing.

what sets superhot vr apart from the rest of the unwashed virtual reality masses is that its core mechanic of "time only moves when you move" allows the player to pull off neat akimbo stunts while not being penalized (and instead, rewarded) for putting that additional effort in.

one could even argue that with time only moving when the player moves, the player is incentivized to move both arms at the same time. any half-decent dual wielding system needs to incentivize radical akimbo shooting, as opposed to simply pressing one weapon's trigger twice.

otherwise, the amount of mental energy it takes to successfully kill two enemies at once comes with little to no payoff — because it would've been so much easier just to click, move the mouse, and click again.

but this is a thread about 2D games. let's talk about those.

in a theoretical world where the player controls their character through a direct neuralink connection, guns akimbo would be a fairly simple game mechanic. unfortunately, as of present, we've got a very large roadblock ahead of us: generally speaking, a player only has two hands.

this is problematic, because the player needs to operate three sets of controls: the left firearm, the right firearm, and the movement of the character as a whole. furthermore, even if our player is a third-armed mutant, the standard player's peripheral configuration

(re: one keyboard, one mouse) fails to provide adequate tools for a player to aim and shoot two weapons at once, especially not with typical mouse controls. in order to successfully accomplish a fun dual wielding mechanic in the second dimension, we'll have to innovate.

when it comes to video games, innovating tends to be seen positively by anyone that isn't an executive for activision-blizzard. the biggest exception to this rule tends to be controls — in fact, i think the biggest unspoken rule of game design is something along the lines of

"thou shalt not radically subvert a player's expectations regarding how they control their character."

they've been using the same control map for the past thirty years of their basement-dwelling lives, and they're certainly not interested in changing those habits now.

most games are, for the most part, developed by mentally sane individuals, and as such, tend not to change this basic setup.

let's take a look at how they did.

hotline miami 2, the sequel to what's arguably the indie king of cool, managed to make its guns akimbo mechanic fairly useless. if you press the right mouse button while akimbo, your character extends his arms sideways and allows you to shoot his two mini uzis in two directions.

but in a twitch-trigger game like hotline miami, you're almost always much better off quickly turning to kill your enemy than waiting precious frames for your character to extend his wings like a goose taking flight.

not only are you not incentivized to akimbo, you're punished.

there are occasional moments where the developer makes it very clear that he wants you to use the guns akimbo mechanic, and it just feels forced. and at that point, it's no better than a cutscene; your agency as a player has been entirely stripped in favor of cinematics appeal.

i've always found nuclear throne to be the video games equivalent of one of those run-down buffets; it's got a lot of things, and it wouldn't be able to have nearly as many things if they put more time into each individual thing.

still, this takes its toll on the mechanics.

nuclear throne's "akimbo" increases inaccuracy and doubles your rate of fire. while you can dual wield different weapons at once, the times i've played nuclear throne have never made a combination interesting enough to make the mutant's guns akimbo ability feel satisfying.

my friend pedro is different from the above games, because it was marketed and very specifically focuses on the dual wield mechanic.

do they make it work? kind of! MFP lets the player control both weapons independently, but it's not enough to activate the rule of cool. (cont...)

the way these guys went about their akimbo mechanic was clever! one gun follows the mouse at all times, and the other can be "locked" to certain locations by holding the right mouse button. if the second gun is locked, clicking fires both guns, otherwise, clicking only fires one.

for those unacquainted with my friend pedro, i can best compare the "gun lock" system to the function of the middle mouse button's function in the original hotline miami, except only one weapon remains aimed towards it.

still, the player never feels like schwarzenegger. why?

because there's a critical problem here: very few players actively want to camp in a corner and lock enemies to be targeted by aim assist. people want split second decisions, thrills, and lizard-brain reactions.

they want "hotline miami moments" that they're simply not getting.

as a result, players don't really feel like they're the ones doing the work, and don't get much pleasure or satisfaction out of killing the baddies. probably because they're not the ones putting in the work behind their akimbo kills.

the visuals sure are nice to watch, though.

hogpocalypse sow is a one month gamejam project done by games critic @YahtzeeCroshaw. i think yahtzee's a smart guy, and i'm fairly certain we share some level of agreement of what the issue with 2D akimbo games tend to be.

still, there's only so much you can do in a month.

yahtzee's solution was to create a system in which one weapon can affect one enemy type and visa versa.

the game itself is fine, but it feels more like dance dance revolution than it does any scene from the terminator series. it lacks the empowering satisfaction we're going for.

anyway. the point of the above tweets wasn't to criticize, but rather, to highlight why i'm spending all this time trying to find the ideal way to implement a guns akimbo mechanic into a 2D game. one that evokes the same emotions as terminator 2.

because it hasn't been done yet.

and, yes, i sure am talking a lot of shit for someone who hasn't released a game with an "ideal" guns akimbo mechanic. there's no guarantee that MFP wasn't simply the best guns akimbo 2D game possible.

but hey, let's spitball some ideas and see if any of them seem viable.

let's start with a few ground rules:

1. the rate of fire of one singular weapon must be low enough that the use of the guns akimbo mechanic is absolutely essential to victory.

2a. reload time should be long enough that the player will need to alternate weapons while reloading.

2b. enemies should be aggressive enough that one weapon should always be "on guard" while the other reloads.

3. if for any reason one weapon is easier to fire than the other, it must be weaker as well. maybe have your character hold one handgun and one sawed-off shotgun, i'unno.

ladies and gentlemen, without further ado...

nobody's work-in-progress list of wacky, crazy "guns akimbo" game ideas that might just break the curse that two-dimensional dual-wielding mechanics tend to suffer from.

** (please do feel free to suggest your own ideas as well!) **

the scroll wheel concept is convenient because it's intuitive: moving the scroll wheel forward moves your arms forward, and moving the scroll wheel backward moves your arms backward until you find yourself t-posing. it also keeps the aiming+firing controls on the same peripheral.

of course, there are a number of downsides to this kind of system. for instance, if you want to shoot one weapon to the left, and the other straight ahead, that might not be easy to pull off. requiring a mouse wheel to play your game might also prevent laptop users from playing.

even then, there's a real question as to whether or not players would rather just move the mouse ever so slightly to shift their torso, rather than exert the effort in spinning a mouse wheel to move their arms.

scroll wheel concept b is a little similar to the first scroll wheel concept, but has one arm controlled by the mouse itself, with the other arm controlled by the mouse wheel.

this is the immediate answer to the torso problem, but at what cost?

it's not exactly intuitive, and players will probably have a long time having to adjust to the idea of moving the scroll wheel while moving the mouse, something which you seldom do in any game, or any use of the computer at all.

rule 3 would probably need to be in effect here.

"dragged by the arm" is a concept for games that aren't trying to dial up the next miami hotline. hold the left mouse button to move the left arm and visa versa. the player character's head and torso rotate automatically if arms are moved past believable limits.

firing could be accomplished either automatically when an enemy is in view, by single-clicking the mouse buttons, or by letting go of the mouse after dragging. firing both weapons would probably best be done by pressing the scroll wheel, or just pressing both mouse buttons.

the concept doesn't play nicely with faster paced games by default, but if you're willing to mix and match, you can use the left mouse button as a regular 2D weapon shooting mechanic, and have the dragged by the arm mechanic only affect a more powerful right mouse button weapon.

axis control works, but isn't intuitive. a 2D arm only needs to move in one of two possible directions (fwds/bwds), while a mouse is capable of moving in four directions (fwds/bwds/left/right). thus, you use one axis to control one arm, and the other axis to control the other.

sure, you'll have guns akimbo, but your game is going to play like QWOP. and no one is going to feel like they're schwarzenegger if they feel like they're playing QWOP.

but if someone hypothetically got the hang of this sort of mechanic, it could work really well. keyword: if.

that's enough for now. i'll crawl out of bed if any more ideas keep me awake.

if you want more design nonsense like this, don't hit the follow button— i only talk about design when i can't sleep. instead, check out @YahtzeeCroshaw's dev diary or @Pentadact's design talk series.