Good idea or stupid gimmick ?

I'm working on a 2D top view game, thing Doom with GTA 2 graphics. I had an idea about one game mechanic, but I'm not sure if it would work and it could all be just a waste of time.

You walk with WASD and iam with mouse, easy, that's done, but I want a "double aim"
What I mean by that is, if you have 2 weaons in each hand (double UZI let's say) you could press a button (mouse wheel ?) and "split" your crosshair. Now instead of rotating the character, you spread your arms. When you're happy with your angle, you press the button again and now you shot in 2 different directions.
I want to stress the fact, that I'm aiming for an "fps" game with top down perspective, not hotline miami, where you can plan your moves and overall the game has few enemies at the same time.

Pic related, hope you get the idea.

That sounds kind of neat, but I think it would work better if you had one gun be aimed with the mouse and the other by the rotation of the character (like, it always shoots where the character is facing or something).
That way you could adjust the aim of both guns without having to stop moving, and the button could just toggle the dual mode on or off.

This works better. Either that or have one be locked on an enemy and the other be free aimed.

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I think this is something that you should try out. It's possible to speculate but you could be surprised; I don't think it would be a waste of time to implement it.

I know we're supposed to hate VR stuff and all, but what if one gun is aimed with the mouse, and the other with head tracking? You know, tilt your head down and that gun aims down, and so on. Then you could always aim both guns freely and move the character independently of either as well.

arm lock buttons?
one button will lock the right arm in the direction of the crosshair and another button will lock the left arm.
can you lock your arms towards an enemy if hes under the crosshair

I don't really see the point of variable aim directions in a top-down shooter with mouse control (unless you're going with tank controls), if all I have to do is move the crosshair to achieve an effect similar to a variable angled firing direction and move in a certain direction in order to get all enemies grouped up in one direction (assuming that the AI of all enemies involve them mindlessly rushing towards you). You'd have to get more creative with enemy placement and which direction they come from in order to make proper of such a mechanic. Unless you set the player movement really slow and/or enemy movement speed really fast in addition to having the enemy come from multiple angles, there'd be little reason for me to deal with variable angles. It's not a mechanic I'd personally base a twin-stick shooter around and would rather include as one weapon, though if I did, it'd rather feel like a puzzle shooter by trying to get the right angles for the right situations.

Hotline Miami did that with the bear guy

Not really, he just spread his arms, OP talks about a system where both hands get "locked" into position when/wherever the player wants.

Mechanics seem interesting but your use of genres is retarded. Only the S in FPS stands for shooter, nimrod.

Apart from the fact that its literally impossible to make that, what does it even mean?

Also it could work, a lot of shmups have similar control schemes of controlling guns individually.
But as says, its all useless unless you have tank controls and some kind of bullet time mechanics which slow down your movement speed forcing you to change your arm position to kill.

Could work well enough with spread sawn-off shotty or stream laser/rapid fire type weapons. No independent aim but adjustable from no spread point to crosshair to full spread 90° sideways via mouse wheel or, probably even better, analog trigger on a gamepad.

What if one hand is controlled with the mouse and the other is aimed opposite of your movement? That way you can shoot whatever is running at you.

Sounds like one of those "interesting on paper shit in practice" kind of things.

That's way too finicky for something it's trying to accomplish, i.e. complex shooter mechanics.

I suppose you could simplify it by making right-click-drag spread the arms when you drag towards you, and contract when you drag away, or something like that. Then just aim in between the two places you want to shoot to.

I think everyone is getting stuck on the control scheme here.
OP this sounds like a solid game mechanic but I dont believe there is an easy answer for how to make it control.

sounds like something you'd see in hotline miami
or Touhou.
Or hotline miami VS touhou

I just want to specify that you rotate your character with mouse, it follows your crosshair, WASD moves you up/down left/right in the world, no matter where you're facing.

Is that a rocket car with gun arms fighting dancing pieces of broken swastikas?

Well, there are few key elements that are not strictly FPS things, but most good FPS games have those. Things like
Quicksaves
Many weapons at the same time
Ammo and HP pickups
"Maps", not "levels"
Keycards, doors, basic stuff


BTW. This is not indie pixelshit, although it might look like it. That's because the whole game runs on 8-bit color, so you've only got 255 colors (the last one is for transparency, although it can be used to draw floors), the engine runs in software mode, every blits are coded by me, it runs on my old laptop (intel core 2 duo with integrated gpu) at this moment at about 300 fps… I don't want to brag, hell, that's way to early for that, but I just want you to know that I'm serious and not just ideaguy. I'll try to implement that double crosshair and show you all a demo and we'll see.

That's 200 rotating and moving around animated legs… it was just a test of performance. And few of these started buging out too !

Sounds kinda clunky, OP.
Why not instead have the button toggle between having one crosshair and having two, and when you have two each corresponds to a mouse button. Pressing a mouse button then makes its associated crosshair follow the mouse while the second remains in place, either relative to your position or moving along with the character.

Alternatively, just make one of the guns auto-aim.

The first option sounds good. Autoaim is not an option

I think it would depend on what pace you are going for, if it's a really fast game where you spray bullets at hordes of enemies or if it's a slower and more deliberate thing where you aim for efficiency. Your idea could in principle work with either but you'd have to implement it differently, in my opinion it would probably be more suited for the slower and more strategic kind, maybe with some sort of bullet-time mechanic. I agree with the fellow who said you'd have to make up some good reason to justify the mechanic, how would it be necesary, advantageous and practical to use it instead of a more standard scheme.


I know this would be quite different from what you're going for, but just throwing it out there: You could control it with a joystick instead of M&K and aim each gun with an analog stick, shooting with L/R triggers and alternate modes of fire with L/R bumpers. Movement would have to be a bit restricted, maybe go from cover to cover against waves of enemies comming from the same general direction and choosing which cover to move to with the four rightside buttons or D-Pad.

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Say, are there any videogames that use two mice at once?

I realize it's not ideal because then you don't have access to WASD, and of course only one of the mice could aim, so it would not be good for first person shooters. But you'd think there'd be one puzzle game or something out there that makes good use of two mice at once.

Only videogame I know that can differentiate between multiple mice is Hammerfall, and that's just for multiplayer.

If you must implement this, use the mouse wheel (or define two easy-to-reach keys) to widen/narrow the cone of fire between the two guns and make the center of the cone follow the mouse cursor. This way the player can easily control the spread or concentration and retain an intuitive sense of where shots are going.

user, think carefully about what you just said.

this is what i was thinking

this sounds good too

Its called twin stick shooter and its a garbage mobile genre

You're describing Warning Forever.

Two mice to control aim.
A directional foot pedal to control movement.

That's quite an ideal picture.

Not dragging, just make it so it automatically spreads its arms depending on the cursor distance.