View ET-hitboxes: buggy/offset on railgun (ET Main)

As Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory uses 2 to 3 boxes drawn around the actual player model, it is essential for you to know how these boxes look to get a good aiming. So perhaps you want to check out for yourself what they look like in different situations (e. g. while climbing a ladder, while beeing in the railgun-train, while swimming, …). In order to view the hitboxes, you need a server that allows cheats and use debugbullets. Sadly in most cases there are no possibilities to view the hitboxes in your recorded replays/demos unless the game was recorded with cheats enabled, because the debugbullets hit boxes are server side things. But you of course can start a server on your own and have a look at those hitboxes, analyze them and improve your gameplay by beeing some knowledge-steps ahead.

If you are alone and if you don’t have another PC in a network, do the following:

/sv_pure 0 // allow any custom content, like supplydepot
/devmap MAP* // start a local server
/g_debugbullets 8 // go into debug mode
/cg_thirdperson 1// go in third person-view to see your hitbox
/cg_thirdpersonrange 100 // play with the value
/cg_thirdpersonangle 180 // play with that value, too

* replace MAP e. g. by oasis, fueldump, battery, railgun, goldrush, radar

If you have a second PC available in a network, start again a localhost-server with cheats enabled, connect the other server and again go in debug-mode:

/devmap MAP* // start a localhost-server on PC 1
/connect 192.168.0.XXX** // type this on PC 2 to connect with PC 1
/g_debugbullets 7 // go in debug-mode

** replace XXX with the local IP of PC 1 – get it e.g. by using “ipconfig” on ms dos-commandline

Now everytime you hit the other player model, its strong>hitbox-model will be visible to you and you can take a screenshot and do some analysis. Other useful things in this context:

/bind ENTER screenshot // bind "take a screenshot" to a key
/cg_railtrailtime 5000 // specify how long the boxes and bullet trails will be visible in ms

... acting headless?

In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory each playermodel gets 2 or 3 boxes drawn around itself. Those boxes are the hitable sweet-spots – the hitboxes. Hitboxes have always been a problem in Enemy Territory as they seemed to be not accurate enough, wrong or even missing. This especially concerned the head-box which registers headshots that do up to 50 damage and thus far more than body shots what makes them very desirable. Bani tried to fix the problem with ET Pro and he came up with new headbox-code b_realhead (see changes in ET Pro 3.2.0, May 2005), better antilag-code and other stuff; but the results still seemed to be everything but perfect. Let’s have a look at some screenshots of ET Main & ET Pro hitboxes in different situations and draw implications for our gameplay.

Back in the year 2004, [nw]reyalP did an intersting analysis on the hitboxes in Enemy Territory. He used a custom MOD (never released though I think) which showed the hitboxes all the time (so not g_debugbullets). Also he used the ET Main code not ET Pro as he had no access to it; but from speaking with Bani, who said there weren’t any adjustments to the hitbox calculations (remark: some boxes were made taller than in ET Main) he was sure that it would also fit on ET Pro – when b_realhead is not > 0. Most servers today got b_realhead = 1 running, so that the following screenshots would not mirror accurately the hitboxes for the head.

hitbox-offset: strafing left with nade

Note: with b_realhead = 0 the heads hitbox is slightly offset to a moving player model – it actually follows slightly behind the player model; and with b_realhead > 0 the head hitbox should stay on the model while moving. To check whether you play on a server with the ET Pros head hitbox code, just enter the console and type:

/pb_cvarval b_realhead

Looking at his screenshots that contained player models in different movement situations (standing, crouching, proning, swimming, …), one state of the models animation, using different weapons (smg, grenade, …) plus the resulting hitboxes-calculation, reyaIP pointed out several interesting things:

1. The player model head can be ahead of its hitbox in the direction in which the player strafes
2. The player model ducks down a bit while moving, but its hitbox does not follow the model
   
3. A player model holding a SMG has its head offset to the left (your POV), the heads hitbox does not follow

Click on the screenshots to make yourself a picture of this:

Besides the notes from reyaIP you can see other things, which have e. g. been reported in a forum around 2005: the heads’ hitbox while crouching is not nescessarily the forehead or helmet, but more or less the chin.

And finally quoted notes from reyaIP on the screenshots for proning-hitboxes, which we all like (2nd) best :

1. The head hitbox position is based on a fixed set of rules based on player view angles, but the player model is not. You can be looking in exactly the same direction, and the player model can be in very different positions with regards to the hitbox. Where the model is depends on what sequence of turns you used to get there. While this is true for all the animations, the effects are more extreme with the prone models.
2. The animations that happen when you turn (or look up/down) have multiple effects. When you start to turn, just the head turns. At some point the body twists, then the feet shuffle around, and the whole thing starts over. Very nice from an eye candy point of view, but horrible in for the hit detection. Like the standing animation, the prone ones change a bit depending on what you are holding, and are different again for moving.

So if the hitboxes for proning are the 2nd best ones, which ones do we like most?

Swimming is like standing

Believe it or not: according to reyaIPs analysis the player model goes into swimming pose while diving/swimming and the hitboxes stick to the ones from player models in standing position.

Conclusions:

Hitboxes in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory have always been a problem and will always rouse discussions. Well I think we got to live with the boxmodel and know about its bugs or “specialities”. For example aim for the chin and not for the forehead when you got someone crouched in front of you. And don’t look for the player model in front of you but have in mind the hitboxes that probably lie behind it. It’s often annoying and frustrating but everyone knows about the problems and thus everyone plays with equal opportunities. You just got to make the best of it… Perhaps we just got to take it with humour – enjoy Just Pub #056:

Just Pub #056

Whats your opinion?