Should recoil be an animation or script?

Question

Should recoil for a rapid fire gun be be done through an animation or a script? I want the recoil to increase as I continuously fire, like a lot of FPS games do.

I was initially considering achieving this through a script in unity that rotates the gun slightly each time I fire, but I realized that since I plan to have most rapid fire guns be 2 handed weapons, at some point, the left hand won't be on the weapon.

However, since I also want the recoil to increase as I fire, I'm not sure how I can achieve this in an animation.

How is recoil typically done? Input on this would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

This should be done via script.

How much recoil? Let's say 10 degrees at a rate of 5 m/s.

Now you level up your handling, and recoil is reduced by 10%. So now our recoil is 9 (10 * 0.9) degrees at a rate of 4.5 (5 * 0.9) m/s. This is a much easier to do and change via a script than it is via animation.

Please see Phillip's answer as well. He goes into more detail, and talks about using the animation system as well. (Although I still think doing this via scripting is the best approach.)

Answer 2

First of all, I would really recommend you to separate the projectiles being spawned from the gun weapon model and its animation. Attaching the spawn point to the gun model just causes unnecessary problems and unexpected behavior (like bullets flying into unexpected direction because you are shooting while still blending to the weapon switching animation). Rather attach the spawn point to the root of the character object, so you have better control over where the bullets spawn. The less surprises, the better. And now your animators are free to animate the gun and the character's hands the way they want without having to worry about the animation exactly matching the bullet spread pattern.

But that still does not mean that the recoil pattern can not be controlled through an animation. The Unity animation system is very versatile. It can do more than just control the bones of character models. It can "animate" (almost) any inspector-visible attribute of any component. So it is perfectly possible to create an "animation" for how the point of aim and random spread of a weapon changes over time while the gun is shooting. This allows you to edit the spread patterns of guns by editing curves in the Unity animation curve editor, which can be a very designer-friendly and powerful tool.

A code-based solution might be less intuitive for a designer, but more intuitive to create for a programmer. You might also be more comfortable with designing your recoil patterns as mathematical functions rather than by dragging around curves until they feel right. So that's also an option.

In software development, there is never just one solution for a problem. There is also usually not a best solution. Only the solution which is best for you.

Answer 3

Both - Consider Procedural Animation

For example, you could create an animation that linearly rotates the weapon a specific angle (moving both hands and whatever else you need with it), but not "play" it in its entirety but set at which point in the animation you are via script. Say you have a max. rotation of 90 degrees, you could make the animation "take" 90 seconds and just assign myAnimation.time = kickbackInDegrees. The same can be done with a second animation for left/right kick.

This approach works well for complex and/or cumulative inputs like your cumulative recoil (multiple shots in rapid succession kick more than a single shot).