Hereticle: Why can no longer sculpt chewing gum in the center of the monitor? Or how we did the invoice sight and went on Kickstarter

I love, you know, sometimes to shoot. In the shooters. From the first, and less from the third person. What is called FPS.



But it all started with Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, of course. Doom caught us on the 2nd year of university and we played it, curiously, on Silicon Graphics, Indy and O2. O2 I even bought, used, from nostalgic and sentimental feelings. Then there was no time for games. Work - development in the field of 3D, family, baby. Rarely, rarely did it turn out to see at least that there is a frag in this world, rendered smoke and explosions. Then a little more time appeared. Then one day, looking at his prostrate virtual body ...
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Everyone probably paid attention to the fact that bullets, rockets and other deadly shells in all these shooters fly to the center of the screen. Is always. I paid. This was later added aiming shooting and shooting from the hip, and different scatter in these positions, as well as the scatter factor when running and walking. And at first, in the Duma and Quack, everything was simple - who is in the center of your screen, when you press Ctrl or the left button, that corpse. Shooting goes to the center, because in games we look at the game scene through a kind of camera, which turns when we turn “head”, and it’s extremely difficult to make a separate control for the head and for guidance. For tank simulators, it is made out of despair, and for shooters it is extremely difficult to do so in order to maintain the dynamics of the game.

In general, the little thought has long knocked on my inflamed brain, that it would be necessary to hang something or put it in the center of the screen, so that it helps to aim. Then one day, looking at my prostrate virtual body, I decided to buy this one. And did not find anywhere else on sale. And told friends. And they did not find. Climbed on the forums - and found! Found that people put dots on the screens, markers, watermarks and permanent. One friend said that in the “office” they sculpted pieces of chewing gum on the screen ... Then I made the first prototype of a transparent slide for presentations. I drew a cross on the slide, pressed it with a webcam, “calibrated” and tried:


(red cross - made on the slide)

And I realized that it was good. Amazing impressions of the game in the already orderly “hackneyed” Call of Duty: World at War have left no doubt - I want such a thing for myself and for everything and everyone.

I threw the cry to my former brothers in arms — old friends in the university, local and overseas — and the work boiled over. The name was born during the discussion with Iggy: “The reticl is a chiretic,” said Iggy thoughtfully when he heard me use the word reticle, one of the English words for a crosshair, in a conversation. So we got the name - Hereticle, and Iggy firmly joined our international team. He also developed a logo - a grave crow on a stylized sight. Well, the project site is also his handiwork. Iggy - he is a creative person.

The main task we saw was to make a cute and comfortable accessory that could be easily removed when it is not needed. Models with stretch marks and pendants quickly disappeared. It also quickly became clear that the base of the sight should be mounted on the monitor, like a webcam, just hold tight so that tilting the aiming knot does not knock down the “calibration”. We tried the first Lego prototype - it worked as it was, and everything seemed to be good. But when a plastic model was made on it - it turned out that he was not sitting on all the monitors. Then an empirical way was found (using the same Lego) the final version in terms of size.
This one sat on everything, even on the fridge. Actually on its basis two final prototypes were built:

The first prototype is made mostly of plastic (steel core):



copes with the task, stylish and at the same time inexpensive.

The second is almost all of the metal, in the style of steampunk:



for limited editions, for lovers of frills and original products.

The fact that playing with such a device is interesting was appreciated by everyone around. But I wasn’t left alone by the question of why it was more interesting and fun to play with such an overhead scope than with a normal software sight. It turned out because of the distance. Due to the fact that the slide and subsequent prototypes were not close to the screen, a curious effect was obtained: a focal point for the player’s eyes was added. As with a conventional, iron (not optical or non-dioptric) sight on a real weapon , where you have to focus on the front sight , and not on a target or slot. In addition, in addition to new impressions of the game with such a device, our target will force the player to sit straight, opposite the “front sight”, otherwise we are not responsible for the result. Again, due to the distance of the sight from the screen, the direction of the player’s gaze matters.



In fact, I, of course, dropped a lot of boring, for the reader, the details - who had to develop parts for production, knows how much fuss there is (although to me personally all the “fuss” was very interesting). But as soon as all this was behind, as soon as we had two ready-to-use, proven in combat models in our hands, the question arose: how to bring this wonderful adaptation to the gaming community, and how to find the means for mass production? We chose Kickstarter : it is ideally suited for our purposes - a large audience, transparent cooperation, a simple and understandable way of presenting, and most importantly - feedback.

At first, we did not realize that this is a separate, large-scale task - to prepare materials and a video clip (the video is one of the key points of the new project on Kickstarter) for a huge audience. Then it dawned on us that we will have to tinker no less than on prototypes. The texts of the description and explanation were already more or less ready for us, we built them for the site. But the clip! We, of course, never faced such a task. We are not directors, not operators, and certainly not actors, just like that - and say everything beautifully to the camera, and also in English (some may, but feel free). In general, there is little to the camera and with the camera, we can There was no reason. It is impossible to learn and train, it would take a lot of time, the project would be “cool”. And we decided that the voice-over would be professional and there would be no direct speech to the camera according to the plot. Shooting, editing and sounding took almost ten long days ... But the clip seemed to work out. And the voice was found decent, and, by a miracle, almost instantly, thanks to the familiar sound engineer.

But by this time we had everything else ready, the texts, the site and the thought-out campaign. A few days took the last preparations, touches makeup . While I was writing this article, we submitted an application for Kickstarter and shaken finely in anticipation of an approving excuse. Which came unexpectedly quickly, a little less than a day after filing. Today, when I last edited this article, we already clicked on the green campaign launch button. And now we, with the fading of everything that can stand still, are watching its progress. Come take a look too!

I would like to thank everyone who helped us and contributed to the process of creating a prototype, video and many other important details. We keep a detailed list on the project website. Special thanks to our families who bravely endured the absence of dads and husbands who are engaged in such an important business.