Advanced Movement: walljumping/running/ledge-grab

(Erkin31) #101

.FROST. : I read your whole reply, I just wanted to talk about the “aesthetic” of the movements. For me, this is independant of the fact we talk about an arena shooter or not.
I don’t share your feeling about the context (E.T. was on a realistic environment, and the straff jump are still pleasant to see).

Moreover, the majority of FPS which are on a realistic environment are neither realistic in their gameplay nor credible (BF for example, an alone soldier is able to pilot a tank and a helico, can open parachute on a small distance, be resurrected, resist to a lot of bullet but be killed with one dash of knife, etc… So I will be not shocked to see it jumping in loop :slight_smile: )

(.FROST.) #102

[QUOTE=Erkin31;468559].FROST. : I read your whole reply, I just wanted to talk about the “aesthetic” of the movements. For me, this is independant of the fact we talk about an arena shooter or not.
I don’t share your feeling about the context (E.T. was on a realistic environment, and the straff jump are still pleasant to see).

Moreover, the majority of FPS which are on a realistic environment are neither realistic in their gameplay nor credible (BF for example, an alone soldier is able to pilot a tank and a helico, can open parachute on a small distance, be resurrected, resist to a lot of bullet but be killed with one dash of knife, etc… So I will be not shocked to see it jumping in loop :slight_smile: )[/QUOTE]

Ok, I understand your stance and I won’t argue about that, since there’s no right, or wrong in this. But I just wanted to make myself a bit more clear, once again. When I was saying “realistic” I didn’t meant that I’d like Extraction to be a realistic shooter(whatever that would be), but there are certain things wich just look kinda silly; bunny hopping i.e. is such a thing. I have no prob, that the characters can jump down 4-5 meters with full gear strapped on, without barely noticing it; and that’d be by no means realistic; yet seeing a fully geared up soldier bounce his way through the map like a frickin rubber-ball, the whole frickin time, is a completely different story, especially if everybody else is doing it as well. Sorry, but that would be just aweful. Stuff like ledge-grabbing, wall-jumping, or even wall-running for a couple steps, on the other hand, would look very cool and would also fit the tone of the game; as long, as they’re(SD) not going to make it a chimpanse-simulator; that’d be ridiculous too. After all this is not Prince of Persia set in London 2020.

But a bit more mobility(more exotic ways to move) would definitely spice up the whole game and give it a more unique flavour. I’d vote for “everything”, that is not too extreme(in every aspect of the game), or would break the whole tone of it. XT still doesn’t have anything, that is entirely unique. It looks very attractive, but nowadays gamers all over the world can have most of the games, with emphasis on online play, for free; and most of them look great. they are not forced to choose between them anymore, but they’ll only stuck with the games wich are the most appealing to them. Mostly games that have something, other games simply don’t feature. Introducing stuff, that had it’s time in the mid-early 2000ents doesn’t strike me as very innovative. It’d be like introducing the Pager to todays mobile market.

(Erkin31) #103

I don’t want to found in DB the gameplay of Quake 3, I just wanted to say that these movements are beautifull to see, nothing more. :slight_smile:

Now for DB, I just want some advanced movements, and not movements limited to an animation like Brink.
Wall jump, dodge, double jump, slide, (etc.) are old ingredients, but SD can make a fresh receipe with them.

(Samurai.) #104

I think we’ve got to the stage with movement where we all want some more advanced system adding to the game as right now it is fairly slow, restrictive, has little skill/learning curve to it and is making firefight ‘dancing’ pretty bland/repetitive.

A lot of people have shouted for strafe jumping, the quake arena style of strafe jumping would look ridiculous in Xt as the map design is far too narrow/restrictive for something like this to be implemented, and the weapons (bullets) aren’t suitable in comparison to the Rockets/Plasma guns you see in these video’s showcasing the boosted escalating accelerating kind of extreme strafe jump.

What i believe most of us are asking for is what DarkangelUK keeps stating: [QUOTE=DarkangelUK;467659] ET ground acceleration for CJ’s[/QUOTE]

Why we need CJ’s
Consecutive jumps that provide a very small ground acceleration over standard sprinting in a straight line is what Xt needs. This eliminates the slow, restrictive movement where after consecutive jumps we end up slowing down to a stand still… this is the issue in the movement system for me, there’s no fluidity, there’s no identifiable movement system with previous SD games (which fans will be expecting), there’s no learning curve. Just this simple adjustment to the movement system will make a huge difference to how the entire game will feel giving the player much greater creativity and control of where they want to go and how fast they want to go. It will also eliminate the boring feeling of just holding “W” + “Sprint” from the spawn to the objective area where the action takes place, its much more immersive and exciting pushing your player to the speed limit to get back in the action! …

“Realism” Discussion
The whole realism argument is ridiculous for me, i don’t care what it looks like aesthetically in the game if it is the feature of a game that is a fundamental component for my enjoyment in the game this is what matters most to me. It’s not like players will be bouncing off all walls going super fast, we’ve all seen what consecutive jumping looks like from previous games of ET:QW / ET etc and i’ve never heard one single complaint that it look’s ‘out of place’. Even BF3 allows consecutive jumping to an extent and from my point of view they seem to push realism far more in that game than we are here in Xt so i see all these discussions over the aesthetics of it being irrelevant.

“Unintuitive” Discussion
The next argument about it being too hard to learn or not being intuitive enough can be responded to via SD providing a more in depth tutorial or teaching system in the game that prompt’s players to learn these skill curves that we want to keep encouraging into the game play.I read an article about BF4 recently about how they realised that players found it hard to learn how to use the vehicles in MP gameplay and players were avoiding using them so they didn’t back down and just remove them from the game even though they are a core component to the fun of the game, nope they instead provided offline practice servers that allowed players to practice/learn/master them without being in the pressured environment of online MP servers… follow suit SD, introduce more advanced skillful features into the game and provide us with an environment that lets us learn/master and then bring these skills over to MP servers to benefit from them over time!

“Too difficult to track” Discussion
The next argument about CJ’s will make targets much harder to aim/track… well for starters we want more challenging firefight possibilities as currently aiming/shooting people is just repetitive and boring now… targets are too slow and the skill gap for aiming is too compressed at the moment. The other counter argument is that you would argue players who have mastered the CJ system will more than likely be the players that will find it much easier to track/aim in the game. Therefore it falls back to the match making system, as-long as you can implement a system which is fairly accurate in matching equal skilled players together then the issue of players finding a massive skill gap between each other on the server should not be an issue and therefore should not be used as an argument against implementing a more advanced movement system that makes it harder to track players.

I always say i will never repeat my rant about the movement system but every so often i find myself with a spare bit of time and feel i owe it to myself and others without the access to these forums to keep pushing such a fundamental feature in to Xt as i can’t see it being successful without this movement system.

Once CJ’s have been introduced further exploration of trick jumping possibilities can be added with ramp/circle jumps but these kind of things are an added bonus to the movement system whereas CJ’s is a core component that needs to be at an implementation stage asap.

(DB Genome editor) #105

As a more casual player who’s also very big on aesthetics, I have to admit I completely agree with most of what Samurai said above. Just goes to show the two sides don’t have to be that far apart… :smiley:

Now for the points on which I slightly disagree:

[QUOTE=Samurai.;468574]Why we need CJ’s
Consecutive jumps that provide a very small ground acceleration over standard sprinting in a straight line is what Xt needs. This eliminates the slow, restrictive movement where after consecutive jumps we end up slowing down to a stand still… this is the issue in the movement system for me, there’s no fluidity, there’s no identifiable movement system with previous SD games (which fans will be expecting), there’s no learning curve.[/QUOTE]
Why would a locomotion mechanism faster than than standard sprinting have to be based on consecutive jumps? I like the idea of “faster than sprint” movement, and I agree with the arguments for having it, but I think in a brand new game this could be implemented in a more natural way instead of exactly as it was in previous games for the sake of nostalgia.

[QUOTE=Samurai.;468574]“Realism” Discussion
The whole realism argument is ridiculous for me, i don’t care what it looks like aesthetically in the game if it is the feature of a game that is a fundamental component for my enjoyment in the game this is what matters most to me.

…

…so i see all these discussions over the aesthetics of it being irrelevant.[/QUOTE]
It’s not irrelevant if you want your game to attract attention. Did they run the PAX demo with minecraft configs like some people use around here? Then I guess the look of the game is important to some people and how the players move is part of that… And again I think the problem is we’re trying to shoehorn an old mechanism into a new game instead of looking at a mean to achieve the same results. If SD needs to code this from scratch because it’s not native to the engine, shouldn’t they do it in a way that won’t look silly? Of course it might mean learning new controls, but I’m sure all the people screaming for a higher skill ceiling won’t mind having to master new tricks. :wink:

Agree what all you said there, but I just wanted to add that a good design should strive to be intuitive nonetheless. It’s not a must, but something a good UI designer would aim for and a plus for the game (clunky control mechanisms can be a turnoff and are never a good selling point). As it’s been said for a lot of aspects of the game: easy to learn, hard to master.

Totally agree with this as well. I especially like the point about matchmaking being key in avoiding huge skill gaps.

(.FROST.) #106

[QUOTE=Djiesse;468589]As a more casual player who’s also very big on aesthetics, I have to admit I completely agree with most of what Samurai said above. Just goes to show the two sides don’t have to be that far apart… :smiley:

Why would a locomotion mechanism faster than than standard sprinting have to be based on consecutive jumps? I like the idea of “faster than sprint” movement, and I agree with the arguments for having it, but I think in a brand new game this could be implemented in a more natural way instead of exactly as it was in previous games for the sake of nostalgia.

It’s not irrelevant if you want your game to attract attention. Did they run the PAX demo with minecraft configs like some people use around here? Then I guess the look of the game is important to some people and how the players move is part of that… And again I think the problem is we’re trying to shoehorn an old mechanism into a new game instead of looking at a mean to achieve the same results. If SD needs to code this from scratch because it’s not native to the engine, shouldn’t they do it in a way that won’t look silly? Of course it might mean learning new controls, but I’m sure all the people screaming for a higher skill ceiling won’t mind having to master new tricks. :wink: [/QUOTE]

+10^Just everything! he said. Nice too see I’m not alone.

PS: “Have to spread some reputation around before giving it to Djiesse again”:wink:

(Dragonji) #107

Couldn’t agree more with Samurai, especially on “Realism” Discussion part.

(.FROST.) #108

I think, that the whole “realism discussion” wasn’t really one; but more a thing of miss-understanding, between me and Erkin31. It was about silly looking stuff(even if many would disagree with that term) in an inarguably realistically looking environment. I think that’s quite a difference. Nobody said, I want XT to feel, look and be like ArmA, but the setting and visual style is already pretty realistic, letting people bounce in zig-zag-patterns wouldn’t necessarilly fit the already set tone.

But you guys got me to a point where I’d just like to rage quit and say, eff it, make it Q3 in London 2020, I don’t care, hail to the pro gamers, I’m out.

Games with CS 1.6 graphics, played on a CRT monitor, plugged into a SLI multi GPU setup, in order to get 2000frames and a game, that strongly encourages bunny-hopping and rocket-jumping; I guess that’s exactly what the audience of 2014 is waiting for, especially those casual, hat-buying, guys wich basically pay for the whole show.

I mean why would people, which care so much about the looks of their weapons, that they’d even pay money for new and exclusive skins, care how a game looks? Sounds completely ridiculous right?

In the alpha we may have 90% semi-, wanna-be-, and actual pro gamers. The moment XT goes live there will be 90% casuals and 10% ambitous players and of those 10% only a small percentage will actually buy stuff, cause they don’t care how their weapons look, right? They just want to play the game, they don’t care for all that fancy pay-stuff, that let’s them play this game in the first place.

(ailmanki) #109

That ain’t a fair comparission, first off Minecraft is extremely successful game for what it is. Despite its graphics people play the game.
We don’t want Minecraft graphics, we want clean graphics. For example the blue tinit on London Bridge aint clean at all.

I at least am not requesting a copy of the q3 bug, as I doubt its that simple to implement in this game, I mean sure you can add it without problems, but it being a perfect copy? Also your right it looks stupid, the zig-zag bouncing, it did not fit the WW2 setting, and it does not fit Extraction theme; and I know enough players who hate it. But it sure as hell made the game have an arcade feeling. It also gave the game a new skill to master.
Right now movement is very simple, there is no stanima. Only the very obtrusive reload makes it difficult. There are no parkour routes, so there are no jumping skills required either.
Something is missing.

Sure polishing and beauty is important, but even more is function. The first plays no good role without the later.

(shaftz0r) #110

i have yet to read a single post from frost. not gonna lie

(.FROST.) #111

[QUOTE=ailmanki;468664]I at least am not requesting a copy of the q3 bug, as I doubt its that simple to implement in this game, I mean sure you can add it without problems, but it being a perfect copy? Also your right it looks stupid, the zig-zag bouncing, it did not fit the WW2 setting, and it does not fit Extraction theme; and I know enough players who hate it. But it sure as hell made the game have an arcade feeling. It also gave the game a new skill to master.
Right now movement is very simple, there is no stanima. Only the very obtrusive reload makes it difficult. There are no parkour routes, so there are no jumping skills required either.
Something is missing.
Sure polishing and beauty is important, but even more is function. The first plays no good role without the later.[/QUOTE]

This^

Everybody knows, that something is missing, but filling the gap with something like bunny hopping, only because it already exists, and for the lack of a better solution, wouldn’t just look aweful, it would also be lazy. The movement should be as much a part of the game’s identity like the visuals, the v-says, the score, the UI and whatnot. A really good game is identifiable through all of those things. That’s a coherent style and it’s not only important for artsy fartsy elitists like myself, but for the longevity of the game as well. Most(all?) of the most popular games out there have a very coherent style, where audio, video, view angle, movement and everything else fits together, and makes sense in that particular world.

Brink is a very good example for an entirely coherent style, everything fitted together just perfectly; the clean and pristine menu, the (“white and turqoise”) intro with the voice over, the theme in the menu, everything emphazised the story and the style of the game. And people would still play it, if it wouldn’t be for the amount of broken mechanics in that game. But that was entirely due to it’s open beta release state* and is a completely different story, that has nothing to do with the fact, that otherwise BRINK was a very well-thought-out game where every aspect spoke to the player in its own way, to immerse him in the post apocalyptic world of the ARK. Bunny hopping would only tell me a story of early-mid 2000nds FPS games, and not from a contaminated London in 2020.

It would be like putting Bruce Willis in an independent movie. It would totally ruin the immersion. Sometimes it’s the better choice to go with something completely new, instead of something that has worked since the beginning of time.

*and of course the fact, that SMART didn’t had its own key, and the problems wich resulted from that.

(Erkin31) #112

Just a word about Straff jump but not for its implementation in XT as SD already said that they don’t want it :
You think that it’s just an effect of nostalgia if we could hope to see straff jump in XT. It’s not, it’s simply because straff jump is really fun to play/give us an excellent gameplay. In 2013, when I start a fps on id tech3, I’m always impressed by the perfect feeling of the gameplay with this feature.

Now, as I said previously, I’m not against differents advanced movements with fit more, for you, with the environment of Xt. Samurai raised an important point on its (excelent) post : The speed momentum.

The majority of fast FPS offer to the player to gain and conserve speed via advanced movements. Even the last: Tribes has the skiing, Shootmania the glide.
In a not realistic game, it’s boring to just run with shift key and… wait.
In ETQW, each run from spawn to objectives was fun because:

  • The knife+straff jump permits to gain speed. There was always an implicit race between players on who will arrive faster.
  • There was some vehicules. Icarus and Jeep was really fun !

Again, I don’t say we need have a straff jump, I quoted two games which don’t use straff jump. But as the natural movements are limited in this FPS (forward, backward, left, right, crouch, jump), the jump is an important element in the equation which will give us an advanced movement system for speed momentum.
So what I want to say is that, with this lack of choice, you can’t except to have advanced movements (to gain/conserve speed) in this kind of FPS without jumps.

(DB Genome editor) #113

[QUOTE=ailmanki;468664]That ain’t a fair comparission, first off Minecraft is extremely successful game for what it is. Despite its graphics people play the game.
We don’t want Minecraft graphics, we want clean graphics. For example the blue tinit on London Bridge aint clean at all.[/QUOTE]
You’re right, not the best choice of example seeing how popular Minecraft is… :o

But I think you know what I mean: a lot of people here are happy to play with degraded graphics (not cleaner, but low-rez, texture-less, etc…) because for them high FPS is the most important thing, they would be happy to play blockout maps with hitbox-shaped characters. I’m not saying that’s wrong, it’s a personal preference. But you would not present your game like that to the public because appearances matter to the average Joe on the street.

From a design point of view, you can’t dismiss aesthetics as irrelevant if you want your game to appeal to the masses.

(Erkin31) #114

I think that it’s possible to make the majority of movements enough aesthetics (for the masses) with some animations (but with animations which have no influence on the gameplay).
Even the consecutive jumps could be aesthetics with the animations of character conceived to link jumps between them.

(Samurai.) #115

[QUOTE=.FROST.;468651]
Games with CS 1.6 graphics, played on a CRT monitor, plugged into a SLI multi GPU setup, in order to get 2000frames and a game, that strongly encourages bunny-hopping and rocket-jumping; I guess that’s exactly what the audience of 2014 is waiting for, especially those casual, hat-buying, guys wich basically pay for the whole show.

I mean why would people, which care so much about the looks of their weapons, that they’d even pay money for new and exclusive skins, care how a game looks? Sounds completely ridiculous right?

In the alpha we may have 90% semi-, wanna-be-, and actual pro gamers. The moment XT goes live there will be 90% casuals and 10% ambitous players and of those 10% only a small percentage will actually buy stuff, cause they don’t care how their weapons look, right? They just want to play the game, they don’t care for all that fancy pay-stuff, that let’s them play this game in the first place.[/QUOTE]

I am a little confused at the direction of your post. I am going to try and explain my response in as brief terms as i can manage…

The way i see it is that there are two types of graphical elements to the game if you simplify things:

[ol]
[li]The visual aesthetics of the game (Texture quality of models/environments etc that you can change in the menu)[/li][li]Game play aesthetics (what the game looks like due to game play features - abilities, movement, shooting etc which you cannot change as they are fixed by the game)[/li][/ol]

It seems from the way i am reading your post that you are mixing up advanced movement (which this thread is about) having a direct negative correlation on the aesthetics of the game (graphic quality) which just doesn’t make sense.

Example: The Crysis Games - They have very high visual aesthetics quality but also introduce some crazy game play aesthetics like jumping super great distances, speeding around the map etc. They attracted mostly or entirely a casual player base but still introduced very advanced movement systems.

My point is that the visual aesthetics of the game (which the mass player base will be interested in) should not decline in any way due to the game play aesthetics (which the smaller more niche player base is more interested in) … so why can’t we have the best of both worlds combined of advanced movement system + high quality visual graphics to satisfy both groups? Also as the visual aesthetics are changeable in the menu, you further satisfy those who want lower performance orientated graphics by allowing room for tweaking (with boundaries).

(.FROST.) #116

[QUOTE=Samurai.;468743]I am a little confused at the direction of your post. I am going to try and explain my response in as brief terms as i can manage…

The way i see it is that there are two types of graphical elements to the game if you simplify things:

[ol]
[li]The visual aesthetics of the game (Texture quality of models/environments etc that you can change in the menu)[/li][li]Game play aesthetics (what the game looks like due to game play features - abilities, movement, shooting etc which you cannot change as they are fixed by the game)[/li][/ol]

It seems from the way i am reading your post that you are mixing up advanced movement (which this thread is about) having a direct negative correlation on the aesthetics of the game (graphic quality) which just doesn’t make sense.

Example: The Crysis Games - They have very high visual aesthetics quality but also introduce some crazy game play aesthetics like jumping super great distances, speeding around the map etc. They attracted mostly or entirely a casual player base but still introduced very advanced movement systems.

My point is that the visual aesthetics of the game (which the mass player base will be interested in) should not decline in any way due to the game play aesthetics (which the smaller more niche player base is more interested in) … so why can’t we have the best of both worlds combined of advanced movement system + high quality visual graphics?[/QUOTE]

I understand your perception of my reply and I understand, that it appears to mix up two not really related things, but that was not my intention; so I’ll explain how it was meant.

Yes, the mere graphics(textures and 3D models) are one part of the overall aesthetics, and the movement/animation of characters a completely different one. With my example I just wanted to to say, we aren’t all purist enough to appreciate the game mechanics exclusively, without careing for the rest; i.e. if it fits the game, or if it looks aweful, or if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the game. Yet I think some understood what I meant, even though my example was a bit poor.

Thanx for the lesson
kiss kiss

PS: Crysis is another good example for a coherent style, where the movement system and the graphics are also part of the overall aesthetics and also contribute to the story. And even though I played neither of the Crysis games, I’d say, that’s exactly what would be needed, if SD is planning to expand XT’s movement system, something, that is part of the story and makes sense in the world of XT.

(Runeforce) #117

Oh goodie! Another chance to show my circle-strafe-ramp-jumping video :slight_smile: (And I love the music.)

//youtu.be/AeDA15h_sjw

Do it!

(I can’t wait to try out that jump on refinery! Would make a good surprise attack.)

(Samurai.) #118

Yeah i agree and i find that the story is something that is very vague at the moment in Xt… we all have a basic background story with the merc’s and CDA sides and something about stealing data … but really the storyline needs to be clearly defined with detail so that players know the context/atmostphere/feel of the game without thinking about it and then that would provide boundaries for what’s possible in the Xt world.

The question is: should the story/setting dictate game play features or should the game play features be prioritized and the story adjusted around this to make it fit in?

For me personally I’d rather see whatever game play features we want implemented into the game for the sole reason of enjoyment and then adjust the story around these features to give it meaning / semi-believable context for those who need it to fit in.

p.s. @Runeforce’s video, seeing Slipgate (or any ETQW map) makes me want open, unrestricted map designs back again. Its so crazy how restricted/narrow/built up urban environments we currently have in Xt, Camden is the closest we have to my ideal map design, just wish they could make every map combine urban elements with more open unrestricted natural envornments that give large open spaces but that’s all for another topic.

(rookie1) #119

It’s a 3rd person view but I realy like the smoothness of movements in it
[video=youtube_share;vihbcL_JJJ0]http://youtu.be/vihbcL_JJJ0[/video]

(.FROST.) #120

[QUOTE=rookie1;468795]It’s a 3rd person view but I realy like the smoothness of movements in it
[video=youtube_share;vihbcL_JJJ0]http://youtu.be/vihbcL_JJJ0[/video][/QUOTE]

Lol, also have that game, love it. I have all the comics from Rogue, awesome stuff. So much more cynical and dark than most of the american (mainstream)comics at that time. The game’s graphics were already vastly outdated, the day it came out(2006), but man was it fun to play. Even worked extremely well in stereo 3D(nvidia 3Dvision), if it wouldn’t have been for that darn 2D reticle, wich basically sits right between your eyes and makes it kinda annoying to play in 3D over a longer period of time*

*(older games work surprisingly well with 3Dvision, even better than current gen games, probably exactly because of the more simpler graphic/engine)