Movement Speeds

(Samniss_Arandeen) #1

I recently returned to Dirty Bomb following a spree of Team Fortress 2, and everything felt…off. The game, advertised as a fast-paced shoot-em-up multiplayer experience, actually was a lot slower than I remembered. I wondered if this was a result of being away from the game for so long, or if we’re actually being tricked into an illusion of speed, Sonic the Hedgehog style.

Since the numbers next to the little icons are the only indication of movement speed we have, and they aren’t expressed with a unit, I wanted to actually find out in real terms how fast the Mercs run. Keep in mind that this is mere speculation on my part.

We know the following:

  • Dirty Bomb runs on the Unreal Engine.
  • The Unreal Engine measures everything by the Unreal Unit. 1 Unreal Unit is exactly one centimeter.
  • We are given a simple number with no unit and a little icon next to it.
  • Dirty Bomb is still beta; most “finished” games would have a graphical indicator instead of a meaningless number for players to grasp. Maybe this means speed in in-game units?

My speculation is that the speeds given to Mercs in-game are centimeters per second. With this assumption in place, we can calculate the real speeds of the Mercs.

In-Game Speed(cm/s) x 1 km/100,000 cm x 3600 s/1 hr = Speed in km/h.

Simplified, In-Game Speed (cm/s) x 9/250 = Speed in km/h. (For those of you in Imperial countries, multiply kilometers by .62 to roughly estimate miles.)

The fastest Mercs in the game are Aura and Sparks, who run at a speed of 470. This means that with their melees out, while sprinting, they move at a top speed of 16.92 km/h (10.49 mph). Impressive compared to real-life humans, especially the fact that both of them can continue like this ad infinitum, but actually rather slow.

For the sake of comparison, a similar conversion (15/352 for those wondering) can turn Source’s Hammer Units/second into miles per hour. The TF2 Scout can run at 400 Hammer Units per second, which translates to 17.05 mph (27.49 km/h)…62% faster than Aura or Sparks sprinting with their melees out.

You know what? That’s not enough for me. I’m going to make a whole list of the Mercs from both games, with their real speeds calculated, and maybe we can see for ourselves.

Well, that’s eye-opening, now isn’t it? That’s Aura and Sparks, highlighted in the list. Look at all that stuff that’s faster than DB’s swiftest. Scout isn’t all that surprising, Demoman charging is clearly the fastest way around…but apparently the “average” speed Team Fortress classes can outpace the Fragile Speedsters of Dirty Bomb. Soldier doesn’t even need to rocket jump to escape a pursuing Proxy; and with Sniper’s greater speed compared to Vassili, he’d outmaneuver his foe in a sniper duel.

(Backuplight) #2

I just want to make an observation.

You’re a giant nerd.

↑ Also a giant nerd.

(wiski) #3

I went and played Titanfall again recently, and was shocked at how slow it felt compared to Dirty Bomb when not actively wall running.

I have no issue with the description of ‘fast-pased shooter’ being applied to Dirty Bomb. Sure, some shooters are faster than Dirty Bomb, but many more are a lot slower. Just because Dirty Bomb isn’t as fast as another fast game doesn’t mean it’s slow. Pretty sure TF2 isn’t as fast as Quake Arena, does that mean TF2 isn’t fast-paced?

(Samniss_Arandeen) #4

[quote=“Backuplight;126237”]I just want to make an observation.

You’re a giant nerd.

↑ Also a giant nerd.[/quote]
I am not a “giant” nerd, I just know where to look. And when I learn things about things, they often remind me of other similar things I already knew about other similar things.

(Amerika) #5

I even went and watched a lot of recent TF2 videos and the game just looks so slow when moving where DB feels ridiculously fast despite having a similar FoV. This makes me question if the numbers you were able to obtain for testing are 100% accurate. But I guess you haven’t and really can’t factor in the speed increase you get when doing long jumps into/off of walls which does increase your base speed temporarily but consistently depending on where you are in a map and what you’re doing and which class you’re playing.

(LifeupOmega) #6

I still find TF2 to be incredibly slow now that I’ve switched to DB, it feels incredibly floaty now - which is great, as I’m getting back into pugs and it makes murdering people even easier.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #7

I haven’t tested any of these numbers yet. This is pure speculation and number crunching on my part. Sometimes, with FoV and map scaling tricks, one game can “feel” faster than another despite being slower. It’s all about how our minds perceive it. We think we’re going so fast when longjumping and wallhopping about on Terminal, but the perception is from having pulled off said tricks.

(Ardez1) #8

Could you source your math on the Hammer units conversion? I tried to search for it but really don’t have time to go in depth right now.

EDIT: NVM I found it as I clicked save.

Hammer units are the unit of measurement used by Source Engine games. It is also used to judge the speed of objects and players in-game, mostly for competitive play. 1 Hammer unit is 1/16 of a foot (or 1.904 centimeters), and is the minimum distance the Source Engine can measure.

(Amerika) #9

I haven’t tested any of these numbers yet. This is pure speculation and number crunching on my part. Sometimes, with FoV and map scaling tricks, one game can “feel” faster than another despite being slower. It’s all about how our minds perceive it. We think we’re going so fast when longjumping and wallhopping about on Terminal, but the perception is from having pulled off said tricks.[/quote]

Yeah, that’s kind of what lead me to posting. My original thought after only reading your first few sentences was, “did your config get reset and you’re now using 70FoV instead of 100-110 and forget to check?”. But then you got into the meat of everything and I LOVE your post as it’s definitely a good topic to discuss. But due to experience with both games and simply bringing them up side by side in Youtube I do wonder if the base numbers you were able to obtain (not your work with them) are accurate. Because by simply viewing things side by side TF2 just looks/feels slow. But it’s neat how not only these game engines work but how our brains perceive things.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #10

Sources for [url=“https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dimensions”]Hammer Unit conversion.

16 Hammer Units/foot, 5280 feet/mile, 3600 seconds/hour

Character Speed (HU/s) x 1ft/16HU x 1mi/5280ft x 3600s/1hr = Character Speed (mph)

(Samniss_Arandeen) #11

I haven’t tested any of these numbers yet. This is pure speculation and number crunching on my part. Sometimes, with FoV and map scaling tricks, one game can “feel” faster than another despite being slower. It’s all about how our minds perceive it. We think we’re going so fast when longjumping and wallhopping about on Terminal, but the perception is from having pulled off said tricks.[/quote]

Yeah, that’s kind of what lead me to posting. My original thought after only reading your first few sentences was, “did your config get reset and you’re now using 70FoV instead of 100-110 and forget to check?”. But then you got into the meat of everything and I LOVE your post as it’s definitely a good topic to discuss. But due to experience with both games and simply bringing them up side by side in Youtube I do wonder if the base numbers you were able to obtain (not your work with them) are accurate. Because by simply viewing things side by side TF2 just looks/feels slow. But it’s neat how not only these game engines work but how our brains perceive things.[/quote]

Perception is a wonderful topic, and how we tend to cling to our perceptions despite having them explained in real terms would make for an interesting discussion. Of course, how is this used in game design to achieve a certain reaction in the player? Penn and Teller applied this concept to stage magic, to wonderous effect.

With that in mind, I too wonder if my numbers or even my assumption of in-game speed units are correct, but I suppose only a developer can answer that question. I think the evidence speaks strongly in my theory’s favor, but honestly, what evidence I do have is limited to my experiences in both Source and Unreal SDK, poking around back there and seeing how it all works.

(Ardez1) #12

Found an issue with your table after further research. one unreal unit didn’t equal 1cm in UE3, which DB is built on. It was made 1cm with UE4.

I found these stats for the unreal unit pre-UE4

15.3 UU per foot and 50.3 UU per meter(roughly)

This would mean that 470 speed in DB is actually something like 20.94474 mph

I could be very very wrong, as this is based on some fairly old information, but UE3 was 2004 tech(originally). And my sources could always be flawed. Pulling this from the tripwire interactive forums and the wiki links they posted.

EDIT: Still look at this a bit. Found this

UE3: 1uu == 2cm on the unrealengine wiki, so it appears to be the official number if SD hasn’t tweaked it.

Then 470 speed would be 21.0272 mph

(watsyurdeal) #13
(Amerika) #14

Welp, I guess that solves that.

(darlingClaymore) #15

What does this game have to do with TF2. Whenever I read TF2, i feel the need to remind you this is dirty bomb. I don’t like TF2, but some people do. Just don’t compare it to this game. This is a original FPS shooter, don’t need it mixed in with TF2.

(Amerika) #16

I’m confused by this. His post was entirely about how TF2 and DB compare in speed. TF2 is sometimes referred to as being pretty slow in regards to your basic move speed. DB is considered to be pretty fast by many. The post was a way of showing how the two games compare or how he thought the games compared in regards to base movement. IMO it’s a neat discussion since it’s not a post about “oh we should all play TF2” or “TF2 is so much better than DB” or “DB just destroys TF2”. It’s a discussion about mechanics and perception. I find nothing wrong with that personally and we also ended up figuring out some solid information about Dirty Bomb due to the conversation even if the information in the original post might be incorrect.