S.M.A.R.T system

(Qhullu) #1

hello!

Rahdos’ posts here made me interested in what this game will be like, and i have some questions about the movement system he told me would better be answered here.

i understand that while there is a SMART button that lets you parkour across the terrain automatically, it is faster to do that manually with sprint, crouch and jump buttons. which i guess means that for example, if you jump so that you will hit the wall you want to climb at the apex of your jump, you will climb it faster than you would otherwise.

  • are these actions (wall climbing, sliding etc?) preset animations or can you affect them slightly? one example of how this could be implemented is when climbing up a wall you press ‘A’ (assuming wasd) to move slightly to the left, press ‘S’ to slow down slightly, or a combination of them, tap ‘S’ and then ‘W’ to pause for a moment. the things you do would also affect your momentum when you reach the top and their effectiveness would obviously depend on when in relation to climbing action they are done. while this won’t probably matter on consoles, on pc against people with good aim any total predictability in the movement system is a death sentence.

  • can you cancel the actions (stop sliding, stop climbing etc?)?

  • are there “recovery times”? can i for example during a firefight with someone, slide towards some small object i know is to my side, jump over it, crouch to disappear behind it for an instant, and appear from either side i choose, all in one smooth movement without any pauses or delays.

  • will there be differences between the movement systems on pc and consoles, and what will they be? i know nothing specific has probably even been decided yet, but just want to make sure you realize that a movement system that results in targets that can be aimed at with a gamepad, will make the gameplay on pc eventually boring.

  • will there be wallrunning and walljumps?

(Exedore) #2

As Rahdo and Bezzy are away this week (PAX and holiday, respectively), I’ll try to answer what I can. Please keep in mind that there’s quite a ways to go yet!

- are these actions (wall climbing, sliding etc?) preset animations or can you affect them slightly?
They are definitely not preset animations, or we wouldn’t think this system is anywhere near as neat as it is! I’m not the one to get into the specifics on dynamic adjustments, but I’ll have to point Bezzy to this thread when he gets back as I know he lays awake at nights thinking of such things.

- can you cancel the actions (stop sliding, stop climbing etc?)?
For most actions you can, but we try to keep it somewhat realistic (once you choose to slide, you slide for better or for worse).

- are there “recovery times”?
Again, definitely not. As movement is such a key part to our game, we decided very early on to do without mechanisms like stamina bars and their ilk that would ultimately limit how much the system gets used. Unless I’ve interpreted your question wrong? I see quite a bit of what you’re describing in the playtests we do here, now that we’ve been playing for a while.

I hope that helps, sorry but I’ll have to leave the last couple to more relevant people.
:stroggtapir:

(darthmob) #3

Nice to see some new questions!

  • can you cancel the actions (stop sliding, stop climbing etc?)?
    It has been said in one of the threads that you can cancel them at any time. That is one thing which always annoys me in CoD. When you mantle over something you always have to wait until the animation is finished and by then it’s always too late. ^^
(radiator) #4

and according to what I’ve read in the forum, if your right hand is free during any move, you can shoot. and the same with the left with reloading. hope it’s true, that’s so cool. :stroggbanana:

(aimology) #5

Being able to stop would be awesome. I always hated the “auto” climb in call of duty. If you accidentally hit jump or pressed up against a wall right as you’re entering a fight, it wold take you up the wall… Problem is if someone is shooting at you, you couldnt stop cause the computer did it automatically. Its very stupid. Especially when you didnt wanna climb the wall in the first place.

(tokamak) #6

Well you would love Raven Shield then, when you climb a ladder, you’re first going to take a while to strap the gun on your back, make sure it’s strapped tight, re-check, and then initiate the climb all the while you can’t do anything.

(deadlights) #7

looks good, nice questions and ty for the reply Ex

(needforWeed) #8

Is this S.M.A.R.T basically the same thing we have already seen in Assassins Creed?

(Exedore) #9

I would say it’s similar ‘in spirit’, but not in implementation.

The Spirit: If you’re holding the button down and running along, you will vault over things and climb up much like Altair in Assassin’s Creed, without the whole slower purely vertical climbing stuff. We also have the tweaks of it changing slightly by where you aim as we have the benefit of being first person; see the sliding under the laser or over the top of the booth example from the recent press presentation reviews.

The Implementation: As I’ve posted above, we don’t use canned animations whereas Assassin’s Creed certainly does (not 100% on that, but as an ex Ubi Montreal employee I’d call it a very educated guess). It lets us in level design work with ranges for geometry rather than rigidly fixed values, which in my view lets the environment seem a lot more real while still playable. Aaaaand it makes my life a whole lot easier! :cool:

(Qhullu) #10

thanks for the replies!

yea allowing canceling the slide immediately after starting it would probably even look a bit silly, but is the slide always a specific length? can you get up after a certain length, or keep sliding for a while longer if you so choose? also, do you slide faster if you start sliding while sprinting?

[QUOTE=Exedore;197397]
- are there “recovery times”?
Again, definitely not. As movement is such a key part to our game, we decided very early on to do without mechanisms like stamina bars and their ilk that would ultimately limit how much the system gets used. Unless I’ve interpreted your question wrong? I see quite a bit of what you’re describing in the playtests we do here, now that we’ve been playing for a while.[/quote]
i meant that can you land a jump straight into a slide or jump straight from a slide for example?

i understand the reasons for the decision to not include stamina bars but this makes me think that sprint is pretty much unlimited and holding it while climbing a wall for example won’t affect the speed, otherwise everyone would just always hold down sprint while doing everything. also this brings to mind that i read you can’t shoot while sprinting at least by default, which makes me sad because in rtcw/et sprint (or actually having some stamina left) plays a big tactical role in close range firefights. and i fear making sprint useless during firefights makes the firefights unnecessarily one dimensional though i understand the predicament, without a stamina bar, everyone would just sprint most of the time. in rtcw/et, the sprint button was more like a ‘push a little harder’ button.

(Exedore) #11

I’m going to preface my response again that this is all still in development, which is why we like these discussions! So please don’t be taking this as ‘final’.

…is the slide always a specific length? can you get up after a certain length, or keep sliding for a while longer if you so choose? also, do you slide faster if you start sliding while sprinting?

The slides currently are specific lengths depending on your body type, this is done to help maximize the differentiation of said types (agile characters have a much longer slide than heavy ones).

i meant that can you land a jump straight into a slide or jump straight from a slide for example?

You can indeed land a jump straight into a slide, and that is actually one of our more skill-based mechanics… you can jump from a height that would normally hurt you, but if you can time a slide well on your landing you won’t take any damage.

For your final point, climbing does affect your speed; balancing the risk vs. reward for using the more extreme movement capabilities is something we’ve been tuning for quite a while now, and we’ll definitely keep tuning right up until release.

To address your last point, I can honestly say that we’ve playtested a lot and will continue to do so, and the close-range firefights are anything but one-dimensional… for me, there’s really not much about this game that is one-dimensional, but ultimately all I can say is I hope you all agree come Spring next year.

(DarkangelUK) #12

Expanding on the recovery, will we have the same pause from a high jump that we have in the likes of ET? From a certain height you can hit the ground and keep running, but too high and you get a slight pause when landing and a small health decrease?

ET:QW seemed to have air drag, you could reach a certain speed and not go any faster (was around the 720ups area), are the same restrictions in place here? Will using the SMART button to leap an object have a small speed cost or will what ever pace you’re moving at be retained?

Are the usual idtech4 engine traits in place, ground acceleration for circle jumps, air acceleration (you could get a constant acceleration when using the parachute in ET:QW), ramping up slopes etc?

(Qhullu) #13

sounds cool!

oh i didn’t mean one dimensional in general , only the movement speed, i mean it’s very easy to track targets with a mouse when you know exactly how fast they can move. in rtcw/et, when someone has saved their stamina, they can move at a speed that throws of your aim enough to be a meaningful thing to do. you need to actually aim and pay attention instead of tracking purely with instinct learned through repetition.

which brings to mind strafe jumping, which i read won’t be included, which is a shame in my opinion. it would make another issue with teams attacking teams with a respawn system better. because there is an absolute minimum time it will take a member of the attacking team to reach a certain place in a map after spawn, the defending team knows exactly when to expect them, but with strafejumping someone can make it there fast enough to catch the defense with their pants down so to speak.

also strafejumping, even though it is supposedly a “bug”, actually has a basis in reality. if you were carrying a gun that weights as much as you do, and physical strength wasn’t an issue, you could use it to pick up speed pretty much exactly the same way as you do when strafejumping. the same principle could also be applied to the stuff your parkour system enables people to do, to enable them to be even more dynamic with their movement. and it would not need to affect the rest of the movement system at all, it would just be another layer of skill to learn in addition to the rest of the things you can learn.

(Sssaap) #14

Now seeing how you seem to cheer the sliding(well I think there are pros and cons on a long slide) will there be areas/shortcuts which are only accessable via sliding? Like thinner walls (1m max) with holes you can slide through?

(shibbyuk) #15

Q: Will a Donald O’Connor run-up-the-wall backflip be possible? :slight_smile: What a great tribute; eat your heart out parkourers, Don was doing it in the 50s :wink:

(Bezzy) #16

As any angry parkour nerd will tell you, “FLIPS AREN’T PARKOUR!”. :slight_smile:

(-SSF-Sage) #17

How am I so sure, that the parkour thing will become a similar phenomenom as trickjumping is. Several servers and maps dedicated for parkouring. S.M.A.R.T. allowed for beginner parkouring servers. xD

(DarkangelUK) #18

I timerun style mod similar to Quake 3’s DeFrag would be awesome. Could include speedcapture as well.

(10chankc2) #19

Is there a physics system that affects the SMART system, sliding upwards was stupid in far cry 2.

(tokamak) #20

I would love to see someone trying to slide up a ramp turn into a ragdoll indeed.

Of course handing out such huge penalties for making ‘wrong’ SMART moves would break the gameplay.

But it does bring the question: How does the SMART button react to commands that are simply impossible?