Wallwalking
NurEinMensch
Join Date: 2003-02-26 Member: 14056Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-02-26 Member: 14056Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">How will it be handled?</div>In NS 1 when you crawl up a wall or ceiling as a skulk your view still fixed to the orientation of the floor. Will NS 2 have AvP style wallwalking, where the view changes to the orientation of whatever surface you're currently walking on? At least as an option this would be great IMHO. I always found it odd how you run along the ceiling with your back turning upwards. In AvP/AvP2 this greatly enhanced the immersion of being an Alien. Of course I see how it would be confusing for some people, so there needs to be an option to enable/disable this feature.
Comments
There are two camps. Some believe it is awesome and should be in. Some believe it is overrated and ups the initial difficulty curve with not enough benefit.
I personally am in camp 2. However, there have been videos of them testing view rotation out.
My personal gripe is it can make you really really disoriented. Hopefully the map makers will give us clues or the UI can give a good idea of which way is down, but wall transferring, especially around corners, can be disorienting and really tough to wrap your mind around. Perhaps a toggleable system would be best.
Everyone agrees that the push a button, cling to the wall system is a must to make wall walking easier so we can stay on and navigate corners that jut out better.
See this thread for another idea:
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=104610" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=104610</a>
They did it in tremulous and its just really annoying, its another button to hit while trying to dodge bullets and get near the enemy.
In the end, it was a loooot better than NS1's wallwalking I say. People here like to ###### about needing skill based movement, AvP2 wallwalking was skill based movement. There was a huge learning curve, and those who mastered it weren't suddenly godly, but a lot better players nonetheless.
Either way, this was button activated, so just toggling wallwalk to a button made it quick and easy to either hug walls or ignore them, great for when you want to leap down a hall but not get attached to walls you bumped into. I'd still be playing AvP2 today if the netcode wasn't such utter crap.
In the end, it was a loooot better than NS1's wallwalking I say. People here like to ###### about needing skill based movement, AvP2 wallwalking was skill based movement. There was a huge learning curve, and those who mastered it weren't suddenly godly, but a lot better players nonetheless.
Either way, this was button activated, so just toggling wallwalk to a button made it quick and easy to either hug walls or ignore them, great for when you want to leap down a hall but not get attached to walls you bumped into. I'd still be playing AvP2 today if the netcode wasn't such utter crap.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I haven't played the mp, but I found the wallwalking far less responsive than let's say bhop. It's more inuitive sure, but at least I didn't have the precise touch NS has. I ended up sticking to the walls too much, couldn't really navigate clearly and took corners and such I didn't want to. I don't know how it would work at ns speeds though. With some fine tuning it might turn out just fine as a part of the movement system.
Tremulous = bad view rotation code. =[ It is perhaps the most singular game that made me hate view rotation. AvP2 did a little to bring it back to at least reasonable.
I like the mix. Let the players toggle view rotation on or off.
I don't like the pulsing idea. Too much excessive UI imho. Instead, the mappers will have to make the floor unique. Most mappers do this already, using very specific textures to show with is the typical path people would take. Somewhere I think there were ideas on a little arrow in your UI that showed which way was down, can't remember if it was a suggestion or implemented.
The tricky part is the vent system. If the vents are fairly tight, we don't want to suddenly start view rotating like crazy. This is where a button to lock onto walls can come in. Of course, leave a setting so that there's auto attach if you're running out of fingers at this point.
If I remember correctly, NS1 has a system that if you press the crouch button, you're locked to the wall/ceiling, making navigating certain corner easier. This could also be a solution, using auto-wall climbing but the crouch can help hold you tighter to the walls.
In the end, it was a loooot better than NS1's wallwalking I say. People here like to ###### about needing skill based movement, AvP2 wallwalking was skill based movement. There was a huge learning curve, and those who mastered it weren't suddenly godly, but a lot better players nonetheless.
Either way, this was button activated, so just toggling wallwalk to a button made it quick and easy to either hug walls or ignore them, great for when you want to leap down a hall but not get attached to walls you bumped into. I'd still be playing AvP2 today if the netcode wasn't such utter crap.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
jes. maybe, maybe not, but aliens are in AVP faster, stronger, stealthier and have more hp as a skulk. so, no.
and, however, in avp you just need to learn 1 alien skills, just 1 thing to master.
in NS, you have 5 aliens, a resource system, hives, deadly marine weapons, marines, cambers, etc etc.
its like comparing delicius-apple-cake whit an apple.
ever played tremuolus? try wall walking there....
as all can see: im in camp 2.
but i really think that it should made easier to come around edges in NS.
how about crouch? crouch dont have any mean to skulks, its just another bottum, but. what when you cling on a wall, hit crouch once, and you cant fall of it! eccept you jump. whitout speed limitations.
you just cant leave the wall, on the limit you would fall off is a barrier.
The basic view rotation isn't bad thing, but combined with even a little flawed movement control and you're in trouble here and there. It's really nasty for example when you stick to a wall you weren't planning to stick. At that point you'll both lose some potential time and the direction totally. I don't think it'll be that much of a problem if the control system and feel stay somewhat similar to ns.
Now all this is not to be confused with the movement control of wallwalking, which I think is somewhat lacking in NS. Maybe I got spoiled playing AvP/AvP2, but the wallwalking there is much more straight forward. In NS you get stuck at corners and obstacles, or lose contact with the surface too easy imo.
Now all this is not to be confused with the movement control of wallwalking, which I think is somewhat lacking in NS. Maybe I got spoiled playing AvP/AvP2, but the wallwalking there is much more straight forward. In NS you get stuck at corners and obstacles, or lose contact with the surface too easy imo.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually taking corners could be easier, and wall pounce could have a little more force, but the view rotation as a skill factor sounds a little weird to me. IMHO the game shouldn't be about mastering the UI, but mastering the methods given to the team. A limited UI isn't that bad (starcraft for example), but it still has to be really responsive and reliable. That's where the AvP2 went a little wrong if you ask me. I simply couldn't be sure how the view rotation would act while navigating over rough surface and obstacles. I guess I might learn it if played it more though.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In watching that video I noticed two things that are missing that are pretty essential for wallwalking to actually work well. AvP2 had both of them:
A) Visual cue as to where the ground is. AvP2 has little blue markers that show around the edge of your screen when wallwalking. When you're on the ground they're both merged at the bottom middle of the screen. If you're on a 90 degree wall, they're in the middle of the sides of your screen. If you're on a 45 degree angle backwards then they're on the sides near the top. If you're hanging off the roof then they're both in the middle of the top. Using these gives the player a very useful cue as to how they're oriented, which is especially useful if there's no obvious ground visible which is often the case in organic environments like hives where the wall looks pretty much the same as the floor or roof.
B) View tending back towards ground-down after detaching from a wall. Whilst airborne after having jumped off a wall or roof, the player's view should re-orient to the angle of the surface the player is about to land on, most frequently the ground. Not doing this results in a horribly jarring jerk as your view quickly spins around to orient to the ground you've just landed on. In AvP2 this happens somewhat frequently.
Ideally the view would rotate to match the angle of whatever you're landing on. So if you jumped from one wall in a narrow corridor to another, your view would rotate from -90 to 90. This would take a lot of trickery to get right, and wouldn't work every time considering player air control. In AvP2 your view would start to rotate towards 0 (ground-down) as soon as you detached from the first wall, then snap to 90 as you land on the other wall.
Reduced: 62% of original size [ 1020 x 708 ] - Click to view full image
I created this handy-dandy diagram of what I mean.
Another important thing is to have the angle of the surface to which the player is adhering is formed of an average of the normal on the surface/surfaces under the player, not the point under the player's origin, or another single attachment point. This is important to prevent the player's view spazzing out when they pass over a tiny bit of detail brushwork. The view should only change for major surface angle changes.
View rotation is a subject on which I'm very passionate, having mastered AvP2's view rotation and being well aware of its shortcomings.
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
--Scythe--
what does it bring to the gameplay to enhance it? eccept easier skulk killing for the marines?
Also note that the AvP2 maps are a bit different than the NS maps. It may not work quite as well with you re-orienting as you round that pipe. Then again, maybe it will.
They were both on older engines, much like NS1. In these engines there's a harsh graphical limit, which leads to much flat architecture on the walls and ceiling. This is actually perfect for wall-walking. But any Source and other next-gen game requires much higher visuals, which generally much almost infinitely higher physical detail. It will be hard enough to manage a wall-walking system in such environments; mappers will likely have to clip the hell out of their maps. Even so, there will almost surely be more 3d architecture to navigate, and more 3d architecture means that view rotation becomes that much more difficult to manage.
That and in the AvP games it was much easier to keep sticking to the walls when taking corners and going around edges.
They were both on older engines, much like NS1. In these engines there's a harsh graphical limit, which leads to much flat architecture on the walls and ceiling. This is actually perfect for wall-walking. But any Source and other next-gen game requires much higher visuals, which generally much almost infinitely higher physical detail. It will be hard enough to manage a wall-walking system in such environments; mappers will likely have to clip the hell out of their maps. Even so, there will almost surely be more 3d architecture to navigate, and more 3d architecture means that view rotation becomes that much more difficult to manage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A new engine doesn't mean there's gonna be extra architecture. I mean, no map designer's gonna put a billion little nobs or whatnot sticking out of his walls. Besides, these new maps for games like CS:S that add extra stuff just to make it look cooler ultimately make the game less fun. The barrels in CS:S are a perfect example, NO ONE WANTS THEM THERE, they push you back and get you killed and make for very annoying roadblocks that don't respond correctly to physics. They do make the map cooler though.
Anyway, just saying the maps in NS2 with better lightning, higher res textures, and various new rendering techniques like normal mapping or whatnot will look plenty good without adding extra architecture.
Mappers can definitely clip out everything, and I'm sure we will, but time will tell if it will look decent or work properly. TF2 is a great example of clipped out maps. Although most players can never tell, their maps are clipped out so hardcore that you pretty much won't get snagged on anything, anywhere. It means that the playable space is very boxy (so smooth walls), while looking very detailed.
The problem arises for NS2 when player models will be walking along these such things.
To control the skulk on walls was/is very hard. I hope it will be easier to manage.
But, "push-a-button" to activate wallwalking like Avp 1/2 isnt a good idea, because ..
Situations like, a fight between aliens and marines in a room .. i want to concentrate me on the fight, and not on the "activating" to climb on walls.
They will find a good way, wont they?
That and in the AvP games it was much easier to keep sticking to the walls when taking corners and going around edges.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hmm yes, but i found it confusing if you stop pressing the "climb" button.
I like the way in NS, you don't need to press something, maybe the UW-Team can make an option for "[true/flase] Enable View rotating"
This is the best way i guess.
Man mein englisch ist aber eingerostet *g*.
However, it is evident there are some concerns here:
1) Wall-walking behavior in close spaces (vents) causes unnecessary disorientation.
2) Getting 'stuck' to the wall when it isn't intended (i.e. leaping at human and stopping short because you grazed wall).
3) General confusion and disorientation.
I wouldn't want walk-walking if these problems weren't resolved. They'd probably create more of a burden than a feature. Fortunately, I think we can fix these problems with some careful implementation.
1) When close to a sharp angle, your 'ground' axis should default to the closest of the actual gravity ground axis. In essence, it means if you are in a vent with all 4 sides surrounding you, you cannot walk on them, defaulting to the ground instead. However if the vents were made larger, you could wall-walk on them (mapper could make this distinction by the size they give vents).
2) You cannot stick to walls by making light contact with a wall. To stick to a wall, you must leap directly towards it or approach the wall from the ground and walk upwards. Once 'on' the wall, one can simply walk and stay attached without problems. Getting off the wall can be done by jumping (to which your angle would be perpendicular to the wall surface).
3) An invisible barrier should be put into place which allows players to be walking on a surface even if they are not completely touching (hardly noticeable). This will make wall-walking very smooth in even the roughest of map terrain.
4) Rotation of the player camera should be a toggled feature, allowing newer players to disable if they desire.
5) The angle perpendicular to the wall is estimated by not one but several samplings from nearby surfaces to prevent very rough and potentially buggy wall-walking. Like in AvP2, the decent to climbing a wall won't be a sudden jerk to the left but a gradual rotation of the camera as you move from the ground to the wall.
With these in place, I don't think anyone will have any problems. Technically if done correctly, it would be easy enough to ignore it altogether, but at the same time, it might prove quite advantageous.