Thiefy jump

[greebo]

You wouldn't say that when you ever played Quakeworld :-)

 

Well, Quake is Quake. This is a completely different game. What's next? Double-jumping?

[New Horizon]

Agreed, that's not the main purpose of jumping. There is a small speed gain when jumping once or twice, but it won't speed you up at all on the long run, literally.

 

I can see the point of the jump-from-carpet-to-carpet issue, but jumping is definitely not intended to be used as free get-away ticket.

 

 

By changing the jump, I think they were referring more to what the original poster mentioned...giving it a tiny bit more length, and making the player feel a bit less heavy. Trying out T2, I can see what they mean.

[Irenices]

I'd just like to put my thought in on jumping from carpet to carpet to make less sound, if you think about it yeah you could do it in thief 1/2 but honestly its pretty silly if you imagine a thief jumping from one carpet to the next carpet behind a guard thinking that its not going to make as much sound, im pretty sure it would be louder than taking some careful steps across a tile floor.

[Baddcog]

Well, there is a run key to ditch guards. Much more realistic than jumping. I would never start jumping IRL if someone was chasing me, sure way to get caught.

 

Even a small boost of run helps alot.

 

I can't comment on the training gap, but to me the jump does feel a little 'heavy' too. It may have as much to do with actual player weight.

-------------

 

As far as changing settings. Not only could it be considered a 'cheat' (which in single player doesn't matter too much, although I do agree with consistancy and mission breaking) , you're only cheating yourself. Not like multiplayer where it gives an advantage over other players.

Purposely making everything easier by CVARs would just make the gameplay worse IMO.

 

Be careful too with things like gravity. If you don't know what it is best leave it alone.

 

Alot of time went into careful tweaking of everything. Changing gravity (lowering it) will probably make things bounce around like crazy, instead of goblets falling and coming to rest they could bounce back up in the air, across the room and possibly even kill you.

 

I spent alot of time tweaking the fire arrows so they had the best possible balance between direct hits on AI, splash damage on AI, effect on blasting away moveables (goblets)...

Every CVAR we tweaked had to be fine tuned with multiple other things like gravity, weight....

 

Change one thing and you could have catastrophic unknown consequences.

[Weasel]

I think part of the issue is that jumping in most video games is not realistic in any way, so a realistic portrayal ends up feeling very stunted. With that being said, I think adding just a little more oomph to running jumps would serve The Dark Mod well, as it would allow FM designers to include jumps that are a little more dramatic (without being lethal, because that's the wrong kind of dramatic). Even with a little practice under my belt, I only succeed in jumping to the awning in the training mission one out of three times. To me, it looks like the kind of jump that should be just makeable while still being fairly easy to pull off. If I had to do it in a real mission, I'd be very frustrated that I had to "cheat" to make the jump (by quicksaving and loading). The drama would be much better if I made a clean landing one out of three attempts, and had to catch the edge on the two that are currently failures.

[Ishtvan]

Physics-wise, the same gravity applies to the player that applies to other objects in the world. I'm curious if falling objects look like they fall too fast to people, or if that looks okay? There is some difference in jumping, because as the original poster pointed out, because you can tuck your legs while in the air and get a bit more time before they hit the ground if you stay tucked.

 

Also, does it feel like you fall too fast if you just walk off a ledge?

[Spitter]

Physics-wise, the same gravity applies to the player that applies to other objects in the world. I'm curious if falling objects look like they fall too fast to people, or if that looks okay?

 

Actually that's an issue I've always had with Doom 3 (and thus Darkmod) - I've always felt that the physics are too fast, even comically so. This is easiest to see if you load up Thief or Half-Life 2 or something and just start throwing stuff around and then compare it to Doom 3, everything just feels faster in Doom. I'm not sure if the physics values used in Doom 3 are more realistic, but they certainly feel less "good" and "satisfying". The physics just lack that oomph factor present in other games.

[plasticman]

Also, does it feel like you fall too fast if you just walk off a ledge?

Ooops, I meant to reply yesterday, went in game to check, but seemingly didn't make it back to the forum.

I agree everything looks faster with Doom physics. Arrows fly much faster like I think they did do in Thief, "Junk" does not fly as far when throwen. It is different but I am okay with it.

 

Falling of a ledge as well feels faster, but IMO not too fast. So everything is fine but jumping distance. Though I have to admit practising helps it a little bit.

[STiFU]

I also think jumping/falling feels a little weird. It's like the gravity acceleration is too fast, because the player drops like a wet bag once he enters the free fall. And I also tapped into the Carpet-Transfer-Jump-Trap... Ended ugly!! Just wanted to raise my hand as well here. It doesn't feel very agile/thievy yet...

 

12 years ago we discovered the strafe jump in Quakeworld, and that made us feel like we were a little bit flying. When Q3A came out, they had removed this "bug", and it was amazing how much that removed the fun from running and jumping. Actually that was the reason why our clan never moved to Q3A, we just didn't enjoy it when running and jumping and moving. It always felt kind of wrong...

 

 

I don't know which Quake 3 you've been playing, but the one I played has a whole mod called "Defrag" built around strafejumping and other tricking with the default quake 3 physics and I played it a lot...

Edited December 22, 2009 by STiFU

[Springheel]

After playing a map with some jumping puzzles, I have to say that I understand where people are coming from. Sometimes I seem to drop and fall like a stone. I wonder if there is some minimum distance you have to travel to make a running jump? Sometimes I don't feel like my two or three steps of running actually adds any forward momentum to my jump at all.

[SneakyJack]

Didnt see this thread before, so I'll just copy and paste what I posted in another thread (thanks to plasticman for the heads up)

 

One thing I noticed that really stands out after replaying all the DM missions released thus far is the quickness of the jumping. It seems far too fast in general (much like the arrow speed) and I think it could really benefit from being slowed down a tad and extended in length. I really enjoyed the slight float effect of jumping in thief 1 and 2 - if you don't understand what I mean go back to the older games and taking a running jump.. there is a very smooth arc to your jumps that made you feel much more agile than the HURGH PLUNK feeling of jumping in TDS and TDM. I think the combination of a better arc to jumping and the incredible mantling mechanics already present in The Dark Mod would help make jumping alot more solid feeling.

 

Edit - Woah, when I edit posts now its adding a metric crap-ton of random html tags on its own that I have to edit out manually or they show up in my posts. I had to edit this three times just to remove the broken line breaks it added on its own.

 

By changing the jump, I think they were referring more to what the original poster mentioned...giving it a tiny bit more length, and making the player feel a bit less heavy. Trying out T2, I can see what they mean.

 

Yeah, this!

Edited December 22, 2009 by SneakyJack

[STiFU]

 

Sometimes I don't feel like my two or three steps of running actually adds any forward momentum to my jump at all.

Hehe, sound a bit like Mirror's Edge here!! I think there is a small time of acceleration where the player is not on maximum speed, because the movement is smoothed-out. But this time shouldn't take up three steps. But your observations are still another identifier that something is not right yet.

 

Baddcog said that altering the gravity acceleration would end up in a pain of reconfiguring things. Well I guess all those values will approximately change in the ratio of  NewGravitiy/OldGravity, so the tweaking-pain could be reduced.

 

 

[etdarkb]

Well, Quake is Quake. This is a completely different game. What's next? Double-jumping?

Yes, yes, yes! But why only the `double' jumping? Give us the unlimited jumping! (Where the mapper decides, like mystical strange rooms or for the effect of the `wings of glory' artifact)

Edited December 22, 2009 by etdarkb

[New Horizon]

I don't think altering gravity would be wise at this stage. We spent years getting everything to feel right. Giving the player a bit more of a boost might help though, as long as it's not too much. Maybe the player is just too heavy.

[Springheel]

I have no problem with the standing jump; it's the running jump that feels a bit flat sometimes. In that zombie pit, I felt a bit like a Loony Toons character, soaring through the air, then suddenly dropping straight down.

 

The player's mass is only 70 though, so that seems normal.

[STiFU]

But altering the player's weight woun't change anything about the falling-speed, since an iron amboss falls just as fast as an egg... =) It would just allow him to jump higher, that is if the jumpheight is actually calculated by an upwards-directed force. If the jumpheight was predefined per config, altering the weight wouldn't change anything here. It would just influence the interaction with other physical objects.

 

Speaking about forces, is it possible in Doom 3 to create forces that influence the player's movementphysics without tricks like invisible "elevators"? If so, as long as the player is in the air, a very small constant upwards-directed force could be used to reduce the fallingspeed. The best way would really be to just change the gravity-acceleration, but I understand that it's too much trouble to go through with this... I don't know anything about the movementphysics of Doom 3 though, so I don't know what can be done either. Just throwing out ideas...

Edited December 22, 2009 by STiFU

[Springheel]

We did have a coder working on the jumping mechanics, but he disappeared before the job was fully done.

 

Don't know if these still work, but you can try them out if you'd like to tweak the settings.

 

tdm_run_jump_vel – speed of jumping when running

tdm_walk_jump_vel – speed of jumping when walking

tdm_fwd_jump_vel – amount of forward velocity to apply when jumping

tdm_min_vel_jump – set to higher value if you want to apply same jump velocity for walking and running (maybe this is not really needed)

[Springheel]

Okay, a couple hours worth of jump comparison notes!

 

Komag's Conclusion - our current settings are pretty good

 

 

Details:

 

Thief 2 Jumping:
				Dromed	Doom 3
distance (forward)	10	   120
distance (diagonal)   12	   144
height				2.5	  30
hang time			 850ms

Dark Mod Jumping:
				Dromed	Doom 3
distance			  12	   144
height				4		48
hang time			 650ms

 

I spent a lot of time carefully maxing out jump heights and distances as best I could, so I believe the above table to be pretty accurate.

 

As you can see, Dark Mod jumping is a LOT higher than Thief 2 jumping! It's true, I was very careful measuring! Not sure if that's an issue or not though, since what's most important is how it feels to us in our situation for our game play.

 

Also, our "hang time" is significantly less than Thief 2, and this does indeed lead to our jumps feeling smaller in a sense. But now that the maximum jump distance is equivalent for both games, the hang time is less of an issue. Adjusting gravity to increase hang time would adversely affect all the other physics in the game, which doesn't sound like a good idea. So we'll probably just have to live with the somewhat faster jumping behavior in Dark Mod.

 

Sideways jumping appears to be the same as forwards, which, however unrealistic, is acceptable to me for game play purposes. I could also accept shorter sideways jumps. Either way.

 

Overall I'm satisfied with the current settings, EXCEPT that backwards jumping seems too fast/far/powerful. Not sure whether it was implemented for the backwards movement jump boost to be lessened (or removed altogether) separately from the forward movement jump boost.

[Springheel]

This could be affecting people's experience as well:

 

I added a first draft implementation for the "jump stamina". With this in place, the player will have to wait 4 seconds after a jump to get the full forward velocity again. Between 0 and 4 seconds, the additional forward velocity is multiplied by 0.4 in the "worst" case.

 

I also added a backwards jump multiplier (= 1/2 of the maximum forward impulse).

[STiFU]

Hehe I have always been wondering whether I just feel like I am jumping faster/further diagonally in T2 or if it is really the case. Now I finally have the answer... =)

 

Thanks for those detailed posts. The lower hangtime perfectly explains the awkwardness of TDM-jumping. That's basically what I was going at... Raising the hangtime and lowering the forward-velocity in order to keep the current maximum jump distance, would make it feel a lot smoother. The jump distance could be raised a little as well though, from what I see of the previous posts... But raising the hangtime is only possible via one of the two methods I posted above I guess, one of them being not an option for the team. And the other maybe can't be realized in Doom 3... *hoping for the best*

 

The variables you posted aren't going to be of much use to me, since my main concern is really the hangtime.

 

Stamina, huh? So that's how you prevent people from strafe-jumping!! But you can still somehow gain a major speedboost by jumping on uneven surfaces. I am not quite sure how it works and it's hard to reproduce, but I assume it happens when you land on a non-horizontal surface facing the direction of the jump and directly jumping again. My second theory on this would be, that the stamina-timer is not reset to 4 after every jump, but only started once instead, so that eventually a much faster jump will occur after a few slow jumps.

Edited December 22, 2009 by STiFU

[stumpy]

wasn't there a bug in thief with the jumping that would make you do a super jump every so often.

[Unwanted Guest]

wasn't there a bug in thief with the jumping that would make you do a super jump every so often.

 

 

At times, you would be suddenly repelled by something smack into something else and take a casuality.

 

 

To add my voice also, played all the games, and the hangtime does seem a little short - feel like a lead ballon in a circus! But besides that, what a great accomplishment overall to the mod!!

 

M

[holaareola]

I'm with those that feel that the jump is too leaden.

 

But that's Doom3 gravity acceleration for you... it's not the gravity amount or the speed and height of the jump that are at fault here. It was what made Doom3 the first id game that didn't handle that well for me. I can understand your point about it being too late for adjustment though, New Horizon.

Edited December 24, 2009 by holaareola

[New Horizon]

I'm with those that feel that the jump is too leaden.

 

But that's Doom3 gravity acceleration for you... it's not the gravity amount or the speed and height of the jump that are at fault here. It was what made Doom3 the first id game that didn't handle that well for me. I can understand your point about it being too late for adjustment though, New Horizon.

 

I think we had adjusted gravity a bit earlier on, so it's not exactly the same as in D3...it's just that adjusting it especially for the jump would be a bit of overkill by this point. Probably another way it can be addressed though.

[_Atti_]

I too, think there's something with jumping , but i think the problem is not with the jump itself but more because we're not used to the perspective of the engine. Ceiling sometimes feel too low like i should jump cautiosly being afraid of hitting it. And sometimes jumping too soon because i cant figure it correctly from which position the jump happens- being afraid of stepping down from a carpet before the jump.