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Conveying A Sense Of Weight And Movement Options


Mr Mike

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Is it possible to have to mouse sensitivity decreased when carrying an object? The heavier the object the more it is decreased. I think this would go some way into giving the object a sense of weight as more effort is required to adjust your view. This could also be used to enhance believability of swimming etc.

 

Also, I really would like the ability to have a free look modifier whilst maintaining movement in a particular direction. Operation Flashpoint/Armed Assault do this with the ALT key if you know that game. :)

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As much as I'd like to see decreased sensitivity when carrying objects, I gather most other people don't seem to want that, so it likely won't be in vanilla TDM.

 

We have no plans for a free-look modifier at this time, but maybe that could be implemented later on down the road.

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As much as I'd like to see decreased sensitivity when carrying objects, I gather most other people don't seem to want that, so it likely won't be in vanilla TDM.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it on Ishtvan's to-do list? I'd like to have that feature as well.

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Maybe it's not crucial for gameplay purposes and but lack of this is great immersion breaker. The best example are "dancing" rag doll bodies - you can do with them whatever you like, just as if they had no mass at all.

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We plan to slow down *movement* while carrying heavy objects, but not looking around. Why should carrying a heavy crate mean you can't look side to side as quickly?

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I would argue that you shouldn't be able to move the crate infinitely fast.

 

If the crate is always in the center of your view AND you can move the view infinitely fast, then you can move the crate infinitely fast.

 

Ergo, I think either we should slow down the view, or not always have the crate in the center. My personal preference would be to allow the player to move their view as fast as they want, within 90 degrees of the crate, and have the crate move toward the center of the view at a speed determined by its mass.

 

I think capping the speed of the crate when you let go isn't a valid way of preventing you from throwing it too far.

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Maybe it's not crucial for gameplay purposes and but lack of this is great immersion breaker.

 

Oh? So when playing the original Thief games, you pick up a crate and think "Damn, I can still move the view around without my mouse sensitivity being artifically adjusted in order to simulate the mass of the crate. This sucks!"?

 

EDIT: Actually, I can't even think of how this applied to the original games, since they didn't use the Half-life "hover in front of your face" carrying system at all. Are you referring to the current TDM implementation?

 

The best example are "dancing" rag doll bodies - you can do with them whatever you like, just as if they had no mass at all.

 

That's something completely different, the ragdoll behaviour is determined by the physics engine, and relies on appropriate masses being set for the joints. This does not affect the controls of the game in any way.

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Maybe it's not crucial for gameplay purposes and but lack of this is great immersion breaker.

 

How can this be such a "big immersion breaker"? Since a lot of people don't even realize it, it can't be THAT big of a problem, and in fact I think that there are enough people who would consider it an immersion breaker if it were included. Like me.

Gerhard

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Oh? So when playing the original Thief games, you pick up a crate and think "Damn, I can still move the view around without my mouse sensitivity being artifically adjusted in order to simulate the mass of the crate. This sucks!"?
I can't remember... In Thief, when you pick up a crate, doesn't it teleport out of existance so there's only an icon showing? If it doesn't physically exist in the game world, spinning around infinitely fast doesn't make it move infinitely fast, so it's not as immersion-breaking.

 

How can this be such a "big immersion breaker"? Since a lot of people don't even realize it, it can't be THAT big of a problem, and in fact I think that there are enough people who would consider it an immersion breaker if it were included. Like me.
I certainly noticed it. And it does have big problems... for example, weren't we talking about capping impulses because of problems with people spinning heavy objects around and killing people with them or something?
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I can't remember... In Thief, when you pick up a crate, doesn't it teleport out of existance so there's only an icon showing? If it doesn't physically exist in the game world, spinning around infinitely fast doesn't make it move infinitely fast, so it's not as immersion-breaking.

 

See my edit in reply to PinkDot.

 

Personally I am in favour of the delayed-move scenario you mentioned in order to avoid the infinite velocity problem. Adjusting the mouse sensitivity would just be infuriating.

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I wasn't clear, I think - I meant the speed of manipulating the object you are holding (speed of rotating), should depend on its mass. I wasn't thinking about turning player itself - that never bothered me.

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This is a sticky situation.

 

On the one hand, it is hard to believe that you can move heavy objects around at the high velocities you whip yor mouse view around. On the other hand, doing things like slowing down the mouse sensitivity and making the object slowly drag along behind where you're looking make the interface feel non-responsive and clunky IMO.

 

That's why for the first iteration, our solution is to cap all impulses when it collides with things while you're holding it. It's kind of a psuedo-realistic system in that it abstractly lets you put the item wherever you want without having to wait for it to slowly drag across the screen (which would be bad for gameplay IMO), but the item you're holding still behaves realistically in physical interactions with other items.

 

This capping is already done for rigid bodies, and it's not just when you let go, it's whenever you're holding it and it collides with anything else, it acts as if it had the max velocity you could push it at. This hasn't yet been applied to AF's, because there were some problems that made the joints on the AF freeze up against the joint friction when I tried to cap an AF's velocity. We still intend to do something about dragging AF's, it just hasn't been done yet.

 

I'm open to trying out the system where the object lags behind your view based on its mass. I don't imagine liking it, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

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I wasn't clear, I think - I meant the speed of manipulating the object you are holding (speed of rotating), should depend on its mass. I wasn't thinking about turning player itself - that never bothered me.

Oh, that's a whole 'nother issue. That's easily do-able with just some tweaks to what angular momentum is applied when you rotate.

 

I'm not sure it would be fun to wait a decade for a heavy crate to turn over though. :) Humans are actually pretty good at turning heavy things over quickly. I could be wrong, but usually when turning heavy things over, we end up doing a dynamic motion where we let gravity turn it about some point we are holding, then catch it again. We usually don't try to maintain a death grip and rotate it excruciatingly degree by degree. I.e., if you're moving a couch with someone, you turn it on 1-2-3 and flip it over pretty quickly, you don't go, "okay, initiate turning, hurrrrrrrrrrr...." for the next 10 minutes. :)

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Oblivion has the weight of things make it harder to move them around with the grab key, heavier items "lagging" behind and if you get too far ahead of them you automatically drop them, which works pretty well to me.

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Oh, that's a whole 'nother issue. That's easily do-able with just some tweaks to what angular momentum is applied when you rotate.

 

I'm not sure it would be fun to wait a decade for a heavy crate to turn over though. (...)

Well, it's all about tuning it.

 

I.e., if you're moving a couch with someone, you turn it on 1-2-3 and flip it over pretty quickly, you don't go, "okay, initiate turning, hurrrrrrrrrrr...." for the next 10 minutes.

Yeah, if you're moving couch with someone.... ;)

 

All I'm trying to say is that it doesn't look good when you spin an object which weighs several dozens kg as it was made of paper...

And you really only want (need) to rotate things up to 180 degrees (unless you want to play with that rotating: "oh, how cool feature they implemented... :) " ;)

 

 

Oblivion has the weight of things make it harder to move them around with the grab key, heavier items "lagging" behind and if you get too far ahead of them you automatically drop them, which works pretty well to me.

You reminded me something - when some object collides with geometry and gets stuck (doesn't follow you) you can go to another room and it will still be stuck there.

Has anybody thought about automatical dropping as well...?

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How can this be such a "big immersion breaker"? Since a lot of people don't even realize it, it can't be THAT big of a problem, and in fact I think that there are enough people who would consider it an immersion breaker if it were included. Like me.

 

Wow, that seems a pretty ignorant statement. I guess if we went back a few years and some suggested an idea to move the view up and down/side to side slightly whilst you walked around you'd say it was unecessary and pointless? Just because something isn't commonly done doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. People might actually subconciously enjoy it but as most gamers don't put too much thought into the mechanics of the game they play it doesn't get considered. Again, Operation Flashpoint used this technique when you were handling a LAW etc and I think it added a lot to the feeling.

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You reminded me something - when some object collides with geometry and gets stuck (doesn't follow you) you can go to another room and it will still be stuck there.

Has anybody thought about automatical dropping as well...?

Yes, that is planned.

 

Yeah, if you're moving couch with someone....

By myself, I wouldn't be able to pick up or turn over a large couch at all. My point was that it's not like I could pick it up, but only turn it very very slowly. Like OrbWeaver said, if you can pick it up, you can usually turn it, albeit a bit awkwardly and with a chance of dropping it IRL. :)

 

It's fine if we want to add some rotational inertia for heavy objects, I just don't think it should be taken to an extreme. It's probably one of those subtle things like frobhilighting fading in and out that is not a high priority when we are still hashing out the basics of the system. Also, a consequence of this intertia and a torque-based system would be that an item turns past where you're trying to rotate it to even after you've stopped actively rotating.

 

@Komag: I haven't played Oblivion, so I'm not sure how it would work. My experience is that sitting there waiting for an action I initiated to complete is not very fun gameplay. We could make you turn very very slowly when your neck gets injured too, but that's not fun. :)

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Wow, that seems a pretty ignorant statement. I guess if we went back a few years and some suggested an idea to move the view up and down/side to side slightly whilst you walked around you'd say it was unecessary and pointless?

 

Exactly. And I'm still of this opinion for a simple reason. Your brain automatically compensates for such movements, so you don't really notice it. However I DO notice it when the screen moves up and down in an FPS game, because the camera is not attached to my brain in the same way.

 

Just because something isn't commonly done doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.

 

I don't enjoy it because I never liked it when controls were starting to get messed up because someone though this to be "realistic". I think your statement is quite ignorant though, because "realism" is quite overrated in many situations. Not everything that would be realistic would also make a good game.

Gerhard

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I don't enjoy it because I never liked it when controls were starting to get messed up because someone though this to be "realistic". I think your statement is quite ignorant though, because "realism" is quite overrated in many situations. Not everything that would be realistic would also make a good game.

 

Well I guess we're never going to agree on this. I don't get the deal with people saying it messes the controls up though. It's just a little more depth, something to make the experience more tactile. And on your other point, I agree that poorly coded headbobbing detracts from the game but a good one adds a lot to the experience. I've believed for a long time that this is where the original Thief games excelled. The movement and feeling was increidbly well done, almost felt "analogue" to most games "Digital" feeling...

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I don't see how it's any more immersive to have a heavy object drag behind your view anyway. Imagine you're carrying a heavy crate, you hear footsteps behind you:

You: Quickly whip around to check out what's behind you

Crate: Initially stays behind your back and slowly drifts through your body, clipping the camera in the process, until it's in front of you.

 

How is that more believable?

 

[EDIT: You could maybe make it more believable by having the crate origin trace out the same curvature that your "arm point", a point somewhat ahead of you went through, but then what happens if you are moving while turning your view? You could run into situations where following the same curvature as your view turned through now bumps into something, because you've moved your feet since your view originally traced out that curvature, and now the box is stuck on something when it shouldn't be. Can of worms.]

 

Maybe it would make sense with full body awareness and full arm-IK showing your arms holding the crate, your head looking over your shoulder, and shoulders turning after your head turns based on how heavy the thing is, but we don't have any of those things.

 

To clarify: We do plan to introduce a sense of weight by slowing down your translational movement when carrying something, but messing with the rotaional view movement just opens up a can of worms.

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You should really try the Oblivion grabbing, it works well for the whole moving/turning situation you just described. No can of worms. There is just a small lag with the larger items, no "waiting around" or anything, and they have a max speed of movement, so if you turn real fast you'll lose it, whereas a small item can be whipped around quick and tossed far.

 

Also, some things you can't lift up off the ground, but just drag along the ground, because they are too heavy. Bodies were this way, but they could be adjusted to be liftable, or perhaps dragging is all we wanted anyway.

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