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Small idea


Noisycricket

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Heya, just had a small thought i wanted to share

 

How about having the front of the...players...hood come over on the edges of the screen when quickly turning the view around? Not a lot, just enough to get the idea and only when turning hard, where the friction between the head and hood is overcome by the speed of movement. Perhaps proportional to the speed of movement and only above a certain speed. Perhaps the top of the hood when he lands from a high jump or when looking straight up. Perhaps have the bottom show when hes looking down. The code for this could be based upon a short algorithm locating the edges of the screen based upon individual screen width, ie, 0 - 2560 and setting those positions as the starting location for the hood model. :ph34r:

Edited by Noisycricket
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I have the honour of quoting Crispy's signature:

 

Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.

 

*stares disapprovingly*

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Putting aside the G-word issue, I'm not such a big fan of body-awareness. Although granted it's nice to know where your feet are in some situations, so I can see some functional uses for seeing some body parts, and you already need something for shadows and reflections ... but as an aesthetic in and for itself ... for me personally I feel like it would pull the character away from me.

 

And something like the hood in particular seems a little odd, esp if you've got different people using different screen dimensions. Also the physics of seem a little odd ... if I wear a hood and turn my head, I don't feel like I'd see that. Or what I might see, it's like seeing the side of your nose ... it's more of a distraction. Anyway, all of this is just my own opinion.

 

Now having the head-bob in sync with different gaits and landing from a jump makes sense and might look cool and natural.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Now having the head-bob in sync with different gaits and landing from a jump makes sense and might look cool and natural.

 

Well, I have to say I absolutely LOVE the mantling code :wub:

 

It would be cool if that could be extended to jumps (a little down-dipping of the screen when you land), and head-bob while you walk. Right now, it feels like you are sliding along on a rail, or floating.

 

As for body-awareness, I really like that stuff as I am quite aware of my own body in real-life :)

 

For instance, it quite puzzled me in my moon-lit attic (in game I mean, I don't have an attic :) why the moon light wasn't blocked by the player. Only much later it dawned (no pun :) on me that my player doesn't have a shadow - nor feet or any other body parts except a right arm to pull out the sword. Ow. :mellow:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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You can turn the player shadow on if you like, though we aren't officially supporting it.

 

We have discussed body awareness multiple times and most of us agree it isn't realistic or desirable to include it. It would be like having the screen go black at random intervals to simulate blinking or adding a 'bladder meter' that the character has to empty. Some types of "realism" actually remind you more strongly that you're playing a game.

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well I think those are a bit facetious "straw man" examples.

 

I think Thief 3 did body awareness correctly (apart from the jerky movement, of course), where you can look down and see your whole body, see your legs/knees prominently when crouched, etc, and I really like it a lot. Halo does this decently as well. It's one of the extremely rare things I think Dark Mod is inferior to T3 in.

 

However, because it's so hard to "get it right", and because it really doesn't matter too much anyway since we're all used to floating arms by now, I believe it is a good decision to do at TDM does :)

 

BTW, the hood thing this thread is about is maybe a good idea, but it made me think of Metroid Prime HUD, and when I try to picture the hood there on the edges I think it would just not work and look silly instead.

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I think Thief 3 did body awareness correctly

 

I think you might be in the minority on that one (especially since the 'sucking in' climbing and lockpicking modes are an intrinsic part of body awareness).

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I think you might be in the minority on that one (especially since the 'sucking in' climbing and lockpicking modes are an intrinsic part of body awareness).

 

I don't have seen T3 yet, but please count me in that minority, too. :)

 

Of course, if the effect is not done "right", e.g. your feet just float etc. it is probably really better to not have them at all. Plus, it is a lot of work.

 

But still, _if_ done right, seeing your own body and shadow is really adding to the atmosphere. Big if, here, tho :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I don't have seen T3 yet, but please count me in that minority,

 

So you haven't seen TDS, but you agree that it "did body awareness correctly"? Based on what, a gut feeling? :huh:

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I've touched on this before, but first let me get this out of the way...we will be providing 'no' official support for body awareness.

 

Our primary concern is 'control' and we refuse to sacrifice control for such a minor visual aesthetic. There are too many concessions that have to be made for body awareness, and it amounts to a LOT of extra work.

 

It's no easy task to get the animations working with things like ladders, ropes, and swimming. Then you come to the point where you have to ask, at which point do we draw the line? Notice T3 doesn't have the player reaching out to open door handles, pick up goods, or pull levers. So, you essentially have a split of traditional first person behavior and a few special cases.

 

Further drawbacks, the frob distance for doors would have to be minuscule, if we had body awareness with a traditional thief style frob distance, you would be pulled towards the door so the animation could play and grab the handle.

 

At any rate, I appreciate the fact that some people liked it, but I personally feel it's a gimmick, impractical and has far too many development drawbacks.

 

Also, I really feel the hood idea is silly. No offense.

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So you haven't seen TDS, but you agree that it "did body awareness correctly"? Based on what, a gut feeling? :huh:

 

No, what I meant is that when you see your feet, it adds to body awareness and makes it "better" or "more correct" for me. Wether TDS got that right or screwed it up (by adding an obviously fake looking effect), I don't know :)

 

I forgot in which game I saw this with the player legs, but there it did work.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Also, I really feel the hood idea is silly. No offense.

 

Yeah, this isn't "Thief - Word, Brother" (Gangsta edition) :) As for the rest, I agree with you that it is just not really feasible for TDM at the moment.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Has no development house added body awareness to a modified Doom3 engine yet?

 

No, not that I'm aware of. I think it's more important to have good control, rather than implementing a system that requires half a dozen work arounds to make up for it. Body awareness was done better in F.E.A.R., but even there...it had similar drawbacks. Rather than just being able to walk up to a ladder and climb it, an icon came on the screen and you entered a 'ladder climbing' mode, basically you get sucked into an animation that is lined up to perfectly use the steps on the ladder. There are other instances too. You just loose too much precision, for a slight gain in visual aesthetic. Not worth it in the long run. I much prefer not having the body drawn for me, as my imagination fills in the blanks. I never questioned why I couldn't see legs on the screen...because I could feel them attached to me under the desk. lol If anything body awareness for me, was more like 'gaming' awareness. It made me even more aware that I wasn't the character in the game, and that I was just controlling a model.

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Regarding the hood idea, the player's peripheral vision is already very limited by having this narrow view that's projected on to your monitor. It might make sense to see the edges of the hood when turning if your FOV was really ~170 degrees or whatever it is IRL, but ingame your FOV is already clipped down to 90 deg. I don't think we need to reduce it farther when turning just to emphasize that you are wearing a hood. For a hood to block an FOV that is already clipped down to 90, the edge would have to be pretty much right in the middle of your face, which is a pretty significant wardrobe malfunction.

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Personally, I think it would be a bad idea, only because people would be saying, "what is that weird thing I see on the corners of the screen when i move around fast" and it would be unnecessarily polygons added to be rendered. If we had more flexibility in terms of the engine and it's limitations I think it would be more feasible.

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Like I said, I don't mind having no body in TDM, but I REALLY like having the shadow turned on. It works fine under plain normal circumstances, but doesn't work for crouching and some other stuff.

 

I know the developers have repeatedly said "no player shadow support", but if we wanted to do it, how much work would it be to make the shadow behave? If I crouch and the shadow doesn't, does that mean the player model is still standing and could get shot by an arrow that I'm trying to duck?

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I think you might be in the minority on that one (especially since the 'sucking in' climbing and lockpicking modes are an intrinsic part of body awareness).
...just like everybody thought locking the view was an intrinsic part of readables before I coded them? I don't buy that at all. Doing body awareness without locking, modes or clunky controls is every bit as doable as readables without locking the view. It may take more coding (and hence wouldn't be a TDM 1.0 feature) but it's certainly possible to have body awareness without sacrificing control.

 

Also, without body awareness, player shadows and reflections will not render correctly - they'll be prone to graphical artifacts. In the case of player shadows, Doom 3 is designed under the assumption that only visible objects will cast shadows, so geometry won't be shadowed in any place where the player model clips into it. In the case of reflections, how do you not show the player, but show their reflection when they're wading? What would that even look like? Do you see your guts when you look straight down?

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...just like everybody thought locking the view was an intrinsic part of readables before I coded them?

 

I don't know about everyone else, but I never though that. I was the one who proposed being able to look around while reading in the first place.

 

I don't buy that at all. Doing body awareness without locking, modes or clunky controls is every bit as doable as readables without locking the view. It may take more coding (and hence wouldn't be a TDM 1.0 feature) but it's certainly possible to have body awareness without sacrificing control.

 

I don't know of a single game using body awareness that doesn't rely on pre-scripted animations for climbing ladders, or most other kinds of 'interact with the world' actions. Could solutions be found for every case where body awareness proves problematic? Possibly. (though climbing ladders, climbing ropes, swimming, mantling, picking up objects, and lockpicking all come immediately to mind as difficult issues) Is it worth the time and effort it would take? Certainly not.

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Is it worth the time and effort it would take? Certainly not.

 

Maybe not as far as you're concerned.

 

Note: I'm not saying it should be in the first release, but it shouldn't be overlooked as an option to be added in at a later date once the mod up and running and has a constantly stable community and fan base.

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