yeah, M&B doesn't have nearly that depth. Basically blocking and swinging is controlled by pre-canned strieks that are dictated as to which direction you are aiming your mouse. Point to the right and you start out with a wide slice from the right moving toward the left. Point to the left and he'll make a downward/left stroke starting above the left shoulder. Start above your head and he'll make a downward strike from above. Start below your centerpoint and he'll usually make a stab.
Oh that's cool, that's similar to how Thief did it except that it wasn't a big part of Thief, and also this sounds more in-depth. That's a fine system.
it works very well for the game.
seriously, give it a shot. keep in mind that it is still very much in production, but there's a lot there I think you'd like.
Plus, chopping dudes heads in with a heavy axe from atop an armored warhorse is the best fucking feeling ever
Thanks to videogames, if I even encounter a gigantic mystical entity, I will know how to climb up it, locate its vitals, and stab it to death. (By using my environment!)
GSM on
We'll get back there someday.
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#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Thanks to videogames, if I even encounter a gigantic mystical entity, I will know how to climb up it, locate its vitals, and stab it to death. (By using my environment!)
or perhaps shooting it with arrows while on horseback
Thanks to videogames, if I even encounter a gigantic mystical entity, I will know how to climb up it, locate its vitals, and stab it to death. (By using my environment!)
or perhaps shooting it with arrows while on horseback
cowboy-movie-esquely standing atop a horse and leaping at it
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
edited May 2007
Page 5 mentioned two of my favorite games.
Play them both, everybody.
And yeah, M&B doesn't quite do the sword combat right (melee fights can feel... floaty, esepecialy when blocking) but it nails horseback riding, lancing and archery. It's a very good (and fun) simulation of what calvary would feel like, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination of the potential franchises it could be leant to - LotR comes to mind immediately, but oh man would I love to have a Berserk/Band of the Hawk game based on this kind of gameplay. All they need is more polish all over.
Die by the Sword - oh lords I love this game. I never did get the mouse mapping to work correctly (the deadzone always seemed way too narrow), and instead used the numpad to strike. The amazing thing is that the importance of sword stroke wasn't so much that you could pick the direction (You would almost always be making horizontal slashes at the same height, forehand to backhand and then backhand to forehand), but instead on how you could control the exact timing of when that sword stroke was started and released relative to your body position. Having the game calculate your hit box and block status based simply on where your sword was instead of just having the character block everyting while in his 'block animation' was what made the game shine so much, even today. You actually had to maneuver your body so that you could get a clear swing at him after he took a swing at you, over extending himself and leaving his entire body open for a strike.
Yeah, DBTS had an interesting way of making you care about positioning and timing. Blocking was pretty difficult, so your primary line of defense (which is true for real-world fencing/karate/whatever) is positioning; if you are not where the enemy attacks, you can't get hit. But if you go too far away, you can't counter.
Defender on
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
It's a good thing Gabe remembered to color that one chip yellow, he might have had to be banned from the forums otherwise.
BYToady on
Battletag BYToady#1454
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FrankoSometimes I really wish I had four feet so I could dance with myself to the drumbeatRegistered Userregular
edited May 2007
"That's cool. You're a cool guy" had me laughing so hard my chef boyardee ravioli started dribbling outta my mouth and back into the bowl. I still re-ate it....
"That's cool. You're a cool guy" had me laughing so hard my chef boyardee ravioli started dribbling outta my mouth and back into the bowl. I still re-ate it while crying quietly to myself alone in my room.
"That's cool. You're a cool guy" had me laughing so hard my chef boyardee ravioli started dribbling outta my mouth and back into the bowl. I still re-ate it....
That's really not the kind of thing you share with people without getting mocked
Man I wish there was another game that has sword controlls like MGS2
I agree. Those were really nice. They weren't really necessary, though...the system for guarding was, like, "either you are guarding or you are not" and the angle of sword-slashes didn't seem to matter. But it was still cool, and it would be really cool if someone made a game where the sword works like that but the directions actually matter.
Hey, look for Die By The Sword (PC). It has some really interesting inverse-kinematic sword controls. Basically you use the mouse to control the sword and you swing it around pretty dynamically.
I thought inverse kinematics was a technique for animating joints
What does it mean in this context?
There are two basic ways to position jointed limbs: Forward Kinematics and Inverse Kinematics.
FK means starting from the "root" and working outward. Like, I bend the shoulder, and that moves the elbow, wrist, and fingers. Then I bend the elbow, and that moves the wrist and fingers. This is a bitch to work with from an artist's perspective, but it's very easy to calculate.
IK means starting from the end and working back toward the root. So like, I say "put your palm here" and the system figures out what it needs to do to get that to happen. The IK system will automatically bend the shoulder and the elbow and the wrist as needed to get the palm of your hand to go where I told it to. This is great for artists to work with, but it's way harder to program and it cannot run as fast as FK. Also, sometimes there are "impossible" scenarios, like if I tell you to put your hand 500 feet above your head; you simply cannot do it without taking your joints out of their sockets.
In many games, you'll see a combination: IK is used to make the base animations, but then, like, if your dude is leaning forward or something, the game will apply real-time FK to the spine and hip joints to make the guy lean.
In this case, it means that your mouse indicates an imaginary point in front of you. Your character will use IK to attempt to move his sword-tip to that exact point. If you, for example, put your invisible point high up and to the right, then quickly move the point (by moving your mouse) down and to the left, your guy will follow the point with his sword-tip, resulting in a down-and-to-the-left cutting motion with the sword.
In other words, all of your sword moves are fully dynamic; no canned combat animations. Your guy's upper body moves as needed to make the exact sword moves that you make, matching your speed, angle, and height with considerable precision. The only thing you can't do well is thrust the sword in and out, because the mouse is a 2D device, not a 3D device. To fix this, one mouse button makes the sword point forward further while it's held, and the sword comes back when it's released. The other mouse button turns the sword sideways so you can use it to block or parry.
It's basically fully-dynamic sword-fighting. It's limited, but it's really innovative and really cool. It's also from like 1998, so factor that in when considering how ahead of its time it was.
In most games, animations are made by hand in packages like 3DSMax or Maya. They are made using IK, or are imported from motion capture sets. But then the data is taken from the animations and stored as FK for use in the game, because that's far easier to program, never has any "impossible" conditions, and runs faster. The game basically just interpolates FK poses in real-time.
When your character leans around dynamically in-game, that's usually real-time FK layered on top of the existing base animations.
When your character has one foot up on a stair and one foot down, that is either real-time IK (with a very simple 3-joint system, just heel-knee-hip), or a special pre-made lower-body animation of the guy standing with one leg up.
Man this is fun to talk about. Which I guess is related to my career choice.
EDIT 2: So the point is, real-time IK being used to animate large portions of your character's body in-game is pretty impressive, especially for 1998. The game's hit-detection system is also really good, it's precise down to the actual polygon that gets cut. Plus of course the game has limb-severing and stuff like that. For 1998, this is very impressive stuff. I mean, that's the year Quake 2 came out...pretty awesome to have a real-time IK melee game with precise hit detection in that year.
Posts
it works very well for the game.
seriously, give it a shot. keep in mind that it is still very much in production, but there's a lot there I think you'd like.
Plus, chopping dudes heads in with a heavy axe from atop an armored warhorse is the best fucking feeling ever
Also, thanks and I will do that, hopefully soon.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Thanks to videogames, if I even encounter a gigantic mystical entity, I will know how to climb up it, locate its vitals, and stab it to death. (By using my environment!)
or perhaps shooting it with arrows while on horseback
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
cowboy-movie-esquely standing atop a horse and leaping at it
No.
:^:
Way to go, dude.
that's a good movie
Play them both, everybody.
And yeah, M&B doesn't quite do the sword combat right (melee fights can feel... floaty, esepecialy when blocking) but it nails horseback riding, lancing and archery. It's a very good (and fun) simulation of what calvary would feel like, and it doesn't take a lot of imagination of the potential franchises it could be leant to - LotR comes to mind immediately, but oh man would I love to have a Berserk/Band of the Hawk game based on this kind of gameplay. All they need is more polish all over.
Die by the Sword - oh lords I love this game. I never did get the mouse mapping to work correctly (the deadzone always seemed way too narrow), and instead used the numpad to strike. The amazing thing is that the importance of sword stroke wasn't so much that you could pick the direction (You would almost always be making horizontal slashes at the same height, forehand to backhand and then backhand to forehand), but instead on how you could control the exact timing of when that sword stroke was started and released relative to your body position. Having the game calculate your hit box and block status based simply on where your sword was instead of just having the character block everyting while in his 'block animation' was what made the game shine so much, even today. You actually had to maneuver your body so that you could get a clear swing at him after he took a swing at you, over extending himself and leaving his entire body open for a strike.
Lies.
That's really not the kind of thing you share with people without getting mocked
:^:
A+ post
Ohh
Very nice writeup by the way, highly informative.
EDIT: One clarification:
In most games, animations are made by hand in packages like 3DSMax or Maya. They are made using IK, or are imported from motion capture sets. But then the data is taken from the animations and stored as FK for use in the game, because that's far easier to program, never has any "impossible" conditions, and runs faster. The game basically just interpolates FK poses in real-time.
When your character leans around dynamically in-game, that's usually real-time FK layered on top of the existing base animations.
When your character has one foot up on a stair and one foot down, that is either real-time IK (with a very simple 3-joint system, just heel-knee-hip), or a special pre-made lower-body animation of the guy standing with one leg up.
Man this is fun to talk about. Which I guess is related to my career choice.
EDIT 2: So the point is, real-time IK being used to animate large portions of your character's body in-game is pretty impressive, especially for 1998. The game's hit-detection system is also really good, it's precise down to the actual polygon that gets cut. Plus of course the game has limb-severing and stuff like that. For 1998, this is very impressive stuff. I mean, that's the year Quake 2 came out...pretty awesome to have a real-time IK melee game with precise hit detection in that year.
Thanks for posting that stuff.
YAY! A+ for everybody!
Also is that a new PBF? Good comic.
I had squirrel-meat befo'
Mainer where is your sig and avatar from?
Got a lump in my throat
dangerously close to manly tears
Naruto, the manga.