New Skulk Movement Idea

Kelrath

So reading through a bunch of the bt threads, I've been hearing this sentiment a lot; “Well we know that wall jumping and strafe hopping are not ideal, but no one has been able to come up with a better idea”. Ok, fair enough. Well then here's my attempt at coming up with something completely different.

A jumping mechanic based more on physics where you charge up and actually jump on the release of the spacebar. Hold on, bear with me. This is how it would work.

The direction and strength of a jump would be a combination of multiple factors:
-Surface normal base jump
-Look direction charge impulse
-Impact reflection

Surface normal base jump: Pretty simple, just a jump of certain strength in the direction of the normal of the surface that the skulk is currently attached to. So on the floor this would be a little hop up, on the wall it would be a little hop to the side.

Look direction charge impulse: This is the charge up mechanic. By holding down the spacebar, you would charge up over time (to a maximum amount) an impulse that will be released in your current look direction when you release the spacebar (so long as you are within jumping distance of some surface). This charging mechanic will slow you down if you are walking, to the point that you will be immobile when fully charged. BUT, you can charge while in the air, so you are encouraged to stay airborne as much as possible.

Impact reflection: If you jump immediately after hitting some surface, you will reflect a percentage of your incoming velocity. The reflect percentage will likely be a function of time after impact such that you don't have to have perfect timing, but having better timing will lead to better results.

On the release of the spacebar, when near a jumpable surface, sum up the velocity vectors of all three components and there's your new velocity (with a magnitude cap of course).

What I'm hoping this new system would accomplish is to emphasize maneuverability as the skill-based element rather than speed acquisition. Multiple charge-up jumps off the floor would be enough to reach maximum velocity (low skill floor) but using the reflection mechanics to rapidly bounce around corners and from the ceiling to floor to wall to ceiling etc during combat would be a difficult thing to master (high skill ceiling). At least that's the idea. What do you all think?

joshhh

Kinda sounds like an abstract version of Shootmania movement.

Kelrath

I'm not familiar with Shootmania so I couldn't say. But sure, possibly.

male_fatalities

I've played Shootmania and don't like the movement system at all. Also not sure why we are trying to reinvent the wheel, I feel most people that don't like BT skulk movement like the walljump/bhop but don't like the implementation; speed, air control, propulsion, feel ect.

Kelrath

I'm not a big fan of the bhoping because I feel like its a hidden feature that you would never discover on your own. You have to have someone explain it to you to ever know it exists. And from a game design point of view, that is less than optimal. However the latest iterations of the movement with the heavier focus on wall jumping have not been too bad. And it does feel better than vanilla so I'll give it that.

As far as reinventing the wheel, well, there are a lot of changes being experimented with in the balance mod. Why should skulk movement be restricted to the binary choice of bhoping or no bhoping? Least that's what I figure.

I can see why a system like this would be odd on purely horizontal surfaces (Which I'm guessing Shootmania is?), but do you think the addition of walls and ceilings might make it more appealing? Even just hypothetically, regardless of what happens with BT.

ritualsacrifice

The bhop that's in balance mod isn't really a hidden feature, it's reallllly easy to pull off and it even gives you a sound to tell you that it's happening.

Kelrath

Sure, its not difficult. Once you know it exists and that you're supposed to move your mouse in a certain way while strafing a certain direction and then switch all the directions upon hitting the ground. But, answer me this: If you had no knowledge of bhopping. None at all. All you knew was that wasd moved you and space jumped you. Would you be able to discover, on your own, with no outside instruction, all of the simultaneous elements needed to properly perform this action? I doubt it. And that is the definition of a hidden feature, not that the feature is difficult.

As a counter example, wall jumping. Wall jumping I would not consider hidden because it can be discovered incrementally. You start by moving around. Then you discover you can walk on walls. Then you think to yourself "Ah ha! If I bounce off walls, I'll be harder to hit". Then when you do so you find you hit the ground going a little faster. You wonder what would happen if you do that multiple times, and you find that you go even faster. Congratulations, you have figured out wall jumping by just playing the game. However bhopping requires too many simultaneous actions for this incremental discovery to take place.

Now, if a proper explanation of this feature is put into the game itself via some kind of tutorial or description (not requiring outside sources of information), then it will be a lot less hidden. And hopefully this will be the case, but we will have to see.