Wallwalking needs a tweak
aeroripper
Join Date: 2005-02-25 Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Join Date: 2005-02-25 Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
A small change, but useful. While holding shift as a skulk, you should be able to navigate complex geometry just as well as when you're running full speed. Currently you can't quietly climb over slight elevation changes in the wall without having to run full speed, which gives your position away with sound.
Comments
It's basically any overhanging wall whose bottom-most edge is at an angle greater than or equal to 90 degrees that gives you trouble. If map makers would bevel their edges, this wouldn't be a problem!
What about existing, official maps that lack bevelled edges on overhanging portions? Is it easier to go through and modify all these, or tweak the movement code slightly to fix this?
I do agree that this is really damn annoying.
It is what it is. Wall-walking worked much better in NS1 because of flat wall, due to HL engine limitations, but NS2 would no longer look like anything vaguely realistic if you bevelled everything. Unfortunately it is a compromise that has to be made.
Edit--
From the code side, you can make it automatically walk around edges greater than 90 degrees, but the code required to create the ability would require a large number of traces and a lot of maths to figure out where you are trying to go, so you would probably find walking round edges to be jerky & hitchy. It would be very complex to write for what it brings, so ultimately, it is a compromise.
Doesn't have to be THAT beveled... even as little as 8 units does it. Most areas in ns2 have this already, but some are lacking it (ie the central drill in mineshaft, can't easily climb up around onto the railing from below).
Secondly, if there is any kind of bump on the ceiling, in 90% of cases you'll fall off when you'll need that the least. It was so annoying i basically stopped using ceilings as means of movement. Or if you're trying to get from the wall on the overhanging edge to another vertical wall, you'll again have massive problems climbing up as the game just doesn't predict any grip there. One of such most obvious places is the right side of East Junction on Veil (the hallway part going from Topographical to C-12). It's a wall, 90 degree overhang corner and then vertical wall continuing into an arch. But more such places are all over the maps. I could never climb there quickly without falling off.
In NS 2 when facing perpendicularly away from a wall, Skulk would attempt to walk literally into the air, and end up falling off the wall; While in AvP, the alien would instead walk up the wall (if oriented normally) or down (if hanging upside down).
Only jumping and using the "no wallwalk" key should detach the Skulk from walls.
As cool as AVP is, i hated the wallwalk. it was TOO Good.
And i'd forgive the non rotated ceiling view if walking on ceilings would actually work. But it just doesn't. And that's why i don't like either things about it. Give the aliens total freedom to move, not just boost jump from the walls and be stationary on ceilings. That's unnecessary limitation. If they could've done it right 13 years ago in AvP2 where alien movement really felt badass and properly fluid as something you'd expect from an agile alien. I'm sure there must be a way to at least improve it in some way, because that falling of the ceiling because of a 10cm edge that breaks the "attached" mechanic is just idiotic. Make it less strict and make it an approximation. Because you don't just fall off because you pressed crouch accidentally, you also fall down if you move forward and look tiny bit too much down, because lets face it, you want to know what's below you. But you just can't, because as soon as you do, game assumes your motion was formed in a downwards trajectory and it detaches you from the ceiling automatically. Well, i didn't want to get detached, i just wanted to see where the hell i'm going and if any marine is below me. Creators of AvP solved that "problem" in a very simple and effective way. "Attach" hotkey. It solved all the motion problems and made wall or ceiling motion a fluid smooth experience that made aliens such memorable and terrifying enemies (looks did their part as well but truly and really not knowing where they'll jump out made them for what they were. Where with skulks, you just know they can't move that well on ceilings and you just expect them to lurk in some corner to bite your ass. And that's already in the are of "too predictable". And you don't want to be predictable in games like this.
- When you spend a lot of time upside-down, your brain automatically adjusts how you process the visual information and re-orientates what you actually see. It's quite possible that an exotic life form like the skulk has the neural ability to perform this adjustment on the fly, constantly. So biologically speaking I have no problem here, it's not inconsistent in the slightest.
- AVP gave a lot of people motion sickness due to the constant shifting of the view.
- AVP was a vastly shallower and slower-paced game in terms of combat.
- Walking on the ceiling isn't your greatest strength as a skulk, nor should you be doing it THAT often.
- You can't travel around 90° angles while shift walking on the ceilings. That's the problem. And we were totally fine and on track, discussing it.
But yet again, you've extrapolated a tiny problem to everything else, blown it out of proportion to the point where you're spouting patently false statements like "aliens can only be stationary on ceilings". You know that's completely wrong right?
- Your last post just reeks not of l2p, but "learn to move using WASD" - you're complaining that if you press W to walk forward and off a wall, you walk forward and off a wall.
All you seem to do lately is whine about imaginary problems that only seem to affect you. Whats going on with your life brah?
However, going off what Soulrider said...
Something like this that seems easy I imagine would introduce a lot of bugs. Not that we can't ever do it, just that one of the programmers would need to look into exactly how much of a pain it would be / if it would be worth it. If it's a simple change, it can be looked into. If it's going to be extremely time intensive or break a lot of things, it may very well not be worthwhile.
Give the programmers some time to get around to it and determine it.
That's all I wanted, but there's been no indication at all that this has even been considered to be glanced at. This thread was started back in July, and yours is the first official CDT post on the matter.
Should be fixed.
PS: Picked ceiling at random: Docking - Ball Court. It is nightmarish.
...Have you TRIED it? That specific spot that I pointed out... TRY it. It is simply not possible to climb up and around to the sides from the bottom without using the walls, and without letting up on shift.
Edit: Are we talking about mineshaft central getting onto the railing from underneath? Challenge accepted.
Edit2: I played around around the rails in Mineshaft, and you're right. In particular if you're standing at 90 degrees perpendicular to a railing, it seems impossible to walk onto the underside, at least on the ones in central drilling. For some reason, at an angle it kind of work sometimes (although, obviously it's really difficult on railings), but even with messing around with it for a few minutes, I was unsuccessful at making it from a perpendicular position - wallwalk or not. Video coming later today.
Video:
I'm not sure why it looks particularly horrible on youtube, like something recorded on a bar cellphone in the early 2000's.... but you get the idea. The troll beam move I was talking about starts around 1:15. You can see me trying to do it over and over without and then with wallwalk.
I agree though, generally it's pretty hard to walk on ceilings, and you tend to fall off a LOT. You can argue that it's "skill" but it could use just a little bit of polish in some way. Not sure exactly how though :-D .
A *possible* implementation, that won't *fix* the issue, but might lessen it somewhat, would be to increase the step height of a skulk while wall-walking.
Currently, a skulk steps up over obstacles 16 units or under ok, anything taller is considered a blocking obstacle that needs jumping over. If you make the step height say 32 units, it should enable the skulk to walk over larger extrusions than currently, although you then lose the benefit to stop 'behind' anything that is 32 units, as you will not be blocked by it moving.
It is something that could be changed with a couple of lines of code, but would need to be tested to check it doesn't cause other gameplay issues, rather than bugs.
What "internal" forums?
Playtesters get access to a "secret" section of the forums to post things like map-related bug-reports and discuss issues with the game -- like this one.