DB Advanced Locomotion - Ladders


(MrEd) #1

Some of you might have had a chance to play around with the new ladder prototypes in OBJ_Battersea. So I thought I’d post to let you know where we’re at and what’s planned next, while also getting some feedback from anyone who wants to give it.

As a recap the basics of DB locomotion design are as follows:

[QUOTE=MrEd;440678]DB has two stages for it’s locomotion design & implementation:

[ul]
[li]basic locomotion - ‘baby learns to walk’: standing, crouching & simple jumping.[/li][li]advanced locomotion - ‘man learns to fly’: anything else.[/li][/ul]

Our main motivations are:

[ul]
[li]Reflect player intentions with immediacy.[/li][li]Try not to take control away from players.[/li][li]Maintain a good conservation of momentum.[/li][li]Simple to pick up; hard to master.[/li][li]Balanced for both the 1st person player and any player trying to track their movement in 3rd person.[/li][/ul]

[/QUOTE]

Full thread here for those interested:

http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/35621-DB-Locomotion-Design-Motivations

In creating the ladder prototype for DB we’ve looked at W:ET, ET:QW, CS, Unreal Tournament, CoD, BF & Urban Terror among others.

The design we’ve gone for is mostly based on Mustang’s design from Rex’s thread here:

http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/35333-Why-are-there-no-ladders?p=440968&viewfull=1#post440968

The full design is as follows (

Mount

[ul]
[li]Ladders have 2 defined automatic mount points: top & bottom.[/li][li]Players can jump onto ladders mid-way up.[/li][li]Bottom mount - Have to be moving forward and facing within a relatively tight angle to mount the ladder.[/li][li]Top mount - Have to be moving backwards and facing within a relatively tight angle to mount the ladder.[/li][/ul]

Dismount

[ul]
[li]Ladders have 2 defined automatic dismount points: top & bottom.[/li][li]Players can jump off ladders mid-way up.[/li][li]Dead players should ragdoll from the mounted position.[/li][/ul]

On Ladder

[ul]
[li]Players can climb up or down.[/li][li]Animation playback speed should be driven by pawn velocity.[/li][li]Multiple pawns may mount the ladder at the same time.[/li][li]Preserve normal loco players collision rules.[/li][li]TODO - Crouch should be used to slide down the ladder.[/li][li]TODO - Ladder velocity should be modifiable via global game balance data.[/li][li]TODO - Players can change climb speed via crouch & sprint keys.[/li][li]TODO - Weapon, item & objective actions cannot be performed when mounted on a ladder.[/li][li]TODO - Movement should stay relative to the aim direction.[/li][li]TODO - Player aim restrictions should be definable in data.[/li][li]TODO - Initial aim locked to 180, no dismount at min/max.[/li][/ul]

Restrictions

[ul]
li Make all widths the same.[/li]li Make all rung distances fixed.[/li]li Try and keep ladder height to uniform multipliers of base floor heights.[/li]li Must have hand rail at the top to prevent deployables blocking exit.[/li]li There should be no strafing on ladders.[/li][/ul]


(DarkangelUK) #2

Does landing on ladders from a great height incur fall damage or is it like W:ET where you could jump from the top of Minas Tirith and live? Sliding via crouch sounds cool. The only issue I’ve had (albeit I’ve not used the ladder much) is the standard climbing speed seems a little slow, would be cool if that could be sped up slightly.

EDIT: I suppose that would be fixed by using sprint.


(MrEd) #3

Not really tested the fall damage but I’d expect it’d be negated as I think that only gets applied when hitting the floor.

The only issue I’ve had (albeit I’ve not used the ladder much) is the standard climbing speed seems a little slow, would be cool if that could be sped up slightly.

EDIT: I suppose that would be fixed by using sprint.

Yeah, I actually nerfed the original climb speed as a quick hack in order to match the animations we had at the time of making the patch but thought this speed was as good as any to get some feedback on :wink:


(ailmanki) #4

I think it would be better to have crouch to make your body target smaller.
If crouch would initiate a downwards direction, imho jump should go up. But I expect to jump away from the ladder when jumping.

Interesting , if crouch does not make you move down, it would make you be slower + crouched, maybe sprinting and crouching together should give normal speed + crouched?

Lastly I don’t like ladders at all. I always thought its poor map design if a ladder is required.
If any give us the ability to jump at that ledge and grab the ledge, and get up without a ladder.


(en2ie) #5

They already seem pretty good to me - with the only issue being the slow speed (which you have already mentioned).

Sliding down ladders would be neat, although on all/most of the ladders so far I would just opt to jump down rather than using the ladder (faster and better chance of survival) - longer ladders would obviously negate this.


(Pytox) #6

like this? :smiley:

//youtu.be/Y24P1rZnro8


(slanir) #7

I see the word ladder and instantly think of a built in ladder system for clans :mad:

:slight_smile:


(Hundopercent) #8

Haven’t tested but it sounds good on paper.


(ImageOmega) #9

I know you said the ladder climb speed is currently a hack to match animation, but do you think it is somewhat unnecessary to include a climbing speed modifier? It seems that people would almost always want to go maximum speed when climbing up in a fast paced shooter. If this was counter strike I could see the need for being extra sneaky sneaky.

Also, what does that mean by you can not dismount at min and max by jumping? Is that when you are rotated at certain viewing angle? On paper that sounds confusing.

P.S. Going to be word getting used to those new fabulous sig and avatar images strych.


(Evil-Doer) #10

I’m just glad to hear that there is going to be more done to the ladders. Thank you :slight_smile:


(INF3RN0) #11

Hmmm interesting stuff. I hope to see more ladders in the environments. Something like sprint allowing a player to slide down the ladder really quickly, but disabling shooting ability maybe and crouch slowing climb speed would be awesome. Then just hitting jump to dismount. Being able to shoot 180 on ladders sounds quite cool.


(Protekt1) #12

I was hoping that this thread was about an elo ladder but still good information.


(Hundopercent) #13

Hehe, don’t worry I got plans to make it more distinguishable because I start reading your posts and in my head I’m saying, “Wtf, I didn’t write this.”


(Mustang) #14

Initial feedback/requests:

[ul]
[li]Having W for always climb up and S for always climb down just doesn’t work as intuitively as I expected, could we try having the controls like this (W=Up, S=Down) when the camera is angled upwards, and reversed (W=down, S=Up) when the camera angle is angled downwards[/li][li]In combination with the above it might work nicer if climb speed were controlled by camera angle, this is more of a suggestion that I’d like to try rather than a must have, e.g. 0-30° = Normal climb speed, 30-60° = Smoothly increasing climb speed, 60-90° = Max climb speed, and the reverse for looking downwards[/li][li]Mount angle is too tight[/li][li]Ladder needs to be more “sticky”, for example mounting ladder from top is very tricky to do fast and smoothly without plummeting to your death because the character would rather fall than try to grab on[/li][li]Jumping mid-ladder whilst facing the wall should re-grab at some point, doesn’t have to be at the jump peak, but instead he just plummets[/li][li]Jumping away form the ladder is pretty meh, he needs to kick off the wall to give some distance to the jump[/li][/ul]

Comments/questions:

[ul]
[li]Animation playback speed should be driven by pawn velocity. - If this is already in why was the climb speed nerfed?[/li][li]I Try and keep ladder height to uniform multipliers of base floor heights.[/I] - This sounds like quite a severe restriction, what is the reason for it?[/li][/ul]


(MrEd) #15

Thanks for all the feedback.

It remains to be seen if anyone ever plays this game sneakily but with characters like Ghost it’s worth trying to give players that option.

In W:ET, if you look past 90 degrees left or right the player automatically dismounts the ladder. We’re planning to try without the auto-dismount for now and see how that goes.

W=Up, S=Down is the UE3 default and I agree it’s quite odd for quake gamers, that will be covered by:

The aim angle controlling the speed is an interesting idea - that’s something I think CS does but we’ve not made any decision on yet.

Lots of people have mentioned the mount angle - definitely seems worth increasing it. None of the ladders are too long atm but we should look at making a more forgiving mount region at the top and agreed on the jumping too.

[QUOTE=Mustang;463288]
Comments/questions:

[ul]
[li]Animation playback speed should be driven by pawn velocity. - If this is already in why was the climb speed nerfed?[/li][li]I Try and keep ladder height to uniform multipliers of base floor heights.[/I] - This sounds like quite a severe restriction, what is the reason for it?[/li][/ul][/QUOTE]

Normally we try and keep animation scaling within ~20% of authored speeds or they start to look either a bit Moon Landing or Benny Hill. The default ladder speed was so high that it made the animations look ridiculous and there was mixed feedback about whether the speed was too slow, too fast or just right so we nerfed them down to the animation speed to give them a proper test. Consensus internally and externally seems to say ‘too slow’ so we’ll look to speed things up a bit in the near future.

Having the ladders at uniform heights makes everything easier for the animators, level designers, environment artists & programmers for reuse. The less special cases we have to deal with the better as then we know that a change in one place will work everywhere, so it’s a win-win.


(DB Genome editor) #16

One thing that bugs me with ladders in games is that in most (all?) cases the characters end up climbing into thin air when they reach the top. As long as their feet haven’t cleared the top rung, they are still in the climbing pose with their arms holding on to nothing. And the same goes when “entering” a ladder to go down.

For me there are two solutions to this:

  • Come up with complicated animations so the characters correctly pull themselves up on top / lower themselves down on the ladder. I think most people here would not like this as it involves some sort of animation loop in which you’d be trapped.

  • Model the ladders so that the current animations look right, which basically means extending the ladders with a top handrail like this:


The hand rails don’t have to be very obtrusive so the angle of capture of the top of the ladder can remain fairly open and you are not trapped between them at the top. And as a bonus it would make localization of the ladders from the top much easier. Get between the hand rails facing away from the ladder, backup and voilà! You’re automatically on the ladder!

Most permanent ladders for rooftop accesses and in industrial installations have these for safety and convenience, so it shouldn’t look out of place (certainly not in a map like Battersea).


(MrEd) #17

[QUOTE=Djiesse;463452]One thing that bugs me with ladders in games is that in most (all?) cases the characters end up climbing into thin air when they reach the top. As long as their feet haven’t cleared the top rung, they are still in the climbing pose with their arms holding on to nothing. And the same goes when “entering” a ladder to go down.

For me there are two solutions to this:

  • Come up with complicated animations so the characters correctly pull themselves up on top / lower themselves down on the ladder. I think most people here would not like this as it involves some sort of animation loop in which you’d be trapped.

  • Model the ladders so that the current animations look right, which basically means extending the ladders with a top handrail like this:


The hand rails don’t have to be very obtrusive so the angle of capture of the top of the ladder can remain fairly open and you are not trapped between them at the top. And as a bonus it would make localization of the ladders from the top much easier. Get between the hand rails facing away from the ladder, backup and voilà! You’re automatically on the ladder!

Most permanent ladders for rooftop accesses and in industrial installations have these for safety and convenience, so it shouldn’t look out of place (certainly not in a map like Battersea).[/QUOTE]

“You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Djiesse again”

Yes, very true and good reference image. They’re some of the reasons why we added the restriction on design for the final ladder models:

(!) Must have hand rail at the top to prevent deployables blocking exit.


(rookie1) #18

Yes indeed ,in last Star trek game ,char still hold the ladder on top end with out no more ladder poles …weird look