Future of Parkour in RE

[fawstoar]

Currently, the parkour in this game is one of the main reasons I enjoy it more than more standard twitch shooters like Quake 3 Arena and various other clones. The wall-running, powersliding, and wall-jump + impulse mechanics are great, but they leave me wanting a bit more. I've got some suggestions here, perhaps we can refine these...

1. Powerslide Knockback. The fact that the powerslide can hurt people is great, but what if the person you hit with it goes flying (thank you, ragdoll) and is stunned for a moment, before climbing back up? It would make this mechanic far more useful, although it might have to eat up some more energy to for balancing reasons.
2. Ledge-grabbing. I remember quin saying there was already some code written for this, so hopefully it won't be terribly difficult to implement. In my opinion it should go something like this: you jump against the wall of a building, kick off of it backward, then impulse forward, grab the ledge, and fling yourself upward several meters with significant forward propulsion (perhaps setting you up for a perfect powerslide?)
3. Air-stomp/ground-pound. If you're above a certain height in the air, perhaps you could plummet toward the ground whilst charging up a punch that will send people nearby flying, with significant damage. The radius, knockback, and damage would be determined by the height at which you jump.
4. Vaulting. Low objects like the air vents on top of buildings on center are currently only avoidable by jumping over them. This isn't a problem, but it's a bit awkward when you run into a tiny little wall that stops you before you realize you have to jump. Perhaps you could instead run towards it, then press a key to vault yourself up and over the obstacle...
5. Enemy-vaulting. Never before seen in a game (I think)! Run towards an enemy from behind, then jump, grab their shoulders, and fling yourself up to higher heights. Perhaps the enemy gets knocked down?

Admittedly 5 is a little over the top, but the others could be very cool and make the game require some more finesse in order to succeed. I'll leave you with this crazy idea: what if powersliding increased your momentum, like Tribes' skiing?

[orbitaldecay]

I would, at the very least, love to see a goomba stomp a la Urban Terror Nothing was better in that game than landing on someones head from a great height and the lovely cracking sound which accompanied it.

[qreeves]

I would, at the very least, love to see a goomba stomp a la Urban Terror Nothing was better in that game than landing on someones head from a great height and the lovely cracking sound which accompanied it.

This one is kind of hard with RE's physics, we have a lower gravity and more air "friction" which gives it that floaty feel (a lot of this was why impulse was invented, then the physics got tailored around balancing out the impulse moves). As a result of this, you don't gain a lot of velocity just falling (it's tricky just getting the landing "thud" sound playing in the right circumstances).

I like the idea of the ground pound (I'm thinking, crouch in mid-air?) and vaulting, and I could probably combine the stomp and vault moves into the current parkour key. Most of my problem with making new moves is determining how to do it without adding any more keys; everything on the mouse and around WASD is occupied by something, and you don't want to have more than a couple of keys to play a game else things get complicated (which I try to avoid in RE, it should be: easy to pick up/difficult to master).

[inpersona64]

I like the idea of the ground pound (I'm thinking, crouch in mid-air?) and vaulting, and I could probably combine the stomp and vault moves into the current parkour key. Most of my problem with making new moves is determining how to do it without adding any more keys; everything on the mouse and around WASD is occupied by something, and you don't want to have more than a couple of keys to play a game else things get complicated (which I try to avoid in RE, it should be: easy to pick up/difficult to master).

I get what you mean. I'm still trying to master the whole powerslide thing and wall-run-headshot-instagib thing lol. Someone new came in the server the other day and we told him straight up, "The Q-button will end up being your best friend, and don't ever press K." ROFL. Simple enough, he pretty much damn near beasted everyone in the server like he had been playing this game since forever. Part of it was because he's running a beast computer, but the other part of it was because he said he'd played a lot of Warsow. Anyway, I think you hath accomplished the "easy to pick up" aspect.

[fawstoar]

Whatever the vault key turns out to be, it should be context-based so that you don't end up vaulting over midair (like in ARMA, where there's a separate key for everything if anyone's played that...). If that were the case, the jump key would work just fine. Or maybe you just walk into the obstacle and get vaulted over.

For the ground pound I was thinking something like this... http://youtu.be/ARKo34tk35Q

[Goku]

I know that the movement system has always been the reason I love this game. Even in Blood Frontier you could hit a ramp a certain way and do unique movement. I definitely would like to see the ground pound idea work out. Vaulting would be cool but is probably not too necessary with the impulse jump available. I would also like to see a thrust forward similar to the super jump. You could hold your jump button in the air to charge your impulse taking more stamina. It would probably need to slow your fall when you start charging. Right now the game is much faster than it started, but still is no where near as fast as warsaw. Whether it needs to go faster depends on how hard it is to kill at higher speeds. Dont want to make getting a kill impossible for new players.

[qreeves]

Okay, preliminary "ground pound" move is in SVN as of r2784. While in the air, press "crouch" (LSHIFT) and you will plummet to the ground, anyone standing beneath you will be kung-fu'd. Pertinent variables are: impulsepound, impulsepoundheight, impulsepoundweight, impulsepoundpitch (last one determines a sort of "radius" for the melee). Neat trick: you can do successive pounds by bouncing off someone's head and keeping crouch held down.

[riidom]

Attached an animation for ground pound.
Untested, so let me know if it works or not.
It's thought for the flight straight-down, doesn't include an impact animation (I am not sure how this gets implemented - if it needs a separate anim, for example). If it needs to be done different, just give me specifications.

groundpound.7z

(18.01 KiB) Downloaded 339 times

[qreeves]

Attached an animation for ground pound.
Untested, so let me know if it works or not.
It's thought for the flight straight-down, doesn't include an impact animation (I am not sure how this gets implemented - if it needs a separate anim, for example). If it needs to be done different, just give me specifications.

Just using the wall kick animation at the moment (you only see these things in thirdperson remember), but I will have a play with this tonight. I've noticed it's also a great balance to the low gravity, pounding gets you to the ground faster, especially from heights. Still determining how I'd like the impact to play out, I'd like to see a mini explosion like thing with a wave push area, but the attacker should probably need to "recover" or something before being allowed to do it again.

[orbitaldecay]

Attached an animation for ground pound.
Untested, so let me know if it works or not.
It's thought for the flight straight-down, doesn't include an impact animation (I am not sure how this gets implemented - if it needs a separate anim, for example). If it needs to be done different, just give me specifications.

Just using the wall kick animation at the moment (you only see these things in thirdperson remember), but I will have a play with this tonight. I've noticed it's also a great balance to the low gravity, pounding gets you to the ground faster, especially from heights. Still determining how I'd like the impact to play out, I'd like to see a mini explosion like thing with a wave push area, but the attacker should probably need to "recover" or something before being allowed to do it again.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. A "wave" effect would accompany it well. It is fairly difficult to execute successfully, seems to me like it should do more damage, but maybe it will seem easier with practice. Either more damage, or a greater damage radius (which would mesh nicely with the wave effect). Also needs a crucial futuristic sound effect, I was thinking something like this http://www.hark.com/clips/ztqxgqgwnn-mario-enemy-stomp

[fluxord]

1. Powerslide Knockback.
2. Ledge-grabbing.
3. Air-stomp/ground-pound.
4. Vaulting.
5. Enemy-vaulting.

+1. Man I would to have those moves in RE. I've already seen move nr. 5 in Prince of Persia 2: Warrior Within.
Also Ledge-grabbing would be useful to have.

Okay, preliminary "ground pound" move is in SVN as of r2784.

Woah! Nice , sadly I can't test it (I'm not gonna download the ~1GB svn with my WiFi connection )

A "wave" effect would accompany it well. It is fairly difficult to execute successfully, seems to me like it should do more damage, but maybe it will seem easier with practice. Either more damage, or a greater damage radius (which would mesh nicely with the wave effect).

What about something like this (Gouki's Misogi from Street Fighter series):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxGkLtOpNQw

Also needs a crucial futuristic sound effect, I was thinking something like this http://www.hark.com/clips/ztqxgqgwnn-mario-enemy-stomp

ROFL

[riidom]

This thread is great to ask some questions about animations that I have for pretty long time

___
First, a problem with the groundpound is, that it is of flexible length - how does get dealed with that?

Can I make the start (getting in pose) in frame 1-3, for example, then have the boost-down (basically static, but could also be some alternating seamless movement) on 4-6, and the impact move, what takes a bit longer, on 7-15? And then have this single animation controlled by code, that it plays 1-3, 4-6, 4-6, 4-6, ..., 7-15 ?

Or is it better to have two animations? One with the start scene (1-3) and tons of repeats of 4-6, so much that it will last to play for even the longest possible groundpound. This will be aborted at any frame (depending on when impact happens) and the impact anim gets played as next then.

To think about what new animations could improve the look best, it is important to understand the possibilities one has, when dealing code-wise with animations.

___
Second, about spectator.
Just to make sure, every anim is dedicated to be either watched from the player itself, while in firstperson-look, OR to be watched by spectators/other players/yourself in 3rd-person view?
This is why the reload looks fine in 1st-person view, but is just a hands-down when watched from outside, I guess?

___
Third, is there some kind of animation-blending, and if yes, how does it work, so I can use the effect properly?
My guess is, that I just have to leave the parts of body free of keyframes that I want to become over-blended by other anims. Like, when I make a reload anim, and want the legs to follow the movement anims that the player triggers, I just dont touch the legs at all? Is that enough, or is there more to know?

Ok, guess that was it for first ^^

tl;dr - Tell more about animations!

[fawstoar]

Just tested out the new SVN. The ground pound is rather useless at the moment, not to mention that it makes powersliding impossible. These radius & recovery ideas are excellent, but I'm afraid a new key will have to be added to prevent interference... maybe LCTRL or V?

[fluxord]

Why another key?
Do you know that Powersliding can also be done by double tapping the directional keys (W,A,S,D) and then crouching.

[inpersona64]

Why another key?
Do you know that Powersliding can also be done by double tapping the directional keys (W,A,S,D) and then crouching.

Oh you mean like Impulse Dash + Crouching = Makeshift "Powerslide" ? Never thought about that

[qreeves]

Why another key?
Do you know that Powersliding can also be done by double tapping the directional keys (W,A,S,D) and then crouching.

Oh you mean like Impulse Dash + Crouching = Makeshift "Powerslide" ? Never thought about that

Yeah, that was the original method of performing the power slide. You can either crouch and double-tap a direction, or boost from mid-air and crouch while you hit the ground (within a certain delay). I've since put it back that way so we could use crouch with ground pound. Yes, the actual pound will be more effective eventually, I'm just trying to get the physics right first while I determine how to make this into a proper "weapon".

[qreeves]

First, a problem with the groundpound is, that it is of flexible length - how does get dealed with that?

Basically, you just need a pose that loops. All that happens is the base time is set to the beginning of the move, and it loops until a new animation is selected.

Can I make the start (getting in pose) in frame 1-3, for example, then have the boost-down (basically static, but could also be some alternating seamless movement) on 4-6, and the impact move, what takes a bit longer, on 7-15? And then have this single animation controlled by code, that it plays 1-3, 4-6, 4-6, 4-6, ..., 7-15 ? Or is it better to have two animations? One with the start scene (1-3) and tons of repeats of 4-6, so much that it will last to play for even the longest possible groundpound. This will be aborted at any frame (depending on when impact happens) and the impact anim gets played as next then.

Complicated things like this need separate animations, and thus code to drive it. While it is possible, it is best to keep animations as simple as possible. With animation blending, it's a fairly fluid process going from one animation to another without "intro" poses. I'd say you'd need at most two animations, one for the plummet and another for the impact/recovery.

Second, about spectator. Just to make sure, every anim is dedicated to be either watched from the player itself, while in firstperson-look, OR to be watched by spectators/other players/yourself in 3rd-person view? This is why the reload looks fine in 1st-person view, but is just a hands-down when watched from outside, I guess?

The first person view is a separate model with its own animations. You can animate the third person models in the same way, just this was never done by anyone (so we reused poses as placeholders).

Third, is there some kind of animation-blending, and if yes, how does it work, so I can use the effect properly? My guess is, that I just have to leave the parts of body free of keyframes that I want to become over-blended by other anims. Like, when I make a reload anim, and want the legs to follow the movement anims that the player triggers, I just dont touch the legs at all? Is that enough, or is there more to know?

Yes, there is animation blending, but to be honest I'm just a hacker who writes gameplay mechanics and knows very little about the more complicated inner workings of the engine. From what I know, you only need to animate the parts of the body necessary for your pose. I think there is a priority system so certain animations have precedence over others. The Cube 2 Model Reference should provide more insight into the model commands placed in a config file. All I can suggest beyond that is to review "data/models/actors/player/iqm.cfg" (third person) and "data/models/actors/player/hwep/md5.cfg" (first person). You'll notice in the first one that there animations that apply to the whole body, followed by "iqmanimpart" commands, which apply animations only to specific parts of the model.

[riidom]

That was pretty helpful so far, thanks, will look after work closer into it.

For now, I have a slightly changed version of the md5-Importer (for 2.49) - it has not to be started manually anymore, but now sits into importer menu, when copied to correct scripts-folder (depending on choice during Blender-installation).

blender-md5importer.7z

(8.29 KiB) Downloaded 362 times

Edit: I'm putting this here, because some models are available as md5mesh/anim only, like weapons and 1st-person-model, so this importer is quite handy if one wants to look at these.

[bonifarz]

It is maybe a bad idea to bump this older topic, but it looks quite interesting and relevant from my point of view. Also, this one was mentioned not long ago on the wishlist:

http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=1937
More moves for time-trial

Most of the discussion so far in this topic is about a ground pound move, which was implemented, tested and rejected, as stated in the corresponding topic:

I've reinstated the old power slide mechanic and removed ground pound now in SVN, it was mostly a test that didn't really work to my satisfaction anyway.

There is also a topic for ledge-grabbing, but it is still unclear to me how this feature might turn out. The same applies to the suggested vaulting mechanics, for which a more specific description of the feature request might help to induce further discussion.

That being said, I would like to add a sixth point to the above list, after hesitating about it for a while. I don't know if this has been addressed in the past, but here are a few thoughts.

Considering the aesthetic aspects of the parkour theme, the inclusion of some spin mechanics could make a wonderful addition, despite some obvious problems. This could imply moves like somersault, wall-spin or backflip. The first problem is to keep the pitch of the direction of view in the usual range to prevent a headache. Furthermore, use of weapons while spinning makes no sense, even though it was fun in games like Contra. For these reasons, one could switch to a free camera mode while spinning, similar to following a player in the spectator mode, but that might be disruptive for the game-play. A spin jump could allow you to better conserve your momentum (lower friction?) while leaving you unable to change the direction of flight using movement keys or impulse mechanics. For example, this could be triggered pressing the impulse and crouch keys in mid air (honestly, I'm not sure how badly this interferes with some sliding habits). The spinning can be canceled any time (releasing the crouch key), but the spin mode will remain until the current rotation is complete. Hitting another player, a wall or the floor while spinning should probably induce some (self-/) damage and cause you to bounce off at reduced velocity. So in summary, this could add some more mobility but would require proper aiming and timing.

Of course, tuning and balancing such a move would be quite tedious. I think this quote from another topic fits well.

I'd be very careful messing with the air movement physics at all anymore. The values they're at now took years of tweaking. You want to encourage movement but limit it enough so people can still aim at you.

[TristamK]

Some small ideas
a) Make dash move more useful . double pressing move buttons isn't good . Rebind it to q+[direction key] for example .
b) Plasma climb and Plasma Slide and something like weapon running maybe . At this moment plasma can help a lot with climbing on the wall . Also shotgun can work like a rocket jump . But all this things can work only if you try move up .
c) Ramp jumping ?
d) idk about ramp sliding then...

P.S.What did and how work this "gpound pound" move ?

[quintux_v]

I don't have any true suggestions for making the parkour better, but some maps designed to learn how to use parkour tricks would be nice. I mean, why have a feature if noobs (like me) have trouble adapting to and using it? the tips between loading screens are nice, but if you're brand new to RE and don't know wtf a "powerslide" or "impulse dash" is, then it would be nice to have a straight-up intro, whether map or video, saying what each thing is, how you do it, and then some practice.

If players can't use this feature, they won't, and it could die.

[Architect]

i tried to get quin to try out a wall stall, but i was denied

[Karoushi]

@ post above, hmm that is unfortunate, I could see something like that. Wall-Stall: At any point before or after a wall run (in the process of using the wall for "parkour") you could simply hold a certain combination of buttons to stall your movement so instead of a wall run you'd perform said "wall-stall" and stand on the wall for 2 or 3 seconds (using the suits boosters to hold you into place against it- which would drain your energy quickly) and essentially could stand on the wall for 3 seconds gauging your target. That is actually a pretty decent idea!

When I am wall running I find that I want to use the ceiling somehow, all that space and nothing to do with it. Perhaps we can vault off of the ceiling from a wall run or something.

A lot of this of course is easier said then done, taking these ideas and putting them into the programming necessary to pull it off is more difficult then we make it out to be with our text.

There is certainly room for improvement or additions, but like OP said, I enjoy the free running aspect of this game as well. Very enjoyable on Medieval Instagib to wallrun, wallvault and then slash somebody down.

@ quintun_v - There are maps that can teach you parkour, they are called Time Trial maps/mode.

[bonifarz]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/redecli ... lipse_1.3/ / viewtopic.php?f=72&t=3443

Full Changelog
Gameplay:

• New "impulse vaulting" movement (press Q next to an obstacle to use it to propel yourself upward)
  [.......]

Modding & Data Assets:

[.......]

• Added texture based slippery physics (textcoastscale and vcoastscale, sets as a scale of floorcoast/slidecoast, only works on top facing textures)
  [.......]

The future is now
Thanks for these interesting additions, Quin!

[quintux_v]

@ quintun_v - There are maps that can teach you parkour, they are called Time Trial maps/mode.

True, but that kind of requires a bit of experimentation, plus you can't quite practice the parkour + shooting you would use in any other modes. I'm also one of those people that learns best from straightforward explanations instead of just trying to learn things on my own - for example, I've learned more in the past few weeks about computer programming (from my college class) than I have in the past 3 years of trying to learn on my own. There's the possibility that many others are like that.